This programme contains some strong language
APPLAUSE
Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
and dare I say again, good evening and welcome to QI,
which tonight features Jack and Jill,
and indeed John, James, Johannes,
or anybody else whose name begins with J.
Let's meet every man Jack of 'em. Jack the Lad, Sue Perkins.
APPLAUSE
Jack the Giant Killer, Katy Brand.
APPLAUSE
Mad Jack McMad, winner of last year's Mr Madman competition,
David Mitchell.
APPLAUSE
And someone who doesn't know Jack. It's Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE
So, buzzer-wise, let's hear it for the girls. Katy goes...
# Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene. #
- I worship that woman. - Sue goes...
# The Jean Genie lives on his back
# The Jean Genie. #
Happy with that.
Good. David goes...
# Jennifer Juniper... #
Awww. And Alan goes...
MUSIC: "Jessica" by The Allman Brothers Band
Ah!
Ah, now do you know, that's the theme for Top Gear.
- Top Gear! - And what's the name of that piece of music?
It's hard to think that the most testosterone-driven programme
in television history is introduced by Jessica.
That's the name of that song. It is. Jessica by the Allman Brothers.
And that's the most interesting fact in the world.
So, don't forget, we are looking for names beginning with J.
Who dies if they don't have sex for a year?
Is it Russell Brand?
SIREN WAILS
Good night! Bye-bye!
- I fear we were there before you, Sue. - Yeah, you were.
He so doesn't begin with a J. Jo Brand does, but she may die, I don't know.
- No, it's two years before Jo Brand dies. - Yeah, exactly.
I suspect it's not a human.
Correctly correctington.
- It's something other... - It is from the animal kingdom.
I actually conducted an experiment many years ago to see
if you could survive a year without having sex,
and I'm happy to tell you that yes, you can.
I was worried your experiment was going to be that you'd had sex
with a variety of animals to see.
It wasn't clear to me that it was you,
it sounded to me like you had someone in a room locked up
for a year just to see if they would die without sex.
- They were the control. - They were the control, yeah.
- While you were freely roaming. - Yes. And as it turned out, neither of us had sex.
Could you not have saved each other by having sex with one another?
I think if you put someone in a room and then you have sex with them,
that's a crime.
So it's an animal and it's going to begin with a J?
Well, yes, though the species of animal doesn't begin with J.
- Right. - It's just that the particular gender begins with a J.
It's a furry mammal often kept as a pet. And the male...
- Cat, dog, rabbit, hamster, gerbil... - Cow?!
Cat! Gerbil.
No, you were closer with gerbil.
- A ferret. - A ferret. - Ferret.
- Now, what's a male ferret called? - Jeff.
- He might be. - They're actually, they begin with H.
They're called a hob.
- A hob? - But a female is called a...
Jenny?
- Not a Jenny, but it might as well be, almost. - Julia. - Jennifer. - No.
A June. Judy.
# Jolene, Jolene... #
- It's not Jolene. That would be so pleasing. - Jane.
No, it's a jill.
- How did we not get Jill? - A hob and a jill. Who knows why these...?
A hob and a jill. That doesn't go.
These are medieval assignations. It's extraordinary.
It sounds like a dance.
And what happens on, is it literally on day 365, they just explode?
It's a leap year! Come on!
In mid-summer they become oestrus, they're on heat.
- The poor jill, the poor female ferret. - Jill Ferret.
Jill Ferret, yeah,
and if she hasn't had sex, she carries on producing oestrogen,
she gets aplastic anaemia and dies.
- So she basically boils to death of heat. - Yeah, kind of.
So what you have to do if you have a pet female ferret,
- is either spay her... - Shag it. - Sleep with her.
No...
- Treat her nice. - It would be the ultimate sacrifice.
- Find a hob for her. - Find a hob for her, you don't shag her, Katy. - And then cook her on the hob, yeah.
Well, you can give injections. You can give injections.
It's easier to have sex with her, really.
It's going to take away some of the pride in the conquest
from the male ferret, isn't it? You know, towards the end of the summer.
The male ferret is very ferocious. They have a hooked penis.
Do they have a bone in there?
They don't, like a badger, that's good, though. It's a hook, really.
And so it's up to the male to unhook himself when he's satisfied.
- He also bites the back of the neck of the female. - It sounds like fun.
It sounds like Russell Brand!
"Come 'ere, love!"
So yeah, there's your ferret. And it comes from the Latin, "furritus", which means?
"Have sex with me or die."
It means, actually, "little thief".
- Oh. - They're always nicking things.
That ferret looks very sweet there
and doesn't look like the sort of ferret that would hook you
with a bone in its penis.
But that's how they get you in, isn't it?
- Exactly. - They get you with the eyes, the soft eyes.
- Yeah, they look so loveable. - Then comes the boomerang cock.
Apparently, flatworms fight with their penises like swords.
And the one that loses gets stabbed and becomes a girl.
- That's a brilliant system. - So they do these fights, and they've both got penises, fight, fight, argh!
It's like fencing, but when the rapier goes in, it becomes a lady
and has to give birth.
But that's win-win for the victorious one,
- because they win and then they get to have a shag... - Yeah.
..with the newly formed female.
Whereas the loser gets hurt and then suddenly develops breasts.
- And violated. - Feels violated and then has a baby.
Let's not get all women's lib about this.
Let's leave that.
Anyway, what made Mad Jack so mad?
Something he ate, I expect.
- Had he been on holiday? - That's a mad Jack, that's a very familiar...
People are always eating things, or there's stuff in paint, that makes you mad, doesn't it?
But no, it's really, where does the phrase Mad Jack come from?
- Why Mad Jack? - The original Mad Jack.
They go back quite a long way. It's basically applied to anybody,
whether they're named John or Jack or not. They're just called Mad Jack
and no-one quite knows why.
- Who was the first Mad Jack? - Very hard to trace. Very hard to trace.
There was Mad Jack Mytton, who was a very eccentric aristocrat,
who paid ?10 to a thousand of the constituents of Shrewsbury
for their vote, which is the equivalent of ?750,000
in today's money. That was in 1819
- and he was elected to be the member for Shrewsbury. - No shit!
Sounds broadly similar to our current system.
And also similar to our current system is,
he found debating incredibly boring,
he only attended one session of Parliament, for 30 minutes,
having paid ?750,000 for the privilege.
And stood down in the next year, 1820.
- It's a hobby. - If you're an aristocrat,
you're eccentric, aren't you?
- But if you're poor, you're just mad and you're a loony. I know. - And you end up in an asylum.
Though he did end his days
in a debtors' prison, he lost all his money.
He used to...he once set fire to his night shirt to cure his hiccups.
That would probably work, but it's not actually a shock, is it?
No, it's not.
If you can get someone else to do it
when you're not expecting it, then that's a shock.
Although it could end up in a sort of Clouseau-Cato scenario,
where it's impossible to explain to someone
that it's no longer necessary for them to find a moment to set fire to your pyjamas.
Did he wake up in the burns unit and go...
- Oh! - HE HICCUPS
Oh!
He also liked to get up in the middle of the night
and shoot ducks while he was naked.
- Naked duck shooting. - SUE: Was there any reason for the nudity?
He probably thought, "They're naked, why shouldn't I be?"
Is it wrong to be starting to slightly fall in love with this man?
I know what you mean.
You might fall in love with Charles Howard,
who was the 20th Earl of Suffolk.
And during the war, he went into Nazi-occupied Paris
and he rescued 10 million worth of industrial diamonds
and all the heavy water that the Germans had.
But he also managed to bring back 50 nuclear scientists from Paris.
This is all during the time the Nazis were occupying.
So he was described by Harold Macmillan as a kind of cross
between Francis Drake and the Scarlet Pimpernel.
He was a very brave man.
He then trained himself to be able to defuse bombs
and had his own bomb disposal unit,
which was his secretary, Eileen, and his chauffeur, Fred.
When you say he trained himself, that's quite hardcore.
- It is. - There's only one way to go if you get it wrong. - Yeah.
Well, he did unfortunately get it wrong, on his... I think his 35th bomb,
aged 34, 35 or something, so he was, he was a good Mad Jack.
There was Mad Jack Churchill as well, in the Second World War.
And he was the only soldier known to have gone into battle
in the Second World War armed with...what weapon of choice?
Teapot.
SUE: A dessert spoon.
Sorry, cosy. Tea cosy.
- A tea cosy! - SUE: A cheese slicer. - A bow and arrow.
Did he know what decade or even what century he was in?
- He was a gallant, chivalrous man. - "Marvellous stuff!"
And also, he would have a sword on the battlefield.
That's even stupider, isn't it? Because if you've got a bow and arrow,
you can't use a sword at the same time.
He thought no gentleman was dressed for battle unless they had a sword.
And he also said that if you smile at the enemy,
they're less likely to shoot you.
And he was...
SUE: I wonder how he died!
No, he was taken prisoner, in fact.
Because he was so charming.
Who is that devastating man with the lovely smile?
He was actually housed at Sachsenhausen,
which was the VIP prison camp.
The Germans thought he was related to Winston Churchill, which he wasn't.
Mad Jack Churchill.
Anyway, Mad Jack Churchill didn't die until 1996, so he had
a more fortunate life than Charles Howard, 20th Earl of Suffolk.
There's a load of Jacks.
But how did Queen Jenga arrange her harem?
Oh, was it like that and then that and then that?
Three rows that way and then three rows...
SIREN WAILS
For you!
You're being so kind. She was quite a piece of work, Queen Jenga.
Bow and arrow and sword, apparently.
And sword, exactly.
He didn't think of the bells, though.
- No, the bells... - That would have clinched it for him.
- That would have been a good... - That's just to make people look up. Ding ding ding! Who is it?
She was a 17th-century member of the Royal Family of...
Well, she killed her brother, who was called Ngola,
after which the country Angola is named,
supposedly her nephew as well, and ate his heart.
And she liked men to fight each other to death
and the winner would sleep with her for the night
and then be killed in the morning.
So she was...
What's the incentive to then enter the competition?
You're killed either way, so it's whether you get a shag or you're killed without one.
But what kind of shag would you have
when you know at the end of it, you're going to get murdered?
I mean, that is one tense coitus.
I think Mr Tiggy would probably be a bit shrivelly, wouldn't he?
Yes, Mr Tiggy would.
Is that not a universal name?
Oh, my goodness.
Too much Mr Tiggy information.
There must be the promise of a reprieve.
Well, you'd think if you were really, really good.
"If you really please me, I will not kill you with my bells."
"Or my sword or my big bag."
What's the bell for?
Is that to just give somebody tinnitus
- before they're eviscerated, or something? - Room service.
She was not a...
You rang?
She was not a kindly soul, it must be said.
But what of the game Jenga? What do we know of its origins?
- I want to say it's Scandinavian. - Does it mean something?
It does mean something.
It's a Swahili word, so it is African.
Swahili for "timber!"
Actually, the reverse. It's the Swahili for to build
and it was invented by a woman called Leslie Scott
and she's still with us, I think, so it is pretty recent.
You can always get giant versions of it.
We had a giant one. We thought it'd be a great thing to have
at a party with lots of toddlers around, but actually,
- three or four of them got quite severely injured. - Whoops!
You build them up and say, "The kids will like that,"
and you wonder off and have a glass of Pimm's and suddenly there's...
- Blood everywhere! - Yeah.
Slaughter! Infanticide!
Buried underneath a lot of...
"Where's Timmy?" "I don't know."
"He's under the Jenga!"
- That's an extremely middle-class form of neglect, isn't it? - Yeah.
Crushed by the Jenga.
- I've never liked Jenga. - Yes, why does it have to be plain wood?
It makes it look like it was invented at the time of Boudica.
- It could be colourful wood. - There are versions with coloured wood.
There are adult truth-or-dare versions,
there are rolling dice versions.
People have tried all kinds of variations.
What about a Lego version? And then, you know...
Too easy, do you think?
Trying to get one out would not be easy.
You could play it with cement and bricks.
Then you're just building a house.
It's just construction.
Gold bars!
Well, the only limit is your imagination.
Surely that's not Jenga's slogan, is it?
I'd say there are severe limits to that game
within even my limited imagination.
- I think their slogan is - (DEEP AMERICAN VOICE) - "This summer..."
"Logs will fall."
Are the children safe? "Waah!"
Oh, my God, yeah! It's like The Borrowers.
How many pieces are there?
- 90. - Too many. - What?
- 90. - No, it's got to be a number that's divisible by three.
- Intelligence. That's nice to hear. - 90 is a number divisible by three.
Divisible by three.
335!
I said 90!
Well, that's true, it is.
APPLAUSE
Hoist by my own petard!
Are there not 90, then?
- No, there are 54. 18 rows. - A triple 18.
I'm quite good with threes, because of the dartboard.
54, also divisible by three.
You can tell whether a number is divisible by three if you add up...
Like 54, you add the five and four
and if that's divisible by three, the number is divisible by three.
- That's very true. - Where were you when I was seven?
If it's divisible by nine, you add the numbers and they add up to nine.
- 81, 72... - Oh, God!
- 54 again. - Does it work over 100?
Yes, always. Nine's a freakish, fantastic, great number.
You add up the digits until you come to a single number.
108, 117, 126,
- 135, 144, 153... - All add up to nine.
All working. 162. How long have we got?
You've lost me, I'm afraid.
171, 180, yeah.
It is amazing, isn't it? It's really just, "Coo-wow!"
- Maybe God's a mathematician. - Up to 180, and then 189...
- Is still... - Yeah, is 17 + 1, which is 18, and 8 + 1 is 9.
- Oh, you can do it that way? - Yes, it still reduces down to nine.
- And keep going? - Until you get it down to a single number.
I don't know whether to cry or wet myself with excitement.
I'm going to do both.
I always do both.
Exciting news for home learners!
Describe the best ever game of royal hide and seek.
Well, I presume the Hampton Court Maze is involved.
Well, no, actually. That's just sort of giving an example.
Oh, no.
- Up the tree. The Royal Oak. - That's certainly...
that was pretty good. I mean, he hid.
The princes in the Tower, and they hid so well
that it was hundreds of years and then they were skeletons.
Is it any game of hide and seek
in which you never find Prince Edward again?
No. Remember, we're in the world of Js.
Now, the Civil War, Charles I.
- John. - No, Charles I had two sons. - There's a J in it.
Charles, who became Charles II.
- And James... - Who became? - James I.
- No. - James II.
It makes sense, because The Second was their surname
and they were brothers.
SUE: That's what, yeah.
KATY: They're like the boys from the band Blue.
- There's Duncan from Blue, and there's Simon from Blue. - Yeah.
- They're all related as well, aren't they? - Well,
James was imprisoned at St James's Palace.
Named not after him, but the saint, of course.
Oh, what an ordeal(!)
Yeah, I know. He used to play hide and seek and he was so good at it
that the servants would spend hours looking for him and...
Oh, they wouldn't look for him at all.
He'd be hiding and they'd go and have lunch.
"Another game of hide and seek?" "Yes."
"Oh, we couldn't find you, sir."
It was all part of his plan,
because one day he managed to get hold of the gardener's key,
and while playing hide and seek he actually escaped from the Palace
and met up with a Colonel Blumpstead, or some similar name,
who was a royalist, as you would be if you were called Blumpstead.
"Oh, Blumpstead, Blumpstead!"
And he escaped to Holland, where he lived a happy life.
It was actually Bampfield, not Blumpstead.
But still, "Bampfield" is clearly a royalist.
So are you saying the hide and seek prowess was sort of
all part of the strategy, or that was just a happy...?
- Yeah, preparing for an escape. - Oh, I see. - At the age of 12.
It's like the Shawshank Redemption.
Yeah, except he was 12, which is impressive.
- He was 12?! - He was 12, so it's quite impressive.
- He was only 12. - Brilliant.
How does he come into contact with Major Bampfield?
I guess secret messages were passed in some way...
I'd dread to think, now I know he's 12.
You've got to be careful as a boy, running away with a random colonel.
- To Amsterdam. - Especially...
You can't be sure. I mean, he might be a royalist, or...
Especially to Amsterdam, yes, quite. No, you're right.
"Come with me, it's going to be such fun."
"No, really, I am seriously a colonel."
Possibly the saddest story of hide and seek that you can think of,
although it has a kind of happy ending, is Liu Wei,
a Chinese pianist who was playing hide and seek
and he electrocuted himself so badly that he lost both his arms
so he learnt to play the piano with his toes, and in 2010,
he won China's Got Talent!
- Which is rather pleasing. - So he can play, and all of his toes work...?
They look like fingers. It's astonishing, really amazing.
Are you sure he just hasn't got his head in the wrong place?
He's got his hands down a pair of trousers.
"Look at my toes! Look at my toes!
"Now I take my socks off...
"Playing the piano with my toes, everyone!"
He's saying he's a man who can play the piano with his feet.
He's a man with a penis that looks like a face.
Still, he wins China's Got Talent.
I'm sure Si-mon Cao-wel
would have checked out his credentials in every respect.
So, while on the subject of King James's,
imagine that Jamie Oliver was to be crowned the next king of England.
- It's sort of... - Not inconceivable.
Not inconceivable in the strange world in which we live.
President Oliver.
What number James would he be?
What would be his regnal number, as the official says it?
It would be different in England from Scotland.
No, there's just one UK, so it would be the same in both,
but what would it be?
I'm desperate to say James III.
SIREN WAILS Yes!
No.
No, because what happened was, when Elizabeth was crowned,
60 years ago, she was of course called Queen Elizabeth II.
But in Scotland, there was a bit of an outcry.
Because she wasn't the second Queen Elizabeth in Scotland,
she was the first.
They had Mary Queen of Scots
when Elizabeth I was on the throne.
So a few early "E II R" pillar boxes were trashed in Scotland
and there was a big fuss.
And Winston Churchill, who was Prime Minister in 1953,
he sort of decided that there...
This is 350 years later!
I know, people have long memories on these things.
So Churchill essentially laid down a convention
whereby UK monarchs would be numbered uniformly
according to either an English or Scottish reckoning,
whichever was higher.
So James I of England was James the..?
Sixth.
..VI of Scotland. So James II was James VII,
so if there were another James, he would be called James VIII.
That would be the procedure.
I worry when you say things like this
that you're the only person who knows
and if Jamie Oliver did become king and you weren't around to tell them,
- they might get it wrong. - That's sweet.
You need to leave these things in a notebook somewhere.
We need to get some tablets for you to...
Princess Anne looks a lot like my daughter in that picture, quite disturbingly.
Gosh! She's very young there, isn't she?
I feel sorry for all the other finalists to be Queen.
APPLAUSE
There is also unresolved controversy over the naming of the QE2.
Do you know what this might be?
Well, I've always wondered,
I was never sure whether the QE2 was named after Queen Elizabeth II,
- or was the second ship called Queen Elizabeth? - Yes.
Because there's a Queen Mary 2.
Exactly. The second vessel of the Cunard line to be called Queen Mary.
And opinion is divided, but a lot of people think it was literally
just the second ship to be called Queen Elizabeth.
But the Queen herself, when launching it, saying,
"I name this ship Queen Elizabeth The Second"
so Cunard had to rename it, basically, because she'd done it.
I was once invited to the launching of a Swan Hellenic cruise liner
and they said, "So, you say your speech, and then you hand over
"to Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, who will do the launching."
I said, "Oh, I'm not going to do the launching?"
They said, "You can't launch a ship!
"You're a man!" Did you know that men can't launch ships?
- So only women can launch ships? - Yes, because I think
- it was Edward VII or someone... - It's bad luck, isn't it?
launched the Lusitania and the Titanic
and marine people are quite superstitious.
And women moan about the glass ceiling!
We can't even launch ships!
We don't want top-level employment,
we just want to smash a bottle of champagne against a ship.
- Everyone wants to launch ships. It's the best job! - It's just that.
You've got to say, "I name this ship..."
- "Barry." - "Barry." - Smash.
- Yeah. - So there is indeed controversy. Opinion is divided.
How does the Siberian Jay stick his nuts to a tree?
LAUGHTER
- It's not snot? - It's not. - Beak mucus?
- Saliva. - Tears? - He uses saliva.
Tears! (RUSSIAN VOICE) "Oh, it's so cold here.
"Thank God my nuts have stuck."
90% of all the oaks in Britain
are germinated, as it were, by the European Jay.
They collect over a billion a year
and bury them in the ground.
They can have nine in their gullet and one in their beak.
Is it from whole acorns or is it because they've eaten them?
They hold them in their gullet, then bury them
in the same way squirrels do with nuts, but the point is,
the Siberian Jay lives in a very cold climate, of course,
and it's harder to bury things cos of the impacted ice
so it sticks the nuts it gets from its trees
with its saliva to the tree itself.
- Does that mean you get trees growing off trees? - It's like the jay...
I imagine after a night out,
it would be the Siberian Jay version of a street of kebab shops.
They can just fly down an avenue of trees, just snacking...
- On a snotty nut! - It's probably quite lucky, isn't it,
that nothing germinates from a discarded kebab?
Our city centres would be even worse.
These little disgusting saplings with doner meat coming off them.
Oh, a very Doctor Who nightmare, isn't it?
Anyway, how did the first person to realise they were colour-blind
know they were colour-blind?
Did they say, "Ah, the red shoots of spring"?
Undoubtedly someone would have corrected them.
"I'm giving a green light to a bull."
Do you know the name for the classic sort of colour-blindness?
I know the guy who it was, a guy called John Dalton.
That's right! That's right, John Dalton.
Well done. Points, definitely.
There he is. He was a very brilliant and precocious child
from a Quaker family. By the age of 12, he was supervising the school
but he made a rather drastic error, given that he was a Quaker
and therefore from a rather pious family
and he decided to buy his mother a pair of bloomers...
they weren't bloomers in those days, a pair of stockings,
for her birthday
and they were a vivid red and he thought they were blue.
And she was shocked, because red was the colour of a whore.
And to buy your mother red pants was just not done.
Buying your mother pants is normal!
Buying red pants, that's weird.
But the other thing is,
he noticed that his brother didn't tell the difference either
so made the connection, which holds true, that there is a genetic disposition to colour-blindness.
So he's the first person to point out it's generic
because his brother also has the condition
- and this is obviously pre-genetics. - Not genetic,
but family, sort of related, inherited traits were understood.
He actually thought the reason for it
was that the liquid in the eye which we all have
was tinted blue, which was making him see wrong
and when he died, he'd ordered that his eyeballs be dug out and squirted
and that instantly proved that they weren't tinted blue.
We now know that it's a problem with the cones of the eye.
- Is there red-blue colour-blindness? I thought it was just red-green. - Red-green, yes,
but they see it as a kind of... I say they,
there are lots of different types of colour-blindness. Strangely,
there are four top 20 billiards... snooker players, I beg your pardon,
- Peter Ebdon, of course, who are colour-blind. - That'll be awkward.
Just occasionally, they have to ask the referee which ball...
Which is the table and which is the ball?
He can't be doing well there, if you look. All the reds are over there.
He's ground his way into a World Championship
so it's not done him any harm.
You know traffic police play snooker? Did you know about that?
They're bored in a lay-by,
they first have to book a red car and that's one point,
so they chase the red car, find something wrong with it,
give them a fine because they've got one rear light missing
and then they can choose any colour.
Say they'll go for a black car for seven points,
then a blue car will be five points,
then they go back to red until they've done 15 reds.
Let's all get white cars.
Then they can just fuck off.
APPLAUSE
I'd say worse things have been done in a lay-by than that.
Horribly true. Horribly, horribly, horribly true.
But yes, that was Dalton's problem.
He's sure that his mother wasn't also colour-blind
but just didn't like being bought pants by her child?
I think we're pretty certain about that.
I think it was perhaps more normal
to buy stockings, shall we say, for a lady.
It's just nothing, just suspenders, something normal to buy your mother.
A little frilly...
A French little tunic.
Everyone likes their mother to look sexy.
Sexy and blue, not red, because that makes her look a bit whorey.
- That's going too far. - "Oh, David. Ann Summers vouchers again!"
Is there a big drawer full of Ann Summers vouchers?
I love that Agent Provocateur Christmas...
What...
What do you know of the colour-blind test cards?
What are you seeing on there?
The number 74.
Very clear. Well done.
I can see it, but not very clearly.
- So what does it mean they can't become? - Pilots?
- Well, no, oddly enough. - Snooker players. No, of course not.
- We know they can be world champions. - Bullfighters. - Actually,
it's a myth that you can't be a pilot if you're colour-blind.
It's only if you're very severely colour-blind
- that you're disallowed. - You can't tell the difference between the blue sky and the green land?
- Yes, something like that. - And the grey tarmac.
The very worst kind of colour-blindness, or "blindness".
Anyway, they're called the Ishihara tests,
devised by Shinobu Ishihara, who worked at a military medical school
and was asked to screen military recruits for abnormalities
for colour vision. The first plate, that's an orange number 12,
I'm sure you can see. This was used in the army to weed out draft dodgers
because if they pretended they couldn't see that it was a 12,
they knew they were lying, as everyone who can see
can see that's a 12. There's no kind of colour-blindness
that can mistake those two.
And I was feeling proud of being able to see it.
But don't despair if you're colour-blind.
There is one advantage you might have.
Can you think what that would be?
Ration books? Something with colour?
No, you're less likely to be fooled by camouflage.
Because the tamarind, the New World monkey, is colour-blind.
- Ration books was a rubbish guess! - The tamarind is much, much better
at eating insects that are disguised as leaves or twigs or whatever
than other mammals or birds who eat insects
because they rely on colour more for identifying things,
so colour-blind people were used often
for spotting... "Ah, I can see tanks covered in a drape," for example.
What begins with J
and was used by the first man to row the Atlantic to attempt suicide?
Jizz.
Suicide by jizz?
On any level, I mean...
Jill the ferret, sex-starved for 364 days,
attacked him in an erotic frenzy.
MUSIC: "Jessica"
Jellyfish.
- That's... - That's something that can kill you and they are in the sea.
You're right. It's slightly confusing.
He just happened to be the first man to row the Atlantic.
- But it wasn't while he was on the boat? - No.
He was a very extraordinary...
As a child, he nicked a pistol from his Scout troop leader
and fired at his fellow Scouts
- and was expelled from the Scout movement... - And got a badge for it.
- Accuracy! - Yes!
But then at age 13, he ran away from home to live in the jungle.
In his early 20s, he met a pirate, who taught him to be a pirate
and he pirated his way around the Caribbean,
smuggling liquor and cigarettes and things
and then in 1969, January 20th,
he pushed off from the Canary Islands in a self-rising rowing boat
and rowed all the way to Florida.
It took him 180 days and he was the first person to do that.
But it was when he was in the jungle in South America
that he despaired of his life
and so he wanted to be killed by something beginning with J.
Oh. Is it a jaguar?
Is the right answer! Jaguar! Exactly.
APPLAUSE
So what did he do? Did he go out in a meat skirt and a meat helmet
- and just wait there in the middle of the jungle? - Well, in a sense...
No, he just wound them up all night by teasing them.
"You look like a cougar. No-one can tell the difference.
"You're a panther!"
He kept a gun by his side in case he changed his mind
and as the jaguar attacked, he did change his mind
and shot it dead and then sold its skin,
- so it was a bit, frankly, unfair on the jaguar. - So he didn't die?
So he was just lying? Basically lying?
He really wanted to end his life so he went out and aggravated...
- He had a gun! - He also had a spear! - I know, if he really meant it...
I don't believe this bloke! I'm sorry.
"I don't know how to kill myself.
"I'm going to wait here for a big cat to arrive."
Sit here winding up jaguars for days.
He was just doing it for attention.
Yes, I think so.
The J part of it is that his name is John Fairfax, and if you look up
who the first person to row the Atlantic single-handed was,
- it was John. - Good old Johnny Fairfax. - Absolutely.
Now, who's this? What are they doing?
"I thought it would be ten times as exciting
"as a swing boat at the fair, but it wasn't.
"There was no sensation, just a lot of noise and wind.
"My hair was blown into a tangled mess
"which couldn't be combed out for days."
The inventor of the hairdryer.
Is it Brian May on the latest Thorpe Park ride?
Well, we're with a transport experience and this person
was famous for their achievement in it, but the first time they tried it
- they found it horrible, noisy, windy. - Amy Johnson?
Amy Johnson is the right answer! Very good.
It's a J, it's a J.
There she is.
APPLAUSE
That's the J. And what was her great feat?
- Flew the Atlantic. - Yeah.
- No, that was Alcock and Brown. - Flew across America.
- No, she flew from... - Flew to the moon.
She flew from Britain to Australia.
- To Australia? - Yeah. Heck of a flight. - Did she ever come back?
Yes, she certainly did, and when she came back, she landed at
what was then the sort of London Airport, which was Croydon Airport,
and there were 200,000 people there to meet her.
- You're kidding? - No, it was a sensation of the age.
Was there a car boot sale going on as well?
No. There was... She had a 12-mile parade through London.
So she was describing when she first got into an aeroplane,
and first flew?
She absolutely hated it. But she stuck with it and became,
obviously, incredibly good at it. So yes, now then,
talking of flight, I want you all to do a jolly jape now,
which is make a dart, a paper dart,
and see the person who can throw it the furthest wins.
Talk amongst yourselves.
There are various kinds you can do, just try the type you did at school.
Oh, I've totally forgotten how to do this.
And obviously take your time, as quickly as you can.
Thing is, I'm going to make one the way we used to make them at school,
knowing they didn't fly very well.
Well, some people were good at it and some people weren't.
Interested to see how well you're doing.
Precision engineering.
- Oops, I've made a hat.
I'm put little flaps on mine, is that all right? And a tail.
I've just had that idea!
You seem to be ready, who's ready?
David, have a go.
As far as you can go.
APPLAUSE
Not bad.
Should you throw or should you cast like a bowler?
- Ah. Well, it's up to you. - Look at that.
Yours looks great, I have to say.
APPLAUSE
- It went up because of the flaps. - Yeah. Your flaps.
- Corrugated roof tiles. - Flaps gave it lift.
Watch out in the back row, this is going to be lethal.
It's one of those stealth ones, you won't be able to see it,
you won't be able to measure it.
You can buy it from Wickes, "It's got her name on it." Oh!
APPLAUSE
- A suicide plane. - Impossible. It defies all laws of physics.
I thought it was acrobatics.
Sue, your chance for glory.
I don't think it's going to happen.
APPLAUSE
Well, despite the brilliance of Amy Johnson...
But would you be surprised to know that the paper aeroplane
that goes the furthest looks like this?
- Stop it! - Yeah, that's a bracelet.
I know, it seems hardly credible.
What do you do? You just scrunch it up and chuck it.
I'm unfortunately not very good at throwing it.
I've practised a bit, but the world record is 200 yards.
- No way! - I'm not kidding you.
- Straight down. - You're supposed to twist it.
That's why I'm not good at it, I've never thrown an American football.
You do it in the style of an American football.
- ALL: Whoa! - There you go!
APPLAUSE That's amazing!
Pretty good, isn't it?
And that's...
So why aren't all aeroplanes designed like that?
It was invented by a man called Mark Forti, whose father worked for NASA.
Oh, what a cheat.
Yes, it's a short plastic cylinder,
slightly weighted on the leading edge and that's as simple as that.
So you use sticky-back plastic,
which some purists would say doesn't make it a proper aeroplane,
because it has to be slightly heavier at the front.
You would not imagine that was so aerodynamic a shape as a dart,
which just to our eyes looks right, doesn't it?
Is that the future of aeroplanes?
Darts, the future of darts.
I thought you said "ducks".
They're going to evolve into kind of cylindrical, little beaks at the top.
Yeah, birds everywhere are watching this programme,
"What have we been doing all these... All this?
"We should have just done that!"
"And just jumped. What have we been doing?!"
But we were saying earlier about Amy Johnson,
almost gave up flying because it made such a mess of her hair.
Can you remember who wrote the first dictionary in English?
- Oh, yes. Johnson. - Samuel Johnson.
Samuel Johnson!
SIREN WAILS
No, it wasn't Samuel Johnson.
I led you down the garden path and spanked you.
- Baldrick. - Baldrick!
"B."
Probably a B, yes.
"We're going to have to write the whole dictionary tonight!"
Yes. Dr Johnson's dictionary, written in the earlier part
of the 18th century, was preceded by, well, there was...
- Famously, the first dictionary. - Weren't there lots?
There was a Richard Mulcaster in the 16th century,
who came up with the name football, in fact, and indeed,
invented refereeing and the idea of football teams,
but he wrote Elementary in 1582, which was the first to gather
"all the words which we use in our English tung, out of all
professions, as well learned as not, into one dictionarie."
But he didn't give definitions.
He just listed all the words that he thought there existed.
But Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall, of 1604,
not only listed words, but gave definitions, so it was
perhaps the first true dictionary, in the sense that we know it.
It listed around 3,000 hard words,
as he called them, defining each one.
So then Johnson's dictionary had how many entries?
At around the time there were about 250,000 or 300,000 words.
- How many did he list? - 42.
Oh, you were so close. 42,000.
Thousand.
That was really close. 42,773.
But we've got some Johnson words that have gone out of use.
Maybe you can imagine what they mean.
Tonguepad.
- Mouth-friend? - Mouth-friend.
Don't we all need a mouth-friend?
Sometimes we certainly do need a tonguepad and a mouth-friend.
KATY AND SUE: Sometimes I like a frigorifick.
I hear you, girl!
Frigorifick.
Yeah. We've all been frigorifick in our time.
A depucelate is...
That's a coffee.
I think it's single shot, isn't it?
You can get those in, yeah, Starbucks.
It's not "depu-kela-tay," it's depucelate.
That's what you do before a big date, isn't it?
If you're meeting a mouth-friend.
You get a bit tonguepad. Slip of the old shapesmith.
Is a shapesmith just a rubbish blacksmith?
- No, a shapesmith is basically what we... - "I've done a thing."
There you are.
"You did a shape." "Yeah."
It sort of looks like a doorknob.
It's not a horseshoe,
but it's sort of horse jewellery in some way.
Like a horse clog.
A horse nipple clamp.
- They founded Camden Market and sold all that crap. - Yes.
No, a shapesmith is actually what we would call a personal trainer,
someone who gets you into shape and improves the shape of your body.
Time for that word to come back.
- Exactly. - "I'm going to see my shapesmith." - My shapesmith, yeah.
"Personal trainer," hate that.
A tonguepad is just a talker, someone who natters all the time.
- A mouth-friend is... - Gossip?
No, someone who is a friend to your face,
- but is duplicitous behind your back. - Oh, God, I know a few of those.
Yeah, a few mouth-friends, pretends to be your friend.
To depucelate is to deflower, to bereave of virginity.
It's not a bereavement!
Let's not see it as that.
Frigorifick sounds like something Del Boy might say, but what is frig...?
Actually, I suppose...
It's probably rather badly spelt. We should pronounce - yes, cold -
we should pronounce it "frijorifick", probably.
It just means causing cold,
something that's frigorifick causes cold.
Some of his definitions were just a little bit lazy.
"Sock. Something put between the foot and the shoe."
He must have thought, though,
because you know, previous diction...
the one before, you say had been just of hard words.
He must have thought, "Everyone knows what a sock is!
"If you've got this book
"and you don't know what a sock is, then I can't help you."
Exactly. Oats was a famous one.
He said horrible things about the Scots in his one on oats, didn't he?
He did. He said "a grain which in England
"is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people."
He describes "to worm" -
"to deprive a dog of something, nobody knows what, under his tongue,
"which is said to prevent him, nobody knows why, from running mad."
- It's a very strange... - Wasn't a scientist, then.
No, I think probably not.
He was one of our greatest men of letters.
Well, we've come to the amen, because it's time for the scores.
It's all we've got time for. Let's see who's hit the jackpot.
HE INHALES DEEPLY
Well...
He's died!
I'm afraid it's Sue who's died in last place, with minus 12.
APPLAUSE
And really, it's a massive step up for Alan,
on our third place, with minus seven.
APPLAUSE
Robbed.
And having been depucelated, QI-wise,
it's pretty impressive to break your virginity with minus three, Katy.
APPLAUSE
But our mouth-friend of the week, clear winner on plus five,
is David Mitchell.
APPLAUSE
So, this is where we jack it all in
and say that's all from Sue, David, Katy, Alan and me.
Be excessively nice to each other. Good night.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd