APPLAUSE
Gooooooood evening, good evening, good evening, good evening
and welcome to QI, for a show that is unashamedly kinky.
Joining me on the top shelf at the newsagent's tonight are...
dominatrix Janet Street-Porter.
APPLAUSE
Nun-on-the-run Sandi Toksvig.
APPLAUSE
Naughty vicar Johnny Vegas.
APPLAUSE
And kinky Tinky Winky, Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE
Right, but before we get down to business, I want you all to give me the horn.
Janet goes...
BUZZER: You've been a very naughty boy!
Sandi goes...
WHIP CRACKS
Johnny goes...
SCREAM
And Alan goes...
MUSIC: "Match Of The Day Theme"
Whatever floats your boat. Now, on with our first question.
Describe the technique of the world's greatest kisser.
- Was there a contest? - There was. - An actual winner?
- There was, and there was a winner. Yeah. - Was it a human, or an animal?
It was a human.
Have you been kissed by an animal, ever? Janet?
Mmmmm... A donkey, maybe.
- I've kissed a... - But only in a non-sexual... - You didn't know?
Do you know, a tiny, tiny bit of bile came up in the back of my throat.
This was a competition, and as you might imagine,
if cliche were piled upon cliche, which nationality would win?
- Scandinavia? - The Italians. Italian.
The Scandinavians, the Italians. No, the...
- The French? - Les Francais. Oui. - Oh, it was the French. - It was the Francais.
- I'm thinking it's the Scottish. - Have you found them particularly good osculators?
No, I just did a quick survey in my head.
And I could only remember four countries.
And it certainly wasn't the Australians.
No. No. No.
His name was Andre Brule,
he was a famous actor in the first part of the 20th century.
A rather stylish actor. And there was a competition.
It was just after the First World War, and it was in Biarritz.
80 participants as far away as Russia and America took part.
And American kisses were described as...? Flaccid.
- Oh. - I would have said forceful.
Forceful, no, you would have thought. Russians were eruptive.
Italians - burning, which you'd think was good.
Ardent is another word for burning, ardent kisses.
I'm still on "erupting" kisses, what are those like?
- I've no idea. Volcanic. - Yes.
That was the bit of sick in the back of your throat.
That's not where you think you're getting a normal kiss
and they stick their tongue out and you weren't expecting it?
Oh, that can happen, yeah, I know.
Or you kiss something and you put your hands up and you shout, "Bingo!"
- But I'm afraid the word that was described for English kisses is almost all too predictable. - Cheap.
Oh, wet.
- Frigid. - Wet. - Moist. - Frigid? - Tepid. - Tepid.
GROANING
I know, wonderful! How disappointed as a nation we are.
Spanish were vampirish or "vampeerish", however you would say it.
Vampire-like. But the winner, who,
although he was a Frenchman, French kisses were described as chaste.
- Which is most surprising. - Really? Because French kissing is... - French kissing itself is far from chaste.
- ..is cataglysm. - It's cataclysmic. Exactly.
- The actual word for it is "cataglysm". - Is that what they call it?
Yes, and it's something pigeons do, bizarrely. Who knew?
- When you see two pigeons billing and cooing... - Cooing.
Yes, they're actually sticking their tongue down each other's...
- Not swapping pigeon milk, which is...? - No, it's better to say to somebody
if you want a French kiss, "Do you mind if we do a bit of catagylsm?"
- They're bound to say yes, because they've no idea what it is. - You may be thinking of cataglottism?
- Cataglottism! - Which is the tongue, the glot. Cataclysm is a disaster.
- No, I think you misheard me, it's my Danish accent. - Oh, I see, right! Cataglottism.
Can I ask Sandi a question about the pigeons?
- Yes. - Do they have sex through their mouths?
- No, no, no, it's... - Well, how do they have sex, just by the way?
- The normal way. - In the normal way, they have a...
The normal way, yes, is this news to you?
I know you've been married a few times, but you don't have children, do you?
No, I don't have children, but I've never had sex with a pigeon
- either, I just couldn't see which bit... - Can I just say that...
Call yourself a Londoner!
The pleasure of Janet questioning two homosexuals on this subject is just a...
- Yes, it's true. - I'd love to see you do a nature show.
"They're doing it! They're doing it!" No, they're feeding.
Do you have any familiarity with anything kinky, though?
Yeah, I once had a boyfriend who said he wanted me to tie him up
and be a dominatrix, and he booked a suite in a hotel
and ordered a load of drinks,
and just as the butler brought the drinks, he got out a dildo and
a pair of handcuffs, so I had to sit on both sex toys at the same time.
- Oh, my God! - Anyway... - Sit on the handcuffs?
I sat on everything! I didn't want me to be associated with all this hardware.
- No. Oh, to sit on them to hide them. Sorry. - Yes!
LAUGHTER
Sorry. Were they furry handcuffs, the...?
No, they were normal ones, and in the morning when he was asleep,
- I just handcuffed his foot to the end of the bed and left. - Wow!
You shouldn't have made him finish your book first.
Hello?
- Is it just men in the kissing competition? - Yes, it was.
- I suppose they wouldn't have had women showing off their kissing technique. - No.
- That would have been thought to be appalling. - Not in those days, exactly.
- So what was he kissing, the back of his hand? - No, women, but HE was kissing THEM, it wasn't
- a mutual kiss, if you see what I mean. - Oh.
He GAVE them kisses. The idea was, he would grab their waist and push himself down.
The whole thing was almost like a sort of ballet dance. It was not about the actual sort of long snog,
it was about the elegance with which you did it.
And that's where he won his awards.
And there's a very famous photograph,
you probably know, of a similar kiss, which is
amazingly evocative of a great victory, VJ Day.
- Oh, the one with the sailor and the... - The sailor and the woman in New York, which is hugely famous.
And in 2012, that recently, they were reunited.
They're both alive, her name is Greta Friedman.
And he is George Mendonsa. They had never met.
He just simply saw her in the street, swooped her up and
kissed her and the photographer got virtually the photograph of the...
- Didn't she rather famously slap him afterwards? - She was not pleased at all, no. Absolutely. - No.
But when they had a reunion in 2012, they were very friendly, and she realised it was a fabulous moment.
- He was swept up in the joy of VJ Day. - So did they shag?
I think not, if she slapped him afterwards, although you probably...
- No, I mean on the reunion. - No, that doesn't mean...
- On the reunion! - That's my point. You know, when there's no, you know, Victory-anywhere-day
and you're just speed-dating and you do that.
Then you're not likely to be thanked. Yes.
No, you're likely to end up in a court with Injuries 4U lawyers.
Yeah, exactly.
According to Theocritus in the city of Megara,
they had a version of the Olympic Games where there was a kissing competition,
which was only between boys. Yeah, I know. I know.
- "Too late," they cry. - They had to overpower one another.
- No, no, it was... - Back to the Greco-Roman snogging.
No, it's those who so sweetliest presses lip upon lip.
Sweetliest.
- If they'd had that in the Olympics, I'd have watched. - Yes!
And they returned laden with garlands for their mothers.
So, if you win the boys' kissing competition, you get garlands,
which interestingly, in Greek, is "stefan" - Stephen.
Just thought I'd mention that.
That's what my name means, and you give your mother
lots of flowers, saying, "I won the kissing competition with boys."
And she goes, "Darling, we have to talk."
"Just don't tell your father." So there you go.
The world's greatest kisser was a French actor named Andre Brule,
but who was the most shocking kisser of all time?
- Oh! - Oh, hello. There we've got two, they're probably called...
- Britney Spears and Madonna. - Madonna.
That is, you can just see, is what pigeons do. That's...
Oh, yes, yeah.
There's only one marshmallow left.
LAUGHTER
I've only ever had one screen kiss, and it was with the wonderful American comic Mike McShane.
- Oh, yes, terrific. - Mike McShane. - You did a sitcom. - We did a sitcom together.
He knew I was very nervous about the kiss, because I wanted it
to be...I didn't want it to be comic, I wanted it to be real.
There's always that worry when you're doing a comedy.
And he knew this and so I was very anxious,
and the very first time he leant down and he kissed me and passed me an anchovy with his tongue!
I was less nervous after that.
Yeah, I had a film where I had to kiss Jude Law
and Ioan Gruffudd, it was awful.
And they were nude. Oh, God! Misery.
But anyway, shocking kisses, that's...
I suppose shocks some people because it's lesbiotic, but...
- "Lesbiotic"? - Well, yes.
I must go home and give the good news.
- They had a shocking kiss in Star Trek. - Really?
There's an episode where Captain Kirk kisses Uhura, Lieutenant Uhura.
- So it's interracial. - Oh, very shocking.
- And that was not thought to go well in the southern affiliates. - Right.
So they shot it so that one of them had their back to camera.
You knew they were kissing but you couldn't actually see it
just in case down south they didn't kick off.
- So are we talking about a screen kiss, or are we talking...? - An electric shock.
- Thank you, Alan. - Is it something electrical to do with it? - Yes. The Venus Electrificata.
It's one of those things, whenever you invent a new technology,
people experiment with it in extraordinary ways,
and of course electricity, when the power to generate electricity
first arrived, people tried all kinds of exciting things with it.
And one of them was to suspend a woman such that she was not
earthed, and then get men who WERE earthed to kiss her,
and you can see, he's winding round there in order to create
an electric current, and you kissed them and you get a tingling feeling.
Well, when I was a kid, I grew up in the States, we used to have electric shock parties.
- You had very cheap sort of... - You put your tongue on batteries?
No, you had cheap nylon carpet and we'd turn the lights out
and everybody would stand and rub their feet on the carpet, and then go, "Now!"
And you'd all kiss and there'd be a little spark.
Yes, we used to do that. At prep school, we had an area which
was cut off for the ponies to graze, with an electric fence. Sorry.
You'd grab the electric fence and the shock would go through,
like a wave, through the whole line of us.
It was kind of rather fun.
There was also Stephen Gray and his amazing "orphan boy",
who he hung down, and put a current through him.
And the current attracted various objects,
and this became so popular, he actually made a kit.
You had to provide your own boy, but...
But otherwise you had the kit with various glass rods
and things like that, that the electricity would pick up.
But as with all new inventions of any kind, people are going to try...?
- Electric cock. - Yes.
And it was the discoverer of ultraviolet light, Johann Ritter,
decided he would try...in the early days there was what was known as
a voltaic pile, ie a battery, and he basically tried it on his groin.
And he described it,
"His organ began in a state of medium swelling."
What we call a semi, I guess.
LAUGHTER
"He wrapped it in a piece of cloth," I hope you're taking notes at home,
"moistened with lukewarm milk," that's lukewarm.
Try, poke your elbow in it and if it doesn't burn and it's not cold, like with a baby's bath.
OK, you're following? You're taking notes, I'm doing it slow enough.
"Then delicately you touch the wire from the positive pole to the
"cloth and with the other hand, you close the circuit.
"A shock jolted him, followed by a pleasant tingling.
"The swelling continued.
"Warmth spread from his groin and then finally, consummation."
What kind of sex was he having?!
- Electric sex. - Yeah, but I mean before that. - Oh, before that!
"You're a lovely person, it's not you, it's me.
"I just like dipping me testicles in warm milk
"and then running a wire from me because... No! No! It's great.
"Christmas was fantastic,
"but this might spoil it for the rest of the family."
- Aren't you going to do a display for us? - I'm not going to do a display!
- Please! - I thought you were going to say "demonstration".
Boil a kettle and throw it on your genitals.
Don't try this at home.
You're sitting in your house and the lights start flickering
- and you know he's at it next door with the milk cloth. - Yes!
I mean, I'm sorry, but...
Channel 5's gone off, it'll be him next door with the milk cloth.
You know how every Christmas they always say,
when all the lights go down, and you can't cook your turkey, it's because we're all watching telly.
It's not, because all over Britain people are...
- Are trying lukewarm milk on their... - They've got things, milk on their willies.
- It's all going on. - Yes? - I shared a dressing room for a while with a very short actor,
and I came into the dressing room one evening. He wasn't expecting me,
he was completely naked and he was trying to get his entire genitalia up into the basin.
I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "I thought it was a good idea, I thought it was a good idea."
I said, "What?" I'd got some muscle heat-rub.
- Ow! - He thought, "Well, it feels so nice on your leg..."
It burns! The men are wincing already in the audience.
Ah. I'm sure Alan has many similar stories to tell.
Here's a really weird one.
In 2005, a boy was admitted to hospital with two neodymium magnets,
the strongest permanent magnets known to us,
trapping a fold, shall we say, of his penis.
He claimed that he had fallen down,
or they had fallen down his trousers while he was playing with them.
But they were so strong that they didn't know what to do.
Magnets can be demagnetized by heating them
to a very high temperature, which wouldn't be very kind.
Or they could be hammered apart.
So they were faced with a real medical problem,
to save this boy's future, as it were.
So they tried alternative solutions, such as bigger magnets.
In the end they managed to remove them by "shearing the magnets away from each other, moving them
"perpendicular to the force of attraction."
So, don't try those magnets at home.
Anyway, let's move on. What's going on here?
- Oh, are they kissing fish? - They're not...are they not aware there's a piece of glass?
- Kissing fish? - They're fighting. - Are they fighting? - They're fighting.
- They're called kissing fish because it's what it looks like. - That may well be, but they don't kiss.
- But they're not kissing, they're fighting. - Exactly right. Gourami is their name.
They don't kill each other by doing that, but one will get knackered and sometimes dies of exhaustion.
It's never utterly fatal.
It looks like the end of a balloon, doesn't it?
It does, doesn't it? It's just like the end of a balloon.
And what other fighting fish do we know?
- Oh, the... - The what-y fighting fish?
Well, they call them Samurai fighting fish, but...
Not Samurai, no. Siamese fighting fish.
Very popular, they're used like cock fighting as a sport.
They keep each separate in a little, just alone in a tank
so it doesn't waste its energy by seeing another male.
There's another version and they have little swords.
Well, they're really vicious fighters,
and the one that loses just flees for its life, basically,
but you bet on them, essentially, it's like cock fighting used to be.
They're not the fish that eat all that spare skin
- off your feet, are they? - Oh, supposedly, that's right. - Have you done that, Janet?
- Have you done that? - No, I'm a bit worried that if I put my feet in hot water with the little fish...
This is for pedicures, where they put these tiny fish in, and they're supposed to nibble your dead skin.
I'd be more worried that they didn't want my feet.
- Yes, that would be such an insult. - You put your feet in and they all go for the side again.
Ugh!
And get little mouth washes.
LAUGHTER
I've done it. At first it's really strange,
and then when you get used to it,
- what's stranger is 15 people filming you. - Ah.
- Whilst you've got your feet in a tank going, "Ooh". - You did it on a TV thing did you?
No, no, I just did it in a shopping centre.
- And 15 passers-by decided... - Yeah, just went, "Oh, look..." - There's Johnny Vegas having his feet...
"There's that Johnny Vegas getting off on putting his feet in water."
Yeah. They have a lung-like organ in their bodies, these fighting fish.
Which means that they can breathe air.
And actually, if we had enough supersaturated water with oxygen,
we would be able to breathe water.
And some people believe this is the future of the human race,
you know, for diving and space travel,
and things like that, that we actually breathe water.
You do know after this I'm going to go home and drown in the bath,
- don't you? - No, don't! I'm going to write out a list...
I take in bits of what you say to me and then guarantee my family
it's safe, "Stephen said I can breathe underwater."
There are certain earlier things...
I am the future!
There are some earlier things I've recommended that you can
certainly do, but not the breathing underwater. But the lukewarm milk is fine, you can try that.
- Yeah. - I'd rather...
I'd rather just drink it.
What?! Oh, the milk.
Right. Sorry.
God, yes, I understand. So, good.
When gourami appear to be kissing, they're actually fighting.
What's so attractive about ordinary people?
Not the movie, which is a very fine movie, of course. Mary Tyler Moore.
It's them massive cars they drive, the... Buses.
Ordinary people drive buses.
- What, you mean ordinary people are on buses? - Yeah. - Is it symmetry?
Well, it's not quite symmetry, this is known as koinophilia,
and it seems that if you take two not very good-looking people
and merge their image, people are more likely to be attracted to them.
And Galton, who was a famous criminologist and was interested in the appearance of criminals, thought
he would try and find the absolute criminal type by taking photographs
of criminals and merging them and merging them, and he was astonished
to find the more he did so, the more pleasant they appeared to be.
So you average-out people's looks
and we are more attracted to that, it seems.
We've actually done a little merge of some of our friends
around the table, just to show you how attractive you look
when you put them together.
- Ta da! - Oh, yeah!
It's Jean from Tenerife.
Oh, no, we look like a tennis player.
You do look like a tennis player, with an open piano lid.
It looks very nice. And let's try the other two.
Oh! Oh!
- Serial killer! - Let's not have children.
- The eyes... - Police are currently looking for...
There's something a bit odd about the eyes there.
But it's from your photograph, Johnny.
We just look like the biggest idiot in the world.
I think someone took your photograph and did one of those,
- you know, red-eye things. - No, it looks like someone who walked in
and caught his parents having sex and they didn't stop.
He's the sort of man the police say, "Oh, he was quiet, always kept to himself."
Yes, he was a loner.
He was just a loner, perfectly nice.
He used to cry a lot at Christmas.
Well, as I say, it's called koinophilia, and it is this theory.
Recent research, however, from the Australian National University,
suggests that good-looking men earn 22% more than not good-looking men.
Yeah, because they're attractive because they're from Australia.
No, within Australia. They're all Australian. Within Australia.
The 22 better-looking percentage.
A study of female golfers also found that they were better, they shot
lower scores, and the theory is that they were more likely to have
offers of sponsorship, and therefore played that much harder
knowing how much money they would make.
Surely it's about confidence.
If you look in the mirror and you think, "Wow, I'm a dish,"
then you get out there and think, "And I can play golf."
- Yeah, I suppose that's right. - But if you look in the mirror and weep...
- And think, "What a dog." - I look in the mirror and I like it.
- And so you bloody well should. - I never look in a mirror.
My partner's much taller than me and she put them all up,
so I've never seen...
I have windows at street level and I just pretend I'm different people.
Just walk past at the same time and go, "Looking good today.
"Let's get out to that meeting quick while I've got that nice suit on."
Then I realise I'm wearing a bin bag.
Anyway, moving on.
Now, what would you keep in one of these? I have one.
There it is.
Is it a...
- A penis. - Yeah, a penis is the right answer, Alan.
It usually is the right answer.
- Is it from the...? - Is it hollow? - Is it an African...
It's hollow, otherwise you'd have trouble keeping it in.
- Is it from Africa, Stephen? - It's not from Africa, no.
- Where's it from? - Croydon.
- It's from Papua New Guinea. - It's what anteaters wear when they're going to rob a post office.
"It's just that little bit of disguise...is that you, Frank?"
"No, no."
I've been to Papua New Guinea and I've seen it...
- They can be different sizes. - ..wibbly-wobbling about.
They can be like this. But, oddly enough, they are not worn for status, they don't deliberately
have a big thick one like that in order to suggest greater manhood.
They often have a thin,
rather strangely trailing-away one with a few hairs on the end.
Like this, exactly.
That would really confuse Bugs Bunny.
"I'm also de wabbit!
"Or maybe I just wannabe fwiends."
- What's it made of? - It's a gourd.
It's a penis gourd, and it's a sort of relative of the squash family, I think, isn't it?
- I went to Papua New Guinea and... - Amazing place.
It's fantastic, and I was taken to this remote island on a boat
and then they painted me with war paint and presented me
with a pig and a pile of yams.
- Oh. - Pig, and then they did these gourd dances to me.
- To, really, right at you. - Right at me, yes. I was really, really impressed.
"They dined on yams and clams and human hams and vintage coconut wine,
"the taste of which was filthy, but the after-effects divine,"
- as Noel Coward put it. - I feel just like that in the taxi rank in Wigan.
But amongst the tribes that have these kotekas,
as they're called, are, in case there's any members watching,
and I wouldn't want to leave you out, the Lani, the Mee,
the Amungme, the Kamoro, the Yali, the Damal and the Moni.
And the government tried to make them illegal and sent them all clothing.
And for so many generations, they'd gone without clothing
and been totally nude, except for these penis gourds,
the clothing actually gave them rashes and all they do now is
they use shorts sometimes to put on their heads.
But they continue to go naked.
I love the fact that when you read the tribes out, you went,
"You know, not to offend anyone."
That would be a brilliant Points Of View when they turn up.
Yes, it would. Yes.
"You missed out my tribe!"
Yes, in an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable programme, exactly.
So, why is it so difficult
to research the sexual habits of penguins?
They're very private.
- It's not really that they're private. - It's cold.
- It's cold, certainly. - Is it because it's graphic?
Well, it used to be very difficult to describe
because we used to be very prudish.
Yes, I mean, Scott's trip to the Antarctic, Levick,
the scientist, wrote it all out in Greek,
he was so appalled by what they were up to.
Absolutely right. He wrote it in Ancient Greek,
knowing that only a gentleman would be able to translate it.
George Murray Levick, the naturalist on Scott's ill-fated expedition,
and he discovered what he called the astonishing depravity
of penguin behaviour, which includes rampant homosexuality.
Not just homosexuality, but rampant.
To be fair, it's Antarctica - there's nothing else to do!
Necrophilia and, I'm sorry to say, paedophilia.
And on their night off, they dress as pandas.
It just muddies the water.
So he wrote his account in Ancient Greek, absolutely right,
so that an educated English gentlemen
would be the only person to understand it.
The penguins in the London Zoo, are they doing all this
- in full view of school parties? - They may well be.
- These particular species... - You've got to have...
You've got to go to the zoo a lot before you go,
"Not Kevin!" Generally, you just go, "There's penguins."
I'm just worried whether there's a warning outside the penguin enclosure.
How would you phrase that for visiting school parties?
"Warning! Penguin might be buggering auntie, uncle, granddad..."
Stephen, maybe they can't tell, right, and I just... Don't go mad,
the animal rights people or anyone else, but maybe if we drug them
and sex them and then we put tiny bikinis on some of them.
Then the grown-up penguins
can tell who they should be having sex with and who they shouldn't.
Not bikinis. A nun's habit.
That would confuse the priests!
But the Adelie penguins were the kind this man looked at,
and it's now thought that his idea of necrophilia was probably wrong.
- They were asleep. - Yeah, they were!
Was it not that a female lying there dead with their eyes like that
looked a bit like a "come hither" look to a penguin?
Yes, they can't tell the difference between a frozen dead one
and a living one. They look as if they're coming on to you if they're lying there dead.
I've had that experience quite a few times.
It's actually very hard to sex a penguin,
- by which I mean to determine its gender. - Give it that stick.
Not for them. They seem to know instinctively,
either by smell or some other thing.
One of the common ways of being pretty sure,
assuming it's a straight penguin, is muddy footprints on the female
tells you that it's a female because it's been walked on by the male.
The feminists are going to love this bit. Footprints on a woman.
That's for sex.
It's quite Almodovar, though, isn't it, if it's high heels.
But I don't think it's high heels in the case of penguins.
You don't THINK?
I was trying to be, you know, not too assertive in my knowledge.
Their life is astounding.
I mean, you kind of think they've drawn the short straw in life.
The miserable cold they have to endure for so long.
Is it true they used to fall over during the Falklands? Is that true?
Lots of planes came over, which they hadn't seen before,
and they went, "Whoa!"
- It's unfortunately a myth. It's not true. - Oh, it's a lovely story.
It's a nice story, but it's not true.
Can you imagine in the bird world if you introduced postcodes?
Penguins would move.
- Yes, they would! SW3. - Somewhere warmer and bigger wings.
I don't think they would want to move,
because they've got flippers and flat feet.
- They need ice to move around on. - They're born for it.
They're not going to say, "I'm going to move to the Himalayas,"
- or, "I'm going to move somewhere..." - You know what, Janet?
You haven't thought this through, because one,
they wouldn't know what a postcode is.
And two, they can't fly!
And I doubt one of them getting on a plane,
by themselves, acting casual after raping all the family.
I would imagine they'd be on a no-flight...
APPLAUSE
I'm just saying, in an ideal world, given the choice, the penguins
would go, "We've had the short end of the deal." That's all I'm saying.
Don't turn this into Question Time!
- It's like being in a home for the elderly. - It really is.
They keep taking me stuff!
All right, all right, whatever...
LAUGHTER
Are we having fish?!
- Wheel him into the sun lounge... - Shut up, Mr Penguin!
So, how did a bunch of choir boys plan to drive Hitler mad?
We've been very literal there. There's Hitler in a straitjacket.
It's a, it's a plot. I do know this.
- Yeah? - Porn. - Pornography. - Pornography, they were going to drive him mad with pornography.
- That's absolutely right. - Was the plan. - Yeah.
They had groups called the Cowboys, who were behind enemy lines,
and the Choir Boys were the people in Washington.
- That's right. - And they came up with bonkers ideas.
All kinds of suggestions. I mean, we did too, bouncing bombs, ridiculous
and yet that was one that worked.
And Churchill chose the date precisely in May 1943,
when the floods were at their full height in the dams
and he was in Washington, so that if it worked he could announce it.
And it would be the first real invasion into German territory
that caused a massive difference.
And Lord Cherwell, his scientific adviser, said to him, reportedly,
"But what if it doesn't work?"
And Churchill said, "Then no-one will ever hear anything about it."
And that's the point about these mad schemes.
There were all these really zany plans. But most of them we don't know about.
And a lot of them were covered up and probably we never will. We know about the ones that work.
This is one that didn't work but we do know about.
- But this was smut. They were going to drop smut. - Basically, it was pornography.
- All over Germany, and... - Well, particularly to drive Hitler mad, over Berchtesgaden,
his residence.
So leaflets were going to cascade down from the sky.
- That would drive him mad. - Absolutely.
The US Army Air Corps described it as insane and refused to do it.
But it did have an important role to play, pornography.
And of course, these were ones that the Germans
dropped on the Allies, because they did the same thing.
Germans and Japanese.
We didn't have much of a porno war effort, in Britain.
We were squeamish. The senior officers,
one was quoted saying he would, "Rather lose the war than take part".
Which is simply extraordinary. Air Marshal Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris didn't approve,
said it was just like sending them free lavatory paper.
What does it say about our troops that the German troops were willing
to drop the pornography and ours are going, "Well, I'm not giving it away.
- "Keep it Frank, we'll sell..." - I like to think it was a more decent reason than that, Johnny.
"We'll sell it when we get back."
But dropping leaflets was a big thing, the first the Danes knew of
the Germans invading was that the leaflets were dropping over...
Yes, leaflet dropping was a huge thing. Absolutely right.
It was what's called a black op, we'd call it now.
Do you know, you must know, Stephen, about the eavesdropping cat
- that the CIA came up with. - I've heard about it.
The most brilliant idea.
They got this cat and they inserted a transmitter
and the aerial was in its tail, and this was in Moscow,
and the idea was that it would walk past Russian spies
sitting on a bench and it would overhear.
And they spent millions on this cat, and it was terrific
and they'd worked it all out, and on its very first outing in the park,
it got hit by a taxi.
- It was known as Acoustic Kitty. - That's right, Acoustic Kitty.
Poor Acoustic Kitty.
The bouncing bomb would be a war crime now, wouldn't it,
- for the civilians killed? - There were a lot of civilians killed.
I don't know if it was a legitimate war target or not, in total war. I don't think...
- I think since they've agreed. - There was a good story I came across
when I was writing a script for the Dam Busters
and there was one of the members of one of the crews which
crashed after dropping its bomb, and was picked up by the Germans.
And they were treated pretty well, and one of them said,
"Well, what do you need? You know, according to the laws of, you know,
"the Geneva Convention, you know, are you thirsty?" They said a glass of water would be lovely.
And he said, "Are you joking? You have just destroyed our water supply."
And that was the first time the guy realised that one of the bombs had actually worked.
And that's how he found out that the Mohne had gone, because he was
saying there is no water, which is quite sweet in its own peculiar way.
- Anyway... - HE HUMS DAMBUSTERS THEME
One mad idea to win the war was to use pornography to drive
Hitler mad, as if he wasn't already.
So, what is 80% of the Kama Sutra about? Back to kinkiness.
- Hygiene. - Hygiene!
- Gymnastics. - Intercourse.
Oh! Dear me, no.
Well, intercourse can have the meanings,
but the fact is only 20% is about sex.
Most of it is about all kinds of other fascinating subjects.
How to be a good citizen, insight into relationships between men
and women, tips on tattooing, the art of making your bed,
playing on musical glasses which are filled with water,
making lemonade, solving word puzzles, knowledge of mines
and quarries, the art of cockfighting. No, don't...
The art of teaching parrots and starlings to speak.
Nine pages devoted to the care of wives
and 26 pages on how to seduce other men's wives.
That's a bit strange.
I love this idea of a child setting up a lemonade stand and saying,
"Courtesy of the Kama Sutra."
- But on the video, on the film of the book... - Yes, on 20% of the book.
There's very, very little starling chat.
I suspect you were getting a video of 20% of the Kama Sutra.
The author was a celibate Indian sage,
so what he knew, goodness knows,
but he was called Vatsyayana,
and he lived sometime between the first and sixth century.
Sometimes, very cleverly, there is a moral tone that distances itself
between what it tells you... It says, for example,
all oral sex is wrong. It then spends pages and pages
telling you how to do it.
- Now, who came up with the missionary position. - A missionary.
No!
KLAXON SOUNDS
What is the missionary position, first?
It's the approved position by a missionary.
Lady on her back, man on top.
Yes, it's a mistake made by the famous sexologist Kinsey
who named it...
What has been Photoshopped out of that picture?
Has Mrs Kinsey been removed?
He of course wrote a book on the sexuality of the American male
and the American female, which shocked America extraordinarily.
He said that 96% of American males masturbate regularly
and he was asked what the hell that said about the American male.
He said, "It says 4% lie."
But as far as the missionary position is concerned,
it was an anthropologist called Bronislaw Malinowski
who described an engaged couple holding hands
and leaning against each other in what was known as "misinari si bubunela",
missionary fashion, and that was just friendliness, leaning on each other.
It was nothing to do with man-on-top sex.
He said it was introduced by white traders,
planters or officials, but never used the word missionary,
but it was Kinsey who somehow just got it wrong.
Kinsey himself was a very odd man.
He had an irrational hatred of... the potato.
- Even chips? - I guess all forms of the potato. - Do we know why?
No, it was irrational, that's the point.
I was married to a man that had an irrational fear of tomatoes.
He was a great big burly film director, very macho bloke,
but put a tomato in front of him and he'd start crying.
Day in, day out, you did that. A cherry won in the medicine cabinet.
Ah!
- Did you know why? - Irrational.
If there was a reason, it would a rational fear of tomatoes.
There's no such which thing as a rational fear of tomatoes! That's ridiculous.
An irrational fear can have some starting point.
As a child, a tomato reared up at him.
If I didn't want to have sex,
- I had a tomato sandwich by the bed. - Very clever.
"Come on, Janet. Oh, God! A tomato sandwich. Good night."
When Kinsey was nervous, he would speak in a Scottish accent,
although he was born and raised in New Jersey.
IN SCOTTISH ACCENT: "I'm so upset. I'm afraid."
That's right.
And he trained himself to be able to insert pencils into his penis.
- Into his penis? - Into, into the urethra. - He trained himself?
You wouldn't train anyone else, would you, to do that?
He might have put a sign up and then thought,
"Due to lack of applicants..."
- That not only a pencil, but a toothbrush, bristles first. - No!
- Yes! - Every year, when his wife's going, "He's impossible to buy for,"
and he's going, "A travel pouch. A pencil case!
"I'm tired of carrying things round in my penis."
"What about a travel iron?" "No!"
His wife actually said, "I don't see much of Alfred since he got interested in sex,"
which is a terribly sad thing for a wife to say about her husband.
- Why he pushed things up his penis, again, no idea. - Irrational.
So, anyway, which of these foods would give you the same
number of calories as used in the average sex session?
- I don't think it's a lot of... - You don't think it's many calories.
- I think it's quite a lot. - You think it's a lot. - Do you? You think it's pizza lot?
I think it's about 400 calories.
400 calories, which would be a good pizza at least, wouldn't it?
- Maybe a slice of pizza, not a whole one. - Slice of pizza, yeah. You think it's fewer?
I'm going to go for the steak.
- Well, it's interesting. - I'm going to go for the burger.
- You'll have the burger. - I'll have a slice of tart. - You'll have a slice of tart. Hey.
- But without the bread. - And what about you? - I'll have the courgette and the shrimp,
- because it's got quite a lot of possibilities. - Yes, that is a good ploy.
Well, David Allison, who is a bio-statistician at the University of Alabama, looked into it.
And the average sex session takes only six minutes.
What, from beginning to end?
So the amount of calories used would be 20,
that's about the same as one egg white or a very small meringue.
LAUGHTER
There you are. That's...
Does the six minutes include the bit where you watch the news?
What, to see if you've made it on?
"We've done it, let's put the news on."
Kinsey showed that it is no easy task describing people's sex lives,
so these figures are up for argument.
A 2008 survey by Durex, who might be regarded as having
a sort of vested interest, as makers of...
Oh. That's The Graduate, isn't it? The stage version. Anyway...
She's got that look, hasn't she?
She has. That was a disappointment, quite clearly.
- Yeah. - That was half a meringue. - Yeah. - "Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs Robinson?"
Anyway, Durex reported the average Briton enjoys 22.5 minutes of foreplay,
while another survey at around the same time in Men's Health
claimed that British men only last 18.64 minutes from foreplay to climax.
So if we level out those different statistics, we could argue that British men take,
in terms of actual intercourse itself, minus 3.86 minutes.
In the Second World War,
they used condoms to protect the ends of the rifle.
- In the north, in the final attack on Norway. - It was so successful
that they decided that they could do with some
for their 18-inch guns and special condoms were manufactured by...
- Is this the Churchill story? - Yes, by Durex.
We've told it on QI, but tell it again, because it's good.
Well, Churchill insisted that they be sent out in boxes marked
"for British service personnel use only. Size small."
He added, "That'll show 'em who's the master race."
So, if you want to work off the weight gained by eating
a tiny meringue, sex should do it.
Now it's time for one of my knick-knacks,
a little scientific experiment.
And all I have to do, yes, I know, it's terribly exciting,
- isn't it, is bring up this. - Ah ha!
I don't know if you can see in here the tiny little
grains of a little kind of, a little crystalline matter.
- And a bottle here. - Salt and vinegar.
It looks like salt and vinegar. Bizarrely, that is what is used
for flavouring salt and vinegar, sodium acetate.
It's got caustic soda and vinegar, which is what makes sodium acetate.
It's then dissolved slowly in water. It's very unstable, if I shook it, it would instantly crystallise,
so I'm going to be very careful about this. But if you add it to crystals, it also crystallises,
- and I hope to make a dildo for you. - Oh, good.
A dildo just out of this liquid.
I'm going to stand up to do it, if the camera allows me to, because
it needs a steady hand and I need to keep rising as I'm slowly pouring.
It's a bit like making mayonnaise, you know, very slowly adding,
adding the oil.
- It's nothing like making mayonnaise. - No, you very slowly...
You're making a phallus.
You very... No, no, in terms of the making, but in terms of the pouring.
This could ruin Mothers' Day for some people.
I'm just going to slowly pour it.
Can you see there's a tiny bit of crystal on there?
So a really very, very small amount.
- Yeah. - OK. - Here we are.
I've got to have a steady slow stream, let's just hope it works.
Oooh!
Oh, I say.
- JOHNNY: - It's a snowman dildo.
# We're walking in the air... #
LAUGHTER
# We're going to land for just awhile... #
"Snowman needs his private time!"
"Get off me back!"
It's not very easy to be very accurate.
I've got to keep doing higher, otherwise it'll touch itself
and blow back into the bottle. But there you go. How's that?
Aah!
APPLAUSE
It's exothermic nucleation,
for the science heads out there.
It's slightly warm. It feels rather gorgeous, and, I mean...
- It's a nice... - He made one earlier.
It's a nice consistency, it's not poisonous, it's not dangerous, but it's a wonderful effect, isn't it?
- Yes, I like it. - It's gorgeous. Yeah, there you are.
It's not an absolutely perfect dildo, but it's...
What's disturbing is it looks like mine.
Yes, exactly.
So that was the supersaturated sodium acetate knick-knack.
And these are the final scores.
And for possibly the first time, we have three people on plus scores.
- It's thrilling. - What?
The winner, with 11 is Sandi Toksvig.
APPLAUSE
In a very, very fine second place
with three points is Johnny Vegas.
APPLAUSE
And with a shatteringly impressive plus two, Janet Street-Porter.
Brilliant!
And the only one plunging into sub-zero conditions,
I'm afraid, is Alan Davies with minus 15.
APPLAUSE
So it's good night from Sandi, Johnny, Janet, Alan and me.
Be very, very special with yourselves, goodbye, bye.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd