CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello!
Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
and welcome to QI, where tonight we're on lethal form.
Let's meet the death-defying Sandi Toksvig.
APPLAUSE
The death-denying Jason Manford.
APPLAUSE
The death-dealing Bill Bailey.
APPLAUSE
And the drop-dead-gorgeous, Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE
At least one out of 100 has to be complimentary.
- That was very kind. - Yeah.
Now, slay me with your buzzers. Sandi goes...
MACHINE GUN FIRE
Jason goes...
HEAVY GUNFIRE
- Wow! - Wow! - Bill goes...
EXPLOSION
And Alan goes...
CHILD'S VOICE: Bang, bang, you're dead!
LAUGHTER
Very good.
APPLAUSE
So, before we start, I have to remind you
we have in this series a Spend A Penny round, because...
CASH REGISTER
Exactly.
Because L stands for lavatory,
one of the answers will involve lavatories in one form or another.
All things lavatorial.
So, if you do spot a lavatory lurking anywhere,
play your joker and if you're right, I'll give you some points.
What could be fairer than that?
Now, I'm going to hand out some bags, can you take one
- and give one to Jason, Sandi, there? - Thank you.
And you've got yours, I think, already, haven't you?
Now, you should have a bottle with a cork in it,
and I want you, using the bag and the bottle
to get the cork out of the bottle.
You can't break the bottle, obviously.
Are these...? These are the ones we use when we go dog walking.
Yes, they are, they're pooper scooper ones, exactly.
- Are they? - Yeah. But they haven't been used, I promise you.
No, obviously. I was going to use the penny.
The people near me have started... Does this happen to anyone else?
They pick it up, put it in the bag and then hang it on a tree.
Does that happen...? They just leave it hanging on a tree!
Like a Christmas decoration!
Like a really shit Christmas tree - literally.
- I think that's a Salford thing, Jason. - I think so!
Ooh. I say, Sandi's looking promising.
That's definitely the right idea, is to blow down the bag,
but I think we need a little bit more down the bottle.
Or as much of it as you can get.
You might use your pen to push, as long as you don't tear the bag.
BILL: Oh, this is exciting. I don't know what I'm doing.
No.
Oi, that's my catchphrase!
- Come in here, rob my phrase.... - I'm just copying what Sandi's doing.
Oh, Sandi, Sandi, yeah.
Line it up, if you can line it up,
it's going to go, I think.
If you can, it's so close.
- Oh! - Oh! - Look, we'll show you. One of our researchers, Zara,
she managed to do it and we shot her doing it, so have a look.
- You shot her?! - You shot her!
Watch, there she goes.
If you succeed, we will have to shoot you.
There, there she goes. She's just blown up it.
A little bit. There it goes.
There.
Well done, Zara. Now...
APPLAUSE
Oh, wait a minute.
- Oh, oh, nearly. - Oh, nearly.
You didn't blow enough to provide enough suction, that's the key.
You have to get the bag...
Don't panic, Mr Mainwaring, blow in the bag.
Blow in the bag, we used to blow in the bag.
We'll soon get it out, Mr Mainwaring.
We'll blow in the bag. Don't worry, Mr Mainwaring!
I think Stephen, it's there...
- You've got it? - This is brilliant!
- Don't panic, we'll blow in the bag sir! - See if you can pull.
I don't know what I'm doing.
Oh, yeah. We don't want to stretch the...
I think it's there. You've got it.
Yes!
APPLAUSE
Oh, well done.
Brilliant. Now...
No, you haven't got the pressure there.
OK, pop them away.
BOTTLE CLANKS
APPLAUSE
That's very much one way to do it.
No, it can't be done.
But what's really interesting about this is
how will this save possibly millions of lives, this trick?
It's not to do with the stent thing, is it?
When they blow up a little balloon into your...
No, it's not, it's...
People getting corks trapped.
That's not going to save that many lives.
- It might save a lot of distress. - Yes, that's what I mean.
To people who want the cork out of a bottle, but it's not really...
Is it the inside of the penis, can we just clear that up?
- Oh! - No, it isn't. - Is it up the bum hole?
- No! - In the ear? - In the ear hole?
- People sticking corks in their ear. - No. This...
Is it a common condition?
It is, in the Third World especially,
a very common condition and one that causes millions of deaths a year.
And that's childbirth fatalities, because of breach births,
and being stuck and so on.
And it took an Argentinian mechanic,
who saw a video clip of the trick.
His name was Jorge Odon,
and he thought, what would be really good...
His name was Corkay?
No, Jorge. He was called Jorge.
George in Spanish. I like that idea, his name was Corky.
Corky Odon. And he thought that would work on babies.
- Already a sucker is used. - Yes, but I just want to be clear.
So, you're having trouble giving birth, and a mechanic comes along
- with a plastic bag... - Yeah. - Yeah.
Pushes it in and then goes, "I'm just going to blow."
That's pretty much...
- Don't worry, I've seen a video. - It'll be fine.
- That's exactly... - Seen it on YouTube.
And the obstetrician he showed it to
thought that he was on some hidden camera show and that it was a trick
and that he was going to be made an idiot of.
But he realised that it was a fantastic idea.
Cos before then they... Do you know the device that is used
to try and pull babies out?
- Oh, the forceps. - Well, the forceps is the really old one,
but the more common one now is the one on the right.
It's a sort of a sucker thing.
It is a sucker, but it has a particular name.
AUDIENCE SHOUT SUGGESTIONS
Ventouse. What's the other one being shouted?
- Kiwi. - You call it a kiwi?
Yeah. We're student midwives.
- Oh, really? Well, then we bow to your superior knowledge. - Yes.
Midwifery is a good thing.
Midwifery, it sounds a bit like a sort of
not very noxious fart, doesn't it?
LAUGHTER
Sort of mid whiffery. Jolly. It...
Can I just say, Stephen, you were, up until then, being so sensitive.
Yeah.
"Your job sounds like a fart!"
Odon's method inserts a plastic bag, just as you said,
into the birth canal, under the baby's chin.
Air is then pumped in, inflating the bag gently around the baby's head.
There's no danger of suffocation. Why is that?
Because they're not breathing yet.
Because babies don't breathe in the womb, exactly.
The baby is then safely pulled out
without the damage of bleeding forceps.
And we can see that.
- Not in real life. - All right, yes. - Phew.
There you go, and that's the suction power
is on a little calibrated thing, you see.
Then you, again, take it away and it's exactly the same principle.
FROM AUDIENCE: It's inconceivable!
Thank you. I hope...
Thank you. Out, out!
I think you've rather misunderstood
the role of audience intervention here.
But the way that the device goes around the baby's head,
very, very similar to the way the chameleon gets its prey.
- Its prey, yes. - You know?
Because the tongue is actually, sort of...
It subsumes the prey and goes round it and then...
Perhaps you could train a chameleon.
To give birth!
Just hold one up to the appropriate area.
That's a brilliant idea.
I feel sorry for this woman who's already said no to the engineer
and then Bill Bailey turns up...
"What about the chameleon?"
- Well... - She might not be able to see the chameleon
- if he's been hanging around for a while. - That's true.
That would take the stress out of it, it just looks like your arm.
That's true, yeah.
Oh, what's this? Oh, it's just, it's just a patterned shirt.
Yeah, it's fine.
And then it runs up a tree with it.
Yeah. That is a disadvantage.
Then it gets raised as a chameleon.
- That's not a bad thing. - Yeah.
Everything you said about this, "Why a mechanic?"
As Dr Merialdi of the World Health Organization said,
with 5.6 million babies a year dying, he said,
for many years, almost centuries, nothing has advanced
in medical science in terms of the delivery of babies,
which is a natural process, but it is also a mechanical process.
So perhaps it's not surprising that it's a mechanic
who saw a way through to easing it.
- I love it cos it's so simple. - It is so simple!
It's kind of palm-smacking, isn't it? A lot of doctors
and obstetricians would have thought, "Wow."
One of the great advantages is that throughout the Third World
midwives and nurses can use it without the presence of a doctor.
It's an incredibly simple technique and very, very cheap
as long as you sterilise everything, obviously, which you would anyway.
- So, good news. - Well done, Corky!
A car mechanic, there, from Argentina
will save millions of lives with the cork-in-the-bottle trick.
Suggest some lethal uses for a laptop?
Oh, some lethal...
- Smart bombs, guiding smart bombs. - Yeah. - Drones.
Hitting people over the head.
- AS KEIFER SUTHERLAND: - Damn it, Chloe!
- Yeah. - Yeah.
That was like he was in the room.
Thank you.
I just happen to have been working with him, that's all.
- Oh, please. - Is he nice? Please tell me he's nice.
He's an incredibly nice guy.
He really is, everyone adores him on the set. Kiefer, this is.
- Keefa? - Keefa, yeah. - Keefa. - Keefa.
- Keefa, you know. - Oh, Keefa. Oh, yes.
- What's he talking about? - Anyway, he's always on laptops.
I don't know what you're talking about.
- My favourite one is when he talks about... - 24. - Oh, 24, oh.
When he talks about parabolics.
- Parabolics. - Where are the parabolics?
I'm like, "Are you saying pair of bollocks?"
That's what it sounds like. Parabolics.
Is it still going, then, 24?
Yes. I'm in it, I played the British Prime Minister.
What kind of Prime Minister were you? Were you sage?
Well, it was non-specified in terms of party.
Oh. But were you very sage?
Like almost every Prime Minister we've had for the last 20 years!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Is it really over-the-top London, though, is it like,
"Chloe, I forgot my Oyster card!"
- Is it all that? - It is all shot in London.
"I'm at Spitting Fields!"
"There are engineering works!
"I'm on a bus replacement service!
"Follow me on the satellite!
"The driver hasn't got a clue where he's going!
"What's the best way from Kensal Rise to Ladbroke Grove?
"You can't use the Harrow Road!"
APPLAUSE
I've forgotten what the question was.
Yes, well, lethal uses for a laptop.
Oh, right, so hitting people over the head.
You can leave it on the rear parcel shelf of a car
- and you stop too quickly, then, you know. - Yeah.
I know this because I went to one of those speed awareness courses,
and there's this ex-copper, and he was trying to scare everyone,
and he went, "Yes, this lady, lady driver, had a laptop computer,
"a laptop computer on the back...
Mel Smith was in the room for a second.
It was, yeah, it was.
He talked like that, he went, "Laptop computer, on the back."
It's very Mel Smith.
"On the back shelf, and she stopped too quickly,
"took her head clean off.
"Took her head clean off, like a knife through butter."
It's always clean off, isn't it?
And there was a dear old lady next to me,
who'd been caught doing 31mph in a built-up area...
On a tiny little scooter thing.
Yeah, on a mobility scooter.
- I can't stop! - I can't hold it!
- You'll have to go to a workshop. - Yeah.
And she grabbed my hand, she went, "Oh, my God!"
Like that. But, of course, I can't imagine it.
No, actually, we're in Australia
and it's a programme that's written on a computer.
- A virus. - It's nothing to do with the Wi-Fi, is it?
- Do they not... - No, no.
It's a specific programme written by a specific person,
in order to help someone do something that will end their lives.
- Is it some euthanasia thing? - It's a euthanasia programme, yes.
There's an Australian doctor, called Dr Death - obviously,
- as they always are - and he's rigged up this... - Death machine.
..injection system to a laptop
and you have to answer three questions.
You have to be sane and smart enough
to answer the three questions, yes, positively.
- Do you know what they are? - Yes, I have them for you. - OK.
"One - are you aware that if you go ahead to the last screen
"and press the yes button,
"you will be given a lethal dose of medications and die?"
So, they're not difficult questions.
- No. - Also, I...
I thought it was going to be things like, you know...
- What year was the Battle of Crecy? - Yes.
I scroll through a lot of these and just press accept.
That would be my worry.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Terms and conditions, I've read them.
Terms and conditions, terms and conditions.
The second one is, "Are you certain you understand
"that if you proceed and press the yes button on the next screen
"that you will die?"
Wow.
- That's just very clear. - Yeah. - Yeah. - So you press yes again.
- So does it then say, "Are you sure?" - On the third screen...
- Are you sure? Come on now. - In 15 seconds...
Have you seen the word "die"?
..you will be given a lethal injection. Press yes to proceed.
- It's that simple. - That's heavy, man. - Yeah.
SANDI: And where do you get it, Amazon?
No. But...
I suppose if you've made the decision, then, you know,
it's finding a... I found a very odd...
I didn't know this was a rule, recently,
I always get headaches when I'm on tour, so I thought,
"Well, I may as well just stock up on paracetamol,"
cos I go through a couple a night.
So, I tried to buy about 48 packets of paracetamol.
No, no, no, no, no. That'll kill you.
Well, yeah, obviously I wasn't going to take them all at once,
- but obviously there's a rule. - They don't know that.
You're only allowed...
But I just thought to myself, that's saving no-one, is it?
No-one's got to that point and gone, "Oh, can I not?
"Oh, I'll stay alive then, thank you very much."
I go into a newsagents and order a bottle of vodka
and they give me a quarter one now.
Because they've heard things about me.
Although, there was a moment when the woman embarrassed me
in front of a queue of people, where she said,
"I can't sell you that many paracetamol."
And I went, "Oh, why? Why is that?"
And she said, "It's in case you kill yourself."
She said those words to me. And I, this was my panic, I went,
"What? But there's a load of freezer stuff in there!"
Like, that was my actual point.
Like, that was the logic, you know?
Look in my trolley there, there's some long-life milk, why am I going?
Why would I go?
Do you think I'm mad? Do you think I'd waste that?
There's some Findus crispy pancakes I'm looking forward to!
Yeah, there's a Solero in there, I've got so much to live for!
You want to look into that headache thing,
it'll be caffeine-related, I expect.
- You want to flush your system. - I'll do that.
With vodka.
I have to say, the only time I've had morphine was in Copenhagen.
I had kidney stones, they gave me morphine.
I should think so, it's the most painful thing.
And my partner said it was so embarrassing because
I was just lying there going, "I'm filled with honey."
We had Jeremy Clarkson on and he was talking about kidney stones,
said the most painful thing a human being could have.
And someone said, "Erm, childbirth, I'll think you'll find."
And he said, "Ah, do we have anyone in the audience who has given birth
"to a child and had kidney stones?"
- And there was one person. - Course there is! - And he said,
"Which was the most painful?" And she said kidney stones.
- Do they zap them with something sonic? - They do now.
I was off my head, I've no idea what they did.
I think they do, they dissolve them and then you pee them out.
What you don't want is someone giving it, "Come here. Come here!
"Bend over!"
APPLAUSE
Let's get this chameleon, let's line it up...
with your, er...entrance.
Well, what about suicide booths, where do they exist?
Have you ever seen or heard of them? Soylent Green?
A Harry Harrison novel that was a great movie.
There are suicide booths there, used by Matt Groening
in Futurama, rather wonderfully.
So what, you just pop in and kill yourself?
Yeah, there are three modes of death in Futurama - quick and painless,
slow and horrible and clumsy bludgeoning.
So what, you just put a 50p in or something?
Yeah, that's the idea in science fiction,
that people would want to do that.
Euthanasia becomes not just a right, but a sort of...fuck it, you know?
- I like a photo booth, though. - Yes.
They've got that retro, you know, Instamatic,
Instagram type thing, you know?
We've sort of gone reverse, cos the photo's getting so perfect,
we've now got to a point where we go,
"Get Instagram and make it a bit worse."
I'm going to do an app where you just put, like,
your dad's thumb in the top corner.
"Remember this?"
They used to say if you look like your passport photograph,
you're probably not well enough to travel.
That's a very good theory, I like that.
The very first job I ever applied for in TV, it said you had to send in
your CV and your photograph, and traditionally in show business
it's a sort of 8x10, used to be an 8x10 rather glossy thing.
I didn't know that, I went to Victoria Station and, erm...
And the stool was stuck, erm, down low.
So, honestly, I sent in a photograph of the top...
LAUGHTER
..of my head, and they thought it was a joke - so I got the job.
Really?!
- APPLAUSE - Wow.
- There was an actors' directory, no longer used... - Spotlight.
..called Spotlight, in which you had to give your photograph,
and I remember Barry Humphries had a wonderful one,
just a picture of him like that, not as Dame Edna but it just said,
"Leather and denim roles preferred."
I used to try and put things in to see if they'd print them.
Just out of sheer devilment.
Things like, "Can hover."
"Is magnetic." You know?
"I'm OK round chickens."
Just to see...
But they never printed them,
- they probably just went, "Silly." - Silly! - "Silly man."
"Will hover on demand."
Anyway, yes, this happy little fellow is about to kill himself.
How?
Do you recognise that?
- Is it a field mouse? - He's about to kill himself?
He is, by doing something which nature impels him to do,
- which is a suicidal thing to do. - Fling himself off a cliff.
- ALARM BELL - Oh, dear, oh, dear.
Throwing himself off a cliff,
I thought, well, why not? We'll get that one out of the way.
You thought it might be a lemming
- and, anyway, lemmings don't, of course, but... - No, they don't.
It's not a lemming, it's in fact not a rodent.
- Is it not? - No. - Is it a squirrel? - Is it a marsupial? - Squirrel?
It is a marsupial, yes,
it's a bit of a convergent how-do-you-do, there.
It's a marsupial, and it's called an antechinus.
Antechinus? Well, what are the natural things?
It's either going to eat something or it's going to drink something.
What do animals live to do? They live to eat in order to?
- Procreate. - To survive long enough to procreate, to pass on their genes.
So, is it some naughty sex thing that happens?
It's about to have sex, and that is, for it, suicide.
They go on an extraordinary shagging spree.
I mean, it is quite, quite unbelievable.
I have to give you the details, because they're pretty amazing.
It's semelparous, which means it only does it once.
And it's about 12 hours on the job
with one female before moving on to the next.
It doesn't eat or sleep,
it just keeps going in a testosterone-driven frenzy.
Well, never mind about him - that poor female!
Well, that's, then the next one, and the next one.
12 hours! She must be chafed.
To get the necessary energy, the males' bodies strip themselves
of all their vital proteins and suppress their immune systems.
By the end of the fortnight, they are physiologically exhausted,
bald, gangrenous, ravaged by stress and infection and keel over and die.
Wow!
Russell Brand, take note!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
- It's pretty grim. - Wow.
That sounds like Henry VIII at the end of his life, doesn't it?
- It does, somewhat. It is, it is. - Does this happen only once, then?
Yes, semelparous, once in Latin, semel is once.
They're dead before the children arrive?
Very much so. And that, some people think, may be the reason...
- Just to get out of childcare. - They can't bear the thought of it.
- Or, if you give it a better gloss, it's in order to... - Food.
..leave more food for their children.
So, it's 12 hours and then another 12 hours.
- Yeah, yeah. And this lasts for a fortnight, apparently. Yeah. - Wow!
- A two-week mating season. - WOMAN LAUGHING
There's somebody in the audience
remembering her Spanish holiday over there.
Ooh!
Magaluf, 1982. Oh.
Oh, that was a party.
But they aren't the only marsupials with a suicidal sex drive,
there's also marsupial cats, which have a wonderful name.
- Very good for Scrabble - quoll. - Quoll? - Q-U-O-L-L.
Very good Scrabble word. There's a little quoll.
These are all Australian?
The female northerns, yes, are subjected by males
to bouts of copulation.
It is put here they can last 24 hours,
- with plenty of biting and screeching. - Oh, I say!
They soon get their own back, though.
The post-coital males lose weight, become anaemic,
their scrotums shrink, their fur falls out
- and they get infested with lice. - Oh, wow.
Within a week or two they die
like their mousy cousins, martyrs to their genes.
- Wow. Horrible. - It's grim, isn't it?
- It's grim down south. - Even if that was in humans,
- I think most men would go, "Ah, may as well!" - Worth it!
"I'm here now!"
Worth it! What a day!
All the females are sitting around going, "Don't worry,
"they'll be gone in a minute."
I presume they don't know it's going to happen to them.
No, presumably they'd have no sense of the impending...
There's no three questions. "If you have sex, you will die."
- Because they never knew their father. - "Press yes."
"Are you sure you want sex?" "Yes!"
"Definitely?" "Oh, yes!"
"Here's a picture of somebody who's had sex."
Their father, unfortunately, isn't there to tell them.
- By definition. - "Don't do it!"
- So they are, they're railroaded into this. - Just programmed.
- Self-destructive shagging frenzy. - Programmed. Deeply programmed.
Now, if you had to fight a duel,
which weapon would you want your opponent to choose?
A - Hot-air balloon? Would that please you?
B - A billiard ball? C - A sword?
Or D - A sausage?
- Sausages are fairly non-lethal. - You'd say sausage.
I would think you could get terrible food poisoning from a sausage.
If you had them in a string of sausages...
I don't know how you'd use the hot-air balloon as an actual weapon
unless you land on somebody, I don't know how you would...
The rules were, if you challenge someone to a duel,
the person you challenge can choose the weapon and the place.
So if you choose a balloon,
- you're choosing... - They'd be in the balloon?
They can choose a gun and a balloon.
You can pretty much work out what could therefore happen.
And you would draw straws as to who shoots first.
If they're not very good shots, the first one could miss.
It would be a bit annoying if you had chosen guns and balloons
and then got the short straw and he got to shoot first.
- You'd be like, "What's the point?" - Yes.
Although it's not a small target,
it depends how far away it was, of course.
Well, we do have history on our side,
so we can tell a story about the sausage.
There was a scientist, a very eminent scientist,
who was rather liberal in his ways, who lived in Prussia,
and who was the great leader of Prussia,
who basically unified Germany and was the, what we would call
a prime minister, but he was the Minister President of Prussia.
- Bismarck. - Von Bismarck, exactly.
And this German pathologist, who was called Rudolf Virchow,
so opposed the mighty armaments programme that Bismarck had started,
that he enraged Bismarck who challenged him to a duel.
So, because he got to choose, this doctor,
who was the first man to isolate the pathogen
behind pork that had gone off, which is called Trichinella spiralis,
said, "OK, the weapons will be sausages."
One of which would be poisonous, toxic, as you say, with this agent,
this pathogen, so he challenged him to a breakfast, essentially,
and Bismarck didn't like the idea, so he called the whole thing off,
which the challenger has the right to do.
- So, it's a sausage roulette? - Yeah.
Yeah, basically, sausage roulette.
Yeah. But with only two.
And so you had a 50/50 chance of dying,
so that's a pretty dangerous duel, a sausage duel.
So, moving from the sausage to the balloon.
Monsieur Grandpre and Monsieur de Pique.
We're going to get quite French, because you know what they're like.
In 1808, there was a dispute between these two over the affections of a young woman.
They took to the skies in separate hot air balloons, each armed with a Blunderbuss.
De Pique shot first and missed. He had the first shot and he missed.
It is a moment, isn't it?
Grandpre then fired at de Pique's balloon and punctured it,
- sending him and his second down to their deaths. - Wow.
2,000 feet above Paris. So, a balloon, pretty damned dangerous.
The very first female air passenger ever was in a hot-air balloon -
Elisabeth Thible. She was an opera singer
and she was dressed as Minerva and sang arias from opera
- as she fed the fire and the balloon took off. - How wonderful!
Unfortunately, she landed and sprained her ankle,
but other than that...
Yes, it's great. She was the very first female passenger.
There's only one example of a billiard ball duel
that we've been able to discover
and that took place between a Monsieur Lenfant
and a Monsieur Melfant. They fell out over a game of billiards,
not surprisingly, and so they used what was to hand - billiard balls.
Presumably it was carom if they were French.
And they decided to resolve their difference
by pelting each other one after the other with billiard balls.
Again, they drew straws to see who would throw first.
And Melfant won and he warned his opponent he would kill him
with one single strike and he did. Straight between the eyes, dead.
- Wow. - Wow. - Bloody hell. - God. - Yeah. That's, so that's...
And he probably went, "I was joking!"
Yeah, exactly.
"I didn't think I'd actually hit you."
- Why didn't they use the cue? Surely, that would have been a... - Yeah.
So, of all the weapons we've described,
probably the safest is the sword, because in duelling,
all you have to do is get the... draw first blood, as the phrase is.
So, you literally have to pink someone,
just give them a little scratch
and it's called off by the second, "Oh, you got him."
So, there we are, duelling.
Now, why would you resupply your enemies with bullets
when they'd run out of them? How crazy is that?
Seems silly, doesn't it?
- Or indeed a plastic spoon! - Unless they were...
- Keep it fair! - ..fake bullets? - No, real bullets.
There's your enemy, you desperately want to defeat them,
they are running out of ammunition and you resupply them.
- Are they bullets which explode when...? - Sabotage?
- Are they sabotaged? - No. - Somebody else comes to attack us and...
They're good bullets. No, no, you don't make a deal with them.
- Is it a sense of honour? - It's something so wonderful, I think,
that should guide the British government
and its policy on a particular issue,
one that is very dear to me
and the nation who have this marvellous building
that I've had trouble pronouncing sometimes.
- It's in the, em...Acropolis. - LAUGHTER
- Ah, yes, that's where the... - Where the Parthenon is, yes, yes.
And it's the Parthenon we are discussing.
So, Greece, let's go back almost 200 years.
- Who ran Greece almost 200 years ago? - Turks? - Turks, the Ottoman Empire.
And there was a big movement to free Greece, led by Greeks,
but also by some Britons, notably Lord Byron, who died there.
Lord Byron, yes.
And, by 1820, they had got quite a grip on the colonialists
and they'd pushed them all back up the Acropolis
and there they were in the Parthenon, that wonderful building.
And...the Turks were firing and they ran out of shot.
Now, the original builders of the Acropolis
were extraordinary architects
and they joined together these 70,000 pieces of marble
in a magnificent way.
They put in sheets of lead to protect it
and bits of iron staple and lead
to keep connecting together the marble.
Then, in 1820, when the Ottomans were defending it,
they started to use these lead sheets
to melt them down to make shot and the Greeks said,
"We're not going to have that happen to the Parthenon!"
Ah, so give them bullets to stop them doing it?
To stop them destroying the building they loved so much,
that meant Athens to them.
And if that story doesn't make the British government
get off its arse and give back the Elgin marbles,
I don't know what will.
APPLAUSE
If we do that, do we have to give back everything else, as well?
- No! No! - Because we've got lots of stuff, haven't we?
That's the slippery slope fallacy,
it's the first fallacy of logic and it just doesn't play.
Anyway, yes, that's basically it.
I didn't give you much of a chance to come in on that, did I?
But it's a good story, it was worth telling.
- I like it when you're passionate on a subject. - Thank you.
But isn't it a wonderful story about human beings,
that even in the face of death that we revere beauty and great art
- more than ourselves? I think that's marvellous. - It is wonderful.
Absolutely wonderful, I agree.
Right, now, let's go to real beauty and real splendour.
Why was a pint of best in 19th-century Norfolk
just what the doctor ordered?
Oh. Has it got something medicinal in it?
It sure has. Poppies.
Heroin.
Not heroin, heroin wasn't discovered...
"A pint of your heroin beer, please."
Not heroin, but opium.
It's no wonder Norfolk has kept to itself.
Heroin needs a little bit more chemical skill
than they were able to show in Fenland.
- Bit more Breaking Bad. - Yes, basically.
And they had been having this stuff for ages and ages and ages,
and then, in the 19th century, laudanum became very popular.
Laudanum is a tincture of a small amount of opium with alcohol.
Queen Victoria loved it, and they loved it in the Fens.
And they had it with beer, so they'd have poppy stuff in their beer.
There was a period called 'the Great Binge', and it was really from,
sort of, 1880s to the outbreak of the First World War,
and the banning of absinthe in France.
- What a time to be alive! - Yes.
And, as I say, Queen Victoria was addicted to laudanum,
she'd have laudanum every night.
To be wealthy and idle in the Great Binge.
Yes. It was something.
You're talking about Wetherspoons right now, aren't you? Yeah.
In our time, you could get kaolin and morphine perfectly easily.
Yes, supposedly to cure diarrhoea. You could also buy, in Boots,
liquid aniseed and you may say, "What's the point of that?"
It was a fabulous trick. You know catnip for cats?
Everyone knows how cats behave when you have catnip.
Dogs behave like that to liquid aniseed,
so you would sprinkle it on your trouser legs
and see these little old ladies being pulled along the street.
LAUGHTER
They'd fly after your trousers. It was quite extraordinary.
While you were completely off your head on kaolin and morphine.
- Ahh, those were the days. - JASON: Good times, good times.
- Was this a private education you were receiving? - Yes.
And I don't recommend it. Anyway, in Fenland
they drank a lot of beer with their own poppies in it.
Basically, Norfolk and Lincolnshire consumed
- over five and a half tonnes a year. - Wow.
Which was, basically, more than the whole country put together.
- Wow. - Good God. - Yeah.
Do you think it hindered the development of the region?
It might have done.
It was known as "stuff" or "best" and, basically, it did destroy...
Got any stuff?
Yes.
In the 19th-century, being an opium addict was normal for Norfolk.
Nowadays, we're told that even sugar is a deadly poison.
But are sugar-free sweets good for you?
Oh, they give you the runs!
Honestly, if you are at all stuffed-up,
two sugar-free sweets, you'll be singing.
I don't know why.
Well, I ought to warn you that
- you have missed your Spend A Penny chance, that was it. - Oh.
Because it's all about going...
- Well, it's too late now. - Oh, yes, of course. - Never mind.
It's lycasin, which can have a mildly
or moderately laxative effect.
That's if you take a few of them.
On the Amazon page where they sell sugar-free Haribo Gummy Bears,
it clearly warns, "May cause stomach discomfort
"and/or a laxative effect."
The same page has over 250 comments.
"Stomach discomfort turns out to be a massive understatement!"
Oh, yes.
"Gastrointestinal Armageddon!"
"Calamitous flatulence."
"Trumpets calling the demons back from hell."
GUNSHOTS
That's the noise, exactly.
- I'm just adding some noises to the story. - Yeah.
"Guttural pronouncement so loud,
"it threatened to drown out my own voice."
And "flammable liquid Napalm extruding."
Those are some of the milder comments.
I've never known anything like it.
I got some butterscotch sweets, and I honestly had two
and I thought it was a good way to help me lose weight, and it did.
Absolutely. Yeah.
I once tried to figure out how many gummy bears
you could put into a remote-control helicopter
before you, you know, would compromise its airborne stability.
- And? - You know those little tiny ones?
Oh, the little, tiny, miniature ones!
The tiny miniature helicopters that can hover.
I put one gummy bear in it as the pilot
and it crashed immediately.
- One! They're so... - Such a delicate aerodynamic set-up.
- Very delicate aerodynamics, yeah. - Wow!
Yeah, I say I put it in the pilot seat and it went over like that,
whereas I should have put one on each rail
and then it would have been fine.
I know that now.
- But thanks for passing it on. - Yeah, no, that's fine. - Good.
And now for the lethal concoction of toxic misapprehension
and venomous disinformation that we call General Ignorance.
So, fingers on buzzers, if you please.
Name a non-venomous snake.
- EXPLOSION - Yes?
The grass snake.
- ALARM BELL - Oh! - What?
We thought you might say that.
Well, clearly!
Somebody's very quick on the typing, otherwise.
Are they all venomous but just not very?
Yes. All snakes are venomous.
A recent discovery by a man you know you can trust because of his name,
he's called Professor Brian Fry, of the University...
No, he isn't.
- AUSTRALIAN ACCENT: - University of Queensland.
And in 2013,
he showed that even snakes that kill by constriction have venom in them
and it's been re-purposed to create a sort of lubricant
to help swallow the huge things that constrictors swallow.
But it still contains small quantities of venom. Fry comments...
"Fry comments," I find that very odd, saying that.
Their toxins are the equivalent of a kiwi's wing
or the sightless eyes of a blind cavefish -
defunct remnants of a functional past.
And he showed that the world's largest lizard, which is...?
- Komodo dragon. - Komodo.
The Komodo dragon, yes, kills its prey with venom,
which we all thought beforehand that it was killed with sort of bacteria,
that it just basically bit it and it had such disgusting slobber
that the thing caught infections.
- Yeah, but they actually envenomate. - It seems so, yeah.
The small fangs at the rear of a grass snake's mouth
do actually spit out at you and they'll hiss and they'll strike,
and you will get a small itchy infection.
- Envenomation, as you say. - Right.
So, there you are.
That's weird and surprising, there are no non-venomous snakes.
They all have venom glands.
How fast was the fastest mass extinction?
- How many years? I'll give you... - EXPLOSION
The Liberal Democrats!
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
- So, about two weeks, then? - Two weeks! Ukip.
Ukip are like Top Gear for people that don't like cars.
LAUGHTER
- That's very good. - Thousands? Are we talking thousands?
- Thousands of years. - Thousands? Oh. - Yes, thousands.
It happened 252 million years ago, the ending of the Permian period.
It's known as The Great Dying. Sounds rather Star Trek, doesn't it?
- The Great Dying. - So, what? Sort of 5,000 years?
60,000 years. Three score thousand years.
But there have been about three of these mass extinctions?
Five. Well, yeah, supposedly we're in the sixth.
We are in one at the moment.
I mean, forget global warming,
just simply by the way we're destroying habitats.
Either eating them or running them over.
Or simply just competing for space and not giving...
You know, monocultures and biodiversity.
But it's a staggering number a day, isn't it?
A huge number day. It's horrifying.
Now, Alan, would you take a bullet for me?
Yes, Stephen, of course.
Aw, thank you. Very good.
LAUGHTER
ALARMS BELLS Wow!
- Sorry, no. No, I wouldn't. - No, no.
No, you wouldn't, because you couldn't.
I mean, that's to say, in the standard way it's done,
the "No-o-o-o!"
The diving in front of someone, you can't take a bullet for someone.
Well, you'd have to anticipate, I presume.
You'd have to anticipate in such an incredible way.
- Accidental, you know, act of... - Accidental, it would.
Because, of course, a bullet goes at 1,000 feet per second.
That's from a hand gun. 700mph that is.
Did you know...? I read this.
You might like this because you like cricket.
They've stopped using bowling machines
because they've discovered that it doesn't help you at all,
that the people who are very good at batting
have worked it out before the ball is released
by the shape and the angle of the arm of the bowler.
Their anticipation is that much quicker,
so it's actually of no use to you to practise with a machine,
you must practise with people, so you're trained...
- Trained to see the arm. - Seeing the person coming at you
- over and over and over. - So, the notion that the Secret Service
are going to throw themselves in front of the President is just silly?
Well, it has happened. It happened in the case of John Hinckley
who had a pop at Ronald Reagan in 1981.
- No-o-o! - That's it, exactly. It has to...
This is how I would do it. I wouldn't use my head.
No, very sensible.
- I'd use my arse. - Your arse, yeah.
Or my leg.
Yeah. Yeah, I would use, I would use that.
- I would use Bill. - Yeah.
I'd get it out for you, Alan.
- I'm taking that bag home with me! - A supplementary question,
why do people fall over when they've been shot?
Because they've just been shot.
ALARM BELLS
Aww!
No, is the answer.
Shock.
Cos they're dead?
- A dead person would fall over, obviously. - Eventually.
Whether they'd been shot in any way...
Is it not the speed, like, the speed and the impact, no?
No, none of those things will knock you over.
- ALARM BELLS - What?
Unbelievable.
"The impact!"
What a band.
I banged my head on the fireplace the other day and I fell over.
- That would do it. - Wait, wait, is this a lavatory question?
No, we've already had one.
- Oh, no, I don't know. - Because they've seen it done in movies. - Really?
So, in the Wild West, when they had a shoot-out
and cos they'd never seen a cowboy film,
people just carried on standing.
- Most people when they're shot don't know they've been shot. - Right.
We have it on the authority of the FBI Academy Firearms Training Unit
that people generally do fall down when shot,
but only when they know they have.
- That's the point. - Right.
Regardless of bullet calibre or where they're hit,
people who've been shot and don't know it yet don't fall over.
Unless you were shot and your leg was shot off, and then you would...
If it was shot off, you would naturally, yeah. Exactly.
There are circumstances in which you can fall over.
But books, films and TV have educated us
- that we are supposed to fall down, that's why. - Right.
Now, is it wrong to eat people?
- Oh! - I think it's wrong...
- Undergraduate philosophy class, this, isn't it? - Yes, isn't it, yeah.
It depends on the circumstances.
It would not have been wrong to eat Hitler, I would argue.
I think it's wrong to eat this one.
- Yeah. - Unless that's Hitler. - Yeah.
Ah, well, yeah. That's a very good ethical point.
Are you saying there are some circumstances where...?
- Well, cannibalism is not illegal in Britain. - Is it not?
Murder is, so to kill someone in order to eat them
- is obviously illegal. - It is frowned upon. Dealt with by magistrates.
- If I had to lose a liver, I mean, sorry, not a liver... - A kidney.
- A kidney, yeah. - Don't lose your liver. - How many livers have you got?
A liver transplant, maybe. I might give my old liver to someone
and say, "By all means fry it up with some onions if you want to."
- Oh, wow. - Well, you can eat placenta, can't you?
- Placenta is commonly fried after, yeah. - Yes. - Absolutely.
There's a special fork that, for cannibalism,
there's a three-pronged fork
and I've always thought that if you saw one laid on a table
when you'd been invited, it probably...
- That's the time to move away. - Yeah.
- So, it's technically not illegal to eat anyone? - No.
And so, if you were to, you know, at a funeral,
just have a little nibble of a toe or something.
Well, you'd definitely need permission. As with anything.
Why hasn't anyone started, you know, in times of a recession, going,
"Do you know what? I hardly walk anyway, so..."
Absolutely.
"Just have the left one."
There are people in the recession who hardly walk!
That's a bad one, isn't it?
That is a really bad recession.
Can't even walk now.
In Germany, in 2003, you may remember that case,
there was a computer technician called Armin Meiwes...
- Oh, that's right, yes. - ..who conspired, as you might say,
with a fellow engineer called Bernd Brandes
to sit down and eat with him.
Armin Meiwes cut off the penis of Bernd Brandes with his permission
and sat down to eat it with him.
He then stabbed him and froze the corpse to eat later.
Brandes gave him explicit permission for the whole scenario.
He originally asked Meiwes to bite off his penis.
This proved difficult. Meiwes had to use a knife.
He then tried to eat his own severed penis raw.
- Oh, not raw! - Yeah.
- Oh! - He found it too chewy.
LAUGHTER
- Have you had it cooked? - Oh, the danger of infection from that!
I mean, really. "Oh, this is... No, this is raw."
- "Give it another five on the grill." - Yeah.
They fried it in salt, pepper, wine and garlic.
- Oh, that's all right, then. - Yeah.
- "Little bit of curry powder on that?" - They tasted it
and agreed it was overdone, so fed it to the dog.
He then killed Brandes and hung his body on a meat hook
and proceeded to eat it over the next ten months.
He was found guilty of a sort of killing on demand,
but was retried and convicted of murder.
- Did he go to prison, or to some secure location? - I don't know.
He was locked in a Happy Eater for the rest of his life.
LAUGHTER
According to the law, eating people, or bits of people, is not wrong.
Which brings me to the grisly business of the final scores,
and how interesting they are.
Way out... Well, not way out, but slightly last,
I'm sorry to say, with minus 19, is Jason Manford.
APPLAUSE
Trailing clouds of glory in a very respectable third place,
- would you believe it, Alan Davies! - Thank you very much.
APPLAUSE
Second, with minus eight, Bill Bailey.
Minus eight.
APPLAUSE
Which can only mean that the winner is our token Dane,
with plus six, Sandi Toksvig.
APPLAUSE
And, with that, it's a big thank you and good night
from Sandi, Jason, Bill, Alan and me.
And we leave you with the last words of the poet Richard Savage,
who died in 1743.
"I have something to say to you, sir...
"No, 'tis gone."
Good night.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING