Gooooood evening! Good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
good evening and welcome to QI,
where tonight is a khaotic klutter of K-words.
Let's klock the kontestants.
The kind-hearted Sara Pascoe.
The kallipygian Jack Whitehall.
The k-nowledgeable David Mitchell.
And k-nock me down with a kangaroo, it's Alan Davies.
And this week's call signs are all K creatures. Sara goes...
Do you know what that is?
- Is it a bird? - Yes.
OK. It's a bird.
Famous movie, kind of British, wonderful.
The man who was in love with a kestrel.
- Shorten kestrel to the... - Kes.
- Kes, yeah. - Oh, that was my question!
Very good. And Jack goes...
- You probably know that. - Ke...
That is Kevin Bacon getting into really hot water.
I'd know that sound anywhere.
- He likes it lukewarm. - He does.
- Kookaburra. - Is the right answer.
It's a kookaburra. David goes...
Is that a Klingon spacecraft?
- Killer bee. - Killer bee!
- Killer bee? - Exactly, there you go.
And Alan goes...
That's a genuine animal recording.
- Kangaroo? - No.
- Koala? - Yes!
Yes, come on!
It's a koala. Who'd have thought a koala sounded like that?
Anyway, there we go.
Just before we start, I've got a bit of very good news for you, David,
cos your old nemesis, Colin, the QI scorer,
has been replaced by a new scorer, called Murray,
who happens to be a huge fan of yours,
so, I think that bodes well for this evening.
- Well, I'm very glad to hear it, yes. - Excellent, yeah.
You've told me too late to bribe him.
- What's happened to Colin, though? - He's been promoted, actually.
He's probably counting votes in the House of Lords or something similar.
We're one step away from the House of Lords.
Yes, we are, exactly.
I think this programme would be an excellent house of reform.
It would, wouldn't it?
You know, just let all the legislation come before us,
we'll fiddle with it. Hopefully, you know, gag it up a bit.
- Yeah. - Send it on to the Queen.
Exactly.
"My government... Will find six penises on this particular insect."
That's what it tends to be about on QI.
Anyway, let's kick off. What is this?
It's a noise, listen out carefully.
And beginning with K.
- Yeah? - A klaxon.
In a strange sort of way, pop just ate itself, didn't it?
A klaxon gave a klaxon.
We call it the klaxon, it's not actually a klaxon.
Is that a brand name?
- Like with a Tannoy or a Hoover? - Brilliant.
- You're absolutely right. - Oh, OK.
- Just like Tannoy or Hoover. - So what is it, an alarm?
It's basically a siren, a noise, an alarm noise, exactly.
A Klaxon has a very specific sound, which belongs to a company
called Lovell-McConnell Manufacturing.
They were first fitted to cars.
And they were the first electric thing ever to be attached
- to an automobile, the Klaxon. - So what is...?
So they needed an alarm before a light?
The sound we heard was just, you'd just call it some general word,
but technically it's not a Klaxon. Now, automobiles, America.
The land of the free, the land of the automobile,
as you can imagine in places like Pennsylvania
they must have welcomed them when they arrived, yes?
- No. - No.
Is the right answer.
Alan, you're really getting the hang of this.
- I've played this before. - Yes.
- You get to intuit. - You would be astounded
by the Farmers' Anti Automobile Association of Pennsylvania,
with its list of impractical requirements for motorists.
"Automobiles travelling on country roads at night
must send up a rocket every mile."
"And then wait ten minutes for the road to clear."
"The driver may then proceed with caution, blowing his horn
and shooting off Roman candles."
"If the driver of an automobile sees a team of horses approaching,
he is to stop, pull to one side of the road..."
- And kill himself. - Almost.
"...cover his machine with a blanket or dust cover,
which is painted or coloured to blend into the scenery."
"In case a horse is unwilling to pass an automobile on the road,
the driver of the car must take the machine apart
as rapidly as possible and conceal the parts in the bushes."
They really didn't want motorcars in Pennsylvania.
Honking the horn, is that a sensible, safe thing to do,
does it avoid accidents?
No, it'll frighten the horses.
Well, obviously, let's assume we're talking about now,
- when there aren't any, or very few. - Wouldn't it raise aggression?
Hearing a loud noise makes you probably release adrenaline,
and then your instincts would be flawed, I would have thought.
- I think you're absolutely right... - Have you ever driven in Italy?
Oh, yeah.
I've been on tour in Italy and the word "go" is "die" in Italy.
- Avante. - "Die, die, die!"
You're like, "Fuuuck!"
"We're all 19 and I'm not a driver."
No, but you're absolutely right, there is no evidence
that using the horn contributes to safety.
There's something interesting with police sirens, isn't there?
Because they... It's two different notes, and the reason is...
If you hear one note for a long time,
you can't tell where it's coming from.
That's exactly right, you genuinely can't tell.
You say, "Is that in front of me, or is it behind me?"
You just don't know. In America, they have a very good rule
when you hear a siren on the road.
You just simply stop driving.
- Yeah. - And go and have a meal.
But it somehow works out incredibly well
and the emergency vehicle weaves through.
- But they have wider roads. - They have much wider roads.
But it does work fantastically and everybody does it.
I usually try and see which of the emergency services it is
and then decide.
"Oh, it's only an ambulance, they don't count."
Or, "It's only a fireman."
"What is that, then?
- "Fire engine. Oh..." - If it's the police,
there's something, sort of, vaguely right wing about it.
I don't know.
So where were we? Yes. Horn sounding does not, it seems,
contribute to the safety of drivers, at all.
In Britain, we're actually...
We have almost zero tolerance of hooting your horn.
But even more intolerant were the Nazis.
And in 1936, they started putting...
They're not known for their intolerance!
No, I know, it's quite surprising.
But we thought we knew...
"This hooting has become intolerable."
"A new camp, I think."
We thought we knew everything they were intolerant of,
but it turns out even hooting your horn,
they would actually punish the driver by putting yellow dots on their car.
It was like a sign, like, "He is a hooter, he sounds his horn."
and people would turn their back.
I've completely changed my opinion of the Nazis.
I thought they were a pretty reasonable bunch of guys,
but this yellow dot business!
It is just... They're shocking, aren't they? Anyway, there you go.
So the QI klaxon isn't a Klaxon, at all.
On the other hand, what is this stuff here?
Nice and loud, isn't it?
Is it Velcro?
According to the website of Velcro Industries BV,
there's no such thing as velcro.
"Velcro is the name of our companies
and the registered trademark for our products."
"It is not the generic name of that product that fastens shoes, pockets
and hundreds of other things."
"That product should be referred to hook-and-loop fastener."
"This matters," they say, "because many terms that we use frequently
in our everyday language were once trademarks,
like escalator, thermos, cellophane and nylon."
Notice they don't mention heroin, which was also a trademark once.
"All these terms lost their distinction as trademarks
because their owners allowed them to be MISUSED by the public."
"So, now you know. You can't buy a piece of velcro,
but you can purchase all of the Velcro-BRAND
hook-and-loop fasteners you need."
THIS is velcro!
"Hook-and-loop fastener"! Even the inventor of it called it velcro!
Do you know why it's called velcro?
It was a Swiss guy and he noticed the way burs caught to his socks
and he kept having to pull them off.
Bird?
He noticed there was a hook action on a bur. Little green...
- I thought you said birds. - No, burs.
I thought he was kicking in the air.
Burrrrrr.
Little burrrrs. Little green, round things, with hooks on them.
They stick on your socks and other bits like that.
He noticed that effect and he reproduced it.
And he used the words for velvet
and hook, which are velours - vel - and crochet - cro.
George de Mestral, his name was.
And he took it from nature, as so many good ideas come from.
Another similar, kind of, copyright issue with the well-known musical,
often performed in schools, by Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice,
one of their very first works, which is...?
Technicolour Yawn.
Technicolour, exactly.
Have you noticed the way it's always spelled
and what follows the word Technicolor?
Er, no?
Again, it's a trade name. They have to spell it like that,
the American way, in order to use the word Technicolor.
They have to show it's a registered trademark.
See, God really missed a trick, not doing more of that in the Bible.
He came up with the idea originally. They just added some songs.
Eve took the Apple™ - registered trademark...
Not that it was an apple, of course, in the Garden of Eden.
How DO you register a word? I mean, what if I registered "the"?
No, it's quite important it doesn't exist,
which is why you get things like Nu-Kleen, spelt N-U-K-L-E-N-E,
so that you can register that spelling of it.
So Apple could...
Apple did have a big fight on their hands
with another company called Apple,
the famous Beatles one, which took years and years to resolve.
But the original inventor of the apple...
No, the fruit was nature.
Perhaps nature, perhaps God or gods, has never sued.
It's only called apple in the English language.
Right. They don't call the computers Pommes in France?
Oh, the computers! The computer... God, this is confusing.
You were talking about the inventor of the fruit just then
and now you've suddenly sidestepped,
with the blithe disregard of a bloody pansy...
- That's not... - I've never thought that flower
is particularly disregarding of me, or blithe.
I think they look like they're frowning.
I know what you mean. Like snapdragons.
- I'm so lost on this. - The pansy, the flower.
I just don't know what they look like.
We have a generation that don't know what pansies look like?
The flowers?
I know they're flowers! I got that bit.
How would you not know...?
Cos we're too busy texting and listening to JLS and going out.
- Do you know what a WKD is? - Cry, my beloved country!
Oh, hell's teeth and a bucket of blood. This is...
Don't worry, we'll be sorted when the Jägerbomb round comes along.
I know what a Jägerbomb is.
My dad genuinely referred to it as a "Jaguar bomb", the other day.
He uses emoticons in text, as well, my dad. He's 74 years old
and he used the little faces that teenage girls use...
Not that I text teenage girls.
- Your sister uses them. - He sent me a message
and it was the most harrowing thing I've ever read,
but it shouldn't have been. It went, "Dear Jack, Are you coming over
for Sunday lunch? Your sister's going to be there."
;)
That's wrong. Deeply wrong.
- How did that happen? - "Family roast."
Oh, lordy, lordy, lord.
Anyway, according to Velcro, there's no such thing as velcro.
Except for this, which is velcro.
Um... Now everyone knows what knees, knuckles and kidneys are,
but what's the point of these less familiar K-parts of the body?
Kiesselbach's plexus.
The valves of Kerckring.
The end-bulbs of Krause.
The pores of Kohn.
That is the best nickname for someone's balls ever.
"Behold the End-Bulbs of Krause!"
- "Kneel before the End-Bulbs of Krause." - Kneel before them!
- Are these not all Star Trek movies? - No. It does!
Star Trek 19 - The Valves of Kerckring. Kiesselbach's Plexus.
They are magnificent names. They are all parts of the human anatomy.
The valves of Kerckring are actually folds. Would that help you at all?
Where do we have lots and lots of folds?
- Intestines? - Yes.
- Well done. Get in there! - Yes!
You got in there with our smaller gut. There it is, the valves of Kerckring.
This is like the QI version of that game, Operation.
- Yes. Bzzzz! - So what had Kerckring done
that someone named disgusting, shitty bits of the body after him?
He was a 17th-century Dutch anatomist, who was a friend
and co-evil of the philosopher Spinoza.
And, as you know from those wonderful Rembrandt paintings,
anatomy was a big subject in Holland, they were fascinated and curious.
Some fantastic discoveries being made
and one of them was this lower intestine,
which is 22 feet long and a few inches wide.
But if unfolded, it would cover a tennis court.
- Just yours. - But surely that's...
A tennis court! And mine. Well, two tennis courts.
The whole of the tennis court, or just the lines?
No, the whole of the tennis court. Including for doubles play.
It's pretty astonishing, isn't it?
What's interesting about the intestines,
we used to be herbivores, which is why we have so much intestine.
Because when you only eat plants,
you have to take a really long time digesting them,
to get everything out of them. Now we're carnivores,
and this is why we have digestive problems, with dairy and stuff.
But giant pandas, who are carnivores, they have very...
- Are they? - They were carnivores.
Were they?
We're one of only three species that have changed over, one to the other.
It's us, pandas and a squirrel.
Squirrels used to be carnivore?
- A kind of squirrel that I can't remember. - Oh, right.
Giant pandas have such a problem cos they have a short intestine,
without these flaps, so they only eat bamboo,
which goes straight through them,
meaning they have to eat it all day long.
I know, It's so boring!
- That's why they never have sex. - Yeah, exactly.
As we all know, you cannot have sex on indigestion. It's impossible.
You definitely get points for that.
What happened that the pandas gave up on meat?
Evolution and their circumstances, their environs.
It's not working for them, evolution.
You're going to get logically cross with them now!
I mean, it seems...
- They took a wrong step. -...idiotic.
They can't... There's like 25 minutes a year they can have sex
and it will work - if they can be bothered, which they never can.
- They look ridiculous. - Oh, what?!
Let's not bring looks into this.
I'm not saying they're not sweet, but they're not dignified, are they?
Oh, but that's what makes them so lovely.
You're not going, "Ah, the wise panda..."
Never mind what the panda thinks, the panda's an idiot.
Maybe they used to...
If you want to make Bungle in Rainbow seem high-status,
bring on a panda.
I'm with David on this. If you're in danger, you eat what you get.
If a rhino turned round and was like,
"Sorry, no carbs before Marbs," then it deserves to die.
Young person reference.
I think they probably used to eat things that don't exist any more.
Oh, like dinosaurs.
- Little dinosaurs. - Yeah. Lovely little crunchy ones.
Who really liked pandas.
They used to go up and go, "Ah, look, really cu... Oh!"
THAT would be evolution -
you evolved to look cute to something you want to eat.
Yes. Anyway, back to parts of the body,
those are the valves of Kerckring.
What about these, then, the pores of Kohn?
The bell ends of...
No, we're going to come to the bell ends, Alan.
Wait for the bell ends. They will come, but the pores of Kohn.
I don't know what's going to come out.
I never know what's going to issue from me.
It's another ring tone, I can't wait.
- That is Twitter, in a nutshell. - I'm so sorry.
The pores of Kohn are incredibly important. We need them deeply.
But they're not pores...
They are holes in the surface of the skin.
Not in the skin, those are where we have, obviously, millions of pores.
- They're an internal pore. - They're internal pores.
- Is it on bones? - No, not in bones.
They're in order to equalise pressure.
In the lungs.
As a backup system, in the lungs. Exactly right.
Named after a German pathologist who was expelled by the Nazis in 1933,
but there they are.
Did he beep his horn?
"I've found some pores in the lungs!"
I wish it were, for such a nice, good reason.
"Out, get out!"
There you go.
And amazingly, they form an emergency backup system,
along with the canals of Lambert and the fenestrations of Boren.
I thought you were going to say Butler, that would have been perfect.
Fenestration... Defenestration is chucking someone out of a window.
Fenestration is presumably chucking someone in.
It's just a window shaping... A window making thing.
The defenestration of Prague, wasn't it, was a historical event?
I don't quite know what happened there, but...
- People got thrown out of windows. - Out of windows, yes.
The whole city wasn't thrown out of a window.
- In Prague. - Yes.
The defenestration of Amsterdam was a historical event
that happened on a stag do that I attended.
I'm sure it did.
These prostitutes do not like getting touched.
Oh, stop.
- Not me! - Oh, right, phew!
- You mean the window ones? - Yes.
Sorry, I've got you. For a minute, I was really disturbed.
- I'm not there. - No, no, of course not.
By the way, if I was, that's how I'd do it.
You'd never be out of work, I promise you.
The end-bulbs...
We're coming to the end-bulbs.
The end-bulbs of Krause. Now, what could they be?
The helmet.
We have them on the genitalia, in mulberry-like clusters,
- as a matter of fact. - Mulberry-like clusters?
- We have a lot of them. - The little funny bits on the...
Pimple bits on the... On the.. Right... That are all...
Don't do that!
They're those bits, there.
Those middle bits.
- Those middle bits there and there. - Here.
You know when you take it out to go to the loo, right?
And then you get the winch down.
I have to take a stepladder to go to the loo.
Behave! No, they're smaller than that,
but they are incredibly sensitive to a particular condition.
- A lady. - To what, ladies?
- To a particular lady. - A particular lady. No.
We also have them all over the skin,
but they are very concentrated on the genitalia, for a particular reason,
particularly the male genitalia are sensitive to the... Your swinging...
- Don't do that! - What did he do?
Are you having a look?
- Is that cheating? - Yes!
You have a special isolated camera above you,
- just thought I'd warn you. - Oh, really?
- Well, I do. Anyway. - Sorry, Colin.
But, no, as you know, the survival of spermatozoa
is very dependent on a very narrow range of what?
- Temperature. - Temperature, exactly.
- That's why we've got balls. - Yeah.
Cos they have to be kept separate from the...
Precisely.
It's like hanging milk outside a student room...
- Yes. -...to keep it cold.
So, if it's very, very warm, they sort of tend to droop down,
and sort of swing a bit and get the air round them.
If it's very cold, they shrink up and...
- They tend to head home. - Yeah, exactly.
And snuggle up, to the blood supply.
Or if you're watching Loose Women.
Maybe. Yes. I should imagine that would...
- In a cold room. - Yes, in a cold room.
So, yes, these end-bulbs of Krause
are tiny little bits all over the skin,
not just the genitalia, they're not as big as...
- Whose willy's that? - No, no, they're not just...
To make it clear, they're all over the body.
- They're goose pimples. - He needs to see a doctor.
They're not the goose pimples. They're tiny and sense cold.
- Could you see an end-bulb of Krause? - I don't think so.
- They're too small to see. - Yeah.
But they're there working out if it's cold.
Yes.
- If it's hot, they knock off. - Yeah. Absolutely right.
They're activated by temperatures lower than 20 degrees Celsius.
Oh, they're pretty busy in this country, then.
They certainly are, they certainly are.
And so that leaves us with Kiesselbach's plexus.
And plexus, as in complex, is a sort of network.
So it's a nerve-endings thing, is it?
- The brain. - The brain, yeah.
No, actually, it's a network of connected arteries.
The heart?
- No. - I'm just going to say things.
And that's it, I've completely...
No, it's in the nasal septum.
Yeah, it's a little network of arteries.
It's around the point where we're most likely to have a nosebleed.
We've covered this before, Alan.
When you have a nose bleed you should pinch your nose and lean...?
Forwards.
- Well remembered. - Lean back.
- Ah! No. No. Forward. - Oh, well, just in time.
If you lean back, the blood might go down your throat. Anyway.
This picture of Tara Palmer-Tomkinson with her make-up off is amazing.
That's terrible. Now, why do doctors hit your knee with a hammer?
To test your reflexes.
Yes.
- That's correct, but what reflexes are they? - What?!
- The reflexes of the... - I was convinced!
It's a muscle...
You know the scorer. You so know Murray.
It's always a really cold hammer, so maybe they're testing
the end-bulbs of Kurchel-bircher-koucher-butcher.
Just checking.
No, it's not the end-bulbs of Krause.
- Cos they don't like you. - Yes.
There's nerves that run from the thigh upwards to the...?
- Head. - No.
No, you would think that.
It's something to do... The expression is a knee-jerk response.
- Because it doesn't go to the brain. - You're absolutely right.
- It communicates amongst itself. - It goes up to the spinal column.
It doesn't go all the way up to the brain at all.
So it is unmediated by the brain entirely.
- It is absolutely a knee-jerk reflex. - And it only happens in two times.
One is when you get hit on the knee with a little hammer
and the other is when you're asleep on a crowded train...
The only two times.
And you never see a doctor rushing off with a little hammer.
What are they hoping to see, doctors, when they tap you on the knee?
They want you to do that, they want you to kick.
Though, actually, if it's too big,
it could be a sign of really bad things.
- So that is a pretty healthy one. - Sorry, is this footage on a loop?
- It's on a loop, yes. - Oh, sorry.
"This is the worst medical ever."
"Just stop with the bloody knee!"
"Grab my balls, I'll cough and then let's leave."
No, it's the relative strength of the twitch that is really important.
Too much of a twitch might indicate a brain tumour, stroke,
liver disease, multiple sclerosis or tetanus.
And too little might mean botulism,
damaged nervous system or an infected spine.
And none at all could well be an index or a sign of...
Or wooden leg.
- Wooden leg. - Or death.
- You're dead, yeah. - Or, death, or...?
Syphilis.
"Oooh!" As if that was tonight's star prize.
"Forget gonorrhoea, go for syphilis."
"You keep the chlamydia, all right? That's yours."
"No-one can take that away, the chlamydia's yours."
- "The genital warts are yours." - Don't point at me, I haven't got...
I'm pointing at both of you.
I think the whole point with chlamydia
- is people CAN take it away from you. - Yes, you can do that.
You're so right. Anyway, yeah.
What if you did a murder with your reflex?
If someone, sort of, attacked your knee and then the reflex,
you had a knife attached to your shoe or something...
...and you killed them, would you be able to say,
"Ah, but the reflex, it didn't go to my brain,
it only went to the bottom of my spine, so I didn't really do it.
Yes.
It happens if you're driving and have an automated response,
it's called, like, murder by automata, but you don't go to prison.
So if you sneeze, for instance...
...and you run someone over... Someone sneezed, literally.
Talk about a reflex!
-That means there's been a murder! - There's a killer!
They've just murdered someone!
Now they know they'll get away with it.
It's something like...
If you walk into a room with a gun cocked, sneeze, it goes off,
you kill someone, you're in the clear?
So if you want to kill your wife, what you do is,
you drive to Dover, get her right up against a cliff,
and then you put your leg behind her and then get a doctor to tap a knee.
- Off she goes. - That, I'm afraid, would...
- The doctor would go to prison. - That would act up.
- The doctor would go to prison? - I think so.
What if he was sneezing as he tapped her knee?
- The perfect crime. - Yeah.
- Broadchurch, series two, sorted. - Yeah.
I love this imaginary super-compliant wife you've found.
- Who allows herself to be taken... - "Come and stand there."
"What are we doing here?! It's freezing."
"And why has the GP come with us?"
"Isn't it a lovely view, my love? Stand still."
So, when you're hammered, a knee-jerk response
is a total no-brainer. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Now, why did...
Why did McCartney's knees displease the Chinese?
There is a thing with Paul McCartney where some people
don't believe he's Paul McCartney any more.
They believe he died and then they had a competition -
a Paul McCarntney-alike competition - and the winner is now Paul McCartney.
There's a similar theory about the Pope, isn't there?
It's not, like, the same guy. There's been more than one.
Gracious!
Yeah, cos, otherwise, he'd be 2,000 years old.
There's a conspiracy theory, with Tony Mortimer, from East 17, that...
- Oh? - No, I made that up.
I thought it could run.
Actually, I'm afraid, we're not talking about Paul McCartney,
this is actually, the first Earl McCartney, in the 18th century.
There is a picture of him and, you can see, he's down on one knee,
bowing, quite straight-backed, to who might that be, that figure?
- Some... - It will be an Emperor.
- The Emperor of..? - China?
The Emperor of China, absolutely.
Now, in order to demonstrate obeisance to the Emperor of China,
you have to do a particular thing - to knock your head.
In other words, knock your head on the ground.
Do you know what the Chinese for that is?
- Kowtow? - Kowtow is the right answer!
To kowtow. Yeah, well done. Well done.
And in an act that shocked the world and was described afterwards
as possibly the most significant act in world history...
He refused to kowtow?
...he refused to kowtow to the Emperor.
He had a trade delegation and, not surprisingly, the trade delegation
was refused, was rebuffed. Chinese scholars nowadays,
sinologists, believe that, in fact, they were just not interested
in having trade relations with Europe and the rest of the world
and, indeed, the following year, a Dutch trade leader kowtowed
something like 30 times, including to a biscuit or some sweetmeat
that had been sent to him by the Emperor. He even kowtowed to that
in public, to show how willing he was to kowtow.
He got rebuffed, as well.
Can't you do something else to greet him?
You saw in that opening picture, a straight-backed...
- It's not like he went, " 'sup, bitch?" - Oh, no!
He didn't moon him.
Yeah, exactly. This was in 1793 that this incident,
called one of "the most decisive moments in world history" happened.
But, obviously, trade with China was fantastically important then,
as it is fantastically important now.
See in back of that shot, there is a man dismantling his car,
out of respect. And he's draped it with that landscape.
That isn't real landscape, that is a sheet.
There's a Ford Mondeo behind that.
And a very small-headed horse.
They do this to make men look taller. Charles I's statue
at the end of Whitehall, at Trafalgar Square,
has got a really tiny head, because Charles I was so short.
He loved being painted on a horse cos he was a very short man.
There is a really wonderful secret thing
about the Oliver Cromwell statue outside...
- Oh, the Oliver Cromwell... - His flies are undone.
The one outside the Houses of Parliament
that looks at a Charles I bust on Westminster Abbey.
A tiny bust, about that big.
They wanted to leave them staring at each other for all eternity, these enemies.
You see this big thing of Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament...
- And a tiny, little Charles head. - ...and you would never see it,
there's a little chapel on the Westminster Abbey side -
and, there's a little circle with this tiny face, staring at him.
There are little symbols...
Do you know about the black dots? This is really boring!
- No, this is great! This is all... - She saw it on Cash in the Attic.
Opposite Banqueting House, where Charles I as executed,
at the Horseguards' entrance,
on the clock, at quarter past two, there's a black dot,
which is the time he was executed, to remind people, as they walk past.
There's symbols all over London to remind people.
I used to do tour guiding on buses.
- I don't just know loads about Charles I! - I'm really impressed!
What a fantastic tour guide of London you must have been.
That is superb information. Now, what happened to the botanist
who couldn't tell heads from coconuts?
Is this the man who mistook his wife for a hat?
- It's not. That's wonderful. - So, all of a sudden...
- Is that a Channel 4 documentary? - No.
I know what you mean, though.
It's a, kind of... Something happens in the brain and it's interesting.
The two halves of the brain are separated, for example, and...
They don't communicate very well, but we find out so much about
how the brain works from people who have brain damage.
And, so, the man who mistook his wife for a hat, he was married and,
when he left Oliver Sacks' office for first time,
he tried to take her head off - sort of, "Oh, my hat's stuck."
And he did lovely things, like when he was walking along the road,
he would pat bollards, thinking they were children playing.
In other cases, they can't feel one half of their body.
They go absolutely terrified by their hand. Like an alien thing.
And phantom limbs. In hospitals, people jumping out of bed...
You can't feel your own hand, it's like someone else's?
Whatever this is, I want it! Sounds amazing!
I sat on it for months and it didn't work. That's brilliant!
- There's cases of people in hospitals... - What's it called?
Anyamaneumamneuaneuma.
Buy the book by Oliver Sacks.
Actually, it isn't a fascinating neurological condition he had,
it was merely incompetence at language.
In Indonesia, on the island of Ambon in 1913,
a very popular Canadian botanist, by the name of Charles Budd Robinson,
was merrily having a nice time, getting with the local people,
and he asked the villagers if they could get a boy to climb a palm
and chop down a coconut, which would be "perong kelapa".
Unfortunately, he said "patong kepala",
which means, "to find a boy and chop of his head."
So they thought he was a headhunter, which they had in those parts then,
- and they murdered him. - We've all done that.
I was in Marbella once...
In Italy, penne arrabiata is a pasta sauce,
but pene, with one N, is "penis",
so you're always asking for an angry penis,
- if you pronounce that wrong. - You have do the double-N.
Yes, it's not "penay", but pen-nay". It's really difficult.
No-one wants an angry penis for dinner.
That explains a lot. I worked as a waiter in Italy.
I had no idea they wanted pasta.
If you said, "pene puttanesca," that would mean a prostitute's penis.
- That's what puttanesca means. - Some people do like that.
There you go. So, in fact, funnily enough,
that same slip is part of their tourist trade.
The difference between kelapa and kepala,
cos you have kelapa kepala sold on the island as mementoes,
which are coconuts shaped into heads. There you are.
- Oh, they're beautiful. - Aren't they lovely?
They must be worth 10 or 15 pence.
There is an Indonesian tongue twister that goes,
"Kelapa diparut, kepala digaruk, kepala diparut, kepala digaruk",
which means, "Coconut being grated, head being scratched."
Don't say it, though, or someone will kill you.
And we've even got a fantastic Finnish little one. It goes:
"Kokoa kokoon koko kokko, Koko Kokkoko? Koko kokko."
- What's the question mark? - "How now, brown cow."
"Collect all the wood for the bonfire."
"ALL the wood for the bonfire?" "Yes, all the wood."
They're always such stupid things.
Anyway, Charles Robinson lost his nut for a coconut.
What's a knocker-uppers' knocker-upper?
That would be the person that wakes the person
that went round the streets waking people,
by bashing their windows with a long stick.
Is completely utterly and entirely the right answer. Absolutely, yes.
It seems obvious, when you think about it,
that after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution,
as people flocked into cities,
they didn't work the usual daylight hours they had worked
in the countryside and there were no such things as alarm clocks.
So they had to be woken up for getting to t'mill
by a tap on the window, by a man with a long stick.
So do these guys stay up all night?
That's the point. A knocker-uppers' knocker-upper,
as David rightly said, was someone who did stay up all night.
And then their last act was to wake up the sleeping knocker-uppers.
And then they'd go to bed and be on night shift, as it were.
There was a Dorset knocker-upper called Caroline Jane Cousins,
known as Granny Cousins, who used a lantern on the long pole,
so in winter time it would send a bit of light, as well as a tap.
Like one of the SAD lamps, kind of, happens gradually.
Exactly.
Did any of them have nice breakfasts?
A nice breakfast for people who work in t'mill.
Bacon and eggs on the end of a pole. Very nice.
They still do this in some Premier Inns.
Lenny Henry wakes you up.
There was a famous Limehouse knocker-upper called Mary Smith,
but she had a fantastic technique,
which was shooting peas out of a pea shooter at the windows.
- Isn't that cool? - That's very cool.
And doesn't she look a marvellous sight.
- Mary is my kind of woman. - Yeah?
Put it this way, if Mary was round mine,
she would not be getting up at four o'clock in the morning, Stephen.
But it's a wonderful photograph, the way she's got her hand on her hips.
But anyway, there you are, a knocker-uppers' knocker-upper
was a human alarm clock's human alarm clock.
Now, which organisation do these people represent?
The BNP.
- The Ku Klux Klan. - The what what what?
- The Ku Klux Klan. - No, those are not Klansmen.
- Druids. - Nor are they Druids.
The Dressing Gown Enthusiasts of Northern England.
It's a bit more than a dressing gown, though, isn't it?
- Are they religious people? - They are.
OK.
Is it the worst Halloween party, where everyone's turned up the same?
Yes.
No, it isn't!
What a gesture.
Is it some sort of Catholic procession in Spain?
Spain. Spanish Catholics. Absolutely right.
They're Penitents and they are called capirotes,
these particular things they wear.
They must be aware that, these days, that has other connotations now.
They like to reclaim it.
- I'm not sure they've quite succeeded. - No!
The mystery is why an ultra-Protestant, ultra-racist,
white organisation would choose a Spanish Catholic piece of headgear
to represent them, because this had been going for 1,000 or so years.
All the way through the Inquisition, these were used.
They were very much a symbol of the Inquisition.
Isn't there something about the Ku Klux Klan,
they think they're the Knights Templar, as well?
I don't think any of this Knights Templar thing is particularly true,
but there are more plausible theories about its origin.
No, I didn't think they WERE the Knights Templar!
Just they thought they were. It's because they're so CROSS.
The Klan's deep roots may reside
in the horse-whispering societies in rural Aberdeenshire,
of all places, where there were six from the town of Buchan, supposedly,
who went over to America and joined the Confederate Army
and, afterwards, formed this club of Confederate people in the South,
which was largely for pranks and high-spirited larks.
Until some appalling man called Nathan Forrest joined it
and started turning it into an excuse for burning black churches
and lynching black people and murdering them.
Where does Ku Klux come from?
It's from the Greek, kuklos, meaning a circle,
so it's the circle and Klan, obviously, as in clan.
So hence the idea of the Scottish origins. There's also another thing,
which is the Crann Tara, which was the way one clan would declare war
on another, which is the very potent image of the Klan,
it's most potent image, apart from the little pointy hat.
- A burning cross. - The burning cross.
Anyway, Spanish Catholics look like that. It ain't the Klan.
Now, what colour is a red kite?
Blue!
- Is it black? - Red. White.
Oh, thank you, Alan. Somebody had to do it.
Very good of you.
- The thing is they were named... - Is it a bird?
They were named before the English language had a word for orange,
we just used the word red for anything that was orange as well.
We had the word orange for a fruit,
but didn't use it for the colour till the 16th century.
We always think it was the colour that named the fruit,
- it's the fruit that named the colour. - Exactly right.
So it's true of a robin red-breast, which is clearly orange, not red.
We call it a red-breast. Same with the red squirrel,
there we are, that's orange. No two ways about it.
And indeed red-headed people. It's not red, if they had red hair...
Some people do through modern use of dyes, don't they?
- Some of your young friends, I expect. - Yes.
Absolutely.
And red deer, similarly, are not red.
But they were all named before the word orange
existed as a colour choice.
In those days, people would say, "What's the name of that red fruit?"
- "Oh, the orange?" - Yes.
- "Yeah, yeah, pass me one of them." - Exactly.
It could have been that, not the orange that made it catch on,
but the front of a robin. So we could all have,
you know, "Front Of A Robin" brand phones.
"What colour is it? Oh, it's front of a robin."
- It would be confusing. - "I'm just eating an orange."
"It's such a bright shade of front of a robin."
And when people were getting bullied in the playground,
it would be way less offensive.
"Oi, front of a robin pubes," like that.
But why is a robin associated with Christmas?
Oh, is this something to do with Jesus? I know he's very Christmassy.
- Is Jesus Christmassy? - Do you know, I don't think he is.
Considering he started it all, I don't think he's all that Christmassy.
I don't think you can hold it against him, really...
No, it's not his fault.
...that he's not entering into the spirit of Christmas.
- I'm not saying I hold... - "Cheer up."
"Watch Morecambe and Wise and have some Quality Street."
"You're bringing everyone down!"
Well, I'm just saying, I'm not surprised he's lost control
of the festival, to commercialism and Father Christmas,
because he's not putting the effort in.
He is at Easter time, but we're not that into Easter.
Yeah, he's losing that to bloody eggs and bunnies.
That's true, that's true.
I was thinking about Jesus, because isn't there a story where
the robin takes thorns out of his hands and then gets its red breast.
It's a lovely idea, there may well be.
They may have tried to post-connect the robin to...
Because it's obviously only in Britain that there's...
there wouldn't be as much snow around the Mediterranean,
- certainly not in Palestine. - Oh, yeah, of course.
- Again, not Christmassy, is it? - No.
Where Jesus lived wasn't very Christmassy.
No, it really wasn't. I love the fact you're so angry about this.
- I actually know this. - Yes?
A robin is associated with Christmas because it's the only bird
within the natural world that round the period of December
flies back to its original nest with its robin parents,
gives them a little bit of alcohol,
and then has to sit there as they're a little bit racist.
- I learnt it in biology. - Well, that's very good.
The actual reason is because we associate Christmas
with Christmas cards and Christmas cards were delivered by postmen
wearing red, bright red uniforms,
who were known as red breasts, or robins.
That was their nickname. The robins come round for Christmas.
So people started putting on Christmas cards a robin
to show that a robin would be delivering it. It was that reason.
- That's amazing. - Which is unusual.
- It is amazing. - But to return to our red kites,
do you know anything about red kites in Britain?
No.
I think they were reintroduced, they'd gone extinct in England
- and they were reintroduced successfully. - That's right.
Now there's loads of them
- in the south of England. - There are.
The thing was, in medieval times, it was the law that you had to kill one
if you saw one. You actually had to.
- Had to kill it? - Yes, you had to.
If you were seen observing a red kite without trying to kill it,
you were breaking the law. That was really absurd.
So the numbers drastically reduced.
Fortunately there now are 1,800 breeding pairs of red kites,
it's been a hugely successful reintroduction.
And lastly, how did the monkey wrench get its name?
I'm nervous of this,
because this was a fact that came up on the Unbelievable Truth.
The marvellous Radio 4 quiz show that you do.
It has happened before that facts we've asserted
on the Unbelievable Truth have been...
I think the word is "mocked" on this programme, for being factually incorrect.
And you know, I'll be honest with you, I don't do all the fact checking.
- Ditto, ditto, ditto, I have to say. - Yeah.
But, on that show, what was given to me
on a piece of paper to read out, was the fact that the monkey wrench
was named after a person, whose name was something like Moncka.
And he was some kind of, I don't know, technical...
That's so unfair.
You could not have parenthesised it more
but, nonetheless, we are beastly rivals of yours,
and you did mock us in your last series, when you...
Yeah, again, the person that handed me the piece of paper put on it
a piece of QI-fact-error mockery.
We... Exactly. We had said...
It's turning into war! And all I want is peace.
I know, you're right. From now on, it is peace.
But we're like, in this war we're like the Southern States,
we haven't got the resources
and we're going to turn to racism as a result.
"That Jew boy Fry said..." I hope you don't go that far.
But, no, we incorrectly said that Descartes, Rene Descartes,
believed that monkeys could speak,
but didn't because, if they did, it would put them to work.
In fact Descartes reported that he had heard this belief,
and you correctly said that and then mocked us, correctly.
It was a rap over the knuckles.
But there you go, that's minus 50 to David, of course.
So what is the truth?
The answer actually... It's a kind of rather gigantic not quite sure.
- The Americans claim it. - So we might be right!
No, we know that it isn't Mr Moncky, because there was an article
written in the 1880s, said that the true inventor, Charles Moncky,
was dying in poverty, despite inventing this incredibly useful thing.
The problem here is the term monkey wrench was used in England
as early as 1807, and these articles were written in the 1880s.
So it's just obviously completely impossible for that to be the case.
It's generally believed that the face of it reminded people
of the jaws of a monkey, you know.
Or that a monkey version of something in the navy
is a sort of rigging up of something.
But it's not all bad news for Mr Moncky,
because he is the originator of the phrase "spank the moncky."
So, you know, he didn't die in vain.
Exactly. Well, there we go.
So, I'm sorry about that minus 50.
Nobody knows how or why a monkey wrench is so-called,
though we do know that it wasn't for the reason given on David's
otherwise excellent and superb radio show.
Which brings us to the matter of scores.
Oh, dear.
Goodnessly graciously...
Murray can't help me now, can he?
I'm afraid it's pretty inevitable that in last place, with minus 41,
is David Mitchell.
That means... It means I was on 9!
Yes, it does, you were on plus 9.
And you saved Alan from ignominy, who is on minus 20 in third place.
Thank you very much.
A magnificent second place for Jack Whitehall, minus 7.
But what a QI kind of mind, what an incredible score,
what an amazing debut from Sara Pascoe, with plus 28!
Superb!
Well, that's all for this week,
so it's good night and thank you from Sara, Jack, David, Alan and me.
Good night.