APPLAUSE
Goo-oo-oo-ood evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening, good evening,
and welcome to the Quite Interesting world of Kitsch,
where tonight everything is in the worst possible taste.
Let's meet those '70s icons,
the girl off the Athena tennis poster, Sue Perkins.
APPLAUSE
And complete with medallion and chest wig, it's Reginald D Hunter.
APPLAUSE
Our man on the water bed in black satin pyjamas, Jimmy Carr.
That is a troubling image.
And not really giving a flying duck, Alan Davies.
Thank you very much.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Now, if you want to avail yourself of my avocado bathroom en-suite
with all the trimmings, all you have to do is call.
- Sue goes... - DING-DONG!
- Reginald goes... - THEME FROM "THE STING"
- Jimmy goes... - CAR HOOTER
- Brilliant. - And Alan goes... - QUACK QUACK
There we are.
So, here's a load of old tat that includes
everything but the kitsch sink.
Have a look.
A flowery chair.
A cute balloon.
A Tiffany lamp
and a donkey cigarette dispenser.
Now, which is kitsch?
See, I don't know where kitsch becomes tacky,
there's a sort of hinterland, isn't there?
Hmm. We're going, unusually for QI, by dictionary definition.
It's a quality, something that a kitsch thing must have
- in order to be kitsch. - Ubiquity? - No. - Popular? - Ordinary?
Ordinary. Worthless.
- Yes. - Worthless. - It would be that chair, wouldn't it?
Well, the Tiffany lamps, I saw a Tiffany lamp in a store,
in the Kings Road, and I thought, "Oh, it's kind of
"a kitschy kind of thing, but it's all right."
And it was like 80 grand or something ludicrous.
- Oh, yes. - So you bought it. - They sold a very...
- So I bought three. - Yes, quite.
There was one from the 1890s that was sold for 2.8 million.
They are far from worthless, the originals.
But as you know, there are many imitations, which would,
I suppose, count as kitsch, because essentially
it's a stained-glass Art Nouveau lamp, with a bronze fitting.
2.8 million and then you can just very easily knock it over,
- can't you? - That would be...
Just come in pissed and you'd knock it over.
But that's true of Ming china, I suppose, as well.
So what about the balloon animal, is that...?
Is that not the one, that's not a balloon animal, is it?
That is... What's the guy called?
- The American artist. - The Pop Art guy. - Yes.
The guy who makes...who was dating La Cicciolina, Jeff Koons, is it?
Jeff Koons is the right answer,
and his work goes for a huge amount of money, vast.
I mean, one of his pieces went for 38 million.
- It really did look like a dog. - STEPHEN LAUGHS
Yes, he does balloon animals. That is a balloon animal, as you can see.
Also, he has three Michael Jackson and Bubbles porcelain figures,
which sold for 5.6 million,
and he just does stuff that is kitsch in every sense,
- but the worthless sense. - But wasn't Warhol doing the same thing
with, you know, pictures of Elvis and Marilyn?
Yes, they're not really so much kitsch, as kind of... I don't know.
- They raise the everyday to... - Yeah, re-appropriation of everyday culture.
Exactly right. Kitsch somehow implies something more ornamental,
more "tchotchke", as they would say in Yiddish.
It's no use just using another word I don't know!
- LAUGHTER That's not helping anyone! - No!
"It's a bit more tchotchke!" "Oh, right, now I get ya!"
"It IS a bit more tchotchke, now you say it!"
Well, we'll have one more from our little conveyor belt
and that's a chintz armchair.
Chintz has become somewhat unfashionable,
but when it first arrived from - do you know where it first came from?
Bournemouth.
- LAUGHTER - Originally... I think it comes from John Lewis.
Let's move a little bit away.
- China. - India is the answer.
- Oh. - It arrived as early as the 1680s in Europe,
and was so successful and so remarkably popular
that, in the court of Versailles, Louis declared
that it should be illegal everywhere, except in his court,
because it was ruining the French textile industry.
And the same happened in Britain in 1720 - all chintz was banned
because our own weavers were going out of business,
because it was considered such a luxury item.
I'm just getting a lot of retinal feedback from it. It's...
Yes, the word chintzy is not a compliment these days.
Here's a really... I'll be so impressed, I'll give you 50 points
- if you can tell me something really unusual... - OK.
..about the word chintz it shares with
- only two other words in the English language, as far as I know. - Oh, OK!
- Is it to do with the Scrabble score? - No! - Is it...?
- It'll be something to do with the Z. - Not exactly.
They're all six letter words.
Almost, chintz and biopsy.
Do all the letters of the alphabet appear in those words in order?
Not ALL the letters of the alphabet, no!
LAUGHTER I mean, I'm not...
- I'm not up on spelling! - The letters are in order.
- The letters are in alphabetical order! - Well, I kind of got that!
You kind of did, yes, you said ALL the letters of the alphabet!
- LAUGHTER - All 26!
All right, knock off a few of them!
- I got 20 more... - But it's amazing how rare that is -
biopsy, almost and chintz are in alphabetical order.
Um, if you know of any more, please DON'T write in.
LAUGHTER
You try and you think of a couple of words, you know, you think, er...
Horse? No.
LAUGHTER
- Dog? No. - It does rather come off to... - SUE: Almond? No.
JIMMY: Do you know what the issue with that is?
- And then, you give up! - Yes!
Basically, you could say to anyone, "Oh, yeah, armadillo as well
"is the other one." People never bother working these things out.
If you say it's an anagram, people never sit down and do it.
No, but I just have, and that isn't.
SUE: Yeah, that isn't right. LAUGHTER
It's got an A in the middle!
All right.
LAUGHTER
- The A was the only give away there! - It really was a bit of a giveaway
So there's a chintz chair. And finally we had on our conveyor belt,
this lovely object here.
- Oh, my God, you're so lucky! - Oh, I want that!
You put...yeah, out comes a cigarette.
- Wouldn't want to smoke it, though. - It poos a cigarette.
I think, instead of going,
"Oh, we're going to get rid of all cigarette advertising,"
- I think they should say they all come out of donkeys' arses. - Yes.
This would be kitsch, because it's worthless.
Well, it's £6.
And it's pretty kitsch, to be honest, isn't it?
I like it. I'll buy it for a fiver.
- It's yours. - Oh, you are a darling. - There, yours to cut out and keep.
- Hello! - Isn't anything coming out there?
Get off! He's just prolapsed.
You've prolapsed my donkey!
- Did you just finger her ass? - Yes.
I literally did.
APPLAUSE
Well, you're not to.
Yeah. I'm putting that away from your roaming anal fingers.
- Excellent. So, now... - ALAN: Er, so...
- QUACK QUACK - Yeah?
Fry's in alphabetical order.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
The important thing is... There are lots of words in alphabetical order!
- The important thing - it has to be six letters. - SUE: So is ant!
That's what's so hard about it.
So, let's look at some things that may or may not be kitsch,
like the fluffy dice.
I like the way we can go from like heavy, you know,
obscure depthful meaning words to donkeys' ass-holes in the same...
That's what we like to think of as the QI difference.
- Uh-huh. Range. - Fluffy dice. Is there a word for that?
- Tacky is the word I would probably use. Is that wrong of me? - Yeah.
But they're used ironically now, aren't they?
That's what's so interesting.
When they first came out, it would have been a tacky thing to have
in your Cortina in the late '70s, and now it's an ironic thing.
Ditto those things behind me that are also on the screen, lava lamps.
- Yeah. - And those... - I've got a lava lamp.
- Have you? - Yeah.
Excellent. And the word one tends to use of that is?
Arsehole?
LAUGHTER
- Hippy. - I was going to suggest retro.
Oh, sorry.
- QUACK QUACK Retro. - Yeah.
- So, have you got any of these, Reg? - Any of...no.
In fact, I can say safely that I've never had any of those things.
Not one? No gnomes in your garden?
- No, man! - Are they kitsch, or just...?
- They're again, postmodern ironic now, aren't they? - Yes, they are.
Gnomes seem to suggests something,
and I don't know what they suggest, but I know for years
when people see gnomes, they go, "Oh, you've got a gnome."
you're like, "What does that mean?"
"Oh, man, ha-ha-ha!" And you don't know what that means.
Do Americans have gnomes in their gardens?
- I mean the fake ones, right? - Yes. Yeah, obviously.
- SUE: - We've all got a real one.
I don't know whether,
because sometimes you see them and you don't know if it's like
- an Irish offshoot of something, or... - Yes.
On the end there, that doll with the, er...
Do you know what that is?
Well, my aunt had one and it was supposed to obscure the fact
that you are a person who owns toilet paper?
That's it, explained, well done. It is indeed.
- You're not that type of person. - No, I don't.
I don't have a bottom and I don't push things out of it every day
and therefore I would have no need
for any sort of paper to wipe that residue.
The donkey shit pusher would have been horrified.
So kitsch is really in the eye of the beholder.
Now, why should you worry about a man in fluffy slippers?
I think I wouldn't have any problem with his fluffy slippers,
- it's more the dressing gown I would have issues with. - Yeah.
It's supposed to be a giraffe dressing gown.
- I don't want to know where the neck is. - Well...
As ever, we've given you a picture that is completely inappropriate.
And if I told you the slippers in question were made of human blood,
- the blood of a young man's arm... - I'm worried now!
..and of emu feathers?
- There's no way to know that off a first glance! No way? - No.
- So now, where do emus live? - ALAN: - Australia.
- Yeah, he just took the words out of your mouth. - Well, he did.
Certain indigenous Australian peoples...
- Aborigines, I'm going to say? - Yeah, in their belief systems,
if someone committed a crime,
then they had a figure called a kurdaitcha,
who wore these slippers and, in order to wear the slippers,
which is quite tricky, he had to dislocate his small toes.
That was part of the thing -
the little hole for the small toe to poke out of, um,
and he would find the perpetrator of this crime,
whatever it might be, and he would point a bone at him
and the perpetrator of the crime would freeze and then die,
presumably through psychosomatic or a sort of, you know, just because
he was so terrified that the taboo was real that he did die.
You would've thought, if someone is coming after you to kill you,
- with toes dislocated, you could get away. - Yes!
- Well... - There's one great advantage they're giving you.
Couldn't they just have made wider slippers?
I mean, so that you could fit all of the toes in without having
- to dislocate and then stick the weird gnarly one at you. - I agree,
the dislocation is an odd part of it, but when you think about it,
in order for us to pass judgment on people,
we have to put something made of horsehair on our head.
I mean, we have our own tribal ways of dealing with injustice.
- Are those boomerangs there in their hands? - Um...
They're probably kylies, yes.
- Do you know the boomerang joke? - Go on, then.
It'll come back to you.
Ow!
LAUGHTER
I walked into that one!
- Oh, dear! - It sounds a little bit like, you know,
bringing someone in for questioning and then to, like, intimidate them,
you start torturing yourself in front of them, like, "Ah!
"How do you like that? Now, tell me where your momma at! Ah!"
That would freak someone out, you're right!
- But I don't know if they'd tell you the truth. - "I'd rather not talk!"
What was that one we had where you put your shoes on back to front
and then...people can't find you?
LAUGHTER
The invisibility shoes or the shoes where...?
- You turned them around. - Well, that would sort of work.
- And then, you walk along and... - People walk the opposite direction?
- JIMMY: Difficult to put on backwards. - Quite difficult. - Lose some toes!
- Special shoes! - There's another kind of special shoe - the cow shoe.
- Who do you think might use the cow shoe? - A cow.
- Well... - LAUGHTER
They already have cow's feet, they don't need to pretend to be cows.
I want to be a cow! Or a horse!
No! Humans wore them, but they gave out cow footprints.
SUE: Oh, like...? JIMMY: Rustlers.
Well, actually, rustlers probably did use them as well.
- It was during Prohibition. - Right. Bootleggers? - Yeah, bootleggers.
So they could move their cases of stuff across the desert...
- A cow field? - ..looking as if... Yeah, a cow field, exactly!
So, sort of, they would think cows have gone from one bar to another!
LAUGHTER
"That cow looks like it was pissed and only had two legs!"
"It went downstairs to the club, it came up again!
"It got in the taxi!"
"This cow stood against the fence and then there's a big puddle of..."
While on the subject of rustlers,
there was a rustler called George "Big Nose" Parrot,
who was a cattle rustler, and he was hanged,
- and a Dr John... - ALAN SQUAWKS
LAUGHTER
And he was skinned.
- Was he? - Oh, that's unnecessary!
And Dr John Osborne made a pair of shoes out of his skin.
- And he became Governor of Wyoming... - Of course he did.
- ..for Democratic... - No-one would challenge him. He's a nutter!
He wore those shoes at his inaugural ball.
- You sound made up about him! - He's a charmer!
At what stage did that become unacceptable, then?
It was as late as 1893. I think it would've been unacceptable...
Did he wait until the man was dead and then he, like, capitalised
and said, "I will seize the skin,"
or he killed the man and then he started raking the man's skin off
- and, like, "I got what I wanted, that's why I caused your death"? - No!
- He was hanged first. - Hanged first, then he went, "Nobody want this?"
- Yeah, quite! - LAUGHTER
"It's only going to waste otherwise!"
He was standing there barefoot looking at this man...
LAUGHTER
Not pleasant, I grant you,
but life was cheap in those days, in the West!
So, stop me now when you know what I'm talking about.
Originally made out of shower curtains,
could be used as wallpaper, works as a burglar alarm,
prevents sweaty toilet syndrome,
covered Farrah Fawcett when she modelled for Playboy.
Good for stress relief and wraps things up so they don't break.
- Nylon. Lino. - What was the toilet syndrome?
Don't worry about that, that's quite hard to guess.
- Rubber? - It wraps things up and...
Plastic, cellophane? Clingfilm.
- Bubble wrap. - Bubble wrap! Yes.
I'll tell you a few things about bubble wrap.
It was invented in... Guess what year it was invented.
- 1947. - It was 1957, in 1957 by Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes,
who put two shower curtains together hoping to find some use for it,
- and it wasn't until they... - What?! - That's how they invented it?!
That's a crazy shot in the dark, isn't it?
I'm just going to put a couple of pencils together
and see if we come up with anything.
- Does this... What? - They were clearly covering the bed.
- Yeah. - To protect the mattress. - Oh, now! They thought it...
And as they lay there, they heard, "Pop-pop-pop!"
"Was that you?" "No, it wasn't me." We might be onto something here.
Must be the shower curtain.
They thought it could be sold as wallpaper, it didn't work.
Nor did greenhouse insulation, which they also used it for.
And it wasn't until 1960, three years later,
they hit on the idea of wrapping up components for IBM.
And since then, the Sealed Air Corporation now makes enough
every year to encircle the world ten times.
That's pretty impressive, isn't it?
That's good if we ever have to send the world anywhere.
But unfortunately you'd send it Royal Mail
and it would get lost, so...
The thing about that is, where does it all go, then?
Because it just goes in the bin, doesn't it, bubble wrap?
- Once you've popped it. - Or you sit in front of the telly relieving yourself.
LAUGHTER
You know what I mean.
Yes. But let's get back to the bubble wrap.
If you put it in the bin, where does it all go?
It goes in that sort of whirlpool, between...in Hawaii.
- Oh, the great Pacific gyre. - Yeah. - The size of Texas.
That vast eddy which is just full of bin liners.
The sweaty toilet thing, you stick it inside of a cistern,
because in hot tropical countries,
the toilet cistern sweats and it apparently cures that.
Now, I've got this little test for you. Here we are.
And with any luck, the audience might have some bubble wrap too.
They're waving their bubble wrap. Thank you, audience.
Do not pop it. This is a really important exercise.
- What do you mean don't pop it? - Don't pop it, do not... No!
- No! No! This is really important. - Why? - OK. - No problem. - Why not though?
This is a test of your worthiness. Don't pop it yet.
One of mine's already popped, I didn't do it.
That's all right, as long as you didn't,
because in 2013, a group of Yale psychologists,
they found another use for bubble wrap,
which was to measure aggression, all right?
They showed pictures of "cute" animals, all right?
- Ooh! - Oh, now, now, wait, wait, wait.
- Oh, the two little chicks! - Ooh! - Stop it.
People were told to pop bubble wrap as they watched.
They thought that it was a test for their motor activity and memory.
But in fact it was a test for what's called "cute aggression".
If you see something very cute, you start popping more and more.
Not because they wanted to hurt the animals, but because they were
frustrated at not being able to touch them and cuddle them.
And this is called cute aggression.
It's when you kind of go, "Oooh!" like that.
So, audience, hold your bubble wrap,
we're going to show you some very cute animals and it's all up to you.
Let's start with the cuteness.
- Oh, dear! - That's not... come on, that's not that cute.
- Oh, it is. - He looks sort of dead.
He's not that cute, yeah, I think he's been shot.
- Oh! That's horrible. - He does look like he's been shot.
Oh, the blue-eyed one!
No, not that cute, not worth a pop.
THEY ALL POP BUBBLES
- You did it! - Definitely.
Yeah, that's getting quite a few pops.
- Look at his little eye. - No, I'm not gone yet.
I want a dog and then I'm going to pop my load.
That's the first time I've heard that phrase since last night.
- Oh, there... - Oh!
- That's pretty cute. - That was the last one.
Not cute, ginger.
All right. You can put away your bubble wrap now.
That kitten is basically saying,
"Help me, they're about to close the lid on this box."
- He's probably the Schrodinger's cat. - Yeah, he is.
- He's about to do the experiment. - I'm not going to exist in a minute.
You may like to know that the last Monday in January is
Bubble Wrap Awareness Day.
- Oh, good. - It's the appreciation of bubble wrap day.
- That's in my diary. - I'm sure they have a website. - Yeah. - They must do.
And Rhett Allain of Wired magazine calculated that you need
to wrap yourself in 39 layers of bubble wrap
in order to survive falling out of a sixth floor window.
Oh, please, don't try that at home!
- So... - Because you don't have a six-storey house?
- It may be that. - So if you wrapped yourself in bubble wrap six times,
- you could jump out of a building and you'd be... - No, 39 times.
- 36. 39. - 39. - Oh, thank God we clarified! - Yeah.
- So you're going to go up to the sixth storey of your house... - Yeah.
I'm going up to the 39th storey and wrapping myself six times.
- Which by my calculations, I should be fine. - Oh, dear!
Just out of interest, do you know what a group of kittens is called?
There is a group name for kittens.
- A puke. - No, no, no...
- Is it a "sack of"? - No, it also begins...
AUDIENCE GROANS
SMATTERING OF APPLAUSE
You are bad!
No, a group of kittens is actually called a kindle, oddly enough.
- Really? - Yeah! - A kindle of kittens.
- SOME PEOPLE: Aw! - Aw!
- Just for kittens, is it for cats? - Just for kittens.
Anyway, so... here are tonight's specials.
There we are.
See if you can read that. They're on the board, as well.
Plats du jour. Sea kittens.
- Sea kittens. - Sea kittens is a madey-uppy phrase,
by people who don't want us to eat fish.
Oh, so they try to make us go into a bubble wrap mode,
by calling it sea kitten instead of cod.
So that would be a group of people who are very against anything
to do with any kind of aggression or beastliness to animals.
- Vegans. - Which would be vegetarians.
No, an actual specific organisation.
- PETA? - PETA, or... - PETA is the right answer.
The People's... Oh, what is it?
Something for Ethical Treatment of Animals.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I assume.
Not Porpoises for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Not Pig-Eaters for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
And so they thought that if they called all fish sea kittens,
people would say, "I wouldn't want to put a hook in a sea kitten."
- So that was the idea. - A lake puppy.
I think, if anything, it would make me want to try kittens.
It's obviously not worked, though, in that case, have they?
And we've also got Nymphs of Dawn.
- Nymphs of the Golden Dawn. - I know one thing there.
- Yes, go on? - I've certainly had the Nymphs of the Golden Dawn.
- Which are Nymphs of the Golden Dawn? - Which are they? - Yes.
Are they oysters?
- They're not oysters, no. - Then I was mis-sold!
They were first served for the Prince of Wales...
- Sounds like a strip club. - ..in 1908.
They were served for the Prince of Wales in 1908,
who would have been the future George V.
They were actually a creation of one of the great chefs,
- or THE great chef, really, of the 19th... - Auguste Escoffier.
Very well said.
And he persuaded the British to eat this dish, specifically
the Prince of Wales, by calling it Cuisses de Nymphes de l'Aurore!
Thighs of the nymphs of dawn.
- Frogs' legs. - Yeah. - Frogs' legs is the right answer.
And there's a picture of frogs' legs.
And they are now a standard dish, which people eat very happily.
Tastes like chicken, as everything does that you're a bit scared of.
And it's, um...
- I'd say that rooster's testicles DON'T taste like chicken. - No?
- I've had them. - Have you? - I've had rooster's testicles.
One of these things you do, isn't it, with Giles Coren?
- You force yourself to eat testicles? - Oh, I didn't force myself.
- And his testicles? - Um... His testicles taste like chicken.
- Oh, right, OK, never mind! - LAUGHTER
We've got a couple left. Mendip Wallfish.
Is that what PETA calls kittens, so we wouldn't harm them?
No, where are the Mendips?
Is it between your bum and your testicles?
LAUGHTER
Mendips, men dip.
Are they sort of Gloucester area?
- A bit further south, yes, Somerset. - Somerset.
Like the Quantocks. The Mendip Hills.
- I know where my Quantocks are. - Yes, they all sound rude,
don't they, like the Trossachs?
But this was served in the Miners' Arms in Priddy in Somerset.
And they served it as Mendip Wallfish because,
like frogs' legs, it's one of those things
- that British people tend to go yuck! - Snails. - Snails?
Snails is the right answer. Somerset snails.
And unlike the French way of serving them, which is with...?
- Garlic. - Butter? - Garlic and butter, exactly.
It's pretty similar, except it's with cider, herbs and seasoning.
- It's almost like moules. - It's a bit like moules, yeah! - Yeah.
And it's a Mendip Wallfish.
Rocky Mountain Oysters, I think, are testicles.
You're absolutely right, bulls' testicles, can be sheep or pigs.
- They're prairie oysters. Yeah. - Prairie oysters, yeah.
Also called prairie oysters.
There are lots of names for them, some of which are quite amusing.
- Ball sack. - How did you get that photo?
They're pretty good, aren't they? They're called Cowboy Caviar...
- Oh, God! - ..Montana Tender Groins...
I had that once.
..Dusted Nuts, Bull Fries...
Dusted Nuts is quite on the nose, isn't it?
Plate of knackers.
- Bull's bollocks. - Yeah.
- Bull fries. - Cream of bollock soup.
- Wow! - They're also called Swinging Beef.
Which is a good title for them.
Swinging Beef is what I'm calling my autobiography.
Or they're sometimes called criadillas or huevos de toro,
- which is... - Huevos de toro. - Huevos de toro is bull's eggs. Yeah.
What are they called in English?
- Plums on a plate. - Very good. - It's not sweetbreads...
- Sweetmeat. - Sweetbread. That's the thymus gland, isn't it?
- You're very right. - It's pancreas. - Spot on.
The pancreas or the thymus gland is sweetbreads.
The testicles are sweetmeats. Very good.
We found our way through those unusual foods.
Now, I'll put the blackboard away, and it's time to ask you this.
What is Kaninhoppning?
Kanin is, I think may be related to the English word "coney".
- Does that help? - Rabbit, like a... - Rabbit. - OK. - So rabbit hopping.
So hopping like a bunny. Bunny hopping.
Hopping like a bunny, but it's a sport.
- Rabbit. - Oh, for sure it is. - Show jumping.
Show jumping for rabbits is the right answer.
- LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE - Sure, sure.
Ahh!
- Argh! - POPPING
- It's not that big a sport in Britain... - Cute.
..but in Denmark and the Scandiwegian countries
they take it pretty seriously,
and they have world records and championships and...
Who's winning? Who's the current world champion?
Well, I can tell you the world record holder for the long jump
is Yaboo, who is Danish.
- Three metres. - With Flopsy a close second.
Tosen has the high jump record, at 99.5cm.
They haven't yet broken the metre, on the high jump.
But there are nearly a thousand rabbit show jumpers in Sweden alone.
And the sport is also practised in the UK, Denmark and the US.
And Lisbeth Jansson has written two books about the sport.
Do they dope test them afterwards?
She does say that the sport will allow a rabbit to live
twice as long, up to 10 or 12 years,
as compared to the average five years that one in a hutch will live.
Yeah. It's very important to take care of your rabbit properly,
you've got to bathe them in hot water with potatoes and onions.
Oh, now!
Let's have some footage of some working show jumping.
- Large footage. - Here they go. - Sure, OK.
Oh, cute. Oh, it's cute!
Oh, I can't bear it.
That's a big one. Oh!
Oh, he's going to refuse. No, he's up.
- Oh! - Just shattered now.
Over he goes!
- Oh, he's had enough. - And a final little one. Bravo!
APPLAUSE
Well, as you could see, they weren't being led, the human is not allowed
to get ahead of the rabbit, or that's a forfeit.
So the rabbit has to lead the human,
I don't know if you noticed in that footage.
The human was just behind.
OK, so, solve this one for me, will you, please?
- I'm going to give you all muddled-up... - Oh, doom!
- Can you do these? Oh, there we go. - It smacks of bullying at school.
- Bullying at school? - Yeah, anyone who couldn't do this got bullied.
How many combinations do you think there are?
- I think there's... - Too many for my small brain.
- It's actually 40... - One thousand. - 43.25 quintillion.
Shall I tell you how we did it in Croydon? We just picked them off.
- There you go. - Wa-hey! Jimmy's done it.
APPLAUSE
Alan!
Alan, you're so close. Oh, you almost had it.
- No, no, I've forgotten... - You've messed it up.
- Oh! - Just start picking them off.
Do you know what's completely tragic?
We told Jimmy and Alan how to do it with six moves.
Jimmy remembered, but Alan, unfortunately...
Oh, he's done it! Have you? Yay!
APPLAUSE
Any luck, Reginald?
Well, I didn't receive that instruction.
- You didn't get the benefit... - You and me, exactly.
- It was unfair on you two. - It's fun.
- It is fun, isn't it? - It just brought back a lot of bad school memories.
As I say, it is a staggering number.
It is more possible combinations
- than light travels inches in a century. - God!
There's the number up on the screen,
it is such a huge number. it's inconceivably vast.
But you can make it impossible, do you know how to do that?
Take the stickers off?
Yeah, you sort of replace the stickers one with the other,
so that it's actually never doable, which would drive people insane.
- But there are these. - The other way you can make it impossible
is to break someone's fingers.
- Yeah, really nice. - They'll come and shove a bone in your face.
There's the 4 x 4, and you can imagine
the combinations are even more gigantic.
It's probably 8 or 9, I imagine.
In 2010, which is quite a long time after the Rubik Cube became popular,
science and computing finally came up with the minimum
number of moves from any combination that it takes to solve the cube.
Can you imagine how many that might be?
- I bet it's 12. - 19. - Six. - It's 20.
It's called God's number and it's just extraordinary.
You say you were obsessed when you were a child.
- Under pressure, can we see if you can do it now? - Oh, gosh!
- Come on, under pressure. - I can do the first two rows, but that's it.
- That's pretty messed up. - Oh, God! - OK, come on.
- Look, look... - You're on the clock.
We've got a lot of time ahead of us,
I've got to decide which colours... All right, so that's going to be...
We need a backing track for this really. This needs...
Let's get green and...
- SUE HUMS A TUNE - Oh, stop it!
Um... Oh, stop, stop!
- CONTINUES HUMMING - You are being so unkind.
And you're out of time and I've had a birthday.
Stop it. Blue goes there.
- We could do one of those fade out, fade in... - Yellow goes there.
Let's get some beers. Can we get some beers?
- Yeah, some time later, yeah, yeah. - Stop it.
Right, so I've got all the middle ones here.
Now we do the corners.
Might kick back, go to the bar, come back in a couple of hours.
That's it, so I've got those four there and those two middle ones.
You should be able to do it within 20 moves, Stephen.
Yeah, I know that!
- But I can't. - It's God's number, you know.
Yeah, don't be mean to me.
- It takes an atheist a lot longer. - Yeah.
Anyway, there's the first layer. Yeah. Thank you.
- APPLAUSE - That's pretty impressive.
It gets quicker after that. Anyway, so there's your Rubik's Cube.
Now, what did the American army do with 100,000 of these?
Whoa, excuse me. There we go. Pass that on. That is yours there.
- Oh, my God! Are these the originals? - That is fantastic.
- Can you see what is inside them? - Oh, wow! - I was looking the wrong way.
There are too many layers of glass separating me and this image.
- What are you seeing, Jimmy? - Hard-core pornography.
- And you? - I've got a target and a plane. - You've got planes.
- And you have got, Reginald? Hello? - I think I've seen the future!
- You have seen the future? - LAUGHTER
- What is happening in the future, Reg? - We are all on a plane.
- It is an assassin's cross hairs. - These are American...
- Do you know what these devices are called? - Viewmaster.
- It is written on it. - Oh...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Why do I bother?
- It is also written up there. - They are made in Portland, Oregon.
Yes, indeed. And they are a rather wonderful device.
Invented in the 1930s. You have a disc like this.
You can pull it out, pop it in, and you press a lever
and you get a 3-D picture.
And what you have got are the army versions that were used
to help members of gunnery crews and various other things
to recognise the outlines and shapes
of either friendly or enemy aircraft.
- And that is what you will see. - Thomas the Tank Engine, I have got.
We have given Alan Thomas the Tank Engine.
We thought he would be confused by the aeroplanes.
LAUGHTER
So what does your card say when you pull it out, Alan? What does it say?
Percy found himself under the coal chute.
"I don't like getting dirty."
LAUGHTER
- Filth. - Ours say Hell Driver, Dauntless, Vengeance, Texan...
it gives all the details of the planes in the photograph.
- I'd like to see that. - Yes, they are rather good. Have a swap.
Sorry, so you had ones for goodies and ones for baddies, then?
Oh, the Thomas is beautiful!
LAUGHTER
- It is 3-D! - I've got the original Nolan sisters here, I'm happy.
- Whose side was Thomas on in the Second World War? - I can't remember.
I think you look a little bit like a Doctor Who baddie.
Anyway, they did have a serious purpose.
- In fact, they handed out how many? - 12. - 100,000.
So that was in the war and then they went, "Well, afterwards,
"what shall we do with them?"
which is often the way with military things.
Whenever there is a war, you always get something out of it.
Like the bazooka.
The bazooka obviously has a use in everyday life as well.
For cooking chicken.
- LAUGHTER - And for playing Greek music.
Is it true...? I went on holiday to Vietnam and I fired a machine gun.
You could pay money for bullets and fire them.
- They have got old guns from the war. - Really?
Someone told me that if you...
They have a bazooka and you can fire it at a cow.
LAUGHTER DROWNS SPEECH
- I have heard that. - You have heard that? - There's a very...
Is it a myth?
There is certainly an eccentric man who has a large estate
in Shropshire and he has an old-fashioned Roman ballista,
one of those catapult things.
And what he does for fun is catapult cows through the air.
- LAUGHTER - Dead cows. He doesn't do it with live cows.
- Not at the end of it, anyway. - No! They do go a huge distance.
And there is something highly comical about seeing a cow
just sailing through the air, going hundreds of yards through the air.
- And there is a butcher underneath. - It's a bit of a mess.
And all the other cows are going,
"If we just wrap ourselves in bubble wrap 39 times, it won't happen."
"We'll be fine." Exactly.
Six million discs they used,
the American army, to hand out to their 100,000 people.
So that was a military thing before it was a toy?
No, it was a toy first but the American Army
and Navy saw the value in it...
Sounds like another defence contract to me.
Yes. Sorry?
The internet was originally a military...
And sat nav, as well, that was a military thing.
Deal Or No Deal, that was a military thing.
LAUGHTER
- It still is. - Absolutely right, yes.
Now, I'd like to take a picture as a memento of this lovely evening.
- LAUGHTER - Oh, they're in love.
What, what...?
Reg, it was a fantastic weekend we spent. What?
- That mohair look is working for you. - Yeah, it really is.
- That softer knit. Sexy. - Reggie takes Jimmy to Georgia.
That's so disturbing, in so many ways.
Oh, there you are. Oh, don't you look lovely!
- Yeah. - There we are. Now, what's the quickest way to develop it?
- What should I do to develop it? - Shake it, shake it, baby.
- HOOTER - Oh! - Oh, Sue!
Oh, no, I'm a buffoon.
The quickest way to develop it is to take it to Boots, the chemist.
No, it isn't. That would take a lot longer.
It's quicker to do an oil painting.
It does take a bit of time. Let's have you two, as well.
Smile. Aaah. That's so cute.
Now, what they used to do, the old pros, when they took
photographs with proper film, they used to do a little Polaroid first.
Oh, yeah, always do a Polaroid first.
- They used to put it under their arms. - Their arse cheeks usually.
I'm sorry? Arse cheeks?! Fair enough.
We had different photographers.
I think Polaroids, it's sort of a slippery slope, though,
- because photography used to be... - Between your arse cheeks, go on.
It used to be you went on holiday, took photos, then you got back.
Don't shake it.
You went to the chemist, put them in, and it took a week.
LAUGHTER
I want to see that shot.
I didn't realise you were pulling that face, Reg.
- I didn't realise you was pulling your face. - Nothing.
What I'm saying is, you used to get photos from a holiday,
the last two shots were of the dog, because you hadn't taken enough,
then you'd go to the chemist, then you'd remember the holiday.
- Now we reminisce instantly and it's ruined it. - It's true.
You go, "Oh, look at us, we were so young four minutes ago."
And you go to one of those rock gigs, where people perform,
and everybody watches them through their cameras,
- instead of watching the real people. - I like that.
When I do a stand-up show, someone will be taping it on their phone.
As if like, "Now is not a good time for me."
I'm going to take this and enjoy it later on in this supreme quality.
- They just can't enjoy the moment. - It's so bizarre.
You used to get your pictures back
- and they'd have a sticker on sometimes, wouldn't they? - Yes.
Saying, "This picture is shit."
- Those old disc cameras. - Or this picture has been sent to the police.
A copy of it.
Well, can you tell me who invented the Polaroid photograph?
- Do you remember his name? - Mr Roid.
- He had a brother named Haemor. - Very good.
Was it Eastman or Kodak or...?
It wasn't Eastman or Kodak, no.
"Fuji!"
No, it wasn't Fuji.
Land, his name was Land, was his name.
And he made polarised sunglasses
and that's why he called it Polaroid.
- There he is, Mr Land. - "I feel the need!"
I feel the need for speed. Indeed.
- Oh, you can ride my tail any time. - Yeah. - Yeah.
And then the Polaroid camera was launched in 1948.
Because the company was already called Polaroid,
he called it a Polaroid camera.
It used to be Polaroids were always a bit grimy, weren't they?
- Absolutely. - If you ever found a box of Polaroids in your parents' room,
- it was worth leaving those alone. - Hello!
That's a mental scarring right there.
- Oh, years of... - Hang on, what's that? Oh, no!
Well, anyway, the point is,
shaking a Polaroid had no effect on how quickly it developed.
Now, here is a classic piece of kitsch.
Why is every fourth monkey like a search engine?
- Fourth monkey? - Fourth. - There are three monkeys... - Ah... - See...
- That is the strange thing. - See no evil... - Speak no evil...
see no evil, hear no evil...
Google no evil!
Well, Google is right, but what is Google's motto?
Feeling Lucky?
LAUGHTER
- Come on, you are just looking for points! - It is true, yes.
But as a corporation, they have this...
one that has been mocked many times,
but it is their sort of mission statement.
- Is it "don't do evil"? - Don't do evil is their motto. - Don't do evil?
- Their motto is...what? - That is clutching its knackers! - I know!
LAUGHTER
I think it has just heard about prairie oysters and gone, hang on...
No, these are Koshin monkeys. We know the three.
The fourth was considered, when it came to the West, a bit too rude.
It was "do no evil". And it was expressed by covering its genitals.
How ironic, though, that the fourth monkey should do no evil and
hold its knackers when Google is a search engine for the porn industry!
- I know! - Probably the most searched for thing on the internet. I gather.
- It is true, but that was... - LAUGHTER
I didn't realise you could get other stuff on it until recently.
I used to refer to the internet as the pornography.
"I was on the pornography last night
"and do you know, you can book train tickets on it as well?"
It is pornography and cats.
If you ever find a video of a tabby banging a tortoiseshell,
the internet will eat itself.
- LAUGHTER It is like finding out about the 13th apostle. - Exactly.
Because the first three are basically "don't grass anyone up".
And the fourth one is "actually, don't get involved".
And lastly, to wrap up our kitsch-fest, here's some karaoke.
What is the world's most dangerous song?
Is this the song that's playing most often during traffic accidents?
No, it's not that, this really is a karaoke issue,
- at least six people in the Philippines... - My Way.
- ..have been murdered for singing? - My Way. - My Way!
- Exactly. - Sorry, murdered for singing My Way? - Yes.
What, because they didn't do it right? They did it their way!
They murdered My Way and were murdered as a result.
So singing, "And now the end is nigh..."
- Yeah, exactly. "At last I face the final curt..." - Argh!
But in Thailand, the song to be wary of is even more dangerous.
In 2008, a gunman shot dead eight of his neighbours
after becoming enraged at the noise from karaoke parties,
at which they sang this American song, by a good old mountain boy.
From West Virginia, Take Me Home...
- Oh, John Denver. - Yes, that's it, Take Me Home, Country Roads
became the song that killed eight people.
- And thus they were taken home. - Thus they were taken home, exactly.
Most people credit the invention of karaoke to a Japanese fellow
- called Daisuke Inoue in 1971. - Oh, he's to blame.
Well, yes, but he didn't make any money out of it whatsoever.
But he has patented a cockroach killer which is specifically
designed to kill cockroaches that live in karaoke machines.
- Presumably by playing them Peter Andre. - Yes, presumably.
Now, this will be very good.
You will get lots of points if you can guess what the prize was
in 2010 for the Karaoke World Championships held in Moscow.
- The prize was one million... something. - Karaoke machines. - No.
- Roubles...? - Not roubles. - Prairie... - Barrels of oil? - Yeah.
- Prairie oysters, you were going to say? - Prairie oysters.
- Dumplings, is the answer. - Dumplings? - One million dumplings.
- How do you take them home?! - They like dumplings a lot.
They do love their dumplings.
They have got to be pretty moreish before you get to 1,000,000.
It is a hell of a number, isn't it?
I suppose you just shared it with everybody.
Well, you'll be excited to know that we come now to the scores,
and how fascinating they are.
In first place, with a towering plus 9, is Jimmy Carr.
Oh, come on!
Yes! Finally. I've never won this before, it's brilliant.
APPLAUSE
In second place, with a very impressive plus 6,
is Alan Davies!
- APPLAUSE AND CHEERING - Wow!
In third place, with a highly respectable zero,
is Reginald D Hunter.
APPLAUSE
And I'm afraid sweeping up the dead karaoke cockroaches tonight,
with minus 8, is Sue Perkins.
APPLAUSE
My thanks to Sue, Jimmy, Reginald and Alan, and good night.