1 00:00:33,027 --> 00:00:34,467 Hello... 2 00:00:35,707 --> 00:00:38,867 ..and welcome to QI, where tonight we'll be 3 00:00:38,867 --> 00:00:40,547 pottering around with plants. 4 00:00:40,547 --> 00:00:44,387 And joining me are a pretty periwinkle, Jason Manford. 5 00:00:48,787 --> 00:00:51,827 A perfect peony, Sara Pascoe. 6 00:00:54,787 --> 00:00:57,627 A proud poplar, Stephen K Amos. 7 00:01:01,788 --> 00:01:05,108 And a veritable vegetable, Alan Davies. 8 00:01:10,588 --> 00:01:12,788 And for their buzzers, Jason goes... 9 00:01:12,788 --> 00:01:15,548 "Roses are red." 10 00:01:15,548 --> 00:01:16,788 Sara goes... 11 00:01:16,788 --> 00:01:19,068 "Violets are blue." 12 00:01:19,068 --> 00:01:20,468 Stephen goes... 13 00:01:20,468 --> 00:01:23,988 "Sugar is S-s-sanskrit for gravel." 14 00:01:26,228 --> 00:01:27,828 And Alan goes... 15 00:01:27,828 --> 00:01:29,788 "That's QI for you." 16 00:01:31,028 --> 00:01:36,748 Right, let us start with some potatoes. 17 00:01:36,748 --> 00:01:40,788 How do you make a potato really petrifying? 18 00:01:40,788 --> 00:01:43,789 Here's one for each of you. One for me. 19 00:01:43,789 --> 00:01:47,469 Oh, hang on, I haven't given you any potato yet, there we go. 20 00:01:52,509 --> 00:01:54,829 I think it was a trust issue to be quite honest. 21 00:01:56,509 --> 00:01:59,749 Right, so I want to make a potato really petrifying. 22 00:01:59,749 --> 00:02:01,189 How do I do that? 23 00:02:01,189 --> 00:02:03,629 You know, like, you have Mr Potato Head? Oh, yes. 24 00:02:03,629 --> 00:02:05,869 I would get all of the facial ingredients, 25 00:02:05,869 --> 00:02:08,309 and I would make it look like a serial killer, 26 00:02:08,309 --> 00:02:09,789 ie, Fred West. 27 00:02:11,349 --> 00:02:12,629 Wow, OK, never... 28 00:02:13,829 --> 00:02:16,509 One of my big fears - I know it's quite common with a lot of people - 29 00:02:16,509 --> 00:02:18,309 is a clown. Right. 30 00:02:18,309 --> 00:02:21,629 So maybe to put a clown's face on a potato. 31 00:02:21,629 --> 00:02:23,229 Do you just show it a frying pan? 32 00:02:24,950 --> 00:02:28,350 Show it the chip pan, yeah. 33 00:02:28,350 --> 00:02:30,230 But I don't want the potato to be scared - 34 00:02:30,230 --> 00:02:32,870 I want the potato to be scary. Oh, I see. 35 00:02:32,870 --> 00:02:36,390 It is actually a way in which a potato has won a battle. 36 00:02:36,390 --> 00:02:41,590 So it was 1943, and an American destroyer called the USS O'Bannon 37 00:02:41,590 --> 00:02:44,310 came alongside a Japanese submarine in the Pacific, 38 00:02:44,310 --> 00:02:46,750 and the ship was too close to the submarine to be able 39 00:02:46,750 --> 00:02:51,070 to lower its guns, so the crew pelted the submarine with potatoes. 40 00:02:51,070 --> 00:02:53,870 Now, the Japanese, you'd imagine, dim light of dawn, 41 00:02:53,870 --> 00:02:56,550 had no idea they were potatoes, so they ran around thinking 42 00:02:56,550 --> 00:02:59,070 they were grenades, throwing them off the deck, 43 00:02:59,070 --> 00:03:01,910 or basically running for cover. 44 00:03:01,910 --> 00:03:05,711 This gave the American ship enough time to position itself, 45 00:03:05,711 --> 00:03:09,351 back away, point its guns, and it sank the submarine, 46 00:03:09,351 --> 00:03:11,871 based entirely on throwing potatoes. 47 00:03:11,871 --> 00:03:14,591 I must say, I've been doing this job for a while now... Right... 48 00:03:14,591 --> 00:03:17,191 ..and that's one of the hardest leaps I've yet faced. 49 00:03:20,471 --> 00:03:22,911 We could have sat here for 40 years... And not got it. 50 00:03:24,231 --> 00:03:27,231 And also, that is a very sad story. Yeah. 51 00:03:27,231 --> 00:03:29,831 And then, thanks to this potato, hundreds were massacred. 52 00:03:31,071 --> 00:03:32,311 Well done, potatoes! 53 00:03:32,311 --> 00:03:34,671 It is a very sad story, and it's about fear sometimes 54 00:03:34,671 --> 00:03:36,711 because of the thing that is in your head... Yes. 55 00:03:36,711 --> 00:03:39,151 ..rather than the actual thing that you're confronting. 56 00:03:39,151 --> 00:03:40,991 What's actually there, what you imagine, yeah. 57 00:03:40,991 --> 00:03:42,951 But people have been afraid of potatoes before. 58 00:03:42,951 --> 00:03:45,031 So, in the 1600s, when the potato first comes 59 00:03:45,031 --> 00:03:48,152 to Europe from the Americas, people were afraid to eat them, 60 00:03:48,152 --> 00:03:50,152 and there were a couple of main reasons. 61 00:03:50,152 --> 00:03:53,152 One is there's no potato mentioned in the Bible. 62 00:03:53,152 --> 00:03:55,032 Yeah. 63 00:03:55,032 --> 00:03:56,232 Does that still happen now? 64 00:03:56,232 --> 00:03:58,312 Do people still go, "Do you want a Jaffa Cake?" 65 00:03:58,312 --> 00:04:01,472 "No." "Why not?" "It's not in the Bible." 66 00:04:02,832 --> 00:04:03,912 Not people I know. 67 00:04:05,512 --> 00:04:07,352 And there were all sorts of claims 68 00:04:07,352 --> 00:04:09,032 about the diseases that it could cause - 69 00:04:09,032 --> 00:04:11,272 scrophula, syphilis, leprosy. 70 00:04:11,272 --> 00:04:13,672 There was a sort of general belief that they resembled 71 00:04:13,672 --> 00:04:15,752 the gnarled hands of lepers, 72 00:04:15,752 --> 00:04:18,352 and they thought that poisons mimicked the illnesses 73 00:04:18,352 --> 00:04:19,912 that they could cause. 74 00:04:19,912 --> 00:04:22,192 They were also considered a dangerous aphrodisiac. 75 00:04:22,192 --> 00:04:25,792 You could go mad and murderous with lust... Ooh, yeah... 76 00:04:25,792 --> 00:04:28,993 ..if you ate a potato. I always feel quite sexy after... 77 00:04:28,993 --> 00:04:31,153 - After a potato? - ..after some chips. 78 00:04:31,153 --> 00:04:33,793 "We've just had chips - come on, let's get upstairs." 79 00:04:34,873 --> 00:04:37,673 We used to take a holdall to the greengrocers, 80 00:04:37,673 --> 00:04:39,553 specifically for the potatoes. 81 00:04:39,553 --> 00:04:43,593 Because? Because we'd buy a lot of them. OK. 82 00:04:50,873 --> 00:04:53,393 I remember being quite small, being very near the holdall, 83 00:04:53,393 --> 00:04:56,033 this terrific rush of earth and mud and potato went crashing into 84 00:04:56,033 --> 00:04:59,033 this old leather bag, and then we lugged it home. 85 00:04:59,033 --> 00:05:01,553 Did you have them mashed or chipped, or how did you have them? 86 00:05:01,553 --> 00:05:03,593 Usually mashed. Right. 87 00:05:03,593 --> 00:05:05,633 Because they were boiled for so long... 88 00:05:07,594 --> 00:05:10,834 Strange thing about the British attitude to vegetables. 89 00:05:10,834 --> 00:05:12,954 I was with a friend, and her mum came round, 90 00:05:12,954 --> 00:05:15,154 and the mum sat there for, ooh, she must have sat there 91 00:05:15,154 --> 00:05:16,554 for almost an hour, and she said, 92 00:05:16,554 --> 00:05:19,274 "Well, must go, I put the vegetables on just before I left." 93 00:05:20,474 --> 00:05:23,434 Oh, yeah, if you can't smear them over the wall, they're not cooked! 94 00:05:24,634 --> 00:05:26,234 People not knowing what to do with them 95 00:05:26,234 --> 00:05:27,954 is part of the history of the potato. 96 00:05:27,954 --> 00:05:30,874 So King Frederick the Great of Prussia wanted people to eat them, 97 00:05:30,874 --> 00:05:34,114 so he sent starving peasants sack loads of potatoes 98 00:05:34,114 --> 00:05:36,314 because he thought that would be good for them. 99 00:05:36,314 --> 00:05:38,594 And they were returned with a note saying, 100 00:05:38,594 --> 00:05:40,794 "These are not fit for the dogs." 101 00:05:40,794 --> 00:05:43,874 And in the end, he had to force the peasants to plant the potatoes 102 00:05:43,874 --> 00:05:47,474 by threatening to have their noses and ears cut off. 103 00:05:47,474 --> 00:05:51,595 In fact, he's so famous for loving potatoes that, to this day, 104 00:05:51,595 --> 00:05:53,075 if you go and visit his grave, 105 00:05:53,075 --> 00:05:56,035 people take potatoes as a sort of tribute to him. 106 00:05:56,035 --> 00:05:59,075 I like him because he was clearly mad. Yeah. 107 00:05:59,075 --> 00:06:00,875 Weird. Yeah, he was definitely weird. 108 00:06:00,875 --> 00:06:02,875 He was infatuated with his greyhounds. 109 00:06:02,875 --> 00:06:04,355 He had Italian greyhounds. 110 00:06:04,355 --> 00:06:06,675 And he was not keen on his wife. No? No. 111 00:06:06,675 --> 00:06:09,155 Used to visit her once a year on her birthday. 112 00:06:10,555 --> 00:06:12,675 Wow. Which meant those children must have all had 113 00:06:12,675 --> 00:06:14,715 the same rough birthday, I think. 114 00:06:16,355 --> 00:06:19,035 I was reading something recently, actually. 115 00:06:19,035 --> 00:06:25,115 There's something in McDonald's fries that can cure baldness. 116 00:06:25,115 --> 00:06:27,555 I don't know why it's specifically McDonald's fries. 117 00:06:27,555 --> 00:06:31,156 I also don't know what the person was doing when they discovered it. 118 00:06:31,156 --> 00:06:33,836 No. Was he drunk and just put the fries on his head? 119 00:06:35,316 --> 00:06:38,516 I love this fact, Jason. It's like being with a bloke in a pub. 120 00:06:38,516 --> 00:06:40,356 "Do you know that fries..." 121 00:06:40,356 --> 00:06:42,676 That's who told me. "..can cure baldness?" 122 00:06:44,236 --> 00:06:47,276 So, as it happens, Jason, I do know what you're talking about. 123 00:06:47,276 --> 00:06:51,516 It was a Japanese experiment with bald mice. 124 00:06:51,516 --> 00:06:54,556 But...it doesn't work on humans. Aw... 125 00:06:54,556 --> 00:06:56,236 I mean, a lot of things start on mice, 126 00:06:56,236 --> 00:06:58,116 and progress to humans, so, you know... 127 00:06:58,116 --> 00:07:00,436 It's weird, actually, cos a lot of things do start on mice 128 00:07:00,436 --> 00:07:02,236 and then they find out it's not replicated. 129 00:07:02,236 --> 00:07:04,396 It's almost like stop testing on mice. 130 00:07:06,236 --> 00:07:09,436 But look at all those mice out there with wonderful hair. 131 00:07:10,837 --> 00:07:16,077 The potato, also banned in France, was banned from 1748 to 1772. 132 00:07:16,077 --> 00:07:17,837 Used to be thought to cause leprosy, 133 00:07:17,837 --> 00:07:20,477 so they didn't want to have the potato either. 134 00:07:20,477 --> 00:07:25,197 And then there was an amazing guy called Antoine-Augustin Parmentier. 135 00:07:25,197 --> 00:07:27,397 There he is. Have you ever Parmentier potatoes? 136 00:07:27,397 --> 00:07:28,997 Probably. Oh, they're delicious. 137 00:07:28,997 --> 00:07:31,757 They're roasted in little cubes with rosemary and herbs. Oh, yes. 138 00:07:31,757 --> 00:07:34,197 Aren't they good? I love those. Named after him. 139 00:07:34,197 --> 00:07:37,117 He was imprisoned for several years in the Seven Years' War with Prussia 140 00:07:37,117 --> 00:07:38,317 and fed nothing but potatoes, 141 00:07:38,317 --> 00:07:40,077 so realised that they're very good for you. 142 00:07:40,077 --> 00:07:42,517 And he came back to France determined that he was going 143 00:07:42,517 --> 00:07:44,517 to make the French eat potatoes. 144 00:07:44,517 --> 00:07:46,557 And he did all sorts of wonderful PR strategies. 145 00:07:46,557 --> 00:07:49,197 He sent potato flower blossoms to the King, 146 00:07:49,197 --> 00:07:51,798 who was then Louis XVI, and to Marie Antoinette. 147 00:07:51,798 --> 00:07:54,358 And then - which I think is the most brilliant thing - 148 00:07:54,358 --> 00:07:56,638 he had a field of potatoes planted 149 00:07:56,638 --> 00:07:58,398 and he placed it under armed guard. 150 00:07:58,398 --> 00:08:00,718 And everybody thought, "Whatever's growing there," 151 00:08:00,718 --> 00:08:03,358 "I want some of that, because that must be really fantastic." 152 00:08:03,358 --> 00:08:05,918 That's clever. And they stole the potatoes and they grew them 153 00:08:05,918 --> 00:08:07,758 and they began to cultivate them. 154 00:08:07,758 --> 00:08:10,198 In 1988 - it is one of my favourite facts about a potato - 155 00:08:10,198 --> 00:08:15,238 researchers found that potato tubers contain benzodiazepine. 156 00:08:15,238 --> 00:08:19,078 So a potato contains diazepam or Valium. 157 00:08:19,078 --> 00:08:20,678 It's synthesised inside the plant. 158 00:08:20,678 --> 00:08:25,198 I have no idea how much mash you'd need to eat to feel totally chilled. 159 00:08:27,558 --> 00:08:30,238 I reckon, Alan, knock yourself out. Yeah. 160 00:08:32,239 --> 00:08:35,399 We used to have mash AND roast potatoes at my auntie's house. 161 00:08:36,759 --> 00:08:40,759 One of my dream meals - baked potato, mash and chips. 162 00:08:45,599 --> 00:08:47,559 With a Parmentier chaser. 163 00:08:48,759 --> 00:08:50,279 Get them in a holdall. 164 00:08:52,199 --> 00:08:54,119 A mucky holdall full of filth. 165 00:08:55,879 --> 00:08:58,279 Right, potatoes away, please. 166 00:08:59,319 --> 00:09:04,359 OK, which former Top Gear presenter failed a drugs test last year, 167 00:09:04,359 --> 00:09:07,039 and how on earth did they get away with it? 168 00:09:07,039 --> 00:09:09,239 Stig? Oh, is it the white guy? Yeah. 169 00:09:15,080 --> 00:09:17,440 "Is it the white guy?" The white guy! 170 00:09:20,800 --> 00:09:22,600 Five white guys. Any more for any more? 171 00:09:22,600 --> 00:09:24,520 So are we just going to guess those guys' names? 172 00:09:24,520 --> 00:09:25,680 You could do, it's up to you. 173 00:09:25,680 --> 00:09:28,240 It's not going to be any of those names, and they're all a trap. 174 00:09:28,240 --> 00:09:30,680 Is it all a trap? Yes. It's all a trap. Watch this. 175 00:09:30,680 --> 00:09:31,800 Jeremy Clarkson. 176 00:09:34,080 --> 00:09:37,960 Is it James May? It's a trap, it's a trap. 177 00:09:37,960 --> 00:09:39,400 Richard Hammond. 178 00:09:41,240 --> 00:09:43,480 Chris Evans. 179 00:09:46,120 --> 00:09:49,160 Carry on. You just bodyguarded us. 180 00:09:49,160 --> 00:09:51,480 You just jumped in front and took the bullet. 181 00:09:51,480 --> 00:09:52,520 I'll take the bullet. 182 00:09:52,520 --> 00:09:53,560 Matt LeBlanc. 183 00:10:00,001 --> 00:10:01,961 Jason, you look like you know this. 184 00:10:01,961 --> 00:10:05,321 I actually do know this one, weirdly. It's Angela Ripon. 185 00:10:05,321 --> 00:10:07,681 Is the exactly right answer. 186 00:10:07,681 --> 00:10:10,441 Angela Ripon... Yeah. 187 00:10:13,001 --> 00:10:14,321 She presented Top Gear? 188 00:10:14,321 --> 00:10:18,241 She was the very first presenter of Top Gear, 1977, for two years. 189 00:10:18,241 --> 00:10:21,641 And then they thought, let's have Jeremy Clarkson? Yeah. 190 00:10:21,641 --> 00:10:24,561 You know who they had between her and Clarkson? No. 191 00:10:24,561 --> 00:10:27,121 Edmonds. Noel Edmonds presented it for a little while. 192 00:10:27,121 --> 00:10:29,681 OK, yeah, he's the gateway drug. 193 00:10:29,681 --> 00:10:31,841 That makes sense, that makes sense. 194 00:10:31,841 --> 00:10:34,321 Anything can happen after Edmonds. 195 00:10:34,321 --> 00:10:36,882 She looks amazing. Yeah, she looks hot. 196 00:10:36,882 --> 00:10:39,602 I'd go anywhere in that car with her. 197 00:10:39,602 --> 00:10:42,322 She presents a programme called Rip-Off Britain. 198 00:10:42,322 --> 00:10:44,842 Rip-on, Rip-Off Britain, you see? 199 00:10:44,842 --> 00:10:46,722 I wish she had an E on the end of her name, 200 00:10:46,722 --> 00:10:49,962 and then it would be Angela Rip-One. That would be amazing. 201 00:10:51,882 --> 00:10:53,482 Was it the poppy seeds from a...? 202 00:10:53,482 --> 00:10:55,722 It's the poppy seeds. So somebody had written to say 203 00:10:55,722 --> 00:10:58,202 they had been fired for failing a drugs test, 204 00:10:58,202 --> 00:11:00,882 and they had eaten poppy-seed toast for breakfast, 205 00:11:00,882 --> 00:11:04,282 so for three days, she ate her way through a poppy-seed loaf, 206 00:11:04,282 --> 00:11:07,642 and she then tested positive for drugs, 207 00:11:07,642 --> 00:11:11,242 and it is perfectly possible. So I have here a basket of... 208 00:11:11,242 --> 00:11:13,362 Woo! Uh-oh...poppy seeds. 209 00:11:13,362 --> 00:11:15,843 Actually, I wouldn't eat those - that is... Yeah. 210 00:11:17,483 --> 00:11:19,523 So basically if you ate, I don't know, 211 00:11:19,523 --> 00:11:21,763 two or three poppy-seed bagels, 212 00:11:21,763 --> 00:11:25,083 morphine would show up in your urine. Wow. 213 00:11:25,083 --> 00:11:28,843 It can remain there for two days. 214 00:11:28,843 --> 00:11:32,363 I mean, it's hard to predict, OK? Because the amount of morphine 215 00:11:32,363 --> 00:11:36,003 can vary by a factor of 600, so some seeds might have 600 times 216 00:11:36,003 --> 00:11:39,003 as much morphine in them as some other seeds. Really? 217 00:11:39,003 --> 00:11:41,043 Yeah, well, it depends when it was harvested, 218 00:11:41,043 --> 00:11:44,563 so each... But you can't spot which one is the one with morphine. 219 00:11:44,563 --> 00:11:48,563 And, in fact, American prisoners have to sign a form promising 220 00:11:48,563 --> 00:11:51,643 not to eat poppy seeds before they're allowed out on probation... 221 00:11:51,643 --> 00:11:53,323 Oh...as you can tell... 222 00:11:53,323 --> 00:11:56,524 That's a miserable form to fill in. Oh, because of the drugs test. Yeah. 223 00:11:56,524 --> 00:11:58,764 It's also the only food, poppy seeds, 224 00:11:58,764 --> 00:12:02,364 that the Ministry of Justice has entirely and specifically banned 225 00:12:02,364 --> 00:12:04,044 from UK prisons. Oh... 226 00:12:04,044 --> 00:12:07,044 They don't actually taste of anything. Don't taste of morphine? 227 00:12:07,044 --> 00:12:09,364 Well, you know what I mean, it's not Nando's, is it? 228 00:12:09,364 --> 00:12:10,484 It's not Peri-Peri... 229 00:12:10,484 --> 00:12:13,164 You've got to put it in a spoon and then you've got to heat it up 230 00:12:13,164 --> 00:12:14,564 and get... 231 00:12:16,764 --> 00:12:19,804 I like our rather vague knowledge about... Yeah. 232 00:12:19,804 --> 00:12:23,004 I got it from Trainspotting. 233 00:12:23,004 --> 00:12:26,004 But if there's such a negative side to the poppy seed... 234 00:12:26,004 --> 00:12:28,084 Then don't have them. ..why are they still...? 235 00:12:28,084 --> 00:12:29,444 Yeah, just knock 'em on the head. 236 00:12:29,444 --> 00:12:31,564 Just have sesame seeds. They're nicer, actually. 237 00:12:31,564 --> 00:12:33,604 Or, like, hundreds and thousands. 238 00:12:33,604 --> 00:12:36,164 Humans are not the only things that test positive. 239 00:12:36,164 --> 00:12:39,925 So, in 2014, the Queen's racehorse, called Estimate, 240 00:12:39,925 --> 00:12:42,445 tested positive for morphine. 241 00:12:42,445 --> 00:12:45,525 Now, to be fair, the company that provided the feed said it had 242 00:12:45,525 --> 00:12:47,925 been contaminated by poppy seeds. Didn't matter. 243 00:12:47,925 --> 00:12:52,725 She had won £81,000 by Estimate coming second in a race, 244 00:12:52,725 --> 00:12:57,405 and that money had to be given back because her horse was a druggie. 245 00:12:57,405 --> 00:13:01,485 I'd like to see a sequence of photos where the next one, 246 00:13:01,485 --> 00:13:04,165 Estimate's got the hat on, and then... 247 00:13:05,325 --> 00:13:07,525 ..the next one, they've swapped coats. 248 00:13:09,405 --> 00:13:12,685 And then the next one, she's got the bit between her teeth. 249 00:13:14,205 --> 00:13:17,845 And then, the last one, she's taking him round the course. 250 00:13:17,845 --> 00:13:19,366 I think I'd like to see one where 251 00:13:19,366 --> 00:13:22,366 she's actually handing the horse a spliff. 252 00:13:22,366 --> 00:13:25,086 Her hand there doesn't look like a real hand, does it? 253 00:13:25,086 --> 00:13:28,406 That does look like her hands are inside her coat 254 00:13:28,406 --> 00:13:32,166 and she's just got two sticks with gloves on that she... 255 00:13:32,166 --> 00:13:34,566 She hasn't touched anyone for 40 years! 256 00:13:34,566 --> 00:13:38,086 She's just got plastic-glove hands on sticks. 257 00:13:40,486 --> 00:13:44,206 The horse is thinking, "What is that?! What is that?!" 258 00:13:44,206 --> 00:13:46,766 "I can see your hand moving over your belly!" 259 00:13:49,046 --> 00:13:52,046 But horses are not the only animals with drug problems. 260 00:13:52,046 --> 00:13:54,966 So there are parrots in some parts of India 261 00:13:54,966 --> 00:13:57,006 which are addicted to opium. 262 00:13:57,006 --> 00:13:59,967 Opium is legally farmed in those parts of India for use 263 00:13:59,967 --> 00:14:03,887 in medicines, and the parrots are eating it like crazy. 264 00:14:03,887 --> 00:14:06,447 And what I love is, to avoid capture, 265 00:14:06,447 --> 00:14:09,487 cos they're so obsessed with it, they've learned not to squawk. 266 00:14:09,487 --> 00:14:11,207 They're like, "Shh...". 267 00:14:13,327 --> 00:14:15,967 That is amazing. Wow. So they want to deter them, and 268 00:14:15,967 --> 00:14:18,727 they've beaten drums and exploded fireworks - they don't care. 269 00:14:18,727 --> 00:14:21,887 That's a party for a high parrot! What idiots! 270 00:14:21,887 --> 00:14:23,487 But it's not good for them! 271 00:14:23,487 --> 00:14:26,367 So what happens is, it makes them really woozy, they fall 272 00:14:26,367 --> 00:14:31,087 into such a deep sleep that they fall off their perches and die. Aw! 273 00:14:31,087 --> 00:14:32,527 I know! I know! 274 00:14:32,527 --> 00:14:35,807 And even worse, the ones that don't die, when the opium season is over, 275 00:14:35,807 --> 00:14:37,487 they get withdrawal symptoms... Yes. 276 00:14:37,487 --> 00:14:39,847 ..cos there's no parrot rehab. Yeah. 277 00:14:40,968 --> 00:14:43,768 And a parrot is not going to go cold turkey, right? No. 278 00:14:50,328 --> 00:14:54,128 Anyway, Angela Ripon tested positive for some TOP GEAR. 279 00:14:54,128 --> 00:14:55,848 Oh... 280 00:14:55,848 --> 00:14:57,568 Come on! 281 00:14:57,568 --> 00:15:00,048 Yes. 282 00:15:00,048 --> 00:15:01,808 Definitely worth it. 283 00:15:01,808 --> 00:15:06,288 Does anyone know why there's a pair of pants buried in my garden? 284 00:15:10,288 --> 00:15:11,888 They've been buried by a dog? 285 00:15:11,888 --> 00:15:15,008 No, I buried them all by myself, on purpose. 286 00:15:15,008 --> 00:15:17,368 Is this a method in which you're trying to stop 287 00:15:17,368 --> 00:15:22,449 the local underwear-from-washing-line thief? 288 00:15:22,449 --> 00:15:23,489 No. 289 00:15:24,529 --> 00:15:27,049 Are they new or worn underpants? 290 00:15:27,049 --> 00:15:28,649 It doesn't really matter. 291 00:15:28,649 --> 00:15:30,409 Are they made out of something specific? 292 00:15:30,409 --> 00:15:32,649 Well, they're cotton, is the main thing. OK. 293 00:15:32,649 --> 00:15:35,209 Is it something to do with maybe the soil 294 00:15:35,209 --> 00:15:37,649 that is kind of working with the cotton? 295 00:15:37,649 --> 00:15:40,329 OK, you're absolutely heading in the right direction, 296 00:15:40,329 --> 00:15:42,329 and you look terribly surprised about it. 297 00:15:42,329 --> 00:15:45,729 So if you want to find out how fertile your soil is, 298 00:15:45,729 --> 00:15:48,849 one of the thing that's advised to farmers is to bury a pair 299 00:15:48,849 --> 00:15:52,009 of underpants, and then dig them up a couple of months later 300 00:15:52,009 --> 00:15:53,369 to see what is left. 301 00:15:53,369 --> 00:15:55,849 And nothing should remain if the soil is fertile, 302 00:15:55,849 --> 00:15:59,289 except the elastic - everything else should have biodegraded. 303 00:15:59,289 --> 00:16:02,330 So the California Farmers Guild, the Quality Meat Scotland, 304 00:16:02,330 --> 00:16:04,690 the Government body, they launched, in 2017, 305 00:16:04,690 --> 00:16:07,050 Soil My Undies campaigns... 306 00:16:09,410 --> 00:16:12,730 ..to encourage farmers to do this. Wow. 307 00:16:12,730 --> 00:16:14,850 So, in healthy soil, so it's got the right amount 308 00:16:14,850 --> 00:16:18,450 of water and oxygen and nutrients for plants to grow well, 309 00:16:18,450 --> 00:16:21,770 life forms - so microbes and worms and insects - 310 00:16:21,770 --> 00:16:25,170 they also thrive, and here is a really startling fact. 311 00:16:25,170 --> 00:16:28,650 Let me show you this. So I've got a tablespoon here, 312 00:16:28,650 --> 00:16:34,250 and if I poured soil onto the tablespoon, 313 00:16:34,250 --> 00:16:40,010 there are about 50 times more organisms on this tablespoon 314 00:16:40,010 --> 00:16:42,250 than there are humans on Earth. 315 00:16:42,250 --> 00:16:45,651 So there's about 7.5 billion people on Earth, 316 00:16:45,651 --> 00:16:51,211 so a single spoon like this is 380 billion organisms living 317 00:16:51,211 --> 00:16:53,531 in a single tablespoon, and the more there are, 318 00:16:53,531 --> 00:16:56,091 the more they'll eat away at materials like cotton, 319 00:16:56,091 --> 00:16:59,131 so an underwear depletion is a really good indicator 320 00:16:59,131 --> 00:17:00,771 of how your crops are going to grow. 321 00:17:00,771 --> 00:17:03,171 It sounds a little bit like these scientists are 322 00:17:03,171 --> 00:17:07,571 the same people who worked out McDonald's fries cured baldness. 323 00:17:07,571 --> 00:17:13,451 Last day of the work - "Let's bury underpants, it'll sort that out!" 324 00:17:13,451 --> 00:17:17,611 "Why did I find your pants in the garden?" "I can explain... 325 00:17:17,611 --> 00:17:22,011 "Have you heard of science? Well, it's a little experiment..." 326 00:17:22,011 --> 00:17:24,652 If you think that's strange, how would you test to see 327 00:17:24,652 --> 00:17:28,132 if it's warm enough to put your plants outside? 328 00:17:28,132 --> 00:17:29,972 Go outside? 329 00:17:31,292 --> 00:17:34,412 So it's still in underpants, bottom... 330 00:17:34,412 --> 00:17:37,932 Well, if you take them off, and you shrivel up... 331 00:17:39,892 --> 00:17:43,092 ..it's too cold. Put your pants back on! 332 00:17:43,092 --> 00:17:46,212 If it looks like a little mushroom peeking out of a bush... 333 00:17:48,692 --> 00:17:50,092 Just out of interest, Jason, 334 00:17:50,092 --> 00:17:52,252 how's that going to work for the lady farmer? 335 00:17:52,252 --> 00:17:56,132 She has to bring her fella over. She has to hire a man! 336 00:17:56,132 --> 00:18:00,572 How smelly your pumps are - is it that? Excuse me? What? 337 00:18:03,012 --> 00:18:06,413 Should one blow off, is it smellier...? 338 00:18:08,493 --> 00:18:10,733 ..is it smellier on a warm day or a cold day? 339 00:18:10,733 --> 00:18:12,853 It's often troubled me. I think... 340 00:18:15,573 --> 00:18:17,093 I think cold air... Yes. 341 00:18:17,093 --> 00:18:21,413 ..somehow lets you smell the gas more. OK, so... 342 00:18:21,413 --> 00:18:24,133 I think I've eaten too much poppy seeds. 343 00:18:24,133 --> 00:18:26,973 I love this, but I can only describe it as a cul-de-sac 344 00:18:26,973 --> 00:18:31,893 of conversation, so I'm going to steer you back to the motorway 345 00:18:31,893 --> 00:18:33,773 of actual information. Oh... Yeah. 346 00:18:33,773 --> 00:18:35,293 It's not that, then? It's not that. 347 00:18:35,293 --> 00:18:37,813 So in order to assess whether it's warm enough, 348 00:18:37,813 --> 00:18:39,533 you've already buried your underpants, 349 00:18:39,533 --> 00:18:42,453 you then sit down with your bare bottom in the ploughed field, 350 00:18:42,453 --> 00:18:45,293 and it is called the bare-bum test... And Angela Rip-One... 351 00:18:45,293 --> 00:18:51,094 It is recommended to farmers, and if it is comfortable enough 352 00:18:51,094 --> 00:18:56,094 to sit on the field, then it is warm enough to plant out your crops. 353 00:18:56,094 --> 00:18:59,214 I'm telling you, science funding is a sham. 354 00:19:01,174 --> 00:19:05,814 They are having a laugh out there making stuff up, last day... 355 00:19:05,814 --> 00:19:08,654 "Take your pants off and sit over there." Unbelievable! 356 00:19:08,654 --> 00:19:10,894 Does this initiative actually work? 357 00:19:10,894 --> 00:19:15,734 Are their hundreds and thousands of farmers up and down the country... 358 00:19:15,734 --> 00:19:18,534 ..wearing no pants? And sitting... 359 00:19:18,534 --> 00:19:22,174 With bum prints across their fields, as far as you can see! 360 00:19:22,174 --> 00:19:24,894 I'm very hopeful, Stephen, that they're rich enough to have two 361 00:19:24,894 --> 00:19:28,735 pairs of pants, so there's one... One for them, and one for the field. 362 00:19:28,735 --> 00:19:30,735 Maybe that's how they get crop circles. 363 00:19:37,295 --> 00:19:43,055 OK, let's try this. You are at a soil-tasting event. OK? 364 00:19:43,055 --> 00:19:45,775 I want to know what you would do with these. 365 00:19:45,775 --> 00:19:46,975 So that's for Stephen. 366 00:19:46,975 --> 00:19:49,335 I got a special one for you, darling - I've got worms for you. 367 00:19:49,335 --> 00:19:51,175 Oh, thank you. That's OK. 368 00:19:51,175 --> 00:19:54,135 So, a soil-tasting event. What would you do? 369 00:19:54,135 --> 00:19:57,375 Is it like wine, where you would sniff it first anyway? Yes. 370 00:19:57,375 --> 00:19:59,215 You look at the colour. Yes. 371 00:19:59,215 --> 00:20:01,255 And then? Put your tongue in it. 372 00:20:01,255 --> 00:20:04,055 OK, no. Sit in it? Yeah, don't...! 373 00:20:18,216 --> 00:20:20,816 Can I say that I didn't trust Alan not to do that, 374 00:20:20,816 --> 00:20:22,336 so you've got chocolate cake. 375 00:20:26,856 --> 00:20:29,056 This is the best meal I've had for years. 376 00:20:30,056 --> 00:20:32,656 So you don't actually have to taste it, is the thing. 377 00:20:32,656 --> 00:20:35,336 You're absolutely right, you can tell by smelling it. 378 00:20:35,336 --> 00:20:37,336 A quick way to determine soil texture 379 00:20:37,336 --> 00:20:40,216 would be to test it with your tongue. 380 00:20:40,216 --> 00:20:41,376 Um... 381 00:20:42,936 --> 00:20:44,176 You probably wouldn't put it 382 00:20:44,176 --> 00:20:46,216 in a wineglass, though... But they do, they do. 383 00:20:46,216 --> 00:20:48,777 At these soil tastings... They lie face-down and go... 384 00:20:48,777 --> 00:20:51,017 ..they do actually put it in a wineglass. 385 00:20:51,017 --> 00:20:52,977 "Don't lick that - I've just sat there!" 386 00:20:56,457 --> 00:20:58,697 "That's why it's warm!" 387 00:20:58,697 --> 00:21:02,177 It looks like the farmers could use some sort of thermometer 388 00:21:02,177 --> 00:21:04,017 to check the temperature of the soil. 389 00:21:04,017 --> 00:21:05,537 Imagine that. 390 00:21:05,537 --> 00:21:08,577 "Oh, I don't feel so well, I've got a right temperature." "Come 'ere." 391 00:21:10,177 --> 00:21:13,457 Farmers sitting on their wives' foreheads all over the country. 392 00:21:16,017 --> 00:21:18,057 There are people who do eat soil, 393 00:21:18,057 --> 00:21:22,417 and it is surprisingly widespread, in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example. 394 00:21:22,417 --> 00:21:27,057 Between 30% and 80% of pregnant women eat clay. 395 00:21:27,057 --> 00:21:29,818 And there are people who are drawn to eating strange things. 396 00:21:29,818 --> 00:21:31,378 It's a condition called pica. 397 00:21:31,378 --> 00:21:33,058 And I read about this fantastic woman. 398 00:21:33,058 --> 00:21:35,498 She's called Adele Edwards, and she lives in Florida, 399 00:21:35,498 --> 00:21:38,338 and she's addicted to eating sofas. 400 00:21:38,338 --> 00:21:41,898 So...she's quite specific. 401 00:21:41,898 --> 00:21:44,818 She only really likes the foam cushions, 402 00:21:44,818 --> 00:21:48,538 and in the last 21 years, she's eaten seven sofas. 403 00:21:48,538 --> 00:21:49,898 This is such a good prank. 404 00:21:49,898 --> 00:21:52,418 You know, like, when someone's got a really badly behaved dog... 405 00:21:52,418 --> 00:21:55,818 "All right, I'll bring Adele round, she'll keep an eye on him." 406 00:21:55,818 --> 00:21:59,018 And she's eaten the living room furniture. 407 00:21:59,018 --> 00:22:00,818 Is she banned from IKEA? 408 00:22:00,818 --> 00:22:03,098 She'd go mad in IKEA, wouldn't she? 409 00:22:03,098 --> 00:22:05,018 Can you imagine? It'd be like Christmas. 410 00:22:05,018 --> 00:22:06,858 She watches DFS ads on a loop. 411 00:22:08,578 --> 00:22:10,299 "Another sale!" 412 00:22:10,299 --> 00:22:12,499 "Mmm!" 413 00:22:14,899 --> 00:22:16,779 "I'm going to get a La-Z-Boy! Mmm!" 414 00:22:18,539 --> 00:22:20,699 She likes to complete eating the sofa? 415 00:22:20,699 --> 00:22:23,139 She doesn't, like, just little bites out of lots of them? 416 00:22:23,139 --> 00:22:25,779 No, and she can't do without, so if she goes out driving, 417 00:22:25,779 --> 00:22:28,739 she takes some sofa with her and eats it. 418 00:22:28,739 --> 00:22:31,779 There's YouTube videos of this woman eating sofas. I like her. 419 00:22:31,779 --> 00:22:34,459 Maybe she's a...couch potato. 420 00:22:36,059 --> 00:22:39,379 Thank you very much. 421 00:22:39,379 --> 00:22:42,979 Right, you've just soiled your pants... 422 00:22:42,979 --> 00:22:45,339 ..now, why would you season your socks? 423 00:22:46,779 --> 00:22:48,459 Well, in for a penny... 424 00:22:52,940 --> 00:22:55,340 Something to do with a P, isn't it? 425 00:22:55,340 --> 00:22:56,620 Pepper... Pepper... 426 00:22:56,620 --> 00:23:00,700 Pepper's a P, isn't it? Pepper's a P. I'm all over this. 427 00:23:00,700 --> 00:23:03,380 It's to stop you sweating? No. 428 00:23:03,380 --> 00:23:06,460 It's the very opposite, and it wouldn't be that kind of pepper. 429 00:23:06,460 --> 00:23:08,300 That's slightly misleading, I'm afraid. 430 00:23:08,300 --> 00:23:10,700 So, 1600s, chilli peppers are first brought 431 00:23:10,700 --> 00:23:13,900 to Japan from Portugal, and people put them in their socks 432 00:23:13,900 --> 00:23:16,540 to keep their feet warm in the winter. 433 00:23:16,540 --> 00:23:18,740 Chilli peppers contain something called capsaicin - 434 00:23:18,740 --> 00:23:21,300 it's the active component in chilli peppers. Yeah. 435 00:23:21,300 --> 00:23:23,220 And it's an irritant to mammals. 436 00:23:23,220 --> 00:23:26,100 And what it does is it gives the illusion of heat by creating 437 00:23:26,100 --> 00:23:28,700 a sort of burning sensation, it doesn't actually give you heat, 438 00:23:28,700 --> 00:23:31,060 it can, in fact, just numb you. 439 00:23:31,060 --> 00:23:33,301 What about these bell peppers? 440 00:23:33,301 --> 00:23:36,381 Does anybody know what the difference is between 441 00:23:36,381 --> 00:23:38,461 the green, the yellow and the red? 442 00:23:38,461 --> 00:23:40,261 Yes, yes, yes! 443 00:23:40,261 --> 00:23:41,701 Colour. 444 00:23:52,301 --> 00:23:54,821 So, colour, yes, but it's not the real difference. 445 00:23:54,821 --> 00:23:57,701 Don't people say it's the sweetness, that the green ones aren't as sweet, 446 00:23:57,701 --> 00:23:59,501 and the yellow ones are the sweetest? 447 00:23:59,501 --> 00:24:00,861 Yeah, the green is the unripe one. 448 00:24:00,861 --> 00:24:03,341 It's not the yellow one that's the sweetest, it's the red one. 449 00:24:03,341 --> 00:24:05,701 The yellow is, as it were, on its way to becoming a red one. 450 00:24:05,701 --> 00:24:07,621 So the green one's packed with chlorophyll, 451 00:24:07,621 --> 00:24:11,541 and it decomposes over time, and that is what gives it the orange 452 00:24:11,541 --> 00:24:14,822 and the yellow and the so on, like leaves turning in the winter, 453 00:24:14,822 --> 00:24:16,462 so the chlorophyll decomposes. 454 00:24:16,462 --> 00:24:17,942 Red is the ripest. Yeah. 455 00:24:17,942 --> 00:24:21,462 Some green peppers, they will ripen off the vine. 456 00:24:21,462 --> 00:24:25,182 But don't put it in the fridge cos that's going to stop it ripening. 457 00:24:25,182 --> 00:24:27,382 So if I had the green one in my house off the vine, 458 00:24:27,382 --> 00:24:28,542 will it turn red? 459 00:24:28,542 --> 00:24:30,542 Not necessarily. It depends when it's been picked 460 00:24:30,542 --> 00:24:31,582 and where you store it 461 00:24:31,582 --> 00:24:34,062 and all those kind of things. It might, is the answer. 462 00:24:34,062 --> 00:24:37,902 It might go a bit reddy. Yeah. Go half and half, yeah. 463 00:24:37,902 --> 00:24:39,942 Oh... That's a good game to play tonight! 464 00:24:41,582 --> 00:24:43,822 So glad you were able to join us this evening. 465 00:24:45,382 --> 00:24:47,782 It's slightly misleading, the word pepper. 466 00:24:47,782 --> 00:24:49,542 It comes from Columbus, 467 00:24:49,542 --> 00:24:53,182 who brought spicy peppers back to the New World in the 1490s, 468 00:24:53,182 --> 00:24:56,463 So the Capsicum plants that he brought were totally unrelated to 469 00:24:56,463 --> 00:24:59,223 the pepper that you would get in the pepper pot, but pepper was 470 00:24:59,223 --> 00:25:01,583 a sort of catch-all term for foods that were hot, 471 00:25:01,583 --> 00:25:03,383 tasted pungent, that kind of thing. 472 00:25:03,383 --> 00:25:05,863 Anybody know how you would play pepper roulette? 473 00:25:06,943 --> 00:25:10,143 Oh...! I remember that day... 474 00:25:10,143 --> 00:25:13,223 Stephen, wow! Looking very good. 475 00:25:13,223 --> 00:25:15,343 I look like Alan's stolen my money. 476 00:25:17,143 --> 00:25:21,623 I think one of the ways to play pepper roulette would be to go 477 00:25:21,623 --> 00:25:25,863 to a Las Vegas-themed Nigerian restaurant, 478 00:25:25,863 --> 00:25:29,903 and if you had the hottest of the pepper dishes, 479 00:25:29,903 --> 00:25:32,983 you will probably get a royal flush. 480 00:25:35,184 --> 00:25:36,424 Well, you're not far off. 481 00:25:36,424 --> 00:25:37,904 Is it when people eat things 482 00:25:37,904 --> 00:25:40,504 and they don't know how hot they're going to be, they look similar. 483 00:25:40,504 --> 00:25:43,704 Yeah, so there are all sorts of peppers that are hot occasionally. 484 00:25:43,704 --> 00:25:45,824 There's a pepper called a shishito. 485 00:25:45,824 --> 00:25:48,944 It's a pepper in Japan, and one in ten is unbelievably hot, 486 00:25:48,944 --> 00:25:50,744 and people play a kind of roulette. 487 00:25:50,744 --> 00:25:54,264 I went into an airport lounge - we went to India - 488 00:25:54,264 --> 00:25:57,184 and they had a jar of long green peppers, you know the sort 489 00:25:57,184 --> 00:25:59,984 that sometimes you can just crunch on in the Greek restaurants? 490 00:25:59,984 --> 00:26:03,424 And I picked one of these up, and I noticed a couple of women who worked 491 00:26:03,424 --> 00:26:07,464 there popped their heads round from where they were going in and out. 492 00:26:07,464 --> 00:26:09,544 And I went like that and they went... 493 00:26:11,784 --> 00:26:16,025 Did you eat it? I took the smallest nip off the end of it 494 00:26:16,025 --> 00:26:19,785 and then I was like the dragons in Ivor the Engine. 495 00:26:21,465 --> 00:26:23,625 Just it was the hottest thing I've ever had in my life, 496 00:26:23,625 --> 00:26:25,585 and they pissed themselves laughing. 497 00:26:25,585 --> 00:26:28,705 And they just put them there on the off chance... Just in case. 498 00:26:28,705 --> 00:26:29,865 It's a good game. 499 00:26:29,865 --> 00:26:33,225 My brothers went through a phase of ordering some off the internet, 500 00:26:33,225 --> 00:26:36,825 like, the hottest, and they would trick each other into eating them 501 00:26:36,825 --> 00:26:39,065 and then gradually got to a point where neither of them 502 00:26:39,065 --> 00:26:41,625 would trust the other one when it came to anything. 503 00:26:41,625 --> 00:26:43,705 They wouldn't take a glass of water, 504 00:26:43,705 --> 00:26:45,945 they wouldn't take a tissue, nothing. 505 00:26:45,945 --> 00:26:48,825 And my brother... We thought this was a bit underhand, really. 506 00:26:48,825 --> 00:26:50,945 My brother went the whole hog, where he got his son, 507 00:26:50,945 --> 00:26:52,985 who was about five at the time, 508 00:26:52,985 --> 00:26:57,426 to say to my other brother, "Oh, we made some brownies." 509 00:26:57,426 --> 00:26:59,866 Obviously, my brother was like, "I don't think so," - 510 00:26:59,866 --> 00:27:01,386 even to a five-year-old. 511 00:27:01,386 --> 00:27:04,706 But my mum was like, "Oh, lovely, lovely!" 512 00:27:04,706 --> 00:27:06,506 And she ate one. 513 00:27:06,506 --> 00:27:08,106 She was blind for 45 minutes. 514 00:27:11,906 --> 00:27:13,346 Couldn't see a thing! 515 00:27:13,346 --> 00:27:15,626 You know what you have to do, I discovered? 516 00:27:15,626 --> 00:27:17,666 Sugar. Oh, does that stop it? 517 00:27:17,666 --> 00:27:19,906 Just a teaspoon of sugar and hold it in your mouth. 518 00:27:19,906 --> 00:27:22,626 It's the only thing that will work. Everything else makes it worse. 519 00:27:22,626 --> 00:27:24,266 People drink milk as well. 520 00:27:24,266 --> 00:27:27,106 You can really test how vegan somebody was, couldn't you, 521 00:27:27,106 --> 00:27:30,426 by giving them the pepper and a pint of milk? 522 00:27:34,066 --> 00:27:38,467 You could really test it, couldn't you? That is so horrible! 523 00:27:38,547 --> 00:27:41,547 That is one of the meanest things I've ever heard. 524 00:27:41,547 --> 00:27:43,787 It's genius, it's evil genius. 525 00:27:43,787 --> 00:27:47,547 Birds can't taste chilli, but squirrels can. Oh... 526 00:27:47,547 --> 00:27:51,827 So in 2008 the RSPB recommended that you sprinkle your bird food 527 00:27:51,827 --> 00:27:54,667 with chilli, and this will keep the squirrels away. 528 00:27:54,667 --> 00:27:59,147 However, what they discovered is it spurred some squirrels on. 529 00:27:59,147 --> 00:28:03,307 Just like humans, some squirrels bloody love chilli. 530 00:28:03,307 --> 00:28:04,707 Go on, Trevor! 531 00:28:10,147 --> 00:28:13,307 They were racing to the stuff with the chillies on. 532 00:28:13,307 --> 00:28:15,947 I need a tiny tissue, a tiny tissue! 533 00:28:15,947 --> 00:28:19,068 Hazelnut milk! Hazelnut milk! 534 00:28:21,668 --> 00:28:23,068 Anyway, here's a weird question - 535 00:28:23,068 --> 00:28:25,788 why might you put chilli in a condom? 536 00:28:28,708 --> 00:28:30,148 Revenge. 537 00:28:36,628 --> 00:28:38,228 Did they do this in your school, 538 00:28:38,228 --> 00:28:41,348 they used to put Deep Heat in people's jockstraps? Oh, yeah... 539 00:28:41,348 --> 00:28:42,828 Wow. 540 00:28:42,828 --> 00:28:46,108 And then, I remember in one particular scrum on the rugby pitch, 541 00:28:46,108 --> 00:28:47,988 there was some very loud screaming... 542 00:28:49,188 --> 00:28:51,508 ..from a lad whose jockstrap had just settled in. 543 00:28:53,268 --> 00:28:54,748 And he couldn't get out of the scrum, 544 00:28:54,748 --> 00:28:57,028 and they wouldn't let him out either, those bastards. 545 00:28:59,709 --> 00:29:01,789 Anyway, no. Um... 546 00:29:01,789 --> 00:29:03,389 It's to do with elephants. 547 00:29:03,389 --> 00:29:06,229 What?! This question gets weirder. Is it to stimulate elephants? 548 00:29:06,229 --> 00:29:07,749 It's quite the opposite. 549 00:29:07,749 --> 00:29:13,429 Elephants have THE most acute sense of smell of any mammal. Do they? 550 00:29:13,429 --> 00:29:14,989 And they hate the smell of chilli, 551 00:29:14,989 --> 00:29:17,789 so Tanzanian farmers want to keep them away from their land, 552 00:29:17,789 --> 00:29:20,389 and they've tried all sorts of things. Elephants are so clever. 553 00:29:20,389 --> 00:29:22,629 They've tried putting bells around their necks, 554 00:29:22,629 --> 00:29:25,549 and the elephant, within 24 hours, was packing the bell 555 00:29:25,549 --> 00:29:28,989 with their own dung to stop it ringing. Oh, my God. 556 00:29:28,989 --> 00:29:32,349 But if you put chilli in a condom and attach a firework 557 00:29:32,349 --> 00:29:36,189 to it and throw it at an elephant, it explodes in a great cloud 558 00:29:36,189 --> 00:29:40,750 of spicy powder, the elephant hates it and goes away, 559 00:29:40,750 --> 00:29:43,030 but it's not harmed. Wow. 560 00:29:43,030 --> 00:29:44,510 So putting chilli in a condom 561 00:29:44,510 --> 00:29:46,990 is a very good way to get rid of them off your land. 562 00:29:46,990 --> 00:29:49,150 Ah, but if that elephant was very clever, 563 00:29:49,150 --> 00:29:51,310 he'd come up the next day with a gas mask. 564 00:29:54,390 --> 00:29:56,910 I think you've got to question your life a little bit when 565 00:29:56,910 --> 00:30:00,230 you're putting chilli in condoms and throwing them at elephants. 566 00:30:00,230 --> 00:30:03,750 Just a little bit of you is going, "What happened?" 567 00:30:07,630 --> 00:30:09,910 "Why didn't I do more maths?" 568 00:30:12,310 --> 00:30:14,590 Sorry, Sandi. 569 00:30:16,070 --> 00:30:19,390 What's an elephant's gas mask going to be like, for God's sake? 570 00:30:19,390 --> 00:30:22,431 Do they have to coil the whole trunk up? 571 00:30:24,231 --> 00:30:27,631 Is it on the end of the trunk, the gas mask? 572 00:30:32,111 --> 00:30:33,831 Right, let's put the peppers away. 573 00:30:33,831 --> 00:30:38,711 So, we all know that Pythagoras loved triangles, 574 00:30:38,711 --> 00:30:41,271 but what did he hate? 575 00:30:41,271 --> 00:30:42,711 Dairylea. 576 00:30:48,911 --> 00:30:50,271 Squares? 577 00:30:51,831 --> 00:30:53,071 Here we go... 578 00:30:54,791 --> 00:30:56,351 I'll do this. 579 00:30:56,351 --> 00:30:57,671 Rectangles? 580 00:31:02,031 --> 00:31:04,672 Rhomboids? Rhomboids. 581 00:31:04,672 --> 00:31:07,152 Well, have a... Yeah! 582 00:31:07,152 --> 00:31:08,232 A rhomboid... 583 00:31:11,072 --> 00:31:12,512 I can't spell it! 584 00:31:16,632 --> 00:31:18,632 He hated something so much, it killed him. 585 00:31:18,632 --> 00:31:20,352 Where are his arms? 586 00:31:24,752 --> 00:31:29,192 "I can only do a tiny triangle for you." "It's all we want." 587 00:31:29,192 --> 00:31:31,992 It's a bit sort of... A bit Yoda-like, isn't it? 588 00:31:31,992 --> 00:31:35,112 "And it's this long, and this high." 589 00:31:35,112 --> 00:31:36,952 It's a food that he didn't like - 590 00:31:36,952 --> 00:31:39,752 in fact, he disliked it so much, it killed him. Pineapples. 591 00:31:39,752 --> 00:31:41,832 No, it's fava beans. 592 00:31:41,832 --> 00:31:46,953 So a kind of broad bean and, according to multiple sources - 593 00:31:46,953 --> 00:31:50,833 for example the ancient Greek biographer Diogenes Laertius - 594 00:31:50,833 --> 00:31:54,473 he died when a mob of his enemies torched the building 595 00:31:54,473 --> 00:31:56,633 that he was in, and they chased him out of it, 596 00:31:56,633 --> 00:31:59,593 and he got a very good lead, and he came to a field of fava beans, 597 00:31:59,593 --> 00:32:04,233 and he preferred to die rather than to cross over the field of beans. 598 00:32:04,233 --> 00:32:05,833 His pursuers caught up with him 599 00:32:05,833 --> 00:32:08,033 and slit his throat and that is how he died. 600 00:32:08,033 --> 00:32:09,353 Why were they chasing him? 601 00:32:09,353 --> 00:32:11,233 They wanted democracy, and he didn't. 602 00:32:11,233 --> 00:32:13,593 He believed in ruling by scholars and the elite. 603 00:32:13,593 --> 00:32:15,713 So we don't know why he disliked them so much. 604 00:32:15,713 --> 00:32:18,073 So one of the theories, Diogenes claimed he hated them 605 00:32:18,073 --> 00:32:20,953 because they caused flatulence, and that represented a disturbance 606 00:32:20,953 --> 00:32:24,394 of the soul, so basically Pythagoras believed that every time you farted, 607 00:32:24,394 --> 00:32:26,074 you lost a part of your soul. 608 00:32:26,074 --> 00:32:29,914 Oh, my God, my arse is soulless, I'll tell you that. 609 00:32:31,914 --> 00:32:33,874 Aristotle speculated why he hated them - 610 00:32:33,874 --> 00:32:36,354 either because they have the shape of testicles or because 611 00:32:36,354 --> 00:32:39,514 they resemble the gates of hell, for they alone have no hinges. 612 00:32:39,514 --> 00:32:42,114 The gates of hell look like testicles? 613 00:32:42,114 --> 00:32:43,394 I've not been. 614 00:32:46,474 --> 00:32:48,234 Actually, to either. 615 00:32:51,554 --> 00:32:54,154 I find mathematicians very much geniuses, 616 00:32:54,154 --> 00:32:56,994 cos I was not good at maths at school at all, 617 00:32:56,994 --> 00:32:58,834 so I'm always fascinated by it. 618 00:32:58,834 --> 00:33:01,834 In fact, I remember distinctly my maths GCSE, 619 00:33:01,834 --> 00:33:04,794 O-levels, and failing abysmally, and my mum, 620 00:33:04,794 --> 00:33:07,875 I can see her face right now - "Oh, Lord, Jesus!" 621 00:33:07,875 --> 00:33:09,675 "How can we look our friends" 622 00:33:09,675 --> 00:33:12,355 "in the eyes when we tell them our son Stephen is not" 623 00:33:12,355 --> 00:33:16,235 "just a simpleton, but he has a certificate to prove it?" 624 00:33:22,995 --> 00:33:25,115 Well, you wouldn't have been a good Pythagorean, 625 00:33:25,115 --> 00:33:27,755 because numbers were absolutely essential to the whole thing, 626 00:33:27,755 --> 00:33:30,115 because he preached a sort of number worship. 627 00:33:30,115 --> 00:33:32,595 But there are amazing thing that his followers believed. 628 00:33:32,595 --> 00:33:34,875 They believed he had a thigh made of gold... Thigh? 629 00:33:34,875 --> 00:33:37,475 ..which was evidence that he was a son of Apollo, 630 00:33:37,475 --> 00:33:40,475 that he was able to literally be in two places at once, 631 00:33:40,475 --> 00:33:43,875 that he physically glowed like the sun itself, 632 00:33:43,875 --> 00:33:45,595 and that a river once called out, 633 00:33:45,595 --> 00:33:48,396 "Greetings, Pythagoras," as he passed by. 634 00:33:50,316 --> 00:33:52,156 It's weird that Pythagoras is one of 635 00:33:52,156 --> 00:33:54,596 the three things that I remember from school. 636 00:33:54,596 --> 00:33:58,316 What's the other two? Oxbow lake. Oh, yeah, I remember that. 637 00:33:58,316 --> 00:34:00,236 Photosynthesis. Yeah. 638 00:34:00,236 --> 00:34:03,156 It's like it's all gone in as osmosis. That's the fourth. 639 00:34:05,956 --> 00:34:07,716 Weird, isn't it? 640 00:34:07,716 --> 00:34:10,436 What is it about the oxbow lake? I remember the oxbow lake. 641 00:34:10,436 --> 00:34:12,156 Because geography is so boring, 642 00:34:12,156 --> 00:34:14,476 and it's just like, "How'd that get there?" 643 00:34:14,476 --> 00:34:17,356 I've got to be honest, I have no idea what you're talking about. 644 00:34:17,356 --> 00:34:20,236 Oxbow lakes? Oh, right... Mate! 645 00:34:22,396 --> 00:34:23,676 So...you've got a river. 646 00:34:23,676 --> 00:34:26,957 So you've got a river. It's bendy, it's a bendy river. Bendy river. 647 00:34:26,957 --> 00:34:29,237 Meander... Bendy river. 648 00:34:29,237 --> 00:34:33,437 Then gradually, that erodes... Erosion. That erodes... 649 00:34:33,437 --> 00:34:37,157 It takes years and years! Years and years, it takes! 650 00:34:37,157 --> 00:34:40,637 That's the lake. And then the river...carries on. 651 00:34:40,637 --> 00:34:42,077 It cuts off here. 652 00:34:45,557 --> 00:34:49,037 How's that possible, you all knew what was, and I didn't, mmm? 653 00:34:49,037 --> 00:34:51,477 And you've got a certificate to prove it! 654 00:34:58,237 --> 00:35:02,357 Maybe different lessons for the white kids! 655 00:35:02,357 --> 00:35:04,997 They did say to us - they did whisper afterwards - 656 00:35:04,997 --> 00:35:07,037 "Don't tell the black children!" 657 00:35:07,037 --> 00:35:10,638 Don't tell 'em! Don't tell the black children. 658 00:35:10,638 --> 00:35:13,878 If you tell 'em about oxbow lakes, where will it stop? 659 00:35:18,318 --> 00:35:21,638 Anyway, Pythagoras hated anyone who had a pulse. 660 00:35:21,638 --> 00:35:24,558 Come on, people, let's... 661 00:35:24,558 --> 00:35:28,078 Right. A pulse is a sort of a bean... 662 00:35:32,598 --> 00:35:38,078 How can a passenger hold up a train with a cheese and tomato sandwich? 663 00:35:40,438 --> 00:35:43,918 Just leave it in a bag, in a rucksack by itself. That's true. 664 00:35:45,678 --> 00:35:47,998 Put the sandwich on the tracks. 665 00:35:47,998 --> 00:35:50,759 Well, sort of. Sort of put the sandwich the tracks. 666 00:35:50,759 --> 00:35:52,679 You see, I know stuff! 667 00:35:53,879 --> 00:35:55,919 You were in that day, weren't you? 668 00:36:02,039 --> 00:36:04,839 So, first, you have to eat the sandwich. Oh. 669 00:36:04,839 --> 00:36:07,319 And then how are you going to get it on the tracks? Uh-oh. 670 00:36:07,319 --> 00:36:10,359 Oh, by flushing the toilet. You're absolutely right. 671 00:36:10,359 --> 00:36:13,719 So, tomato seeds have a casing that allows them to survive the trip 672 00:36:13,719 --> 00:36:16,959 all the way down through the human digestive system intact. 673 00:36:16,959 --> 00:36:21,639 Oh, OK. Human excrement is an excellent fertiliser. 674 00:36:21,639 --> 00:36:26,039 And it has caused so much trouble because tomato plants are actually 675 00:36:26,039 --> 00:36:30,200 growing onto tracks in the UK 676 00:36:30,200 --> 00:36:33,760 from train toilets being emptied, people having eaten tomatoes. 677 00:36:33,760 --> 00:36:36,800 I feel this is a really positive story of hope. Yes. 678 00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:41,320 These tomatoes, against all adversity! In Norwich... 679 00:36:41,320 --> 00:36:43,440 I don't know if you've been to Norwich station, 680 00:36:43,440 --> 00:36:44,680 it's a beautiful station. 681 00:36:44,680 --> 00:36:47,440 And it's got a glass roof and it acts like a giant greenhouse, 682 00:36:47,440 --> 00:36:49,400 and passengers are not doing as they're told - 683 00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:51,040 they are flushing in the station.... 684 00:36:51,040 --> 00:36:53,320 Not shitting on the platform, are they? 685 00:36:55,040 --> 00:36:58,080 They're leaning over the platform. No... 686 00:36:58,080 --> 00:37:01,960 No, they're flushing on the train in the... Oh, I see! 687 00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:05,480 Surely it's been years since they actually dumped the loo on the... 688 00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:08,960 No, so, one in ten trains are still dumping directly onto the track. 689 00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:12,041 They say that by 2019, it will all be over. 690 00:37:12,041 --> 00:37:14,801 But why does the tomato plant stop the train going? 691 00:37:14,801 --> 00:37:18,281 They're small plants. Should we make trains stronger? 692 00:37:20,041 --> 00:37:21,921 It's a plant, grows, isn't it? 693 00:37:21,921 --> 00:37:24,121 If you grow one in a poo, the tomatoes are massive! 694 00:37:26,481 --> 00:37:29,441 Those toilets have this incredibly high suction system, 695 00:37:29,441 --> 00:37:32,921 and every few years somebody gets their arm stuck down... 696 00:37:32,921 --> 00:37:34,681 Their arm? Yes. 697 00:37:34,681 --> 00:37:37,081 Usually, I think, getting a phone out of it. 698 00:37:37,081 --> 00:37:40,361 Oh, right, I was going to say... Not trying to get back the tomato. 699 00:37:42,321 --> 00:37:47,521 In France, in 2011, it took fire crews two hours to rescue a man 700 00:37:47,521 --> 00:37:49,881 who'd got his arm caught down the toilet 701 00:37:49,881 --> 00:37:52,322 and eventually they carried him away on the stretcher 702 00:37:52,322 --> 00:37:55,362 with the toilet bowl still attached! Oh, no! 703 00:37:55,362 --> 00:37:58,402 Were they trying to get to him up through the toilet? 704 00:37:58,402 --> 00:38:01,522 "We'll pull you right through! We'll get you right through!" 705 00:38:01,522 --> 00:38:03,562 "I'm not going to get right through -" 706 00:38:03,562 --> 00:38:05,402 "you need to pull me out this way!" 707 00:38:06,682 --> 00:38:10,962 Now, for the root of all Alan's problems, it's General Ignorance! 708 00:38:10,962 --> 00:38:13,402 Plant your fingers on your buzzers, please. 709 00:38:13,402 --> 00:38:16,362 Name a root vegetable beginning with P. 710 00:38:16,362 --> 00:38:19,082 Sanskrit... Parsnip. 711 00:38:19,082 --> 00:38:21,802 Yes! Is absolutely right! 712 00:38:26,962 --> 00:38:28,202 That would be correct, 713 00:38:28,202 --> 00:38:30,482 as you've not said potatoes, because they are not roots. 714 00:38:30,482 --> 00:38:34,603 The potato is part of the stem, so it's not a root vegetable. 715 00:38:34,603 --> 00:38:37,483 Any other vegetables beginning with P? 716 00:38:37,483 --> 00:38:38,883 Peetroot. 717 00:38:40,883 --> 00:38:42,443 Parrots! 718 00:38:50,243 --> 00:38:53,443 So the other ones you might look at - sweet potato is a root. 719 00:38:53,443 --> 00:38:55,243 Introduced to Europe in the 1490s, 720 00:38:55,243 --> 00:38:58,043 so it's at least 70 years before the potato. 721 00:38:58,043 --> 00:38:59,843 But doesn't that begin with an S? 722 00:39:01,523 --> 00:39:03,843 Well, it depends if you are very fussy, and you are right 723 00:39:03,843 --> 00:39:06,923 in the sense that it's not remotely related to the actual potato. 724 00:39:06,923 --> 00:39:09,923 It's in the same family as morning glory, in fact, 725 00:39:09,923 --> 00:39:12,003 which I don't recommend... 726 00:39:12,003 --> 00:39:14,004 Ah, there's a root vegetable! 727 00:39:16,204 --> 00:39:17,684 I do not recommend... 728 00:39:17,684 --> 00:39:20,004 Feel like a root vegetable this morning? 729 00:39:25,204 --> 00:39:27,924 A wonderful story - in 2014, there was a man from Aylesbury 730 00:39:27,924 --> 00:39:30,244 called Don Dover, and he was so excited. 731 00:39:30,244 --> 00:39:34,164 And he called news crews to his garden because his parsnip plant 732 00:39:34,164 --> 00:39:37,444 had grown enormous leaves above the ground. 733 00:39:37,444 --> 00:39:39,884 About 7ft high, and so the crew came, he was going to 734 00:39:39,884 --> 00:39:42,884 dig up the parsnip, it was going to be the most exciting thing, 735 00:39:42,884 --> 00:39:46,564 and they filmed it, and the parsnip was four inches long. 736 00:39:48,604 --> 00:39:52,284 World record for a parsnip, any ideas how big? Longest parsnip? 737 00:39:52,284 --> 00:39:55,045 50kg. No, the length. 738 00:39:55,045 --> 00:39:57,685 12 inches? 12 inches? 12 inches? 739 00:39:57,685 --> 00:40:00,045 So, there's a man called Peter Glazebrook. It was 18... 740 00:40:00,045 --> 00:40:02,325 12 miles. 741 00:40:02,325 --> 00:40:08,125 Whoa! 18 and a half feet. Look! Look how proud he is! Yeah. 742 00:40:08,125 --> 00:40:11,205 Chin up - "Look at me parsnip!" 743 00:40:12,885 --> 00:40:15,325 That's exactly what the massive parsnip face should be. 744 00:40:15,325 --> 00:40:18,845 Yeah. The potato is not a root vegetable, but the parsnip is. 745 00:40:18,845 --> 00:40:22,005 Buzz in as soon as you know the answer to these questions. 746 00:40:22,005 --> 00:40:24,445 What French dish can you make from these words? 747 00:40:24,445 --> 00:40:27,565 Violets... Yes? Is it duck a l'orange? 748 00:40:27,565 --> 00:40:30,725 Well, let's use the word canard, as it's the one we've got up there. 749 00:40:30,725 --> 00:40:32,485 Canard a l'orange. 750 00:40:32,485 --> 00:40:34,965 What English dish can you make from these? 751 00:40:34,965 --> 00:40:37,366 Toad in the hole. Toad in the hole, absolutely right. 752 00:40:37,366 --> 00:40:40,446 What Mexican dish can you make from these? 753 00:40:40,446 --> 00:40:42,246 Violets... Chilli con carne. 754 00:40:43,486 --> 00:40:44,686 Yeah, no. 755 00:40:45,806 --> 00:40:47,966 It's a trick again! It's a trick again! 756 00:40:47,966 --> 00:40:50,086 Chilli con carne comes from Texas. 757 00:40:50,086 --> 00:40:52,566 Ah... It has nothing to do with Mexico. 758 00:40:52,566 --> 00:40:54,766 In Texas, it's the official state dish. 759 00:40:54,766 --> 00:40:57,846 But Mexicans make carne con chilli. 760 00:40:57,846 --> 00:41:01,846 In 1959, a Mexican dictionary defined chilli con carne as 761 00:41:01,846 --> 00:41:05,526 "detestable food passing itself off as Mexican," 762 00:41:05,526 --> 00:41:09,726 "sold in the US from Texas to New York." 763 00:41:09,726 --> 00:41:12,246 Sounds like they need some sort of wall. 764 00:41:14,726 --> 00:41:16,927 Just to keep them yanks out, you know? 765 00:41:16,927 --> 00:41:20,207 Now, then - what do you use your palate for? 766 00:41:21,927 --> 00:41:24,247 Stephen's going. Sanskrit... 767 00:41:24,247 --> 00:41:26,687 For, erm... Paint. Paint it. 768 00:41:26,687 --> 00:41:27,847 Oh...! 769 00:41:29,607 --> 00:41:32,167 For... Taste? Taste! 770 00:41:36,447 --> 00:41:39,327 Don't listen to Alan! 771 00:41:39,327 --> 00:41:42,727 Is the palate that thing that separates the acidic taste 772 00:41:42,727 --> 00:41:46,007 to the salty taste to the...? No, it has nothing to do with taste. 773 00:41:46,007 --> 00:41:49,087 It's to stop your brain falling into your mouth. 774 00:41:50,327 --> 00:41:53,407 You're weirdly closer, you're weirdly closer. 775 00:41:53,407 --> 00:41:55,167 It's like a protective case. 776 00:41:55,167 --> 00:41:56,647 Well, fundamentally what it does 777 00:41:56,647 --> 00:41:59,488 is it separates your oral and your nasal cavities, 778 00:41:59,488 --> 00:42:02,128 it stops you getting a mouthful of snot or a nose full of food. 779 00:42:02,128 --> 00:42:03,968 It doesn't have any taste buds. 780 00:42:03,968 --> 00:42:06,928 Foetuses have taste buds in their palate, newborn babies do, 781 00:42:06,928 --> 00:42:09,208 but these disappear within a very few months. 782 00:42:09,208 --> 00:42:11,768 So it has nothing to do with taste at all. 783 00:42:11,768 --> 00:42:15,048 Although we do have taste receptors in the most extraordinary places. 784 00:42:15,048 --> 00:42:18,488 The genitals. Yes. So, men have them in their testicles. Yeah. 785 00:42:18,488 --> 00:42:21,368 People have them in their stomach, in their intestines, 786 00:42:21,368 --> 00:42:23,968 their pancreas, their lungs, their anus. Yeah. 787 00:42:23,968 --> 00:42:25,688 And to be honest... 788 00:42:28,128 --> 00:42:31,088 I think that was the quarter past two to Chester. 789 00:42:40,089 --> 00:42:42,049 We have taste buds in surprising places, 790 00:42:42,049 --> 00:42:43,969 the place we don't have them is in the palate, 791 00:42:43,969 --> 00:42:47,289 so the idea of having a good palate is a misnomer. 792 00:42:47,289 --> 00:42:50,169 There's taste buds is your...down there now. Yes. 793 00:42:50,169 --> 00:42:53,649 Who told us this? Was it scientists? Yes. 794 00:42:57,449 --> 00:43:01,529 I'm just saying! There's a theme, isn't there? 795 00:43:01,529 --> 00:43:05,609 "And there's also taste buds in your bollocks! There you go!" 796 00:43:05,609 --> 00:43:07,529 And so it's time for the scores. 797 00:43:07,529 --> 00:43:12,289 In first place, at the very top of the tree, 798 00:43:12,289 --> 00:43:14,249 with -1, it's Stephen! 799 00:43:19,810 --> 00:43:22,770 In second place, -2, Jason! 800 00:43:27,330 --> 00:43:31,450 And hot on his heels in third place with -3, it's Sara! 801 00:43:36,490 --> 00:43:39,050 And in last place with -97... 802 00:43:40,330 --> 00:43:42,650 ..it's Alan! 803 00:43:49,810 --> 00:43:53,650 Thank you to Sara, Jason, Stephen and Alan. And I leave you with this 804 00:43:53,650 --> 00:43:55,930 from American humourist Erma Bombeck. 805 00:43:55,930 --> 00:43:59,731 "Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died." 806 00:43:59,731 --> 00:44:01,491 Thank you, goodnight!