Hello, and welcome to QI, where tonight we're enjoying
an absolute plethora of painful punishments.
Please welcome the well hung, drawn and quartered,
Jimmy Carr.
A cool cat-o'-nine-tails, Lee Mack.
Thank you.
An irony maiden, Alice Levine.
And, with his neck on the block, Alan Davies.
And their buzzers are all suitably painful.
Jimmy goes...
Oh... Short but sharp, I think.
And Lee goes...
Alice goes...
And Alan goes...
Tottenham Hotspur - 6, Arsenal - 0.
The most painful cut of all.
Question one is all about the place of eternal punishment.
So tell me, how many circles does hell have?
Someone just went... .."Seven!"
Was that for me?
Were you trying to...?
That person was wrong.
No, not seven circles.
It's like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire all over again,
with the coughing. Yes. Seven... Five.
Five, why five?
Did you say hell or the Olympic rings?
These are concentric circles of doom
that, depending on how bad you've been...
Yeah, yeah. It just gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse,
and then the devil's in the middle.
Who was the person who wrote about the circles of hell? Dante.
Dante, so in Dante's Inferno...
Nine, nine circles of hell. Absolutely, nine circles in hell.
So the first part of the epic poem, the Divine Comedy.
So the seventh circle is the one everybody talks about,
but there's nothing special about it.
It's where murderers are punished.
Oh... Isn't there a weird thing where murderers are punished there,
but then it gets worse if you're a fraudster,
which I'm annoyed about.
It's just made like... There's a murderer,
and then in a worse place there's me and my accountant going, "What?!"
Well, you do strike me, Jimmy,
as someone that eventually will murder, as well.
Thank you, Lee.
Just to get out of hell one step at a time.
You're going to end up in the eighth circle of hell.
The eighth? Yes. OK.
It's where fraudsters, pimps, hypocrites,
coin forgers and flatterers are punished in, frankly, various...
Flatterers?! Flatterers?! Flatterers.
You look well, Sandi. Arrrrrgh!
So what? Being a suck-up is as bad as being Jimmy?
I'm using you as... I'm using you...
"As bad as being"?! What?!
Yeah, so flatterers get immersed in dung.
That's their thing. Oh, OK.
Quacks have to suffer the ailments that they've caused in life.
People who've tried to predict the future
have to walk around with their head on backwards, unable to see ahead...
What about Daily Mail readers? Are they at number nine?
We know what circle Jimmy's in,
let's see if anybody else wants one of these.
First circle is just basically limbo,
it's for virtuous non-Christians.
So... Gary Lineker.
Why Gary Lineker?
I just say that about any ex-Tottenham players.
First circle of hell. Straight away.
People in the first limbo have to spend eternity
in an inferior heaven.
So it's a bit like... That sounds all right.
Slightly cheaper furniture. I'm quite into that, yeah.
Things that have to be put together with an Allen key.
Second one is lust.
This is the first of the circles of incontinence.
Can I go back to one, please?
Sexual incontinence, rather than urinary, if I may say so.
OK, got you. So you would be spending your time with Cleopatra,
Helen of Troy, people like that.
And you get to spend time with Helen of Troy? Yeah.
That... Put me down for one of those, yeah.
It's too late - you're already in number eight.
This is quite a sexy circle, isn't it, this one?
Yeah, that's a good circle. Gluttony, that's number three.
Trapped in a vile slush.
Greed is number four... Sorry, what flavour was the slush?
I don't know if... Is it like the blue one? I like the blue one.
You get to be pounded by icy rain, I don't know if you fancy...
Oh, it is, it's literally slush. Yeah.
Is greed on a different category to gluttony?
Yes, and they have to push rocks around pointlessly.
Is there a way of pushing rocks around that isn't pointless?
Yes, if you say it's curling. Curling.
Number five, anger.
And people who are sullen. Sullen, angry types.
Yeah. Heresy is number six.
Violence, number seven.
The final circle, the ninth.
There are four circles within the final circle
and they have different names as they go down.
The worst one is round four, named after Judas Iscariot.
So, hell has nine circles, but if you think that's bad,
Milton Keynes has got 130 roundabouts.
I think that's the wonderful thing about Milton Keynes,
the roundabouts, cos there's lots of chances to turn back.
Now, before you get to hell, can you tell me, where is purgatory?
Milton Keynes.
Bloody marvellous.
I don't even... I don't even mean it. I like Milton Keynes.
It's very nice. They've got a very nice theatre.
Are you really doing
the "some of my best friends are from Milton Keynes"?
So where is purgatory?
Does anybody know what purgatory means?
Is there a difference between purgatory and limbo?
Yes. So, limbo is one of the circles of hell.
It's like the waiting room for heaven, isn't it?
Well, a lot of Christians in the late Middle Ages
believed that humans have to suffer for their earthly sins
before they enter into heaven,
and it was actually a physical place on Earth.
The real debate was where it was.
They're saying it's a place on Earth?
Is it the Trump Tower in New York?
Lots of people used to believe it was under Mount Etna,
but there was a very popular 12th-century text
called The Treatise of St Patrick's Purgatory,
and it persuaded a lot of Catholics
that, in fact, purgatory was a cave in Ireland,
on Station Island, so it's in a lake called Lough Derg in County Donegal,
and it appeared as a physical location
on loads and loads of medieval maps.
This is actually one from 1666, and lots of people believe
that this cave was the portal to purgatory.
15,000 people a year still go on a pilgrimage to this place.
Is that...? Is that it? Yes.
It's all built-up now? Yes, it is.
People hope to go to purgatory,
because only saints went straight to heaven.
Unrepentant sinners went to hell,
so, honestly, purgatory was your top option -
and then, while you were there, your soul would burn in flames
until it was clean enough to get into heaven.
Oh, well, that sounds nice.
He looks like he's just won the Showstopper on Bake-Off.
And he's even got the audacity...
"This is my recipe, if anyone wants to read about..."
Well, funnily enough, Lee,
there were two ways to get your soul out of purgatory,
and one of them was to give people cake to eat on your behalf. No!
That was a way of doing it.
So on the evening before All Souls' Day,
poor people would go door to door
and they would offer to say prayers for the dead...
A banana. ..in return...
Well... Yes, that does appear to be a banana -
but in return for food.
They were called soul cakes, and...
That looks like one of those cons at the fairground
where you're never going to win a goldfish,
it's never going over that cross, is it?
The other way, which was much simpler if you were wealthy...
I don't know why I'm looking at you, Jimmy.
..you could pay institutions to pray for your soul on your deathbed
and thus cleanse your soul and let you into heaven -
you didn't need to do it yourself.
You can today.
There are nuns, particularly in the United States,
that you can pay per prayer to pray for you.
So if you haven't got time... Come on! Yes.
They've got a webcam.
Might be different nuns. I'm pretty sure it's the same.
OK, which of these punishments would you rather receive?
The penalty of the sack, an Assyrian parking fine,
or be forced to wear a drunkard's cloak?
Are they all worse than they sound?
Well, certainly the parking fines is hideous.
So, we're talking 700 BC, what do you think the parking fine
might have been in 700 BC?
Well, I don't know, but I know after 30 days,
it doubles if you don't remember to pay.
What are you parking in Assyria?
Chariot or a horse or a camel or anything you like.
Where is Assyria? Is it Syria?
It's modern northern Iraq,
south-eastern Turkey, north-western fringes of Iran,
it's an area that's now divided up into other countries -
and there was a king called Sennacherib,
and he announced a parking restriction
on the kingdom's royal road,
so you couldn't build anything on it,
you couldn't park your chariot out front,
and if you did, you were impaled on a stake
and planted in your own garden.
And that's for a single yellow or a double yellow?
What if your horse has just broken down?
Got his hazards on.
As long as he blinks like that, that's all right, the horse...
But they actually had a sign that said,
"Royal road, let no man decrease it", and so...
This is 2,700 years ago,
it would've been in cuneiform, Akkadian cuneiform.
What is really interesting is that that average person at that time
was able to read.
You don't think that's a thing 2,700 years ago,
that somebody might have had, A, a sign about parking...
I suppose not understanding the signs
meaning you end up impaled and planted in your garden
is a good motivation for reading.
You're saying it's like it's more of a punishment,
"in your OWN garden". Why is that bit so bad?
You might have landscaped,
you might have got your lovely front garden sorted, and then you...
Yeah, you've just put the leylandii in, it's all looking nice.
You'd be like one of those weather cocks, wouldn't you?
You'd swing around with the wind.
And if you've died like that, you could always point
in the direction of the wind.
Just imagine, if you, I don't know, say your husband has been impaled
on a stake and planted in the garden, you spend all your time
going, "Yeah, but where have you put the car?"
Yeah, the horse is in a pound somewhere...
Also impaled on a stake.
I mean, impale the horse, not me!
Stashed all the parking tickets in its mouth.
"Look at them all!"
"Look at how many you've ignored!"
Right, well, other punishments.
The penalty of the sack, or a drunkard's cloak.
What do you fancy?
Penalty of the sack, that... it doesn't sound too bad.
Maybe a waxing?
I'll have that, it's not too bad.
It's an ancient Roman punishment. It was called...
Couple of clothes pegs.
It's called poena cullei,
it's an ancient Roman punishment for parricide.
Anybody know what parricide is?
Parricide, killing someone in the family?
Killing your parents.
It must have been popular enough to merit a separate punishment.
It involved being whipped, stitched into a leather sack
and thrown into the sea.
The Emperor Hadrian adjusted the law by including animals in the sack,
along with the victims.
You might have a dog or a cockerel, a snake or a monkey.
We're not really sure whether that was just a deterrent,
or they really did look for the animals,
but we do know it survived into the 18th century in Germany,
and monkeys and snakes,
really hard to source.
So, in 1715...
Oh, I thought you meant when you're cooking them, sorry.
Oh, I see, yes.
You'd have a bearnaise or something, yeah.
So, they were very difficult to source, so in 1715,
there was one man who was "sacked" with a dog,
a cockerel, a cat and a picture of a snake.
It's the thought that counts.
Drawn by a child.
What about the drunkard's cloak?
It's something metallic that is impaled upon you?
No, wooden.
In the 1640s - and I think you're going to find this hard to credit -
Newcastle upon Tyne had a problem with drunkenness in the streets.
Oh, shut up! No way.
What I know about Newcastle, and I know it quite well,
is no-one there wears a cloak of any kind, no matter what the weather.
So the initial punishment was to put the offender in the stocks,
but if that didn't work, they would take a barrel,
and they would cut the bottom off it, and they would cut holes
like this, one for the head, two for the hands,
and they would force the drunk to parade around town.
I think he's more of a medium. He's wearing an extra large there,
and it's not hugging in the right places.
That's not overly flattering.
He looks as if he's about to tell quite a fun story.
Yeah. "All I did was I parked the chariot..."
It's a very unfortunate outfit,
because drunk people fall over a lot.
If he falls over, he's not getting back up very easily.
No. He could end up miles away.
Over a waterfall or something.
What's she got on her head? Scold's bridle.
She's wearing a scold's bridle
and it was something that was done for nagging women.
You can't really see from here, but it had a piece
that went into the mouth and prevented her from speaking.
And where can you get these?
In ancient Jewish culture, and indeed in Athens,
male body hair was valued,
and one punishment was punitive depilation.
Oh, that sounds painful! Oh, yes.
They burnt off your anal and pubic hair.
I've had that done. Punitive depilation!
Have you had that done? Oh, it looks amazing now.
Like a runway.
Everyone likes a clean work surface.
Yours is Formica, though, isn't it, Jimmy?
Apparently men found it emasculating
because women often singed off their hair as a beauty thing,
and men did not like having this done to them.
Well, I imagine having it done to you wouldn't be great, would it? No.
I think, fire and genitals - try and keep 'em away. Yeah!
OK. What's the best punishment to keep people punctual?
I haven't encountered it yet,
because I'm a very late person, so... Why?
It drives me mad! I know! Sandi, I know!
You were supposed to be on last week's show, weren't you? Yeah!
Why...? If you make an arrangement, why can't you turn up on time?
Because I do the thing where I think as long as I leave the house
before the arrangement starts, then it's fine. I do the same.
Wow. It hasn't started yet - we'll be all right.
Yeah, exactly. "But it's in Wales!"
There's a name for people like you - it's called selfish.
I'm always on time, Sandi. What about you, Jimmy?
I've been late once in my professional career.
I was late for a gig in Blackburn by two hours
because the train just stopped.
It was... Yeah...
Did they wait?
Well, the annoying thing was I had to buy everyone a drink.
Yeah, with your audience that's only 18 quid.
Boom!
I once had a gig in Torquay,
and I was told I could fly down to the area...
You can't fly!
These magic beans, Sandi?
BA had a flight going from Gatwick.
Anyway, the flight was cancelled, so I went out to the cab rank
and I got in a black cab and I said,
"Will you please take me to Torquay?"
and we were ten minutes late.
No! Wow. Yeah.
The bill was eye-watering.
Well, that's always the cheapest way to do it, isn't it? A BLACK cab.
Anyway, best punishment to keep people punctual?
Screaming very loudly and saying, "No Haribos on Saturday" -
that works at my house.
And what about the kids?
Is it impaling people and planting them in their own garden?
I still think punitive depilation is the best punishment...
Burn off their anal hair.
It's guilt, is the very best thing.
So what does not work is fining people for being late.
So they did a study, two Israeli economists,
and they found that punctuality gets worse with a financial penalty.
So they had ten Israeli daycare centres, and some of them,
if the parents were late picking up the kids,
they just had to make peace with the teacher.
Then they changed the system and they brought in a small fine -
it was about £2 - as a penalty for lateness,
and punctuality immediately got worse -
and eventually it stabilised,
but it stabilised at twice the original level.
People are happier to pay a small fine
than they are to face the guilt...
Because you feel you've paid your dues then.
Doesn't matter, I've paid for it! It's fine. Just up the fine.
Yeah, I'd pay £2 - I wouldn't pay £200 to be late.
I think if the daycare centre said,
"If you're ten minutes late, it's 200 quid,"
you'd say, "You can keep the kid!"
"We liked him, we didn't LOVE him."
"We have others. It's fine."
"They're older and can make tea."
There have been places, of course, where it's appalling.
The Qin dynasty in China, their punishment for lateness was death.
What, all lateness? That is worse.
Any government worker who turned up late for work,
whatever the excuse, was killed.
So, even on the first day, when you...? Yeah, doesn't matter.
So, 209 BC, this led to an uprising.
There were two officers called Chen Sheng and Wu Guang,
and they were delayed on a journey by torrential rain -
so totally not their fault.
They had been ordered to lead 900 soldiers to a place called Yuyang,
to help defend the northern border, and they were delayed,
and they thought, "Oh, we've got nothing to lose..."
Black cab? Yeah, get a black cab.
"..nothing to lose, we might as well start a rebellion,"
and some 20,000 thought, "Yeah, that's fair enough,"
and they joined in with the 900.
Unfortunately, they did become the new regime,
but they were just as paranoid and arbitrary
and murderous as the previous one,
and both men were assassinated by their own bodyguards.
Now, what do parrots think of the dead parrot sketch?
Oh, actually, I know this one. Yes?
Is it that they don't think anything cos they're not aware of it,
what the hell are you on about, Sandi?
They don't know about it, so they don't think anything
any more than those candles think about...Ronnie Barker.
They don't care.
I mean, they are intelligent enough to observe things.
You mean, they can see?! They can see?!
Cos I can see, and I'm thick as pig shit.
That's so a teacher writing the school report
trying to think of something good.
They can see brilliantly well. They can see more colours than we can.
They have astonishing... That's what they say!
So they can they see more colours than us? Yes, they can.
So which ones can they see that we can't see?
There's a whole extra range in the ultraviolet range
that they can see that we can't see.
Well, if we can't see them, how do we know they exist?
Lots of birds can see ultraviolet
and they can see... animals' urine on the ground,
and that's how they know there's a burrow.
How about that! That's very good.
So when they're swooping around, looking for prey, and they think,
"Oh, look, they're over there,"
cos lots of those small rodents are incontinent.
This is all God's will, right? "I'm going to set this up."
"That one can see wee, that one keeps pissing itself."
Let the games begin! Let the games begin!
"Oh, I can't stop pissing!"
"Look at all the wee! Look at all the wee!"
"Get in the hole! Get in the hole!"
That's the only thing. If they can't get in...
It must be awful if you're a vole and running with your mummy,
and you look up and you see one, and go,
"I'm terrified, I'm going to wet myself."
"Don't wet yourself! Do not wet yourself!"
"I can't help it!"
But their fatal flaw is they have to go out the hole to do a wee -
they don't like to do a wee in the hole, you see.
Get a bloody en-suite. What are you doing?!
Can you tell us this absolute crazy fact, then?
Cos I'm really going to pull you up on it, whatever you say.
Puerto Rican parrots - I'm being very specific -
are an endangered species, and what the authorities want to do
is they want to raise some in captivity
and then release them into the wild.
Here is the problem - they are not aware of predators,
so they have to be trained to watch out for predators,
otherwise they will simply be released into the wild
and captured immediately by something that wants to kill it.
Like John Cleese?
Probably more like a hawk.
So what they do is they have a programme of training them,
to be aware of predators
so they might fly a hawk-shaped cut-out over the aviary,
they might play hawk calls,
they might allow a live hawk to attack the cage.
The final stage -
they stage a parrot murder scene
and they make the trainee parrots watch. OK?
So sorry, but this is a Pixar movie, isn't it?
So we get the learner parrot
and it faces another parrot who's wearing a small leather vest.
What are you talking about, Sandi?!
You've lost your mind!
There's a straight parrot and a gay parrot... Yes.
Sandi, can I ask you a question? Yeah.
When you were painting and decorating in that blouse today,
did you inhale it?
So what happens...? So Freddie Mercury parrot, in the leather...
Yes, you've got one in the leather jacket,
and the trainee parrot, I'm going to call it.
So it's a waistcoat...? It's more like a flak jacket, really. Sure.
OK? Yeah.
So a hawk is released to attack the parrot in the flak jacket...
And he's been told just to attack the one in the flak jacket?
Don't go near the other one.
No, the learner one is being protected - it's just watching.
The one that's attacked, obviously it has a bad time, it screams,
but it's protected by the clothing, so it doesn't die,
and the trainee parrot learns to be wary of hawks in the future,
and it absolutely seems to be working.
I mean... What?
I mean, it sounds to me that evolution is trying to get rid
of these little buggers anyway.
Sounds awful. It does sound awful, doesn't it?
Parrots are the only non-human animal to play the drums.
Oh, she's off again!
The male Northern Australian palm cockatoo, so that's a giant parrot,
it beats out rhythms on hollow trees with seed buds to impress females.
It has a regular non-random beat, and it even trims down the sticks
to get the length right, it is so keen to get it right.
Do we have any footage of this, or is it a made-up thing?
We don't have footage of it cos... Oh, it's a made-up thing.
Yeah, OK.
We don't have footage because we couldn't afford it.
To parrots, the dead parrot sketch is not so much a comedy
as a harrowing infomercial.
Now for another question on pet punishment.
Why do cats hate Hitler?
Well, he loved dogs, didn't he? He did, he loved German shepherds.
Is there any connection with that?
I think it's fair to say cats and dogs would have hated Hitler.
So he was responsible for which war?
I tell you what, this show's really dumbed down, hasn't it?
Is the Second World War, Sandi?!
He was the baddie with the tache, weren't he?
I've worked with you so often, I'm trying to tailor the material, Lee.
Hundreds of thousands of cats and dogs were killed off.
In the first four days of the war alone, in World War II,
400,000 cats and dogs were put down,
so a quarter of the pets that were in London,
and the whole massacre was a horrible mistake.
So the government body which made provision for British animals
was called the National Air Raid Precautions Animals Committee,
or NARPAC.
They issued advice just before the war to pet owners
about what to do in an immediate emergency, and it said,
"If you can't get your animals to the countryside,"
"then the kindest thing to do would be to have them destroyed,"
and everybody overreacted -
because it didn't mean, "Do it now!" Oh, God.
It just meant, "If things are very, very bad..." The rumours spread.
You would double-check! You wouldn't just be like...
.."What did it say again?"
Is that an advert for a gun to kill your pet? Yeah.
You'd want to do it with a captive bolt pistol, wouldn't you?
"Because he deserves the best."
Oh, that's awful.
People were worried their animals would starve to death.
They were worried that they would panic if there was a bombing raid -
but a lot of animals were killed.
London Zoo beheaded their black widow spider.
"Beheaded"?! Yeah.
I'd have just pulled its legs off, it's the same thing.
Did they kill the black widow spider in case...? In case it escaped.
Escaped, right. Yeah.
Cos, you know, if a bomb lands on the zoo and they all get out,
you'd come out of the air raid shelter, "Thank God for that,"
and there's a lion outside.
They also killed a manatee.
A manatee is afraid of its own air bubbles.
A lot of the animals in a lot of the cities of Europe
got eaten, didn't they? Cos they were under siege and starving.
Well, certainly, in the Siege of Paris in 1870...
They ate an elephant, didn't they? ..they ate almost the entire zoo.
In one sitting.
- What a hell of a meal that was. - With a lot of garlic!
Didn't they eat a whole elephant? They ate an elephant, there was...
You could buy slices of elephant trunk.
What does elephant taste like?
You never forget.
I've had hippo. That's very unpleasant.
What do you mean, you've had hippo?
Which bit of the hippo did you have?
I don't know. It was an enormous steak!
Talk about unnecessary.
You're only a little thing, you could have had a guinea pig!
I canoed across Africa, I canoed the Zambezi. You...?!
And in Mozambique, we were invited... Where did we find you?
What are you...?
Why did you do that? Buy a rail ticket like a normal person.
She flies to Torquay!
And she canoes across Africa.
I mean, she's a mystery to us all.
Now, a question about punishing perverts.
Sorry, Jimmy, I don't know why... Why'd you look straight at me?!
You looked straight at me.
You certainly did. You did do that. I mean, straight at me.
I mean... So sorry. No, I mean... I mean... I'm so sorry.
..you're a very good judge of character, is all I'll say.
- How did she know?! - Sandi...
Sandi, you didn't need to go over there.
he'd have gladly come over and touched you, wouldn't you?
You smell so nice. Oh. Aww.
That's it. Win 'em back, Sandi.
I believe flatterers go to the...
We'll be in the same area of hell if you're a flatterer.
Right, can you spot where this woman's concealed weapon is?
Usually, yes.
What's in between her eyes?
It's a machine gun!
She's wearing a pince-nez. Is it in her hat?
It is in her hat.
What is it?
- Hatpin. - A hatpin, someone said.
Alan is absolutely right. It's a hatpin.
It is a hatpin. Points for the audience. Yeah.
They may have points. Well done!
She's Edwardian.
So, in the late 19th century, early 20th century,
hats got bigger, much more decorative,
they had fruit on them, and feathers,
and women needed pins to fasten them to their hair,
these rather elaborate hats -
and they were fantastically useful, apparently.
One San Francisco publication
said it could "pick a lock, open an ink bottle"
"or furtively spear a pickle."
There you go. They grew to over ten inches long,
and there was a type of man called a masher -
so these were lecherous men, who took advantage of the fact
that women were increasingly beginning to travel unchaperoned,
and women started using their hatpins for self-defence,
and there were all sorts of newspaper reports
across Europe and across America -
Women who had foiled robbers or muggers with hatpins.
Or masseurs, apparently, cos he's just giving her a nice back massage
and she's like, "Like it. Don't like it!"
It's worse than that. He was just doing the conga.
"Come on, we'll get one started."
Self-defence manuals,
they recommended a combination of jujitsu,
hatpin stabbing and umbrella beating to deal with dangerous men.
There was even a music hall song
which was entitled Never Go Walking Out Without Your Hatpin.
Lots of stories from the time of hatpin perils.
There was a 19-year-old girl in Scranton, which is in New Jersey.
She playfully thrust her hatpin at her boyfriend
and fatally pierced his heart.
There was a story of a young New York streetcar passenger,
felt a sharp pain behind his ear.
It was an accidental...prick from a stranger's hatpin
and, within a week, he fell into a coma and died.
And people began to panic.
They associated them with violent suffragette tactics.
There was one London flower seller - she stabbed a policeman,
and the magistrate said,
"The hatpin is as dangerous a weapon in the hands of a woman"
"as a revolver in the hands of a man."
Los Angeles even debated limiting hat feathers
on the grounds of constant tickling on the bus was annoying.
And, from 1912, quite a lot of local councils passed rules
saying that hatpins could be no more than seven to nine inches,
and you had to have a permit if you wanted to have a longer one.
Can you just show me again what seven to nine inches is, Sandi?
How many years have you been wrong about it?
1910, Chicago actually banned hatpins
that were longer than nine inches.
And that was the end of crime in Chicago.
So why did it all disappear in the end? It wasn't the laws.
What was the reason why they all sort of disappeared?
Cos the little fascinator hat came in.
Didn't need a nine-inch pin for that.
Well, basically flapper society is what happened.
So, first of all, you get the Audubon Society,
and they don't want birds killed just for their feathers,
and then the new bobbed hairstyle,
and, in fact, pins were seen as much less of a social problem
than flapper culture, which was thought to be completely outrageous.
The other problem was pirates.
Obviously, the one on the left there is a pirate.
I like the one on the right. That's a good frock.
I like the one on the right cos she didn't read the memo about the hat.
Yeah. She just put on a tea cosy as she was going through the door.
Right, you've put up with so much punishment it's time for a prize.
Which of these would you prefer to win?
..or the Oldest Mouse Award?
I would like to win the Oldest Mouse Award.
The Oldest Mouse Award.
It's worth, actually, quite a lot of money.
There's a thing called the Methuselah Foundation,
they're a scientific body,
and they are working on extending the healthy life of all of us
and fighting ageing,
and they're offering prize money if you can make the oldest mouse.
So the current record is five years.
Average mouse lives to be three years old.
So five years in human terms would be, like, 150 to 180 years old -
and then there's another prize
if you can rejuvenate a middle-aged mouse.
First step - kill all the cats, obviously.
No more cat killing stuff. Let's keep it light.
They are offering a prize of 1.4 million
to the research team that can break the record
for the world's oldest mouse.
What proof do they need?
Cos that's an interesting amount of money.
I love that phrase, "that's an interesting amount of money".
Is that what you say to your agent? Yeah.
"That is of interest to me, that sum."
"Torquay, you say?"
"How much is this cab ride? I've got an old mouse - I'll pay with that."
The fact is, we are genetically very similar to mice.
Why are you looking at me now?
I wasn't looking directly at you, I was ignoring Jimmy.
We're very similar to mice? Well, you are - we're regular size, Sandi.
We're genetically very similar, so in terms of extended life spans,
it's hoped that successful work on mice
can then eventually be applied to humans,
and the current prize pot stands at 4.5 million,
and the overall winner will receive a chunk of the money
for each week that the mouse survives
after breaking the old record and setting a new one.
So what you really want
is a little, tiny mouse life-support machine.
Tiny... Clear! Ka-dush! Like, tiny defibrillator.
Clear! Boom!
Two wires and a AA battery. You get a straw...
So let's look at the other prizes...
There was the Aussie Non Drunk Driver Cup,
the Val d'Isere Skiing Cow
and solving the Birch/Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture.
Isn't that the maths thing where you get paid a fortune
if you solve some impossible thing?
I think Rachel Riley had a crack at it, but she only had 30 seconds.
It's the Clay Mathematics Institute.
Basically, there are seven maths problems -
they're called the Millennium Problems -
and you get 1 million if you can solve any one of them.
And this is only one of them,
the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture.
It's basically the set of rational solutions
to equations defining an elliptic curve.
You know, it's one of those open problems
in the field of number theory.
Shall we have a go?
Yeah, if you solve it, you get a million dollars straight away.
Is it eight?
Let's have a look to the other two.
The Val d'Isere Skiing Cow or the Aussie...
Now, they put a cow on skis, right? And chuck it down the mountain.
It rings its bell like mad, but no-one will help it.
So, it is the traditional prize in the World Cup downhill,
and in 2005, the Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn -
there she is - she won the cow.
Now, what usually happens... You win the cow? You win the cow.
What usually happens is the person goes, "I don't really want a cow,"
and they go, "We thought you might not, here's 5,000 instead."
Lindsey, however, wanted to keep the actual cow,
and everybody was very annoyed, cos it was worth 20,000...
..and it was pregnant, so she's basically getting two cows for one.
She named it Olympe, and it now lives on a farm in Kirchberg.
It has had other cows, it has even had grandcows,
and she's named them all after members of her family.
She is the only person who has kept her cow prize.
Surely people will now keep them, now they know they're worth so much?
It's a wonderful... I'd love to have a cow. I think it's a great idea.
You have to win the competition. Yeah.
What about the Aussie Non-Drunk-Driver Cup?
Has nobody ever won it?
No.
I liked it when they started selling...
We used to have one at home.
..the breathalyser that you could just... You could buy a thing.
You could buy your own breath... It's a great idea.
Should have one in the car.
Don't they want to put them in cars
so you have to blow into them before you can start the car?
Yes, that's one of the things, that it would actually
stop the ignition if you had alcohol levels...
You'd just always have your child with you, wouldn't you? Yeah.
"All right, son, you know the drill."
"Blow into that. Go on."
"Now let's get you to school."
Right...
Your little seven-year-old blows into it and it still won't start.
"What have you been doing?" "Mind your own business!"
Well, in 2016, traffic police in the Australian town of Nanango
in Queensland started offering cash prizes
to any driver found to be sober.
- Wow. - I mean, that's...
That is pretty good. Any driver who was stopped and tested
and had zero blood alcohol limit entered into a prize draw,
and it gave them a chance of winning 500.
Is not being arrested not enough of an incentive?
Apparently not, no.
It's whether you would win money, and apparently it's spread.
Other towns in Australia have now picked this up
and think it's a really good idea.
You could stop drinking and driving in Australia overnight
by just having you as the traffic cop, just going...
.."I'm disappointed."
If you're pulled over in Australia,
there's a chance the only ticket you'll be given is a raffle ticket.
Now the punishment of round one is out of the way,
it's time for a quick dip in the fiery lake of general ignorance.
What's the most volcanic country on Earth?
Ooh... Ooh... Oh, yes, Jimmy?
I'll go New Zealand.
No, it is not New Zealand. Good shout.
Yes?
Is it another place other than New Zealand?
Indonesia.
KLAXON BLARES No...
It's weird, that, because I thought it was such a stupid answer,
but the fact that it was considered an obvious answer
I see as a bit of a result.
It's like when you're watching University Challenge
and you say the answer, but it's wrong,
but they say the same wrong answer. You go, "That's a point."
New Zealand's not even on my list.
Ha-ha, mine was! It was on the big board!
What about...?
I'll have Hawaii.
Well, you're absolutely in the right area, cos it's the United States.
The United States has more volcanoes than any other country in the world.
It's got 173 volcanoes in total.
Are you counting it by volcano numbers
or by lava emitted?
OK, so it's...
This is my profile on Match.com.
If you were doing most active volcanoes,
then Indonesia would be the correct answer.
Well, that's what I thought you meant! Yay!
I've just given myself two points.
Yeah, maybe turn the fingers around. Um...
I've just given myself two points!
It's United States first, then Russia, then Indonesia, then Japan -
those are the ones with the most volcanoes.
I don't think Russia's taking part, actually, this year.
In terms of active, it's Indonesia,
then the Philippines, and then Japan.
There are areas where there's just a huge number of volcanoes,
so the Pacific Ring of Fire has got 452 volcanoes -
it runs all the way around the Pacific.
♪ Ring of Fire, Ring of Fire... ♪
♪ I fell in to a burning ring of fire
♪ A ring of fire, a ring of fire. ♪
It's like there's a problem with the boiler just to my right.
Strange voice. Let's record it, Jimmy.
We'd have a Christmas number one.
Jimmy's always happy with a Cash gig.
- Come on! - Come on!
It's a Cash joke.
It's Johnny Cash and it's about Jimmy.
Those planets aligned perfectly!
First the Indonesia incident and now this!
Place in the world with the densest region of volcanoes?
The most amount of volcanoes? Yes, the densest.
Where might you find that?
Yes?
Indonesia!
No!
Antarctica. Antarctica!
But it's so cold!
Yes, so this is the issue about it.
So in 2017, 91 new volcanoes were found under the ice sheet
of Western Antarctica.
It now has 1 volcano every 4,800 square miles,
and they're expecting to find lots, lots more.
So, some of them are as tall as the Eiger... Wow.
..and they were all discovered by researchers at Edinburgh University.
and it really, really matters,
because it has implications for the rest of the planet.
If one of them erupts, it could melt the ice from beneath.
Goodbye, Norfolk! Basically.
Let's cancel it, then.
I feel like we were like "Yeah, let's do that!
"No, let's not do it." It's not a good idea.
The most volcanic country on Earth is actually the United States.
After Great Britain and Ireland,
what is the third most populous island in the British Isles?
I know that if you could get everybody in the world
on the Isle of Wight, then it would sink.
That is not the answer that I'm looking for.
And the Isle of Wight in fact would come fourth.
I'm looking for the one that would come third.
I'm looking for the most populous island.
Yes? Man.
The Isle of Man is not right, no.
Is it going to be somewhere far off?
No, it's not even far from the studio, actually...
Oh!
Isle of Dogs! Isle of Dogs! No. Oh...
I meant Indonesia!
I was going to say you could get there
in about an hour and a quarter on the train.
Isle of Thanet? It's Portsea Island.
It is where the city of Portsmouth lies.
The island of Portsea has the highest population density
of any of the UK's islands.
In fact, Portsmouth is the only island city in the whole of the UK.
It's a complete island, is it? Yeah.
It was one of the most heavily defended cities in the world
during the Napoleonic wars,
and it was the world's first mass production line.
The Royal Navy made... Pulley blocks were made there
by in fact, Marc Isambard Brunel, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's father.
I was the Chancellor at Portsmouth University for five years.
I think it's a most wonderful place. Ooh!
Only because they didn't know you'd eaten a hippo!
It was the home to some of the earliest free schools
for working-class children.
Portsmouth is one of the first places where their education
was thought to be important. It's also...
The other thing they pioneered was free venereal disease clinics.
Why would you pay for venereal disease?
Oh, to the... No. Yeah.
I've paid for venereal disease.
Well, let's...
..let's all let that settle in for a minute.
That's what the doctor said.
It sort of works for the joke.
The idea that they'd say "I'd just let it settle in."
"Let that settle that in if I were you." "That's there for the winter."
Here's a gorgeous painting by Turner. Where is this?
Yes?
Is it Indonesia?
I'll give you a clue. Here are two paintings.
I'll give you the titles if this helps.
One is called Festive Lagoon Scene Venice,
and the other one's called
Procession Of Boats With Distant Smoke Venice.
Is it Portsmouth?
Yes, it is Portsmouth, you're absolutely right.
Are you serious?
They were wrongly titled in the 1960s
when they were exhibited in New York.
They had nothing to do with Venice whatsoever.
You said it as a joke... No, I'm just an expert on Turner.
So annoying!
If he'd painted them in Indonesia, I'd have been laughing, wouldn't I?
No, you're totally right.
It was in 2003 that a curator at the Tate declared
that they were not of Venice at all.
They have been renamed The Arrival of Louis-Philippe,
who was King, at the time, of France,
at Portsmouth, 8th of October, 1844,
and The Disembarkation of Louis-Philippe,
8th of October, 1844.
That is also a stretch, isn't it?
You can't see him coming or going, can you?
It's not the first time it's happened to a Turner painting.
There was one which was identified as a view of Monte Rosa in Italy
for over a century, that turns out it's actually a pier in Scotland.
Turner's beautiful Venice scenes turned out to be scenes
of lovely old Portsmouth -
and with that, we've reached the end of our path of punishment,
and it's time to lick our wounds, and let's peek at the points
while I point out the penalty.
Our prize fighter tonight and the winner...
Oh, my goodness.
..with -2, it's Jimmy!
Yay!
Taking second prize with -3, it's Alan!
And in third place with -8, it's the audience!
So in fourth place with -9, it's Alice!
We're running out of time - you might want to wrap this up. Yeah.
Finally, an absolute glutton for punishment, with -27, it's Lee!
That's it from Alice, Lee, Jimmy, Alan and me,
and I leave you with these wise words of advice from John Hardwick.
Don't do drugs, because if you do drugs, you'll go to prison,
and drugs are REALLY expensive in prison.
Goodnight.