CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Well, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
and that's the fewest times I've ever said good evening,
and welcome to QI,
where tonight we'll be journeying to jestinations beginning with J.
And joining me are the jet-skiing Sandi Toksvig...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..the jet-setting Susan Calman...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The jet-engined Bill Bailey...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..and, still being probed by Gatwick security, Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Now let's hear your buzzers. And Sandi goes...
RACING CAR
Susan goes...
JET ENGINE
Bill goes...
FAST VEHICLE ENGINE
And Alan goes...
CAR ENGINE CHOKES
Try that again.
CHOKES AGAIN
- No, it's never going to work, is it? - Flooded it. - Yeah, absolutely.
Well, let's have an easy one to start with.
Strictly speaking, where does the phrase Chariots Of Fire come from?
- It's a film. - It's a film. - Where did it originate?
It's something to do with this.
Where does the phrase originate?
- It's a quotation. - SANDI: It's a quotation.
- From what? - Shakespeare, must be Shakespeare. - No.
BILL: Oh, the Chariots Of Fire.
Wordsworth, Jerusalem, the hymn Jerusalem.
ALARM BELLS
- You fell finally into our trap. - Finally! It took a while. Sorry, it's the first question.
It was slightly embarrassing how long it took you to get the wrong answer.
Yes, I did start by saying "strictly speaking".
Strictly speaking it comes from a poem by William Blake, called...?
- Chariots Of Fire. - No.
I'm ashamed of you.
You must know the first line of...
I must, but I can't be arsed to tell you.
- Well, you're not English, that's fair. - Fair.
- And... - And did...
- BILL & SANDI: Those feet in ancient times. - Thank you!
Finally we got there.
- Oh, I know that! - Yes!
That's the name of the poem
- from which the line "chariots of fire" comes. - Oh.
The tune is called Jerusalem.
# And did those feet... #
And it's referred, mistakenly as a hymn.
# In ancient times... #
Thank you for starting in my key.
# Walk upon England's la la la... #
Come on!
Bring... Oh, clouds unfold.
Yes, really what I'm after is, what does it mean? And whose feet?
"And did those feet in ancient times appear on England's mountains green." Whose feet?
- Jesus, surely. - Right. So what is the story of Jesus coming to England?
- Is there a film about it? - Yes.
- Not to my knowledge. - Well, then, I'm in trouble. I am, as they say, out of...
This is what people say when they don't know the answer - "I'm out of my comfort zone."
You have been the equivalent of
- sitting on spikes for the last ten years, Alan. - Yeah!
I have yet to discover your comfort zone.
- OK, listen, there is a legend that Jesus came to England. - Yes.
And did those feet, his feet, in ancient time...
And he was said to have gone to a particular place.
- SANDI: Was it Glastonbury? - The audience know. Ah, thank you.
- Glastonbury. - Glastonbury. Glastonbury Tor.
- And he went with his uncle. What was his uncle's name? - Bob.
- Uncle Bob Christ? - Bob's your uncle.
Yeah, they were a bit more...
Surely they were more informal in those times, surely. Bob Christ.
- His uncle's name was the same as his father's name. - Joseph.
- Joseph. And he was named after a place.
Is it like working with very slow children, Stephen?
- BILL: Arimathea. - Thank you!
- Say it again so the camera can get it, clearly. - Right. Oh, OK.
- This is a new thing we're doing. - Hang on a second.
ALAN'S BUZZER
Hey, hang on!
You had your chance.
- I was just composing my face. - Joseph of Arimathea.
No, I said it! I said it!
Joseph of Arimathea.
I'm going to throw cold water over you both in a minute.
Joseph of Arimathea.
ALAN'S BUZZER
Joseph of Arimathea!
It was the first ever Glastonbury Festival, if you will.
It was that Jesus supposedly came with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea,
who is mentioned in the Gospels,
although, it has to be said, Arimathea is only mentioned once,
and that is in relation to the place Joseph came from.
No-one knows where it is, where it was, where it could have been. Anyway...
It could have been a falafel tent. Nobody knows.
Jesus was effectively the first act, then.
- He was the first act ever to appear at Glasto. - He was the first on at Glastonbury.
Was he a juggler? Did he have bongos? Was he doing the diablo thing?
He did holistic balancing.
Three rooms of banging scripture.
All right, OK.
So there was a myth that Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea came...
Supposedly, Joseph of Arimathea was after tin,
and he came with Jesus, went to Glastonbury Tor and there's a tree.
SANDI: Tree, isn't there, the Glastonbury tree. Did Mary come?
- Supposedly, it was planted... Sorry? - Mary, the mother.
- I just wondered if Mum came as well. - I don't think she did. - Boys' weekend.
We don't know. Boys' weekend!
But I will give you 20 points each if you can mention the two other places the myth says they went to.
Glastonbury is one, but they were said to have gone to two other places.
- Wait! I know this. - Torquay? - No.
Because there's a group called the Aetherius Society, and they believe...
Oh, they're your neighbours, aren't they?
They're my neighbours in Devon,
and they believe that Christ appeared to them on the top of this hill,
and the founder of the Aetherius Society said he was doing the washing-up in his flat,
and he heard a voice say,
"You have been chosen as the planetary representative of Earth."
So, immediately, he went, "Oh, right. I'd better do that, then."
- So he left the drying up? - He left the drying up to someone else. - And the putting away?
Can I just ask how much Bill knows about washing up?
Cos you do it like you're typing. You did that for washing up.
It's just a little, gentle caress of each thing.
And then that to get rid of the plates.
- He eats his dinner off old keyboards. - Yeah.
That's my life.
- Anyway, the places were, in fact, Penzance was one. - Oh!
And the other was Falmouth.
- Oh, I see. - And I'm sure he had a lovely time.
- A pasty, did he have a pasty? - He would have had a pasty.
Now, what can you tell me, as we were on the subject of Jerusalem, about the Jerusalem artichoke?
- Well, it isn't. - It isn't what?
From Jerusalem.
It's not from Jerusalem is right. That's absolutely correct.
What else can you tell me? You said it's not from Jerusalem.
- It's not an artichoke. - And it's not an artichoke.
- Aaah. - Do you know why? - It's just a lie. The whole thing's a lie. It's annoying.
Jerusalem artichoke, not from Jerusalem, not an artichoke, you don't know where you are.
The word Jerusalem is a corruption of what it actually is.
We used to grow them in America.
When I grew up in New York, we grew them. They look like sunflowers.
Oddly enough, you say America, it is the only endemic, original,
natural vegetable from North America.
- Is that right? - There is none other.
Potatoes come from central and southern America,
as do tomatoes and chillies.
There are some wild rices that come from Canada and North America,
but that is the only...
Isn't that bizarre? In that whole landmass.
You think of squashes and all those other things.
- So if it looks like a sunflower... - Say sunflower in Italian.
- Giras. - Jerusalem. - Girasole. - Girasole.
- Gira, turn, as in gyroscope, to the sun. - Girasole. - Girasole.
- And girasole became Jerusalem. - The same thing.
We call it a sun...because they turn...
I'll be very impressed if you know what's Greek for sun...
If I knew what it was, you'd be more than impressed, you'd have a heart attack.
- Do you know what the Greek for sun is? - Helios. - Helios, OK.
- So helio is sun. Turn, turn. - Heliotrope. Heliotrope!
Heliotrope is the right answer, we got there.
Girasole and heliotrope, and they all mean the same thing
because it was noted that the members of the sunflower family follow the course of the sun.
- A lot of lizards are heliotropic as well. - Indeed they are. Absolutely right.
Because they're cold-blooded and they need the sun to warm them.
Katie Price is Heliotropic.
LAUGHTER
I think... I think...
I think...
- She is, yeah. - I think Harrow Road's...
I think Harrow Road's Sun Parlour Tropic is not quite the same.
I met her once, we were on the same breakfast TV programme.
And I said, "What are you here to talk about?"
She said, "I've just published my autobiography." I said, "Oh, well done."
She said, "Yes, I'm looking forward to reading it."
It's an odd thing about Jerusalem.
For some reason, it seems to attract things that just don't seem to be particularly connected.
There's a Jerusalem cherry, that's not a cherry.
- It's a poisonous nightshade. - Wow. What?
The Jerusalem cricket is not a cricket, it's another kind of insect.
Jerusalem sage is not a proper sage. None of them is from Jerusalem.
So essentially you can put Jerusalem next to anything that isn't what it is and then it becomes fact?
- Exactly, I'm wearing Jerusalem glasses. - And I'm a Jerusalem model.
Mountain also has that. You've got mountain lions.
The mountain cow is in fact...
Katie Price.
What a pity.
It's actually a tapir, one of those long-nosed South American...
- Messapia. - Anyway, we're ready to move on.
Why might my pockets smell of fish?
They've done that thing where they take my body
- and put it on the head of someone who looks a bit like me. - Ah, yes.
I hate when they do that.
God, that's like a dream I had last night! This is so weird.
It's not like a dream I've ever had.
But I mean, obviously, if you're a fisherman...
But if you were a person of a high rank in society,
a particular society, your pockets might smell of fish.
- Oh. - The Fishmongers' Society. - Well, no.
That's what I mean. Aside from the obvious professional reasons why you might smell of fish.
- Oh, right. - It's a society in which it was considered polite not to eat,
- but to pocket the fish at a banquet. - Is it Japanese, cos...? - Yes!
- Cos fish, fish, they love fish. - Japanese is exactly right.
Medieval Japanese society, at weddings and banquets
and other such things, it was right to drink the drink you were given,
but that you should take the fish, bring it up to your mouth and then tuck it away into your pocket.
- I know it seems very odd. - What?
It's just a social...
I've done that with sausage rolls for the dogs later.
We've all done it with certain things, I agree.
But it is an interesting thing, and they still have a tradition in Japan,
when a baby is 100 days old,
is to take food, sea bream and beans and soya and rice,
and wave it in front of the baby's face, but not let the baby eat it.
Wait a minute. So there's people dangling fish in front of babies?
This is... Right, OK. What, on a fishing line?
No, no! From the food cupboard or the fridge,
which in Japan would be filled with all kinds of different fish, as you can imagine.
- I see, I see. Sashimi. - Sashimi and sushi and all kinds of other such things.
- In fact, while on the subject of sashimi... - BILL: Weird, weirdos.
- What is the difference between sushi and sashimi? - Sashimi is raw fish.
And sushi is rice and seaweed and that kind of thing.
Yes, it's rolled in rice.
And the particular thing about sashimi is not just that it's raw fish, but that it's...?
- It's sliced. - It's sliced at an angle.
Those huge knife skills are incredibly important in Japanese cuisine.
This particularly used to be true in the medieval period.
And in carp, for example,
there were at least 47 different ways of cutting carp,
which represented different aspects of human life or activity.
For example, there was departing-for-battle carp.
So soldiers would have carp carved in a certain way before they went to battle.
If they weren't told they were going to battle, the carp was the giveaway.
Yeah, exactly. There was celebratory carp.
- There was taking-a-bride carp. - Ooh!
- Flower-viewing carp. - No! Really?
BILL: Warning carp. Look out, carp!
Moon-viewing carp.
So it was a very important part, obviously, of Japanese life, the way they prepared fish.
It's a wonderful art, obviously,
and it's a very popular cuisine now around the world.
I have an amusing joke that I always say when I'm in a Japanese restaurant -
bring me a various selection of things to drink, waiter,
and don't get all sake.
Oh, you see! Hey!
But what actually is sake? What is sake?
- Rice...? - Rice wine. - Rice wine, you said, Alan? - Yes, rice wine?
Alan came in first with rice wine.
- He said it! - Yeah.
- It is not rice wine. - Oh. - No.
Is it from Jerusalem?
The actual word "sake" simply means alcoholic drink.
But the sake we think of as sake is in fact a kind of beer.
The word they use for the drink we call sake is "Nihonshu",
which means Japanese liquor. Nihon, as in Nippon.
Anyway, originally, people would just chew rice
and spit into a large container,
and the enzymes from the spittle would cause the breakdown of starch into sugars,
which would cause the fermentation, which would make the sake.
So it is actually a strong beer, not a wine.
- A wine is a fruit-based drink, usually grape, obviously. - BILL SIGHS
What other kinds of particularly Japanese things can you do to food to make it Japanese?
- You can put it in tempura. - Tempura.
Funny you should say that cos tempura was actually introduced to Japan,
and I will give you ten points if you can tell me which nation
taught the Japanese to batter things, which is essentially what tempura is.
ALL: Scottish.
You'd think, wouldn't you? You would think.
Surely there's a ginger-haired man somewhere,
in one of those medieval scrolls, just going...
- "Do you want to deep-fry that?" - Yeah. "That would be magic, it really would."
- "Have we got any eggs?" - Oddly enough not, no.
- It was the Portuguese. - Portuguese! - The Portuguese.
Also, the name vindaloo is originally from Portuguese origin, from Goa.
Is it? I thought that was a French...
- Vin de loo - toilet water. - Goa, as you know, was...
But there you go.
Anyway, so lots of interesting things about Japanese food.
Now, what do people in Java use for a quick pick-me-up?
- Now, well. Ah. - SANDI: Not going to say. - Go on.
- No. In for a penny. - Go on.
- CAR ENGINE CHOKES - What was it?
- Oh, you are so canny. - Coffee. - Coffee, there we are.
Coffee does not pick you up. You may think it does.
If you drink coffee regularly, you get withdrawal symptoms
and all coffee does is put you back on the same level
than a non-coffee drinker is on.
It doesn't speed your reflexes, doesn't help you concentrate,
doesn't do anything. It can cause anxiety.
- That's the worst of it. - Shocker. - It's a kind of wired anxiety, but it isn't is a pick-me-up
- or an energiser. - Stimulus. - It's not a stimulant in that sense.
What most scientists recommend is that you either drink coffee regularly,
in which case you satisfy your body's need and withdrawal symptoms,
or you don't drink it at all.
- The problem most people have... - They're not getting on, are they?
..is when they suddenly go on a bit of a coffee jag,
go to a country that does very good coffee so they have a lot of ristretto
in Italy and then return to England, and then
don't have any, then they have one again - that's what screws you up.
- Anyway... - CAR ENGINE CHOKES
- Yes, my dear? - Cocaine.
You probably know that in Indonesia, the price for drug trafficking
- or being found is, essentially, death. - Yeah.
There is a strange habit of doing something which is supposed
to pick you up, supposed to cure you.
Somebody tried to commit suicide because they had an illness.
So they laid themselves down in a particular place,
- in order to try and end their own lives. - Railway line.
- A railway line is the right answer. - Ah.
And they suddenly found that their illness went away
and this caused a rash of Javanese people...
- lying on railway lines. - SANDI: How irritating. - Like so. Very irritating.
ALAN LAUGHS
The joke is that the power comes from the overhead lines.
There is no electricity in the rails at all.
I've never seen anyone look more serious than the woman
- in the blue! - No, she...
So presumably the pick-me-up part
depends how fast the train's going.
Whenever I see women like that I want to have a moustache
and twirl it.
- Like a proper melodramatic villain? - Yes, just with a cape.
Twirl your moustache.
- And we know the music that goes with it. - Silent music.
SANDI: That's the same as the washing up!
Yes, it is. Multitasking!
I could be washing up, I also...
Washing-up whilst tying his wife to the railway line.
Da-da-da-da-da-da...
Oh, tricky one - cheese grater.
- Cheese graters, they are tricky. - Brush. - No, no.
- Use a brush. - I take them to the car wash, hold them out the windows.
Let their brushes take the strain!
Another thing they do in Java which they do in other parts
of the world, dangerous sport involving trains.
- Do you know? - Playing chicken, running in front...
- Running on the roof. - Yes.
- Roof surfing, as it's known. There you can see. - Oh, my God.
That's not so much running as having a picnic.
There are so many of them. What they started to do was suspending,
just at human head height, grapefruit-sized concrete balls
so that people would - bang, like that!
- In order to stop them... - Start with a grapefruit!
- Then say... - No, they're tough in Java. Believe me. They are tough.
But not that bright.
I'm having a senior moment. The famous volcano near Java?
- Krakatoa. - Krakatoa.
- What's the name of the movie? - Um...
- Krakatoa... - Erupts? - SANDI: East of Java.
East of Java, yes.
- And oddly enough, it's actually west of Java. - West of Java, yes.
It's an odd thing, but it was one of the first big Cinerama
kind of movies, called Krakatoa East of Java.
It was just a bizarre lie, because Krakatoa is west of Java.
So some producer must have thought, "I don't like the sound of West of Java."
"It's not going to sell. What can we do? We can take it north. North, south?
"East! East, it's going to be fantastic."
So, within ten years, tell me when this great huge explosion?
- 1883. - 1883.
Erm, 1882.
Right.
Ladies and gentlemen, viewers at home,
- brace yourselves. - Oh, hello.
The explosion, the great enormous, gigantic eruption of Krakatoa
was in 1883.
I thank you.
APPLAUSE
- I saw a documentary about it. - May I just say...
..W-T-F?
There was a documentary about it on the BBC and they re-enacted it.
Well, well remembered! I mean, it's not an easily, not particularly...
I don't normally remember anything.
It was the loudest sound, apparently, that has ever existed,
or at least as far as we know, certainly within human reckoning.
So, four atomic bombs is sort of the average...
Oh, no! It was 13 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb.
Oh, was it? Wow!
Five cubic miles of rock was spewed into the air,
and it was heard 3,000 miles away.
You could actually hear it 3,000 miles away.
- Pop. - And it... Yes!
LAUGHTER
That's what it sounded like in Australia.
It reverberated around the world, the ripples of it, seven times.
- It was a most extraordinary... - It was winter for years, wasn't it?
Winter for years was actually another. That was an 1815 volcano.
And it was known as the winter of 1815. You might know, I can tell.
Those who don't know - Bill Bailey is a great friend of Indonesia,
lives there, works there, plays gamelan.
- I do. - Does the whole thing. - The whole gamelan. - So you might know
- this mountain. - It might have been Tambora.
It was Mount Tambora. Well done.
APPLAUSE
It was called the year without a summer in 1815 and, in fact,
about 100,000 people died of disease and famine,
whereas the explosion of Krakatoa
killed 36,000 people because it was an eruption.
Wasn't Krakatoa... Was that the first global event
that sort of was... The news of which spread around the world?
Exactly. We can see behind us, Harper's Weekly.
- It was a media event for the first time. - Yeah.
- "The island and volcano of Krakatoa Strait of Sunda, submerged during the late eruption." - Yes.
When eventually a human party of people
arrived at the site, at what was once a gigantic volcano
that had just exploded, they found -
and I'm including both vegetable and animal matter here - one living creature.
And I will give you ten points if you can tell me the species.
- Was it a spider that they found? - Yes!
- It was a spider. - What's going on?! Everybody's brilliant.
- APPLAUSE - Bravo.
Absolutely marvellous. Everybody's on cracking form here.
You really are doing superbly well.
Was the spider going, "Ooh, it's hot"?
It was indeed.
It was using two legs at a time.
- Anyway... - BILL: Like this.
Ooh, ah! Ooh, ah! Ooh, ow! Oh, ah! Ooh, ow! Ooh, ow!, Ooh, ow!
- So it was doing the washing-up! - Yes, it was.
It's the Jerusalem washing-up spider.
Anyway, moving on.
So, what was the most hurtful thing Rambo's boyfriend did to him?
Right. I've seen this film. It's a bootleg, it's very different from...
- Rambo's boyfriend? - I'm being very naughty - the picture is being very naughty.
- When I say Rambo, I really mean Rimbaud. - Rimbaud!
So when I say Rimbaud, who do I mean?
- You mean, of course, him. - But who is he?
- Rimbaud. Somebody French. - SANDI: He looks off his head on something.
- "Somebody French." - Arthur? - Arthur.
- Rimbaud. - Rimbaud.
- Arthur Rimbaud, who was? - He was a great writer, wasn't he? - A poet.
- A great poet, but very rare inasmuch as... - Got that right! Can't believe it.
We're used to Beethoven and Mozart, and other musicians
being extraordinarily prodigious at an early age.
It's very rare for a poet.
The greatest work that Rimbaud wrote, and he was a great poet,
was between the ages of 17 and 21.
He was extraordinarily beautiful. According to a school friend,
"He had eyes of pale blue, irradiated with dark blue,
"the loveliest eyes I've ever seen. He was a brilliant student.
"He won a regional poetry competition,
"in spite of sleeping through the first three hours of the exam."
- SANDI: Oh, I've done that. - At 16, he ran away from home with no money,
and then between the ages of 17 and 21, just four years,
he had this extraordinary flowering as poet.
But, in doing so, he shared his life with someone.
He had a passionate, tumultuous affair with dot, dot, dot.
Katie Price.
His dates were 1854 to 1891. So he died at 36, 37.
- And he was of a homosexual persuasion? - A child prodigy, he was gay.
Oh, well, don't know anything about those people.
And in fact there is a blue plaque to him in London,
where he shared a short-ish time with his lover,
who was also a poet, a famous poet.
- Oh. Gerard de Nerval. - No.
- Gerard de Nerval was a fascinating man. - He was.
- I very much enjoyed the way you said that. - Je suis le veuf,
- l'ancontre. Le tenebreux. - And he also famously had a pet lobster...
- He did indeed. - ..that he used to take for walks on a lead. - Vite, vite, monsieur!
- Monsieur Clicky. - Stay with it! Stay with it!
Alors!
Stay with it, because it's ...
Non!
- J'ai fatigue. - Non! Allez vite.
ALAN CHOKES
- L'eau, s'il vous plait. L'eau! - Non.
Non, pas de l'eau. Non. Le artichoke.
Le Jerusalem APPLAUSE
I never thought I'd see the day
when Bill Bailey force-fed Gerard de Nerval's lobster
with a Jerusalem artichoke, and yet the day came.
Anyway, let's just return to this other poet,
who was the lover of the young Verlaine.
- Oh, sorry. - Verlaine!
APPLAUSE
Did I ever give that away! No.
Now, there, on the left is Verlaine,
- the one who looks slightly like John Malkovich. - Oh.
- In the middle is the boy wonder. - Rimbaud.
Rimbaud, and on the right is... Erm, I can't remember his name.
- That's Robert De Niro, isn't it? - It is Robert De Niro, yes.
It is a bit, isn't it, on the right?
It's Robert De Niro, that's who it is.
It's like a 19th-century ad for a hairdresser's, of all the different styles you can have.
Is that the same person in that picture as it was in the one before?
- It is. - Jeez. Air-brushing. - I know.
But they went to live in Camden for a short while
and there is a blue plaque in Camden that says,
"Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, poets and lovers, lived here."
It was the first blue plaque to celebrate a gay couple, which is rather sweet.
Anyway, that's the story of these two.
Paul Verlaine wrote a poem of extraordinary international importance, whose opening lines are?
# And did those feet
# In ancient times... #
No, I'll tell you what they are.
# Walk upon England's... #
Les sanglots longs de violons de l'automne
Blessent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone...
- SANDI: I didn't realise you wanted it in French! - No, no.
It seriously is internationally important, that poem.
How can that be that those first lines changed history?
- It's the internationale... - I will do it in a voice that might give you a hint. - OK.
- DEEP BARITONE: - Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne...
- Yes? - It's the start of the Eurovision Song Contest.
- As we know, Beethoven's 9th Symphony begins that... - Dammit! - No.
- It was a code. - A code. A code to the resistance. - Yes!
It was a code to the resistance that the D-Day landings were beginning
and that the resistance should begin their sabotage.
- That was the signal. - They went, "finally!" - Rather wonderful.
So French hearts beat a little quicker when they hear these four words.
What kind of camp person decided that was the code
- they where going to use? - It's a very famous poem -
it would be like saying "shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
Anyway, we thought you'd like to know about it, but why...
BILL: Yes, quite interesting.
The question was how did the lover hurt Rimbaud?
- Shut his fingers in the door. - Yeah.
- Worse than that, he had a tumultuous... - Oh, it does nip.
- ..passionate, jealous rage and shot him in the wrist. - In the wrist? - Yes.
Whilst he was masturbating.
I'm going to move on, because you're just simply misbehaving.
- Yeah, move on. - Yeah. - It's for the best. - Anyway.
I am so out of my comfort zone.
It's all good information that is well worth knowing.
Arthur Rimbaud was shot in the arm by Paul Verlaine.
Now, on to one of the delicacies of Jamaican cuisine,
I think we all know how to make cock soup,
but how would you make mannish water?
Sorry, I don't know how to make cock soup.
- I don't like cock soup. - I don't know what... - Cock-a-leekie.
Oh, right! Oh, OK.
Cock-a-leekie.
- It's good, chicken soup. - Oh, I see. Is that what it is?
- A cock is a chicken. - Cock is a chicken, yeah.
What can you have been thinking?
I don't know, I thought it was some terrible euphemism.
What, a euphemism for pheasant?
I don't... Yes! Yes, that's it, pheasant.
Well, cock soup is chicken soup. Cock-a-leekie.
- Cock-a-leekie soup. - You've had cock-a-leekie in Scotland.
- I have had cock-a-leekie. - Yes, you've had a leaky cock. Hey!
No, shush and because...
No, listen, now. Mannish water...
SANDI LAUGHS UPROARIOUSLY
It's like Frankie Howerd was in the room.
- BILL & STEPHEN AS HOWERD: No, no. - No, don't. - Oh, no. - Stop it.
- Shush! No. - Don't. - No.
- Missus! - No.
Big belly laughs from all men with big bellies and we'll have little titters from... No!
- All right. Don't you remember that one? - Oh!
Stop it! Mannish water... Come on, we're in Jamaica.
- Mannish water. - Yeah.
- Is it some kind of a soupage of some kind? - Yes. - It's a soupage. - Mannish water.
It's Jamaican, is the point.
- Right, so Jamaican food is what you're looking for? - Yeah.
- Coconuts, plantains. - It's mannish, though.
The point is they want to be male, so eat male animals.
Oh, OK, so it's a...
- And what food is common in... - Rice and peas. - Yes.
- Rice and peas, flying fish. - Anything else?
- Goat and... - Goat! Yes.
- Entrails of goat. - That's it.
So all the male parts of a goat - and a male goat is the important thing - makes mannish water.
It's also called goat's head soup.
Does the phrase goat's head soup mean anything to you?
Er, yes, that I'm not hungry, is what it means.
- Anything else? - It's an album, isn't it? - Thank you.
Goat's Head Soup, by what's his name?
- It's not his name, their name. - Oh, God!
- The greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world, they call themselves. - The Proclaimers!
And you can walk another 100 miles for...
Oh, I love The Proclaimers.
No, I'm very fond of The Proclaimers, but The Rolling Stones...
- Rolling Stones! Rolling Stones. - In 1973, produced an album called Goat's Head Soup,
because they recorded the album on Jamaica.
And do you know why they recorded the album on Jamaica?
- Island Records. - SANDI: Because they were mad for the soup. - No.
Because it was about the only bloody country on Earth where they weren't banned from.
It was around the time of a lot of the drugs and all the rest of it,
so they were allowed in Jamaica and made an album called Goat's Head Soup,
which is another word for mannish water.
And its ingredients, should you wish to make it, are goat's head,
feet and intestines, served with bananas and spices.
It's supposed to be an aphrodisiac. It's supposed to man you up,
that's the point. Hence mannish soup.
There's also cow cod soup, made of bull's penis,
chilli peppers and bananas, cooked in white rum.
- Which sounds rather nice. - That is nice. - I like the sound of that.
- I'll pop to Lidl in the morning. - Yeah.
Anyway, that's mannish water for you.
Where are fathers often barely older than their sons?
Barely...
When I say barely older, they can be only a day older than their son.
- In the insect world. - No, I'm talking about humans.
- ALL: - Humans?!
- It sounds impossible. - Adoptions. - Adoptions.
And there is a country in which 98% of all adoptions...
- are of adults, not of children. In which country? - Japan.
And it begins with J. And it is Japan.
And in Japan, it is very traditional to adopt
an adult young man - aged between 25 and 30 is roughly the average.
- So you have to find one without parents, presumably. - No!
Oddly enough, you, as it were, adopt them from their own real parents.
- Because you are rich and successful. - It's called stealing. - It sort of is.
It's the transfer system.
It is basically an open market transfer system.
- It's like the Premier League. - And it is for the same reason.
It is business. If your own son is a bit of a clod,
and I'm afraid it is a male business this,
and you run a business, and you want it to stay a family business,
what you tend to do is adopt a young man who is very bright
and you'll probably marry him to your daughter.
There is a saying, "You can't choose your son,
"but you can choose your son-in-law."
You can adopt someone then marry them to your daughter?
I know it's weird. But it is the Japanese way.
- Wow. - That would take off in Norfolk.
LAUGHTER
So, for example, the current chairman of Suzuki,
one of the largest corporations in Japan,
is the fourth adopted son to have run the company.
So he is a Suzuki, that is to say his father was someone
who was adopted by someone who was adopted by someone who was adopted by a Suzuki.
And they're not blood related, but they have become the adopted child.
But there you are. Only 2% of adoptees in Japan are infants.
- Right. - Only two, the rest, 98%, are males. - All males? - All males.
And for that reason - to continue the line.
- That's ongoing? - It's ongoing to this day. Absolutely.
Now, here are two towns behind me. They both begin with J. Why are they blue?
- Oh! Now, I know this. - Yes?
- Well, I know one of them. - Go on, then.
I've got a Smurf collection, I've had it many years.
When I was younger, I used to collect Smurfs, it was my hobby.
I've got a Smurf village, I created when I was younger,
it's still there, reminds me of the bad times.
- And the good times. - Right.
Now, and if this is wrong, I'm going to look like a total twat.
- The thing is, you'd look like a twat even if you're right. - Yeah. - Carry on, yeah.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
No, because knowing this is so deeply sad. Yeah, carry on.
OK, so I love Smurfs and everything about Smurfs
- and Smurfette and everything else. - Yeah.
When they did the premiere of the Smurf film,
they painted a town somewhere -
I think it was Spain, near Marbella, or something like that -
blue, for the premiere of the film.
And then afterwards they said, "We'll paint it back,"
and the residents had had such a lot of tourism,
and they dubbed the mayor Papa Smurf, which he was delighted about!
But they had a referendum to see if they wanted to keep their town blue,
because they thought it was quite cool.
And, cos that's Smurf, because it was Smurf Town,
which sounds amazing, cos I love the Smurfs.
- You are 100% correct! - Come on!
APPLAUSE
The only thing...
The only thing that would add 20 points
- was if you knew the name. - BILL: 20 points? Oh!
Will you not destroy the set?
Yes, you've broken it.
- Just tell me the name of the town. - Juarez, was it Juarez? - No.
No, that's in Mexico. We're talking about Spain.
- Jojoba. - Jerez. - No, that's... - Jerez.
- That's... - Jomin? - Juan.
All right, it begins with "J". I'll give you that.
Is it Jipswich?
SANDI: Is it Jerusalem?
It's not Jerusalem.
Ji... Jiby.
- No, it's called Juzcar. - ALL: Oh!
The next thing I was going to say.
Juzcar, spelt J-U-Z-C-A-R, Juzcar, with an accent on the U.
Was the other town Jaipur?
- Yes! Well done. - A point!
No, no. No. Sorry. Whoa! I misheard you.
- SANDI: It's Jodhpur. - Jodhpur is the answer.
I still said it before Sandi, I still said Jodhpur before Sandi!
- You did, you said the wrong thing. - No, no! I said Jodhpur, I still said Jodhpur.
You're quite right, it's Jodhpur.
So we're going to go back to a picture of Jodhpur. Why is Jodhpur blue?
- SANDI: It's to do with the caste system. - Yes.
It's to do with indigo, indigo being the colour of the Brahmin.
The Brahmin, which is the highest caste.
It was to distinguish their houses and everybody thought it a good idea.
There is also a pink city. Can you name a pink city?
- Jaipur. - Yes!
APPLAUSE
There you go.
And there it is. There we are. It was built in pink stone
and it was painted pink for a very particular reason.
- I wonder if you can... - Prince Albert, wasn't it?
Yes, Prince Albert Edward, who later became Edward VII.
He was coming to visit and they thought, "Let's paint it pink."
In the 1870s, painted it pink in his honour. Anyway, there we go.
Jodhpur and Juzcar are both painted blue, one by tradition,
the other for a Smurfs film.
Now, what would you keep in a 14-tonne jar with no lid?
- Biscuits! - Yeah.
Biscuits. A lot of biscuits.
- A lot. - 14-tonne jar. - 14-tonne jar...
- I have difficulty imagining how big that would be. - Vast.
14 tonne is heavy, but it's only... It's only six or seven lorries.
Well, six lorries. Well, four lorries.
- It depends how big the lorry is. - Yes.
- You know... - Jam.
You get a two-tonne truck, so if you're talking about a 14 one...
- Jam. - It's not a jam jar, no. It's a jar. - BILL: Tadpoles.
They're known as a jar to archaeologists,
- if that's any use to you. - Ah, yes.
I did archaeology at university
and there's quite a lot of things we don't know what they're for.
- Yes. - And I think this is one of those.
- Might you be able to place it on the map? - I think it's in Laos.
You are damn well spot-on. I am so impressed with you lot today.
Although you've been occasionally just a little bit facetious,
you have also come up with some stonkingly correct answers.
What they now think, no-one knows what they were for,
Marco Polo described them.
And we now think they're for making goat's head soup.
- LAUGHTER - You're absolutely right.
They're on the plains of Laos and they are made of granite
and they are human made. No-one knows how they made them.
Granite is not an easy stone to work with.
You make a nice kitchen surface for it, for slicing, slicing...
Slicing.
- Writing. - Writing. - Buying things on eBay.
Anyway, there are 90 sites, each containing up to 400 of these jars.
And, as you rightly say, we don't really know what they're for.
The assumption is dead bodies were put in there, allowed to decompose,
then taken out and cremated
and it was something to do with the journey of the dead.
But you always have to allow for the soul of even very early people
and maybe they thought, "If I make a very big container, the gods will fill it for me with bounty."
- Absolutely. - We would always allow for the dream element.
Absolutely right.
There is often a functional fallacy. There is always an assumption
things are done for a specific practical reason, which isn't always true. The soul is...
It's like the cargo cults in Papau New Guinea who built whole runways.
The missionaries came and they had all this stuff.
And the indigenous people said, "What is it?" They said, "Cargo."
They said, "Where does it come from?" "Sydney," meaning Australia.
And they developed a God called Sydney and they made whole runways
in the jungle, waiting for Sydney to bring them cargo.
So you might find a runway and think, "What landed here?"
Nothing did, except your dashed dreams.
- Yeah. Beautifully put. - Perhaps that's the case with the jars.
I think that's beautifully put.
The most honest archaeologists say they don't know how they were made
or exactly what they were for. Your guess is as good as mine
and yours seems to me to be a very rational and realistic one.
- There also may be a corresponding set of stolen lids... - Yeah.
Somewhere!
Anyway, d'you know the capital of Alaska?
- SANDI: Yes, you just said it. - Exactly. Thank you.
Very good! Juneau is the capital of Alaska.
- J-U-N-E-A-U. - Ah, Juneau.
But there's something unique about it.
- It rains all the bloody time, I know that. - Well, it's not accessible by road.
You can only get there by air or water. There is no road to Juneau.
- Sarah Palin can get there by walking on the water. - Well, yes.
Can you tell me the biggest joke ever to come out of Alaska?
Sarah Palin, who can walk on...
Ohhh! Dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.
APPLAUSE
We're not forfeiting you that,
it was so obvious that we weren't even going to forfeit it.
Isn't she lovely?
- If I had forfeited, I would have refudiated. - We would have refudiated.
Anyway, the point is, there is actually a famous practical joke,
an April fool's joke that came out of Alaska.
It took a lot of preparation and was rather extraordinary.
Here's a photo that might give you a hint.
I mean, it's not going to be easy, but what's in the background there?
- This is a volcano-based practical joke. - Yes.
And it's one that I read about and it very much impressed me
because if you do a practical joke which is, you know,
clingfilm over the toilet, something simple...
But the person who did this practical joke...
LAUGHTER
It's a good one. It doesn't work for women necessarily,
cos we tend to notice when we sit down that there's something,
but for men, I tell you, it's a hoot.
There was a volcano, and a gentleman,
- and I can't remember his name, I apologise. - Don't you worry.
Decided to try and make it seem as if it was erupting, so took loads of tyres...
- You are class. - ..and set fire to it and then everyone came out of their houses and went,
"The volcano's erupting!"
- Yes. - Cos it was so good. - You're absolutely right.
He waited three years until there was a clear April 1st.
He took kerosene and smoke bombs and tyres,
and he dropped them down the crater and set fire to it.
But, in 50-foot letters, he did say, "April Fool"
and he warned the federal authority.
He called them up, but he forgot to call the coastguard, who did panic a bit.
But it was, fortunately, all taken in the right spirit.
- And his name was Porky Bickar. - Porky. - Porky?
Porky - that was his nickname.
- He was American, so he was called Porky. - Porky Bickar.
And that is, aside from Sarah Palin, the greatest joke ever to come out of Alaska.
It is a good one. It is a good one.
I have to say I am very impressed again with your knowledge.
And that's the end of tonight's questions.
Let's see how our journey has panned out.
Well, it's astonishing! Her first ever appearance, on plus 15,
a clear winner - Susan Calman.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
And only four inches behind on 11 -
Sandi Toksvig.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
And...
impressively, the digitally endowed, still in the black, plus four - Bill Bailey.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
I'm delighted.
Well, perhaps the best we can say is, bless him, he did try.
Minus eleven - Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
That's all from Sandi, Susan, Bill, Alan and me.
Thank you, good night and be wonderful to each other. Bye-bye.