CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening and welcome to QI,
where tonight we'll be sorting out the Knights from the Knaves.
Strapping on the breastplate of interestingness,
we have a goodly knight, Sue Perkins.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
A knight to remember, Victoria Coren.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
A very perfect, gentle knight, the Reverend Richard Coles.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And the long, dark knight of the soul, Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And their knightly noises all come from naves.
Sue goes...
PLAINSONG PLAYS
Lovely. And Victoria goes...
PLAINSONG PLAYS
Richard goes...
PLAINSONG PLAYS
And Alan goes...
# Fruity, fruity, fruity!
# Fruity, fruity, fruity! #
Yes.
# Fruity, fruity, fruity! #
Yes!
# Fruity, fruity, fruity! #
Let... You have been warned.
LAUGHTER
Let's head straight to the lists.
Why was the Black Prince so-called?
PLAINSONG PLAYS
Rev Richard?
Well, if my Ladybird Book Of Princes is to be trusted,
it's because he had black armour.
KLAXON
Ey! It's the one occasion where the inestimable Ladybird series
has let you down. There is no evidence.
Is it like Reservoir Dogs, where they weren't allowed to use their first names
and they got a sign up saying, "You're the Black Knight, you're the White Knight,
"you're the Pink Knight"? "Why do I have to be the Pink Knight?" "Just be the Pink Knight."
It might as well be true.
# Fruity! #
- Yes? - Was he black?
LAUGHTER
Well, oddly enough,
his mother was perhaps of Moorish descent.
- Ah. - Philippa of Hainault.
Which is a Tube line, isn't it?
- Hainault is very near where I grew up. - Oh, there you are.
- 'Ainault. - ANAL. Do you like ANAL?
Anal... Steady!
LAUGHTER
I just... Is it, is Hainault good? Is, is...
LAUGHTER
- What, what, what happened? - I don't know. - Did something happen there?
I mean...
APPLAUSE
I find, at the end of every Tube line, you do get a good Hainault.
I think it falls to me to rescue this, somehow.
Yes, I think you should, yes.
Did you know that the oldest British door comes from Hainault?
- No. The oldest door? - Well, it's in Westminster Abbey,
it's a door which connects a cloister to the Abbey,
and the Canons of Westminster live behind it,
and they dated their door.
And they found that the wood it was made from
was growing in Hainault in the 10th century.
Wow! Are you proud?
I am very proud of the door.
The sign painters are getting busy right now, going,
"Home of the oldest door."
- It's a reason to get off at Hainault, finally. - Yeah.
Is it a wood that grew there a thousand years ago?
Yeah. Well, Philippa of Hainault was perhaps of Moorish descent.
So that may be the reason he was called the Black Prince,
- we don't know for a fact. - I'm wondering, do you think the Black Prince might have been
called the Black Prince cos his sins were as black as pitch?
Yes. I mean, although he was known as the Master Of Chivalry,
he almost destroyed the entire population of Limoges and Caen.
- He doesn't look like he's capable of it. - No, he doesn't, does he?
I know a fact about the Black Prince.
I don't know if it's definitely a fact,
but this is something my husband told me.
David Mitchell told you something and you believe it?
You know those sort of early dates when you're just
talking about whether you were happy at school and heraldry.
LAUGHTER
Is this true that - wait now - he stole something off a corpse?
I remember the romance of the moment...
- You're thinking of, "Ich Dien." - Yes, "Ich Dien,"
which the Prince of Wales wears now,
that was stolen by the Black Prince off a corpse on a battlefield.
That's right, and it was the feathers as well,
the three feathers that are the symbol of the Prince of Wales.
It was the King of Bohemia and he had a very serious disability,
but he still rode into battle.
He was blind.
That explains appalling make-up. LAUGHTER
That was the King of Bohemia who went into battle against him,
and he defeated him and took his colours,
which were the three Prince of Wales feathers
and the motto, "I serve." "Ich Dien."
Do you know, stealing from dead people was a quite big...
Do you know St Hugh of Lincoln, the great St Hugh of Lincoln...
I think we are all pretty, yes, up to speed on St Hugh of Lincoln.
He was one of the great saints of the Middle Ages,
but he was staying with some monk friends in France,
and they had the preserved arm of Mary Magdalene...
I thought I'd got that?!
- You got the other one. - 25 quid I paid for that!
He bent down to venerate it and while he was down there,
he bit off her finger. It's true. He took it back to Lincoln.
When you say, "It's true,"
I happen to know you have written a book on rather obscure saints and
are you suggesting that everything about all of them is true?
I'm suggesting that very little about them is true.
The biting off the finger of Mary Magdalene is true.
His friendship with a swan is doubtful.
When you say, "Friendship with a swan," are you being euphemistic?
No, his best friend was a swan.
And it's depicted in one of his, sort of, portraits,
that he walks around with a swan.
But if you look at Lincoln Cathedral,
it has a vault which is all wonky, which he built, which is
said to suggest the flight of a swan's wing.
That's great if builders do something wrong.
They could just say, "I was trying to evoke a swan's wing."
"Yes, that's right.
"No, that is a symbol of me being crap at building."
He really did bite off the finger.
There was a huge, huge trade in bitten off relics.
You know, you weren't on the ecclesiastical map
until you had a good dead bit of someone.
So he was notorious for stuffing his mouth with bitten off
members of one kind or another.
LAUGHTER
The Black Prince, of course, was, as I say, leader of chivalry
and chivalry was all about jousting,
so can you tell me anything about jousting?
What the rules were of jousting
in the lists, as they were called?
You had to...
Now, there is the big, massive cotton bud
and you have to hit the shield?
You get a point if you hit the shield or their breastplate?
Absolutely right.
The rules vary but one set of rules we have is that you win
- the joust if you get three points. - That's how we do it in Croydon.
You get three points and you get a point for knocking someone
straight on the breastplate so that it shatters the lance.
A glancing blow doesn't count.
In the dinner show at the Excalibur casino in Las Vegas, the winner
is the last one to jump off their horse.
- Do they really have that? - Yes,
it's a brilliant show because they've got King Arthur
and he fights against his long lost son Prince Christopher.
I think the people that put the show together don't
know that there's other people in the story apart from King Arthur.
They thought, "Well, we can't have a story
"that only gives you one person,
- "so we will just invent Prince Christopher." - Christopher?
Yes, and he wins because he gets off his horse last
and then you all have a big piece of chicken.
But there's no Game Of Thrones... with those noises
and heads coming off and blood spurting out?
- They're real people so... - Oh, right. There are ways of doing that.
- Do you have to dress as a wench? - You say have to.
LAUGHTER
- Yes, they give you some plaits to put on. - Sounds all a bit Bavarian!
This is the Excalibur English-themed casino.
It is sort of Harry Potter, Robin Hood, King Arthur
and the Queen are all roughly the same vintage.
You can buy memorabilia of all of them in the same shop.
- How many people are sitting down for dinner at this event? - 200.
It's much like this room actually.
If Richard and I now galloped towards each other on horseback with lances,
as I very much hope we will later, that's exactly what it would be like.
- It's just people have buckets of chicken... - Don't they get a bit...
Getting a horse into a casino is a fairly elaborate thing, isn't it?
Las Vegas has white tigers. They had Siegfried & Roy
- with their white tigers. - They do.
They don't really have Siegfried & Roy any more.
- There was a terrible mauling. - Yes.
Actually, I really respected Siegfried & Roy
a lot more after that because for years,
people thought they were all cheesy and mainstream
and then one of them had his head bitten off by a tiger.
It showed that every night they were actually taking a risk.
- They really were. - The Vicar of Stiffkey, he was bitten by a lion.
- He was, Roger something or other. - Harold Davidson I think it was.
You're right.
He was in the '30s, I think,
he was a vicar of Stiffkey, but he used to try and reform
prostitutes in what we'd say is in a very hands-on ministry kind of way.
LAUGHTER
That's what a prostitute needs really.
Just a bit more prostituting, but with a goodly hand.
He was tireless in his dedication to his flock
and rather got in a soup,
and he ended up as a lion tamer in I think it was Skegness.
It went horribly wrong and he was bitten by his lion
and that was the end of the Vicar of Stiffkey.
Are you sure you're not accidentally recounting the plot of a limerick?
Anyway. So there we are.
Now, what is the first rule of Knight Club?
LAUGHTER
The first rule of Knight Club?
- Yeah. - Well...
..you don't talk about Knight Club.
KLAXON
APPLAUSE
Oh! It had to be.
- Somebody had to. - Well done.
- Yeah, exactly. - I fell on my sword, which seems appropriate. - Yeah, it was, exactly.
It is an existing club, or a club from the olden times?
No, it's a very olde-times club of knights.
The most famous group of knights of...
- Templar. - The Knights Templar.
There are still people who think they still exist and, you know,
in the sort of Dan Browny kind of way,
but they actually folded up in 1314. But they were very powerful.
It was after the First Crusade, they were formed, in Jerusalem.
And they were allowed to do almost anything. The law didn't apply to them in Jerusalem,
which annoyed a lot of people, but there were certain things they weren't allowed to do.
They weren't allowed to breed ferrets?
To breed ferrets! Anything else you know about them?
- Well, you know they look like that. - Chew gum.
- I know about ley lines. - Go on then.
- They made them. - They made... You see,
you've been reading these stupid books about knights,
"Apparently, they are responsible for laying ley lines."
- No, well... - "No." - They know where they are, anyway.
Yes, they do. They've got them all hidden.
- No sex? - Well, yeah, they were allowed to marry,
but if they married, they weren't allowed to wear the white and red uniform.
There was no hunting except lions.
LAUGHTER
- That's quite specific. - That would actually be a brilliant rule for now, wouldn't it?
There's so much debate about whether you should hunt or not.
Please everyone - "OK, hunting is allowed, but only lions."
Lions. That's very true.
They were only allowed one squire each, no telling tales,
no lockable purses.
- Oh. - Yeah.
I suppose they have to show their trust or something like that.
But their last and most important rule was no kissing.
"Lastly, we hold it dangerous to all religion
"to gaze too much on the countenance of women
"and therefore, no brother shall presume to kiss neither widow,
"nor virgin, nor mother, nor sister, nor aunt, nor any other woman."
But anal's all right.
LAUGHTER
Well...
APPLAUSE
It's very funny you should say that, because one of the reasons
they were closed down is there was a charge against them...
- Too much buggery. - Yeah.
There was a charge against them.
"Deosculabantur se in ore, in umbilico, seu ventre nudo,
"et in ano, seu in spina dorsi." "Et in ano."
- Et in ano. - "Et in ano." - And the end, yeah. - Yeah.
And in Hainault.
And the accusation was that they kissed one another on the mouth,
on the naval, the bare belly, the anus, or the backbone.
- Well, they were thorough. - They were!
LAUGHTER
When you're looking for a ley line, you don't want to leave any stone unturned.
"There might be one coming out of his arse!"
"I'll have a look."
- But that is... - "Right, that's enough! That's enough, Templars!"
LAUGHTER
Did you know that the Temple Church in London, which was founded by the
Knights Templar, and there are still some Knights Templar lying around...
- Dead ones, yeah. - There's a unique title for, if you're the priest in charge there,
you're the Reverend and Valiant Master of the Temple.
- Oh, that's very good. - Which sounds like something from a Star Wars movie.
- The Reverend and Valiant Master of the Temple. - Yeah. - In that picture, is he going,
"Show me on the cross where he kissed you?"
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
They're all going, "Yeah, yeah."
He's saying, "But my arms are much too long."
- Yes. - "I'm not going to fit on this."
Yes. "You're going to nail me against the air."
- It's true... - "You're going to have to just nail my ears to it."
There you go.
Kissing, of course, has long been a controversial thing
and in the 20th century, there were anti-kissing leagues.
What do you think they objected to?
- There you are. - Transmission of disease? - Yes, you're right,
it was a hygiene issue.
I read a thing also that when trains first began,
women travelling on their own in compartments were supposed to put pins in their mouths
lest, when they went through a tunnel, someone tried to kiss them.
- I read that as well! It's hilarious! - Nail gun their mouths shut?
Mouths full of pins.
No, with the pin facing outwards, so if someone went, "Oh, I have to!"
They were in for a rude surprise. Yes, I do that in tunnels,
- just in case. - I consider myself warned. - I'd keep a pin in my anus.
- Oh, dear! - In case any Knights Templar... - were around the place.
Oh, you bad person.
OK, what makes you think this knight is a total bastard?
- Oh, he looks like a mean... - His hat. - Oh... - Not his hat.
PLAINSONG PLAYS
- Richard? - He's got a diagonal white stripe across his lions,
which means he's been naughty.
- No, he hasn't been naughty at all. - I beg his pardon.
Is he, oh, is he illegitimate? Has his father been naughty?
His father's been naughty. It's what's known as the "bend sinister".
Oh, we've all had bend sinister.
It starts at the bottom left and goes up to the top right,
which indicates you are a bastard.
And in his case, there's more information just on that simple coat of arms.
The three lions.
- No, he's not the bastard son of Wayne Rooney. - Wayne Rooney.
Yeah, yeah.
LAUGHTER
Something told me you were going to say that.
Is the red significant?
Yes, it's the Royal Family. It's a royal coat of arms.
- So he's a royal bastard. - Yeah. - So he's a Fitz-John or something?
- A Fitz? - Fitz-Herb, Fitz... - Fitz-Herbert?
- Fitz-John, Fitzroy. Of course. - Fitzroy. His name would be Fitzroy.
Fitz is the "son of" and roy, "roi", is king.
And one particular king had five Fitzroys from his mistress.
Who would that be?
- Who was a really... - Oh, hang on, George, one of the Georges?
No. Go back a bit. Rewind.
- Henry VIII. - Charles II. - Charles II. - Henry VII.
- No, Charles II. We got there. - Charles II.
- We got there without you. Charles II. - Shouting out some kings to move it along.
Very good. She was called Barbara Palmer and she bore him five...
- Babs. - Five, Babs Palmer.
They don't think of the Babs, do they?
She might have been a Babs, I expect, yeah.
- Queen Babs. - Yeah. - "You Fitz'd me up again." - You Fitz'd me up.
And we have a Henry...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
But does it cancel out, if the one with the stripe then marries
and has a legitimate son, don't they take the stripe away?
Ah, that would be very good.
No, I think you keep it, I think, in your coat of arms.
There are certain things which indicate something very extraordinary about your shield.
- What do you think they are? - OK. - They have a particular meaning.
PLAINSONG PLAYS
Yeah?
Is it visible panty line?
LAUGHTER
Oh...
It's terrible, really, they get terrible VPL.
It's not visible panty line.
It's the colours, actually, are indicative of...
Status?
Of sin. Of a mistake, an error.
They're known as abatements, also as "stains"
as in a stain on the family name, or a stain on the...
Oh. So what can a stain be?
- It's got to be very serious if it's going on your coat of arms. - I know.
Well, the first is called the point champaine tenne,
and it's for killing a prisoner who has demanded quarter, or mercy,
which is really ungentlemanly.
But how would anybody know that you had done that?
You'd have to have a witness. A very good point. It's true of any crime.
They'd have to have something on their shield.
Witnessing someone killing someone who's asked for quarter -
you've got to have something on their shield.
That's true, and not intervening. You're right.
- But how would you know that they'd done that... - I don't know!
..and not intervened.
They'd definitely need something on their shield.
They'd have massive whistles and say, "You grassed me up!"
And the shield would just be full of stuff.
- A shield within a shield... - "You don't clean the toilet properly."
"You've got a toilet brush, you don't do it, you get one of those." It's endless.
It's a bit like points on a driving licence, isn't it?
- It is. You're absolutely right. - It's the points on the shield for... - Yeah. Exactly.
And the next one here, which we'll have a look at.
Needs dusting.
LAUGHTER
This is called the delf tenne,
and that's for issuing a challenge and then bottling out.
- Coward. - Yeah. - That's a big old yellow smudge on that.
Exactly. Very much a smudge on the coat of arms.
And then, we have a gusset, a gusset sanguine sinister.
- A gusset sanguine? - Yeah.
On a knight, really?
Yeah, I know, absurd, isn't it?
- Gusset sanguine.... - There's no reason for you to get it.
- Well, the sanguine is the colour. - So a bloody... - It's blood colour. It's for being drunk.
And you have a gusset sanguine dexter.
Which is on the right, and that's...
- Is being... - Being stoned? - Being an adulterer. - Oh, right.
And there you are.
Now we have one that you have to guess, so tell me what this is.
You're a drunken adulterer.
There you are, you see, points for listening.
So that's the whole world of heraldry.
In a way, it's sort of a nicer design for the drunken adulterer.
- It is, isn't it? - I feel like it's too rewarding.
Is it two gussets or a wine glass?
Well, that's the choice facing the drunken adulterer.
Yes, exactly. Exactly.
LAUGHTER
- It's perfect. - Every Saturday.
APPLAUSE
Oh, they knew what they were doing.
Did you know that if you're a clergyman you can't have
a helmet on your coat of arms?
- Oh, thank God. - Phew!
LAUGHTER
Because you can't have been a chaplain or something?
No, you can't do anything which is... Did you know that if you're a clergyman,
if you go to a black tie do, you can't have a stripe down your trousers?
- No. - Because, no, because it's a military insignia. - Oh. - And you can't have that.
And you can't have a helmet because it's a martial sign.
So you have to have this sort of, it's a lovely sort of,
do you remember Bill and Ben?
It's a bit like that, it's called a galero.
- Oh, how fabulous. - And it's black if you're a priest and red if you're a Cardinal.
And if you're the Pope, you get a pointy one with three tiaras.
- Oh! - Oh. Quite the fellow.
I want to be Pope now.
I think you'd look good in that.
You've got to... Oh, you've got to have it.
- Who decides this? - There are people who apply to, they decide.
Isn't it the College of Arms? And you have to pay.
How do you become one of the people that decide? How do you become a herald?
If you go to Garter Day at Windsor Castle, they turn out for that.
LAUGHTER
I need to see photos of Garter Day at Windsor Castle.
It's very exciting because it's a big do
and if they install new Knights of the Garter,
you are in there for hours, then you hear sort of tramping
from miles away and all of a sudden, the beefeaters come in all done up.
- Then you get the College of Heralds... - It's like a gay tsunami!
They carry things, have special big T-shirts.
- Saying, "War. What is it good for?" - LAUGHTER
So that's our knights with their shields.
You also find knights on a chess board, of course.
So what I want to know is this very strange conundrum.
What's the maximum number of knights you can have on a chess board,
such that none of them can take another one?
- Oh, multiples of eight, I suppose. - I'll give you, you can try it out.
So that none can...
Maximum number.
What you have to do is understand what a knight's move is.
Stephen, I don't understand the question.
It's the maximum, it's the maximum number of knights you could
have on a chess board, such that none can take the other.
Have you noticed something in common with the ones you're putting down?
- They're all the same. - The same, OK, the same colour, so...
Yes, because a knight move must take a different colour.
- Oh. - So 32.
- 32 is the right answer! - Oh.
It's really very simple when you think about it, isn't it? Very good.
APPLAUSE
It's one of those things that sounds very complicated, that you have to work out for ages,
- but there you are. - I still don't understand it at all.
Well, none of those knights can take another knight.
- But isn't that rather more knights than we're used to? - Yes.
LAUGHTER
It's a problem, it's not a real chess situation.
- It's if you had... - Because they move, because of the way they move,
diagonal and up one, they move to the alternate colour.
- Yes. - So if you've got all the knights on the same colour, they cannot take...
- Exactly right, I mean, that's how... - Oh, I get it.
In the centre of the board, you're controlling eight different squares there.
They're all a different colour, the knights are on a black square.
So all you have to do is put them all on a black or a white square.
When you move your knight, do you make a horsey noise?
HE WHINNIES
Do you? That's so sweet.
HE SNORTS AND SPUTTERS
And when you move your rook.
SHE CAWS
When I do the bishop...
HE IMITATES PLAINSONG
- When you do your queen, "Hello." - "Hello." - "Hello."
That's your bishop.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
- Oh, you're going to get in such trouble. - No!
You're going to get in trouble from both sides.
I've been going, "Ooh, you are awful, but I like you."
You're getting into trouble from both sides, Richard.
If the Bishop of Peterborough is watching this evening,
you'll have my resignation on your desk in the morning, by the way.
- He confirmed me, not the present one. - Which one? - Oh, God knows.
- Was it the rudest bishop in the Church of England? - It could've been.
He just gave me a piece of the Host and moved on to the next line.
- He gave you a piece of the Host?! - Yes.
What the hell kind of party was it?!
It's what you would call the bread and wine, as well you know,
you secret religious, you.
I think it might have been Bishop Westwood
who, interestingly, is the father of Tim Westwood, the hip-hop DJ.
- Good gracious! - Does he speak like him?
Does he have a particular way of speaking?
Tim Westwood talks like a hip-hop star from the West Coast of...
- Oh, does he? A false American accent? - It's very effective.
- Ali G is based on Tim Westwood. - Really?
But his father was the Bishop of Peterborough who was famous for knitting.
LAUGHTER
- It's true! - For knitting?!
The knitting Bishop!
There were items on Look East about his knitting.
Isn't there a version of chess for kind of chess-heads
called fairy chess, where the pieces do more things?
- What a wonderful... - I'm not making this up, I'm sure this is true. - Fairy chess.
That there's versions of chess where you can call these fairy pieces
- and they can do extra things. - How many drugs did you take
when you were hanging out with Jimmy Somerville?
So you can just go, you're playing chess and suddenly you go,
"No, we're playing fairy chess now."
# La, la, la, la, la... #
Checkmate.
Yeah, well, I don't have to touch the pieces.
- Yeah. - Oh, I see.
- The whole point of chess is its limitations. - Yeah. - Yes. Precisely.
It's all about the strictness in which you have to operate.
But hang on, Mrs Poker Player Victoria Coren Mitchell,
aren't there versions of poker where they kind of introduce
wild cards and stuff to kind of get it...? It's the same sort of thing.
Yeah, poker's different. As Martin Amis once said,
"In chess, the properties of a bishop are fixed.
"In poker, it's all wobbled through the prism of personality."
- Very good. - A beautiful quote. - Beautifully put.
Although, even chess players will say the best chess move to play
is not the best chess move,
it's the move your opponent would least like you to play.
So in that sense, it is very like poker.
Anybody who played Kasparov, for example,
will say that the moment he sat down at the table, you felt beaten.
He was so virile, so big, like a...
Five o'clock shadow at ten in the morning
and he hunched over the board.
But what nobody ever tried with Kasparov was just grabbing the queen
and shouting, "I'm playing fairy chess!"
That's exactly right! Exactly right!
You can put your boards away now, children. There you go.
32. Brilliantly deduced by Sue "Brilliant" Perkins.
Kasparov wouldn't have liked it if you'd gone...
HE BLUSTERS ..every time.
He'd have liked it even less if you did it when he moved his!
LAUGHTER
It's a brilliant strategy!
Every time he moved his knight, you'd go...
HE WHINNIES
"Put me back in the stable!"
- With fairy chess, it could go... - HE NEIGHS
- Victoria, what was that line, that Martin Amis line again? - It's beautiful.
"In chess, the properties and powers of a bishop are fixed.
"In poker, it is wobbled through the prism of personality."
But do you know when he said that, Stephen?
It was after a poker game that you and I and he all played.
- Yes, I remember, in Wales. - Many years ago. - With the then-unknown Ricky Gervais.
Ricky Gervais was knocked out, got up and said,
"What am I supposed to do now?"
And you said, "There's a shotgun in the drawer."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Oh, God.
That would be a very good, very good title for a book.
So, now, name a place where a knight can be buried.
The ground.
KLAXON
Amazingly not.
APPLAUSE
You must be astonished to know that isn't true.
Do they have to be buried above the ground?
No, I'm saying that they can be buried,
but where can they be buried?
In a...tomb?
- A vault? - A hole.
LAUGHTER
- A pyramid. - A pyramid.
The fact is, is the moment you are dead, you are no longer a knight.
- You're not a knight any more! - Oh, of course! - Right.
Cos everyone was shouting about how Jimmy Savile should
have his knighthood taken away. But they'd have had to give it back to him, in order to take it away.
You're no longer a member of the Order the moment you die.
So the moment you die, you're not a knight. So you can't bury a knight anywhere.
Unless you're very mean and bury them alive, I suppose.
Do you know who has the record for turning down the most knighthoods?
- No. - LS Lowry. He turned down more honours than anybody else.
- Good Lord! - Mr Pin Man? Mr Stick Drawing? - Matchstick men, yeah.
Alan Bennett certainly turned one down. Who else do we know?
The art, isn't it, is turning one down
so everybody knows you've turned it down.
So everyone knows without you telling them, which I refuse to do.
- I turned one down. - We all thought that was a poorly-kept secret.
- You haven't quite grasped this, Alan. - Sir ANAL Davies.
LAUGHTER
I'm sorry to go on about it, but if you're a clergyman,
and you're knighted, you can't call yourself Sir.
- Whoa! - Unless you are knighted before you're ordained,
and then you can be the Reverend Sir or Lady.
- What a swiz! - It's a chivalric order, you can't be...
It's military, isn't it, if you're a knight?
Exactly, so you can't be that if you're a vicar. You can't bear arms.
You can bare legs though, can't you? Yes. Ha-ha!
LAUGHTER
So, there are no dead knights, only dead former knights.
Which knight's luggage included cannabis, bladders,
shark intestines, strychnine, chilli pepper, cocaine,
- heroin and Kendal Mint Cake? - PLAINSONG PLAYS
Yes, Sue Perkins.
I say to get him through Eurovision, Terry Wogan.
KLAXON
- APPLAUSE - We got there! We got there!
Oh, you've got them all!
We've thought of all the heroic endurance struggles, yes.
PLAINSONG PLAYS
- Was it Sir Edmund Hillary? - It wasn't Sir Edmund Hillary,
although Sir Edmund Hillary did take Kendal Mint Cake right up the Everest.
Really?! I didn't know that was a serving suggestion!
I'm going to go home and try it now, though.
It was one of the many things that made Kendal Mint Cake
famous in its day, when it was famous perhaps.
- Was it Ranulph Fiennes? - You're in exactly the right area. - Shackleton?
Sir Ernest Shackleton is the answer. The Antarctic explorer.
- That's him in the darker polo neck. - It's a really fun job, isn't it?
The endurance was astonishing.
- They all look like Captain Birdseye. - They don't look happy.
The one on the right actually can't open his eyes any more.
- Is it true the he used to take strychnine as a tonic? - Yes, that's right.
I've been to Shackleton's hut. I don't really remember what was there.
This was his first aid kit.
It had isinglass, which is from the swim bladders of sturgeons,
for use as a wound dressing.
Tonics of iron and strychnine - completely correct, Richard.
And iron and arsenic, which the wrong doses of either could
cause a horrible lingering death, so you had to get that right.
A colic treatment based on cannabis and chilli pepper.
Ginger carminative, an anti-flatulence preparation.
LAUGHTER
Cocaine solution, which was in fact used as eye drops for - what problem?
Tired eyes. It would certainly perk them up.
It's actually snow blindness.
Used chalk and opium against diarrhoeas, like kaolin and morphine.
- And Kendal Mint Cake. Have you ever had Kendal Mint Cake? - It's lovely!
I find it quite plain. I would have taken a Crunchie.
It's nice to see that picture
because it explains what that man gave me at Schiphol Airport.
Kendal Mint Cake!
If you go to Shackleton's hut,
you are followed all the way there by a New Zealand official,
and if you eat anything at all, like a packet of crisps, he walks,
looking around you, making sure you haven't dropped any crumbs.
I should hope so! And is it worth a visit? Where is Shackleton's hut?
- It's on Antarctica. - You've been there? - Yes. - When did you go there?
How exciting!
Ten or 15 years ago, but it was a very exciting
opportunity to see somewhere I would never normally go.
- Was this from New Zealand? - Yes, from New Zealand.
You go up from Christchurch.
I went to an exhibition about Scott in Christchurch
and they talk about what Amundsen took - a completely different plan.
Whereas Scott's plan was to go with ponies and horses and things,
Amundsen was from Norway and they just went with dogs,
55 dogs I think they had. They were really much better at it.
- SUE: - Dogs can go very... Have you ever been...
I have been in Wyoming. It was one of the most thrilling things I've ever done.
A friend of mine did that and she said that the thing is, the dogs
cannot stop when nature calls and that you get pelted with poo.
Pelted with droppings.
- Pebble-dashed by huskies. - It is basically husky cack,
liquid husky cack flying.
What Amundsen dogs didn't know was that they would be
- eaten by the men and by the other dogs. - Is that what happened?
- Yes, it was very carefully worked out, very precisely. - You can't carry all that dog food,
you can't feed all those dogs all the way there and all the way back.
This is the programme that Paul O'Grady must never make.
The death of dogs!
I think it was a bit unkind of Amundsen to put "nul points" under the flag.
Now to some knaves.
What's the best way to stop your car from being stolen?
Never park it, just drive it around and around.
Keep driving round and around and around. Yeah.
What you've cunningly done is avoid the obvious trap of saying
you have a car alarm, because it seems that car alarms are worse than useless.
In fact, we know that instinctively, don't we?
- Yeah, because you ignore them. - You ignore them. Exactly. - Yeah.
In fact, not only that, 1% of people, when asked,
said that they would actually call the police if they heard a car alarm,
and 60% said they would call up to complain about it.
So you would actually make a phone call, but not to say that someone's
car was being stolen, but just to say what a bloody nuisance it was.
- So if that's the worst thing to do, what's the best thing to do? - Put in an old-fashioned lock.
- Or have a rubbish car. - Or have a terrible car. - I've got a terrible car.
- Have you? - With loads of graffiti on it. Someone drew a penis on the front bonnet.
A friend of mine who's married to a vicar, she came out one morning
and found someone had written "Monk Whore" on the back of her car.
LAUGHTER
Extraordinary! Monk whore.
- Monk whore. - And now on BBC One, Monk Whore.
LAUGHTER
- Robson Green... - Is Monk Whore.
But did you know that actually car thieving
is almost never a female occupation?
- That's like a challenge. - Yeah. - Yeah.
Tonight, the pair of us.
There's, I'm sure you know who that is, but...
That's Bonnie.
Bonnie as in Bonnie and Clyde, yes.
But apparently, the confraternity of car thieves don't think women
should be allowed, so if a woman steals a car,
they can't sell it on, cos they go, "Oh, I'm not having that.
"I'm not having it off you, you don't know what it's about."
So what you're saying is there's very little to divide between car thieves and car salesmen.
- Yes. - Of a similar view. - It's a sexist bastion.
I saw this brilliant documentary about crime
and they interviewed these two young car criminals who were in jail,
and they talked about what pride they took in their work,
and one of them turned to the camera and said,
"Some car criminals, unfortunately, give the rest of us a bad name."
Fantastic. A bit of pride in his work.
Now, explain the effect of Stockholm Syndrome.
- Oh. - Wasn't that when you identify...
LAUGHTER
Oh. But you identify, if you're a victim of kidnap,
you identify with your kidnappers
- and you sort of become weird friends. - Yeah. - Is that right?
I mean, that is what they say.
From the Patty Hearst kidnap, is where it started?
Well, no, because she was nothing to do with Stockholm.
There was a '73 kidnapping in Stockholm, where,
after which it was named, that's the Stockholm four.
And they defended the robbers after the event and so on, so...
- Cos they'd become so inured to the system of... - That's right. - Yeah.
And the most famous one, as you rightly say,
was the heiress of William Randolph Hearst, Patty Hearst,
who was kidnapped by a strange group
called the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Unusually for a clergyman of the Church of England,
I've had dinner with Patty Hearst.
- You haven't! - I have. - How was she? Is she back to normal?
Charming, completely charming. I didn't know who she was until someone said who she was.
By the time they had coffee, she wanted to be a vicar.
LAUGHTER
She had sort of become a kind of Bohemian socialite in Los Angeles,
in the 1980s, when I used to go there
in a previous incarnation, and I met her...
And when you were a rock star, a rock god.
- Oh, you! - Yeah.
And I met her there. It was those sort of dinners that you would go to
where everyone would be weirdly famous
and have no other reason to be there at all,
so you'd have Patty Hearst and, I don't know...
- Nancy Reagan. - ..Andy Warhol and Eddie the Eagle, you know.
Oh, that's a dinner you'd want to go to.
Definitely. Definitely.
But the fact is, it seems to be an aberration, it's very rare.
Most people when they're kidnapped, have nothing
but feelings of complete hostility
towards their captors. As you would expect.
I would feel, as a clergyman, sort of bound to sort of...
Are you a clergyman?
- I would sort of feel obliged to kind of be nice to them. - Oh, you would.
And establish some rapport of some kind.
- "I do understand your point of view." - Exactly, yes. "I think your case is good in parts."
- It would be like that. - Yes, exactly.
So there was a famous figure in history,
one of the most famous in history, who did certainly not have
Stockholm Syndrome, who was kidnapped by pirates.
- And... - Pirates in history, kidnapped... - Johnny Depp.
No. This is a great figure in history.
- Kidnapped by pirates? - Who was kidnapped by pirates,
was held hostage and the ransom was paid.
- Give us some clues. - What sort of era?
He then pursued them with a small fleet, or a number of boats, a flotilla.
- Francis Drake. - Drake? - No, and... - Cook? - Raleigh, Cook? - Nelson.
Had them all crucified.
- Oh. - A Roman. - Oh, it was Julius Caesar. - Julius Caesar is the right answer.
- Julius Caesar. - Yeah. And the thing is, he had told them while he was held hostage,
"When I get out of here, I will come back and I will crucify you."
And they apparently thought it was a joke.
Joke's on you.
- Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho. - Who's laughing now?
Yeah. They didn't know their Caesar. Exactly.
- So, one tough cookie. - How do you crucify someone if they've got hooks for hands?
It's very, very difficult.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Do they hang them up?
- They have magnets, massive magnets. - Magnets. Magnets.
They have got one wooden leg, though, haven't they, so that's not so difficult.
VICTORIA: Why? Why was Julius Caesar kidnapped by pirates?
- Under what circumstances? - It was a ransom, simply, it was a business...
But they didn't kill him, it sounds like he was harsh.
He went after them and had them crucified.
He was not a man to be trifled with. Julie.
- Well, especially if you call him Julie, I imagine. - Yeah, no, he didn't like that.
The worst thing you can do to Julius Caesar, call him Julie.
Is call him Jules. There is a suggestion that Stockholm syndrome could be
a sort of psychological thing, in the same way that women
throughout history have had to put up with being taken and seized
and that the human being is conditioned to make the best of a bad job.
- Well, we've all been there. - But that's just a relationship, Stephen.
- Yes, that's right. - But it is sort of logical, if you thought you were being kidnapped long-term,
- it makes sense to try and see it from the other person's point of view. - Yes, it does.
- Just to maintain sanity, apart from anything. - In fact, to get the syndrome to work on them,
rather than you. For them to be so fond of you, they would no longer want to kill you,
which would be handy.
Now, what's a good reason for faking your own kidnapping?
Oh, I mean...
If you're bored on holiday?
- That would do it. - You're trying to get out of a relationship,
that's why I always do it.
There was an American man who pretended to be kidnapped
just so that he had an excuse as to why he hadn't
called his girlfriend for two weeks.
LAUGHTER
He was terrified of her reaction.
And the police realised it because he had duct tape
round his wrists, but the reel, the spool of it was still connected.
You can't tear it with your teeth, it's so fibrous.
I could imagine the girlfriend saying, "You could still have texted."
Yes, exactly. Exactly, he could have done.
There was Jennifer Wilbanks of Duluth,
who faked a kidnapping to get out of attending her own wedding.
Yeah, I've been there.
But weirdest of all, there was a 2008 case of another Spaniard,
Josefa Sanchez Vargas, who convinced
her husband to pay more than half a million pounds to secure the release
of their children. It was a faked kidnapping, which you'd say,
"Well, that's... We expect that," except she did that six times over five years.
He didn't twig.
- That's quite a nest egg, isn't it? - Every time she needed a new hat.
Some people get kidnapped just for the thrill of it.
- Can you imagine why that would be? - So they pay for kidnappers to kidnap them
so they can experience the visceral thrill of, you know,
being in a car boot with a load of duct tape round your ankles.
- Absolutely that. - People are weird. - I know!
The BBC does it to you too.
If you are going into a hostile zone,
you have hostile zone training where
as you're driving your Land Rover, chaps come out with ski masks and
put bags over your head and bundle you into the back of a...
Oh, this is for BBC reporters.
I was just thinking, "Why presenting Blue Peter..."
Hostile zone as in people who are not very nice to you.
It sounds like a Top Gear sex park,
where Clarkson gets his kicks of a weekend.
One of those funny phrases, isn't it?
When you are put in the back of a van you are always bundled.
Bundled! It's the only word...
- It's true. - Don't get bundled onto a bus.
Anyway, yes, there's a French company that,
for 900 euros, gives you your basic kidnapping,
which is being shoved into a car boot and held down and blindfolded.
And then, for a little extra money, you can have helicopter chases
and really quite sort of sexy stuff.
- And then, they'll cut your ear off and send it to your mum. - Yes.
So, now it's time for me to hold you all hostage.
There's no escape from General Ignorance.
Fingers on the buzzers please.
How long should you wait before reporting a missing person to the police?
PLAINSONG PLAYS
- Yes, Sue? - Well, certainly until they're missing.
LAUGHTER
- Very good. - Until they're out of sight. - Yeah. - Yes, that's...
- Just when they've left the road. - Yes, when they've turned the corner. - Yes. - When is it too soon?
"Just going to make a cup of tea." "Right, I'm ringing."
24 hours?
KLAXON
Ah, no.
- You shouldn't wait at all, if you're convinced someone's missing. - Absolutely right.
If you take your child into a supermarket, it would be 20 minutes, wouldn't it?
- You know that they're gone. - 20 seconds. - 20 seconds. You just check they're not there.
I'm going to wait 24 hours.
Go home to my wife, "Well, I don't know where she is."
LAUGHTER
- "But I'm going to wait till tomorrow." - Yes.
"We might as well go out, because we don't have to get a baby-sitter."
LAUGHTER
"Let's go and have a curry and some wine and phone her in the morning."
You're absolutely right. Then, of course, if it's an adult, it doesn't matter,
cos the police are very likely just to say, "That's not our business."
Unless they have a particular problem.
But the fact is, yeah, there is no set time.
The police use their own skill and judgment, as it were.
- If it's a child, there's obviously... - Oh, well.
ALAN LAUGHS
- I don't know why that's... - That's a message.
That's three words you don't hear in the same sentence, isn't it?
Yeah, you just hope you're not burgled soon, Alan.
Oh, I was burgled so many times in the '90s that one time
they came round, it was like the fifth time I'd been burgled,
they came round and my cat came in, and this constable goes,
"If only he could talk."
LAUGHTER
That's fantastic. Oh, that's brilliant.
Is that how we're going to... Is that it then?
Is that the extent of the investigation?
Willing the animal to give evidence.
Now, what did Parliament pay for to put in Sir Peter Viggers' garden?
PLAINSONG PLAYS
Yes?
The notorious duck house.
KLAXON
Ah. You're in the duck house there.
The fact is, the duck house was one of the ones that they turned down.
- Oh. - Yeah, he put in claims for £32,000 for gardening.
£500 for 28 tonnes of manure.
£1,645 for the duck island, but that was turned down
by the eagle-eyed guardians of the national purse.
It's probably worth mentioning that at the same time as that
£8 billion was spent bailing out the banks,
it was just that was too big a sum for anyone to get their heads around,
so they went, "What? £10 for a sandwich?!"
- I know. - "This is appalling." - It is, it's fascinating, isn't it?
Sir Peter Viggers later commented that the duck house was,
"Never liked by the ducks..."
LAUGHTER
"..and is now in storage."
Ah, look, there they are. They don't need an island.
- (I love ducks, don't you?) - Hmm.
You never see that sort of thing on a coat of arms, do you?
All the sort of lions and dragons, you never see something nice like a duck.
- A duck. - Or a, you know, Eggs Benedict, or some sort of friendly,
- like a friendly thing. - Yes, like a hamster or guinea pig or something. - Yeah.
- That's true. A furry bearing. - Yes.
Anyway, the famous duck house didn't cost the taxpayer a penny.
And with that last tilt at our old friend General Ignorance,
we reach the end of tonight's performance,
and I can tell you that it is incredibly exciting.
We have leaders, two leaders, with plus three, Richard and Victoria.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Wowzer!
In third place, with minus seven, Alan Davies.
Highly commendable, highly commendable.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And with a fantastic minus 24 is Sue Perkins.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Well...
And it only remains for me to thank my panellists,
Victoria, Sue, Richard and Alan.
Thank you and good night!
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd