Goo-ood evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening.
Welcome to tonight's QI where we're giving ourselves up to an evening of idleness and indolence.
Joining me in the hammock with a large gin and tonic in this week's edition of Knitting Today,
we have the inactive Ross Noble.
The immobile Dara O Briain.
The indolent Jeremy Clarkson.
And the simply inoperative Alan Davies.
Should any of our panel feel the need to bother with their buzzers, they sound like this. Ross goes...
Dara goes...
Jeremy goes...
And Alan goes...
Have another go.
It's that kind of a lazy, lazy day.
And before we dive in, I should remind our panel of the Nobody Knows joker.
'Nobody knows.'
For this series, there may be a question to which the answer is "nobody knows".
If you think I've asked that question, wave the question mark as Alan demonstrated.
We might as well shamble along into a question. I've got my hands on the American nuclear trigger.
Without putting yourselves to too much effort, see if you can tell me what the code is.
- The secret trigger code? - The secret trigger code given to every President between 1960 and 1977.
I think that if you've got to remember it under pressure and it would be a pressured situation,
beginning the end of the world, it's got to be something quite simple.
It's zero-zero-zero-zero, zero-zero-zero-zero.
- That literally was the code. Four zeros twice - eight. - Eight zeros? - Eight zeros.
- I'm good at maths, me! - Eight zeros. That was the password.
Is that because it's just about the end of the world and you go, "Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, ohh"?
Did the President, when he was testing this,
did he do the chip and pin, that little dance you do
when the shopkeeper is looking at you and you kind of go... pretend to press...
Or the...
I just do a cover.
Have you not noticed polite shopkeepers now do this which is when you nick all the penny chews?
You're there with the lovely Debbie McGee, going...
Ta-da!
While you're doing your number, you say a different number slightly under your breath.
- That's like rubbing your tummy and patting your head. - 4577. - That is clever. - "His number's 4577..."
The people I most hated at school were those who in a test did that as if one cared what drivel...
- That's because you're not an idiot. - Oh, no, it's such a creepy way of behaving.
So I always just do it like that, grandly make sure that my number...
I published mine in The Sun once.
- I remember that. - It went badly wrong. - That was very funny. - I couldn't understand it.
They were complaining that everybody's bank details had been left on a train by a civil servant.
I thought that makes no difference. All they can do is make a deposit.
So I published my bank account number. "What will you do with that?"
And the Diabetic Society helped themselves to 500 quid.
Well...
In case we feel smug, the British had code, what do you think that was?
Crikey.
"We didn't even have one" is the answer.
Basically, it was a bicycle lock key
and to arm the weapon you remove two screws from the panel
like opening the back of a remote control device, you know that?
And this reveals the sequence of dials, but these wasn't codes.
It was many settings, whether you wanted the bomb for an air burst or a ground burst.
You just do it really like that.
So Harold Wilson had to undo the back of a panel
and then...?
How do you think they brought politicians into that's all? It was just Flight Lieutenant Sanderson.
Oh, he just sets off. When the mood took him.
They should've had it like you know the top of a tin of ham.
Farewell, that one was good to the end, but never mind, lovely ham sandwich.
Absolutely. That would have been the answer.
As far as passwords are concerned, what do you think is the current state of advice?
I'm sure everyone watching probably has passwords for anything from bank accounts to social media.
- What's the advice? - The advice is that you should have a different password for everything you have
and that it must always contain at least eight digits,
some of which should be numbers and some letters, and you mustn't write them down anywhere.
Exactly. That's the point. That kind of advice is useless.
There isn't a human being on the planet you would want to meet
who is capable of having all those in his head at the same time.
The current advice is don't bother about writing it down
if you've written it down and it's in a drawer in your desk.
You're more likely to have your password stolen online by malware
than by a burglar getting into your house and seeing it written down.
If you need lots of different ones for different things, do what I do and have each of the Seven Dwarfs...
- Oh, shit! - You've given it away now.
A burglar breaking into your house is usually a lot less interested in information theft
than in selling your television.
This idea of writing it down being dangerous was oversold.
There is a complete mismatch between a person who'll get your password by using technology
and a person who breaks into your house to get your TV.
You've really got to watch them smackhead geeks. They're the ones, the real ones.
They go around like that with glasses on. Forget it. It's over.
Have you noticed, if you've ever tried to wire up a Wi-Fi router,
when you're on the phone to a man in India and he says, "Go and read the numbers off the back of the router",
why does it have a password on the back of the router?
There's a default password that you can change by going in, using your web browser.
You can access your...
Are you a Help Desk of some description?
I am a bloody Help Desk. All my friends call me up just because I'm a boring nerd.
- What you're saying is correct... - "Have you tried turning it off?"
"Take the card out and hit it with your teeth!" Have you had that one?
- With your teeth? - Yeah, like that.
No, no, he went, "I've got Jeremy Clarkson on the phone."
"Shove it up your arse. Go on."
You can see it coming a mile off!
"You know that petrol you love so much? Pour it on your head and have a cigarette. Go on."
The greatest danger when setting a password is thinking of a word that sounds cool at the time.
Cos you go, "Oh, superspy, that'll be a good one!"
Suddenly, you go, "I'll have a whole other identity. It'll be amazing. I'll be The Raven."
And you'll forget your spy name the next time you go to check your Hotmail account.
"Was it The Hawk? No.
"Was it The Eagle? No..."
I've never been able to read these incomprehensible bits of scribbly writing you're supposed to reproduce
- to show that you're not a bot. - "Captchas", they're called.
Apparently, computers can't scan in and recognise a wavy "3"
or can't tell a kitten from a rabbit, which is the weird thing.
"Which of these are kittens?" Click, click, click and then the rabbit... But robots haven't worked this out.
This is how we will win the war.
"Which of these two animals do you like?"
You've got a problem if it says to come up with a password and you're just holding up kittens.
I'd rub them off the screen. Is that not what you're supposed to do?
- I'd find as many kittens as the computer asks for. - Lots of static electricity. Just put them up there.
Static is only so strong. Over time, they'll slowly begin to slide down.
That's exactly why I do it. I have a kitten and a puppy and I bet on which one gets down first.
That's why I don't have a computer.
It's strange how the biometric systems that have been in movies for at least 30 years,
retinal scans, thumbprints and so on, aren't really used.
A lot of laptops ask for a thumb, but they haven't really taken off.
- I love the eye thing at airports. - You do use those?
Yes, it's really good getting very drunk on the plane, so your eyes are completely bloodshot.
You think, "They'll never do it this time. I'll be locked in this box for ever." It always knows it's me!
In the airport, you know when you go through the first security bit and they take your photograph?
What I do is I do a different hairstyle.
Like that, then change it for the next time.
Whom is that inconveniencing more?
The security person or you?
Who's the one who's having things looked up their bottom and missing their flight?
Well, you know, there's only so much time you can kill in duty free. isn't there?
Why not shove something unusual up there?
Go on, guess what that is, guess what it is!
I went through Gatwick to get on a flight to Spain.
You know the way some people behind you get stopped and they go, "You've got fluids," or whatever?
Or they go, "You can't do this."
And they all started laughing. They said, "I'm sorry, sir, you can't bring this."
It was like one of those two-litre bottles of soft drink filled with water and a fish floating around!
- They wanted to take their fish on holiday? - They brought their fish with them.
You could see your man going, "The fish is grand, it's not the problem, but you can't bring the fluid."
Are you sure it wasn't just a Japanese couple and that was their packed lunch?
- You'd just have to drink a bit of the water. - To prove that this is...?
- To prove it's not a... - Presumably, the fish is already proving they're not making a bomb.
"We did think, but evidently not..."
Fish don't swim in nitroglycerine!
It's been trained to swim in explosive fluid!
That is exactly how I found out that I really like baby food
because they said, "Can you eat a bit of the baby food?"
I went, "All right... That's good!"
"We'll get some more for the child. Give her peanuts."
- Delicious! - Stewed apple. - Oh, yes, lovely.
The point is, there's more chance of someone tracking your computer than breaking into your house.
You might be better off choosing a complicated password and writing it down.
What's the best way to ensure that you get the best person for any job within the hierarchy?
Or indeed of you like the least bad person.
I'm talking about a principle in the promotion of people within office hierarchies.
- Employee gets promoted to one level above their degree of competence. - Yes. That is exactly right.
Do you know what's that called? There's a name for that.
- "The Peter Principle"? - It's "The Peter Principle".
The idea is if, say, you start in the office and you're very good at filing or whatever
They say we'll move him up to this or her up to this.
They go upstairs, "She's surely good at that". Moving up, moving up.
As you're good at things you will get promoted, until you get to the thing you're not good at.
And that's sort of inherent flaw with a hierarchy ecosystem.
So what would be way of electing MPs?
Obviously, people have fiddled around with types of
whether there's first past the post or AV or PR or single transfer of their vote.
But there's a system which guarantees certain number of things.
It guarantees, for example, powerful interest groups can have no influence whatsoever on the outcome.
- That's good. - Unlike the current system where elections are won by people who are good at winning elections.
It does not favour the charismatic, the rich, the well-educated or the well-connected.
Votes cannot be bought, it's impossible in this system to be corrupt.
It's called "sortition" - it's what the Greeks used.
And it is, quite simply, lottery.
It is the same way we choose a jury.
You are told that is your duty for certain number of years to be a politician.
And you're paid for it. It's a brilliant idea!
Yeah, it's a brilliant idea, except for the fact that if it's a lottery
do you really want to find out who the MPs are gonna be
by Dale Winton, pressing a button?
- It could be you. Aahh! - Everybodyyy?
Obviously, maybe I shouldn't have used a word "lottery".
But by random selection of a citizen, essentially. that it becomes a part of a citizen's duty
for a some part in their life to be involved in the presence of government.
How many times could you put it off before they made you do it like jury service?
Well, it's an interesting point, isn't it? I mean, in Australia they make you vote, don't they?
- Yes. - And jury service, I'm not sure I've been let off jury service as perhaps you would be.
If you are a known face...
- Sadly doesn't wash any more. - Doesn't it? - No.
Oh, I'd write a letter.
I'm so sorry but I don't want some blood dripped murderer staring at me saying, "I know you".
The defendant comes out, sits down, "Oh, shit, it's Clarkson. Oh, God, no."
And then sinks into a sombrero, going, "I shall not get justice here".
What are the chances of an Italian, and a German, and a Mexican, all...
"You're clearly guilty cos you drive a Prius"
The system they should have is that you just open the doors of parliament
and everyone just like piles in, and anyone who gets a seat are allowed to stay, everyone else - out.
- When the music stops, you seat down. - Exactly.
The Speaker of the House with a mouth organ.
But sortition is a genuine system that was genuinely used by the world's first really great democracy, Greece.
And it seemed to work very well. They believed that the idea of a professional politician
with vested interest was inimical to the idea of "demo-cracy", "rule of people", ordinary people. And that it...
But it wasn't opened to everybody, was it? Cos there are quite a few people I've just thought of I don't want doing it.
But mostly the ones who want to do it, which are the ones we have, obviously.
I'm just more intrigued by the fact of it being random punters.
But it being done like that "Noel's house party" thing when the television shows you.
You know, where they flash round and there will be someone sitting on the couch.
And then they go, "And the Minister of Education is, Geoffrey McComal". And he goes, "Oh, shite."
"What? Oh, no."
But anyway, it's worth thinking about, isn't it? It is a fascinating idea
that we would have a duty to be politicians. It would stop us moaning quite so much.
Why might it be a good idea to use your leisure time smoking 30 cigarettes a day,
drinking explosives and eating dried blood?
- Why would it be? - Yes.
How might that help one? And, indeed, in a strange way, possibly even lengthen one's life?
We're in a war here.
And there were black ops on both sides.
While we were in Italy, the Italians who weren't as witless as perhaps we like to think of them as being ours enemy
They sent boxes of matches as gifts
that would drop down on the allied troops, and inside were little folded bits of paper
and the folded bits of paper said... There they were, look.
This is how to pretend to be ill, very convincingly. You're gonna lose the war.
You're having a miserable time fighting us. It's ghastly. You probably gonna be killed.
You've got a family back home. You've done your bit.
Just pretend to be ill. And you'll get sent home.
It's rather clever.
And it gives advice for psychological things as well. It says, "Act as if you hate to be ill."
It's quite good psychology. "Stick to one set of symptoms. And don't tell the doctor too much."
Basically, smoke as much as you can, 20 to 30 cigarettes a day. If you normally smoke as much, double it.
And otherwise there are various other little tricks you can use.
Why smoke them? Or this was before people were worrying about lung cancer?
I know if you did smoke a lot it wasn't about lung cancer, it was about the fact that it would make people breathless.
and it could bring on conditions similar to cardiac arrhythmia and so on.
Isn't it easier to just shoot yourself in the foot?
Well, the trouble is, that was such a known thing, a "blighty one" it was called.
I mean, anybody who was shot in the foot in the war, people went, "I don't think so".
Shoot yourself in the ear.
- That's a difficult one to get exactly right. - Well...
In your foot the worst is you gonna get the bullet in the ground..
I think I can blow my own ear off.
I think it's odd how you can paralyse your arm by bandaging a pebble on your funny bone.
And then there's a needless drawing of a bottom. Figure 1.
There's no such thing as a needless drawing of a bottom. That's what I can say.
It doesn't feature in any of this. Why is there a bottom? Not mentioned.
It is there to catch your eye. It's how advertisers do these days.
The British, of course, replied in kind. And what we tended to do is flood them with
books that looked like real German manuals, sporting books, all kinds of things, catholic prayer book.
And sort of half-way through suddenly there will be this list of ways
of how to pretend to be ill. And we really did use an enormous number of them.
There was a man called Delmer, who was in charge of it, Denis Sefton Delmer.
And he hoped to appeal to the sort of Germans in a "Schweinhund" as he called it.
And there were manuals, step-by-step instructions as to how to fake a wide range of diseases.
And they sort of had a double effect, once cos the Germans knew they were there, obviously.
And that meant they doubted a lot of people who were genuinely ill.
And sent real ill people back to the front.
Where they could be a) demoralised and b) spread infection.
And generally it's just all part of the strange little things people do.
But there was a good way to fake tuberculosis. And this is really fascinating.
How would fake tuberculosis? Sadly we are at the time again when tuberculosis was a big threat to our population.
Pretend to be a badger.
Well, there is the issue whether or not badgers do or don't. Yes, I know.
I can tell which side you're on in the great badger debate.
But, aside from that, tuberculosis...
Glass, powdered glass.
Well, certainly you have to cough, cough blood is important.
But the mucus you bring up is gonna be analysed by a doctor.
This is only applied to men and I think you'll see why, in a little while.
So, you get to have a nice genuine cough by doing a lot of smoking.
Tell the doctor you had flue some time ago but the cough just hasn't gone away.
And there's blood in your mucus.
You can add the blood to your mucus, obviously, just cut a finger and just add it to mucus.
That's easy, cos he would want to analyse it.
But what do you add to the mucus
that would allow him to believe that you might have a tuberculosis bacterium inside? Well..
- Sperm. - You're very close. Horribly close.
I'm afraid it's a little worse, in fact.
- Dingleberries. - What the gentleman must do is not wash downstairs for a while
until cheese develops under the foreskin.
- Charming. - And they take a little bit of this cheesy substance
and add it to the mucus, and the blood.
And so when the doctor asks for the sputum you give them that.
And a lazy doctor, and a pretty averagely competent doctor
would be fooled by the similarity of whatever it is in smegma.
Or perhaps he just would rather not do the analysis.
He wouldn't know that is was smegma.
He not just gonna send you to a psychiatric ward, going "You're eating knob cheese."
Point is he doesn't know it, you're using your knob cheese because it looks like TB bacillus.
That's the point.
Yeah, but the thing is, he's gonna know, he's gonna see the crackers falling out your pocket.
The what?
Jacobs crackers, you can't just eat it straight, it looks bad.
"Other crackers are available."
This is the worst conversation I've ever been in ever.
Ladies and gentleman, this may be a television first, but I just want you
to remember we're talking about a piece of history, we're talking about how people
tried to malinger or pretend to be ill
- Personal hygiene is very important. - We're talking about personal hygiene, we're talking about
a fact, some people might giggle when the word "smegma" or "cock cheese" is used on the television.
I think that's their problem, not ours.
So, since we've got nothing better to do, what about a board game?
Why was Alfred's Game so much more successful than Alfred's Other Game?
- That is Alfred who is... - Scrabble?
Yes, Scrabble is the answer.
- Alfred Butts. - And he sold that for bugger-all. - It's interesting.
He had the idea of the board and the 15 by 15 squares and the triple letter and double word and so on.
He made them himself. In the early '50s, it was in the shops of New York and it wasn't a great success.
The chap who ran Macy's, the famous department store, he played it one Christmas and he went nuts for it.
The following year, it sold four million.
It was the fastest growing game in the history of that genre of games. It just completely went wild.
And all he got, I say "all", was about 1.6 million, Butts, the inventor.
But he never complained about it. He said, "It allowed me to have a wonderful life." He was proud of it.
He then produced another game which he called Alfred's Other Game.
That wasn't a hit, despite the lady in the black, busty dress.
The principle of the scoring is pretty obvious. He used the frequency of letters in English.
The highest score you could have from one word has been worked out.
I wonder if you know what that word is? It's unlikely.
- The highest I got was "underpass" on two triple word scores. - Very good. I did "bezique" once.
- You would though, wouldn't you? - That was very lucky.
- You would have "underpass", wouldn't you? - "Underpass" is good.
You've got to use all seven. You get the plus 50...
The most irritating thing about playing Scrabble is when people use words that aren't in common usage.
- Just earlier this year, they announced that "grrl" is now a word, but it isn't. - No, it isn't.
And I have my house rule which is you can't use a word you don't know the meaning of.
- I'd go even further than that. - Some people just learn lists of words.
- Why put in a word that you just...? - Do you let people have the list of two-letter words? - No. - No.
"Jo" is a classic case in point.
I know it means "love", but I never use the word "jo" in conversation. Therefore, you can't have it.
- Or people who spell "axe" in the American way. - Without the E. - No!
- Do you know the most commonly played word in Scrabble? - "Penis." - No. - It is in my house.
- It's rather thrilling. - "Gay"?
- No, not "gay". - It's a good word.
- It's a fine word. - Seven points.
- QI! - QI, thank you.
"Qi" is the most commonly played word in Scrabble.
It's a Q that doesn't need a U and if it's on a triple letter, you score well.
It's the Chinese for the "life force". If you could play the word
and it would involve intersecting with many other words because it's longer than seven letters,
if you could get "oxyphenbutazone",
there is a technical, potential score of 1,178.
- Just for playing that... - And I bet you've done it. - Never, no.
Is this Call My Bluff?
Can I just point out, I'm dyslexic, I've never played Scrabble.
To me, playing Scrabble is like decorating a bathroom.
- That is unfortunate. - Finished!
There are games of Scrabble that involve words like "bezique" and there are games of Scrabble that involvewords like "tits".
You know, I do both.
You look at the Scrabble board and go,
"God, we really aren't the sophisticated people we thought we were."
The highest recorded single word is 392 for "caziques",
- played by Dr. Karl. - "quizzically" would get you 400, I reckon.
That's, obviously, counting any one of the "z"s.
- Oh, well, obviously, yes. - That's pretty good.
- But If you get it on two treble words. - Yeah, that would be the key, isn't it? It would be fantastic.
Alright, well, we gonna move on somewhere where spelling isn't quite as important.
Is it "Boggle" next? I like that too.
No, this is Monopoly. Strategically speaking, which are the properties, that are best
to buy straight away, if you can?
- Are they the ones that if somebody is in Jail people will constantly end up starting again? - That's the point.
If you get a 6 or an 8, which are the most likely throws you'll get for a dice game,
you are gonna land on one of those as you move out of Jail.
Which is rather appropriate because Vine Street, Marlborough Street and Bow Street are all streets
which have in common...?
- Courts. - They used to have, yes, Magistrates' Courts in them.
And I think they all, actually, now in disuse, but..
And why is there a dog?
And a hat?
Which one would you choose? You'd choose the car, I suppose.
I'd choose a car or a ship.
- Why would you choose?.. Who said that I will?.. - Well, I will dog.
- You take the dog for a walk around London. - Yeah, but hold on a second, you'd go for the dog over the iron?
Give it a choice, you got, right? Dog or the iron, in most scenarios dog is a better option.
- True. - Greyhound racing.
They're off. Oh, the iron's lost again.
"Quick, quick! The criminals are getting away, release the iron!"
"Darling, I've gotta get to that formal occasion in the next while."
Do we know how they arrived at the idea of an iron, a dog, ship?
Apparently, one of the theories is that these were all things that were on his wife's charm bracelet.
His wife had a charm bracelet, inventor of the game.
- She had a ship on her charm...? - I don't know.
They only have an iron.
"To remind you of the indentured servitude of our married life,
"here's an iron. Now go walk the dog."
My next question on idleness is what did the dormouse do on his gap year?
- There's a dormouse. Aren't they charming? - Sweet.
- I suppose you know the most obvious thing about a dormouse is... - They sleep in teapots? - Well...
- According to Lewis Carroll they do. - They're very quiet. - They're not mice.
- Obviously, yes. - They're not doors, either. - They're neither doors, nor mice.
- The dorm is the key. The dormancy of them. - They sleep. - They spend so much time asleep.
- They're the only animal that will hibernate for 18 months, sometimes. Aww, look at him asleep. - He's dead!
- Oh, shush! - He's dead!
- Shush! - He has been killed...
That creature has been killed by those falling nuts.
- No! - He tried to pick them up. - They live a surprisingly long life.
- If they're asleep for 18 months... 18 months?! - They see how the harvest is going to be on the beech trees
very early in the season and if they think there won't be many nuts, they just sleep through.
They eat as much as they possibly can, put on huge amounts of fat and sleep. Quite astonishing.
At our house you can see the river from the bottom of the garden and we were showing this to people
who'd brought their kids. And a squirrel came down off a tree and scampered to the water's edge.
This is the Thames. And it started swimming in the water.
You could see the ripple where he was going, the tail, when wet...
And we're all going, "This is fantastic! Look at him swim!" And then all the parents go, "Jesus!
"I hope he can swim all the way otherwise we're encouraging our children to watch a squirrel drown."
"Someone go out there, just in case he doesn't make it! I'll go."
And the squirrel goes, "Jesus, they're coming for me!"
- Tell me he made it. - He disappeared from view and then, as we go,
"We have to explain death to these children," emerges out of the water, shakes himself off,
tail - whoomp! Runs into the trees.
- Oh... - He swam the Thames?
- He swam the Thames. - I'm very happy. - And raised 400 quid for Sport Relief.
You have to watch the last item on every local news coverage
because two minutes later he was on water skis.
Now...
could you demonstrate the best way to sit the dolls you've been given, which you should find somewhere,
in a chair? We're really after what's best for the back.
- You've got a chair and a bendy... - 'His politics are terrifying.' Please don't pull the string.
- These are Stigs that you can buy in shops. - You pull the string and Clarkson speaks?
Could anything give nightmares to children more? You're not Woody from Toy Story, are you?
Well, what we're after is what you think, what you seriously think,
is possibly the healthiest way to sit at a chair in an office.
I can reveal that this is how the Stig actually sits in a chair.
There.
- You've all gone for very unusual postures. - Yes, I love those.
The head just came off mine and he revealed himself to be Action Man.
- I knew it! You're all doing very interesting shapes. - There you go.
That's good for his back, is it?
Oddly enough, Clarkson wins.
- It's not difficult! - You win because you're right, not just because you're the least wrong.
The idea was that sitting up straight was good for your back.
Actually, quite a steep backward... 30-odd degrees, is much better for you.
It's a bit unfortunate if you slip off your chair. It looks lazy, so bosses never like to see it,
but you can say, "It said on QI so it must be true,"
or you can point to the research that's been done.
You know if you use a chair like a lion tamer uses a chair? Would that repel a cat?
- That's how you start, I guess. Start on a cat and you build up through the feline species. - Really?
- You start with a smaller chair? - No, you start with a cat.
I'd start with a lion and a really huge chair.
- No, start with a small cat and a small chair. - I see.
Use Stig to show me where the nasty man touched you, Alan.
Stephen...
Oh, dear!
Put them all away now, children.
Thank you...
- This must have been... - Yes? - I've got bloody Jim Henson here!
Oh, look, look, actually. What we can do is have
our very own mock execution.
All we need now is a saw and there you go.
Just because you revealed his identity in a book, you've got to fry him. Unfair.
Moving on, if you can put away your toys...
Let's have an ingenious interlude now.
I want you all to make a homopolar motor. You should have a bowl with these.
This was first done in 1820 by one of the great scientists
and it's rather amazing.
You've got a wood screw, a magnet, a piece of wire and a battery.
- A homophobic motor, did you say? - No! Homopolar! - Homopolar.
It means you get rather depressed and you're gay. No, shush.
- Sir? Sir? What do you have to do? - Watch the tape behind.
The tape behind.
Take the screw...
- ..in your... - You touch it. - ..in your right hand...
Wha...?!
What's he doing now?
Is that just stuck to the...? What's he done? Oh, I see.
- Ohh! - That's it.
- Holy moly! If this works... - It's extraordinary how fast it goes round. - Jesus!
- It spins round so fast... - Oh, yeah! - It really, really does.
- It's still going! I'm not even connected! - Why doesn't mine work?
- Why is that working? - Look at that! - If I was to use the power from the buzzer
- and just stick that... - It's going without the wire.
- It's slowing down. - What? - Slowing down. - You don't need the wire.
- Your finger might be completing the circuit. - I've got sparks!
- I dropped it down there. - Oh, dear.
Perhaps you could be kind... Thank you. Michael Faraday demonstrated it all that time ago in 1820.
And the ingenious thing about it is the speed at which it goes round.
It goes at about 10,000rpm.
All right, into the ice-cold shower of general ignorance we plunge ourselves. Fingers on buzzers.
If they're still working, Ross.
- We live in a spiral galaxy, don't we? Yes, thank you. - It's fine.
We live in a spiral galaxy called the Milky Way. How many arms does that spiral have?
- Two. - No.
- 'Nobody knows!' - Yes, you're right! We don't know. Very good.
- And the reason we don't know is because we're inside it. - We couldn't possibly know.
We can see distant galaxies and count their arms, but our own, when you're inside, you can't tell.
Now can you be bothered to tell me what make and model of car this is?
- Yes? - It's a three-wheeler. You drove one hilariously and kept falling over at corners.
Is it a Robin Reliant?
That was really mean of me. I knew someone would do that.
- Everyone calls it a Robin Reliant. - It's not a Robin Reliant.
- It's a Regal supervan. - Yes. - The Robin was a different model.
It gets in the way of Mr Bean's Mini as well. People think that's a Robin Reliant.
They are these Regal supervans.
You have driven a Reliant Robin. Would you like to remind yourself of that experience?
This was setting off in it. Sheffield.
You get to the first corner and...
That was a fast one
and then it rolled over again.
And then it rolled over all day. And then it rolled in the river.
Now apparently letters came to your office saying
- that if "Mr So-called Jeremy Clarkson..." - On So-called Top So-Called Gear, yes.
"..knew how to drive the Robin, he would know you cannot drive it at speed."
- As if you were all incredibly disappointed. - Oh, bother!
Oh, no, it's rolled over again. I must drive more carefully so it's completely boring.
- You challenged the Stig to drive it. - He rolled it over. - First corner. - It was unbelievably comfortable.
You'd be very surprised. As it flops over, I don't know if it's the shape, but... "That's nice."
It's quite annoying to be sitting bolt upright. Everybody looks a bit idiotic when they're driving.
And so to think, "I'm a bit weary. Oh, yes..."
- And have a lie down. - I once flipped a Land Rover.
The thing went over, onto its roof, onto its side. My wife's lip gloss hit me in the face.
And then the sat nav on the dashboard just came crashing down
and I was lying there, dust all over the place, and the sat nav went, "Off route. Recalculating."
- "If possible, do a U-turn." - I just remembered, when we did rolling the Reliant Robin over,
Health and Safety got involved and they made us take every single thing out of the car,
including my cigarettes and lighter, lest these catapult around and smack me in the eye.
So every thing was taken out. Then they put in this sort of window-breaking hammer.
A very substantial piece of steel. A window punch. And they put that on the centre console.
And the abiding memory I have was this spike going...pshhh!
The safety equipment bloody nearly took my head off.
Unhealth and lack of safety gone mad.
I'm thinking of training either as a doctor or a vet.
Obviously I want the... Good God. I want the shortest possible course. Which should I choose?
Which is the quickest one to become?
I'll do it. Ready? Doctors.
People have it in their heads that it takes longer to qualify as a vet than as a doctor. It doesn't.
By about two years it doesn't. A veterinary degree takes 5 or 6 years,
but to become a British GP is a minimum of 9 years.
And then 12 years to be a hospital consultant.
- How long was it for vets? - Vets, it depends on the course, but five or six years. - OK.
They have the highest suicide rate, do they not?
- The only people who want to be vets are people who love animals. - And most of the time they...
"I love animals. I so want to be a vet." And you study for six years
- and then all you do is drive around killing animals. - Put them to sleep!
"My dog's not well."
"My horse! It's been in the family..."
- Eventually, it's going to get to you. You'll get fed up. - If you're doing them three at a time!
You're not quite as emotionally attached as you previously were! You're popping them gang-stylee!
You're lining them up three in a row to see how many you can do...
I'm sometimes terrified when our vet comes to shoot the donkeys or the horses.
"Donkey or horse - you decide."
When you did that sound effect there, that's the end of EastEnders.
- In my head, every time I watch EastEnders and they go... - Horses are dying!
You'll hear, "Doof doof..." and I'll imagine bleeding donkeys falling.
It should have been terriers.
- Oh... - "And now All Creatures Great And Small..." Doof, doof, doof!
- That's how it starts! - Well, it will take at least nine years to train as a GP
whereas vets can do it in five.
Now, which gets more from charity in the UK, animals or humans?
Oh, it's, it's donkey sanctuaries, it's animals.
No, we like to think of ourselves as that animal loving thing and we like to
tell stories of how mad people have given huge sums to donkey sanctuaries or whatever
but in fact it always has been the case that far and away the most money we give is to human charities
and in particular one kind, if you can name it.
- Well, it's children charities. - No, not children charities.
- Cancer. - Cancer.
To children riding on the backs of sick donkeys.
We give a lot more to animals than we do to the old.
That may be true, they've just amalgamated the two major all people's charities happening at the time,
I'm sorry, I thought you said they've amalgamated animals and old people.
What you've created there is a sort of venison.. You've got your guns.
It's a sort of venison that they called "old deers".
Basically, cancer research gets the most, by massively in front. Children charities do well, and obviously some of those are
also child cancer related but not as well as the National Trust.
The National Trust gets more money than children's charities do.
The RSPCA is Britain's favourite animal charity
but even that has never been in the Top 10 of British giving.
Which brings us ambling idly towards the scores
and what reading they make. In last place...
with an impressive minus 15, Dara O Briain!
Lounging lazily behind him on plus 1, Jeremy Clarkson!
Er, a little bit ahead there, though, on plus 4 is Ross Noble!
And in an episode which is all about indolence, who would ever have thought that the day would come
when I would say that our runaway winner with plus 12 is Alan Davies!
Well...
That's all from this indolent edition of QI, so it's good night
and I leave our losers with these wise words from James Thurber.
"It's better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all." Good night.