This programme contains some strong language.
Gooooooood evening, good evening, good evening, good evening
and welcome to QI,
where tonight we're on the move with K for Kinetic.
Let's meet motor-mouth Danny Baker.
Thank you. Good evening. Thank you.
Speed-freak Marcus Brigstocke.
Go-go girl Jo Brand.
Go-go girl?
And poetry in motion - Alan Davies.
Thank you. That's nice.
And let's hear your beats, bruvs.
Danny goes...
# I like to move it, move it... #
Yeah. It's too loud for me today.
Marcus goes...
# I've got the moves like Jagger... #
Jo goes...
# Moving on up Nothing can stop me... #
And Alan goes...
# Saturday night at the movies Who cares what picture you see... #
Movies.
Kinema was originally what cinema was called.
From the same word as kinetic - it was kinematic moving,
i.e. moving pictures.
Well, "kinetic" of course means anything to do with movement,
so, for heaven's sake, let's get moving. Where will this get me?
I'm going to find my broom here.
If I were to move my hands together like this, what would happen?
Whether I did this one a bit more than that one,
or that one a bit more than that one.
What would happen, at the end, when my hands met?
- The heavy end would fall down. - No. - Shut up!
When you do this,
you will always find it meets at the centre of gravity. Always.
Because the resistance from the heavy end slows...
Yeah, exactly, so as long as
you're just sort of doing it without thinking, you know,
it just meets up like that, and it balances.
It doesn't actually look a very natural implement
in your hand, Stephen.
But you've got one. Maybe it'll look more natural in yours.
Yeah, I am a drudge.
You can ride it home tonight.
- Here we go. - You've all got one, so try it.
- Obviously... - His fell apart! - ..everybody except Alan.
Now try properly.
Obviously the left hand won't move as far as the right one.
Is it working for you, Marcus? Please, God!
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Jo isn't even trying.
No, well, I can tell you, there are women all over the country going,
"Look at the silly bastards. We've got to clean the floor with it."
- Oh, man, this is... - I've been trying this all afternoon
- and I can't make it do anything else. - No!
It's like it's got the Uri Geller touch about it, it's just...
Ohhh, cool.
That is bizarre.
- Ah. - Well, that's really disappointing.
- This one's Kate Moss. - Yeah, baby.
I'm completely astounded.
We're all very disappointed.
Every single person who's tried this...
Is there any money in doing it wrong?
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
It's just like, I'm not doing it on purpose, I promise I'm not...
- Close your eyes. - Look at that!
There, that's good. You've found the centre of gravity perfectly there.
The thing is, you're tilting it, Danny.
You've got to keep it straight.
No. I promise you, I'm trying to tilt it. It's not...
No, you're tilting it. That's working perfectly.
Well...
Physical comedy so early in the show.
I know. You can't beat it.
- Last time, last time, last time. Last time. It's level, yes? - Yeah.
Level. It's going, I can feel it's going... Aah.
Hooray!
Phew!
- Human error. - And this - now, that's interesting.
Why do you think you can balance it with the centre of gravity so high?
- Because we know where the centre of gravity is. - Because I am a genius!
- LAUGHTER - That's right.
But if you try and do that from the bottom end,
but not grasping the brushes,
literally just balancing it on your palm,
- it'll just fall over. Not... You mustn't grasp it. - Like that.
- Hello. That's really good, actually. - Yes.
I'm just going to rip...
I think the show's broom techy might need a word after the programme.
APPLAUSE
- Well, thank you very much, my science elves... - Exactly.
..for all your moments of inertia and your centres of mass.
I like this. This game's brilliant, because you don't need to be clever.
No, exactly. You just need to know a variety of broom-related tricks.
- Well, the centre of gravity is the issue there, isn't it? - Yeah.
Discovered by Archimedes, supposedly.
Could anyone hear him speak, Archimedes? Was it just a...?
HE MAKES SQUEAKING NOISE
It did sound as if it was coming through dense undergrowth.
There's a man in the bushes. "No, it's me, it's me."
Behind you, there's a man in the bush.
"No, I'm telling you, it's me speaking."
Anyway, listen, the idea is that you will always find
the centre of gravity of a broom, as you zoom your hands together.
Try it at home. Jesus, God!
Here is a tricky bit of maths for you on a centre-of-gravity-related theme.
I am 6 ft 4½ ins tall, and weigh a little over...
Oh, Christ.
I thought I had every copy of that.
Attack of the 50-foot Stephen.
Anyway, yes. Nice.
I am 6 ft 4½ ins tall and I weigh a little bit over 14st.
Between 14st and something more than 14st.
So, how much would I weigh if I was 44,000 miles tall?
- Keeping the same ratios and proportions? - Yep, yep. How much would I weigh?
Well, there would come a point where the top part
of your extraordinary body would no longer be affected by earth's gravity,
so you'd weigh a bit less than one might expect,
but still a fair amount, I would think.
No, I'd actually be weightless,
- cos my centre of gravity would be outside... - Beyond the halfway point.
- Yes, would be in orbit. - How long would your penis be?
- It would depend... - Strikingly.
Grand Canyon would have to worry.
It would be like the Isle of Skye, wouldn't it?
You could change the tides.
If you were weightless, but lying across the top,
then the penis could be affected by gravity whilst you weren't.
We've just done the calculations,
and my penis would be 3,384 miles long.
APPLAUSE
I thank you.
Which means if we do the division again we can figure out REALLY how big it is.
JO: Also, it would...
Too much information, I think.
It would be poking out of your dress, as well.
- You'd have to have a ball gown. - Literally.
There was... I think we've talked about this before, Alan.
There was a proposal made in the 19th century to build a tower
that went out into space as a way of getting out there.
Which seems ridiculous, but it would use the same principle.
If it was anchored to the ground and then went up high enough,
its centre of gravity would be in orbit and so it would be weightless.
But absolutely rigid and stable.
Here is the thing, while we are in space.
This made me space out about a year ago
when I realised that nobody knows which way this planet is up.
That's right. You can buy in Australia globes with Australia on the top.
Yeah. Because we don't know up and down.
If a UFO approaches, there is no particular reason it should approach with the North Pole at the top.
I think, though, if they came all this way they'd be fairly unlikely to go to Australia.
- This programme has been raised in Australian Parliament. - Yeah?!
Yeah. Someone said,
- AUSTRALIAN ACCENT: - "Why is the Australian taxpayer not paying for home-made Australian entertainment
"but playing for wall-to-wall bloody Stephen bloody Fry?
"It's QI, QI, QI. All the bloody time!"
I apologise. You don't have to watch us.
- No, we love it that we are so popular in Australia, don't we? - Yes.
Yeah, exactly. Very nice.
I was talking to an astronaut, believe it or not, about two months ago.
A British astronaut. He's been up three times into the station.
A very expensive phone call, that one.
Mike Foale, is it?
- Yeah. And I mean, just... - Wonderful guy. - Yeah, what a life.
And he's been up three times. And he said the most important thing is...
Cos they're doing repairs on the outside of the craft,
and they have to keep listening just for one message.
There's no talking backwards and forwards because they have to say, "Gentlemen, two minutes to sun up."
Because there's about eight different sun-ups as they go round,
and he said it's like a nuclear explosion.
He said it's the one thing you have to remember. Visors down, every time.
- There's nothing to filter it? Yeah. - There's nothing. It would come straight at you.
And also, the spacesuit, while we're here.
I couldn't help but ask dumb questions.
Are they off-the-peg? Cos they all look the same.
- He said no. He said the suit itself costs £35 million. - What?!
Each one is tailored...
I know a chap on Jermyn Street that'll do it...
Or, you know, you can get them in TK Maxx.
And he said, "No, you don't go and pick them up.
"You are measured for it about two years beforehand."
They'd be quite cross if he suddenly stacked a load of weight on just before...
- I don't know how that would work. - "We've made it."
"Sorry, I've been to a wedding. Had a hell of a weekend."
Good, good nuggets of fact, there. Thank you, Danny.
Now, what's the most interesting thing you can do with a hole, a stick, and a Greek?
Yes?
There's quite a few Greek men I'd like to put in a hole and hit with a stick.
- From holidays. - Oh, I see. Do you know the one in the middle?
- Do you know who that is? - That Greek man? I didn't go out with a boy.
- As you can tell by the photograph, he is now actually a man. - Zorba. - Right. Prince Philip.
- It is Prince Philip. Well done. - Of course it is! - You're so surprised when you get something right!
- Phil the Greek. - Phil the Greek, exactly.
Where's his arms gone?
Arms were added later...
..when he became the Duke of Edinburgh.
- Alan, they put on a royal coat of arms. - Ah!
Thank you.
He's... He's nine years old there.
- He's going, "I hate this headscarf. I hate it." - They certainly go for national costume.
There's a hole, in case you want to know what one looks like.
And there's a stick, in case you want to know what one looks like.
There was a Greek who did something pretty amazing just with a hole and a stick.
Can you think of anything you might do?
Was it hide their sovereign debt?
- There is no hole big enough. - A very old Greek? - Pretty old.
Eratosthenes, his name was.
Did he drop a stick down a hole?
He looked down a hole at a particular time of year.
- Was it at Christmas? - Exact opposite. Christmas is the winter solstice.
- Right. - Summer solstice.
If you looked at the bottom of the well at exactly noon
- on the solstice, he saw no shadows whatsoever. - Ah! There you go!
And he worked out with extraordinary cunning,
he knew the distance from there to another place 500 miles away.
At exactly the same time he put a stick in the ground
- and the sun was at an angle... - Gotcha.
..of 7.2 degrees from overhead.
So he worked out from this information that
the Earth's circumference had to be 25,000 miles.
He worked it out using a stick in the ground.
In fact, we now know the actual figure to be 24,859.
- That's how close he was. - Idiot(!) - I know.
And so his margin of error was less than 1%.
- With no technology other than a stick. - Wow.
I think that is pretty astonishing.
Eratosthenes was the librarian of the great library of Alexandria,
which is considered the greatest repository of knowledge in the ancient world.
And he was a musician, an astronomer, a poet.
He invented the term "geography". Mathematician, obviously.
He was known as Beta
because he was the second best at every discipline in the world
- that was known at the time. Which is pretty astonishing. - That is.
He was a great man. And his dates were around about 200ish BC.
Anyway, that was the great Eratosthenes,
who measured the Earth with a stick.
What would happen if the Earth suddenly stopped spinning?
- We'd all fly off it. - Oh! ALARM BLARES
Marcus-y, Marcus-y, Marcus-y, Marcus.
- Wouldn't we all fall off, then? - We wouldn't fall off, no. No.
- Oh, there would be numerous consequences, Stephen. - There would.
- Name a consequence? - Well, half of the world would be plunged into eternal darkness...
- That's a very good point. - ..and they would all leave and come and join the light side.
- Or would some of them go to the dark side? - Ah.
It would change the very nature of human life on the planet,
from the dark to the light people. What about the animals?
All the ones who like the dark, they'd have to get to the dark side.
All the moths would have to go...
All the moths would have to go that way.
The butterflies would have to go that way.
The moles would be really confused.
What about on Daybreak, when they start broadcasting?
- That would be confusing. - How do they know when to start Daybreak if they're on the light side?
The weather would be substantially changed.
I imagine it'd be enormously changed.
- Would there be big floods? - The seas would come to...
- Tsunamis, earthquakes. - Famine, pestilence. - Pestilence, exactly.
Moans will be heard over the face of the deep.
And your mobile wouldn't work.
You'd only be able to grow food on half of the world.
The other half would have to come to the light side for food.
- They could have mushrooms and rhubarb. - They would only be able to have fungi.
I'd live on that side. And what time would the four horsemen of the apocalypse turn up?
At the sound of the last trumpet.
Do you think they'd book an appointment, the four horsemen?
"Yeah, we will be round, you'll have to be in between eight and seven.
"He's at the lights."
Well, the point is, the Earth spins at about 1,000 miles an hour,
at the equator.
It's slower at the poles.
I remember my father explained to me how
the edges of a record were going faster than the bits in the middle.
I said, "That's not possible - how can that be?"
And he said, "Well, how can it not be?"
Yeah, like when you slam a door. The end bit is going very, very fast,
the other bit that traps your finger on the inside...
Yeah, it's going very, very slowly. Absolutely right.
- Get two children, put one there... - Less distance in the same time.
- If it stopped, would you fall over? - You'd certainly fall over.
The point is, the Earth spins at about 1,000 miles an hour at the equator.
It would have to be almost 17 times more than that to defeat the effect of gravity.
We would just scrape along the ground at 1,000 miles an hour,
and we'd, you know... Good to have shares in Savlon,
because we'd have any number of bruises.
If I scraped along the ground at 1,000 miles an hour, I'd kill a load of old ladies.
It wouldn't be pleasant. What we couldn't do
is have enough force to go out of the atmosphere.
If it slowed down over a number of years, we might not notice.
There is that. That would be very interesting.
I started writing a book about exactly this. And then...
- Yeah, and then... - Was it called The Decade The Earth Stood Still?
It was called The 25th Hour, and I was really thrilled with it as an idea.
It was just the idea that some comet went past, the science was very fudged,
and it slowed the rotation of the Earth so we ended up with 25 hours.
And to begin with, everyone knew what to do with their extra time,
and then the banks got hold of it and they went, "No, we'll just make everyone work."
But it turned out time available was sitting perfectly balanced
against greed, and when you increased one, it all collapsed.
Anyway. The same thing got published by someone else for a record fee
- in the same month I came up with it. - How annoying!
At least, that's what my publisher told me. Very trustworthy chap.
There we are. The fact is, you wouldn't fly off, although it's a compelling image.
You'd just scrape along the ground and probably bump into things.
Now, what travels the wrong way along a motorway
at 12mph?
- # Moving... # - Yes, baby?
Is it an elderly man in a Morris Minor?
- No, it's one of those motorised wheelchairs, normally. - Oh!
KLAXON
- Oh, no, I got half of that. - No, you were both going for the same thing.
Well, no, this is an effect we might all have experienced on motorways,
and a deeply unpleasant one, and yet a perplexing one.
There was a wonderful New Yorker cartoon,
which showed a huge traffic jam
and a man looking in a puzzled way at a sign that said,
"Traffic jam clears inexplicably three miles ahead."
And that's the phenomenon we're looking at if you drive -
you know that sometimes you can be in this terrible traffic jam
and then it will magically clear.
There are no cones, no police, there's never...
Not been anything wrong. And you think, "What was that about?"
And there's a science which is like fluid dynamics,
but they use things called "kinematic wave equations".
And what happens is, a car will suddenly brake
and the car behind it will brake,
and the car behind it will brake, and so on and so on,
and it sends a ripple effect back through the traffic.
And the one ahead can start off again quite cheerfully,
saying, "Oh, it was only a pigeon diving at my windscreen."
But the other ones are still slowing down.
And they continue to, going backwards.
There you see them backing up.
And they continue to back up for quite long distances,
while the ones ahead are free.
But they've discovered that pulse backwards, of braking,
travels on average about 12mph and can cause big jams.
Presumably you get the same effect
when there's a police car in the slow lane doing 68 as well.
Oh, yes, that's so annoying, you inch past it.
Everyone, doing 68, yeah.
- If I just... I bet police love that. - Do you ever give them the look...?
They're going, "Oh, look, he's going 71. Shall we? Shall we?"
But of course we know nothing of traffic jams in this country.
Which country is the absolute heroic epicentre of the traffic jams,
- of all traffic jams? - I would think India.
No, it's China. China has epic - I mean epic - traffic jams.
They had one in 2010 that was over 80 miles long
and it moved on average less than a kilometre a day.
I'm not kidding you - that's how bad it was.
And they're so bad regularly,
that they now have quite profitable services
where you call up this service
and they arrive on a motorbike, two people on a motorbike.
One gets in and takes your place in the traffic jam,
and you get on the back and the other one drives you through the traffic.
Do people bring you things?
- Like, will you get a phone-a-pizza and that kind of thing? - Probably.
They're an enterprising people, the Chinese, I should imagine so.
But it would be very difficult. I suppose if you bought the pizza on a motorbike, you'd be all right.
But it'd be quite frustrating to order the pizza, you know,
"We're at the lights, so we're four days away."
I was quite impressed. I went to Las Vegas last year
and they have those billboard trucks
that say they can deliver a hooker to your room in 25 minutes,
but the pizza still takes half an hour.
So what I worked out is that you could,
if you had the resources, get the hooker to pick up the pizza for you.
APPLAUSE
That's absolutely brilliant.
Oh, wonderful. Wonderful.
- You still have to pay for extra toppings. - I was going to say.
Oh, heavens above. There are all kinds of... Yes. Very fine.
They're called phantom traffic jams,
when they are waves that flow backwards at 12mph.
So, you're a mosquito, it starts raining heavily, what happens next?
Umbrellas, they put umbrellas up.
That's a lovely idea.
They're flying about going like that, "Aah, I love it, aaah."
The problem they face is that one rain drop
is 50 times heavier than they are,
- so you'd imagine they're being knocked sideways by them. - Good.
- But, yes... And frankly good bloody riddance! - I bloody hate them!
But this is what happens...
- They just brush them aside. - Oh. - Oh.
And sometimes they actually ride on them.
We actually annoyingly don't have film of them riding on them,
and then they leap off just before they hit the ground and burst.
They very, sort of, elegantly cope with them.
Because they like wet weather...
I genuinely think that we have slept-walked
into being a mosquito nation.
- I don't remember mosquitoes. Gnats, yes. Swarms of gnats. - Yeah.
Mosquitoes were something you experienced abroad.
But now they say there's only one thing guaranteed,
if you're having a barbecue, to keep the mosquitoes away from the food -
that's hang a big bag of blood over by the neighbours' house,
and you'll find they'll always go that way.
But I don't remember mosquitoes being in this country...
Well, it's climate change.
- ..and I think the Daily Mail should look into it. - Yes.
You could obviously want to take the Tube to stay nice and dry
and avoid the problem of rain drops at all,
but there is, in fact, a special sub-species of mosquito
that lives only on the London Underground.
- Yeah? - Yeah, and it bites rats, dogs and people,
and it's called Culex pipiens molestus.
There it is.
It's not that big, don't worry. Please.
But I promise you, it is a horrible...
Would you like a seat? Thanks very much.
I've bitten four rats and I'm exhausted.
So, if it's raining is it best to run into the dry,
or to walk slowly into the dry?
In order to be less wet.
I've just realised how much of my life I've spent,
when it rains, trying to work this out.
Going, "If I run, am I running into more rain drops?"
Yes, exactly. That's the point.
"Or if I walk.... So what's going to make me wetter?"
And by the time I've stopped and figured that out, I'm drenched.
Yes.
- You run, but you run sideways... - Ah, yours is...
..in a very narrow shape.
- You're absolutely on the money here, Alan. - Really?
Is that right?
If... Yeah. If you're thin. So there are many, many variables.
Pull your tummy in, pull your tummy in.
It's all been thought through by a man called...
- So, fat people get wet? - No, well... - Fucking typical.
- That's a good title for a book... - It is. - Fat People...
Fat People Get Wet.
Isn't it a Randy Newman song?
# Fat people get wet... #
Professor Franco Bocci actually wrote a paper
in the European Journal Of Physics.
- He's a high-level physics man... - I love that journal.
Obviously it was sort of semi-jokey,
but it covered all the points you've made.
It recommends that if the rain is falling straight down,
or being blown towards you by the wind,
you should run as fast as you can until you reach shelter.
If the wind is behind you,
you should try and match the speed of the wind.
If the wind is from the side,
fat people should run as fast as they can.
Whereas very thin people might be better off walking.
The maths behind it is apparently fiendishly complex.
- If it's from the side, run as fast as you can. - Yeah.
Be pretty galling to be in that situation
and see a mosquito surfing past. Wheee!
So, now then, do you remember when snails were faster?
Yes.
Good. You probably do. You probably do.
- Incrementally, by such a small amount. - Yeah?
They're slowing down?
Snails are slowing down, yes.
It's like that awful joke about the builder who turns round and stamps on a snail and says,
"That bastard's been following me round all day."
What about the bloke...? The snail who knocks on the door
and the bloke picks it up and he goes...throws it away.
Then about two days later, he hears "bing-bong",
and he opens the door and the snail goes, "What?"
But they do... Apparently, if you throw them away,
they do make their way back to where you flung them from.
I'm sure I read that. I'm sure someone painted up some...
- Not thinking of cats? - Oh, yes.
Yes, yes.
- You're thinking grandparents. - Grandparents!
- No, I'm sure... - But you are right about snails,
and of course they're the easiest animals on earth to mark, virtually.
I mean, because of the shell.
So, some scientists from Chile took the common garden snail,
and what they did on each one is they measured their metabolism
by the amount of CO2 they emitted at rest.
And then they released them into the wild,
and then later they went out
and found some dead ones and some still-living ones.
And they found that the size of the snails
had no effect on their survival and thriving rates,
but the metabolic rate did.
The lower the snail's metabolic rate,
the greater the chance of survival.
It seems that nature is selecting for snails with a slower metabolism,
giving it more time to do that kind of thing.
- Oh, yeah, look at him. - Yeah. Now that's lazy. That is lazy.
I mean, say what you want.
Are they slowing down because they've taken up smoking?
- Is that why they're slower? - It's a good point.
I think it's evolutionary pressure is slowing them down, as it were,
selecting them for slowing.
I think I read somewhere that they were the first things we farmed.
Do you know? I think that rings a bell.
I have a feeling they were the first things we farmed because...
Well, because they're relatively easy to farm.
I mean, it's a quiet day for a snail shepherd, you know.
I would think, but they found evidence
from very, very early man that...
- That we'd farmed them, yeah. - You're absolutely right.
In fact, we covered this, didn't we, Alan? Do you remember?
- Is your memory stirring? - Yes, we did.
That's what's happened with QI now. You'll have people like me
coming on and going, "I'm sure I heard somewhere..."
I can't think where the hell it was.
So, if you want to catch a snail, there's no hurry.
The longer you leave it, the slower it'll be going.
Who are Europe's biggest swingers?
- The Germans. - The Germans?
- ALARM WAILS - Oh, dear. Here we go.
- Could be a long ride. - The Dutch.
- Dutch, that's an interesting one. - Ah, haha!
Damn and curses.
Don't say any Scandinavian countries, whatever you do.
- Very wise. - Do you mean swingers, like, that swing from things?
I literally do, yeah.
Or swingers that are married couples looking for some excitement?
Cunning you. You have seen through our ploy.
It is indeed the more literal former.
I don't know anything about that.
People who use swings in a sporting way. They have...
- I do about the other. - Yes, of course.
They have a national pastime, which is called kiiking,
- or kiiking, K-I-I-K. - Hungarians.
Oddly enough, it's one of only two other countries
that has a language which is based on the same language as Hungary.
- Iceland. - No. - Finland.
No, though Finland is one of them.
- It's Estonia, bizarrely. - Estonia.
Yeah, it's Estonia, Finland and Hungary
are part of the Finno-ugric linguistic family.
I had a UKIP leaflet came through the door
saying that's how they're going to get in, using big swings.
All of them, apparently, the whole lot -
they're all just going to swing in in one day.
- Well, they will take up space in our parks... - That's right.
Swinging in a way that we've never seen before. Behold kiiking.
They can swing better than we can.
You'll see something that we thought was impossible when we were children.
- You start off like that... - He's not going to go round the top, is he?
- He's not going to go over the top?! - Surely he couldn't.
- Look at that, big leg thrusts. - Well...
Big leg thrusts at just the right moment.
He could have someone's eye out.
Hitting the resonance of the pendulum just at the right moment.
- He's been to see Matilda. - Oops.
Ah, now he's higher. Come on, baby!
- There he goes! - Yes!
Wowzeroonie! And then nearly up then.
- So, that's the sport. - That's tremendous.
The interesting thing is, those arms, they are adjustable,
so everyone has a go. When they've all done it at that height,
you then extend the arms telescopically,
you bracket them up, and it's a bit like the high jump or something.
All those who can't do it drop out
until you've got a winner who's got the longest arm setting
and has done a complete 360 degree turn.
You'd have to raise the height of the axis though, wouldn't you?
- That would be very important. - Yes. - Otherwise...
- Oh, heavens, yes. - I mean, it's good, it's nice to win, but...
No. Exactly.
Well put. They look obviously immensely strong,
the thighs are very strong, getting that real sort of kick in
- because they haven't got Daddy pushing. - I'm imagining the thighs now.
Oh, stop it! Picture...
They're immensely strong.
Mates would push you when you were little, and they wouldn't stop.
I know! And you screamed!
Have you seen the one where kids put a moped on its side?
And they put the back wheel of the moped against the bottom
of the roundabout when there's some children on it, and then hit it.
- Yeah? - Oh. Oh, my word.
It is one of those, you can't look, but you also can't look away.
They start going and they are like, "Ah, this is... Aaargh!"
- And then come flying off. - Oh, my God!
- The thing happens that you thought would happen with the Earth. - Exactly, yeah, yeah.
And they say kids don't get out enough these days,
but there they are, on YouTube, being brilliant.
Developing new forms of torture for their fellows.
I think the thing about taking kids to the swings is that it is such
a weird mixture of incredibly stressful and really boring at the same time.
They could break their neck, but most of the time they don't,
and so you're just standing there going,
"God, I've been here half an hour, and it seems like, you know, a year."
The other thing is, if they fall over, is the dog poo.
If they transfer it to their eyes, they go blind.
Sandpits.
A sandpit, that was always full of turds and junkies' needles as well.
- And dog poo was chalky white, wasn't it? Which it no longer is. - Yes, pure.
That's because of the ingredients in the dog food.
Well, and the length of time it's left out.
Because now people pick it up and put it in a bag
and then put the bag back where the poo was anyway.
Who...? Who is doing that? Who are they?
Who are those people? Or hang it from a tree.
My children believe that bagged poo grows on trees.
I had to explain it to them. No wonder ash trees have surrendered.
Yes! Dear, oh, dear! Most unfortunate.
Anyway, the Estonians have taken swinging right over the top.
What happened to most of the people in Pompeii when Vesuvius erupted?
- # Moves like Jagger... # - Yes, Marcus?
They choked on the dust and gases,
but they were sort of set in dust before anything else touched them.
- Mmmm... - No?
- # Movies... # - Most of them got away.
Is the right answer. Yes.
Very good, yeah. Yeah.
APPLAUSE
A jolly encouraging and patronising round of applause to you, young Alan.
You're absolutely right. Spot on.
If we got all my patronising rounds of applause,
added them together...
Yes! It would probably tilt the earth off its axis.
Around 1,100 bodies were found at Pompeii.
But at least 15,000 people, which is 83% of the population, escaped.
But we know one person who did not escape, don't we, Alan?
Who, out of his natural curiosity, sat down on a chair and
tied a pillow to his head with a napkin and watched it and then suffocated.
- Yes. - And his name was...? Your old friend. - Pliny. - Pliny! Hooray!
- It's always Pliny. - It's always Pliny. - The elder?
- The elder. - Yes, not Pliny the Younger.
Certainly not Pliny the Wise.
Yes. Most of the ones you've seen of those bodies frozen, as it were, by the ash,
actually had holes in them as their flesh corrupted within,
and when they were discovered,
it was deemed a neat idea to inject them with plaster of Paris,
so almost all the ones you have seen are probably casts, or indeed,
casts of casts, because there are probably at least a dozen
of those around the world in different museums.
But they're a perfect representation.
Did you ever see it with the original cast? It was fabulous.
- Ha ha! Very good! Very good! - Fabulous. - Very good.
Now, what's the world's highest waterfall?
That is to say, has the longest drop.
- Is it in South America? - No.
- It's not Angel Falls? - Angel.
KLAXON
Oh, no. I've...soiled my clean sheet.
Oh, Jo!
- What a tragedy. - It is.
Its drop is 11,500 feet.
Angel Falls is only 3,212 feet.
But you think, "Well, what is it called, then?
- "What's its name?" The weird thing is, it doesn't have a name. - Oh.
- It's actually underwater... - Underwater.
..between Greenland and Iceland.
Why does it count as a waterfall, though,
when there's loads of water there anyway?
Because it's a huge current of cold water dropping down,
and it is a waterfall within water.
- In Iceland all the other water is warm, isn't it? - By comparison, very.
It's why the ice cap disappearing matters,
because the ice cap is incredibly cold water which is then very dense,
and it drops very fast to the ocean bed,
which draws warm water up, straight past us.
If that process stops, then instead of being two or three degrees warmer and having peach trees on our lawn,
we will actually probably sink back into an ice age.
Have you been talking to David Attenborough?
No, I've been there. I went with a research vessel.
One of the best things that happened on that trip,
we reached the east coast of Greenland and went into a fjord,
and they wanted to film me floating between icebergs.
I got in this survival suit, got in the sea,
and as I was climbing down the ladder, this guy says,
"Oh, there's a seal in the water."
And I thought, "That's good, it'll make the film really exciting. Brilliant."
And as I let go of the ladder, like this, you can hear him say,
"Hang on, that's not a seal, it's a bear."
And you can see this mother bear,
mercifully with two cubs on her back, otherwise
she'd have been a lot quicker, is going across the bay like this.
- And then she goes... - HE SNIFFS
- In my direction. - Two cubs to feed. - In my direction.
- Well, indeed, that's... - I must Brig-stock my larder.
Exactly. That's why she was crossing what would have been a frozen fjord,
she was looking for any ice on which she could hunt
and feed those cubs, and then we watched her climb a mile or so
up and down into the next fjord to find that one isn't frozen either.
- So, yes, very bleak and very beautiful and amazing. - Poignant.
But this... This doesn't have a name, right?
No, weirdly, it doesn't. The QI Waterfall.
- The QI Waterfall, yes. - The Alan Davies Waterfall.
The Alan Davies Cascade.
- That would be a good name, wouldn't it? - Now you're talking. - Yeah.
That's a haircut as well, isn't it?
- LAUGHTER - Very good.
It's also a position.
Oh, dear. Oh, dear.
Can't do it any more - I need support.
The unnamed QI Waterfall
carries at least 175 million cubic feet of cold water per second.
- It's the equivalent of 2,000 Niagaras at peak flow. - Wow.
Yeah. So, what's the world's biggest river?
And where is it?
- Is it underwater? - KLAXON
It's a nice thought.
- Amazon. - Oh! - KLAXON
- Hang on. There you go. - Nile. - Nile? Well, you just...
KLAXON
- When you said biggest? - Yeah. - What do you mean? Widest, longest?
- Carries the most water. - Carries the most water.
Well, you're going to be so angry. It's in the sky.
- They're called atmospheric rivers. - Oh!
Oh, now, I've got to say,
sometimes, on behalf of the audience, I hate this programme.
APPLAUSE
I agree.
I agree and I'm really...
This is hurting you far more than it hurts me. No...
They're known as atmospheric rivers.
They're vast ribbons of water vapour moving water around the world.
They appear in different places, different times.
2,000 km long.
Are they the ones that are perfectly timed
to coincide with bank holidays?
Yes, absolutely. In fact you're right. They're the ones.
2,000 kilometres long and only a few kilometres wide,
but although they cover less than 10% of the globe,
four or five of them
- contain 90% of all the world's water vapour at a time. - Wow.
So the world's biggest rivers are in the sky - I'm sorry about that.
But seriously, name the world's biggest river that isn't in the sky.
Go on, Alan. Go on, Al.
An actual river this time?
- That isn't in the sky. No, that isn't in the sky. - Yes, but...
Is it one of those ones that Alan's mentioned already?
- Do you think, maybe? - No.
There is a river under the Amazon called the Rio Hamza,
and it is actually bigger than the Amazon itself.
- It was only discovered in 2011. - The Rio Hamza?
- Yes, exactly, the Abu Hamza. - Is it sort of hook-shaped?
It is a really sad coincidence, I'm afraid.
- A river hated by the tabloids. - It's hated by the tabloids.
Yes, they collected data from 241 abandoned deep wells
and it runs 6,000 km, like the Amazon above it,
but is up to four times wider.
And that's 200 to 400 km wide.
- How far down is it? - 4km beneath the Amazon itself.
I mean, some people would say it's an aquaflow,
but it actually flows horizontally, like a river.
- And it is called "hio", which is "river flows". - Do things live in it?
There must be organisms.
No matter how crap a place is,
Attenborough always goes, "Even here...
- "..something very stupid..." - Then something comes past going...
"..has built its house."
- ..like the Muppets. - Yeah. He'll go anywhere, won't he?
- The organism Muppet. - Yeah, yeah. - He's got a little light on his head.
It's true.
And here they are mating.
It's absolutely true.
So, the biggest river that isn't in the sky is underground.
So, what's the world's biggest animal? Alan?
- Oh, don't, get me started. - Oh, it's...whatever you say...
# I've got the moves... #
- It's the blue whale. - Is the right answer! - Oh, you bastard!
APPLAUSE
Poor Alan.
- Oh, it's so unfair. - No-one's allowed to say "blue whale" except me.
It's the biggest animal that's ever lived on the Earth,
- bigger than any dinosaur. - Absolutely correct, yeah.
- Magnificent things. - Tongue as big as a bus.
- And we know, we know... - Alan's so annoyed.
- We know next to nothing about them. - You're right.
We don't know where they go, or anything.
I know where they go, I know exactly,
I know everything about them.
They go on the minus side of the debit ledger, don't they?
- Yes, exactly. - Their tongue is the size of a Mini Cooper.
Or is it their heart?
Oh, poor Alan, everyone's feeling so sorry for you.
But they are... No, they are mysterious and extraordinary
and beautiful animals.
- And they're huge. - Oh, fuck off!
- You tried. - It's been waiting for me for years.
You tried, is all I can say.
And it is of course the blue whale. Don't you listen to anything?
Now we're going to end.
How can you knock a building down with a feather?
Like the Shard, for example.
You could knock it down - I could knock it down,
if I prepared things correctly - with a whisk of a feather.
- Not using any electronics. - A very, very large feather.
No, using... I've actually got the feather here that I'm going to use.
It's nice and pink, so it stands out.
That would be the feather I would use.
Do you tickle the architect while he's doing...
Coming up with the plans, so that they're all off? Like that.
- And it falls over. - And then they make it. "Oh, it didn't work."
"Well, Stephen was tickling me with a feather."
A cunning thought, but no. This is the existing standing Shard.
- And you could reduce that to rubble with a feather? - Yeah.
Shall I show you? I'll show you the principle.
This is my little template to show me where I have to go.
You see, I've got them down here and here's my big... Oh! My big load.
- Oops. - Steady. - There we go.
Now, what we've got here is,
in varying sizes, kind of dominos.
You can see. And the idea is
that each one is just 1½ times bigger than the one before it.
And it may seem like a very little amount,
but what we're going to do is make a really loud bang with this.
What, is that meant to be like the Shard?
Dominos, it's the domino effect.
- You would aim this at the Shard... - Yes.
..and you would only need 24 of these.
Each one just 1½ times bigger than the one before it -
that's the point.
You'd only need 24 and the last one would utterly destroy it.
- Really? - Blimey. - It's the exponential increase of mass,
just by going 1½ times bigger.
It's all right. It can only fall, yeah.
I've got a splinter off my broom now.
Careful, careful. Right, here we go.
We've just made the security services' job that much more hard.
- You can bring down the Shard... - Here we go. So...
Who needs to hijack aircraft any more? QI's given it away.
So you imagine this increasing up to just 24
and you'd start with one movement of a feather,
and all the potential energy stored in these
and all the mass of them like that,
and you just have that effect, like wow...
- Wow! - There you go.
- Excellent. - That's pretty good, isn't it? - Yeah.
That's brilliant. Bravo.
Where did you come by such a camp feather?
The awful thing was, I was asked to choose a colour
and I immediately went, "I think this one stands out."
It is a lovely feather.
There's a bird of paradise somewhere
having a very problematic flirting season.
Well, we've run out of energy for this week.
Let's see the movement on the scoreboard.
And oh, my word, isn't it fantastic?
Clear winner - I want to say "as always", cos he's so brilliant.
It's Danny Banker with plus eight!
Thank you very much. I thank you very much.
In fantastic second place with minus five, Marcus Brigstocke.
- One mistake, Marcus, one mistake. - Yeah, I know, I know, I know.
A very close third, with minus eight, Jo Brand.
You must have minus 47, I think.
But poor wee soul, with minus 56, in fourth place, it's Alan Davies.
Whoo!
Well, my thanks to Marcus, Danny, Jo and Alan.
And it's goodbye from me, and adore each other. Good night.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd