This programme contains some strong language.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
and welcome to QI, where tonight we're all kings for a day.
Joining me at court are
His Majesty King James VI, Jimmy Carr.
APPLAUSE
His Majesty King William III, Bill Bailey.
APPLAUSE
His Majesty King Jeremy the... Only, Jeremy Clarkson.
APPLAUSE Thank you.
And King Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
So, before we commence our battle royale, let the trumpet sound. Jimmy goes...
ORNATE FLOURISH
Bill goes...
ORNATE FLOURISH
Jeremy goes...
ORNATE FLOURISH
And Alan goes...
PARTY HORN
Why am I not surprised?
Here are some kings I'm sure that you're utterly aware of,
but can you tell me how they got their nicknames?
These are all real kings and their real nicknames.
Is this what people called them
while they were actually on the throne?
Cos history is always written by the victor... By the victor.
..and therefore you have got William the Conqueror,
who was probably called William the Weak. Yeah.
Well, he was probably William the I'm Going To Give This A Go.
Why don't we have that now any more?
Why isn't it Queen Elizabeth the German. Or...
Constantine - you should be able to guess where he comes from.
Sorry... Greece.
Has your crown slipped?
Yeah, it's... Look, it's done that, you see, that's a...
Like that.
It's a medieval torture.
Yeah, this is what they put round royal dogs
to stop them nibbling their stitches.
Imagine the crown-maker...
Has your head lost weight? Yes, it has, yes.
He's lost even more hair than when we started! Sorry. Yeah. That's right. That's very unfair.
Yes, I do apologise. It's just...
You're welcome to take it off.
We're going to need a bigger king. See if you can abdicate.
No, that's going to hurt.
It's like watching a two-year-old take their clothes off.
JIMMY: Try and get it down the other way.
Shall I try and go through it?
Yeah, try and go through it. I think this is...
LAUGHTER Come on, Bill.
APPLAUSE
And that's the last we ever saw of him.
That's not a good look.
I was thinking of Zoidberg from Futurama.
You, honestly, you look fine. You look fine.
That's so like something out of Lord Of The Rings now.
Even more than ever.
I'm going to put this as my passport photo.
"What do you do?" "I'm a fighting king. What do you want?!"
But you can take it off now, you can all take off your crowns.
Oh, God, thanks, thank you.
Feel more comfortable. Thank you very much, yes.
So, this brings us to these names. Names, right. Constantine...
Constantine the Great, the first Constantine was? Was he a Greek?
Well... He was a Roman Emperor,
but he moved the capital from Rome to his new city, Constantinople.
And he became Christian,
and this particular one is a descendant of his
who became very unpopular
and so his enemies claimed that, when he was baptised,
he was so nervous that he pooed in the baptismal font.
Ah, we've all done that!
We've all had nights out. Yeah.
So they called him Kopronym, which is the Greek for Crap-Name.
Oh, I see. Poo-Name. Kopronym.
Was he christened, then, as a child or as an adult?
I think... Because it's worse, I think, as an adult.
Yes. Either way, it's embarrassing if you're an emperor
and that's all they call you - Poo-Name.
You're still an emperor. I'm still emperor.
So what were the other ones? Let's have a look.
See if you can have any sort of mild guess.
Louis the Universal Spider.
He was actually Louis XI of France.
There were a lot of Louis,
so what sort of century would Louis be? I'll give you ten points
if you're in the right century. Fourteenth. Oh, fifteenth.
In the 1400s. That's what I meant.
That's what they call the quattrocento,
these days they do, don't they? Oh, yeah...
Could he climb up the water spout? No! That wasn't it.
It's because he had webs of conspiracies all across Europe.
Oh. It wasn't because he got stuck in the bath?
No, he was friends of Philip the... Spaniard.
Philip the Good.
I thought it was going to be Philip the Fly.
"The Good" shows a lack of imagination, doesn't it?
Yeah. Yeah, the Good.
Good's good though, isn't it?
It's better than Dave the Satisfactory.
That's the best you could have hoped for on your reports.
That's probably what channel we're on now, as people are watching.
APPLAUSE
Yeah. Graham the Outstanding.
I think he was called Good
unfortunately because he pursued so many crusades
which is not considered good these days. Went off to the Holy Land and killed people.
We'd never do that today(!) No. No. As if!
So the next one is King Eystein the Fart.
Is that meant to say Einstein? No. It is Eystein.
He got it wrong? Eystein the Fart. Eystein the Fart.
So he farted once?
No, "Fart" is Norwegian.
Audience, do you know what "Fart" means in this context?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Speedy. Speedy, fast. Exactly. Speed, quick.
Oh. So it's just a typo, really.
No. It's correct in Norwegian.
It's lost a little bit in the translation.
He travelled a lot
and he was also the first source we have in writing of ice-skating.
He described his own "ice legs".
Fshhh! Exactly.
Yeah. Oh, ice legs.
But he was succeeded by his son, whom you will like,
who has one of the best names, I think, of any king.
Halfdan the Mild.
Halfdan the Mild?
Ah. Surely that's a "half a mile, please, Dan"? Isn't that?
That's pretty good. Halfdan the Mild.
Yeah. Foreign policy was like, ah, it'll be fine.
I think that's lovely.
I've never understood why they don't do that with warships.
HMS Mild.
Instead of Intrepid... HMS Weak. Vulnerable.
The Vulnerable, that'd be a good one to serve on.
HMS Unarmed.
HMS Help.
HMS Colander, that would be a good one.
Right, let's go to King Ragnar.
Why was he called what he was called?
Hairy Breeches. Oh, um...
Was he very hairy? He wore hairy breeches.
His wife made them out of animal hide
and they, supposedly, were there to protect him.
But as you can see, he's here being killed. How's he being killed?
By his own trousers.
No. Did she kill the animals before she made the clothes?
His Viking ship capsized off the coast of Northumbria,
and he was thrown into a pit of poisonous snakes.
What, in Northumbria?
By the King of England at the time, King Aella.
Where did he find these poisonous snakes from? Adders.
Yeah, but that wouldn't kill him, though.
Adders, that would give you a bit of an itch.
They're not really poisonous.
It may be a made-uppy story.
But Ragnar was eventually avenged by his son,
who was called Ivar the Boneless.
That's a great name.
He'd be called Ivar the Viagra these days. Yes!
He could get through railings. Yeah.
And he got his revenge on King Aella...
It's a pretty good superpower.
Didn't one of the Fantastic Four have that?
In Valiant comic there used to be Janus, who was an escapology person.
A bottom with a J in front.
Yes, that's right. And he could get through tiny gaps.
Oh!
LAUGHTER
Ah, there you are.
There you go. Janus. Every week, he seemed to be in a situation...
A Janal situation!
..where it would be really helpful if he could get through a tiny gap.
I don't know how the writers kept coming up with these scenarios
where the only solution was for Janus to get through a tiny gap.
But he was always going through drain grids and that sort of thing.
And avoiding the door that was open.
That'd be too easy! Quite often he'd forgotten his keys.
That's King Ragnar, the Hairy Breeches,
being killed by King Aella, looking down on him in the pit.
But he was avenged by having his ribs opened
and his lungs spread out against his chest, which was known as...
Say it again. AUDIENCE MEMBER: The Blood Eagle.
Very good, yes. Audience, ten points.
He wasn't that boneless if he had a ribcage, then?
No, he did it to the man who killed his father.
Well, then presumably this person was... It was against his will.
Yes, it was very much against his will.
Yeah. It wasn't just, "Come on then, wa-ay!"
Help yourself. The thing to have done
would have been to put hinges in before he arrived.
It would have been like a cabinet.
See? Fill your boots.
I saw a documentary about heart surgery
and to get through the sternum, they used a power saw.
I mean, it was... ALAN WHIRRS
Did you think you could open it like a Western saloon bar?
It's kind of hard to get in there. Yeah.
Or a little toffee hammer. And it takes a lot longer.
Yeah.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding...
When they say he's been in surgery for eight hours,
it's not eight hours doing the surgery, that's just the knocking-through.
Why don't they just use a big hammer?
No, that's a crude instrument.
It's a very small power saw.
It's not a huge... I mean, it's not a great big one.
No, it's not a logging thing. STEPHEN MIMES POWER SAW
It's a tiny... ALAN WHIRS GENTLY
But when you're over a certain age,
they can't risk doing that to you any more
and they actually go up through the...thigh.
Penis. Not the penis!
Well, you were going, "Up through, up through..." the penis.
What a pity. Pee-hole surgery.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Requires a steady hand, obviously.
Don't be absurd, they go up through the anus.
Oh, of course. Oh, dear!
So sorry, Stephen. They go up through a major...
Yeah, like your mate, through the tiny cracks in the...
Janus.
That's why he was called Janus. I've got a job for you, Janus.
Oh!
Up you go. Oh, God!
Steady, chap.
Stephen, now, I've got a question about farts. Oh, yes?
Do you think that farts smell before they come out?
I'm not going in to find out!
Quite a philosophical one from you, Alan.
If you went up someone, when Janus goes up to do the heart surgery...
Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
You wouldn't have to hold your nose, is what I'm saying,
you'd be free to use both hands.
If you have a colonoscopy...
If you were to have a colonoscopy, 24 hours before,
you have to take these unbelievably powerful...
Hallucinogenics.
APPLAUSE
Whoa! Oo-ee!
Ho-ho, I'm being taken by a space octopus!
ORNATE FLOURISH
Oh! I didn't even touch it!
How does it always end up like this on QI?
We were talking about kings and it was all noble.
The thing that Alan said about does a fart smell when it's in you,
has anyone ever tested to see how quickly
asparagus makes your wee smell?
Oh, it's amazingly quick.
There are some people to whom that doesn't have the effect.
Just as some people have their pee going red when they eat beetroot
and other people don't. I don't go red when I eat beetroot.
Oh, God, not pee. What are you talking about?
Have you never heard the disaster? What do you mean? Other juice?
We're back on shitting, but...
I was having a poo one morning and turned round and it was bright red.
STEPHEN GASPS And I just thought, well, that's it.
That's arse cancer. LAUGHTER
And so I thought, well, fair enough. I've had a great life, just relax.
And so this went on for several days and each morning, bright red.
Bright red? Yeah. Beetroot.
Ha! You shouldn't put them there.
The relief! LAUGHTER
But what would have... If you'd just have thought, "That's it",
and then you just go on a bender for five days.
Ha! Phone up all your ex-girlfriends.
For three days I didn't tell anyone. I was a bit weepy. Oh, really?
Then I mentioned it to somebody who said, "Have you been eating beetroot."
And I had, I'd bought a load of beetroot salad. That was it.
I had a very similar experience.
"Oh, my God! I'm an alien."
So I then phoned the doctor and they go,
"Oh, you better bring a sample in."
So got a sample in a jar and went in the doctor's -
obviously keeping it out of sight -
and went up to the desk
and they said, "Name", you know, "B Bailey", like that.
And then they said, "What's it for?"
I went, "It's an abnormal bowel movement", like that.
They went, "No, what's the initial for?" I went, "Oh, Christ!"
"You didn't hear that!"
Brilliant.
Pushing on, name a cobra beginning with K.
King.
KLAXON Oh, Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy.
A king cobra isn't actually a cobra.
It has its own genus, which is in fact ophiophagus,
which would tell... It sounds like "off your face."
Off-a your faces?
No. Ophiophagus. Phagus means?
Eating. Eating. Ophio...
It means snake. So it's actually a snake-eating snake.
A snake-eating snake.
Yes, it is, that's right. I saw a cobra eat a snake.
The true cobras belong to the genus Naja,
and that includes the kaouthia and the katiensis,
the Malian cobra, if you wanted to know.
Ah, so close!
Well, maybe you can make up for your lack of points
by making the noise that a king cobra makes.
I'm just going to get that klaxon again, aren't I?
It doesn't make a noise. It does make a distinctive noise.
Was it... All right, OK. "Hello!"
Very good. So just imitate a king cobra if you can.
Does it hiss? JEREMY BARKS
We're all... Meow!
KLAXON Does it bark?
Oh, you did the hiss.
I didn't, it wasn't me, I was barking.
No, no, no, Alan did the hiss.
You did the bark, so you get points back. So does it hiss? Does it hiss?
It barks. What do you mean, it barks?
It barks like a dog. It barks. Like a dog.
Who does the research? Do you want to hear it?
It just seems that we should get some... OK.
Here we go. Here, here we go. SNAKE BARKS
There you go. There's no way that that's a snake!
It is a king cobra. Fact.
Bring him out, bring him out. Bring him out, yeah.
Just to prove it...
AS EAMONN ANDREWS: You thought he was over there,
but he's here tonight. Please welcome...
I'm sorry. Can we hear that again?
Stephen Fry's barking cobra. It was a guess. Ssh.
SNAKE BARKS A barking cock-alike.
ALAN BARKS It feels like if we play that a few times,
it would sound like the TARDIS. Shall we just...? OK, keep going.
See if we can... SNAKE BARKS REPEATEDLY
Anyway, it has a little sort of special place in its trachea
and a kind of kazoo-like membrane and it makes that noise.
I'm surprised we didn't know that.
Wait a minute, a kazoo, a kazoo-like membrane?
Well, a membrane, yeah.
It doesn't sound like one, I grant you. It doesn't sound like one.
OK.
What else is interesting about king cobras? How venomous are they?
Really venomous.
More venom than any other snake.
It's not AS venomous, but they've more of it.
They've got more of it, and then they envenomate more often.
They venomate a lot. And they chase you.
Yeah. So they're really bad. They chase you while barking. Yes.
With more venom than...
It's warning enough to stay away. Yeah. It can kill 20 men, one bite.
Or one elephant. One bite can kill 20 men? Yeah. Yes.
No, you're not going to get 20 men who are linked
unless you've been watching Human Centipede or something.
AUDIENCE: Oh!
A strange number of the audience!
So, now... Oh, dear, why are we just always in this region?
It's so unfortunate.
Why might a Frenchman want this up his bottom?
Cos the French love shoving things up their bottoms.
KLAXON
Who knew, who knew I was going to go there?!
We knew it was you, yeah.
Of course! It's true that if you ask for an aspirin in France,
their first action is to... Oh, straight up the bottom.
Is it to get tapeworms? No, it is a surgical instrument
and it was devised for one particular...
What's our theme this evening? Kings.
Who's the most famous King of France? Louis XIV.
Louis the XIV, the Sun King.
Yes. And he was very fond of riding, and enemas,
as they all were in those days. Was he constipated often?
It was worse than that, he developed a condition
which has a particular name. And...
Faecal concreting.
It's in the faecal area.
I don't know, I just made it up.
It's when a duct appears between two organs
and connects them - they shouldn't be connected,
it causes great pain and it's called... That's a hernia.
Ask ribcage man, he'll know. It means a little pipe and it is?
Fistula. Fistula. Fistula.
They're very good, this audience. Yeah.
Are we doing QI Historical Embarrassing Bodies?
Anyway, Louis XIV had a terrible fistula, and his doctor...
Oh! Oh, no. That's the dilator.
Oh, no.
That's to dilate. That's what they used for the common man! No.
The King had to have that too, he had to dilate it with that.
I'm afraid that would have hurt a lot.
Yes, but you still haven't got to why he'd want to
put a cobra up his bottom.
That was in order to pierce and slice the fistula. What?!
Yeah. And it worked. Really? It worked.
So Felix de Tassy, the doctor, was given an estate
and became hugely popular. And no less than 30 courtiers,
mimicking the King, said, "Yeah, I've got one of those too."
You know, it's a really cool thing to have,
suddenly having a fistula was THE thing at Versailles.
So he had this huge order book, basically. But to be fair to him,
he didn't perform the operation
on anyone who didn't need it,
he was good enough to spot when people were faking,
just by trying to mimic a king.
Was that invented for the King? So presumably the doctor said,
"Come in, pop up on the table." Yep. "Pop that off for me,
"and I'm just going to put this up your bum. If it doesn't work..."
What is the instrument on the left? Does that have a name?
I don't know if it actually has a name, I guess it's a fistula...
It's called a...AAAGH!
APPLAUSE
It's now used as a toothpick, of course.
Yes, the King's relief.
A fistula scalpel... If you want to pick your teeth
from the back of your throat... Oh, dear! Can't get to my back tooth! Don't worry, sir,
we'll go in the other way.
But as I say, the weird thing is
that 30 courtiers pretended to have this condition
so that they could boast about having had the royal operation.
Erm, anyway. Moving on. What has 20 legs,
five heads, and can't reach its own nuts?
Oh! Wait, hold on.
20 legs, what? Five heads. Five heads.
Westlife.
Oh!
Oh, you're so lucky. You're so lucky.
I know what the klaxon was. I presume the klaxon... Shall I?
Yeah, go on. One Direction?
KLAXON Whoa!
I've thought, I've got to go somewhere a little bit away...
You're so behind, Jeremy, it's very sweet.
Some kind of hideously mutated tyrannosaurus squirrel.
It's got the word king in it, oddly enough, and it's... Is it a plant?
It sounds like a Gypsy band, but it's the Squirrel Kings. Squirrel Kings.
What would Squirrel Kings be? The best squirrels.
Well, oddly enough, no, it's really unfortunate,
normally they squirm around on the trees,
but sometimes trees exude a sticky sap.
Yes. And when that happens
and the baby squirrels get their tails in the sticky sap,
their tails get stuck together,
and you can get this, where they're absolutely stuck together.
AUDIENCE: Aww!
Oh, that's fucking hysterical. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Seriously, they get stuck together?!
You are so bad. The audience goes, "Aww!"
It's not... That's the funniest thing I've ever heard of!
They're never going to be organised enough to say,
"Right, ready, steady, all run off in different directions."
They'll never be able to do that. I'm afraid they will all perish.
If you saw the damage squirrels do... They are appalling rats.
Talking of rats, people call them tree rats,
and the phenomenon was first spotted in rats in Germany
and in museums and universities in Germany
there are examples of huge rat kings,
where rats have been shoved together and preserved in alcohol.
That's a vast one - pretty disgusting-looking, as you can see.
Rats can fall asleep in the sewer, and they sleep together for warmth
and then they can urinate while they're asleep,
so they're all just lying in their own urine. I can do that.
And then sometimes they get so cold that the urine then freezes
and that kills them. They die in their own frozen urine.
Ah. Ooh. Thank you for that fact.
I'm sure you'll get points. It's a beautiful story.
Don't change a word of it!
Which trees? Are they lime trees that cause this?
I want to know specifically. Is it a lime tree?
Just one that exudes a lot of sticky sap will do you. Lime.
Lime does exude a lot of stuff, and some trees, of course, exude a lot.
You could just buy some sort of maple syrup and just put it in the garden.
I'm thinking treacle...
Treacle! What about glue? Yeah, glue!
LAUGHTER
Glue only sticks people's fingers together,
you know that, everybody knows that.
Superglue, you nail a car to a wall with it. You can't.
It will only glue...
Fingers together.
Have you ever spilt any on your inner thigh?
What were you trying to do?
But it was meant for skin. On battlefields, exactly.
The only thing...
That's all it can actually do is be a battlefield wound.
If you try and glue a teapot lid back together again...
Doesn't work, I know. What was it invented for?
In the Vietnam war when they had battlefield wounds
and they didn't have access to be stitched up,
they developed this glue.
It sticks skin together. So they seal the wound up,
get them back to the triage... Yep.
..area, and then treat them.
Especially in hot climates like Vietnam
where infections replicate at double, triple, quadruple the speed
that they would here in Britain, say.
So they really need to close the wound instanta.
Stat, as they say.
How do the tails get stuck together? In the rats' case, I don't know...
Not the rats, no, I'm more interested in the squirrels.
Why would they... I'm not going to be the one
who teaches you to murder squirrels.
It's not murder, it's pest control for the sake of Britain's woodland.
They go up the tree and they get it on their tail?
What makes them go near another one? They wriggle over each other
as they look for their mother's milk.
They're baby squirrels? Yes, they're babies. Oh, that's a bit sad.
LAUGHTER Oh, he has got a heart, ladies and gentlemen.
Yeah. Oh, yeah, we'll catch you in a minute.
You'll be caught on camera smearing Pritt on the bumper of your car.
LAUGHTER
All right. Now, how could King's Cross Station possibly be improved?
Turn it into a car park.
Turn it into a car park!
A Wagamama's. LAUGHTER
Well, we're in your area, which is transport.
They've the Harry Potter platform there, haven't they?
They do have the Harry Potter platform. They should just let the kids go for it, I think.
Occasionally you see someone go, "No, no, just don't."
There should be someone there going, "No, no, have a proper."
This was a plan in 1931.
Oh, to improve it? Was it the Germans' plan?
It was the age of optimism and pride and speed and machinery and, oh...
Was it a bit after that?
So it was the roof... Yeah... Glass. Crystal. The roof was flat.
Runway. Yes!
It was to have an inner airport for London...
No way, what, land...? ..on the roof of King's Cross.
And look at that design. What?!
Why is Boris Johnson messing around with the Thames Estuary
when we could have one there? Isn't that brilliant? It's brilliant
apart from whoever's in the middle, where there'll be some traffic.
It's controlled. I can see where the crashes are going to take place.
It's controlled. You have radio.
Wait a minute. That's a device for gluing squirrels' tails together!
That would be... Wouldn't that be great? Isn't it? So great, isn't it?
And obviously the jet era would have got rid of it,
they're not long enough for jet runways,
but they are long enough for ordinary prop airplanes.
Light aircraft could land. They could.
People could commute to London and it would be great.
I know. Really great. And they had elevators designed
so the airplanes would be hangared in and then lifted up.
That's not just Form 4B homework.
They took it seriously. That was serious?
Yeah. It is lovely, isn't it? I'm very impressed with it.
Quite difficult to land on a kind of a bend, though, isn't it, like that?
I think you use the straight bits. LAUGHTER
That would have been an amazing pilot's last words.
"This is tricky!"
Now, why do more than 300 people need to die
before you finally get a Burger King?
Oh. So it's not actually Burger King with a capital B, capital K, then?
Well, it is actually, a capital B, very much so.
It's American. No, as in Burger as in Burger of a town.
Could be a relative of the Queen's.
300 people need to die. Is this King Ralph? Well, it's like King Ralph.
300 people need to die for this Burger to become Burger King.
Is it about someone who's the 300th in line to the throne?
It's more than 300. Someone called "Berger".
Wesley Berger from Oregon is 305th in line to the throne.
So if 304 people are killed - and we, between us, can do it -
we'll have a Berger King.
Surely, at something like the royal wedding,
if something like the roof fell in -
heaven forefend, at the royal wedding - you sort of think,
"Who would be next?" It would be Fergie, she wasn't invited.
You're right. They must have had him on the phone, going, "You ready?"
It's your big day tomorrow if this doesn't work out. Wesley!
Learn the ways of the Force. Is that actually him?
That's Wesley, Wesley Berger. This is really interesting, I think.
The law has changed, as you probably know,
so that now the first-born will be made monarch, not the first male.
So if, in 1901, when Queen Victoria died,
the law we've now introduced stood,
who would have become monarch in 1901?
Oh, I couldn't care less. I've just remembered. I think you did.
It would've been... Oh, wait a minute.
Is it Hitler?! No... LAUGHTER.
Is it Marty McFly? No!
The first-born daughter.
The first-born was a daughter, who was... The Queen Mum. Victoria.
Her first daughter was Vicky,
and Vicky died very soon after her mother,
so her son would have been King, and her son was Kaiser William. Oh.
So, had we had that law, Kaiser William would have been our King.
And we would now be speaking German, is that what you're trying to say?
Or Germany would have been speaking English.
I would not be speaking German, I wouldn't have picked it up by now.
I'd still be working through my GCSE.
That is genuinely fascinating. So in 1914 what would have happened?
We would have got rid of the monarchy probably. Right.
So many things. If someone had actually got him a horse, erm... Yes.
He wouldn't have died in a car park in Leicester. No, of course.
That's a hell of an offer - my kingdom for a horse.
It was a one-time offer and no-one went, "Go on, have my horse."
Meh...what else you got?
I want it in cash.
Work out why this is true.
No monarch on the British throne
has ever been descended from Charles II.
But if Prince William becomes King,
he will be the first British monarch to be descended. Because Diana...
Because Diana was not just descended from Charles II,
she was descended four times,
in four different ways, from Charles II.
Four different ways!
Hell of a lady! Think how many ancestors you have from that period.
Four of them straight from Charles II.
Now, what kind of sick person wants to be touched
by a member of the Royal Family?
I quite fancied Diana.
Is Pippa Middleton royal? No.
She's not even a weather girl. JIMMY LAUGHS
That is perhaps THE most snobbish thing that's ever been said.
She's not even a weather girl!
I think she was descended
from the Weather Girls of Saxe-Coburg, wasn't she?
She's very nice, I'm sure.
Apparently she has a very nice bottom. Is this somebody who's ill?
Somebody ill, yes. Ill people for hundreds of years would be killed...
Sorry.
Ill people for hundreds of years would be cured by Kings of England
or, indeed, France.
They wouldn't really be, though.
No, but it was thought that they were.
King's evil was a disease, which was in infection of the lymph nodes.
Very unpleasant.
And it looked like little piglets, which the Latin for was scrofulae.
So scrofula. You've probably heard the phrase scrofulous. Yeah.
It was thought that the King touching...
The Confessor certainly was probably amongst the first to do it,
would touch people, and give them a gold coin as well -
king's evil - sometimes with a hole in it
so they could hang it round themselves to show.
And the last one to do it was Charles II,
and he touched 92,107 people.
Presumably there's something of the placebo effect
in being touched by the King and lots of people went, "I feel a lot better."
If you've got piglets coming out your neck, it's going to take a lot more than a placebo to mend that.
It was stopped... It was relatively recently. George I.
He stopped it because it was too Catholic. What, the TB?
No, the process of curing people.
The superstition was considered too Catholic.
So it was got ridden of.
Some cultures have a culture against touching a royal.
In the 1880s, a Siamese Princess,
it's around the time of Anna and the King of Siam,
called Princess Sunandha Kumariratana,
drowned because nobody was able to touch her,
they weren't allowed to touch a royal. So she just went down.
But King Menelik II of Ethiopia. He was Christianised.
Men he licks?
Menelik. King Men He Licks.
King... King Menelik. Like Yoda!
He liked to cure himself by eating pages of the Bible.
Did he? Yes. And he died, basically,
choking on the Book Of Kings.
Rather appropriate.
Now, kingfishers - most of the kingfishers in the world
live near what? Water. Rivers.
Well, no, they don't. Forests. Kingfishers?
No, most of the kingfishers in Britain live near water.
But most of the kingfishers in the world don't. Sea?
No. Not near water at all.
Why are they called kingfishers? That's a British word for them.
Because we in Britain see them by the river.
They're called kingfishers all over the world. No, they're called "alkuon" in Greek.
What do you think we call them...? The Greek for kingfisher?
Halcyon, exactly, but it doesn't mean "fisher".
There it is, fishing.
It's... In Britain.
Sorry, why does it...? Fishing again. In Britain.
In Britain. The evidence is there behind you.
In Britain. No, but if you go to... Go to Africa.
Somewhere that isn't Britain. Africa. For example.
I've seen a kingfisher not anywhere near a river, you're right.
In Africa... They're mostly all like this.
Mostly in Africa they live in disused termite nests.
It looked lost. They live in disused termite nests.
"You haven't got a fish on you, Bill, have you?" Yes.
"I mean, you haven't seen a river round here, have you?
"Water or anything?" What is the colour of that kingfisher?
It's a turquoisey really, isn't it? Azure? Turquoise?
It's brown. It's brown? Yeah.
This programme's getting more and more ridiculous every week.
It is a sort of optical illusion.
In fact, the actual colour pigment is brown,
but it iridesces it.
I must remember,
I'll go to the middle of the Sahara Desert and get one,
and then put it in a darkened room and see what colour it is.
Yeah. Perfect. Just because it's not near a river
doesn't mean it's in the Sahara Desert. It eats fish!
Are you saying that the colour it is
isn't the colour that it appears to be?
No, because all colour is perception.
But that's kind of what I meant by colour.
Yeah. But the... That's a bluey colour, that fella.
But if you examine it, in terms of its actual pigmentation...
Right up close. Right up close,
rather than where it is presenting, with the light striking it.
Oh, right, so if I examine it without any light. No.
Oh, that feels brown.
I just don't understand when you do this on this show,
you go, "That brown thing is a blue thing
"and that blue thing is a brown thing."
I know, but iridescence is a very particular quality -
in the same way that petrol is not rainbow-coloured.
You put it on water in a puddle and it seems to be, but it's not.
It's pink. Nobody knows what colour petrol is.
Well, quite, exactly. Yeah, that's right. It could be any colour.
No-one has ever checked.
Nobody's ever gone, "What colour is this?"
They used to have pink or blue diesel, didn't they, for farmers?
Red diesel. Which you're not allowed to put in your car, and I don't.
No. Quite right.
Evading tax, Jeremy, it's a slippery slope.
All right.
APPLAUSE
Just saying.
OK, it's time for a little experiment.
It's our K series - knick-knack.
Talking of colours...
Green, yellow and red.
What's that brown liquid?
These are all readily available liquids.
This is blue Curacao, which is a sort of liqueur.
This is nothing more nor less than lemonade.
And this is pomegranate juice. We're making cocktails!
Excellent. Things are looking right. I'm going to mix them together.
There we are, and they all go into a horrible sort of colour.
The colour of a kingfisher.
If you can now put them back.
And then we put these away. It's alchemy.
There we go. I'm going to pour here.
Different colour in a different glass. There we are.
Now, this is quite difficult, by the way, to catch on camera.
But nonetheless... Or indeed to the naked eye.
No, you hold it up to the light. Just tell me what colour it is.
What colour's that?
It's reddish. It's got reddy. Yours is? Blue. Blue.
So you're seeing red and you're seeing blue. What can the reason be?
The shape of the glass. Simply that.
It's the width of the glass. I work with James May, I know these things.
It's a taste sensation. What do you make of that?
You might just see on camera... It's quite sweet. It's quite sweet.
My teeth have gone the same colour as Jeremy's.
It's gone the colour of a kingfisher.
You should be able to see on camera here, this one is both.
No, I can see that. The top bit is purple and the bottom bit is blue.
Yes! You're the best science teacher we've ever had!
Credit where credit is due.
Let's have congratulations for this beautiful experiment,
which was devised by Doctor Alice Bowen.
Well done, Alice. APPLAUSE
Now, let's see if we can get some points back
with some simple royal questions.
How many King Henrys of England have there been?
ORNATE FLOURISH
Say it. Eight! No!
KLAXON
There were nine, in fact. Henry II had a son,
who was known as Young King Henry,
who, according to the French tradition,
was anointed King while Henry II, his father, was still alive.
And so he wasn't given the reginal number III, but he was King,
and he died at age 27 or so,
and he was quite an amusing fellow.
He was very popular, he died young, but when he was 17, he...
He got in trouble with his father
for refusing to turn up home at the castle for Christmas.
Instead, he held a feast in Normandy
in which he invited only knights whose name were William.
It's a randomly peculiar thing to do.
So he was actually Henry the second-and-a-half.
Yeah, kind of, yeah.
I love the idea of that party, though. He's been to so many royal events and fancy weddings and gone,
"I can't remember everyone's name. I just want Williams."
And he arrived, went, "Hello, William. All right, William?
"William." "Bill, Bill..."
Saves you having to bother with the name, like the Beefsteak Club in London,
where all the staff are called Charles, whatever their names,
so people go, "Hello, Charles, I thought Charles would be here."
"No, milord, Charles is ill, so Charles is here."
Is this a real place? It is a real place called the Beefsteak Club.
You're a member of that? I am, yes.
It's very old and very good fun.
Don't mock me.
Yeah, we just go to a caff, but, yeah...
That makes you more real.
"Charles, oh, Charles, yes, Charles, tea please, two teas," you know.
The staff from there are probably watching this, going,
"Oh, it's that Stephen Fry,
"he thinks everyone's called Charles. Bloody idiot."
We can't just tell him now.
Someone's just told you that the first day you arrived.
It's a practical joke on you.
All right. Did they also ask you to go for a long wait?
No, they didn't. Now, name the Queen's official residence.
ORNATE FLOURISH
I'll go Balmoral. Ah!
KLAXON
2A Pall Mall.
2A Pall Mall, SW1. Yeah.
No. ORNATE FLOURISH
I'm going to say official residence, Buckingham Palace.
KLAXON
I meant Windsor Castle. No!
KLAXON
A submarine is sinking somewhere.
Yeah. Berlin. Jeremy Klaxon.
Sandringham? Sorry? Sandringham?
Oh, Alanny-wallany-woo. Not Sandringham.
KLAXON
I'm feeling left out.
I wonder why there's three different pictures.
It's 3A. It isn't...
Center Parcs, Surrey. I don't know.
The Eagle's Nest.
Does she have a static caravan?
If you are the American Ambassador, you present your credentials to?
It's actually the Queen... The court of...?
St James's Palace, is that her official...? The right answer!
If only I could award you more points... I wish I didn't have
this speech impediment that made Buckingham sound...
St James's Palace is the official residence of the monarch,
although she does, of course, spend most of her time in her second, third, fourth, fifth homes.
Now, here's some potassium iodide.
It's a catalyst for my next experiment. Oooh! Yes!
My next experiment also involves me having,
for health and safety reasons, to wear these.
Cowabunga, dude, you look awesome!
Tell us, O mighty king.
ALL: Oooh!
Oh, stop it, no! I can tell from that sample you've had asparagus.
Well...
What that is, is H2O2. Does anyone know what H2O2 is?
Water water. Yes. Double water.
It's H2O, it's water with an extra oxygen molecule,
but it has a different name.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Hydrogen peroxide.
They're a good audience.
Well, that's partly because three quarters of the women
have got blonde hair.
But it's quite unstable
and it's always trying to lose its extra molecule
and turn to water and to oxygen gas.
And we've mixed it here
with some ordinary detergent, some washing-up liquid.
So could you go and stand next to Bill?
It's not really violent, let's just say... Well, why...?
Let's just say...
Hang on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
What? When? What am I, a human shield or something?
It's all right, you're this side of him, it's not that violent.
Stephen, you don't seem too concerned about my safety.
You can stand next to Jeremy, that's a good point.
It's that much nearer Alan.
It's really, you'll see, it's not going to be dangerous.
It isn't dangerous. It might be dangerous. It isn't. Just hold me.
It's basically...
Do you want to sit on my knee?
Don't stop, I liked it. Here we go, are you ready?
Do you want to count me down, audience?
Count me down from three. Three...
Oh, what comes next? AUDIENCE: Two...
one!
LONE AUDIENCE MEMBER: Zero.
GASPING
APPLAUSE
Oh, very good. There you go.
And so...
That's quite a money shot!
Stephen, are you suggesting, if I get some of that potassium...?
That that will really make you perform in bed? No.
Well... That's amazing! ..that magnificent...
Whoa, it's still... Oh, yeah, that's it, baby.
It's a rather horrible yellow at the edges, though, isn't it?
Yeah, it does get like that! Do you know what? I've been away.
Anyway, that brings us to the final scores, while it's still flowing.
And...let's have a look here.
I'll have to hurry you, because you're going to be invisible.
In last place, with minus 38 points, it's Jeremy Klaxon.
APPLAUSE
Second equal...second equal,
with minus 19, Bill and Jimmy.
APPLAUSE
APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH
Do my eyes deceive me?
Tonight's runaway winner with minus 18, Alan Davies!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Though the unquestionably knowledgeable audience
takes the ultimate palm with plus eight!
THEY CHEER
So from Jimmy, Jeremy, Bill, Alan and me,
good night.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd