CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Good evening and welcome to QI
for a truly original episode about origins and openings.
Please welcome, with open arms, the open-eyed Rich Hall.
APPLAUSE
The open-minded Susan Calman.
APPLAUSE
The open-mouthed Josh Widdicombe.
APPLAUSE
And opening a can of worms, it's Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE
So, without further ado, I declare the show open.
Rich goes...
GRIEG'S PIANO CONCERTO
That's lovely.
- I have to wait for all of that before I can answer? - Yes.
Susan goes...
DRAMATIC ORCHESTRAL MUSIC
Some of the greatest openings in the world. Josh goes...
BEETHOVEN'S FIFTH SYMPHONY
Alan goes...
MUPPET SHOW OPENING THEME
APPLAUSE
Right, I'd like you to act out the opening scene
of the classic film All Together Passionately.
Sorry, am I on the wrong show?
I mean, I'm happy to do it, as long as I can go on top.
I think you should speak to Josh.
As long as you've got a cushion, I'm fine with it.
Anybody know All Together Passionately?
- A great film. - It's not ringing any bells.
It is the Italian name, I will tell you, for a very famous film.
Tutti Insieme Appassionatamente.
I'll be honest, if anything, I'm further away from the answer.
- OK, if I do this... - The Passion of the Christ.
- No. - Titanic. - Titanic?
No, and I'm twirling around on top of an Austrian mountain...
Oh, The Sound Of Music.
The Sound Of Music. It is the Italian name...
There's no Italian phrase for the sound of music?
Apparently, that's what they called it, All Together Passionately.
In Italy?
That sounds like a film you wouldn't watch on a train.
- Do you watch a lot of films on trains? - Lots of them. You have to...
Oh, yes, because you don't fly, so you spend your life on a train.
Yes, so you have to be very careful sometimes if you have a film
with a bit of...
- Naughtiness. - ..naughtiness. You have to turn it to the window.
Does anybody here cry at movies on planes
that you wouldn't normally cry at?
Like Paul Blart - Mall Cop, that's...
I'm in floods. Floods!
Not just at movies, sometimes just a credit card ad.
Like, "Oh, my God, she lost her...
"Oh, she got it back. Thank God!"
So many emotions to handle in one commercial!
Well, here is a thing about The Sound Of Music.
It was so popular in South Korea when it was first released,
one theatre owner in Seoul made the film shorter
by cutting out all the musical numbers...
LAUGHTER
..so they could show it more often.
Do you know what? I've never seen it.
- GASPS - Josh!
- Oh, really, never? - You've never seen...
- THROATILY: - # You are 16, going on 17... #
Yeah, it's like that, but with a tune.
APPLAUSE
In 2004, the Sun reportedly saw a leaked document -
we don't know if it's true - that in the event of a nuclear bomb
going off, the advice is going to be to stay indoors and watch television.
And apparently, BBC bunkers will broadcast
- The Sound Of Music for 100 days, or until we're all dead. - Wow.
You're all going to go, "I've seen it." That's when I cash in!
Do you know, I was once lucky enough to meet Julie Andrews?
It's the only time in my entire life I have been completely speechless.
Because she wouldn't shut up?
Kept harping on about what her favourite things were.
It was very annoying.
- COCKNEY: - "Do you like them tied up with string?
"I bet you do, girl! I bet you do!
"What's a deer? What's a female deer? Come on!"
Julie, leave it alone!
"I'll get the puppets out. I'll get the puppets out!
"Do you want to see the goat herd?
" # High on the hill... # It wasn't me singing.
" # High on the hill... #
"I'm Maria. I'll be back with you. I'm Maria."
Shut up, Julie! God!
APPLAUSE
I'll be honest, I understood none of that.
OK, let's try five more original movie titles.
The top one, I can tell you, Please Don't Touch The Old Women,
an Italian version of a famous film.
Is it Cocoon?
No!
It's The Producers.
- What?! - The Producers.
Yes. Because, you know, the whole thing is about him raising money
from the old women, so I guess that's the bit they most focused on.
Try the next one - this is the Brazilian title of a famous film.
11 Men And A Secret.
Ah, it was 12 Angry Men, but one of them is transgender.
- Ocean's Eleven. - It is Ocean's Eleven, you're absolutely right.
- Yay! - OK, this one is also Italian, this next one.
Don't Open That Door!
Das Boot.
APPLAUSE
It's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Right, this next one is Chinese.
I'll be honest, when you say which country it's from,
it's of no relevance. "Oh, it's Chinese, oh, yes."
It's Chinese, yes. His Great...
MUPPET SHOW OPENING THEME Yes?
The Man With The Golden Gun.
Come on!
No, it's Boogie Nights.
Oh!
No, no, no, no!
Would you like to see my great device?
- That's horrific. - OK, let's try a few the other way round.
I want you to think of better titles for these actual films.
So Jaws, I have the French title,
but what do you think would be a better title for Jaws?
Angry Halibut.
That was the original screenplay, it wasn't about a shark at all.
It's a furious halibut.
A Large Expanse Of Water That's Still On The Surface.
So the French title of Jaws is The Teeth From The Sea.
- Teeth From The Sea. - Try this one.
Free Willy - any better titles for that?
Oh! The Device Made Him Famous.
I don't know.
Release The Penis.
The Chinese title is A Very Powerful Whale Runs to Heaven.
- Quite... - It's like something you'd get in a fortune cookie.
It's quite literal, isn't it? Yes. Bad Santa?
Anybody got a better title for Bad Santa?
- Good Santa. - Good Santa.
The Czech Republic is Santa Is A Pervert.
LAUGHTER
Die Hard was released in Germany as Die Slowly,
in Greece as Very Hard To Die and in Norway as Action Skyscraper.
And SpongeBob Squarepants was originally going to be
SpongeBob Ahoy,
but that turned out to be the copyright for the name of a mop
and so they couldn't have that.
That's true. And Lion King's working title was King Of The Jungle.
- Why does that not work as a title, King Of The Jungle? - Cos... - Cos?
- ..the lion... - Yes? - ..is not... - Yes? - ..in the jungle.
Correct, it does not live in the jungle.
So King Of The Jungle would be something else.
- I've never seen The Lion King. - Oh, my God! - Have you not? - No.
GASPS Ooh.
- I know! - Oh, it's not so nice when it happens to you, is it? - Yeah.
Now, what's the most original idea in this book?
- What year is this? - 1831, it was published.
This fella, Patrick Matthew, is he by any chance Scottish?
- He is, he's a Scottish, or was... - From near Scone.
- ..a Scottish horticulturalist. - Yes. - And what is he famous for?
I think he came up with some of the ideas which Darwin then
took on in The Origin Of The Species.
Well, you are right and not right, in that he did have the original
ideas about natural selection being the mechanism for evolution,
but Darwin had no idea that Matthew had come up with this.
So 30 years later, we're 1860, this guy is reading a review
in Gardeners' Chronicle about Darwin's Origin Of The Species,
and it said, "Darwin professes to have discovered the existence
"and the modus operandi of natural selection,"
and he wrote to complain, saying that he had already written about this.
And Darwin wrote back and said, "I had no idea, I've never, ever read your work."
Oh, come on, Darwin!
And not only did Matthew get there before Darwin,
lots of his ideas were proved in the end to be more correct.
But there are actually three people who are thought to have independently
discovered the principle of natural selection
as the mechanism for speciation.
- Wallace? - Matthew, Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace... - Yes.
..who also comes up with the idea about five years before Darwin.
Wallace wrote an essay
and Darwin very quickly then wrote On The Origin Of The Species, because
he wanted to make sure that he got his stuff out before anybody else.
Darwin very much emphasised competition between individuals
of the same species, and Wallace emphasised environmental
pressures, and in fact probably they were both right.
- He looks friendlier than the other two, the middle one. - Yeah, he looks nice.
- He looks like you could go to him with a problem. - Yeah.
The other two...the other two would be like, "Sort it out, Susan." Yeah.
So all three of these guys are proponents of natural selection
- and that we evolve in order to survive? - Yeah.
But they all have hair growing out of their ears.
Well, sometimes, personal grooming can just fall by the wayside, Rich.
Recently I've stopped plucking my toe hair, because I just...
..can't do it any more.
- It's a bit like a euphemism. - I used to, I used to...
- You can't reach or...? - No, I used to, I used to...
She's got like a selfie stick with tweezers on it.
I have quite hairy toes and I used to pluck them,
for fear of upsetting people, and then I stepped
out of the house one day in a pair of sandals, and you've
never lived until you've felt the wind through the hair on your toes.
And after that, I thought, "To hang with social convention,
"I'm just going to let it go."
So, when Darwin had The Origin Of The Species published, he gave the
original manuscript to his children to use as scrap drawing paper
- and the only surviving pages are illustrated by his children. - Ah.
There's a drawing of a fish with legs carrying an umbrella,
there's men riding horses made of vegetables.
And they wrote short stories on the paper.
The Fairies Of The Mountain is one story.
"Two fairies travel to the sun,
"where they find that life has adapted to the environment."
So I like the idea that they thought, "Oh, it must be different on the sun, they must evolve."
- They'd obviously read it before they drew on it. - Yes, I think so.
Anyway, what did Mr First think of Mr Second?
Oh! Didn't like him.
Also, what's wrong with this picture?
That's a very unrealistic snake.
Well, that wasn't my first thing, but, yes,
that is a very unrealistic snake.
That hair would be difficult to keep control of in damp weather.
- Yeah. - Yeah. You should see their hairy toes - all over the shop.
It was in the very first QI ever.
Oh, don't ask me.
- It'll be to do with Adam cos it'll be A, right? - Yes.
So the very first man and therefore? He wouldn't have a...
- Oh, a bellybutton! - He wouldn't have a bellybutton. - Oh.
- And also, what are they eating? - A peach. - Apples.
Apples, there are no apples mentioned anywhere in the Bible whatsoever.
- So what was the forbidden fruit then? - We have no idea. It doesn't say.
Anyway, he's not the Mr First that we are talking about,
the first person that we are talking about is Omero Catan,
an American man who claimed
to have been the first person at over 500 opening events,
and he was known as Mr First.
And his brother Michael very occasionally took his place,
and he was known as Mr Second.
But the rivalry between the two was truly terrible.
So he would just turn up at openings?
So, when he was 13 years old, Omero Catan heard of a family friend
who had been the very first to cross the Brooklyn Bridge when it opened,
so that is 1883, and that inspired him, one year later,
when he was 14, to become the very first American passenger
aboard the Graf Zeppelin.
There it is, the Graf Zeppelin. Look at that thing!
You could fit three 747s on one of those airships.
But he was the very first American passenger to fly the Atlantic
- in that airship. - Yeah.
Which took four and a half days, in those days.
And then he rose to fame, he did all sorts of things.
He set up camp outside the Lincoln Tunnel for four days
so he could be the first to drive through.
He was the first person to buy a ticket for the 8th Avenue Subway,
first person to skate on the Rockefeller ice rink, first person
to drive across the Hudson Tappan Zee Bridge, and the
first person to put a quarter in a New York parking meter.
- You should never be first to do things like that. - Why not?
Because the danger aspect. You wait until a lot of people have done it,
and then you know it's safe, and then you pop on.
It's so good Neil Armstrong didn't make that speech.
Oh, I bet he hates Neil Armstrong, doesn't he, Mr First?
No, actually, he said, "I wouldn't have had the nerve,"
is what he said about Neil Armstrong when he was asked.
I bet Mr First is an absolute bore at dinner parties.
- Yes. - "I've been here ages!"
But what happened was, in 1945, the third Lincoln Tunnel opened,
and Mr First was in the UK. And so his brother, Michael,
was asked if he would be there in his place.
He began to step in more and more regularly, and the papers started
to give them equal status, and Mr Second became Mr First.
GASPS
Terrible tensions. Terrible tensions between them!
- Oh, my God. - Omero became convinced that
his brother was trying to steal the limelight.
There were offers from Hollywood to make a movie, he wouldn't have it
because he didn't want his brother to get equal billing,
and his very last "first" was a drive through the newly-opened
I-595 highway from Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport
to the Everglades.
- Not one of his classics, that, was it? - No.
But in the last 20 years of his life,
the brothers lived 20 minutes apart and they wouldn't speak.
You'd think one of them would go,
- "I was the first to get back in touch! Unlucky!" - Yeah.
So have you done no firsts at all, Susan?
I was the first person ever to get 100% in the Currys
electrical superstore exam.
- Wow! - Were you selling white goods?
I was in charge of microwaves and vacuum cleaners,
with an overall ambit for white goods.
I went down to Newcastle for a training course and you had to sit
an exam in not only the goods itself,
- but also PMA - Positive Mental Attitude. - Ha!
Because everyone in Currys had to have a positive mental attitude,
and I had a cravat and a badge that said, "Susan, happy to help".
And you got 100% in the exam?
I was the only person to ever get 100%.
Josh, done any firsts at all?
I once put a whole packet of Polo's in my mouth.
- That's less impressive. - That way?
Oh, I opened it, so it was just 20 Polo's. I wasn't like...
Rich, have you done any firsts of any kind?
I was the first person to Google myself to see if I was still alive.
- And were you? - Yeah. - Yeah.
If you Google "Rich Hall", my name will come up first
and the second is a dormitory at Boston University.
But last week, if you went on like Twitter or something, it said,
"Rich Hall was on fire last night."
And I was in Aylesbury, and I thought it was...
- But it's actually the dormitory caught fire. - Oh.
Just cut out the headline, it's a great review.
- Yeah, it's still going on my poster. - Yeah.
I think that's a wonderful thing. Have you done any firsts?
No, but someone did send me a thing to a website
and it said I died in 1997.
That was at Jongleurs.
I was the first person to do stand-up in Stockholm.
They had got the old Royal Yacht Britannia
and they'd turned it into a stand-up club.
And I went out to complete silence, I mean not a laugh, just total silence.
And I finished by saying, "I've been Sandi Toksvig, thank you very much, good night."
And they went nuts, they went crazy. The audience were going wild.
- Is that cos you were leaving? - Clapping, clapping...
Well, I had no idea what was going on,
so I went backstage and the organiser says,
"Oh, you were so funny, it was very, very funny."
I said, "But nobody laughed." "No, we didn't like to interrupt."
I've got an audience that doesn't like to interrupt
all round the country.
This whole thing about people want...
- None of these people want to go to Mars. - Yeah, why?
I'll tell you why, just so they can dominate every conversation afterwards.
"I've been to Mars!"
There's not much point in going to Mars.
Oh, it would be awful. They're going... "It's got water."
That is the... If you went, "I'm moving." "What's it like?"
"Well, they've got water." That's the bare minimum!
They're going to habitatise it.
- Habitatise? Is that a thing? - Yeah. Habitatise.
Put loads of furniture from Habitat on it.
I'm going to wait till they find a planet that has Diet Sprite on it.
Yeah, I would need a planet that had Angel Delight.
Oh, have you set fire to Angel Delight? Have we discussed that?
What?
Butt out, Josh. Yes, it's very good.
- It's good, isn't it? - Yes.
Do you set fire to the powder, or when it's made?
So, what you do... Don't do this, OK,
cos it's really dangerous, but it's fun.
So, what you do is, you get some of the powder
and you put a tea light on the floor and then from a height, sprinkle the
powder and it does a phosphorescence, a little kind of... It's marvellous.
I tell you what, tomorrow morning, the supermarkets are going to go,
"Angel Delight's suddenly very popular."
"Get some more tea lights and some more Angel Delight.
"It's going crazy in here!"
Don't do it, do not do it.
Mr First hated Mr Second because, when Mr First was seconded,
Mr Second started coming first.
What's the worst thing that can happen when you open something?
Well, if it's the gentleman that pressed the button
on the Virgin Train from Glasgow to London, he'd say
it's seeing me on the toilet, which is what happened today.
Those doors take so long to open!
Especially... If you're a gentleman, you can go, "Oh, gosh!"
If you're a lady, you just have to sit and go...
But the problem is...
The problem is, because I'm so short, my legs were swinging.
LAUGHTER
I love that you felt you needed to explain that to ME!
We used to take the train to visit my aunt in California
and it took five days to get there,
and so it's quite boring for children, so what we used to do
was go to the toilet on the train, and then flush,
and then run to the back of the train.
And there was a little sort of platform, and you could watch all
the toilet paper rushing out across the desert.
The most marvellous entertainment for children. It was very good.
When did you grow up?!
It was a black and white time.
I was born in 1958.
That is astonishing.
- What, that I'm still working? - Five days! No...
Josh, just a wee thing for you, sweetie pie. See when a woman
talks about her past, don't go, "When did you grow up?!"
I was...
Like it's the 18th century.
In the '60s, yes.
No, that's what I presumed.
- I presumed the '70s or '80s, actually. - Thank you.
And this week's winner is Josh!
APPLAUSE
OK, what's the worst thing that can happen when you open something?
Is it something that begins with O?
Well, it's lots of opening nights that have not
- gone as well as possible. - Oh. - So the O-lympics, we could start with.
- There will be no doves at the Tokyo 2020... - Oh, no!
..which is because they were banned after the 1988 Seoul Olympics,
when instead of flying out, as this photograph suggests...
GASPS
..into the sky, they decided to perch on the huge saucer
in the centre of the stadium with the Olympic Flame,
and several birds were incinerated.
- You say incinerated, do you mean roasted? - I do, yes.
- Mm! Just a little bit more! - Absolutely delicious.
Most delicious opening ceremony I've ever been at!
- Opening night of BBC Two was a disaster. - Oh, that's...
There was a power outage
and the whole of Television Centre went dark that night.
But the best bit of the story is, to publicise the launch,
they had been using a graphic of a kangaroo.
So the kangaroo represented BBC One and then, in the pouch,
the little joey is BBC Two.
So they thought, "For opening night, let's get some real kangaroos..."
- Oh, no. - "..in the studio".
And they had just got them into the lift
and pressed the button at the moment when the power went...
Oh, my word!
..and, apparently, the kangaroos went berserk!
I'd like to think that there was just some guy in the lift,
going, "Oh, my God!"
Also, some opening nights of plays have been disastrous.
So Balzac wrote a play called Les Ressources De Quinola,
and it opened to a completely empty house on March 19th, 1842.
So he had hoped to create a buzz about the play,
and he told everybody that the tickets were sold out,
it was impossible to get a ticket.
- Oh, no! - So nobody bothered. - Oh, no!
- Yeah. Nobody came. - Did they do the play?
Well, the Equity rule is you don't have to do the play
if there are fewer members in the audience than there are in the play,
- so whether it was... - That's true.
Once, I was doing a gig at Willesden Library Centre...
LAUGHTER
Bill Bailey was there, in The Rubber Bishops.
So there was the two of them, I think Bob Mills, me,
someone else, and then there were seven people in the audience.
So we're thinking, "Oh, shit, there's more of them than there are of us."
And then this couple came over to us and said,
"Would it help if we left?"
LAUGHTER
And we said, "As a matter of fact, technically, it would."
So they left, and we didn't have to do the gig!
At the Fringe you, contractually, if one punter turns up,
you have to do your 55-minute show directly to them.
And what could be a light-hearted show could become
quite an aggressive diatribe.
Just saying, "So this happened to me,
"and then this happened to me."
And they don't want to leave,
because you're clearly distressed at this point.
I had a friend who, at one point,
was doing exactly that to one person,
and she turned round at one point to pick up a prop and turned round
and she just saw him sprinting.
I remember going to see Arthur Smith doing a show in Edinburgh
and it was 50p to get in, and he'd go round...
As the audience were coming in, he was offering everyone a quid to go.
So, when Disneyland opened, the very first Disneyland in California,
July 17th, 1955, it's known as Black Sunday because so much went wrong.
The first thing was there were 15,000 gate-crashers.
Apparently, it was incredibly easy to counterfeit the tickets,
plus somebody got a ladder to the parking lot
and people could pay 5 to climb over the hedge.
The asphalt had been poured at 6.00 that morning,
so all the guests' shoes got stuck in it.
There was a circus parade in which a tiger and a panther broke loose
- and had a fight. - I mean, if they're going to break loose,
- at least they've cancelled each other out. - Yes.
Yeah, lucky there were two of them out -
not the tiger looking for a fight.
"Release the panther! The tiger's already out!"
There was a plumbers' strike and so they had to choose
between drinking fountains and flushing toilets.
- Definitely flushing toilets. - Yeah!
If I go to someone's house, "Have you got a toilet?"
"No, but I've got a drinking fountain."
There's a drinking fountain,
but Susan Calman's sitting on it at the moment.
The premiere of Pinocchio in 1940 is one of my favourite stories.
So Disney had had a huge success
with the opening of Snow White, and so they thought they would hire
11 people of restricted growth, and they put them on the roof of the
theatre in Pinocchio costumes, they were to just dance around, entertain.
It was a fantastically hot day, so it was lunchtime,
so they hoisted up a load of beer to try and calm them down a bit.
And by three o'clock, apparently, they were belching loudly
and playing cards in the nude on the roof.
They refused to either dress or come down,
and police were sent up on ladders
and, in the end, the 11 gentlemen were carted away in pillow cases.
APPLAUSE
Now, I'm open to a bit of artistic paper folding.
Of course, the art of making folded paper models
without cutting the paper comes from...
Japan.
KLAXON
- No. - I forgot about that bit! - Yes!
It does not come from Japan.
"Ori" means folding and "kami" means paper,
so the word "origami" comes from Japan, that is correct.
But Japanese paper folding was done with white paper,
which was both folded and cut.
The modern version, in which we only fold and we don't cut it,
often done with the coloured paper on one side
and the white paper on the other side.
It's actually imported from German kindergartens into Japan,
after Japan opened its borders in 1860.
So the answer is that origami as we now understand it is German.
- Is anybody good at origami? - I did that thing... - Oh, yeah, that one.
The only thing I've done is that thing where it goes,
"Pick a number, Josh".
- Oh... - Three. - SUSAN MUMBLES
- "Pick a colour." - Red.
SUSAN MUMBLES
"He fancies you!" That's all I've done.
How is it so accurate?!
- I've got some very good ones for you. So, Josh, you can have... - Oh!
- A frog. - A little jumping frog.
And, Rich, you have a jack rabbit. There's a jack rabbit for you.
- And, Susan, you've got an elephant. - Oh!
- And, Alan, what's this? - That's a blue whale.
KLAXON
APPLAUSE
- No, THIS is a blue whale. - Oh, of course.
All these years, still don't recognise it.
There you are, there's your blue whale.
These are rather good, these are origami sunglasses. There you are.
- There's some origami sunglasses. - Thank you. - Thank you very much.
I'm really not sure what the point of them is because you...
You actually can't see anything at all.
We've got some origami boomerangs. Do you want to give these a go?
- Oh, yes, please. - Yeah. - OK, there's some origami boomerangs.
There we go, have a go. OK, give it a go.
- Do you want me to throw this? - Yeah. - Can I stand up for this?
- Will it make a difference? - Yes.
APPLAUSE
I never get to say that to somebody else! OK, go.
- Oh! Oh. - Oh, not bad, not bad, yes, very good.
Right, Josh is off and running.
Oh, that was very good.
Rich, are you going to give it a go?
I like yours.
CHEERING
A friend of mine, Chris Buddle, is brilliant at origami and he made...
This is a little badge.
It is a 1 bill, which he has made into a badge for me.
Isn't it stunning?
- And that is without any cutting, it's all folded and beautiful. - Wow!
Josh, your frog is rather marvellous.
If you press the back of it, it will... Yes.
- Well, be less violent with it. - Oh, sorry. - It will jump.
Be gentle, like you're touching a woman.
Let me show you. Let me show you, darling.
APPLAUSE
I've never wanted someone to fail so much at anything!
Right, so let's put our origami away, please.
- Still playing. - My rabbit, look out for the car!
ASTONISHED LAUGHTER
Right. I've got oysters, ox horns, wood,
and a walrus penis.
What are my plans?
That's like those old ads in Loot. "I've got...
"..oysters...ox horns, wood,
"and a walrus penis.
"No time-wasters, please.
"It's a set, I can't break it up."
Sometimes I watch Nigella Lawson and she always goes,
"I went to my pantry to make some supper
"and I had what everyone has, which is some oysters, some oxtails,
"some wood, and a walrus penis.
"I'm going to make myself a frittata."
It's like she's in the room!
The answer is that all of those materials
can be used to make windows.
Can you imagine making windows out of penises?
Well, let's start with the oyster.
The windowpane oyster is found in the Philippines
and the shells... Look at those beautiful windows,
the stuff in-between the wood there is windowpane oyster.
The shell lets 80% of the incident light through
and it's been used for thousands of years.
It's also incredibly strong. Despite being 99% calcite,
which is a really brittle mineral, it can withstand multiple blows
because of the way the material is structured. And it may have
some uses for the military. They may even have a look at
windowpane oysters for visors you can see through
but are also bulletproof. You wouldn't think that from an oyster.
- Isn't it beautiful? - It's a pity
they put those two big pillars in front of it.
Wood, you can have see-through wood. It's being developed, much stronger,
and more insulating than glass, so we're not really
interested in the leaves, but to show how much you can see through.
What you do is you boil the wood in water, sodium hydroxide
and other chemicals, to remove the lignin,
so that's the bit that gives wood its colour.
And then epoxy resin is poured over it to make it stronger.
- But look how much you can see through. - Wow.
And cow horn used for windows in medieval times.
So all of that stuff between is cow horn, and it becomes translucent
if you soak it in water for three months,
and then it becomes malleable.
Now, the walrus penis, and who hasn't wanted to think,
- "What am I going to do with...?" - "Made a sofa out of the walrus..."
Yes, historically used in the construction of Arctic dwellings.
It's stretched over window openings a bit... I don't know how to say this.
A bit like clingfilm, really.
- It stretches out? - Well, it depends how excited the walrus is, really.
Yes, it's a stretchy thing,
and you can stretch it out and use it a bit like clingfilm.
- So, it'd be the skin of the penis and not the...the...the... - Penis.
- I don't know... - Doesn't feel good in your mouth, does it?
APPLAUSE
So, the walrus has to stand outside your window
for the rest of its life, with its cock stretched out.
A really annoyed walrus.
- "How did I get this gig?" - "I'm not getting paid enough."
There's a really wonderful, wonderful thing called Liter of Light,
and it provides environmentally friendly and cheap lighting through the roofs of small houses.
What you do is, you cut a small hole in the roof,
you put a large plastic bottle full of water in it,
so half the bottle is inside and half the bottle is outside.
And the bottle acts like a prism.
And in the daytime you get up to 40 to 60 watts of sunlight
refracted into the house.
- Isn't that...? A fantastic project, I think. - Clever.
But you have to...you have to hold it up like that the whole...
Yes, the whole time, yeah.
With a walrus with his penis out.
Every now and then one of them drops through and kills a child,
but, apart from that, they're awesome.
Largest window in the world, anybody?
- Largest window in the world... - What is one you've seen?
- I'll narrow it down - Paris. - Oh, in the Pompidou.
No, it's in Notre Dame, it is the rose window in Notre Dame.
- Oh, is it? - It's absolutely the largest window in the world.
Did you see they've just announced that the world's
largest passenger aircraft windows are going to be, in 2018,
it's going to be four and a half feet by a foot and a half.
- Oh, I wouldn't like that. - Would you not? - No, no.
No. Too... I mean, you could fit out of that.
I don't think they open.
That's not a standard measurement of window.
"Can we have the window one and a half Calmans, please?"
Is it big enough to shove Susan out at 30,000 feet?
- Is that what this is? - I never said I'd shove you out!
It sounded like he wanted to throw me out of the plane, I'll be honest with you.
I'll be honest, I never get in a London taxi without thinking about you, Susan, because?
I can stand up completely straight in the back of a black cab.
Wow!
APPLAUSE
Now for a question on job openings.
What will be the first occupation done exclusively by robots?
Oh, I hope it's not people on panel shows, otherwise...
LAUGHTER
- I would think something like surgery. - OK. Which kind of surgery?
Keyhole heart surgery, maybe, something like that,
or brain surgery, where they can be incredibly precise.
- So, I need you to go the other end. - It would be...anal surgery.
Wiping arses.
You have to try and imagine that you are training to be a proctologist
and you need to, at some point, have a look inside a rectum,
that's going to be your basic training.
Until recently, the UK has had only one registered
rectal teaching assistant, who travels around the country,
visiting medical schools and offering up his rectum to students.
- Oh, no, Sandi. - Oh, yes. - But somebody says, "I'll do it!"
It's a job. "Leave that with me."
So, there are some problems with this.
You'd definitely make up what you did for a living, wouldn't you?
There are a few problems with this. First of all, the strain of training
an entire country of doctors with one rectum, I think...is pressing.
And then the problem with using a real person is that the professor,
who is teaching you, can't really tell
if you're doing it properly because they can't see what you're doing.
Sorry, can I just...?
- Sorry. For the profession of proctologist... - Yes.
- ..everyone in the country... - Yeah. - ..is using the same person?
- You can see the problem with this, can't you? - So...
..you apply for it, or does it...?
Well, they only got one applicant.
It's been a problem, so Imperial College
have come up with a robotic rectum,
so this guy can go home and sit down.
There are tiny robotic arms that apply pressure
to a silicon rectal passage. SUSAN SQUIRMS
And then the hardware can be changed to different levels of difficulty.
You can change the size and shape of the rectum...
..you can change the prostate.
Eventually, you get to a boss fight at the end.
And each one of these arseholes costs £25,000.
So, once the current rectal teaching assistant retires, we will go from
a workforce of one to a workforce of none, and there will be just robots.
My arse definitely needs a good looking at.
CONSTERNATED LAUGHTER
I've been wondering what to give as a prize this evening.
The UK's a rectal trailblazer in more ways than one.
People who have rectums that no longer function
- can be fitted with a bionic rectum. - Oh, yeah!
They can fire out their shit over 40 feet!
Or they just pull their pants down and launch themselves up.
You know, like Steve Austin, they can get onto the roofs of buildings.
MAKES LOUD FARTING NOISE
So was the Six Million Dollar Man technically a robot?
- Well, depends how much percentage... - He was a cyborg. - Cyborg, yeah.
- What's the difference? - Depends on how much of you is a robot
and how much of you is still a human being.
- RICH: - So, what about Robbie Williams?
- What about him? - Cyborg or robot?
LAUGHTER
That's a game we could play for a very long time.
I'm going to carry on with my bionic rectum, if it kills me.
I hope someone's just tuned in at that point.
Anyway, you take a muscle from the inside of the leg
and you wrap it around the anus,
and then you hook it up to the device with electrodes that makes
the muscle contract or relax with an electric signals.
So, basically, it can be activated by remote control.
The only thing I think is, if you have a bionic rectum,
keep hold of the controls. Don't let your...
Don't let the children...
Imagine the panic when you've lost that remote down the sofa.
Anyway, we salute the passage of the UK's only rectal teaching
assistant and welcome our new robot bottom overlords.
Now, it's time to open the floodgates to General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers. When's the best time to rob a bank?
Yes, Susan?
- Thursday morning. - Why?
It's when I'm most free and...
I think I can fit it in around ten
and then I've got coffee with Sandi Toksvig.
Ski season cos everybody would have a ski mask on.
- There would be a lot more suspects. - Yes. - Alan, do you want
- to give it a go? - Well, it's either when it's open
or when it's closed...
KLAXON
Bless you. Here's the thing,
you cannot rob a bank when nobody's there.
- Why is that? - No-one can open anything.
No, a robbery's when you steal something by threatening somebody.
So, if you steal from somewhere and nobody sees you, you know this,
- you're a lawyer, it's a burglary. - Yeah.
So, the Hatton Garden heist was actually a burglary, not a robbery.
I always find, like, a Friday about four o'clock, I think
- the best time to do anything... - Is Friday at four?
- ..is Friday about four o'clock. - How are you going to get
into the safe? You can't even get into a train toilet.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
She could get in the safe, but then it would shut her in again.
Did you ever study...? I did law, we have it common that we did law.
- Did you do Harman's Case? - No, no.
It was a case in 1620 that rather establishes this principle.
There was a man called Harman and he stole a purse from a man called Halfpenny, or Ha'penny.
And he was indicted for robbery, so robbery is a felony, and the
conviction would have meant that he couldn't claim Benefit of Clergy.
"But the facts were Harman came by him
"and slipped his hand into his pocket and took out his purse.
"Halfpenny not suspecting the taking of his purse until turning
"his eye, he saw it in Harman's hand and then he demanded it.
"Harman answered him, 'Villain, if thou speakest of thy purse,
" 'I will pluck thy house over thine ears and drive thee out
" 'of the country as I did John Somers,' then went away with his purse."
The physical threat only came after the theft.
That means he had done it by stealth, that means it wasn't robbery,
it meant he could claim Benefit of Clergy.
So, the only time you can rob a bank is when there's somebody there.
What colour is the pigment in this person's eyes?
BEETHOVEN'S FIFTH SYMPHONY
- Yes, Josh? - Mauve.
Mauve is a very good colour that we hadn't thought of, so...
APPLAUSE
I'm going to give you a point for your colour knowledge
but not because it's correct.
- OK. - Obviously, it's a bluey-green colour, isn't it?
KLAXON
So, everybody has melanin in the iris of their eye
and all melanin is dark brown in colour.
The thing is that people with blue eyes have less melanin
and people with brown eyes have more.
This is called the Tyndall effect. So, melanin absorbs light -
if you have less of it, so you have blue eyes, that means that the
light is not absorbed and, instead, some of the light is reflected back.
So, people with blue eyes are reflecting back more light.
So, people with dark brown eyes, are they better, then?
You just checked my eyes before you said that!
You looked at me and thought, "I'm going to win this one!"
So you could have some melanin taken out?
Change your eye colour - that'll be the latest thing being offered.
So, it wouldn't be about taking melanin out.
The easiest way to do it is a corneal tattoo. So what they do is...
GASPS I know, they inject ink into your cornea.
No!
But this has been happening...
The first recorded incidence that we know of corneal tattooing
is the 2nd century. The ancient Greek physician, Galen, used ink
made from pomegranates to change eyes that were disfigured by disease.
I'm going to get my eyes tattooed with "love" and "hate".
So, even if your eyes look blue, they are in fact brown.
To finish off, let's go right back to the origin of man.
What is happening in this diagram?
If you reverse that, it's the story of Alabama.
- Very good. What do we think it is? - Well, it's not right, is it?
- Why is it not right? - We didn't evolve from monkeys in that way.
There are various branches of the tree of evolution, aren't there?
Yeah, the diagram's originally called The Road To Homo Sapiens.
It was done by an illustrator called Rudolph Zallinger
and it was to illustrate a book called Early Man.
Remember those Time-Life Books that were incredibly popular?
It's most famously known nowadays as the March Of Progress,
but all of these things are incredibly misleading
because the road from early primates
to humans cannot be shown in such a neat diagram.
So, the first four figures there are in fact offshoots
to The Road To Homo Sapiens. They aren't ancestors of us at all.
The original drawing had 15 figures in it and there they are.
Slightly better. Again, it's got some blind alleys in it -
species that died out or didn't evolve into modern humans at all.
And the author said it was not supposed to imply
- that one led to the other... - But it clearly does.
What you need in the middle
are the four Beatles crossing the zebra crossing.
What is, in terms of human evolution,
what is the biggest problem with this particular picture?
Is it the guy second from the left? He's the best one.
He's spoiling for a fight. Look at him!
So, this is a picture of the whole of human evolution.
- There's no women. - There's no bloody women in it!
There we are, you're absolutely right.
APPLAUSE
It's like watching an episode of Mock The Week.
Which brings us to the open and shut case of the scores.
And, in fourth place, well, it's magnificent,
with -25, it's Alan!
APPLAUSE
In third place, with -8 points, it's Josh!
APPLAUSE
I'll take -8.
In second place, with 3 points, it's Rich!
APPLAUSE
And, tonight's winner, with a magnificent 9 points, it's Susan!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So, thank you to Susan, Josh, Rich and Alan,
and I leave you with advice that Professor Walter Kotschnig
once gave his students at Holyoke College - "Keep an open mind,
"but not so open that your brains fall out." Thank you and good night.