Well, goooooood evening, good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening
and welcome to QI, which tonight is just a jumble of J things,
and joining me in the land where the Jumblies live are an owl, Jo Brand.
APPLAUSE
And we have to have a pussycat, John Sessions.
APPLAUSE
And a beautiful pea-green Dara O'Briain.
APPLAUSE
And...all at sea, with a mind like a sieve, Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE
So, let's hear your J buzzers, if we may. Jo goes:
# I'm still Jenny from the block. #
Yes, that was obviously some female artiste.
- ALAN: J-Lo. - J-Lo. - Yeah. - John goes:
# I got 99 problems But a bitch ain't one - hit me! #
I'd give you ten points if you knew who that was?
Uh...Usher.
- I think J would have helped you. - Jay-Z?
- It's too late now. But yes, Jay-Z is the answer. Jay-Z. - Right.
Or Jay-Zed, as we call him in England.
And Dara goes:
# It's not about the money, money, money
# We don't need your money, money, money... #
- And that was? - The lovely Jessie J. - Jessie J, absolutely. And Alan:
MAN: # J, we're like Jack and Jill
WOMAN: # K, we're so kissable
MAN: # L is the lovelight in your eyes. #
Aw! It's The Alphabet Song.
I think it was Perry Como. I may be imagining it.
It wasn't a J person, was it?
- No. - I think it might have been his brother Jerry Como.
Never mind. Those are your J buzzers and J is our jamboree today.
So, what do jockeys use their whips for?
- # Hit me! # - Oh, oh, oh...!
Do they have whips? Or are they not called...crops?
A riding crop is a whip, so that's not the problem.
Well, recently they have decided that they can only use the whip,
I believe, on the flat, eight times,
and in the final furlong,
if they use it more than five times,
they forfeit their portion of the win, if they do, in fact, win.
Wow, this is very impressive. For all I know, you're right.
LAUGHTER
I know that in Britain, if you use your whip more than eight times,
there is almost always going to be a steward's inquiry.
Only if you use it on the horse. If you're hitting yourself...
Obviously. I was taking that as read.
If you go, "Argh, argh!" They don't mind!
Is he being lowered on like the old kings used to be?
That is Frankie Dettori's signature leap from the saddle.
- He's wearing Arsenal colours... - He is? - ..cos he's an Arsenal fan.
- Is that the reason? - I made it up.
No, of course, it isn't the reason. He wears the colours of his owner.
There is, also, the very famous American jockey Robert Mapplethorpe
- who decided... - Arse jockey! - ..to put his whip UP his arse. - He did.
And photograph it. The way we all do, I think.
- And it caused rather a stir in American circles. - It did. - To say the least.
- It's a variation on the photocopier thing, isn't it? - Absolutely.
Wherein you put a photocopier up your arse?
- Oh, surely, we've all been there. - It was a helluva Christmas party!
No, I'm presuming it's some sort of encouragement to the horse to run?
You used a very important word - encouragement
because naturally the RSPCA and those who care for animals
are not particularly, frankly, pleased
by the sight of animals being hit for sport.
They don't find it acceptable.
- Quite a weapon, close up, isn't it? - It's a heck of a thing,
but there's been a study by the RSPCA at Sydney University.
They found that whipping does not have the effect of horsing a speed up.
- Er, speeding a horse up. - LAUGHTER
- APPLAUSE - These glasses...
I don't want to get all street on you there,
but when you horse your speed up, it does, say,
it's when you get your methamphetamines and mix heroin in with it.
And that will make you run!
What have you done with Stephen Fry?
OK. Let me start that again. They found that whipping does not have the effect of speeding a horse up.
The RSPCAA claims this settles the case against whipping.
The study has been criticised by racing authorities.
They say it's too small a cohort of testings,
only 48 horses in five races, etc.
According to jockeys, speed is not the main purpose of the whip.
The main uses are safety of both horse and jockey,
stopping the horse from veering, losing balance,
backing off from a jump
or prompting it to change the length of its stride.
They're never allowed to use it to coerce the horse.
The other is precisely the word you used - "encouragement -
which, obviously, the animal lobby says,
- "Come on, that's just a euphemism for coercion." - Yes.
"It would be delightful if you could run just a tiny bit faster now, this race is almost at an end."
I think we've all seen horses being enthusiastically "encouraged"
- in the last furlong of a race. - LAUGHTER
If you were in a race with somebody alongside you
- like at a parents' day, for school... - Egg and spoon.
- More the three-legged one where you have somebody with you. - Oh, yes.
If one of the people had a whip and felt that you were lagging
and other parents were beating you and then whipped you,
your motivation wouldn't be to run,
you'd think, "Stop whipping me, you prick!"
- You'd punch them in the face. - Yes.
And also the notion that "Ow! You whipped me on the bum, therefore, I will be propelled forward,"
as opposed to reacting, veering off, randomly finding out what is...
I was caned in prep school and I never won a single race. It was terrible.
There you are, they whipped you every day.
They whipped me every day.
Did they whip you during the races? That would have been an impressive prep school thing,
if they gave you a head start and then ran after you with the cane.
- It would be a five-legged race. - I'm not saying that on a...
When you say "a three-legged race," you're thinking of two people,
but what we're talking about here, Dara, is horses and people.
I wasn't saying that the last time I went to a school sports day, I brought a horse
in an effort to win the three-legged race, and nobody sussed it.
LAUGHTER I would love to see that.
Have you met my delightful wife, Juniper?
HE SNORTS
LAUGHTER
What happened to the old carrot dangled in front of the horse?
Ah, the carrot or the stick, you're absolutely right.
Well, inflicting pain is not part of the intended method.
The whip currently used in British horse racing
has an energy-absorbing design, which means it does not cause pain if used correctly, supposedly.
The fact is, some people,
and I have to say, I probably count myself amongst them,
think it would be a nice idea to have a sport in which
you didn't have to hit animals at all. Maybe I'm wrong.
However, what does a robot jockey do?
Ah yes, these robot jockeys ride camels, don't they?
You are good, and you've already got the points.
Yeah, yeah, the robot jockeys,
they're a form of racing in Dubai, in particular,
- and perhaps across the... - In the UAE, generally.
They have camel racing and camels at that speed, probably could not take a human weight on them,
they'd have to be quite small. So I am presuming that at some stage
they experimented with either little people or with children.
But it was reintroduced by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia
in the 1970s, and children were indeed taken from their parents
and forced to be the jockeys on these camels.
What do you mean, "taken from their parents"?
People would just turn up at a random house?
I'm afraid, as you probably know, much of the service industries
are performed by Sri Lankans and Indians.
The Gulf Arab people themselves don't do much of the basic work.
It was Indian children who were taken to be jockeys.
It was not a pleasant story, there's no way of dressing it up nicely.
How much control do they have over the camels, exactly?
Well, they've got reins and also GPS, so they know where they are.
Now, you may say, "Why put a face and a hat and costume on it?"
The fact is, the camels were spooked out when the robots just looked like machines.
The camels were much more relaxed at the idea that it was a human,
- because they've sort of grown used to the idea. - Right.
So these only weigh a few kilos, they're not that expensive.
About 500 each. They whip the camels by remote control,
because the managers are following in a truck,
so they do whip, I'm afraid.
They're far lighter than the child jockeys,
and I suppose it's less inhumane.
They were designed in Switzerland. Ha-ha.
LAUGHTER
Please may I tell you the only camel joke that I know?
- Please, please. - OK.
There's two guys in the army out in the desert,
and there's a new recruit, and there are no women around at all,
and the new recruit says, "What do we do for sex?"
And the old guy says, "I'm afraid it's the camels."
And so that evening, they're all let out towards the camels,
and the old bloke's running really fast
and the young guy says, "What are you doing? It's only a camel."
And he goes, "Yeah, but you don't want to get an ugly one, do you?"
LAUGHTER
So what are those camels we're looking at?
What sort of camels are they?
Hang on, I'm sorry, there is another camel joke.
LAUGHTER
Same starting point, taken from the first couple of minutes and said,
"Oh I'm afraid there are no women here, I'm afraid it's the camels."
So, late at night, the guy declares "I can't take it any more, I'm as horny as hell,"
and he goes out and he rides the camel.
He comes back in and he goes, "Well, that's the best we can do."
And the man says, "Well, actually, when I said 'We've got the camels',
"we normally ride them into town."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Very good.
Anybody else got any camel jokes?
- No. - Excellent. - They are dromedaries, aren't they?
Those are dromedaries, and how can you tell?
Because they have two humps.
No, because they have one hump.
Oh. Oh, I thought the robots were sitting between the humps.
It does look a bit like that. No.
Bactrian camels with two humps are incredibly rare,
- especially in the wild. That's a Bactrian on the left. - Oh, yes.
You find them in Mongolia and in China, and there are probably
not much more than 1,000 left in the wild.
They had them at the zoo when I was a kid
cos that's the sort I've been on.
That's what we think of as a proper camel, a two-humped camel.
In fact, it only had one hump, then I sat on it
- and it looked like... - LAUGHTER
Oh, nonsense!
So, there's another sport associated with camels in another country.
Are you familiar with it?
Smoking?
There is Camel smoking, that is unquestionably...
- I wouldn't say a sport, but it's an occupation. - It's sport to me!
It is a physical sport involving the camels.
Water polo?
No, it doesn't involve humans. It only involves the camels.
Chess?
I sometimes... I look at you and I wonder where these things grow,
where they come from, what's going on.
It'd just be nice to see, wouldn't it?
It would be fantastic to see camels playing chess.
"Checkmate."
"Thirsty? Me neither."
"Let's go again."
Um, we have to go to Turkey
and in Turkey, they have two males and a female
- and as often happens with mammals... - Three-legged races!
- It wouldn't be three-legged, would it? - No.
You've got two males and a female
and that tends to make the two males fight,
so you then take the female away
and you have camel wrestling. It's a Turkish sport.
It's a kind of wrestling they do.
- They kind of push each other over. - It does look enormously popular. Look at the crowds. - Yes!
- That's good numbers for camel wrestling. - It's incredibly popular.
This is given to me as if it's unusual,
but I suppose maybe it is, maybe it's just me.
When they're in the mood for sex,
they urinate, use their tails to swish urine onto their own back,
froth at the mouth, spit and dribble. Isn't that usual?
LAUGHTER
Also our hind feathers flare
and we stamp.
That's right. Apparently, it seems they deliberately waste water
by this urinating and frothing and dribbling
as a way of showing their superiority, because obviously,
water conservation is what they're all about as desert animals.
Anyway, why does Joe Camel like Nosmo King?
- # Hit me! # - Whoa!
Joe Camel was the mascot for Camel cigarettes.
Yes. There he is. Old Joe.
There's old Joe up there.
And Nosmo King was a British vaudeville act in the 1930s
and I think, obviously Nosmo King is "No Smoking".
That's right. He saw two doors.
Once said "nosmo", one said "king"
and when they closed in the theatre, it said "no smoking".
He wasn't tended to call himself Fi Reexit or something else that...
Emerge Ncyexit!
No, he wasn't any of those.
- It was in the 1920s, as you said, then the '30s... - Toi Let.
Roy Alcircle.
But you haven't actually answered my question,
- which is why would Joe Camel - like - Nosmo King?
- He'd like... - You'd think he'd dislike him.
Because Nosmo King used to be sponsored by Camel tobacco.
No. Joe Camel and cigarette manufacturers
would like something that said, "No Smoking".
It makes you think of smoking.
Yes! What psychiatrists have found
is that "No Smoking" signs make people want a cigarette.
It makes you feel rebellious.
Not just rebellious, it puts it into your head.
- It reminds me... - Putting signs up saying, "No Smoking"
- is something that makes people want to smoke. - Reminds me of the tube.
- It worked very well with that bloke. - Worked very well with him!
The fact is, anyway, the sign, "No Smoking" makes people want to smoke
so that's why Joe Camel would like Nosmo King.
That's a rather complex way of putting it.
- Now, which one of you can imitate an expectant jackrabbit? - # Hit me! #
- Yeah, wow! That's quick. - It's a kind of hare, a jackrabbit.
It is a hare. It's American for "hare", basically.
It's an American hare, yeah. But the female jackrabbit,
when she gives birth to her young,
makes no attempt to suckle them
and they are just left to... forage for their own.
So she's a bad mother.
- Daily Mail is going to go crazy with this. - I would imitate her like that, with a fag.
LAUGHTER
- I guess. - What you say may be true,
but there is something more extraordinarily true about the pregnancy of the female jackrabbit.
And this was something that was suggested by Aristotle.
I know how you love to have an Ancient Greek...
I'm distracted by that rabbit being fisted in the background.
- LAUGHTER - Absolutely.
I don't know who did our little silhouette.
It's not entirely successful.
It's a good effort and we thank them for it, but Aristotle suggested
that hares could get pregnant when they were already pregnant,
- which in most mammals... - LAUGHTER
Isn't that rather sweet?
I think you'll agree, is a bit peculiar.
Aristotle thought of it, and he was scoffed by scientists
until very, very recently,
it was discovered that he was absolutely right!
- It was discovered in Berlin. - Cats do this.
A male hare... Cats?
Cats do do this, yeah.
- A cat can have... - Impregnated by more than one tom.
Yeah, we have two cats and they have the same mother, but different fathers.
And humans even can.
There were twins born in 2010, in Arkansas, conceived two weeks apart.
They were actually conceived at different times.
So one egg was fertilised, then another, so they could have had different fathers.
Twins with different fathers - it's a weird idea.
All this is recently new knowledge, but Aristotle was spot on.
It's known as "superfecundation",
when two different ova are fertilised in the same cycle.
Aww!
- Or it's superconception... "Aw, the little fluffy bunnies!" - LAUGHTER
So, complete the phrase, "Pregnant mothers should eat..."
- JO: - Loads.
LAUGHTER
Erm... Burgers...
The equivalent of two slices of bread extra per day,
and no more is necessary.
That's probably about right and that's only in the third trimester.
The fact is, the idea that you should eat for two,
which you managed to avoid, is nonsense.
A pregnant woman should eat no more than she normally eats.
She might have changes in appetite.
Did you have any particular dietary desires when you were pregnant?
I gnawed my husband's leg occasionally.
And that was unusual?
LAUGHTER
- Not as far as our marriage was concerned. - That's what I mean.
So did you have any peculiar appetites that were
specifically related to pregnancy?
- No, I was very boring, I didn't, really. - No sort of coal?
They say that you only want to eat coal if you're lacking vitamins, don't they?
- Certainly, exactly. - So, no-one eats coal any more. - So you were obviously not lacking anything.
- My mother smoked my father's pipe. - Could she not get her own pipe(?)
LAUGHTER Your poor father.
- It was her pregnancy that made her want to do it? - Yeah. She just loved pipe tobacco.
- God, that's extraordinary. - Yeah.
There's no more beautiful image of motherhood than a pregnant woman smoking a pipe(!)
Just the essentials of nature(!)
A woman going...
Then tapping it out on the table, and then digging a little bit out.
I thought you were going to say, "Tapping it out on her belly."
When I got pregnant, my grandma said to me,
"Oh, eating for two, are we?"
And I went, "Bog off, I'm not cutting down."
LAUGHTER
Anyway, moving on...
- What have they done to the javelin to improve it? - # Hit me! #
- John, you've got to stop answering every question. - Sorry!
Let the others get in!
- I'm sorry to be a bore. - No, you're not being a bore. It's fine.
I like enthusiasm.
It's just like a little puppy shagging a sapling.
- ALAN'S BUZZER - Thank you.
- Alan. - Didn't they change the javelin because they were throwing it too far?
- Yes! That's the point. - Were they in danger of hitting
the long-distance runners on the other side of the stadium?
You don't want them to be able to throw it further than 100 metres
and what kept happening was that they just got better and better
and there was a particular technique called the Spanish technique
which involved spinning your body round
like a discus thrower or a hammer thrower
and Miguel de la Quadra Salcedo
threw a javelin 112 metres using this system,
so it was outlawed by the IAAF.
If you spear one of the judges and he staggers backwards...
LAUGHTER
..and is taken into an ambulance and driven to hospital,
the record's going to be about five miles!
I think you're right!
That was their problem. Their problem was simply safety,
especially with this Spanish style of spinning
because if it went out of control,
there was no net like with the hammer, you could spear anybody,
so they banned the spinning business, the turning round.
But then javelin makers used special paint and dimples to improve the aerodynamic nature,
- so again, they had to ban that. - Like with a golf ball?
- I was actually a javelin champion when I was at school. - Were you?
I was, but I slightly ruined my career
because on the last sports day,
I was in the toilets having a fag
and I was using Swan Vestas
and I blew it out and put it back in the box while it was still alight
- and it blew up in my hand. - Ouch.
And so I had to throw the javelin with my left hand
and it went about three foot.
- Oh, dear! - They should make them throw underarm. That would be good.
That would certainly make a difference. At the moment...
At the moment, all these things have been banned,
all these dimples, all the special paint
but they'll have to make the javelin worse again soon
because the world record now, with the current javelin,
is 98.48 metres. It's really close to the maximum.
Is there a standard javelin they all use? It's not like they arrive at the stadium...
They ought, presumably, to allow people,
force people to take one at random.
Everyone puts a javelin in and everyone takes a javelin out.
Like a billiard cue or something,
but I will give you points if you can tell me,
as far as the javelin is concerned,
almost exactly a third of all javelin medals awarded since 1908
have gone to competitors from three countries.
- JOHN: - Finland. - Keep going.
- Czechoslovakia. - Poland. - Bulgaria. The United Kingdom.
No, it's weird. You should have stayed where you were with Finland
- because the others, it was Norway and Sweden. - Oh, really?
Scandiwegia, is the answer.
Just, for some reason, they seem to be very good at throwing sticks.
There you are. Very good.
So, now,
which should you avoid going to bed with,
a jactitator or a jactitator?
The second one.
LAUGHTER
Why?
Erm...because...
it means, um...
someone that wiggles about a lot.
- Yes! - Oh, does it?
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The official name for it is Willis-Ekbom disease,
also known as "restlessness",
or particularly, "restless leg syndrome."
That's one meaning of "jactitation".
- The other... - Yes, the other is?
..is speaking unpleasantly of somebody?
No, nice that you're trying and don't be put off.
LAUGHTER
I still want to see that puppy shagging that sapling,
but it's a very specific...
I won't say "crime", exactly.
it's a malfeasance, possibly, it's a wrongdoing that people do.
- And that is to maintain that you're married to someone when you aren't. - That's right.
You are so angry, because...
Wow, you're angry.
If a man says, "Oh, yes, she's my wife, we're married,"
she goes, "No, we're not," you can go to court
and your remedy is a suit of jactitation of marriage,
in which you ask the court to declare you are not married to the person who is claiming that you are.
Is the "jactitation" the denying of the marriage,
or is it the maintaining you're still married when you're not?
A "jactitator" is one who claims to be married to you when they aren't.
So "Ding-dong," "Darling I'm home!" "You're not married to me."
LAUGHTER
- The bad guy is the "ding-dong," "Darling, I'm home!" in this situation? - Exactly. - Stop doing this!
LAUGHTER
So I could take you to court, because you never stop...
Saying that we are married. But we're married in comedy, Alan.
- We're married in comedy. - There you go again.
Comedy. Comedy and erotic love, those two, surely...
- Do you... - Hello!
Do you know what the opposite is? Cos my husband often says he's NOT married to me.
LAUGHTER
- What's that called? - Shame. - Embarrassment. - "Embarrassment"!
On the subject of twitchy legs,
why do we dance around
when we need a pee, why do we do that?
LAUGHTER
To try and keep it moving so it doesn't come out of the pipe?
No, the odd thing is, it is the worst thing to do.
If you really want not to pee, keep as still as possible.
Clench the end of your cock incredibly hard?
LAUGHTER
I've tried that, but it doesn't work.
I've found it best to get someone else to do that.
A full bladder creates a...
"Tie a knot in it". "ANOTHER one?!"
A full bladder creates a sense of urgency in the mind
and the conflict between the desire to take action and relieve the stress
and the fact that circumstances don't permit it
is translated into various rhythmic displacement behaviours.
Was it Enoch Powell who used to say,
"I always speak when I'm dying for a piss, because I do much more..."
It lends urgency.
Yes, and David Cameron thought he was going to have a crack at it,
- didn't he? - Oh, did he?
- Mm. - Oh, well, no wonder...
Wet himself.
- So, during Enoch Powell's famous Rivers of Blood speech... - "Rivers of piss" speech.
- Every time he said, "Rivers of..." he'd go... - HE GROANS
- "Aah!" - LAUGHTER
That poor fellow.
I do think those urinals should be done on an obvious demand,
because the guy at the end seems very relaxed about it, but, man,
the guy number three, really...
- Whoa! He's desperate. - ..needs to go very soon.
There's a perfectly good tree, just there.
LAUGHTER
It's probably a pop festival, so half of them
are actually wanting to go and ingest drugs rather than urinate.
That's the thing.
"M'lud, they're probably horsing the speed, m'lud."
LAUGHTER
"They're smacking themselves with skank!"
"I know all the words, oh yes." All right.
Who gets most use from Jacobson's organ?
# Money! #
Mrs Jacobson gets most use...
KLAXON SOUNDS
APPLAUSE # Hit me! #
All right. It's your turn now, John.
Jacobson's organ enables, particularly lions and deer,
to chemically detect the pheromones in creatures of the opposite sex.
- In lionesses, or... - Not just creatures of the opposite sex, but also prey and predators.
Prey and predators.
Yes. It's an organ. You see it in snakes,
lions, it's not just related to mammals,
but it's a patch of specialised skin on the roof of the mouth.
Many vertebrates have it, including humans. We have it.
Oh, yes, we do.
Unfortunately, we seem to have lost the use of it.
But snakes and lizards can tell
when an ant has been present a week earlier...
- just by using that. - Well, how useful's that?!
Well, it can tell them when it comes back again.
- "An ant was here a week ago"(!) - It might be.
- LAUGHTER - That's really improved my life(!)
And they think, "Aw, I'd love an ant now!"
"No, it was last week."
But in the case of horses, giraffes, camels, zebras, big animals...
when they do it, there's an expression you've probably seen them pull,
where they almost turn their face inside out and stop breathing.
That's in order to get the chemicals onto their Jacob...
"An ant! There's been an ant!
"There's been an ant in this stable, last Tuesday!"
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
In their case, it's less likely to be an ant
than there was female or a male
- or a predator or a prey. - Makes them look gorgeous(!)
It's a funny old look, isn't it?
The one in the middle has had its hair styled by someone from Girls Aloud!
- LAUGHTER - I think they're rather fun.
He's had the GHDs on that!
A rather fetching Emma Bunton look, I thought.
- Rather touching little bangs. - LAUGHTER
So, what could be as good as spending eight hours
- sitting on the lavatory? - Oh, very little.
What could be as good as sitting for eight hours on the lavatory?
With the seat up or down?
Sitting with the seat down, I think, probably.
In terms of evacuating yourself?
No, you're not actually pooing for eight hours.
Sitting on the lavatory for eight hours, you're expanding calories.
- Are you? - Just by sitting on the loo.
This is not recommended in any of the books.
- With this, we are all losing weight now. - We're burning calories.
Plus of course, we're using our brains,
- or some of us are using our brains. - LAUGHTER
Who did you mean by that?
The fact is, eight hours of sitting on the lavatory
uses the same calories as one hour of jogging.
- JOHN: - Good God. - JO: - No! - Yes!
Right, I'm off.
It doesn't have to be a lavatory. Pretend you're on the lavatory,
unless you want to go for a jog.
Unless you really are pushing, you're really heaving...
If you are, as they used to say, straining at stool. Yes.
Now, that takes some clenching.
Unclench, clench, unclench. That'll be good for you.
But eight hours, that's too much.
You'll have a sphincter that could grab onto a pool cue
and I don't know what you could do with a sphincter that could do that.
Don't go any further. You've gone far enough.
- Can I go further? - Please do.
Well, a friend of mine used to work
as a nursing assistant in a home for elderly people
and there was one very old guy, I think he was about 95,
- and he was really constipated. - Poor soul.
So they gave him a massive dose of laxatives
and he was kind of left on the loo to see what would happen,
and this friend of mine swears this is true,
and he said that when he came back,
this bloke was lying on the floor
and the reason he'd fallen off the toilet
was cos he had done such a big poo, it had levered him off.
Oh, my God!
It's a charming story and I love it, and...
You not getting any cardiovascular work, are you, sitting on the loo?
- It's not aerobically efficient, no. - Plenty more where that came from.
There was a man who had a light bulb screwed up his arse
and this was mentioned to Alan Bennett
and Alan Bennett said, "What wattage?"
Where did modern jogging as a mass movement begin?
Jim Fixx in the 1960s, was it?
No, you're right, he was the first American to make it popular
- but there was actually... - ALAN'S BUZZER
- Yes? - Forrest Gump. - No!
- That is Jim Fixx. - (ALABAMA ACCENT) "Run, Forrest, run!"
That is Jim Fixx, who was the man who popularised jogging in America
but who died of a heart attack while jogging.
That fixed it for Jim!
It did. The man who actually gets the credit for starting it
is a man called Arthur Lydiard, a New Zealander in the early '60s.
The police would see people running in tracksuits
and they would stop them
and it was just an odd sight. It had never been seen before.
- Now we take it for granted. - Suspicious activity. - Especially in New Zealand,
people jogging all over the place, very outdoorsy place,
but then, yes, they were constantly being arrested.
The father of utilitarianism -
who would you describe as the father of utilitarianism?
- Jeremy Bentham? - Jeremy Bentham.
- He's stuffed. - He is. - London University. - They've taken him out. - The University College, yes.
- They removed him, didn't they? - He's in a box.
Now you have to make an appointment to see him.
- Yes, because people kept stealing him. - They did!
I didn't know. I did a debate as a student in London University
and I was walking around the corridors,
trying to get the thing ready in my head, and I just walked in...
I saw this box in the middle of a corridor.
It's not like there's a big sign...
- No, and he's dressed. - ..going, "Body in a box, body in a box!"
You just see this little cupboard
and you look in and there's, like...
a dead man looking at you.
One of the most brilliant men of his age, of course.
Jeremy Bentham and James Mill used their utilitarian hypotheses...
- On John Stuart Mill. - ..on John Stuart.
- James Mill was John Stuart Mill's father. - I see.
And he and Bentham sort of bombarded poor John Stuart Mill as a child
with facts, so by the age of four,
he could speak Greek and Latin
and in his teens, he had an appalling breakdown
as a result of this forced knowledge feeding,
and the only thing that brought him back to sanity
was reading the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge, apparently.
- That's so like my own life. - Yes! - LAUGHTER
I thought it was only me.
I just have to do a story that's worse than the poo story.
- Go on, then. - Well, it's to do with pranks at medical school.
- Oh, lovely. - My flatmate,
they had a girl in their group at medical school who was very annoying
so they decided to play a trick on her, so basically,
they got a hand from the lab
- and put it on her pillow... - Oh, God.
..in their student digs, and then they all hid in the kitchen
and she came in from a night out, went into her room
and they expected that she'd open the door and go, "Wah!" like that,
and then they would all go in there and point and laugh
and she went in there
and for ages, there was just complete silence
and they thought, "Oh, dear, God, what's going on?"
Please, God, no, not what I think it is.
LAUGHTER
I hope you're not thinking what I'm thinking, Alan.
Please, let's not...
- Anyway... - Did she ball it into a fist? - No, no! Don't!
And then couldn't get it out!
We're all thinking... It must be the wrong thing.
No, so they went into the room and she was sitting on the bed eating it.
- Eating it?! - No!
Oh, that's even worse!
- I know. - Oh!
I'm sorry to have to tell you, but that's absolutely true.
Why was she eating it?
- She was hungry! - Because...yeah.
Why? What? "She was hungry?"
That's like, I'm hungry right now.
I'm not eating your hand!
Oh, Lord. Well, yeah. OK, how did we get there? Oh, yes.
We were talking about jogging, weren't we?
Then we were talking about the stuffing of Jeremy Bentham.
Anyway, he invented a kind of trotting jog
that he called ante-prandial circumgyration...
- Oh, for fuck's sake. - ..which was his way...
How annoying of him to be intelligent.
- Yes, very annoying. - If only everybody were really stupid.
It's not annoying of him to be intelligent.
- It's quite annoying of us to be a bit thick. - Ah, now,
don't be. Celebrate the glory of Jeremy Bentham. He was one of our greatest men.
However, jogging is apparently very good for the memory. It does seem
that a few days of running can lead to the growth
of hundreds of thousands of new brain cells
in the memory-forming part of the brain.
I'm getting off the toilet and going back to jogging.
Yes, but you can also reproduce that by lying on a mechanised table
that shakes the body several times a second
- and that will also increase your memory. - What are those things?
Those things you stand on that vibrate really quickly.
- Oh, those plates. - Yes, those are fun. - Little plates. - Th-th-th-th.
I think you sounded like B-Bruce Forsyth, then.
LAUGHTER
Yes, it's a Forsythificator.
- Well, let's face it... - Very nice to see you!
An evening here without Bruce Forsyth or Ken Dodd...
- Oh, you've got a good Ken Dodd story, haven't you? - Oh, gosh.
Tell me your Ken Dodd story.
Um, a broadcaster of some description
went to interview a politician, British politician,
and he saw this wonderful picture, as he perceived, of Ken Dodd
on the wall, and the politician came in,
and the guy said, "Oh, that's wonderful, Ken Dodd,
"I mean, he's just one of the greatest, greatest comedians
"this country has ever produced,"
and the man said, "Do you mind? That's my wife."
LAUGHTER
- I want to know who the politician is! - I want to know, too.
Whose wife looks like Ken Dodd!
It's true.
"My wife, or Doddy, as I call her."
"What a fine day, what a fine day to marry a politician!"
Then in came the children. # "We are the Diddymen..." #
The little Diddymen!
Oh, my God.
Anyway, eight hours on the loo
burns as many calories as an hour's jogging.
So, what does a cockroach find absolutely disgusting?
Jeremy Kyle. LAUGHTER
- Yes! - Yes? - Is the right answer!
Because Jeremy Kyle - almost, but he does count - is a human being, right?
We don't like cockroaches and cockroaches don't like us.
If they see us, they not only run away, as soon as possible,
they wash themselves after they've been touched by us.
They find us revolting.
I used to live in a flat when I was a student nurse
and it was absolutely inundated with cockroaches.
And one night, I came home from the pub and I'd left the telly on,
and there were two cockroaches sitting on the settee, watching telly.
Wow.
They were looking at the telly kind of going, "Werr..."
Was it a documentary about insects?
It was Jeremy Kyle.
LAUGHTER
- So they like Jeremy Kyle? - No, there were people
- in whatever they were watching. - They really don't like people.
But also, as well, I was once painting the ceiling
in the flat and a cockroach actually fell in my mouth.
ALL: Oh!
Cockroaches are everywhere, aren't they?
In hospitals, particularly, anywhere where there's sort of...
I mean, it's a huge...
I once went into a hospital kitchen at night
and turned the light on and for a split second,
the entire floor was brown. And then it was white.
It's just astonishing. And then they disappear.
And they don't do that much damage, and yet they do repulse us.
And the point is, we repulse them, hence they disappeared so quickly.
But there is something that they must hate even more,
and this is a real test for anybody who's sung,
"All things bright and beautiful, the good Lord made them all,"
because He also made some things not very bright and beautiful,
and one of the least bright and beautiful things imaginable,
which is a parasitic wasp that has the most extraordinary life cycle.
They're called jewel wasps,
because they're faintly jewel-coloured.
They go up to the cockroach.
They then impart a sting into its brain
which turns it into a sort of zombie.
It doesn't kill it.
But it kind of makes it... "Errh."
And they then saw off one of its antennae,
and uses the other one as a lead... literally, and pulls it to its nest.
There it's leading it, it's now pulling it.
- As you see, it's much smaller than the cockroach. - Good God!
This poor cockroach, I'm afraid, will have a pretty miserable time.
He then gets packed into the nest...
and then he lays eggs inside.
And the baby wasp is born in,
and eats the cockroach alive
from the inside, in a very special order, to keep the cockroach alive.
Because cockroach meat goes off very quickly and it's very warm.
And that is the life cycle of the jewel wasp.
Now, if you ask me that if there's a benign, divine God
who looks down on creation and loves it all, you just ask him
how the hell he came up with something so cruel,
so unpleasant, so vile.
Only evolution could cause that kind of horrible life cycle
for the cockroach.
I mean, it's a pretty grim business. So, there you go.
I thought I'd leave you with that charming thought(!)
- If only you could do that with Piers Morgan. - Yes, oh!
APPLAUSE
STEPHEN LAUGHS
- A very pleasing thought. - Very good.
Here's a simple question. Why are we all such arseholes?
LAUGHTER
Well, I'm contractually obliged. LAUGHTER
Well, let me say that there are two types of living creature.
There are protostomes and deuterostomes.
"Stoma" is the Greek for "mouth".
If you're a protostome, when you are just developing as an egg,
and dividing and turning into what will become a lovely little person,
protostomes start at the mouth and then grow outwards.
But humans... we start as an arsehole.
We are deuterostomes, because we're "second mouths".
We start as a bottom and then work outwards.
So we begin as arseholes. We all begin as little botties.
It's a rather nice thing to know, it puts us all on an equal footing.
Next time you look at George Osborne
saying something grand about the economy,
say, "You started life, and continued life, as an arsehole."
- LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE - So, there you are.
Now, this is very exciting,
because we have a very special finale tonight.
Tonight, entirely alone, without the aid of a safety net,
I am going to do something that has never been done by any human being
since the beginning of time.
AUDIENCE: Woo!
- Yes! - Rash claim.
And all I need is...this.
"A simple pack o' cards!" No.
All I need is, indeed,
a simple pack of cards.
What I'm going to do is shuffle them. I'll shuffle this pack.
There are different ways of shuffling, as you know,
there's the overhand shuffle...
- Shut up! - ..like that.
There is your standard riffle,
which just...riffle
- and push the cards together. - ALAN APPLAUDS
Everyone can do that... Wait, wait! I haven't come to it yet.
And then there's the weave, which is rather more pleasing.
Some people can do a weave that's so accurate,
they actually go A-B-B, A-B, A-B, A-B, like that.
And there, that gives you a nice little fan, like so.
It's a beautiful thing.
And now I have produced a pack of cards...
and that pack of cards, ladies and gentlemen, believe it or not,
has never before, in the history of our planet, been in that order.
It's never been in that order before.
How can you possibly know that?
How can we know that? It's a simple mathematical fact.
The order of cards is a gigantic number.
It's a number which is known by mathematicians as "shriek".
You write it as "52!" You'll know this.
52 factorial.
It's 52 factorial, which is 52 times 51, times 50, times 49, times 48...
These are all the possibilities in which a pack of cards can be.
Just 52 of them. And that number is big. It's this big.
Look how big this number is.
That number is so big that, were you to imagine
that if every star in our galaxy had a trillion planets,
each with a trillion people living on them,
and each of these people had a trillion pack of cards,
and somehow they managed to shuffle them all 1,000 times a second,
and they'd been doing that since The Big Bang,
they would only just now be starting to repeat shuffles.
So, I can say,
with all the mathematical certainty that is possible,
that this pack of cards has never been in this order before.
It's an absolute world first!
Wow, very good.
APPLAUSE
I know that seems amazing,
but that number tells it all. It is astonishing.
And I have done something, as I say,
that has never been done by any human being before.
I've produced this pack of cards in this order.
And for that I'm going to award myself some points, so there.
Anyway, that comes to the scores, I think.
We'll go in reverse order from...
Well, from last to first.
It's actually marvellous. We don't have a single minus number.
We don't even have a zero.
Everybody's on a plus!
We have, equal,
Dara, Jo and Alan with one point.
APPLAUSE
In a clear second place, with 16, is John Sessions!
APPLAUSE
But the clear winner, with 52 shriek,
52 times 51, that number you saw, is me!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Well, that's all from John, Dara, Jo, Alan and me.
Thank you, be utterly lovely unto each other, and goodnight.
APPLAUSE
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd