Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to QI.
Does anybody know where the word "quiz" comes from?
As we're doing a kind of quiz.
I feel like I do know, but I can't remember.
Do we get a point for that?
Yeah, Alan can have a point for that, I'm fine with that, yeah.
When you say it, I'm going to go...
- Watch, watch. - OK.
We don't really know.
So, it used to mean a sort of eccentric person.
How it has come to mean asking people questions for points,
we don't really know. There's a story that Richard Daly,
who was a theatre proprietor in Dublin,
in 1791 made a bet that within 48 hours
he could get a word into common parlance,
and he distributed the word "quiz"
to be put up on walls all over Dublin,
and it became part of the language.
So really when they say - "Police are quizzing the suspect" -
that's wrong, isn't it?
No, that's from "inquisitive" and "inquisition".
- So that's a separate... - Very good.
You've got it, you're in the right chair.
I had a little cold feeling, then!
I think with hook-a-duck they do that.
- I think they purposely... - In "hook-a-dook"?
- "Hook-a-duck." - "Hook-a-duck."
- I knew what you meant. - I'm foreign.
Hook-a-duck, oh, in the fair! At the fair?
Our vowel sounds are very similar to yours.
I did a gig in Norway,
and they could understand me more than in Cheltenham.
Yeah.
- Nowadays you can't fail at hook-a-duck. - Why?
Cos kids will kick off if they don't get something.
- So, what do you get? - You don't come away with nothing from anything in the fair any more.
Cos you used to get a fish in a bag,
and it would teach you about life and death.
Usually very quickly!
Those fish, they're not dead when they're floating on the surface, necessarily.
Can you make them better?
Yeah, feed them and put them in a proper tank!
But when they grow, they grow to fill the tank.
You can get one about this big.
- Really?! - Oh, yeah. - Goldfish in the wild are about 40-foot-long!
Absolutely huge!
I don't think that's true,
they don't just keep filling the space, mate.
No, I don't mean like they become a square fish!
A big rectangular fish, like...
"It's tight in here!"
I want to win one of those!
Are you a good sleeper, Noel, do you sleep well?
Yeah, I can sleep a lot, yeah.
Apparently what you should do to find out how much you need to sleep,
is you should spend a week not having an alarm clock at all,
and you should let your body just wake up when it needs to,
and log how many hours, and if you need six hours,
and you need to get up at 7am,
then you know what time you've got to go to bed.
Yes, but, Sandi, you'd need a wee at five.
- Yes. - No matter what.
Yeah, it's very annoying.
It's not like you particularly have that much wee to do.
You get there and you think, "Why have you woken me up for that?"
"I would rather have just left that in the bed."
"We could have just dealt with that... in the morning!"
I would say sometimes, in-the-middle-of-the-night wee,
you can start thinking about something stressful,
or get frightened by noises in the house.
Best just to stay asleep until it gets light.
Really the solution is some sort of an apparatus where you can sleep on the loo.
My father was in hospital and he had a catheter fitted for a
couple of weeks, and he said he'd never slept so well
for about 50 years.
It was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
It's like when you go and stay in a hotel and they say
- never use the kettle, because people pee in it, apparently. - No!
- What?! - You see, I don't want to know those things! - No!
- What? - I mean, how far away is the bathroom?!
I always think that must be a man who pees in that kettle.
- Pee in a kettle?! - I can say on behalf of men
all over the country, we do not piss in kettles!
You've got to take the lid off, you've got to unplug it,
it's way too much effort.
I'm not making it up, it's a well-known fact.
I wouldn't come on QI and talk bullshit,
I'm straight up with the facts.
When you go to a hotel room, and there's water already in the kettle,
that's a bit suspect. I always get rid of that.
To be honest, boiled piss, it might change the flavour of the tea,
but it's not a bacterial threat, is it?
Another thing, never eat the chocolate on the pillow.
Where's that been?!
Anyway, moving on.
In 2015, they were very busy, they also discovered that giraffes hum.
- For pleasure? - Well, we don't know.
They recorded giraffes at three different zoos,
and they found they make this really deep sound,
it's just within human hearing range.
They don't know if they're snoring or sleep-talking, or just saying,
"It's all right, I'm still here, don't you worry,
"light will come in the morning." They don't know what it is, but they hum at night.
Could they be a three-part harmony, like the Beverley Sisters?
The Three Degrees, or the Beverley Sisters, yeah.
That, to me, looks like the giraffe version of going into the loos with
one of your friends when she's about to vomit...
"I'm fine!"
The one on the left's going, "Don't take a picture now!"
That one on the left looks so drunk,
it's trying to have sex with that tree.
She's only got one leg, but I'll have a go!
She's still here, she can't be going anywhere!
I spent part of my childhood in East Africa,
and we had some neighbours who had a Mini which they were very pleased
with, and they had brought it all the way from England, this Mini.
And one day they didn't come home,
and everybody was very worried about them. It turned out a giraffe had
taken that rather interesting shape there, and tried to hump their Mini!
And got stuck over the car!
They couldn't open the doors, and then the giraffe couldn't get off.
I guess they drove it back to England...
"We'll knock him off in the Dartford Tunnel!"
Astonishing thing, twice a day the tide in the bay
rises 28-foot-six-inches, to the point that it overtops
the waterfall over which the Saint John River normally flows,
and the river flows backwards.
- Wow. - Isn't that amazing?
We've learnt so much, haven't we?!
You've got to be careful with this show, what you take away from it.
Because you can hear people in pubs, and they'll say this happened,
and you go, "No." And they'll go, "I saw it on QI."
Like, it's become that.
I was chatting to a friend of mine,
I said I was thinking about going to Venice.
He said, "I don't do Venice, it's full of racists."
"It's a racist town." I said, "How's it a racist town?"
He says, "Yeah." He says, "All the gondoliers,
- "they've got to be black. They have to be black." - What?!
I said, "I don't think that's true."
He said, "No. It's true, I saw it on QI."
He said, "Honestly, I don't know how they've got past the EU with it",
"but every single one of them has to be black."
I said, "I don't think that's true."
Anyway, about three days later, he rang me up.
He went, "I meant gondolas. The actual gondola."
The gondola has to be black.
So here's the thing, we're going to make our own nuisance call this evening.
There is a number that anybody can ring in Sweden,
and it's a scheme set up by the country's tourism authority
to celebrate 250 years of free speech in Sweden,
and it's called Ring A Random Swede, OK?
It's a genuine random thing.
We have no idea who we're going to get.
We've already pre-selected a question from a member of the
audience, and the question is, why do you eat rotten fish?
Does anybody speak Swedish?
Here's the marvellous thing about Scandinavians,
- is that their English is really coming along. - OK.
So, the marvellous, marvellous sound department are going to put a call through now,
and obviously we'll have to explain what it is that we're doing to this person.
Hello?
Hi, my name is Sandi, I'm ringing from London, who's that?
Robin! Hi, you're my random Swede that I'm ringing!
'Yeah.'
Is it your first phone call from an English person?
So, this is kind of exciting, Robin,
because I'm ringing you from a live television studio in London.
So you're on the BBC right now, is that OK?
OK. So, I'll tell you what,
we'll have a round of applause from our audience,
maybe you can hear that.
So, what do you do, Robin?
Are you actually in the shop?
OK.
So, we have a question from our audience.
You may be buying this now, what do I know?
"Why do Swedish people eat rotten fish?" is the question we want to ask you.
It was lovely to speak to you, Robin!
You know when people say,
like, an old woman died in her flat, and she was eaten by her cats.
- I mean... - What kind of a world do you live in?!
People peeing in kettles, and old women...
Three days.
- Three days and your cat will eat your face. - Yeah.
Because it will have loosened up enough for it to get purchase.
- Yeah. - What sort of show IS this?!
They never say that, do they, about aged meat on a menu,
with 20-day aged beef,
they never use the phrase,
"It will have loosened up enough to get purchase".
Say you took an average of every single person here in this room,
and we took height, and shoe size,
and collar size, and all those things,
you won't find anybody who's average in all respects.
It just doesn't exist.
And it's called the jaggedness principle, and it really matters.
So in the 1940s, the US Air Force, they thought, "I know what we'll do",
"we'll design a cockpit that fits absolutely everybody."
The cockpit has yet to be designed that will fit my proportions.
In what way?
- Oh, in a plane? - In a plane. - Oh, I'm sorry.
How embarrassing. I thought you were talking about...
I try so hard with you boys.
So they took the measurements of over 4,000 pilots,
and they designed this cockpit seat based on these ten different body
measurements, and it didn't fit a single pilot,
because there isn't any such thing as normal,
and in the end they had to develop the adjustable seat for aeroplanes,
because of the jaggedness principle.
So, take me and Richard. So, Richard, you come here
- just for a minute, darling. - Oh, goodness.
- So, if you wanted to do... - Where's the sun? Where's the sun?!
If there was a jacket to be had
for the average quiz show presenter...
Can I just say, I'm very proud of Sandi and her time at the school...
She won the grammar prize, well done.
You do know that people watching won't know who's,
and I don't use the word lightly, abnormally heighted.
- It could be that you're 25-foot. - Yes, yes. - We need some proportion.
I'm five-foot-nine, to give an indication
I used to work with the brilliant Humphrey Lyttelton,
and Humphrey was exactly the same height as me when he was kneeling.
- I bet I am. - Shall we try that? OK.
Right, here we go.
- Oh, just about! - Not far off.
What's the worst noise in the world?
So, we have some props where you can make some noises.
- Oh, hello. - Let's have a look.
So, let's start with Nish and Alan.
That's very irritating, isn't it?
- Oh, God. - Wow. All right, stop it.
Do you remember what that is, Nish?
- This is a vuvuzela. - It is a vuvuzela, yes.
Which ruined the 2010 World Cup.
It's a hideous noise, isn't it?
Well, luckily I have grade seven in vuvuzela, so we're fine.
Oh, Alan, Alan...
That is awful.
We've got a band going! Don't stop!
I've got a mirror and this cube of white stuff.
Is the most annoying sound in the world me on drugs?!
I think this is polystyrene, and...
Oh!
The Journal of Neuroscience gave the top ten most annoying sounds.
Apparently the most annoying is a knife on a bottle,
but we haven't been able to work out why that is.
This one we can do. This is number two, a fork...
Oh, God.
♪ I got the power. ♪
Oh! Stop, stop, stop!
That's very unpleasant, isn't it?
This is the old...
What is worse than this is when it just goes, "Doot."
- Yes. - Oh, yes.
And then four minutes later goes, "Doot."
And you can't work out which one it is. It's somewhere in the house.
"Doot."
The thing that I love about, like,
any sort of smoke alarm is that we've advanced so far
technologically and yet we still haven't got beyond the only way
to solve a smoke alarm is to have a tea towel and just do this.
Now, what did Highland Warriors wear at the Battle of Bannockburn?
Kilts.
- No. Not kilts. - No.
Here's a random Scandinavian fact.
- Oh, OK. - The word "kilt" comes from the Danish word kilte, meaning "tuck".
- So it's actually a Danish word. - Oh? - Yes, that's rather fine.
But medieval Scottish warriors did not wear kilts when they went into
battle. What did they wear? Anybody know?
- Dungarees. - Pantaloons.
- No, it was a yellow tunic. - A yellow tunic?
A yellow tunic called a leine croich.
The bloke on the left has got one of those umbrella hats from the fair.
Yes. They're rather fine, aren't they?
He's trying to knock it off.
"That's a stupid hat."
It's not even raining!
What was weird, they used saffron to make them yellow,
but if they didn't have saffron they used to use...
- Urine. - Yes.
- Horse urine. - Very keen on the yellow then.
Piss-stained tunic.
Urine was in all the tweeds as well, cos they used to use it to fix the colour in the tweeds.
Yeah, but still, you know, can we not make it green from the grass?
No, keep on pissing on it.
That horse has got the hots for the painter.
Yeah, he's looking right at him, isn't he?
"Now you're getting my best side."
"Don't paint the twat in the umbrella hat, for God's sake."
- My mum would summon me home by whistling. - Seriously? - Yeah.
And she taught me how to do it with the two fingers there.
- Wow. - Now, I could hear that three miles away.
Me and my brother would be playing with my mates.
We'd be out all day and then at tea-time my mum would go out
the back door and go...
- And then we would... - Wow. That is a seriously good whistle.
- We would come back. - One time, do you remember we were in Manchester?
- Oh, yeah, yeah. - And I had to get a train? - Yeah.
And the taxi went by and I went, "Taxi!" Like that.
- And he ignored me and it went about 50 yards and it did that and it braked. - It went...
Was the taxi driver your mum?
Now, can you describe a bearded tit?
If anyone says David Baddiel, I'm leaving.
Well, once you get past 30, it does happen.
- We don't always talk about it. - No woman should be without tweezers.
- No. - Or the skill of platting.
- That's true. Give the children something to hang on to. - Exactly.
Like a sports bra, tie them together round the back, bosh. Off.
I sometimes feel when I speak to you, Ross,
that I haven't thought things through.
- All I'm saying is you're welcome. - Thank you.
Now, could you please do an impression
of a trout faking an orgasm?
Oh, Deirdre's off.
Looks like a really bad face-lift.
- Well, I'm trying to be a sarcastic trout. - Sarcastic trout?
- The gills, it would be... - A trout faking an orgasm?
- Was that it? - Yeah, I'm done.
"Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, the river moved for me as well."
Anybody else want to try? You do a fine line in animal impersonations.
Well, I'm not sure. I feel like I'd have to move my tail.
I'm sure the tail...
I don't believe anybody is stopping you.
If you have just tuned in...
That was Alan being a trout faking an orgasm.
The mouth opened...
My husband makes me sleep facing away from him,
cos I breathe too loudly.
That's quite weird, isn't it?
Well, like those two in the picture.
- Oh, yeah. - When I got married, another thing I found out,
that wasn't usual to put your underwear and your socks on before
you put any of your clothes on.
- Are you supposed to put it on afterwards? - No, no.
Did you marry a superhero?
- I put my underwear on. - Yeah. - And then I put my socks on.
- And then I put my outerwear on. - And what's wrong with that?
Well, apparently it's weird to put your socks on before
you put your trousers and your top on.
I think your husband is telling you that things he does
are things that everyone does.
It is perfectly reasonable to put your socks on
before your trousers or shirt.
It is also perfectly reasonable to breathe while you're asleep.
The problem in your house is he keeps pissing in the kettle.
But at least you can stand up, so for women it's really difficult,
because you sort of have to hover, don't you? And I remember one time,
I went to the ladies and the lock didn't quite work. This is a very
tricky moment for a woman, cos you have to sort of hover.
And I, so obsessed with not making a mess on the seat, I thought,
"Oh, sod it, I'll just sit down." And as I sat down,
the door burst open and a woman came straight in and she went,
"Oh, I'm so sorry." And then she shut the door again
and then she burst it open again and she went, "You're Sandi Toksvig..."
But what is Britain's biggest national secret?
If we tell it, it won't be a secret any more.
Ah, well, that is true and that was a thing that worried people
for a long, long time.
- So, we're in London. - Right.
Was it the London Tower, something up there?
- It is a tower. Tower is right, Jerry. - Is The Shard a secret?
Is there some enormous building that isn't supposed to...?
- Yes, there is an enormous building that was a secret for years and years and years. - The Gherkin.
- BT Tower. - The Post Office Tower.
- The BT Tower is exactly right. - Oh, the BT Tower.
It was built in 1965 and was considered such an important
part of the telecoms infrastructure
that it was classified as an official secret!
- What?! - Cos no-one can see it.
- No. I know. - Oh, my God.
It was Britain's tallest building.
It contained a public viewing gallery and a revolving restaurant.
Nevertheless...
I went to that place once for a charity event
and Rick Astley was singing.
It was wonderful.
And I went to the loo, which is in the middle,
and when I came out of the loo it had revolved
and I came out right on stage next to him!
He was going, ♪ Never going to give you up... ♪
But the restaurant was fantastic.
Did you ever go to the revolving restaurant?
- No. No, I haven't been. - It was just glorious.
And in 2009, BT said they were going to reopen it, and anybody who's ever
had a promise from BT will know that that never happened.
You get a lot of e-mails saying your order is on its way.
A male black widow spider and a female black widow spider
have just finished having sex.
What happens next?
Yeah, Ross?
Tiny cigarette.
It wouldn't be a tiny cigarette, would it?
It'd be eight tiny cigarettes.
Shall we do it again?
Maybe she could try and kill him in that way rather than by eating him,
which I think is the answer that we were being led towards.
Ah, she eats him.
No, she does not if she's a black widow.
So there is one species in the widow group in which the female, well,
- let's say, routinely eats the male. - Scottish Widows.
Yes, but at least she's insured.
Right, speaking of ears, I'm going to play you two recordings, OK?
One is of hot water being poured into a bowl
and one is of cold water being poured into a bowl.
I want you to tell me which is which, so here's the first one.
And here is the second one.
- So... - Sorry, I need a wee.
What do we think the first one is?
- Hot or cold? - Hot. - Hot. - Hot.
- Everybody? Hot? - Yes, I'll go hot.
I thought it was the first one. Sounded like emptying a kettle
and the second one sounded like filling a kettle.
- Oh. OK. Yeah. - Ooh!
The audience has taken to mocking me.
Since Stephen left they've just turned.
There are sitting there going,
"No-one's taking the piss out of that idiot, it's up to us."
That woman there.
You said one was filled, one was...
I think that woman went, "Oh!"
- "Oh, yeah!" - That was admiration.
- Admiration? - Yeah.
The sound of admiration? I've never heard that before.
Obviously cos I'm unfamiliar.
The second one sounded kind of crisp and cold and I wanted a drink.
OK, let's have one more listen, so here is the first one.
Everyone listen.
And the second one.
Can we just bear in mind, this is QI,
so I've got a feeling it might be somebody pouring soup onto a horse.
I promise you it's hot and cold water.
Hands up who thinks the first one is hot.
And hands up who thinks the first one is cold.
Ooh, that's weird.
OK, so, it is about the right percentage.
96% correctly usually identify the first one as hot.
So, yes!
So, they do make different noises, because hot water is, kind of,
slightly less sticky is the thing of it.
Molecules in it have more energy from the heat,
as when hot water hits a hard surface, it breaks up into smaller
particles and it makes a higher-pitched splashing noise
- than cold water. - Oh, OK.
- So, but now you'll know. - Good.
So that's good.
I'll be like, "Ah, that was hot."
- Yes. - The next time you pour boiling water on yourself, you'll be like,
"Is it hot? Oh, by the sound of it, yes, I am, I've boiled my hand."
OK, how would you consume the original Humpty Dumpty?
Is it that he wasn't an egg, he was something else?
Is correct. Yes.
It has always been sort of a nickname, but it wasn't an egg.
In fact, in the early depictions of the rhyme,
he is actually depicted as a child.
There he is, not looking entirely content.
Some people think it might have been a story about Richard III depicted
as humpbacked in Tudor histories.
And he was defeated and despite all his kings men and horses
- at the Battle of Bosworth. - Oh, isn't he gorgeous?
So when did it start becoming about an egg?
Because it's an egg, isn't it?
Well, we now think of it as an egg,
but the earliest citation in the OED is for a drink made with ale,
boiled with brandy...
Yes, please.
- ..and I have some here. - Oh!
And I have five glasses.
Oh, yes. Are you sharing it out or just having a brilliant time?
I am sharing it out.
So, here is the thing as well,
- the traditional... - Keep pouring!
The traditional food that is eaten at a Danish Christmas is something
called aebleskiver. They are a little tiny, like a pancake,
thing which you have in jam and these have been made for me
by a brilliant Danish chef Bronte Aurell, from the
Scandinavian Kitchen in London who's here in the audience.
- Where are you, Bronte? Give us a wave. - Hello.
Brilliant. Have a glass, here we are.
So you tip the jam on your head and then rub the pastry in.
- And there we go. - It tastes medicinal.
God, that's horrific.
Not the food.
So, Humpty Dumpty was originally a mixture...
- This is lovely. - Look at all me jam!
- I never had a happy childhood. I wasn't happy. - We'll get a taxi.
- I didn't like you either! - We'll get a taxi.
Let's all just get a taxi.
We'll sort it out outside.
Humpty Dumpty was originally a drink...
..of ale and brandy and you consumed it like this, cheers to everybody.
- Cheers. - Cheers. - Skal! - Cheers to the audience.