Hello!
Welcome to QI, where tonight, we've packed up our provisions
and plonked down for the perfect picnic.
Let's meet our picnickers.
Making the sandwiches, it's Richard Osman.
Supplying the Thermos, it's Rachel Parris.
Carrying the hamper, it's Romesh Ranganathan.
And reading the newspaper in the car, it's Alan Davies.
And their buzzers are quite literally buzzing.
Richard goes...
..Rachel goes...
..Romesh goes...
..and Alan goes...
All right...
You've been in my lavatory again, haven't you?
If you just did that for 29 minutes, this would get a BAFTA.
OK, what would you keep in this basket?
You get those if you go fruit picking, baskets like that.
Yes, you do, but not this particular basket.
I'm going to... It looks a bit like a building to me.
It is a building, that's exactly right.
What you'd keep in it is a basket-making company.
Wow! No way.
It is a seven-storey picnic basket.
It was built as the headquarters for a basket-making company
called Longaberger Company.
That guy's enormous! He's making it there...
It's a giant!
It cost 32 million to build. It's in a place called Newark, Ohio.
Worth it, worth it.
It was the brainchild of Mr Dave Longaberger,
and at one point, the architects tried to talk him out of it,
they said it was a very bad idea, and he said...
.."If they can put a man on the moon,
"they can certainly build a building that's shaped like a basket".
You say brainchild... Yeah.
Hmm. Yeah.
Unfortunately, Mr Longaberger is no longer with us
and the Longaberger Company has downsized and relocated.
It's rather sad, isn't it?
Was he buried in a coffin made in a massive coffin-shaped factory?
Yeah.
What do you think gets made in this building?
So it's the middle bit that we're really interested in,
the very long bit, what do you think it was?
Oh, now, is that the rope-making place at Chatham?
It is absolutely the rope-making place in Chatham.
Rope has been made there since 1618,
and it's where all the strands are woven together to make the rope.
I know it because I've been in it. Have you? Why were you in it?
We were doing a Horizon documentary
about how long is a piece of string...
Oh! ..and, er...
Well, well, well, how...
That's the sort of thing Horizon ought to be doing.
They've got a building about a quarter of a mile long,
the ropes go almost as far as you can see properly.
They make very, very long ropes indeed.
They do, and it's really, really tough work.
You start the rope-making process by combing the raw hemp fibre
across boards with long iron pins - they're called hatchels -
and it straightens the fibres, and then they use whale oil
to lubricate the fibres, which is known as train oil.
Did you say whale oil?
Whale oil, yes.
A whale is part oil.
I have a recipe. Do you want more?
Is there a vegan version?
It would be nice if you could tap into the whale and get some oil,
without having to drag it out and slice it up.
Yeah, what, like a tap? Yeah.
What are those things you stick in trees,
you know, that you wind in and then the sap comes out?
To get the sap out. So you could do that with a whale.
It wouldn't be pleasant. No.
If you said to the whale, "Look, you've got two options here."
Yeah. Yeah.
"Either we put a tap on you..."
Yeah?
"..or we slice you into pieces. What's it going to be?"
You have to then go, you have to go five miles away
to hear the answer.
"I think he said tap. Let's do it."
Do you know when they have a barrel
and they put a tap in the side of the barrel? Yes.
Er, that's called a cock.
And that's why your cock's called a cock,
because it looks like you've got a tap.
I think it depends very much on the weather.
Right.
I have a picnic here for you.
Ooh!
Now, I've got some packed lunches for you here.
Rachel, that's for you, darling. Oh, thank you!
You're going to have a Cornish pasty. Yes!
Richard, you've got ham sandwiches.
Romesh, you've got a toast sandwich, that's for you.
I'll be honest, Alan, yours looks...
..a little tiny bit mouldy.
So, what quite interesting thing can you tell me about your snacks?
Richard, ham sandwiches.
In nature... Yes?
..they're the only thing that grows in triangles.
Well, here's the extraordinary thing -
so 1851, we know from a census
that 436,800 sandwiches were sold on the streets of London,
and they were all ham, every single one.
They didn't sell any other sandwich? They just sold ham sandwiches.
Do you know who invented the pre-packaged sandwich?
And when...? Er...
Er, no. I don't know why I started speaking there. I've got no idea.
Would it be a Joe Lyons tea shop?
No, it's much more recent than you might imagine, it's M&S...
- M&S?! - M&S?! - 1980.
Wow. What?
Apparently, an assistant wrapped up some leftover sandwiches
from the cafe and put them out for sale and then it took off.
So, in 1980, somebody had some leftover sandwiches
and put them on the shelf to sell?
Well, they were left over from the cafe -
they wrapped them up and put them out to sell.
This is like freestyling it, just going for it and see what happens?
Yeah, just go for it, sell them.
So the most popular ones, egg mayonnaise, BLT
and chicken salad, those are the ones that make all the money.
All morally corrupt, those sandwiches, just so you know.
Am I right, my vegan brothers and sisters, yeah?
Romesh, let's have a look at your toast sandwich.
What have you got in it? Er...
No need to rip it like that, darling.
If you'd just opened the bag, we could have reused it.
What is wrong with you? It's got my name on it.
It's very unlikely you're going to have another Romesh on this.
Or even me, based on how this is going.
Tell us what's in your sandwich.
So my sandwich has toast in it.
Yes, it is literally a toast sandwich.
Yes. And I can give you a fact about this. Go on, then.
One day, Romesh Ranganathan was given this on QI
and was very insulted.
OK, so this is an historic sandwich. So Mrs Beeton, the great Mrs Beeton,
her Book Of Household Management in 1861,
she had a recipe for a toast sandwich.
It was a piece of toast, seasoned with salt and pepper,
and served between two slices of bread.
Wow. In many ways, she didn't need to write that down, did she?
No. I mean, no.
She says, "This sandwich will be very tempting"
"to the appetite of an invalid."
I've got to tell you, it's delicious. Is it good?
Mm. Toast sandwich.
That's a good idea, like, it's all about texture, isn't it?
And I bet that's got a lovely texture to it.
Big up Mrs Beeton. Yep. She's absolutely smashed it.
Rachel, Cornish pasty, what do we know about the Cornish pasty?
Well, this bit is where you hold it.
Yes. That's called the...
..handle. Yes.
Famously.
Um, or in other parts of the south, they call it the edge.
And why was it created?
For miners.
Absolutely right. It was a portable lunch, basically,
to take down the mines, you're absolutely right.
Is it true that in those pasties...
Yeah...they put the pudding in the pasty as well?
Yeah, so it was perfectly possible to have the savoury bit one end
and the sweet bit the other end, so you can see one there
which has got a bit of savoury and...
So is that a pastry barrier? A little pastry barrier, yeah.
Cos if they didn't have enough pastry,
slam a bit of toast in there, that'd do the same thing.
It's not the only one that does that, actually, Romesh.
A Bedfordshire clanger looks more like a long sausage roll
and again, it's two-thirds savoury and one third sweet.
They did that on the Bake Off.
Did they? I didn't see.
Can I just say, we should whisper this if anybody in Cornwall
is listening, but the oldest Cornish pasty recipe...
..comes from Devon.
Oh!
Did you hear that, Cornwall?
You didn't even come up with a pasty, losers!
The Devon one is from 1510, the Cornish oldest one is from 1746.
Are you enjoying that toast sandwich?!
It's just, you think it's going to be boring
but the middle bread just tastes
so different from the other two pieces!
You've really gone full circle on it.
Honestly, I think it might be the best thing I've ever eaten.
Well, you're a vegan, so I'm not surprised.
Boo!
I just remembered I know a thing.
Oh, wow! About Cornish pasties. OK.
That picture reminded me. Yes?
Those ones where it's all...
The crimping. Crimping, I was going to say!
I have all the baking terms that you need.
Yes. It was just going to be that it's called crimping.
Oh.
Right, Alan's eaten his sandwich,
I said it was mouldy but this is actually a rather brilliant thing,
this is a mouldy anti-theft sandwich bag!
So the sandwich is not mouldy at all, the idea is to stop people
nicking it out of the fridge!
Didn't work with Alan. No, clearly not.
It was an invention by a New York engineer and designer
called Sherwood Forlee, and he's also come up with...
I think this is clever, Richard. You'll like this.
It's a jar which has a lid on the top and the bottom,
so that you can get all the bits out of the bottom of the jar.
Don't you think that's clever? That is a good idea,
other than you'd open both bits at once.
That would be my worry. Great surprise, though.
Like a sort of awful glass Christmas cracker. I like it.
- Here's a tip, though. If you've got a jar... - Yeah? - ...of pesto sauce.
Oh, right. Quite hard to get all of it out. Yeah.
All that you do, you put a bit of olive oil in there,
and some balsamic, shake it up. Lovely dressing. Mm. Also...
Or a pressure washer, if you've ever used one of those. That's...
That is terrific. Do your patio, then get the Marmite out.
Or what you can do is just get the bottom of the jar
with the pesto in it and just smash the jar
and just sprinkle that into the pasta.
Sometimes having kids is stressful. Yeah.
Right, we are going to move on to drinks.
What does water taste like? Is my question. Oh, man.
Like plastic straws these days. Am I right, Richard...?
There you are, my darling. Can you pass one to Richard?
So here is the thing.
There was a team from Caltech University in California,
and they gave water to mice, and they studied their tongues,
and they discovered that when you drink water,
it stimulated their sour taste sensors.
So they used something called optogenetics,
and they actually triggered those same cells
using blue light instead of water,
and even though the mice weren't getting any water,
they carried on "drinking" the light
because it stimulated those same cells as when they get actual water.
The mice after: "Mate, I tell you what, I am parched."
"I've been drinking that light all day"
"but it's doing absolutely nothing for me."
So apparently it tastes sort of sour.
Here is an extraordinary thing.
There is a water sommelier in a bar in Los Angeles
called Ray's & Stark Bar. They have a 45-page water menu.
Oh! Oh...
It features water from ten different countries.
There's a range of prices.
The queue of mice outside is unbelievable.
There's a water called Berg.
It's harvested from glaciers in western Greenland.
It's 20 a bottle.
Evian, 8 a bottle.
So the reason that some tap waters taste different -
it's what they call the TDS, or total dissolved solids,
that are in the water. Oh, dear. Ugh! Yeah.
Well, it's actually calcium and magnesium and potassium.
People say that about Guinness,
cos it has to be brewed near to where it's sold.
But, funnily enough, after two, they all taste much the same. Yeah.
That's absolutely true.
There is an annual International Water Tasting Competition
in West Virginia.
There was a press release after the 2018 event, and it noted,
"The water was filled with water enthusiasts"
"coming from as far as Australia..."
"..and Oklahoma."
There are things to look for. So it should be clear.
There should be no smell at all,
it should feel very light in your mouth,
and the main thing is it should leave you thirsty for more.
You like it? It tastes like you'd die without it. Yeah.
Almost as if it was a vital life source.
It is sometimes, actually, the only thing that you want.
Right, let's put the cups away.
Do you want the rest of your toast sandwich now, Rom?
I'll eat it... Did you actually like it, Romesh?
I did, I feel nervous about saying,
cos I'm being persecuted as a vegan on this show,
but, um, it tasted all right.
I didn't know you were a vegan, you should mention it occasionally.
Ahem.
How long have you been a vegan?
I've been a vegan for five years, Sandi.
OK. Was it to do with feeling sorry for animals, or what was it?
No, I just sort of wanted to feel better than people, you know?
Oh, so, a smugness thing. Yeah, I just sort of...
Also, two cows came round and kidnapped his children.
That's too difficult to talk about cos no-one believes it,
so he's got to go through this whole thing.
Is that because children should be seen and not HERD?
Where did the first-ever picnic take place?
The garden.
Outdoors. In the...
I thought I was fairly safe there.
The earliest picnics took place indoors,
it was a sort of potluck supper
in which each guest brought some food for the meal.
I've got to make an admission here,
just based on what we've said in the last 30 seconds,
I don't think I know what a picnic is.
If you're having a picnic inside, that is a meal.
Is it?
We now think of it as an entirely outdoor thing,
but it was absolutely an indoor pursuit
and, in fact, some of the earliest regular picnics
were held by a group of Londoners who formed The Picnic Society
and they used to meet at a wonderful place called the Pantheon
in Oxford Street in the early 1800s and it was always indoors.
What I quite like about this is, the Pantheon is no longer there
but on that site is an M&S, so you could in fact go
to the Pantheon and buy yourself a picnic.
And maybe a packaged sandwich from 1980.
From 1980, yes, would be ideal.
So the first time we go outdoors, Romesh, is the early 19th century,
so the British and indeed the American graveyards
became very crowded and for the very first time they began to be built
further out of town and that's the very first place where people
would go to enjoy some green space out of the cities,
and they would pack a picnic
and they would enjoy a day out in the cemeteries.
You're shaking your head.
Well, in Italy, they go to the opera, don't they?
The big outdoor opera - they sit up the back in the cheap seats,
and they take wine and salami and bread and they have a big picnic.
Yeah. The opera goes on for hours, they all know the songs.
That's a day out. Yeah.
THAT'S just morbid. Yeah.
It is a bit strange, isn't it? Yeah.
But, in fact, the first public parks
are actually based on these cemeteries.
In fact, the top three attractions in the United States
were Niagara Falls, George Washington's house
and Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts.
You know, today, you have all sorts of things in cemeteries.
There are people who have yoga classes,
people who go bird-watching, film festivals...
I went to one the other day that had a helter-skelter,
I thought, "Come on, this is a bit much." That's getting bit silly.
Crazy golf is a good option.
A lot of obstacles you need to get around.
Right, back to the great outdoors now, here's a question about pests.
What is the best way to keep those pesky wasps at bay?
A jar of something that they like, and then they go to it.
To kill them or to just trap them?
Well, if they get stuck in there, not much you can do.
What if the jar's got two... A top and a bottom?
What do you reckon, Richard?
A wasp gun? I don't know.
A wasp gun is a gun that fires wasps, isn't it?
You're just adding to the problem, aren't you,
just generating more and more of them.
It fires them a long way away, Romesh.
Makes them angry, though, and when they come back...
It's like that joke about the...
About the bloke who throws a snail off his front step.
And then three days later the doorbell goes,
and the snail goes, "What?!"
Do you know the one about the moth who goes to see the physiotherapist?
No. The physiotherapist goes, "Can I help you?"
She says, "Oh, I'm just very depressed."
"I don't know what's the matter with me."
"I just feel so low the whole time."
And he says, "Well, I'm a physiotherapist."
"You should see a shrink. Why have you come in here?"
And she says, "Oh, the light was on."
What are you...?! Are you clapping that but you don't clap the snail?
I felt I was more in the character, if I'm honest.
Yeah, I suppose you gave it a little bit more.
And also, how did the snail ring the doorbell?
Just... It falls apart.
You'd have your doorbell really low down in case the snail comes round.
So, the best way to keep a wasp away from a picnic,
they send out scouts, the wasps, to go and see where the best food is.
If you see the first couple, take them hostage. Oh, OK.
If you trap them, they cannot report back to the nest
about the food source, but if you kill them,
they can release a pheromone
and the other wasps go, "What? What's going on? What's going on?"
They get the pheromone smell... Yeah.
They go, "Can anyone else smell Dave?" Yeah. Yeah.
Top tip about wasps - check drink cans before you take a swig.
Don't say that. Always look at what you're putting in your mouth, Sandi.
Yeah. First, absolute...
That rule will never fail you.
But also thin straws, as well, cos they can't get up a thin straw.
Not plastic ones, though, please. No.
Just because I care about the environment, I use a teak straw.
Teak that's inlaid with ivory. It's got my initials on it.
And I carry... I don't re-use it, cos I've got hundreds,
but I could re-use it if I wanted to.
But you shouldn't kill wasps at all because...
That's really good, so just catch them and that's it.
Yeah, because they do some fantastic good work.
Oh, do they? I doubt that very much. I hate them.
OK, so here's the thing that you may not know,
so social wasps eat cockroaches and spiders.
There is a woman whose Twitter handle is @waspwoman,
Dr Seirian Sumner,
she estimates they eat 14 million kilogrammes of insects per year
in the UK.
Each?
Not each, no. Oh, right.
No, as a team effort. Oh, OK. Yeah.
There is another thing you can do. It's only anecdotal evidence,
but you can hang a paper bag up in a tree,
and that will ward off wasps if they mistake it for another wasp nest.
They stay away, cos they don't want to fight
with a bunch of other wasps that they don't know.
OK. Let's go to Italy.
So what do they do in Italy
to stop people eating their lunches as picnics?
So have a look here.
This is, of course, the gorgeous Basilica of Santa Croce.
You don't want people having a picnic on the steps, do you?
No, but what they want is for you to respect the place.
This particular building is the place where you will find
the burial places of Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, Rossini,
it's like all this greatness of Italy
and they don't want people just eating sandwiches on the steps,
so they had a really simple idea how to stop them doing this.
Was it that they get the spooky voices of all those dead people
on a loudspeaker?
"Stop eating sandwiches!"
"Hey, this is a-Michelangelo!"
"I see you've brought a sandwich!"
"Why you ruin-a the steps with your sandwiches?"
"You need to stop!"
"It's me, Rossini!"
"I'm-a going to be crazy angry"
"when you're eating a sandwich on the step-as!"
Sorry, none of these are spooky enough voices!
No. Too jolly!
Don't you want to see a film where Romesh plays Michelangelo?
"I'm-a going to do a ceiling-a picture!"
"This one is-a God. This one? That's-a Jesus, that one!"
"It's good, eh?"
They did a really simple thing, they hosed down the steps.
While you're having a picnic?
To stop people, they simply washed the steps.
With water? With water.
And it stopped people sitting down because you...
Cos they're wet. Cos they're wet.
And they're very concerned about their buildings,
has anybody been to the Trevi Fountain in Rome? Mm-hm.
They have a whole squad of volunteer retired police officers
guarding it, cos apparently people like to swim in it.
So you can be fined for sitting on the fountains,
for washing your feet in them,
letting your pets play, water fights...
Thus far, I'm still hearing you can have a wee, no problem.
Yeah.
I went to Florence and I saw... By some miracle there wasn't a queue.
..Michelangelo's statue of David...
"It's a great-a statue!"
"You go all the way behind, see everything!"
"It's got massive hands, a tiny winky. That's how we do it."
"I'll tell you who it is, it's Rossini, don't tell anyone!"
But what I was going to say was...
No, no, I think they've got more to do!
There's a replica of it outside. Right.
And, honestly, you can't tell the difference. No.
So don't bother queueing up and going in.
I agree. It does look exactly the same.
But the thing about the Italian accent,
it lends itself to being funny.
I was in Pisa, and I wanted to get the train to Florence.
And I said, "I wonder if you can tell me"
"when the next train to Florence is."
And the guy said, "The next-a train to Florence is at-a 12 o'clock."
And I said, "Yeah, but it's 12:10 now."
He said, "Well, you missed it."
OK. Let's stay with pests.
Richard, my pointless friend. Can you name a pointless pest?
I can name one. I won't name him,
because he's a very esteemed colleague of mine.
But in terms of... In terms of the drinking, he is, er...
He's a pest. Um...
Can I...? Can I appeal against that klaxon?
Cos, you know, he really is...
I don't want to have a one-on-one argument
with whoever's pressing that button, but...
I'm actually working it with my foot.
Anyway, this pest is one that pretty much doesn't exist any more.
This is why it's entirely pointless. Dodo?
It is the false spider mite,
but it is most specifically the male spider mite.
So this is a species of mite.
It once reproduced... As one might expect, it reproduced sexually.
But the females caught an infection
and, since they caught the infection,
they don't need males any more.
It's a type of bacteria that infects the mite's egg
and if the mite growing in the egg was male,
the bacteria changes it to female.
The bacteria have to live in female eggs,
it's the only place they can survive.
There isn't room for them to fit inside the smaller male sperm,
so they have eradicated males in order to ensure their own survival.
And you're saying this is what Yakult is based on?
So the mites reproduce by parthenogenesis.
In other words, the egg can become an embryo
without having to be fertilised by sperm.
If you were to treat the eggs of the false spider mite
with antibiotics and cure it of the bacteria,
then you would hatch males.
But, left to their own devices, they only produce females. Wow.
I just imagine some feminist laboratory somewhere, where...
..they're trying to tease this up into a human form.
Well, it could never happen in a human form. Do you know why?
I don't know why. Because there's bits of the DNA in the male,
there's bits of the DNA in the female, and they set each other up.
It's called genetic imprinting,
and it would be impossible for us ever to...
I can see you've looked into it. Yeah.
So there's a false spider mite and there's a true spider mite.
And the true spider mite, the boys are real idiots, I have to say,
because they have discovered that the male
often chooses to court dead females rather than live ones.
We've all been there.
Last time I did it, I was having a picnic in a cemetery.
Instead of calling them true spider mites and false spider mites,
they should call them spider mites and spider mite-nots.
That's what I would call them.
Do you know what the difference is between the false and the true one?
Yes. Go on, then.
One's female and one's male, I thought we...
No, no, no, so they are totally separate.
Have you paid attention at all, Richard?
The one thing I remember is you're vegan. Everything else has gone.
The false one doesn't spin webs. That's the difference between
the false one and the true one. There you go.
So there are other animals that can reproduce by parthenogenesis
if there's a shortage of males.
So there are Komodo dragons,
hammerhead sharks and whiptail lizards.
How does a hammerhead shark get through a door?
I mean, does it have to go on its side?
It gets the snail to ring the bell.
Anyway, the whiptail lizard
has actually become an all-female species now,
on account of the ability to reproduce by cloning,
but they still have genetic diversity because they start off
with twice the amount of chromosomes as you would normally find
in a sexually reproducing individual.
It's exactly the same as the Sugababes.
But some male fish are being feminised
in a completely different way.
So they did a study at the University of Exeter in 2017,
and it reported that a fifth of male fish in the UK
are, sticky speaking, now intersex.
Did you say the fish are "intersex"... Yes, darling.
..or "into sex"? No.
Intersex. Intersex. Intersex.
So what's happened is they've developed feminine behaviour,
including they're less aggressive,
they're not so competitive, they are producing eggs,
they are producing, in most instances, fewer sperm.
Anybody know why that might be?
Is it cos we've started paying them 20% less and just it followed?
Is it to do with everyone being on the pill
and filling up the rivers with female hormones?
No, see, that's the myth that used to be believed,
that it was the contraceptive pill.
It's the run-off from livestock manure... Oh. ..going into rivers.
What a lovely sentence. Yeah. Yes.
"Try and make livestock manure sound worse!"
When you see pints of beer in pubs, they have all these odd names,
and no-one's ever done a Run-off Of Livestock Manure.
"A lovely pint of Run-Off, please."
OK.
Why did Shakespeare not suffer from hay fever?
Benadryl?
Is that his friend?
Troilus and Benadryl. Yeah. Because there wasn't any?
Because there was less pollen in the air back in the days of yore.
Well, you're probably heading in exactly the right direction.
Yes! Vagueness pays off!
Yes, very good!
So are you saying there was less pollen? I didn't know that.
Yeah. Amazing. I could go on, but I won't.
Yeah, yeah.
So, basically, today one in four people have hay fever.
It appears not to have existed until the 1800s.
So anybody, we just picked Shakespeare at random,
but anybody who died before then can't have had it,
and we don't really know why.
So the very first documented case, 1819, there was a doctor called
John Bostock and he suffered with it and he decided to investigate,
and he spent nine years looking for people with the condition
and he only found 28, so it could be a change
in the environment, the type of crops grown,
intensity of farming, it doesn't seem to have existed at all.
Is it possible that it did exist but they just didn't call it hay fever?
It's like, "Geoffrey sneezes a lot, doesn't he?"
Next year, you go, "I tell you what",
"I've got a bit of the old Geoffrey flu." Yeah!
Bostock called the condition summer catarrh
and he tried to treat himself -
I have to say these are not things I recommend -
bleeding, cold baths, vomiting, opium, meh...
You're open to it! Yeah, whatever.
No success with it at all
and then there was a scientist called Charles Blackley,
1859, also had hay fever and he finally found the cause,
he identified the culprit as grass. He had a load of hay on his chin.
But what they didn't understand was why would city dwellers get it
if it's to do with grass pollen, which is what Blackley suggested?
Why would sailors at sea get it?
So he flew kites with sticky paper on them at different altitudes
and he was able to analyse the dispersal of pollen
at various altitudes
and established that it carried hundreds of miles out to sea.
In fact, there is more pollen at an altitude of 1,000-2,000 feet
than there is at ground level.
But it's actually caused by allergic rhinitis.
Does anybody have it here?
I do. Do you know exactly what it is and why you get it?
No, I don't. But I was... Well, then, you don't deserve it.
I was told that, apparently, you can stop it by eating honey from the
area, but I can't, because - I don't know if I mentioned - I'm vegan.
Have you tried one of these? Now, what you have to do is you stick
both of those up your nose.
It's like Total Recall. Yeah. That's a bit of a niche reference.
So, has this been...? It's clean. We haven't used it in any way at all.
You stick it up your nose? Stick it up your nose like that.
Argh! The blinding light from your ear!
Finally I'm going to be able to work in panto. This is excellent.
And then what do you do? Apparently, if you sit with it for ten minutes,
it is supposed to calm all the inflammation down.
I know several people who've used them, and they work very well.
Some people don't like to take the antihistamines.
I can't imagine preferring this to taking the antihistamines.
Do you want to keep that one? Because nobody else wants it now.
This is a really long-term prank by Sandi. Yeah.
I would love it if this is completely made up.
No, no! You could have it built into your glasses, actually.
You look like the weirdest ever thing on a "Guess Who? board."
In the late 19th century, they thought it was only those
with a delicate condition who suffered it.
So wealthier people, upper classes tended to have it.
They were called hay feverites.
And in fact, there were specific holiday resorts.
People went to the lakes and to the mountains. I'd like to go there.
Doesn't that look like fun? Lovely!
Have they all got hay fever? Not any more!
I like the one who's just diving straight in, feet first.
I think she's rather... Oh, yeah! It looks like she's just emerged.
Well, she could just be coming out the other way, yes. Whoa!
Now, Paul McCartney and John Lennon first met at a picnic in Liverpool,
but why are the Beatles the reason you can now eat out in Australia?
Er, did they, like, go to a restaurant
and they wanted to go outside and then they said, "You can't do that,"
and they said, "We'll do what we want, we're bigger than Jesus,"
and then they went and ate outside and...
Er, no. Let's do Beatles in two different senses.
Different sort of beetles. Oh, Richard!
Ahh. Like you've played the game before!
Like beetles with an E. Whoa. Ahh.
This is just such a joke, man.
You've said the names of the Beatles,
you've put the photo up there. Yeah.
And I trusted you.
Yeah. Yeah.
What I actually said was that they met at a picnic... Yeah.
God knows what a picnic is any more, after this show.
So, Australian picnicking was saved
by the introduction of millions of dung beetles.
So let us imagine, the Australian cattle industry
takes off in the 1960s. What is the side-effect
of a fantastically successful cattle industry?
Load of manure. Poop. Loads of poop. Loads of cowpats.
And, of course, the run-off from it. Yes.
And the run-off from it.
And that's how they got Foster's.
So, the native dung beetle, they're used to a little bit
of a dry poo, like a kangaroo poo, for example.
They don't like the wet dung that is introduced
by the European cattle.
And there was a period of time when these cows were producing
200,000 pats...
..per minute.
I know.
The poor guy that's got to count those up just to get that figure.
I mean, Australia was in danger of disappearing entirely
underneath a load of shit.
And it wasn't vanishing
because the dung beetles were not eating it,
so there was the Australian dung beetle project
and they imported 1.73 million beetles, 43 different species,
and it was so successful, that is now the reason
why Australians can enjoy a picnic.
Look at the size of that!
Blimey. And they ate the whole thing?
And it does look nice and dry.
It's spelt wrong, though.
What are you saying it should be?
Yes, what would you say?
I wasn't going to say it cos the klaxon was going to go off. Ah!
No shit!
I was trying to lure you into my trap!
I felt that.
Anyway, we owe the Beatles to a picnic,
and Aussies owe picnics to the beetles.
Now it's time for the gathering storm that we call
General Ignorance. Fingers on buzzers, please.
Heading off to Italy for a moment,
where are you if you are dining alfresco?
Rachel.
Outside.
Outside!
No! I'm sure that's right!
Do you want to try again?
Inside! Yes!
Absolutely right. They don't call eating outside alfresco,
so they think of it as being in the cool, OK?
And for them, that means being in prison.
So it's like the English slang "in the cooler".
So eating alfresco is to eat in prison.
If the Italians eat outside, it's called fuori or al aperto,
so outside the door.
Now, what liquid can you take five times more of through security
at Genoa Airport?
Yes!
Pesto? Yes!
Like you were my own boy, I was so proud!
How did you know that?
Cos he's a vegan!
I didn't know you were vegan!
Yes, they have relaxed the ban, but only for pesto, the liquid ban.
Passengers can now carry 500ml of pesto in their hand luggage.
It has to be the proper stuff, not supermarket-bought,
and they have a special machine to scan it.
I say special, it's the same one that does breast milk.
You have to buy a 50p stamp,
and they give the money to something called the Flying Angels Foundation.
The Flying Asians Foundation? No, Fly...
That's actually how I found out about it.
The Flying ANGELS Foundation.
It gives free flights for children from developing countries
who need medical attention.
The change was because so much pesto was being confiscated,
they thought, "This is ridiculous, we have to stop this."
Now, they also had a problem at London City Airport.
What was it that was being confiscated in great quantities?
Coffee?
No, it's particularly British in the same way as pesto...
Marmite. It is Marmite, absolutely right,
They ran a Marmite amnesty in July, 2017,
and if you took through an oversized Marmite, you could swap it
and get a small 70g one. The trouble is
that half the security officers would let you through,
it's the other half who wouldn't.
The American Transportation Security Administration, the TSA,
they have an Instagram account which Rolling Stone magazine has
named the fourth best in the world!
And it's the stuff that they confiscate.
And you can look on Instagram.
So, it's, on average, nine firearms a day,
the majority of which are loaded,
there's been brass knuckles, live eels,
a live grenade, a medieval mace...
I don't think I'd confiscate the live grenade. Would you?
"You can have that."
There was a dagger hidden inside a replica of the Eiffel Tower
and a Chihuahua that the owner said had sneaked into their bag.
I can believe that of a Chihuahua. They are sneaky, aren't they?
OK, moving on.
If you're... Oh, this is so controversial.
If you're making a cuppa,
does the milk...
I know.
Oh, a gasp, an audible gasp!
Does it go in first or second?
Did I ask you?
OK. Not everybody agrees. First or second?
Second. First? Some people shouting first?
OK.
The trouble is that there is no correct answer, that is the point,
yet opinion is so unbelievably strongly divided.
But the British Standards Institution
has a 5,000-word report...
..on the correct way to make tea.
Which you are going to read out to us now.
I'm going to precis for you. OK.
It's like when they dramatised the Leveson Inquiry
or something like that. It is.
We're going to do an interpretive dance. OK.
Here is the definitive thing from them,
they say milk should go in first.
Oh, I know, I know!
I know, it's very upsetting for some people.
And they also say you should have 2g of tea per 100ml of water
and it should be brewed for six minutes
and served at a temperature between 60 and 85.
Milk first - a 2003 experiment at Loughborough University
found that adding milk after the water can heat it unevenly,
and that leads to the protein in the milk clumping.
But Yorkshire Tea says milk second,
particularly if you're brewing in a mug.
Then you should brew the tea first,
otherwise the milk will drag down the temperature of the water.
If the teabag's in the cup, you can't put milk in till it's brewed.
That is the thing. That'd be stupid.
Yeah, so the milk has to go in second. Yeah.
But in that debate, they're called Miffers - milk in first -
and Tiffers - tea in first.
George Orwell said, "By putting the tea in first and stirring as one"
"pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk, whereas one is"
"liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way."
He really did write down everything he thought. Everything.
He must have had a column in the Daily Express or something.
"What do we do today?"
"Can we do a side-bar filler? I've got a thing about teabags."
Nineteen Eighty-Four was, like, a cage over the head with just someone
washing tea. "Don't do it!"
Ah! Ooh!
Oh!
See, now, this always happens at a picnic.
But speaking of football, Alan...
Yes? Romesh... Yes?
Who is the most successful Arsenal manager of all time?
Is it me?
Do you want it to be you?
No, that's Bertie Mee,
he was one of your most famous managers, wasn't he?
Well, in terms of winning trophies, it's Arsene Wenger.
Do you follow football, Rachel?
Not at all, but I'm willing to participate in this conversation.
OK. Timothy... Say George Graham, say George Graham.
George Timothy...
Rachel, it's not George Graham!
Herbert Chapman.
Steffi Graf.
Weirdly, Rachel is heading closer to the correct answer than anybody.
What?! Oh, really?
Martina Navratilova. Er...
Serena Williams! It is women that we are...
Vic Akers.
It is Vic Akers, absolutely right,
who founded the Arsenal Ladies Football Club.
He managed it till retirement in 2009.
Under his management, the ladies' team won 32 major honours,
including the FA Women's Cup ten times
as opposed to Arsene Wenger's management,
where the men's team has won seven FA Cup titles.
Vic Akers is the kit man for the men's team, and he always
wears shorts, no matter what the weather.
So on my podcast, we refer to his genitals
as little Vic and the Akers.
He's greatly loved, Vic.
What a fantastic track record, 32 major titles. Astonishing.
I mean, at the time hardly anyone else played women's football,
it must be said.
Well, there was a time in the 1920s when there were 150 women's football
teams in England and they could draw bigger crowds than the men's teams.
The reason it all fell apart was that the FA stopped women playing
on Football Association pitches.
This team is Where's Wally FC.
This team was actually the Dick, Kerr's Ladies team.
They were named after the munitions factory where most of them worked.
They were the first women's team to ever play in shorts,
and my favourite player is a woman called Lily Parr,
and apparently she was astonishing, but she was also a chain-smoker
and she insisted...
Look at the length of that cigarette!
She insisted that part of her wages was in Woodbine cigarettes
and sometimes she was known to play while still smoking.
They completely squashed women's football. They stopped it.
For about 70 years. It was extraordinary. They weren't allowed.
No reason for it at all. Anyway, the most successful Arsenal
manager of all time managed the women's team.
So, it looks like our luck with the weather has run out.
Let's have a quick look at the scores before we are
completely rained off.
Er, last tonight by...
Oh, that's frankly... Oh, dear, there we are.
Last tonight with a rather narrow margin,
the audience with -20!
Getting drenched in fourth place, with -19,
it's Richard!
Slightly soggy with -15,
Rachel!
A bit moist with -14,
Alan. Thank you.
And coming in from the cold, with two points,
it's tonight's winner, Romesh!
Finally, my mum will love me.
I'd like to thank Rachel, Richard, Romesh and Alan,
and leave you with this from American actress Marie Dressler.
If ants are such busy workers,
how come they find time to go to all the picnics?
Goodnight.