Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
good evening and welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to QI,
where this week we're looking at ladies and gentlemen.
And we have a pair of each.
A decorous Kathy Lette.
APPLAUSE
A distinguee Sue Perkins.
APPLAUSE
A dashing Ross Noble.
APPLAUSE
And a-dorable Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE
So let's listen to the ladies.
Kathy goes...
# Three times a lady... #
Ah. And that's Lionel, who has two Ls himself.
And Sue goes... It's also libellous. Yeah, libellous.
Sue goes...
# Oh, yes, it's ladies' night And the feeling's right
# Oh, yes, it's ladies' night... #
And lo, the gentlemen.
Ross goes...
# I'm a man
# I spell M-A-N... #
LAUGHTER
Good blues harping.
No, no, that was me adjusting my dentures. Oh, right.
And Alan goes...
# Boys and girls come out to play
# The moon is shining as bright as day... #
Aw, that's sweet.
Now don't forget our L series Spend A Penny joker.
JINGLE
FLUSHING
So, if you play your joker
because you think that the answer to the question
is something to do with the lavatory, you'll get extra points.
Right, now, ladies first.
Oh, you smoothie.
Oh! Why shouldn't you have the vote?
LAUGHTER That's a nice way to start, isn't it?
Finally. Your true colours, Stephen.
Because we'll find out the size of your election? No.
Hey, hey, very good.
You must be talking about, are you talking about in suffragette days?
What they... Yes. OK.
What were the reasons advanced for women not being given the vote?
Well, I mean, it's unnecessary, isn't it?
I imagine it was the aristocracy that were the most fervently against.
Oddly enough, in the days of the suffragette movement, possibly,
you could argue, it was socialists who had the most objection.
Because the suffragette movement
only asked for votes for property-owning women.
And the socialists regarded that as deeply wrong.
Because they said, well, that would just stuff parliament
with even more bourgeoisie. We wouldn't want that. Yeah.
And, in fact, a lot of the enemies of the votes for women were...?
Were women. Were women, exactly. Yeah. There you are.
These are the women against it and they didn't want it.
It's the one behind going...
LAUGHTER
I'm late, I'm late!
For a lobotomy. Yeah, the one behind has a hammer, which is
obviously trying to suggest... Yes, she's off to perform a...
But there was sort of the Stockholm Syndrome.
That they were brainwashed.
They'd been brought up to be decorative and demure. Yeah.
And they had this idea they had to be home
looking after the children
and being domesticated and doing the home cooking.
Home cooking, that place where a husband thinks his wife is. Yes.
So... And also I think they were, the women who thought that way,
obviously they were also a bit braindead because of the corsetry.
Their corsets were so tight,
it had cut off all circulation to the brain.
Do you know where Constance Wilde, Oscar Wilde's wife, comes into this?
No. She was a very, very leading figure
in a movement which was a precursor to Votes For Women,
which was called the Rational Dress Society.
Oh, yes. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah.
Women in Victorian eras, as you say, were corseted
to within an inch of their life. They could barely breathe.
And they wanted to loosen out.
And that's why they would faint so often,
in hot dinners and parties and things, balls.
But what you could do is, as the blood was cut off,
you could turn them upside down... LAUGHTER
And then it would rush to their legs... And make an egg timer.
And you could have a lovely egg. Yeah. Yeah.
The three-minute lady. Yeah.
And Constance Lloyd, then Wilde as she was, very intelligent,
splendid woman, she was one of the first to say,
well, we should wear rational dress, you know.
Straight, loose clothing that doesn't constrict us.
And that kind of was symbolic of a wider constriction
that existed in society, in terms of what they were allowed to do.
And it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Because women were not in engineering, were not in politics,
were not in anything involving the colonial system...
Therefore it was said, well, but they know nothing about politics.
They know nothing about... Therefore they shouldn't vote.
But it's because they...
But there should have been something, when she sort of,
you know, brought this up as a thing, rational dress,
she should have gone,
"But in the future, leggings must be approached with caution."
LAUGHTER That's the... That's true. Yeah.
Because there are certain people who, I think,
if you're not fighting crime - no, thanks to the Spandex.
Well, look at Spanx. Spanx are back, like corsets, aren't they?
What are Spanx? Oh, Spanx are life-savers.
They just move it around. What are Spanx?
It's basically anatomy roulette.
It's like, put them on, who knows where it'll end up?
What is a Spanx?
They're these tight pants that some women wear
to hold all their little bits of flesh in.
But, honestly, they're a contraceptive,
because once you get them on, you can never get them off again.
But the best thing about Spanx is, is if you go to a wedding
and at the start of the night there's these,
loads of women just looking amazing,
then they get a few drinks in them, have a bit of a dance
and then just boobs start appearing in different places.
LAUGHTER And you go, "Have you got leg boobs?
"I didn't know you could have leg boobs."
It does, it moves the boobs. It just, whoa, there's one.
And then you, look, I've got, I've got a side boob,
and then push that and then boom, out there.
And you get a nice shoulder tit. What, hey? Oh, oh, oh!
So what is it, is this like a body tube?
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Wow!
So, anyway, just to sort of sum up what's happening here.
Um... LAUGHTER
Are you referring to what's happening in my Spanx right now?
The pro-suffrage movement was divided against itself.
There was the suffragists, who followed the Liberal Party,
and then there were the suffragettes, as you can see there,
Mrs Pankhurst being the most famous,
and they believed in smashing windows,
chaining themselves to railings, and in the worst possible case,
Emily Davidson, deliberate or not, throwing herself
in front of the King's horse and dying. It looked pretty deliberate.
Although I don't suppose she intended to die.
I think she intended to stop the horse.
There's the saddest thing, at the British Library
they've got her purse and in her purse is a return ticket.
Which, was she... But was she just being female and thinking,
"Oh, it's cheaper to get the return"?
Presumably, I don't know if this is true, but if, but pre-suffrage,
would women have been seen as sort of goods and chattels?
So if they did something wrong, would it then, would the husband be liable?
What a fabulously good idea. No, no, they'd just be...
Speaking as criminal stock, you know. They'd just be burned.
Well, burned is... That's going a long way back.
They would be burnt or ducked.
Or tried as witch or something like that.
But actually, Stephen, I don't think...
It's amazing women got the vote,
it's amazing they went out to protest.
Women weren't supposed to go out without a chaperone.
If you did, you were seen as a prostitute.
We're a couple of slappers being here right now.
I suppose the most amazing thing is those women who existed
before the vote, who managed to achieve things.
The trouble is, you could name them
almost on the fingers of a pair of hands,
the women who managed to break through,
what was not a glass ceiling, but basically a rock ceiling, you know.
Yeah, and they had crazy ideas.
There was one professor who said that women shouldn't be educated
and shouldn't vote because it would mean their brains would grow.
And if their brains grew,
their wombs would shrink. They would vote for Nigel Farage.
And he based that evidence on the fact that women who were educated
didn't have children, mainly because we were smart enough
to know that, you know, our careers would end.
He clearly didn't foresee the Katie Price scenario then, did he?
Well, we seem to have covered that very well.
The fact is, strange as it seems to us today,
many women were against votes for women.
When did women first get the vote in Britain, do you know? Either of you?
Either side? '21. '21?
1920, I think.
'20...
KLAXON Oh, the '20s generally,
I'm afraid, get the klaxon. Oh, dear.
Oh, dear, oh, dear. It's actually rather surprising.
You may think, of course, they were enfranchised, more or less
by the 1920s after the contribution
they clearly gave to the First World War.
It was nigh on impossible to doubt that they had earned the right.
But the first was in 1867.
The first woman to vote, so far as we know,
in the entire United Kingdom, was one Lily Maxwell in Manchester.
And she was a ratepayer.
And the law then was that ratepayers were allowed to vote.
And it never occurred to the good burghers of Manchester
that a female ratepayer would take it up and vote
because there just wasn't a rule.
It's like saying rabbits cannot vote.
And if a rabbit turned up and voted, you'd say, "Oh, gosh, there's no law
"that says rabbits can't vote."
That's what it was like to the Victorians. They closed that
loophole very quickly, but a few women snuck in under the wire
and voted, 1867.
When did the law that prohibited women from doing that come in?
Very shortly afterwards? It was the following year, 1868.
That is quick. They really stamped that out. And they burned them. Yep.
Get on the pyre.
Is that fella there, in the blue shirt,
is he wearing a false beard, by any chance?
You can see the straps there. That's a woman.
He's there going, "Yeah, yeah, you can have the vote there!
"Don't tell anyone. I'm a woman."
Must be a woman because she's got a box of chocolates next to her.
We can't go to the polling station without confectionery. Absolutely.
Who said this?
"Nothing would induce me to vote for giving women the franchise."
Said in 1905.
Churchill. Who? I bet it's a woman. Churchill.
Is the right answer!
Yes, I'm afraid so.
Yes, he did say that.
He was not, let's face it, the most liberal and progressive man
when it came to Empire and things like that,
marvellous as he was in all kinds of other ways.
So, "We will fight them on the beaches" was originally something
he said about women, he just modified it. We'll fight them on the bitches. Bitches!
ALAN: Supposedly, he did not say, "Golf is a good walk spoiled."
That was somebody else. Mark Twain, I've always heard.
Apparently not Mark Twain either.
It's what's known as Churchillian drift.
It's all these witty remarks get attributed to
people like Churchill, Noel Coward, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain...
Stephen Fry. George Bernard Shaw. It's always, like...
it's always the real highfalutin one, isn't it,
the real amazing bits of wit that then get attributed to somebody else.
It's never, like, Cannon and Ball, is it? No!
I think it was Churchill who once said,
"Oh, Tommy, you've got me skin."
IMPERSONATES: I've got my eye on you! I've got my eye on you! Rock on. Right.
I mean, that was Churchill, wasn't it?
I believe it was...
Now, I've got some little toys for you to play with.
What would you use them for? Oh, hello.
You can have the blue one.
Well... Hello? Hello? It's an alarm key.
LOUD WHIRRING
Ah, you've pressed the button. That's a very good start.
It's the world's worst rape alarm.
If you're wearing a microphone,
it sounds like a million voles having a heart attack.
If you can hold them away from the mics,
because you're sending the audience mad.
I can't turn it off! No. Yes, you can. Just leave it.
It's a tiny stadium audience in a box.
And you just go, "Good evening, Wembley!"
It seems to be white noise.
This is what it's trying to do. Oh, go on.
SOUND OF RUSHING WATER
That's just frightening. Oh, that's better.
That's like a toilet.
Yeah. Why, is the word?
Why would you want to replicate the sound of a flushing toilet
wherever you go?
More to the point, why has Stephen got an app on his phone?
LAUGHTER
Because there is nothing I wouldn't do to make things clear for you,
because of my love for you all.
Is it to make people urinate after an operation or something?
Yes, it's not exactly to make people urinate.
It's designed by the Japanese for the Japanese.
Oh, to cover the sound of yourself in the toilet, you put it on.
Yes, I bet that's it.
You could have played your Spend A Pennies here.
Oh, I could have done. Oh, we could.
It's to cover the noise of peeing.
Because Japanese are traditionally rather pee-shy,
and it's called a Sound Princess.
A Sound Princess! LAUGHTER
Oh, that's marvellous.
They're actually built into some lavatories in Japan,
but these are the ones for if you don't have a built-in one.
"This clever little key chain gadget from Japan
"solves a real problem for those that are shy,
"namely the embarrassing sounds of our noises as we go to the bathroom.
"Push the button and 25 seconds of continuous sounds
"of a running refilling toilet permeate the room
"in a natural, unobtrusive way."
25 seconds! It's just going to run out.
25 seconds is not going to do it. "Masking the sounds you make..."
It finishes and then you hear... HE BLOWS A RASPBERRY
Yeah. Do they do another one for sort of number twos,
the sound of sort of an avalanche or something? You'd think so.
"Press it again, press it again." RASPBERRY
Well, push the button again for another 25 seconds of bliss.
"I've dropped it!" RASPBERRY
You mean in the cubicles.
I thought you had to hang it off your downstairs.
Oh, no!
And then you're stood at the urinal, just weeing.
The fella next to you hears.
"Why is there cheering coming from the...?"
"We will rock you!"
Imagine that whacking off your plums.
It comes in three colour-ways. We've got two.
"It comes pink with a cute little heart,
"for the inner girl in every woman."
But this is... I don't want... Do you have an inner girl?
Well, not with that in it, no. No, you don't. No.
"Baby blue with a ribbon for that free and fresh feeling." Yeah.
"And a white Save The Earth unisex model for both men and women."
But it's an Eco Otome,
because it saves you having to flush the loo to disguise your noise.
So you're saving water, in theory.
Why don't you just go into the cubicle, close the door,
you hear somebody come in, just go, "Brace yourself!"
He'll go, "Oh, no, I'm not having this." And leave.
But also the sound of that, you turn that on and you hear...
MAKES FAINT GROWLING NOISE
The person - it's Japan, isn't it -
what's the first thing they're going to think of?
"Hang on, I can hear Godzilla."
Another person might be halfway through their business.
"Oh, my God, Godzilla's here." And then runs out.
The floor gets slippy, they fly over, smash their head,
and it leads to all kinds of... It's a health and safety nightmare.
This should be banned. It should be off the shelves.
I'm writing to Watchdog.
I took my children to the toilet today...
Yes? They're 18 and 19.
And we all went in, we were all in a cubicle together.
They're two and four. Right.
And then someone went into the next door cubicle and started
going about some, obviously some quite serious business.
After about four minutes of this, my little girl started saying,
"Oh, oh, that stinks!
"Oh, that's terrible! It's really smelly in here! Oh!
"That's awful!"
If only you'd had this! Princess poo! If only you'd had your princess.
And I could hear the person in the next cubicle laughing.
Where was the loo?
The O2 Centre on the Finchley Road.
Oh, no. Oh, look, was it you?
It was me. I know the very one.
Well, there's only one other thing that's vaguely connected to this,
and that's the architect, Sir Edmund Beckett, the 1st Baron Grimthorpe,
and he was considered the best locksmith of the century.
And he hated it when people didn't pull the flush in his lavatory.
So he set it up such that if you went into his loo
and locked the door, then if you didn't flush, you couldn't get out.
It was locked.
Only when you flushed did it unlock the door.
Isn't that brilliant? That is quite brilliant. Yeah.
And maybe, for the ladies' sake, it would be the same
if you lifted the seat or lowered it, rather than lifted it.
Which is it you like? I always forget.
Well, we like it where you do the wee in the hole bit. Oh, really?
As opposed to all the way round. That never occurred to me.
Just the rest of the toilet, anywhere in the rest of the toilet.
It takes all the fun out of it.
I suppose we could try that, couldn't we?
The difference between the sexes here is that men seem to think
sitting on the toilet is a leisure activity,
which women just don't get that, do we? No, you're quite quick about it.
Yes. Who wants to stay in there?
Well, maybes if you weren't outside the door giving it all that...
Well now... I am joking.
I am joking. I am joking.
Of course you are.
Who made the ladies' toilet, was it George Bernard Shaw?
I think he definitely was the one who pushed for it, as it were.
Because they'd previously...
Previously there'd been lots of public conveniences for men,
but never for women, because it was thought rather... Women didn't wee.
..inappropriate for women to go, you know, outside their own home.
Well, the building of theatres in the 19th century
did not take women into account, did it?
And to this day, you can see it at the intervals of plays,
women are having to queue up,
while men are just peeing all over the place.
Just one bog and a tannoy bellowing,
"You've got one minute till the..." You know. Minute to go, yeah.
Till View From A Bridge starts
and you've got a bladder the size of a spaceship
and then you just do it on the seat and cry.
And go home with a wet bottom on the night bus.
LAUGHTER I imagine. Aw!
That's the title of your autobiography already,
Wet Bottom on the Night Bus. Wet Bottom on the Night Bus. I love it.
Anyway, next question.
What can you catch from a lavatory seat?
A tennis ball.
If you position it right,
so that they're just serving through a slightly open window.
Yeah, you can just get it. Very good. Lob it through. Nothing.
Nothing? No, that's not right. KLAXON
It's so not right, you get a klaxon.
Something.
Everything. Not good enough. Everything is not right either.
There are quite a few diseases.
Gonorrhoea.
Um... Syphilis.
Is it the crabs? Is it the tiny crabs?
Well, there are a number that are very much known to be caught.
Hepatitis, dysentery, fungal infections, puerperal fever. Ugh!
Viral gastro-enteritis,
but the only way you catch it from the loo seat
is from the loo seat to your hand
to what is nicely known as a "soft entry point." Oh.
Which tends to be the nose or the mouth.
So as long as you wash your hands, you're perfectly safe.
You don't get it through the thighs and bottom.
Yes, that would be weird. That would be weird.
Surely the bottom is something of a soft entrance, isn't it?
It is, but unless you're doing it very, very wrong,
it should be hovering over a nice hole in-between the seat.
Well, you just stand up. I tend to slide off onto the floor like that.
Do you? Well, I advise you from now on not to.
That is why they have a gap under the door.
Just so your feet can go through. No, what I do, what I do is...
That's brilliant. So you leave all your doings,
and then get out with the door locked.
What's happened here? Yes.
So somebody goes, "Oh, my God, he didn't even flush it."
"I don't need to flush it.
"It will not unlock the door." Whoosh! Like that.
In fact sometimes, if you time it right...
Don't you catch your testicles, as they go under?
No, no, it's a sort of a reverse limbo, you pull them in like a sumo.
Oh, right, OK.
But what you do is, you time it right so that
when the fella or the lady is mopping the floor,
I slip out from under the door, it's like the curling, like that.
And then somebody opens the door, all the way down,
"What are you doing?" "I'm fine, I'm fine."
And then as you're moving, it pulls your trousers up.
Superb. KATHY: That should be an Olympic category, I think.
It should be an Olympic category, that is superb. Yeah, excellent.
Never do it on the ice though, never on the ice.
No. Never. Those of us who use lavatories in a more,
shall we say, normal... Conventional.
..usual, conventional way, tend not to do that.
We tend to keep the soft entry points of our bottoms...
That is why I'm riddled with disease.
Yes. Riddled, riddled with disease.
That would explain it. Yeah, absolutely.
But who was responsible for the myth that you can catch
sexually transmitted diseases from lavatory seats?
It's, erm, Brian Blessed. Brian.
"Yes!" "Oh, you can!" "No, I don't think... No, no, no."
"My soft entrance has been violated!
"Yes! I can't believe it!"
"It's hairier than the rest of me."
So who put it about? My grandmother, I think.
Your grandmother may have...
Would it be a pharmaceutical company with profits to be made?
No, it's actually doctors. Doctors suggested that you could catch it.
I love that show.
They suggested you could catch it from lavatory seats.
There's something very, very wrong with that torso. There is.
I think she's past hope. Is it a she or a he?
It's very hard to tell.
Your problem is... It's Tilda Swinton.
It's beautiful Tilda Swinton with gangrene of the upper rib.
Yeah.
"Your head is much too small for your body."
That's not a usual... It's not a usual soft opening part,
that he's poking his tube into.
I don't know what... He's draining it, presumably.
He's harvesting tit juice.
All right. He's harvesting tit juice. Gangrenous tit juice.
No, it was doctors. Doctors suggested it because they thought
it would make more people come forward with STDs,
because they would be less embarrassed to say they caught it
from a lavatory seat than
that they caught it from a whore, strumpet, harlot. Sex worker.
Or parent. Puttanesco. Or parent. Parent?!
Don't make me repeat things without thinking. It's all wrong.
This is a thing that's happened to me.
I'll share, cos I feel I'm amongst friends. All right.
I went to the doctor, had terrible, like a sort of a...
It was almost like welts... Did you say whelks? Welts.
Welts. Not whelks. It was a red... No, welts with a T, not with a K.
I thought you said whelks, as in cockles and...
There was... You know, whelks. I was bothered by Cockneys.
And all the time I had chimney sweeps around me,
I was batting them off. "Feed the birds."
Went to the doctor and I thought, I've got some sort of...
MUMBLES: ..sexually transmitted disease.
Went into the doctor, he went, "Pants are too tight."
That's what he said.
He said "Your pants are too tight." You had your Spanx on. Just had...
So you were kidding yourself that you were a medium
and in fact you were an extra, extra large.
I've done it, I've been there. Yeah.
And you do get welts, you get awful webbing marks, you get...
Webbing? Yeah, well, the... You know, the webbing of the...
You need to just loosen that banana hammock and let it fly.
I got the larger... I went for the larger pant,
and since, trouble-free. It's been simple. Yeah, I know.
What a wonderful, wonderful thing. So, there you are.
So, there you are. Now, here's one for the gentlemen.
How could your mother-in-law help you run things at tiny bit better?
Well, my mother-in-law...
There's a rather classy version of Deal Or No Deal going on.
It's the picnic special. The wicker version. Exactly.
Fortnum and Mason Deal or no Deal. "Oh, chutney."
It's a hell of an episode of Blind Date as well.
"Who'd date number one? The older lady..."
They look like they've just emerged from them.
Put them back in them.
Anyway, they're two daughters-in-law with their mother-in-law,
but that's just an example, obviously. Run things? Yes.
Talk about running things, I mean runs companies and things. CEOs.
CEOs is exactly what we're after, actually.
A study of 6,753 deaths among CEOs
and their families found they caused a statistically significant
and economically large decline in the profitability
of their companies. But there was one exception.
The death of a CEO's mother-in-law
led to a positive effect on performance.
You're now advocating that mother-in-laws of successful CEOs
should do the decent thing, ladies, and top yourselves.
It was marked as positive but statistically insignificant,
which makes it rather, sort of, peculiar.
But there is one feature that CEOs should have in America,
which WILL make them the more successful.
Do you know what that is? A face. Is it a face?
It's not a face, but it is physical. It's rather good news for me.
Height. Height is the answer.
Height is more important than race, sex,
or ability when it comes to CEOs.
Only 14.5% of US men are over six foot.
But 58% of CEOs are.
Which is going to piss on Janette Krankie's attempt to lead.
You'd think it'd be a towering intellect they'd need.
I always think the only important organ in a man is the big,
throbbing organ between the ears.
The only place where size does count.
Stephen has a big throbbing organ. Bless you, darling.
And, in the US, there's also the issue of the pay differential
between large company CEOs and their average employees.
But the fact that I haven't yet given you is that CEOs anyway,
no matter how much they're paid,
have absolutely no effect on the performance of a company.
So the idea that they are worth what they're paid,
which apparently only applies to them
and not to average workers anyway, is complete nonsense.
And there are perfect examples of this which I can give you.
A report in 2013 found that during the years 1993-2012,
40% of the highest paid CEOs in the US had either
had their companies bailed out by the taxpayer,
or had their companies charged with fraudulent activity,
or been fired for poor performance,
or overseen the death of their companies.
These are people paid millions a year.
So the fact is, 40% of them have been shown to have
a disastrous effect on their companies.
In the UK, women get 58p for every pound that men get.
I know. 100 years since Emmeline Pankhurst tied herself
to the railings, and we still don't have equal pay. She never called for
equal pay, of course. That only arrived in the '70s.
Should we do a riot? Let's do a riot.
Do a riot. Do a riot. There's three people that are ready to take arms.
So, the death of the CEO's mother-in-law helps businesses
a little bit. Now, staying with lady relatives for a moment,
can you finish these real suggestions from agony aunts?
Here they are.
"There is no more harm in a kiss than...?"
Shaving a monkey and pretending it's a woman.
I don't know where that's coming from or where it's going.
Sorry. Sorry, I'm so sorry. Is it the common cold?
It's actually a loaded revolver.
It's from Ally Sloper's Half Holiday of 1911.
Next one. "Kidney troubles, coughs, colds, toothache and neuralgia,
"diarrhoea and stomach catarrh are frequently brought on by...?"
Kissing? Exposing one of your soft entrances.
In a public convenience.
I tell you, it's true.
"Kidney troubles, coughs, colds, toothache and neuralgia, diarrhoea
"and stomach catarrh are frequently brought on by...paddling, rowing."
Paddling is the right answer! Yes. Bizarrely.
It's Mother and Home, 1910.
And finally, "If your friend is too fat, she should..."
Only be seen... Try presenting Bake Off.
KLAXON
Ta-dum, boom!
Well, well, we...
Should not live in glass houses.
This is a very strange 1928 cure for obesity, which is,
"She should try doing rolling exercises on the floor."
For the amusement of the family.
The world's first agony aunt was actually a man.
He was called John Dunton.
He started a twice weekly periodical called the Athenian Gazette...
How could a man with hair like that give advice to anybody?
Everybody had a perruque in those days.
What kind of advice did the agony aunts give? Quite interesting.
Mostly literary, political, scientific or religious. "Never bathe."
He got a letter from a lady and he was rather surprised.
She asked if she could submit questions.
This led to a spin-off, "Reasonable questions sent in to us by the fair sex,"
and the spin-off was called the Ladies' Mercury, not surprisingly.
the first women's magazine.
Yeah! Its mission was "to answer all most nice and curious questions
"concerning love, marriage, behaviour, dress and humour of the female sex,
"whether virgins, wives or widows."
Is there any other type? LAUGHTER
There are no other types. Stephen, no lady will ever touch you or hurt you.
It only lasted a month but things would never be the same.
He was asked at one point by a woman saying she was lonely,
he advised her to go down to the docks and find a randy sailor.
He didn't use the word "randy",
but said there would be sailors aplenty to oblige her.
Another asked for "the opinions you have met concerning the capricious
"and extravagant humours of women."
And he replied,
"The word 'capricious' is used to signify the extravagant
"humours of most women, because there is no animal
"they resemble more than a goat." LAUGHTER
Which is pretty odd,
because he actually dressed up as a woman to avoid tax and debt.
Yeah. Gary Barlow didn't think of that one!
No! Did he look like a goat when he dressed up as a woman?
"How shall I do it? They look like this, don't they?"
Horns, four hooves and going up a mountain.
But that's fascinating that he gave such ribald advice.
in Victorian times agony aunts were dipped in penicillin.
Telling her to go down and look for a sailor...
A horny sailor who just wants anything with a hole and a heartbeat, is quite...
It's very impressive.
That's the second volume of my autobiography. A Hole And A Heart. LAUGHTER
They're all collected in a book, Never Kiss A Man In A Canoe,
Words of Wisdom From The Golden Age Of Agony Aunts, by Tanith Carey.
Who's collected them all for your pleasure and enjoyment.
So now let's man the lifeboats.
What was the seventh most common cause of death among German submariners in World War I?
Was it banging their heads on low doorways?
Bulkheads, I believe they are called.
Being shot? Shot, yes, kind of, but shot in a particular way.
Can I do one? I think toilets,
the water coming in rather than flushing out, maybe.
How ironic to die of an overflowing toilet in a submarine!
Being fired out of a torpedo tube? Friendly fire.
Well, not friendly fire.
Very unfriendly fire and deeply unsporting unfriendly fire.
Soft tissue access, so communicable diseases...
No, I'll tell you what it is.
The Germans, who were very sporting and gentlemanly,
they used protocols which meant that if they
approached a merchantman, in other words, not a warship,
what they would do is rise to the surface
and they would give an opportunity for everyone on board to
get into the lifeboat and sail away to safety.
Then they would sink the ship and its supplies, because that was a legitimate war target.
So the Royal Navy got these ships that they disguised as merchant ships
and they got their sailors to dress up in drag and walk up and down as if they were women...
Like goats! As if they were perfectly natural civilians,
and the German U-boat would approach and call out and say, "Man your lifeboats!"
The captain of the boat would pull a lever, reveal all the weapons
and shoot down and destroy the U-boat.
And it was mean. That's not the Marquess of Queensbury! It's not cricket.
So did they learn their lesson and perhaps disguise themselves as a hen party, a sort of...?
They should have done, but 14 German submarines were felled that way,
making cross-dressing sailors the seventh leading cause.
That's hilarious! Amazing, isn't it?
In 1927, HMS M2 was the very first submarine to carry aeroplanes.
Carry aeroplanes? Yeah.
Not only carry them, but they had a deck. A slightly flawed plan.
Yeah, obviously they would only allow them to land and take off when they'd risen to the surface.
A small, specially designed seaplane took off next to the sub
and could be winched aboard and stowed in the hangar.
Unfortunately they once opened the hangar too early and the whole thing was sunk. Very sad.
Now, ladies, you should be covering your ears, because you're very sensitive, I know.
Can you name an Anglo-Saxon swearword?
BLEEP. I would say... Oh. KLAXON
That's... We've covered all bases there.
In for a penny. BLEEP, BLEEP, BLEEP...! KLAXON CONTINUES
Knob-gobbler. Knob-gobbler?!
Knob-gobbler is Anglo-Saxon. It's also a delightful wading bird.
The amount of times Bill Oddie's gone after a knob-gobbler on the...
He does spend a lot of time on Hampstead Heath,
it's certainly true. That's where he comes from.
Yeah. "Ooh, look at the plumage on that knob-gobbler."
This isn't rude, it's a type of... No. It's a type of bird.
You know, who wouldn't want to stroke a knob-gobbler?
But no, you see the fact is,
we have no knowledge whatsoever of Anglo-Saxons swearing,
because the only Saxons we know of are those who wrote.
And those who wrote were in Holy Orders, and tended not to swear.
And didn't swear, of course.
But we have no evidence for them. There must have been swear words.
But we do know that Vikings swore, because we actually know,
there's a particular word, and this is rassragr.
It's such an appalling word that
if one Viking called another Viking rassragr,
the Viking who was called it
would be entitled to kill the man who called him that. Gosh!
And indeed, if he didn't try and kill him,
he would be expelled from the community
and indeed be proved to be a rassragr.
I've been told what rassragr means, but I just cannot tell you. Aw!
Is it... I just can't. Rassragr. Rassragr. Rassragr.
Is it to do with colouring? I just can't.
Russet beard or something? My mind has got the idea of it in its head
and I will never be the same. He must tell us!
I don't know what it means. We all want to know, right? Rassragr.
Anyway, the fact is, there are no known Anglo-Saxon swear words,
in the sense that Anglo-Saxon peoples use them.
It's time for a maths test and it's ladies versus gents.
Which team will let itself down?
Oh, lord. What happened to our faces?
You're eating your thumb. Disturbing, isn't it? Which team will let itself down?
If it's the pair of us, we will lose because I'm really bad at maths.
Because women are always told that that's ten inches. LAUGHTER
That isn't ten inches? Exactly, yeah.
And also, on our team the little boy at the back has had a severe head injury.
LAUGHTER Look at him, he's concussed.
He's sat there going, "I can do maths but I've been smashed in the face with a ruler."
This is a gender fulfilling... It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Because women are told we are bad at maths.
And we did it - we said, "We'll never be able to do it because we are rubbish."
Indeed, yes. and it's been tested because there is a general feeling
that seems to be, again, self fulfilling,
that Asian people are very good at maths.
So if you take a group of Asian women and say,
"You're women and you're going to do a maths test
"and the men are going to do a maths test," they tend to get 60%.
And then you take a group of Asian women and say, "You're Asian
"and you're playing against a group of European men,"
they tend to get, at the same level of difficulty,
80% or 90%. So it's really about being told what you are,
and the very fact that you're told you're a woman makes you think,
"Oh, God, I'm no good at this."
And your self-esteem is lower than Lady Gaga's bikini line.
I'm rubbish at maths, but when I go, "You're an Asian woman," boom!
Brilliant, honestly. I'm on Countdown next week.
Now, some might say that's borderline racist, what I've got planned,
but I'm going to win, that's all that matters.
It's about tribal affiliations.
So if you are oriented to affiliate with a more successful...
You could be a woman or you could be a redhead or a European or
an Antipodean or whatever, so you find the right one.
Similarly, some retailers have tried to make their toy displays
gender neutral, but they have a toy tool box and a toy handbag
and one is blue and the other is pink!
How is that in any way neutral? Lego has a pink brick box.
"It has everything young girls need to create a world of building fun."
And it includes a female mini figure. A mini finger? Mini figure!
LAUGHTER Just a slightly smaller version of your own finger.
"This is a shit gift.
"I've got five and now I've just got a really small one."
OK. Women who are reminded they are women do worse at maths.
And now hold your horses, ladies, fingers on buzzers, gentlemen,
because it's time for a bit of General Ignorance.
Right, what did Lady Godiva do? # A lady... #
Yes? Well, of course she rode naked through the town,
because she wanted to... I forget, what was it she was doing it for?
She had... She wanted... No. KLAXON
Whoa. No.
No, which town was it that she didn't ride naked through?
Birmingham, I think. Birmingham! No.
Coventry is the one that people suppose that she...
She owned Coventry, interestingly. Did she? Yes, she owned it.
And the first story of her riding naked is the early 13th century,
but actually, that's some 200 years after she lived.
And this story was a fellow called Roger of Wendover,
who was a notoriously unreliable purveyor of anecdotes and gossip.
In fact, the story that he gave was that her husband,
who was the Earl of Mercia,
had put large taxes on the citizens of Coventry,
and she thought this was unfair,
and she said, "You must get rid of these taxes."
He said, "I'll do it if you ride naked through Coventry."
And so she thought, "All right,
"I like the people of Coventry, I'll ride naked."
And they all obediently closed their eyes.
But there's no evidence for any of this. All this is later.
Do you think that would work today
if we suggested that to Boris Johnson,
if we rode naked through the town, we could stop paying our taxes?
To bicycle on a Boris bike through the streets of London.
Yeah. Yes, naked.
Yeah. The story of Lady Godiva is horseshit, frankly.
So what did Mary Magdalene do for a living?
Mary Magdalene, what did she do for a living?
Ah... Oh. Are we? Do we dare?
# Ladies' night... #
I just want to hear that again,
because I am so in the groove with that shit. Yay.
She was a...
DUTCH ACCENT: Sex worker. A sex worker, a prostitute? KLAXON
We call them sex workers now.
Sex workers. They are called sex workers.
The sex workers, like prostitutes.
No. In as much as we know anything about her,
or anything about anybody in the "Bibble".
She's got jaundice, that's what we know about her. Well, that's true.
I think we've taken faces
from some sort of Sienese school rendering of her.
But she's mentioned in each of the four Gospels, Mary Magdalene.
And not one of them says she was a prostitute or even a sinner.
All you need to do is to have sex once.
If you're a girl, then you are a prostitute.
It did say that she spent a lot of time on the docks, wink, wink.
At some point she became confused with two other women
in the Bible - Mary, the sister of Martha
and the unnamed sinner from Luke's Gospital, chapter...
Gospital?!
Gospel, both of whom washed Jesus' feet with hair, if you remember.
That's the third chapter of your book, The Unnamed Sinner From Luke's Gospel.
In the sixth century,
Pope Gregory the Great made this confusion official by declaring
in a sermon that these three characters were the same person.
This remained the official line for over 1,000 years
until the Catholic church finally ruled that Mary Magdalene was not the penitent sinner in 1969.
And the whole world went, "Ooh!"
Oh, I've been calling her a slag for 2,000 years.
Can I just ask, right? I'm no art historian,
but why is there a severed baby's head with no body attached, just...?
It's like a flying tray with a head on it, isn't it?
Just the wing ears.
You will get these in baroque paintings, putti, as they're called.
It... But how do we know that that is a cherub
and not just, like, a fat-faced bird?
That's a knob-gobbler, that's what that is.
Well, it's... The Baroque did go rather crazy,
and there's no real excuse for it.
It's overdone, to say the least.
But the one thing that we know about Mary Magdalene
is that she wasn't a prostitute.
What happens nine months after a blackout? Ah.
# A lady... #
Many, many babies.
Ah... No, no... KLAXON
Oh, you've been doing so well. Aw.
Is it the power company finally give you the cheque for a refund?
That's probably right. Yeah. Yes, you finally get your refund.
No, there is no evidence, although it is a commonly held belief,
absolutely no evidence whatsoever from demographers
and other such people that this is true.
There was a famous 1965 blackout in New York and everybody said,
nine months later, including the New York Times,
that there was a sharp increase of births.
But they then, after it was proved to be inaccurate,
issued an acknowledgment that they had made a mistake.
I mean, lights do go out every night.
I mean, it's not like we're permanently in sort of spotlights.
Precisely, exactly. No. And so it's such a rare thing we go,
"God, the lights are finally off. We can have sex!" Exactly.
"Oh, telly's not working. Go on, then."
I always go to the main fuse box. "Sorry, love."
"Our leccy's gone."
That's your foreplay, is it? Clever, clever, clever. Yeah.
No, there is no evidence that people have more sex during a power cut.
So, not with a boom, but a whimper, we come to the scores.
Oh, my good night. HE CHUCKLES
Well, we're going to start in last place, and I'm sorry to say,
because of her filthy mouth, in last place with minus 48,
it's Sue Perkins. Oh.
APPLAUSE
And hardly less Anglo-Saxon, with minus 28 is Kathy Lette.
APPLAUSE Thank you. Thank you.
APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH
And not losing again, with minus 8, it's Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE
Second place, you must be very proud.
It only means there's one winner, with plus 2, Ross Noble.
APPLAUSE
So, all that's left for me to do is to thank Kathy, Sue, Ross and Alan.
And I leave you with the last words of former
British Prime Minister, Pitt the Younger.
"I think I could eat one of Bellamy's meat pies."
What greater last words could you ever have? Good night.
The heat in the Den is rising.
You're coming across as, frankly, ridiculous.