Well!
Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
and welcome to QI, which tonight is a wholesale homage
to all that is horrible.
Queasily hunched over the handrail with me tonight are
the disgusted Dara Ó Briain.
The appalled Chris Addison.
- The shuddering Sean Lock. - Thank you.
And the slightly disturbed Alan Davies.
Their buzzers are a hideous foretaste of the loathsomeness to come.
Chris goes...
- Dara goes... - That is disgusting!
Sean goes...
- And Alan goes... - Hello, I'm Piers Morgan.
Fabulous.
So... Very good.
Pass the sick bag, Alice, let's plunge in.
Where do you think this little chap lives?
I bet it's about your person, is it?
Mm, it's certainly... Let's just say it is parasitical.
It looks like it fits on the top of a pencil.
As a good luck charm for your exams?
You know, like kids have stuff on the end of their pencils, yeah?
One of those?
Or has someones head been removed? Is it a massive thing?
Ah! No, it's not that.
I reckon it looks like it lives around something that's long.
Yes!
Long, and... And that it's got lots of blood in it.
It's... Yeah...
Maybe, a couple of veins... It might have a couple of veins in it, whatever it is...
Just to get a bit of purchase, 'cos it was just long and smooth, it would slide down it.
- Where are you going!? Sean? - Something that...
- Something that's got a certain texture to it... - Sean?
- Sean! - That's got a bit of give in it...
I'm gonna rain you in, Sean.
- I'm just... - Yeah.
You're... You're kind of right, in that it's a slidy organ. A wet organ...
- That it's... - You could have made for!
I think that... Looking at it, I think it lives in the dark.
It's black all around it.
- That's it in its natural environment. - Yeah!
No, it's got that translucent, I'm not worried about how I look feeling.
Actually, it's a mouthpiece. It's a mouth part that it latches on to.
- The tongue. - The tongue.
The tongue? Yes, there's a tongue of a...
- A tongue mite? - ...particular fish.
It is indeed. It's called a tongue eating louse.
Is it the tongue of the thwh-thwh-thwh fish?
It is...
It developed fins like that.
And fish have tongues? I have never heard of a fish...
- Yeah! - What? Really? What? Why?
- "Why?" - Why would a fish have...?
Rehearse, they get a whistle.
- This is the African blacktail. - That's not it's actual size, is it?
Yes, it's a big fish. It's the African blacktail.
The really gruesome thing about this louse,
is that it latches onto the tongue - you can see how big it is,
and it sucks the blood out of the tongue
such that the tongue disappears and it replaces the tongue.
The animal thinks its tongue is actually this louse.
And it lives in there, quite happily,
and breeds and its children live in the gills and it just colonises the head.
So, when it... When the fish sees that photo, it's gonna be really embarrassed.
Yes! Exactly!
"No wonder everyone was looking at me oddly at that party."
So the fish goes without a tongue, the louse gets free food.
On the plus side, it looks like it's on a massive space hopper.
Does it die, the fish?
- No, no, it carries on with a false tongue. - They co-exist?
Well, parasites likes to keep their host alive, don't they?
Well, that's it. It's to their advantage. 'Cos the point is the food that passes into the mouth.
- It's probably not that bad. - No!
There's worse things happen to a fish, like being caught, as it has been there.
- Yes, that's true. By a human. - Yeah.
It probably finds the human more disgusting than the louse.
There's a flatworm that sort of inserts itself into crabs
and then grows through all the parts of the crab
until it pops out the top and drives the crab around.
"Get out of the way!"
"I'm after some seaweed."
You're absolutely right. Well, there are other animals you might like to know about.
What's covered in snot and eats whales?
I don't know. Some sort of nose parasite?
Well, it's a parasite that eats whales. And it eats...
- What, whole? - No, it feeds on the bones of whales.
It has evolved...
Is there a creature I don't know about? A massive creature that eats whales?
- Oh... - The snot monster?
Just this gigantic green thing that I've never seen?
- It would be big, wouldn't it? - Yeah. Eats them like peanuts.
They... I mean, everyone has a bit of a whale when it dies, don't they?
It takes months for it to get... And, gradually, it all gets consumed
- by the creatures of the deep. - Absolutely.
And the bits that fall right down to the bottom are the bones,
- and there's this extraordinary little... - Snotty little bugger.
This literally little... Yeah, it latches into the bones
and it brings out this sort of feather-like plumes and it feeds off the nutrients
and it's covered in mucus, so it's called a snot flower or mucoflora.
I've coughed something like that one.
That looks a bit like KFC.
- It's tempura. - Yeah.
- It does a bit. - Tempura. That's SO middle class.
Not if you're from Japan.
"No, actually, it doesn't look like KFC, it looks like tempura."
Two other parasites worthy of mention.
Tapeworms. How would you know if you had a tapeworm?
You'd eat more than usual?
- No. Oddly enough... - I know a fact about tapeworms,
that 80% of the people in this country have got tapeworms,
which makes them more popular than dogs.
There you are. The most popular pet.
I heard a very interesting programme on the radio the other day
about a man who was told that one of the benefits of having a tapeworm
is that it gets rid of asthma and eczema.
And, eventually, he caught a tapeworm,
and it's got rid of his crippling asthma and eczema conditions.
- Completely got rid of it. - Goodness gracious.
And he swears by it. He won't... He doesn't want to get rid of this tapeworm.
You know? He said he eats more...
Well, no, you don't eat more, actually. That's not true at all. In fact...
- I added that bit on. You're right. - Yeah. Quite.
- I put that in... - Yeah.
- I put that in on purpose. - It's a misapprehension.
People think that: "Oh, it eats all your food, therefore you're bound to be really hungry."
In fact, it makes you nauseous.
It eats a small amount of your food but the irritation to the bowel
and various other problems, mean you actually lose appetite.
Someone told me that to get rid of the worm, you have to starve yourself
and then wave a steak in front of your mouth.
- I was 16, I was chatting up this girl... - Not your mouth.
Yeah, well, she was all about then it would come up and bob out and you know...
- Sweet idea. - I was 16, she was saying this,
I was trying to chat her up, and...
You where trying to chat her up with tapeworm stories?
- It was her tapeworm story. - Oh, I see. Right.
So what sort of length would you expect a tapeworm to be inside you?
- 8 metres. - 8 metres?
- 14 miles. - More... 14 miles is perhaps a little long.
- A good half marathon. - But thank you for joining in. No.
- 50 feet is not... - 8 metres isn't bad, is it?
8 metres isn't bad at all, no. But they can stay in you for 20 years.
A long, long time. They're not pleasant.
We don't want them. And they are segmented, aren't they?
They're not... Flat but in little segments to make them even creepier.
There's one that comes out of your leg
and they... It takes three or four weeks to come out of your leg
because the only way of getting it out is to wind it round a pencil.
You have to go to the doctor every day and he'll do about an inch of it a day.
It's incredibly painful. But there's a theory that that's
where the medical sign of a serpent wrapped round a staff comes from.
Oh, the Aesculapius. That's a nice thought.
I don't know if it's true, but I like this kind of atmosphere of scout camp
where everyone keeps each other awake saying, "And apparently there's this thing
and this person, and they had these spiders came out and ate them."
Hopefully that's prepared you all for the horrors ahead. So...
You might need a stiff drink after all those disgusting animals.
What's the key ingredient, then, in the world's nastiest cocktail?
Is it Malibu?
I reckon...
I reckon you've got someone there who's a really good, quick typist, that goes...
Why is the Child Catcher now working as a barista? Why has a...
I suppose it is to suggest nastiness, that is indeed Sir Robert Helpmann.
I think he's there to suggest nastiness. We're after a nasty cocktail.
Is it genuine drink?
It's a genuine cocktail that is served in a genuine bar in a genuine place
in a genuine country.
- In just one place? - One place. And it's probably...
- Give us a clue. - It's part of the body.
We're in a country that is sort of known for its cleanliness, probably.
More than anything else. Known for its...
- Japan. - Switzerland?
- Canada. - Oh?
Which they say Toronto is New York run by the Swiss. So, it's that kind of a place.
- But this is in the Yukon. - Some sort of moose?
In a mining bar. The Downtown Hotel of Dawson City.
It's a part of a human being.
- An eye? - Toenails.
Well, toenails is good enough. It's a toe.
- A toe? - A toe. Yeah.
The Sour Toe Cocktail is the "spéciale de la maison"...
- ...in the Downtown Hotel - Where do they get the toe?
Well, there's a whole story. There...
It started in the 1960's when a figure called Captain Dick Stevenson -
he'd been all kinds of things, from a male stripper to a miner to a lumberjack,
- you know the way that manly men are... - They usually are.
Yeah, exactly.
And he found himself in an old cabin and there was a pickled toe
that had belonged to a rum runner back in the prohibition days.
And for some reason he thought it would be amusing to offer as a challenge to put it in alcohol
and the idea was you drank it and it became a very popular drink.
You kept the toe, though. It moved from glass to glass.
But, the important thing was, that there's a little rhyme, which is the key.
Is that, "You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow,
but the lips have got to touch the toe."
So the toe has to touch...
But unfortunately, there was a series of accidents.
In 1980, Garry Younger, a local miner, accidentally swallowed the toe...
So they found another one. This very nice lady called Mrs Lawrence of Alberta,
whose middle toe was amputated due to an inoperable corn, donated it.
So you're now drinking a toe that not only was amputated but had a hideous corn on it.
And people... That lasted well. It didn't have to be alcohol.
I've drunk... I've drunk worse than that.
I remember being at a party once, no glasses, drinking Tia Maria out the dog bowl.
- Wow! - They had no glasses. Wahey.
That, that's just... That's chicken, it's fine.
So, yeah. They've gone through a lot of toes. Now, they... In fact, they have a collection.
People know about this bar, so they donate their toes if they're going to be amputated
so they have some packed in rock salt in the back. You can choose your toe to have with...
He looks like he finds it hilarious.
I can imagine him going, "Hee-hee! You're gonna have to drink the toe!"
"This guy is gonna drink the toe."
- It's only... - "I love that."
It's only 5$ a shot. They reckon 35,000 people have... Have done it.
- Yeah. - It's quite popular.
I mean, you're likely to pass on germs, though, aren't you?
All those people touching the same toe. Seems very unsafe to me.
Is the toe supposed to retain any flavour?
Has it been pickled in a way that makes the drink more interesting or is it just for the...?
I think it's just so you can say you've done it these days, isn't it? It's pretty...
It's leather now, I would imagine. Isn't it? Leather and a hint of nail varnish.
Anyway, there we are. That's the Downtown Hotel in Dawson City in the Yukon
and it offers its patrons the Sour Toe cocktail,
the liquor of your choice garnished with a severed human toe.
Could be worse, though. Give me one good reason to but a frogs' bottom in your mouth.
- Do you remember posing for that? - I remember that. What a night that was!
You should see what I've got in my hands!
Is it breathing under water? 'Cos if you're swimming along, you grab the frog, and go...
Sucks all the air out of it, keep going...
You've just got to swap... Swap round. Swap round your elements.
Your Aristotelian elements. You said you're in water, sucking out of a frog,
imagine you're in air...
- Sucking water. - Water. You're in the desert.
- You're in the Australian desert. - Right.
And there's a number of species of frog, who, in order to kind of, prepare themselves
for the dry season ahead, store a huge amount of liquid in the form of...
Actually, urine, but very weak urine. And as you can see, they swell up quite a lot.
And, as Aboriginals have discovered, if you find one of these and you're very, very dry,
you literally, put it like that, and suck its bottom,
- and, and you get a lovely drink. - So, it's basically...
It's like a... Essentially, it's a Capri Sun.
Yes! That's what it is!
- That's what it is! - Squashier than a fruit.
I just get a straw, and you can make a hole wherever you want!
It's cyclorana platycephalus, the little round frog with the flat head, essentially.
Also known as the water holding frog.
Presumably though, the frog I'd like to see is the one after all of the water
you carefully stored inside, and he's there all loosy going...
And then he has to go find more water again.
- It is a bit mean, isn't it? - Yeah!
It buries itself under the ground in that condition in the summer, and kind of sleeps,
which is the opposite of hibernating. And there are points at stake,
for those of you who can tell me what the summer version of hibernating is.
Hibernating is from "hiber"...
Lowbernating.
Oh, that's a good... It's logical again, "lowbernating".
- Hibernating and "lowbernating". - Entination...?
You're SO close, yes.
- It's... - The audience knows, I expect?
- They squash you in a minute. - Aestivation, they're saying there.
Yeah, very good, yeah. Yeah, aestivation.
And if that's made you feel ill, answer me this.
What's the best way to get rid of a leech?
Stand near someone fatter.
You just go... "Go on! Off you go!".
"Look at that! Check that out!"
'Cos you think they like going through fat.
Burrowing through fat to get to the blood.
Well, I figured that there'd be something more tastier than my wizens.
- And your etiolated blood. - Yeah.
- Well, you don't want to rip them off, do you? - Why not?
Doesn't that do more damage? And leave bits, or something in you, or something?
It's gonna turn out to be ripping them off?
All right, burn it off?
You... You wanna burn it of, yeah?
Douse it in a... In a... some sort of vodka, whisky spirit thing.
You're safe with that one. You could try that...
Actually, the answer is simply just leave it.
- Ignore it? - Yeah.
- It fills up and goes? - Yeah, yeah.
If you pull it off, you won't leave a bit of it behind but nor will it help.
It's kind of difficult to ignore when it's right there on your nose.
Having to... Sorry, I...
They're usually on the legs.
Because there are many kinds of misapprehensions about leeches.
One is that they've evolved to drop down onto your neck.
They're nearly always on your legs because they're in the water.
If you pull them off, they don't leave bits of themselves behind
but their anticoagulant means that you will bleed for quite a long time.
Whereas if you let them finish it off, they actually seal off the wound nicely
and you'll only lost about a teaspoonful of blood.
Aren't they experimenting with the anticoagulant to find ways of stopping hemophilia, or something?
That's right. Wales was the capital of British leech farming, you'll be please to know.
There's still one left.
- So they're called "lleeches". - "Lleeches". Yeah, two L's, that's right.
- Does it hurt? - Not really, no.
I've had a leech. I mean, you don't actually notice, someone usually points it.
It hurts if you pull it off, so that's the point, just leave it.
- How did you get yours off? - I was told just to leave it. Exactly.
- And how... - They said: "You've got a leech on".
- And I looked at it. - And it's till there now.
- No, it's not still there. - Five years later. Huge great leech.
- Given it a name, read it stories. - Nurturing it.
- How long before it fills? - Oh, not very long.
I mean, you know, it sort of... It'll be there for ten minutes or so.
And it doesn't leave you a sting, like a mosquito?
No, no.
But if you burn one, it'll come of, won't it?
It will but it's bad for it. It will make it vomit, which is a bad thing
because other blood it's got in it may go into you. From someone else.
It's just completely unnecessary. Just leave it be.
It's nothing like as annoying as a tsetse fly, for example.
- Or a human. - Or as painful.
- Or a human that bit you, for example. - Yeah.
When they used to farm them, people used to stand around in, sort of pools of water...
- Exactly. - And get them all over their legs,
and then, presumably, they used to take them off. So, they must...
Well, they'd wait for them. Yeah, that's right. And sort of peel them off as they finished,
pop them into buckets and sell them.
- Who did they sell them to? - The National Health Service.
- Well, to doctors. - All right.
Another name for a physician was a leech. That's what you called the doctor.
Because one of the most popular "cures", so called, for anything was a blood letting
and leeches were actually the least harmful.
Those are the worst kind, what a doctor would call a phlebotomy, the cutting of a vein,
and there, huge bowls of blood, I mean, really constant... Terribly bad for people.
But that was considered to be the basic cure for almost any fever,
whereas a leech... Mind you, they'd use about 50 of them,
they'd cover you in leeches. They're used today in surgery.
The NHS buys thousands of leeches a year. There's some.
- What surgery do they use it in? - Well, in microsurgery.
It kind of repairs the blood vessels quite well, seals them up properly.
It's really very helpful, it seems.
I hope the leech guy in the surgery dresses differently to the rest of the operation staff.
I wonder if when the leech guy arrives it's like the Child Catcher.
In a fancy hat with leeches hanging off of it.
And then he arrives in. "Hello! I'm the leech man."
So leeches won't do you much harm if you just let them finish their meal.
Now, what was a really horrible way of transporting smallpox vaccine?
Was it via Marty Feldman?
God bless you, I remember that scene so well, don't you?
Do you mean now? When transporting smallpox...?
- No, now you would transport smallpox... - Within an animal. You infect an animal.
And then you transport the animal, and then you take...
You've got the right principle, but it's actually not an animal.
People?
- Humans. - A rock. You infect a rock.
- A human. - A volunteer prisoner.
A human child. An orphan.
- An orphan? - Yeah.
- Who's got no one to tell. - Yeah.
You go back to the early 19th century. Vaccination has been discovered.
- We know about vaccination. - Cowpox.
Cowpox, exactly. Edward Jenner discovered that if you injected people with cowpox,
they would be immune to smallpox.
Smallpox which killed about 60 million people in the 18th century.
It was a really terrible decease.
Now, in about 1803, the King of Spain, whose son had died of smallpox,
thought we want to vaccinate everybody in South America.
But how do you get... The, um...
The vaccine to... In a ship for months?
You haven't got ice packs...
You know, since it's 1803. So you round up a few orphans.
And you inject one orphan with the vaccine, and he develops the immunity,
and his blood is full of the antibodies, and it's all great.
So you take his blood and you put it in the next one, and then the next one,
until you've got a whole colony of orphans who are... Not harmed, 'cause they are immune
to smallpox, but it means you could use them as a kind of serum, if you like.
It's kind of creepy.
They're not harmed, but they're... Quite a long way away from home.
Yeah, that's one type of... They say that to themselves in the middle of the jungle.
The British, I'm afraid, we did it too. We did it with low cast Indian boys.
It's a pretty squalid thing to do, but it did work.
It saved hundreds of thousands of lives, but as you say,
at the expense of some rather bewildered Spanish boys.
Yeah, but they presumably weren't brought there and then samarilly killed,
- the minute they arrive. - Not, they where not killed,
they where just left there, presumably. I mean, they where orphans anyway,
so you may say... Um, maybe they wouldn't have had that good a future in Spain in 1803.
So, maybe their lives went well for them in South America? Who knows?
Too late now, anyway. Nothing to to about it.
No, there is... You're right. Yeah.
We could think about them. We could give this little pause
- to honour them. - Errhhh, don't worry about it! Stop.
Stop. Forget about it! Let's move on!
So, what about smallpox today? Is it a worry?
Yes.
How so?
'Cos it's really, um... The orphans... Uhhhmm...
- That you care so much about. - The orphans create dynasties...
- And they're coming back to attack us. - No.
It came THAT close to being the very first disease that human kind completely got rid of.
In the sense that there was not one file or test tube left of it in the world.
And then... Then they thought again, in about 2002 and said,
well, maybe we don't really have the right, actually to extinguish it,
from the face of evolution. So, there is somewhere a tiny amount of it left.
Is it not a fear? Is it... I would've thought they might... Keep it to...
Develop a vaccine, in the event that... I don't know, North Korea had...
- ...kept hold of some smallpox? - Well, that's also possibly.
You're absolutely right. It may just be that they can't risk the possibility,
that somebody else has it, and that's human nature.
This... I'm sorry, this whole... It feels like we're in the opening scene
- of an Apocalypse movie, or something. - Yeah!
- Doesn't life often feel like that? - ...shouting about.
But don't worry, it's in THIS test tube. Nothing could...
And it... Of course, it was SO virulent in the 18th century,
and people knew that it was contagious. That, actually, you where much more likely
to get a job if you where pock marked.
- 'Cause you've actually had the decease? - Because it showed you'd had it.
So, servants and things, who where unblemished where unlikely to get a job,
because it's possible they would catch it and pass it on in the family.
Now to some other handy hints for travellers.
Fill in the blanks from these 19th century travel guides, all right?
Firstly, "Never rub your eyes except with your...."
- Frog. - Frog.
- Other eye? - Other eye?
It's "A handbook for travellers in Spain" by Richard Ford in 1847.
- Paella. - Elbows.
Elbows is the right answer!
That's brilliant!
I suppose, 'cause you're not supposed to use your hands in case there's something on them.
That's it! But it's quite hard to get... You have to be quite limber.
Well, reasonably.
Yeah, yeah. Elbows. That was a piece of traveller advice. OK, the next one:
"Keep a spare jewel for emergencies in your..."
- Dog. - Dog?
Would work.
This is from a book called:
"The Art of Travel; Or, shifts and contrivances available in wild countries",
by Sir Francis Galton.
So, it should be like, "So, you have some spare cash"?
Uh, yeah. It's... Or a jewel, in fact. Literally, to keep a spare jewel.
Imagine you've been robbed. A highwayman, or what... It's in the 19th century,
- some sort of foot pad... - In your shoe?
Your shoe? They're probably looking in a shoe, or a hat.
Like a hamster, in your cheek?
- In your cheek? No. - In your fundament?
- In your ear? - In your stomach?
- In your nose? - No, not in your stomach.
The weird thing is, that it isn't in an orifice.
- Double chin? - Armpit?
No!
- Under your eyelid? - No! Ew!
- In your hair! - No!
Between your toes.
- No! In your arm. Literally. IN. - In your arm?
He recommends you make a cut, prior to travelling, you push a jewel in,
and you sew it up, and let it heal. And then, when you are...
And a little bit of hash?
Maybe. Maybe.
Yeah.
"Beware the dirty habits of native cooks. who will often be seen buttering toast with..."
Earwax.
- I bet it'll be something that isn't butter. - Yeah.
The wings of birds, the wings of fowls, apparently.
- This is something you are warned against. - Oh, you use them to do the buttering?
Yeah. I think it's quite reasonable.
D'you mean, actually, what, for the sub... Secreting a substance, or...?
- Just the butter...? - The greasing wing, I guess that
- they've would have roast a fowl, and... - Oh, I see.
Or, that they used a live chicken. And use it to butter bread with.
A live chicken!?
In the kitchen, they have a chicken whose only job...
I don't think...
- Buttering the toast. - I don't think you would...
He also did the washing up, that's how he got the greasy...
The greasy arm from the washing up. When it's finished the washing up,
it does the toast...
When you only have one arm, wouldn't you want a particular good arm for it?
Well, that's what they do. When it's a job, it's a job.
- Yeah. - Well, it's a gig, you know?
And then, if you want an egg out of it...
Anyway, that's advice against eating butter when in the tropics from a book called,
- "Hardships in travel made easy". - What a brilliant book that must be.
Another thing they warn you against is, "The Germans are the worst offenders,
having a grossness in their way of eating and a gloating zeal in..."
A gloating zeal enclosure?
"Zis iz my gloating zeal..."
"I have zee biggest rock."
It could be that, um...
Oddly, it isn't. No. It's actually dirty post cards.
You... They're warned against travelling with Germans,
because they have "a gloating zeal in collecting salacious post cards", is the exact...
Love this... The warnings that where given pre-two world wars.
Yes! Yeah.
"Previously known for collecting salacious post cards."
- Turns out that... - "Later for exterminating millions!"
Good. I think we should move on.
How can you tell if you've got Bonnie and Clyde syndrome?
Is those people who've got, like, one half, they're dressed as a man,
and the other half, they're dressed as a woman?
And they, sort of do... Go and do variety shows,
probably somewhere like Albania these days, probably the only place that have them.
- It's not... - Has that woman on the left got it?
No, I don't think so.
Peculiarly enough, Bonnie might have had it but Clyde certainly didn't.
It's a paraphilia. Do you know what a paraphilia is?
It's an erotic attachment to something wrong. Or...
Yes, a fetish or a taboo or something like that.
- It can be for a physical... - Bank robbery.
Not necessarily bank robbery.
It's one of the few paraphilias that more women have than men,
this particular one.
It's called hybristophilia.
Women who fall for very dangerous, violent criminals.
Right.
In Britain alone, there are estimated to be at least 100 women
who are engaged to Americans on death row.
- People who've corresponded with them. - British women who've not even been there.
Who are engaged to, yeah. Not just corresponding but engaged to.
- Not to mention the wives of Tory MPs. - Yeah, well, quite.
It's an erotic, sort of fetishistic, strange love that people have
for violent criminals, real wrong 'uns, not just like, "Oh, he's a naughty boy,"
but, I mean, murderers of the worst possible kind.
She appears to be going, "Lose weight!"
That's the real Bonnie and Clyde.
- Yeah, the casting was quite favourable to them. - It was, wasn't it?
I've never really seen a picture of them.
- Yeah. - They just used to wear a hat then...
They were no Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty in real life, that has to be said.
No. The real Clyde Barrow was an absolute institutional criminal.
I mean, a really violent, unpleasant man who murdered a lot and killed many people
but Bonnie might have had this.
A lot of the gang members said she never raised a gun or killed anybody
and that she was fond of poetry, she was privately educated, she was intelligent
and maybe she actually had hybristophilia for Clyde.
So why would men not find them as appealing?
I dunno. Maybe it's something to do with...
At the risk of being, sort of, cliche about these things,
that some of these women believe that they can improve people,
in the way that men don't seem to have that desire to believe that...
I imagine, that seriously violent criminals are quite good at sex.
- Are they? - I don't know, I'm just guessing, here.
You've got to say they are, otherwise they'll blow your brains out.
I imagine they're quite horny. Maybe they're just...
On a moped.
Yeah. There are various theories given.
The glamour of notoriety, vicariously gratified propensity for violence themselves.
Religious fervour. Sometimes evangelical Christians who that think they can convert...
There's a very sad case of two Christian sisters from Australia called Avril and Rose
who left marriages they were already in,
so-called boring marriages, for two criminals in Australia.
Avril was battered to death with a hammer by her husband as soon as he was let out of prison,
having married him when he was in jail,
and the other one, Rose. Her husband was put back in prison
after he tried to cut her ear off and pull her teeth out with pliers.
So these were not nice people they had fallen for.
- Bad choices. - Bad choices.
- Yeah, they are bad choices. - Yeah.
There's another paraphilia called harpaxophilia.
That's someone who gets off on being robbed.
It apparently exists.
Do you see that documentary about that guy who fell in love with a car?
- There's a guy who... - Oh, yes!
Yeah, he had decided that he would have sexual relations with cars.
And they brought two of them together. Two of these guys. In a weird kind of...
"Well, we'll bring them together, so they'll have something to talk about..."
The two of them... But one of them shagged the other guy's car!
And he got REALLY angry with this!
Well, there you are. That's the Bonnie and Clyde syndrome. Hybristophilia.
It's an attraction to people who have committed terrible crimes or atrocities.
Name a pizza topping that eats insects.
Dara!
What, do I get to be Mario in this week's episode?
- Anchovies. Is it? - Oh, dear me, no. Not anchovies.
- Olives. - Sorry?
- Olives. - Not olives.
- Spiders! - No. Is that a pizza topping?
- Well, you... Yeah. - Pineapple.
- Yeah, you can put anything on a pizza. - Pineapple? No.
It's no more ridiculous than pineapple on a pizza, spiders.
Cheese!
If someone said to me, "Do you want spiders on that?"
I'd go, "Yeah, all right."
If you're gonna have a chicken tikka pizza,
- I think spiders is a very small leap further. - Do you?
- Peppers? - Not peppers.
I've forgotten what the question is now. What did they just...?
- Tomatoes. - What pizza topp...
Tomatoes is the right answer!
- 50 points! - Yeah... Maybe.
Some points.
- Some points are all right. - Yeah, they eat insects.
- Do they? - Tomatoes eat insects.
It's not their only diet, as we know.
Tomatoes grow like a lot of fruits and vegetables.
They draw nutrients out of the soil and can be grown hydroponically
but also they have another way of ingesting nutrients
and that is trapping insects in the furry, the hairy stems
and they die and they absorb their nutrients.
So they are insectivorous.
- Not while they're on a pizza, though. - Not while they're on a pizza.
That would be bad news for the spider, wouldn't it?
What about if you were wanting your spider pizza and they get eaten by the tomato?
Fortunately...
That's how you get the flavour. That's how you get that lovely spidery, tomato flavour.
They trap them and so they fall down into the ground and are absorbed through the soil.
But it's way of collecting richer soil by filling it with dead insects, you see?
OK, very good. Tomatoes trap insects in a deadly embrace on their hairy stems
and use their decaying bodies as fertiliser.
But, what is it that THIS flower, behind me, eats,
that Louis XIV ordered to be removed from the corridors of Versailles, once a week?
- Peasants. - Not peasants.
You want to get a sense...
A sense of the scale of the flower.
That central bowl shape, is about the size of the palm of a human hand.
A mouse?
Well, a mouse-like animal. That plant is a really extraordinary plant.
It's a lavatory plant. It's a... It's a toilet seat.
It looks like a toilet seat. I mean, a toilet with a seat, a bowl...
And that's what it is. It is an amazing achievement of evolution.
It attracts a little shrew, by giving out a sweet, buttery smell,
and the shrew sits on it, like that. And it has to face that way,
because that's where the smell is, and it can lick its nectar from there.
And this shrew poos when it eats. It's its habit. So the poo...
- I'm the same! - ...goes into the plant,
and gives the plant about 70 to 100% of it's nitrogen.
So, it's a fabulous system.
That shrew's going, "Do you have to take photo now?"
"While I'm on the job?"
Well, isn't that a pleasing way for a plant to develop?
So, hang on. The thing that Louis the whatever had removed, was poo?
- Yes, poo. Once a week, for a... - That's how he got the name "Looie".
Once... Once a week from Versailles, in the corridor. 'Cause he was an hygienic fellow.
- One a week? - Yeah.
- Into these plants? - No.
No, you where... No, never-mind.
- So, that's just a coincidence... - Yes, it's a link.
What you've done, is that you've joined two things together.
A way of talking about a plant that's a lavatory and a way of saying that...
Versailles, which was one of the most elegant palaces in the world,
in it's day, was full of people who never bathed, and whose idea of hygiene,
was clearing poo from corridors once a week.
- So it was human poo? - Yes, human poo.
- They just have a crap in the corner? - Basically.
Right. Just... Just chatting away to a lady...
"Oh! Oh! Madamoiselle, de la Boivoir de vey? Avenger... Eh, excuse me a minute."
No, that was German. Um...
"Qu'est-ce que vous allez... Le Versailles, maintenant tu cutard?"
They're not fanning themselves.
- Please... - Wait, when we broadcast this bit,
can we get proper subtitles for what Sean just said?
- It would be hard. - Yeah, I speak French!
Yeah, pretty good. Pretty good.
Yeah. You so do. Um... Well... Yeah, there's a...
I'm not quite sure, necessarily, in front of ladies like that.
But the point is it's a very robust, non-bathey sort-of place,
- in which the poo piled up in corners. - They've got gardens,
- it's famous for the gardens, Versailles. - Yes?
- There's bloody gardens everywhere! - You can't poo in the garden,
- someones spent ages making that garden. - Yeah!
The point is that toilet bowl shaped nepenthes lowii, lives primarily on shrew feces.
The French in Louis XIV's time weren't keen on washing,
but drew the line at leaving piles of excrement around the house
for more than a week, or so.
One horrible thing all of our panel, I suspect, has experienced, is heckling.
- So where did the first hecklers come from? - Jugglers.
What did they do for a living?
- Houses of Parliament? - No. It wasn't the House of Parliament.
A heckle is actually a word meaning a comb
for dividing two types of fabric of flax for making yarn
and people who did that were called hecklers. And there was a particular place.
Where was the capital of the jute industry in the 19th century?
- Scotland. Dundee. - In Dundee. Absolutely right.
And the Dundonian heckler was known to be a troublemaker, a rabble-rouser.
Violent harangue and ferocious debates, they were known for.
And so to publicly question, to shout, to harangue, was like being a heckler.
It was a back formation. You were a heckler and so what you did was to heckle.
And that's where the word comes from.
- I thought you'd like to know that. - No, it's interesting, yeah.
- Have you been heckled much? - No. I didn't used to get heckled.
If people didn't like me, they'd just start talking amongst themselves.
I remember these two girls at the front row at the Comedy Store.
One turned to the other and went, "He's lost it."
That's very disturbing.
Really gets under your skin, then.
I have to go to them to get them to talk.
I was in Liverpool and I was talking about dreams
and about in case you have a dream about a famous person
and some bloke in the crowd shouted out that he'd had a dream about Kate Winslet.
And I said, "Oh, was it a sexy dream?"
and he goes, "No, she turned me down."
In his own head.
I had a dream about Kate Winslet.
I said to him, "Were you disappointed?"
And he goes, "Naw, I didn't hit her with my best stuff".
- That's very strange. - Yeah.
I had a dream about Kate Winslet and in my dream it didn't quite work out either.
Wow, she's like the Freddy Krueger of teases.
Well, thank you very much.
Yes, hecklers were originally people who split the fibres of flax and hemp
to spin into yarn.
And so with a cough and a retch, we bring up the bolus that is General Ignorance.
So fingers on buzzers. Where does a snake's tail begin?
After its bottom.
Is the...
Is the right answer. After its bottom. Absolutely right.
That simple.
Well, as you know... As you know, Stephen,
I studied snakes for many, many, many years.
I'm one of the world's leading snakeatologists.
- Herpetologist? - Snakeatol...
- Herpetologist, yes. - Ophidian expert.
- We don't call ourselves that. - Don't you? Oh.
- Not since the re-branding. - Yeah.
It's called a cloaca and after that is where the snake...
'Cause the rest of it is all these...
- Ribs... - The body. We call it the body.
Ribs...
Ribs and spine. It's got vertebrae. It's got a lot of vertebrae.
- And, yeah... - That other bit's the head,
up the other end there.
You might want to write that down, Stephen. The head.
You weren't kidding, were you?
You really are an expert. And thank you. And you get your points.
- Snakes... - No legs on a snake, Stephen.
- You won't find any legs on a snake. - Not a one, not a one.
Snakes might look like they're all back end, but they actually have surprisingly short tails.
What are the dimensions of a piece of two by four?
Yes?
- Oh, thanks. - Four by two.
Oh! What a pity!
- No! - Two by four?
Two by... No!
And all those points you've made on your expertise on snakes.
- That's just... You've leached them. - I'll win them back.
- No, it is... What is two by four? - It's a plank of wood.
Yeah. But it's not two by four. It's about 1.5 by 3.5 inches.
It's based on what's called a dimension block which was originally itself two by four
but it's then shaved and planed so it's a lot smaller.
But even now the original dimension block is smaller or larger.
It doesn't actually matter.
It's just a block of wood still called a two by four even though it no longer is.
Now, we've saved the most disgusting, the most horrible thing of all, for last.
What am I describing?
Allegedly, it can cause birds to fall dead from the sky
and it's banned by airlines but it's quite good on toast.
Will your...? Oh, no! No wonder you've not been getting points.
- Oh, that's typical. - Yes. That's unfair. Chris, you can answer.
Er... What was the question?
Is it gentleman's relish?
No. I have some here. I have a can of it.
But... And this is a genuine can of it.
- Caviar. - No.
- It's something rotten, isn't it? - Yeah.
- Scandinavian rotten food. - It's Scandinavian rotten fish.
- That's exactly... - On midsummer's night, don't they?
- I've always wanted to try that. - Surströmming.
I've actually been told,
and you may say, "Oh, go on, Stephen," that I cannot open this
and if I did, the audience... Probably the audience at home would go away.
It is apparently so disgusting, it would never leave the studio
- and I think we'd be sued by the studio. - By the Graham Norton Show.
Yeah, by the Graham Norton Show.
It's called surströmming. It's herring.
What happens is, they put the herring in a barrel first of all,
in a wooden barrel. With about half the amount of salt you need to cure it,
so it's not cured, and instead of being cured, it ferments, it putrefies.
And then after it's been like that for a month or so, you then put it in a can
but the can is designed, as you can tell,
to swell up slightly, so it's continuing to ferment. It's still...
- They buckle, don't they? - They buckle.
And it's absolutely, unbelievably disgusting, this smell.
There is nothing, apparently, as revolting, really, on the face of the Earth.
A friend of mine lives in Sweden and he says that, you know,
that is something you have to be Swedish to eat.
Yeah. Indeed. It's a... I mean, they consider it a delicacy.
Often, what they do, they open the can underwater
because the way to eat it anyway, is to rinse it
and then cover it with sort of, onions, which helps with the smell a bit.
- And then drink it down. - It's got a best before date.
- A bit late for that! - It is a bit late.
- I'm going to move this away... - Best before we canned it.
Apparently, in the 16th century, there were...
You can have a look at the can, but please don't open it.
There were Swedish sailors...
No!
...who ran out of salt and they had this rotting fish
and they found some Finnish islanders that they sold it to,
thinking that, you know, they were idiot foresters who knew no better.
And then a year later, they came back and they met these same people
and they said, "Can we have some more of this rotten fish, please?"
So they thought, "Oh, maybe it's good?"
So they tried it themselves and apparently, it is tasty,
- even though it smells... - It's the can.
...beyond anything, yeah. I'm glad to say the can is holding up.
So there you are. Surströmming. Baltic herring fermented in cans
with foul smelling and explosive but allegedly delicious results.
And so we head now staggering towards the bucket
and there only remains the horrible embarrassment of the scores.
And, well, I have to say, totally repulsive as they all are,
it's pretty impressive. In first place, repulsing all comers,
with a positive 2 points,
Dara Ó Briain.
In second place, with a reasonably bad taste in the mouth with 13.8 points
it's Chris Addison.
Gagging slightly from time to time,
Sean Lock with minus 33!
What?
And just behind him taking an early barf, on minus 35,
Alan Davies.
That's all.
That's all from this stomach-churning edition of QI.
So, it's goodnight from Chris, Sean, Dara, Alan and me,
and one final word of advice.
If you can't be a good example, try to be a horrible warning. Goodnight.