Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening, good evening and welcome to QI.
Tonight, we look through both telescope and microscope
at the Quite Interesting world of Little and Large.
Joining us tonight are the gigantic Phill Jupitus...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..the massive Richard Osman...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..the titanic Lucy Porter...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..and - oh, my gosh,
he's so teeny-weeny I could squish him - Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Thank you.
Now, let's go large on your little buzzers.
Phill goes...
MUSIC: Big Spender by Shirley Bassey
# Hey, big spender
# Spend
# A little time with me. #
Big Spender. Richard goes...
MUSIC: Big Bad John by Jimmy Dean
# Big John, big John
# Big bad John... #
Lucy goes...
MUSIC: Big Girls Don't Cry by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons
# Big girls don't cry... #
And Alan goes...
MUSIC: Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini by Brian Hyland
Lovely. Now, during this L series of QI, we have a Spend A Penny joker.
SPEND-A-PENNY JINGLE PLAYS
TOILET FLUSHES
You should use it if you think one of the answers in today's show
is of a lavatorial bent.
So, what's the largest native land animal, hmm,
that you'll find all year round on Antarctica?
I don't think there are any land animals on Antarctica.
Humans? Human beings?
- Oooh! - KLAXON
I did say...
The line between clever and stupid is so... It's so thin, isn't it?
I did say "native". Obviously there are humans.
- Oh, I beg your pardon. - Yeah, there are natives.
- Is it a penguin, a big penguin? - Oh!
KLAXON
I mean... Right, OK.
So it's not that, because I made the evil siren go off.
Would it be whales?
A whale isn't a land animal.
- A seal? - If the water melts really quickly it is.
I will give you a clue. You've already said penguin...
It's a flightless animal, but it's not a big mammal.
Given that it is big and little and large, is it very wee?
It is actually very small. Although it's the largest.
Is it krill?
- I just like saying "krill." - I like saying "krill" too.
- Is it a mosquito or something like that? - It's an insect.
You're in the right direction. It's like a mosquito.
Mosquitoes are like... If you go to Scotland, what do you get?
- A ladybird. - Midge. - Midge. - Midge, midge. It's a midge.
It's a...bug? A midge?
Belgica Antarctica. The Belgian, as you might say, midge.
There it is - it's wingless, flightless, it's a midge
and the point is, it's native to Antarctica.
There are all kinds of animals, like humans, like penguins,
that spend a bit of their time in Antarctica.
Penguins only 25% of their time,
75% of their time, they're at sea.
They're not a land animal.
"Arr, but we're married to the sea.
- "Penguins, we love the life." - They do.
"Away from our nagging wives
"with their beaks and their wings,
"sitting on eggs. Arr!"
There they are. Ah, bless.
What is it about them that is so endearing?
They're delicious.
LAUGHTER
Mmm, that's good eatin'.
Talking of humans not being native to Antarctica,
there's a story the other day about the American scientist who's there,
and he decided to turn Tinder on -
- you know Tinder, the dating app? - Oh, yes? - Oh.
And he got a date with a woman in a tent 45 minutes away,
- who was also a researcher. - You're kidding me!
- That's hilarious! - That would be great if she came up and he went,
"Nah..."
Grindr, however - all penguins.
But if they were to mate, say, have a child,
raise that child there, suddenly...
That child would be endemic or native to Antarctica.
Yeah, and by the time this goes out on Dave, everyone will be like, "What about the..."
- Yeah, you're right. - Yeah, what about the Tinder baby? - The midge.
They've got wifi, that's the best thing about that.
- Yeah, wifi on Antarctica. - That's good going.
- Yeah, it is impressive. - I bet the penguins are all hooked up.
"They're all the same."
LAUGHTER
Their version of Tinder is called Pick Up A Penguin.
LAUGHTER
Very good. So, now...
Identify the world's biggest gasbag.
LAUGHTER
Oh, Lord. John McCririck.
John McCririck is a very good answer.
An actual bag of actual gas?
That would probably be the best way to go.
Without hinting too much.
I presume something like the Hindenburg, an airship.
An enormous airship, perhaps.
Well...kind of like an airship, yes, though in fact even bigger.
This is the biggest such device ever constructed by man.
Is it the one that Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden is involved with?
How extraordinary you are.
No.
But I am very impressed that you should know of that.
I met him about five years ago,
he said he invested a huge amount of money,
and it's about 200ft, or 300ft long or something,
it's absolutely enormous. There's pictures of it,
it looks like an arse, the way it's built.
- That's it. - Oh, there you go. - It does. There it is, like an arse.
It's in a hangar that's so big it has its own climate.
- Yes. - It has clouds and all sorts of things. - Yeah. - Why, oh, why, oh, why?
Did he do it? Well, because, for commercial reasons...
- Oh, it goes 100mph. - Yeah, it's like properly quite impressive.
Have they sorted out the whole, you know, Hindenburg...
- fiery-death element? - No, they decided not to worry about it.
It can carry 50 tonnes,
it can stay in the air for three and a half weeks.
But the difference between that and the Hindenburg is?
- Do you know what the...? - It's not full of hydrogen, I take it.
The Hindenburg and the earlier airships were full of hydrogen,
- which is incrense... Incrensely... Incrensely flammable. - Yeah.
Anyway, not just incredibly or intensely,
- but "incrensely." Yeah. - Well, that's... Which is why it blew up.
That's why it blew up, because it was incrensely flammable.
What have I told you about reading Jabberwocky
before you present shows?
It makes it "intedibly" dangerous.
So, yes, that was a really good interruption, as it were.
- Is this a naturally occurring gas-bag? - No, it isn't.
It is the biggest ever bag of gas created by human kind.
Does it have a purpose...
So it has a purpose other than storing the gas?
It had a purpose, in as much as it broke three records,
which are better remembered than this record.
What are the three records you might think of,
in terms of a balloon?
- Height, distance... - Yes, height, distance...
- ..and number of deaths. - There were no deaths.
There were no deaths in this case.
Is it loudest pop?
Not...
Most excited child?
Who... Who jumped out of a really high balloon?
- Oh, the... - Felix Baumgartner. - Yeah.
- GERMAN ACCENT: - Felix Baumgartner is the right answer. This is the... Ja.
So, Felix Baumgartner - there he is.
- He fell from a greater height than anyone has ever fallen. - Right.
He achieved a greater speed than anyone has fallen,
- which made him the first man ever to what? - Break the sound barrier.
Break the sound barrier, unaided.
And it was the highest balloon ascent ever.
Those are three records -
the highest balloon ascent, biggest freefall...
- Do you know what else it was, Stephen? - What's that?
It was "incrensely" dangerous.
Incrensely... It was incrensely dangerous!
But it was the largest balloon ever constructed.
And let's have a look at how bigot it was. It was... Bigoted?
It was "bigoted" than the Statue of Liberty.
It was more bigoted than the Statue of Liberty?
- What is the matter?! - What is going on?!
It is a famous bigot.
Get... Just get rid of this one, get another one in.
"Give me your poor, your tired and tell them to piss off."
What they'd call it in Carry On world is
the "Statue of Diabolical Liberty".
Anyway, it is gigantic,
it's almost as tall as St Paul's Cathedral,
but taller, as you can see, than the Statue of Liberty, by a few feet.
But the comparison with the Hindenburg is interesting,
which is one... Do you know the Hindenburg? You mentioned, I think,
- didn't you? - Mm-hm. - There's the Hindenburg.
And the Hindenburg burst into flames catastrophically in New Jersey,
at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station. There it is. I mean, just awful.
It was so sophisticated inside, incredible.
That is, that is sophisticated.
Yeah. And they even had a cigarette lighter,
although it was hydrogen, one of the most flammable gases there is.
- All smoking! - But it was chained.
"Cigarette? Cigarette?" "Yes, please."
"I like to live dangerously..."
"What's that smell? Can anyone smell gas?"
LAUGHTER
"Don't be absurd."
The cigarette lighter was chained to one place,
so you could go up and light your cigarette.
But everyone wore special shoes
that didn't create friction and static electricity
to create a spark that would set it off,
but something went wrong. In the movie, it's supposedly sabotage.
So there you are. What use is a blue whale at a birthday party?
Alan, I'll give you a chance here. We know how you love blue whales.
LAUGHTER
It's not a blue actually, we should have offered you a blue,
but in fact that is a hump. It's a humper.
- That's not real, that photo, is it? - Oh, yes. Oh, yes, Alan's a diver.
A blue whale at a birthday party?
- Well, they take up a lot of room, you'd need a big hall. - Yeah.
It's good, I think you're getting there.
Yeah. That's good encouragement, thanks, Richard.
That's OK.
Think it would be fun for the kids to get inside, couldn't they?
- Play around. - True. - Bouncy castle?
- Bouncy arsehole, did you say? - No...
I didn't, but by all means.
Oh, bouncy castle.
- Bouncy castle. - Oh, yeah, yeah, I see what you mean, yeah.
"Yeah, I'd like to... I'd like to hire a bouncy arsehole, if I may."
LAUGHTER
Oops.
No. List things that you need for children's parties.
- Well, my kids... - Cake, I was thinking candles. - Yeah.
- Candles is one. - My kids love ambergris, so...
You're quite right, ambergris does come from a whale.
It would be a natural for a blue whale. Right, cake...
- Pass the parcel. - Pass the parcel.
- Balloons? - Yes! - Balloons!
- Balloons. - A big whale balloon. Whales filled with helium.
Why would a blue whale be useful at a children's party?
Because it can fill up, it's got the largest breath in the world.
Yes. Because, in one breath,
a blue whale could inflate
1,250 balloons.
- Wow. - OK. - That's a spoilt child.
I agree.
I take that point, but I'm fairly sure it's never happened.
No, no. You're right.
Yeah, and also, logistically, it would be almost impossible.
I would like... Whales live to be very old as well, don't they?
- Oh, yes. - So I would like one at my birthday party
to make me feel both young and slim.
Yes. Whales aren't particularly slim though, Lucy.
No, but I would, next to a whale...
Oh, I see, next to a whale. Yeah, sorry, I'm so stupid.
I'm not asking for much of a compliment, Stephen.
No, no. I'm sorry!
- Just...you know? - I do apologise.
You're not going to be able to get next to the whale,
because he's in the balloon shed, pumping away.
- HE GRUNTS - One.
- HE GRUNTS - Two.
Just going, "Those dolphins have it easy, don't they?"
I'm going to give you some bags now and ask you to blow these up.
Now, you may say, that's easy enough.
Ah, time for the controversial auto-erotic asphyxiation round.
Oh, don't, that's so rude.
- There you are. - Here we go. - That's terrible.
I'd just like a belt and a tangerine now.
So you're blowing up.
What you're doing is, you're trying to blow up...
- All right. - Look how clever she is.
How did you do that?
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
I'll show you here. It's called the Bernoulli effect.
- I can't even do that, Richard. - OK, watch this.
One blow.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So there you are.
Just one blow from a distance, like that, which you did.
So you get the points there, Lucy, that's very impressive.
So put them away nicely. You can put them away now.
But that's the Bernoulli effect, which is rather impressive.
You can try that at home, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.
Go to the little cupboard under the sink, boys and girls,
- where Mummy keeps all those little bin liners... - And her gin.
Yeah, don't put them over your head. And just do that little...
- HE BLOWS - ..effect, and then Mummy and Daddy
- will be very impressed. - "Stephen Fry told me to do it, Mummy!"
LAUGHTER
Now, who said, "The most beautiful girl or woman in the world
"would be a matter of indifference to me,
"but tall soldiers - they are my weakness"?
You did.
KLAXON
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Oh, yes.
- That was very pleasing. - It was, wasn't it?
Was it someone who had a tall soldier
pointing a gun at them at the time?
You'd think so.
This person was obsessed with tall soldiers,
- tall people generally. - Was it my PA, Kelly?
She would be.
She is literally... All she wants in the world, if you know anyone,
is a ginger squaddie - that's all she wants. It's all she wants.
- But a tall ginger squaddie? - A tall ginger squaddie or, failing that,
a ginger roofer. So if you know anybody...
All right, you heard it here first.
I do have a... I have an inkling about this,
but I can't remember... It was a squadron...
Potsdam?
Ah, brilliant! Absolutely right.
Yeah, there were the Potsdam Giants. Yeah, absolutely right.
It was King Frederick Wilhelm I of Proist,
or Prussia, who was the father of Frederick the Great.
And he became King in 1713,
as you all know.
And he was obsessed with tall soldiers.
- And he would kidnap them, he would recruit them... - It's like your PA.
He would get them from any country that wanted to be in with Prussia,
which was just growing as a power.
He himself was only five foot five.
So he wasn't very tall. But he just got them from all over the place.
In fact, one of his tallest was a seven-foot Irishman
called James Kirkland,
who was a hero of the Regiment of Potsdam Giants.
And he paid fathers for tall sons,
he paid tall women to have sex with tall men
so they could have tall sons. He was, and if he was...
He sounds like my kind of guy, I've got to say.
If he was unhappy, he'd get two or three hundred of his giants...
Ho, ho, don't finish this sentence.
No, no, no. Preceded by tall, turbaned Moors,
with cymbals and trumpets of the Grenadiers' mascot,
an enormous bear, to march for him to cheer him up.
And they'd do this through his bedroom if he was ill.
- To march for him? - With a bear as well? - How big was his bedroom?
It must have been, well, enormous. He was an emperor.
He wants big men and a bear, marching to strict rhythm,
which you can find in Old Compton Street, most Fridays.
- You're right. You're right. - PHILL BEATBOXES
You'd think he'd want them to do tall stuff.
- Like reach up to high shelves? - Yeah, stuff off shelves or something.
Yes, that's true. Plucking.
What's the point of having them just walking up and down?
I don't know. He had his particular thing.
The reason I've heard of this is because
when I got together with my husband, someone made this reference,
because I'm four foot eleven and my husband is six foot five,
- which is like... - Hmm, Justin.
It's like, yes, in the bedroom it's like a ventriloquism act
that's gone really seriously wrong.
- You know, a horrible image, I know. - Or so right!
Well, yes.
There's a... Well, Frederick would have loved it, obviously.
- Yeah. - What does he make you do while he's drinking a pint of water?
LAUGHTER
I'll bet it's not the alphabet.
Oh!
Now.
So, and almost 100 years,
this regiment was part of the Prussian army.
Was that because they live longer?
No, I don't mean each individual member -
though they did live longer.
Do they get gradually shorter?
- It was a... - "I used to be tall."
Yes. King Frederick William of Prussia liked a tall soldier.
But why was Sir Billy Butlin such a little devil?
- Hmm. - Oh, holiday camps.
Butlins holiday camps. Minehead, Scarborough, Filey.
- Skegness. - Skegness, yeah. - Were the chalets little?
- No, but Billy Butlin himself... - Was he tiny?
He was. And if you think about the age he is,
- you might be able to work this out. - Second World War?
- No. - First World War?
The First World War, that's the generation he was.
And in the First World war,
they had something to make people fight, which was called?
Bromide.
No. It was a law.
- Conscription. - Conscription, yes. - Conscription.
But one of the things that could get you out of being conscripted
- was that if you were? - Tiny. - If you were small.
Did he pretend to be bigger to...?
No, he, as it were,
fell under a particular desperation that the British Army...
Did they start a short army?
Yes, they literally did.
Lord Derby, the Earl of Derby said,
"Now, hang on, there are a whole load of short people, as it were,
"getting under the wire.
"And all these tall people are fighting and dying for us,
"we want more people to die for us.
"There simply aren't enough people dying.
"And all these short people are living.
"So we're going to have a short brigade."
And they were known as the "Bantams." The "Bantam Brigade."
I know, they were...
Presumably it would be quite good,
you could play on the opposition's...
- You know, the opposing army's sense of perspective? - Yeah. Exactly.
- In some way you're like... - "Those soldiers are really far away."
- Yeah, that's right. - "We have ages. They won't get here for days."
"They are no danger to us... Argh!"
These were men under five foot three
and Billy Butlin was one of them.
They became known as "The Devils", in fact, the "Devil's Dwarfs",
- because they were so... - Oh, my God!
..their reputation for brawling and mischief.
They were very, very aggressive.
Here they are, being inspected by a splendid man with a moustache.
"Well done, well done."
German shin injuries up 75%.
LAUGHTER
"All our legs are being shot away from us, we do not know why."
Surely they should have just put them
- on each other's shoulders in a long coat. - Oh, yeah.
The most famous of them was called Henry Threadgould,
who was only four foot nine.
And he was believed to be the shortest soldier
ever to have served in the British Army.
There he is, next to quite a tall Scottish soldier.
But that's a short chap,
but chirpy and cheerful and ready to lay down his life for our country.
- I hope he doesn't shake hands with him. - Hey, now.
That's given my husband and I
a whole new avenue for bedroom role-play.
- "You be Henry and I'll be a Scots Guard." - Yeah!
Well, there you are.
So next time you go on a Butlins holiday, you can say,
"Well, thank you, Billy, for putting your life at risk,
"despite the fact that you weren't as tall as most soldiers."
And he survived.
He survived, in order to create these holiday camps. Yeah.
- With tiny beds. - With...
Now, bearing in mind the Potsdam Giants and the Devil Dwarfs,
what do you make of these?
- Alan? - Oh, now... - Yes, absolutely.
Strap on your feet to make you taller?
Can you pass those to Phill? Thank you. Alan, these are for you.
- I'm sort of guessing I'm not going to need any. - You're not.
Lucy, these are for you.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
- Oh, I feel... - Whoa! - Whoo!
There's a Naomi Campbell moment coming on here, isn't there?
Actually, we're going to do a little experiment.
There's an artist called Hans Hemmert,
and in 1997, he created a piece, an art project...
- I've seen this. - Have you? - Hmm. - It was called Level. - That's right.
And the idea was that he made these things
so that everybody was six and a half foot tall.
Essentially two metres, being a European. So, you're six eight?
- I'm six seven. - Six seven. You're five eleven.
I'm six four and a bit. You are?
I'm six foot, but I've got creepers on, so I'm six one.
- Six one at the moment. And, darling? - Four eleven.
See I now can't see Lucy.
No, you can't actually see her at the moment.
They are half my height, that's it.
So, rather than get you to wear these,
we've actually given you blocks,
so we're all going to stand up to show what this art work revealed.
What you have to do, Richard,
- is duck down to be the same size as Alan. - All right.
I have to go on tiptoes to be a couple of inches taller.
- And you have to stand on your block. - Come on, girl.
- Which one am I, this one? - Yeah. - Phillip will help you up.
LAUGHTER
And we're now all the same height. It's an artwork!
APPLAUSE
Isn't that astonishing?
You see what that's like, Lucy?
This is the happiest I've ever been.
You tire of it, you tire of it, I promise.
- You're so far form the desk when you want to write something down. - I know.
When you want to pick your tea up, you've got to go all the way down.
- I know. - It is hard with us, because, you know,
you have to move things onto higher shelves as children get older.
I can't reach the cleaning fluids in my house now.
I'm like a Borrower, it's ridiculous.
- So, let's sit down. - Careful now, health and safety!
Whoa!
The one thing when you are six seven, or you're very tall,
is you endlessly get asked to be on police identity parades.
- That's exactly what will happen. - But you do. At least once a week
people say, "You don't have 15 minutes, do you, sir?"
I think because they don't have a ready pool of people to do it.
- That's bizarre. - And a lot of tall people commit crimes. - Yes, they do.
- Oh, yeah. - I'm an example. - And we get away with it, too.
- I think what it is, a lot of short people report crimes. - Yes.
- But you can see... - "He was huge!"
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
"How tall?"
"At least six foot six or something. He was huge."
"A giant of a man, he was."
Anyway, the idea was an artwork called Levels,
which was something to do with the idea that people from business
and meetings and everything else should all be the same size.
Anyway, what are the GIMPS searching for?
LAUGHTER
That's a Travelodge curtain!
LAUGHTER
- It definitely is. - I love that you recognise is.
Anyway, that's their curtains.
It's impossible to tell, with the old zip done up.
"You don't know where the station is, do you?"
Is it an acronym?
Aaah...
"Great, Giant, Italian Men...Posturing Slowly."
Great is right, "Great."
Is the MP "Magnetic Pulse"?
- No, but I love the way you're thinking. - All right.
Is it searching for extraterrestrial life?
It is searching, but it's searching for something much closer to home
- or, indeed, wider in the universe. - Parking Space! PS, "Parking Space."
It's a Great something and the S is a "Search."
So it's a Great something something something Search.
- It's using computers. - Michael Parkinson? - Since 1996...
Mum Porn.
It could have been a man-porn search, that's not that difficult,
but in 1996, from 1996 onwards,
a lot of people have devoted the time of their computers
to run a little programme
which helps search for something very rare and extraordinary
- which mathematicians have always... - Prime numbers! - Prime numbers.
- I got it before you! - Yes, you did. - You just got in there.
- The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. - Yeah.
A Mersenne prime number is a very particular kind of prime number.
What is a prime number, if you can just...?
One that's divisible only by itself and one.
Is the right answer. So we start with 2, 3,
5, 7, 11,
13, 17,
19, 23.
But they go into numbers with thousands of digits, don't they?
They've found like a million-digit prime, haven't they?
Oh! Well, 17 million. Way over 17 million digits.
But, the thing is, there's no system behind it.
And great mathematicians like Erdos, the great Hungarian mathematicians,
have always tried to find some system behind it and, to this day,
computers are battling away trying to find it.
- Literally a needle in a haystack, isn't it? - What's a Mersenne prime?
A Mersenne prime is a very particular prime.
It's two to the power N, ie, two to the power anything.
So 2 squared, 2 cubed, 2 to the power of 4,
2 to the power of 5, minus 1.
So 2 squared is 4,
minus 1 is 3. That's a Mersenne Prime.
5 is not a Mersenne Prime, but 2 cubed,
which is the next power up, is 8, minus 1 is 7.
That IS a Mersenne prime.
And the longest prime number as yet discovered,
while I'm speaking,
is 17,425,170 digits long.
That's not the number itself, that's how many digits it is.
AUDIENCE: Ooh. You're right to ooh.
You're right to ooh and, to some extent, you're right to ah.
You'd be annoyed if your bill came to that in a restaurant.
And that is a Mersenne prime, which is what's so fascinating about it.
I'm excited now about maths, in a way I've never been. Thank you.
Good. Well, there you are. That's it.
GIMPS is searching for ever-bigger prime numbers.
Now, back to the Front. This is the Goliath.
Where did the driver sit?
It didn't have one.
- Is the right answer. - Come on! - Yes. Quite right.
APPLAUSE
If we zoom out, we can see that it is...
- Is it what's his name, Butlin? - Yeah.
They are quite small tanks.
"Wahey! Come on, the Boche!"
It appears to have a Tommy there, with his rifle slung.
"I say, Sir, what on Earth are these?"
"I've got no idea, keep smiling."
Well, you're right. They wouldn't know what they were.
They've just discovered them, because they're not British.
- In fact, it's the invention of? - The Hun. - The Hun, the Boche, Jerry.
It's an automatic, or at least remote-controlled tank,
which is actually a mine, known as Goliath.
And they contained a bomb
and you remote-controlledly drove it into an enemy territory
and blew them up.
Do those soldiers know they contain bombs?
- I think they'd disarmed them by this time. - Oh, OK, good.
But in terms of miniature weapons of this kind,
the Americans really beat the Germans in quite a disgusting way.
Do you know the Davy Crockett?
Is it going to be a miniature sub?
It's worse than a miniature sub, it's a portable launcher...
Is it a suicide-bomber racoon, with a...?
It's a portable launcher that could be mounted on a jeep.
- And what do you think it carried? - ALAN: Bubble gum.
"Bubble gum!"
Oh!
A lavatory?
- I like the idea, it's good that you're thinking. - No. - Poo. - No.
It was worse, it was a small nuclear bomb.
You could actually carry a small nuclear bomb.
75 lbs only, and in case you wanted to know what 75 lbs was,
it's the same as an 11-year-old boy,
five racing bicycles,
100 cans of beer,
300 apples,
or 262,500 bees.
LAUGHTER
That's like the worst-ever conveyor belt on the Generation Game.
LAUGHTER
That's so true.
I'm glad you said that, cos I always wonder what things are in bees(!)
- It's my favourite unit. - Over a quarter of a million bees, yeah.
There you are. 2,000 were deployed in Europe, between '61 and '71,
to deter the Soviet forces.
The nuclear yield could be switched between 10 and 20 tons,
which is a huge amount, in terms of a nuclear yield.
- And were these things used? - No. Fortunately.
They also, in special forces,
had something called the Special Atomic Demolition Munition,
or SADM, rather bizarrely.
Which could be carried in a backpack.
- And these were backpack nukes. - What?!
Yes, I know, it's weird, isn't it?
On battle fronts ranging from Eastern Europe to Korea and Iran.
Although small, each one of them was more powerful
than the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
- You would be like, "Bagsy not carrying that one." - Yeah.
But lots of them were carried but, fortunately, none were used,
- as far as we know. - This show has really changed since WikiLeaks.
We've got so much more information at our hands.
Thank you, Edward, again.
It is astonishing, isn't it? Absolutely amazing, as you say,
soldier carrying an atomic bomb with more power...
- He looks like he's just set his off and it's ticking. - Yeah.
I think we've sort of put that together,
because we don't actually have a shot of one with.
But that's a soldier with a backpack.
- What soldier? - Anyway, what's the best way to get shit out of a tank?
LAUGHTER
Two in the front, two in the back.
Fire it out of the barrel?
- Fire it out of the barrel is the right answer. - Oh, really? Blimey!
APPLAUSE
That's a war you don't want to be in, isn't it?
You could have waved your little loo thing,
- cos it is a lavatorial answer. - Which the Russians used to do with T34s.
How did you know that? That's rather sick of you.
The T34 is the bus from Twickenham to Kempton, isn't it?
LAUGHTER
And you can sling your shit out of the side of it any time.
It was a man called Aleksandr Georgievich Semenov
of St Petersburg, who was granted a patent
for his Method of Biowaste Removal from Isolated Dwelling Compartment
of Military Facility and Device for Its Implementation.
I tell you what, they should stick an I on the front of that,
- they'd sell a million of them. - LAUGHTER
In plain English, it got rid of a tank crew's excrement
by firing it out of the barrel at the enemy.
And he described it thus...
- RUSSIAN ACCENT: - "The military psychological positive effect
"takes place: comprehension of the facts of delivering
"and distribution on enemy equipment and uniform,
"as well as the opportunity of informing other soldiers
"and the enemy about it."
In other words, covering the enemy with shit is good for morale
because it's funny.
AUDIENCE GROANS IN DISGUST
I love the fact that got a way bigger...
the idea of being hit with poo is much worse than the nuclear bomb.
- But it is really, isn't it? - It is, yeah, I'll go with that.
The 20 seconds after you've been hit by that
is worse than 20 seconds after you've been hit by a nuclear bomb.
You're vaporised, exactly. Or just, what do you do with that?
You vomit, you just...
It's horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible.
- Beautiful story. - It is a lovely story. Thank you.
And I'm happy to share it with you.
Now, what did the chap on the left here have
that was twice as big as the chap on the right?
SNIGGERING
- I don't know. Are these chaps inventors, Stephen? - No.
Is it to do with their beards?
No, they're both very, very, very famous, they're both 19th century.
- Are they philosophers? - One of them won a Nobel Prize, the other didn't.
Oh, is it Nobel Prize cabinet?
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
You are faster than the speed of light tonight.
No, it's not that, but it could easily be.
You definitely deserve points for that. The one on the right
was hugely fashionable for a time, and his name is Anatole France.
And he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The one on the left was a great literary figure,
still much more highly regarded as a literary figure
- than the one on the right. - Is it Twitter following?
Neither of them, to their eternal shame, has a Twitter following.
How do you win a Nobel Prize for Literature if you don't Twitter?
It seems inconceivable, doesn't it? I know. I know.
The one on the left... His initials, though, are to do...
Slightly to do with Twitter, his initials are IT.
Is he Russian?
Yes. So if it's "I", it's got to be?
- Igor. - Ivan. - "Ivan" is the right answer.
Month In The Country?
- Turgenev? - Fathers And Sons, Ivan Turgenev is the right answer.
So, you have Ivan Turgenev and you have Anatole France.
One had something that was double the size of the other.
Is it right hand or left hand?
- No, but you're right to be physical, it's about their bodies. - Cock.
- Maybe cock... - Well, everyone's thinking it, we might as well
get it out in the open. KLAXON
Oh!
APPLAUSE
- No? - It's quite fun to sit here
when the word "penis" just flashes behind you.
The number of times that's happened to him.
- It's not. - Brain?
"Brain" is the right answer.
You bring back a little... A few points to yourself.
- Oh, come on, it must match up. - Well, that's the thing, is...
You can't lose more for saying "cock" than you get for saying "brain".
You know that a klaxon...
Yeah, Turgenev's brain is twice the size of Anatole France's -
or was - and Anatole France won the Nobel Prize and Turgenev didn't,
not that that's anything to do with it, but it is quite surprising.
Because, generally speaking,
it's held that brain size is to do with intelligence.
Although there are manifold exceptions.
But in the case of Turgenev and Anatole France, well,
Turgenev's brain was 4lbs 6oz.
And France's was 2lbs 4oz, almost exactly half.
Can you feel the weight of your brain?
- Is that a thing? - Yes, I can. - If you've got a heavier brain...
Yeah. It's really upsetting.
I can't feel anything.
LAUGHTER
Size isn't everything, it seems.
However, just how small can you feel?
Er, right. So is this the... Your ability to feel tininess?
Hmm, it is. Well spotted.
A human hair is pretty small.
Hairs are small, yeah.
You can't feel that if it's resting on your hand,
but if you put it between your fingers, you can.
- Pollen, can you feel pollen? - Ooh, ooh...
- It depends what you're feeling it with. - Yes. - Look, I'm doing this,
- I can play the tiny violin. - You're using your fingertips, which are your best feely things.
- Oh, OK, fingertips. - It was only in 2013
they started to do experiments, really, to try and find out.
And they used a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very
smooth surface to try and get the friction, the friction.
And it's absolutely extraordinary what they discovered.
And that is that we can feel, with our fingers,
something as small as 13 nanometres high.
Which is to say, the size of a single molecule.
Which in itself would be ten times smaller than a bacterium.
Fortunately, we can't feel bacteria,
cos that would drive us crazy, because they're everywhere.
We used to do that game at parties, where you had to feel molecules,
but you had to wear a big pair of gardening gloves as well.
Which is impossible.
Human fingers do this by sensing vibrations from the friction,
and it is absolutely astonishing. And you can test it,
because you can put something on a surface that's smooth
and put these tiny things and say "stop" when you feel it.
How smooth is smooth?
Yeah. Are we talking, like, Magic FM?
- That's too smooth. - Too smooth? - Yeah.
Let's butter your back, Stephen, and get some molecules on there
and have a good old feel.
The research team created invisible wrinkles of 16 different heights.
The smallest detectable ones were 7,000 times thinner
than a sheet of paper. There you are. It makes you wonder, though,
why we can never find the end of a roll of Sellotape.
- Hey... - How is that?
Anyway, you'd be surprised just how small people feel sometimes.
Now, fingers on buzzers please, cos it's time for General Ignorance.
Where is the second biggest film industry based?
- # Big girl... - Yes? - #
Nigeria.
- Oh, is the right answer! - I was going to say that.
Were you going to say that?
APPLAUSE
Very impressive.
- And so it is called, of course? - Nollywood. - Nollywood.
Nollywood is the right answer, absolutely right.
Bollywood is the biggest. Nollywood is the second biggest.
Nollywood was founded by Kenneth Nnebue, in 1992,
when he bought in a huge number of VHS cassettes from Taiwan,
and he figured that he could sell them better
if he put something on them, cos they were blank.
So he quickly made a film which was called Living In Bondage.
And it was about a man who achieves power and wealth
by killing his wife,
but she comes back to haunt him and destroys his happiness and sanity.
And it sold three quarters of a million copies.
So immediately people started to... You know, to follow his bandwagon,
and this extraordinary studio system -
well, it's not really a studio system
because it has so few facilities -
but it's incredibly successful, they turn out 30 films a week.
- They churn them out, don't they? - They really do.
We once made a TV show in Nigeria, and we turned up...
It was a quiz show, we turned up, there was a field,
they built a studio, brought everything inside it,
we filmed it, they then dismantled the whole thing
- and we all went home. - Really? - Yeah. - For one half-hour TV pilot.
- Was that Pointless Nigeria? - It wasn't Pointless Nigeria!
Wow, that's amazing.
Now, which country's armed forces' official march
is about a tramp by a pond being accosted by a farmer
because he's stolen a sheep in his lunch bag...?
- # Big bad John. # - Australia? - Oh!
- KLAXON - What a shame. - It sounds a bit like it, though, doesn't it?
It sounds exactly like it, because it is an exact translation of...?
- Waltzing Matilda. - Waltzing Matilda.
But Waltzing Matilda is not an official march in Australia.
But it is the official march of... a country's military.
Oh, it's one of the African countries, isn't it?
- It's not, bizarrely. - It's one of the Asian countries. - No, it's not.
- So, way deep down there in South America? - South American?
- No. But that's the right area, except not south. - Caribbean.
- No. - Central America, Nicaragua, like Honduras-type place?
I want to say Panama.
Belize, I'm going to say Belize. I'm going to say...
- If you get it, when I've done 15, I'm going to... - Belize, Belize me.
- El Salvador. - Costa Rica. - No. Go big.
- Mexico. - Mexico.
- Even bigger. - America. - America.
The United States of America, amazingly.
- Get out of town. - The 1st Marine... Yeah.
- The 1st Marine Division, there they are. They have... - Tall soldiers!
- Yeah. The 1st Marine... - "I love you. March for me!"
I love she's just... She's just not all...
She's come out of the wrong door.
- Well... - That's my PA, Kelly.
LAUGHTER
"Hats off!"
Yeah, the 1st Marine Division used Waltzing Matilda,
because of their relationship with the Australian Army in World War II.
But there's no Australian military force that uses it officially.
- Of course, they can play what they like. - They were trying to have it as
their national anthem. But it was out-voted, I think.
- By? - By Advance Australia Fair.
- AUSTRALIAN ACCENT: - "Advance Australia Fair."
Which is one of the official marches, the other being God Save The Queen.
And there's also the British Royal Tank Regiment's Slow March.
So, the fact is, if you hear Waltzing Matilda coming at you
in an official capacity,
it's Americans attacking you, not Aussies.
Or our own chaps, but very slowly.
When a chicken lays an egg,
which end comes out first?
Oh, God. Not answering.
# Big girls... #
- The big end. - Yes! That's right. You see...
Oh, shut up! I was going to say that!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
We can actually, erm...
We've actually got a glove which sort of reproduces an oviduct -
you know, a little egg-laying tube, so you can try and...
What happens is, in utero,
the egg is little-end down and then it turns round.
Yeah, very good.
I'm going to start campaigning for epidurals for chickens.
There you are, you can let the big end out, can you...? Ooh.
- Oh, no, this is so sore. - Are these hard-boiled, because this is...
- Oh, well done, there you are. - Oh, I've laid one.
Oh, dear.
It is a rubber egg, as you can...
WHACK! WHACK!
That's why you're not a hen gynaecologist.
But you should have... Have you got a real egg down there?
I've got a real egg and a cup.
Now, now be careful with the real egg. Point it over the cup.
- Why, are they fragile, Stephen? - Well, no, they're not fragile, Alan,
and if you obey this picture
and put the egg in your hand like this
and squeeze as hard as you like, you shouldn't be able to break it.
- What have I got to do? - Squeeze.
Hard as you can, to break it. But you can't, can you?
- No, I cannot break it. - Very, very strong. And that's the thing,
eggs are very... You can try it at home, ladies and gentlemen.
If any of you had done it, I would have married you, goddamn it.
How do they stamp them, Stephen?
Well, they've got a little thing inside their little hymen.
A little printing event, that goes on, just as it comes out,
getting its best-before date.
- That's clever. That's very clever. - Yeah, yeah.
The cartridges to refill a chicken are really prohibitively expensive.
LAUGHTER
- Well, yes, you've rather revealed my trick... - Oh, they're great.
Meanwhile, on the chicken farm, Barnes Wallace...
And so, having spent a little time having it large with you all,
it's time to look at the scores.
Well, it's extraordinary, it's wonderful, it's terrific
and it's marvellous because, in first place, by quite a margin -
that's to say by QI standards -
it's Lucy Porter, with 8 points!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In second place,
5 behind, with plus 3,
is Phill Jupitus.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And, surprising, given the depth and breadth of his knowledge,
with minus 16, in third place, is Richard Osman.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
We did rubbish.
But, bringing up his all-too-familiar rear,
with minus 27, is Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So, it's thanks from Lucy, Phill, Richard, Alan and me.
And I'll leave you with the last words of Nostradamus,
as he lay dying, probably making what was his only accurate
and only unambiguous prediction.
"Tomorrow, I shall no longer be here."
Good night.
APPLAUSE