APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Thank very you much. Welcome to QI.
According to the latest research, the average person has five secrets
which they've never told to a living soul,
so I'd like tonight to hear one of yours, please.
Are you looking at me?
I was, darling, but I think you've given enough.
For subtitling services, contatct: waqas.zahoor89@gmail.com
I'll give you all five. OK, go.
Where I keep my keys... Yes?
..and four murders.
I was once walking home across Hampstead Heath,
and I got caught short and I had to do a poo under some leaves.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Did you have to do that five times?
Four other secret poos I've done, probably.
Sorry, so let's just retrace our steps. Yeah.
So, you're crossing Hampstead Heath, trousers down...
No, I didn't have my trousers down until I needed to go.
He doesn't walk around with his trousers down... Do you?
But then, then as I went to pull my trousers up,
I slipped over in it and fell.
GROANING
Excuse me, sorry, have you not been mocking me?
I'm not mocking you. I've been sympathetic. No, you haven't!
And you've shat in a bush.
Did you have any paper with you?
No, I used some leaves, and that's what I slipped on.
And... my glasses fell off,
and I had to go home and when I got home,
I couldn't properly see my house.
I thought, where am I going? My glasses have fallen off!
And I had to go back and look for them.
How drunk were you?
I was pretty pissed. A bit steaming.
The Columbia Business School - it was a study.
They used 38 categories of secrets, so there's all the normal ones
that you might have, you know, stealing,
cheating, fancying somebody that you shouldn't fancy,
and all that stuff, but they also had some odd choices,
so a secret opinion,
not liking something that people think that you like.
Planning a surprise for somebody, a secret hobby,
and they asked 2,000 participants
if they had any of those kind of secrets.
Oh, I didn't really realise those were the parameters, I thought...
Oh...
I thought...
..a terribly humiliating event.
I didn't realise like a secret opinion.
I like yours as a benchmark. I think it's very...
Oh, he didn't on the bench as well, did he?
A gift for you all now. Ooh!
I've got you your very own QI periscopes, OK?
Have a look.
What are you going to use them for?
OK. Have a look through.
Oh, that's a good idea, yep.
Yep.
It's very clever, cos even though you're down below,
you can still see the audience, even though you're below the desk.
You have totally understood periscopes.
I can't see the audience now, I can't see the audience.
Now, you need your periscope, darling, it's the thing...
My periscope doesn't work.
Where's Alan gone?
Alan, Alan! Rhod...
I can see your periscope, Phill. I can see yours as well!
Are you under the desk? I am!
I'm under the desk, Alan.
Can you see my second L?
I can see... Why, yes, both of the Ls, Phill, yes.
Both of the Ls.
I've lost your N, Alan. I'm coming up.
OK.
I'm now above the desk, Phill.
We've toyed with the idea
of having two five-year-old boys on the panel...
..and then we thought, no need.
This is me going down the stairs. OK.
I'm coming up now.
Oh, I forgot my phone.
He's having so much fun under there. you should see his little face.
Really, really enjoyed that.
Can I have this? Yes, you can have them.
Because we've got quite a high garden wall,
and I've often wanted to look over.
Didn't you build the high garden wall, Alan?
Er, yes.
It's true, so I could have a lower one,
but really I want to go like that.
There was a TV programme on
when I was little called Why Don't You? Yeah.
Why don't you just turn off your television set,
and they once had a thing which you could do at home
called the dying duck.
What was it?
QUACKING NOISES
Pow!
RAPID, FALLING QUACKING
I can remember...
I was five years old, and I've been doing that duck ever since.
You were wasted in parliament. That's fantastic.
Can we ask a question, Sandi? Yes, Rhod.
Is your periscope bigger than ours because you're the host?
Well, what can you do? Or was it
because of your diminutive stature?
Yes, I think because I need the extra help with the periscope.
Imagine how much easier shopping's going to be for you now with that.
Do you know...?
Alpen! They've got Alpen!
Now here is an astonishing thing - that is Stephen Wildish,
and he beat Mo Farah.
Whoa! And what did he beat Mo Farah doing?
Oh, most corn consumed? No.
Yes. Sack race.
He held the world record in 2014, 39.91 seconds.
In 2017, Steve Wildish smashed that in just 26.3 seconds.
What's the distance, sorry? 100 metres.
It's 100 metres, yeah.
So he had tried earlier in the year,
but his sack had been deemed too small.
LAUGHTER
Do you know what...? I say!
In this weather, I've had the same problem.
So the man who beat Mo Farah substantially is in our audience.
Please welcome Stephen Wildish. Oh!
APPLAUSE
OK, would you mind having a go for us and showing us your technique?
Yes! But, wait, we have to have a competitor,
so I feel the only person I know who's been
and reported at the Paralympics
is Josh Widdicombe, I would like Josh to go.
Yes!
APPLAUSE
Don't let us down, Josh. I won't.
Um, I won... I didn't do the sack race,
I did a race at school called the dressing up race. Oh, yeah!
I won two years in a row. Really?
And left primary school undefeated.
I now want to see Mo Farah doing the dressing up race, but there we are.
So, please be careful, both of you.
Darling, you have to hold the...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Have you got any tips? I use one arm out, a bit of balance.
Whoa... OK.
Ready, boys?
Imagine if I win, how amazing this will be.
If you win, darling, you'll be the world record holder.
Oh, my giddy aunt!
On your marks, get set, go!
Go, Josh, come on!
Thank you, Stephen Wildish.
What's the pizza-litically correct procedure
for eating a piece of pizza?
What is it, yeah?
Many years ago, I was a friend of and knew Fanny Cradock.
Oh, dear Fanny. The younger people won't know who she was -
she was a television chef, a sort of interesting cross
between Mary Berry and Jeremy Clarkson.
A wonderful woman, and she taught me and my wife
how to make pizza, proper Neapolitan pizza,
and she explained to us, A - that you cut it up,
but then you don't use a knife and fork to eat it,
you have to eat it by hand. Yes.
And you have to feed one another.
Yeah, the fact is you can eat pizza in any way you please,
but there are certain thoughts and some advice about how to do it.
It's a fold, isn't it? <span tts: color="white It's a fold. So the grease doesn't go everywhere.
Yeah. Yeah, so what you end up with is a sort of triangular package,
with all the toppings inside, they don't slip off.
That looks exactly like Fanny's.
I often do that with mediums where they go,
"I've got your grandad here, I've got your grandad here,"
and he's come all this way to talk to you in a theatre
where you pay 25 quid or whatever it is
to listen to it, and then you go,
"I've got Fred. Anyone? Fred?" "Oh, yeah, that's my grandad Fred.
"What does Fred want to say?" "It's something with the letter C."
What? Won't he just tell me? Fred would tell me,
I know Fred.
Ghosts don't have great English, and that's why...
What even the dead... Like, the dead English ones? Yeah.
Once they go up to heaven... Yeah.
..they forget all their English, and they've just got a few words.
Like "Wooooo!" Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So "woo" is "all right, how you doing?"
"I'm all right, thanks. Yeah, I'm all right." Yeah.
Must be horrible when you're dying and you wake up as a ghost
and go "Woo."
As if the car crash wasn't bad enough, now all I can say is woo.
Of course he wouldn't be able to say that, it would just come out woo.
Right, for a question about proximity,
so, Alan, I want to ask you...
She's only just got casters.
Can't stop now, can you?
Am I close enough to trigger your reaction bubbles?
Without a shadow of a doubt.
Is it uncomfortable at all? No, no, just feeling it now.
So, why is it uncomfortable, does anybody know? No, don't go!
We were so close!
Does anybody know why that might be uncomfortable?
Well, um, proximity. Yeah, it is.
It's the study of proxemics.
It's the discipline of studying
the space that we keep between ourselves.
So, the founder of it is a US cultural anthropologist
called Edward Twitchell Hall.
You all right?
Are you coming to me?
No, darling, you're OK, because you might get injured.
So there are four main zones and you can see it up here.
First of all we have the public space.
That is the distance at which you are comfortable...
No, there's zone six as well. Oh, yes, that's true.
So the distance at which you feel comfortable addressing a crowd.
Then there is social distance.
That's where I would interact with my acquaintances.
And then there is personal distance,
which is coming up to four feet, so that's for friends and family.
Now I'm going to... I'm going to pick you.
This is intimate distance, OK?
So, I've never met you before, have I?
No, Mum.
LAUGHTER
Ladies and gentlemen, my son, Theo.
APPLAUSE
This particular building is the place where you will find
the burial place of Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli,
Rossini, it's like all this greatness of Italy,
and they don't want people just eating sandwiches on the steps,
so they had a really simple idea how to stop them doing this.
Was it they get the spooky voices of all those dead people
on a loudspeaker, "Stop eating sandwiches..."
"Hey, this is-a Michelangelo. I see you got a sandwich."
"Why are you a-ruining the steps with your sandwiches?
"You need to stop."
"It's-a me, Rossini! Stop with the baguette."
"We're going to be crazy angry,
"that you're eating a sandwich on the step-as."
None of these are spooky enough voices! No.
Just saying. Too jolly.
Don't you want to see a film where Romesh plays Michelangelo?
Fantastic idea. I'm-a going to do a ceiling-a picture.
I went to Florence and I saw - by some miracle there wasn't a queue -
Michelangelo's statue of David.
It's a great-a statue. It's amazing.
You can go all the way round behind, you're right behind.
You see everything.
He's got massive hands,
and tiny winkie.
I liked it when they started selling...
We used to have one at home. The breathalyser that you could...
You could buy a thing, couldn't you? You could buy your own breathalyser.
It's a great idea. Should have one in the car.
Well, don't they want to put them in cars
so that you have to blow into them before you can start the car?
Yes, that is one of the things, that it would actually stop
the ignition if you had alcohol levels that were...
You'd just always have your child with you, wouldn't you? Yeah.
SLURRING: All right, son, you know the drill.
Blow into that thing.
Now let's get you to school.
INDISTINCT SLURRING
Your little seven-year-old blows into it and it still won't start -
"What have you been doing?!" "Mind your own business!"
Anyway, here's a weird question -
why might you put chilli in a condom?
LAUGHTER AND GROANING
Revenge.
Did they do this in your school?
They used to put deep heat into people's jock straps. Wow.
And then, like, I remember in one particular scrum,
on the rugby pitch, there was very loud screaming from a lad
whose jockstrap had just settled in.
And he couldn't get out of the scrum,
and they wouldn't let him out either, those bastards. Oh, God.
Anyway, no.
It's to do with elephants. What? This question gets weirder.
So it's to stimulate elephants? It's quite the opposite.
Elephants have the most acute sense of smell of any mammal. Do they?
And they hate the smell of chilli.
So Tanzanian farmers want to keep them away from their land,
and they've tried all sorts of things. Elephants are so clever.
They've tried putting bells around their necks,
and the elephant, within 24 hours, was packing the bell
with their own dung to stop it ringing.
Oh, my God.
But if you put chilli in a condom and attach a firework to it
and throw it at an elephant,
it explodes in a great cloud of spicy powder,
the elephant hates it,
and goes away, but it's not harmed. Wow.
So putting chilli in a condom
is a very good way to get rid of them off their land.
But if that elephant was very clever,
he'd come up the next day with a gas mask.
I think you've got to question your life a little bit
when you're putting chilli in condoms
and then throwing them at elephants.
Cos a little bit of you is going, "What happened?
"Why didn't I do more maths?"
TRUMPETING WHINE
Sorry, Sandi.
What's an elephant's gas mask going to be like, for God's sake?
They'll have to coil their whole trunk up.
Or is it on the end of the trunk, the gas mask?
The economists William Evans and Timothy Moore in 2010,
they found that mortality rates spiked by almost 1% on the first day
of every month, and remain high for the next few days.
Why do you think that might be?
I know nothing about stacking coffins,
but even I know, that is not the right way of doing it.
They're all going to be rolled up against the side, aren't they?
Are they all full of dead people that died of obesity on one side?
"Died of obesity on one side."
It's a very common condition. Very common, that.
Massively fat on one side.
He tipped over and died.
My father passed away about 30 years ago,
and, of course, we were very distressed.
My brother and I had to go to the undertakers,
and he put on his desk... He said, "Let's talk about the coffin,"
and he put six tiny little examples of coffins
on the desk in front of me.
He said, "What do you think?" And my brother said,
"I think they're bit small."
Were you not tempted to nick one for your funeral?
Ooh...
Anybody a fan of Lord of the Rings?
Yes! <span tts: color="white Yes? Yes.
So the guy who came up with the technology, Gamgee.
Samwise Gamgee. <span tts: color="white Yes, so... Frodo's best friend.
Who never let him down, no matter what anyone said.
"I'll stay with you, master Frodo! Give me your hand."
CHEERING
The other one I do...
I don't know if I fancy you more or less now.
I'm going to go with less.
Havo dad, Legolas.
That's "Sit down, Legolas."
It's definitely less.
Anyway, he is named... After that man!
No, not after him, after his brother.
His brother was called Jay Sampson Gamgee. Yeah.
And he is the person who invented that surgical dressing
where you get cotton ball between two pieces of absorbent gauze.
Oh, yeah. And so he was known as Sampson Gamgee,
and Sam Gamgee, it's most likely that Tolkien got the name from him.
Wow. Which is my connection between the hobbits and ice skating,
just for you. I love it. <span tts: color="white As a Christmas present. Brilliant!
I auditioned for The Hobbit.
What?! Did you?
I don't know if I fancy you more or more.
You were going to be in The Hobbit. Yeah, well, I didn't get it. Oh.
To be what, darling?
The main... The hobbit. Bilbo! You auditioned to be Bilbo Baggins.
I auditioned to be Bilbo Baggins, and the day before...
NOEL: I'm going to blow your mind now. But go on, carry on.
They brought down the maximum height,
and my agent phoned me and she said, "How tall are you?"
And I said, "I'm five foot six and a half..."
How tall do you want me to be? That's what you say.
Never accept the premise of the question.
Find out what they want before... you say anything.
APPLAUSE
So, you didn't go? No, they said we brought down the maximum height,
but I still qualified. I was short enough to be a hobbit.
And? I went.
And I was dog shit.
I also auditioned for something in that. <span tts: color="white Did you? Yeah.
They said you'll be four hours a day in make up in New Zealand,
is that OK? And I went, "Yep."
How tall are you?
How tall do you want me to be?
I went for a part. For Frodo.
Did you? Yeah.
And they went, "You're a bit tall,
"you look more like an elf. Get out."
You do. You're clearly from the elven race. Exactly.
Yeah. Apparently.
Rivendell, you look like a Rivendell elf.
A River Dance elf. Rivendell!
Cariad. Yes?
Stop now.
I really wanted an audition!
You're the right size and everything. I know!
I don't think you'd have been professional on set.
I wouldn't have been. I would've been so excited.
It would've been like,
"Can someone remove this crying woman, please?"
The best bit about this book is not the yoga poses.
It has some instructions for example, how to avoid death
by re-drawing discharged semen back into your penis.
That is one of them.
GROANING
That's like a boomerang on Instagram.
Oh, you've been on my Instagram?
What a gif! Yeah.
There's another one - how to lengthen your own tongue
so you can lick your forehead.
Who doesn't want that skill? Wow.
Licking your forehead's not the first thing that comes to mind.
Phil, I'm sorry.
You seem like a nice boy, and I'm very sorry.
This is exactly what I came here for. OK.
The most difficult yoga pose that we know of
is called the Yoganidrasana.
And it is known... Oh, God. Yeah!
It's the yoga sleep pose.
Huh? I don't even know what's happening.
I think he's trying to do what Alan was suggesting earlier.
I think that all that stands between that man and happiness
is two vertebrae.
Will someone help me get my pants off?!
Yeah, where are his feet, actually?
They're tucked in under his chin. Some people tuck the feet
behind the head, and use it as a sort of pillow.
That is the other way I've seen it done.
Just use a pillow!
Weird that Pythagoras is one of the three things
that I remember from school. What's the other two?
Oxbow lake.
Oh, yeah, I remember.
Photosynthesis. Yeah.
It's like it's sort of gone in as osmosis.
Well, that's the fourth.
What is it about the oxbow lake? I remember the oxbow lake.
Because geography is so boring,
and it's just like, how did that get there?
I've got to be honest, I have no idea what you're talking about.
Oxbow lakes? Oh, right. Alan's drawing you a picture.
So, you've got a river. So, you've got a river.
The river's going like this. It's bendy! It's a bendy river.
Then it will meander. Bendy river. It's like that.
Then gradually, that erodes. Erosion. That erodes.
Erosion. Takes years and years.
Years and years it takes. The water's going down...
That's the lake. Takes years and years. And after a while...
..it cuts off here. Oh.
How is that possible you all knew what that was, and I didn't? Hmm?
Maybe different lessons for the white kids.
They did say to us, they did whisper to us afterwards,
don't tell the black children.
Don't tell!
They don't... If you tell them about oxbow lakes,
where will it stop?
So the British Board of Film Classification,
which used to be the British Board of Film Censors. Oh, right, yes.
It not only awards films a certificate,
but since 1997, it's provided a brief line of consumer advice
of what to expect from the picture. How about this one?
Dangerous behaviour, mild threat, innuendo,
infrequent mild bad language.
QI.
Austin Powers? Nope.
Is it something that is quite tame?
Yes, darling, it is. Is it Pingu?
It's Paddington. Paddington? Oh, what? Yeah.
Where's the bad language in Paddington?
I have no idea. Well, actually there was one bit where he said,
"Where's me marmalade sandwich, you BLEEP?"
That's my favourite word in the English language.
I went to see the Sistine Chapel, and all I remember is,
somebody in the middle of the room -
there's about 200 people all going like this -
and there's somebody going, "No pictures! No pictures!
"No pictures!"
Of course, people immediately go, "Wow..."
Why don't they let them take pictures of it? I don't know.
I was talking to Ronnie Barker's daughter, Charlie,
and she said the first time...
No pictures! Oh, God!
She was always saying it.
The first time she realised her dad was famous,
she was a little girl, and they went to see the Mona Lisa,
and they walked into the room, and she's standing there looking
at the Mona Lisa, and the room filled with British tourists,
and they were all looking at her dad, and nobody was looking
at the Mona Lisa, and she said that was the moment
she thought, ooh, OK.
And then they all went home, and went "I saw Ronnie Barker.
"Was he smiling? Wasn't he?"
Why has he got no eyebrows?
When I was a kid, I had a dog called Ronnie Barker.
You could leave that there if you want. Yeah.
My dad named him, and I was like
"Ha, it's funny, Barker, it's a pun."
But I didn't know... It was named after Ronnie?
No, I didn't know Ronnie Barker was a famous situation,
and, so I...
I thought, "Oh, I think we just named our dog
"after Ricky Barker's dad."
And Ricky's just a guy I went to school with. And so..
I even told Ricky, and he's like "Oh, did you?"
Did Ricky not know his dad wasn't called Ronnie?
Yes, he did!
His name was Michael, and I kind of...
It wasn't until years later, I was watching Open All Hours,
and he's like, "Why don't you j-j-j-jiggle it?"
And I read it and like, oh, my God. Poor dog.
It's not Ricky Barker's dad!
Oh, I just got that. Because of the bark.
It's like having a troubled child. Now...
Time for an experiment. I'm going to show you what happens
when water reacts with magnesium and silver nitrate,
so I've asked the panel to put their safety goggles on, please.
And I have to charge this.
Are you ready?
Woohoo!
You didn't do that. I did. Isn't that fantastic?
That didn't come from that. I love that.
So that is what happens when water reacts with magnesium
and silver nitrate.
Can anybody tell me when a reaction like that happens in the body?
When you've eaten a lot of very spicy food and you have gas.
It's a really specific moment like that,
but on a much, much smaller scale.
Sneezing. Ejaculation. Well, you're closer.
Conception.
It is the moment when the sperm and the egg meet for the first time.
ALAN SINGS OPERATICALLY
Sparks literally fly.
So when a sperm enzyme activates a human egg,
there is an explosion of zinc,
and the human egg has got about 8,000 zinc compartments,
and each one contains around a million zinc atoms.
So at the point of conception,
they're all released in a display that looks just like tiny fireworks,
and it goes on for about two hours.
So did you just fire semen at that? Is that what you've done?
So is it like a firework display? <span tts: color="white Yes. Different ones going...? No.
But tiny, darling, it's not as big as that. Yeah, I realise that.
Zinc compartments...
OK, we're going to have another go,
but I'm going to let you all have a go.
I'm a 50-year-old man, that's a bit far away.
Are you ready? Yeah, I'm so ready. Ready? Pull it out now, as it were.
What do we do?
Three, two, one, fire!
Come on, boys.
Oh... Oh, for goodness' sake.
How was it for you?
I can go on for two hours, Sandi!
Did that one not go off? No, it didn't.