and
Writing as we take let's meet our scribblers in fine feathers. It's loose on does
It's Tom Allen for the feather. It's Jimmy Carr always tickling our fancy
Writing lugos notes your own anymore
I don't even use a pen. Do you not when did when did you last write something down you type it?
Also people my mom is allergic to feathers issue she couldn't have written anything there used to be a name for that
I was that was called being illiterate
They were the writing instrument of choice for almost
1,500 years but they required a lot of upkeep
So basically not very efficient you could write maybe three or four letters at a time and then you'd run out of ink and they
Regularly needed sharpening. So the pen part of a pen knife
Anybody know where the word pen in pen knife comes from Oh from sharpening pets. Yes, and it comes from Pena
Which is Latin for feather. So that is why we call it a pen knife. Oh, did you hear that? That was a lovely
Someone in a pub
In order to make quill pen what you're gonna have to do first of all, you're gonna have to catch a bird. Yes
Is the first thing and then there's a hierarchy of quills
So Jimmy you've got the goose there's that like an everyday it is I'm afraid it's working pen common a garden
When you say a live bird, it's not is it live for long. I mean you yeah
Yeah, I mean once you've plucked a bird's feather it will grow back
It'll take about a year probably for it to grow back again
So ye olde WH Smith's would have been just a bunch of birds and you're plucking
Problem in the 19th century they began to experience a real shortage of quills
Why might that be Oh avian flu or something was it? No, just more people could read and write down
You said earlier that you could write three letters and then you'd have to dip again
You'd have to dip again that why Shakespeare was so good because you really have to think about stuff. Yeah, whereas now, you know
Da Vinci code they can just crack it out
I think that's why some books are just over long because people think oh, it's fine
I can just write a million words and it wasn't so well
I said Dickens quote I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time
I didn't have time. Yeah, absolutely because it means you have to think about the noise again
And made them do the noise. They were just startled jimmy that you knew something so
Really interesting thing that clive james wrote about typewriters. He said about the noise that writing used to make
So when he wrote his first memoir, he wrote it on a tight
It was terrific racket all day long. It was a phenomenal noise
Every line and I still that's a sign of my age because I still do that when I'm on ipad you'll do that
Yeah, I know it's very annoying
I would like to have that effect when I press return
But it goes ting just so other people on the train in the quiet carriage will be you know when you hear people on their phone
And they haven't turned the keypad tones. Yes. Oh, it's so endearing. Is that was a good noise as well
I just say to them, you know, you can turn that off. Don't you do you like that? Yeah, just say
Do you want me to do it for you?
Throw the phone
Now you've got a crow feather, oh, thanks these were for artistic people they were specifically for drawing thin lines
So you might be doing an architectural drawing or some such thing. You might be drawing my body
You've got a swan quill, oh lovely that's only the best so thank you the first she preferred swan
But the everyday one thomas jefferson kept his own geese. I was so pleased when I got given this and now I feel like
Jimmy
Are you all right?
Yeah, i'm right handed. Yeah
You would need a quill from a left wing if you are right handed because you don't want the feather to be hitting you
In the face must have been awful then if they weren't killing the birds and they were just bald on one side
Just flying in circles going well this one still works
Bald eagles lose a feather on one wing. They will shed it on the same one on the other side
Why might they do that fashion?
So wait, so you pull out one they pull out that's fascinating. Yeah, but what's that though?
Seagull going to the library they're coming back from the library. Oh, sorry
Sandy I have a question. I mean, it's all very well talking about feathers. Why didn't they just sharpen a stick?
It has like a little reservoir inside. It's where the ink goes now the ink can go inside
Whereas a stick less successful and in fact one of the sort of forerunners of the fountain pen
They worked out that they could have a little steel holder and you could actually cut one of these into five or six little
Nibs and then we eventually get to the fountain pen
But there are some advantages to the quill because it can hold certain inks
Which would clog a fountain pen like india ink for example
Now goose feathers are still used for what purpose might you still use a goose feather?
I've got that as well pillows and duvet pillows and duvet
There are no rules
Wild west kid
Uh one else a goose himself or herself
Not one of the answers we had thought of but yes, yes you said is still weirdly in use by the geese
Fashion fashion. No, so sport. Oh
Archery shuttlecocks shuttlecocks
That was absolutely enormous
Look out
To be made a shuttlecock from the left wing of a goose in order that it spins clockwise when it's struck
What this is a great show i'm learning
Name federer like in uh as in roger federer great stuff a tennis player. Yeah, okay
His name means one who trades in quills
So really he should have been a badminton player
Does he know
I bet he'd pick it up wouldn't he badminton. Do you think yeah?
You've wasted your life roger
The real money's in badminton
Now hens poised for the next question
What do you think these q words mean?
Uh quokka wodja, yeah, what do you reckon? Is that somebody who can't pronounce their r's properly asking roger to hurry up
Quokka wodja
Jonathan ross asking roger federer to hurry up
They'll be here in a minute. Yeah
Like a thing you do
Yes, it is sort of a thing you do, you know, those wooden puppets that you get the ones with the strings
Oh, yes
So it's the person pulling the strings
But he became a name for politicians who one presumed were having their strings pulled by somebody else god
There are so many of them. Yeah, that's a great word. Isn't it? You quokka wodja
I don't think it would gain you any points though would it in the house of commons if you stood up and went you are a
Right next one, let's have a look
Who's got a pick quick quick stick quick sticks. I think that's early onset erections
And that happens all the time when I walk into room early on set
Half past six in the evening. Oh my god already
Hurry up doesn't it quick sticks it just means right away chop chop
Doesn't mary poppins say i see mary poppins. She says quick sticks. I think yeah, that's what she's talking about
I love that film. I think it's great the original i'm talking about the original haven't seen the new one
Maybe not it's just not julie andrews. So what can I say?
I know and i quite fancy emily blunt and you're not supposed to fancy mary poppins. No, that's very bad
I'm quite wrong. You get a quick sticks around mary poppins
Quick sticks around emily blunt
Quick
In the 1440s it was criminal slang for you know escaping from the police
Sounds so innocent. Doesn't it? What a wonderful time. That must have been like come on lads quick sticks
It comes in the old bill the old bills come in
You and I have been marvelous in one of those films. Oh a lovely eling comedy
Jimmy what's going to be a quick quake buttock is the old english term for twerking
Is it something to do with being nervous or yet it's coward it's literally shaking in your ass
It's a coward. It's a coward. It's a quaker watcher and a quake butter. Yes, exactly
Poultron is also a coward a dastard
A poultron. Oh, it's a great word. It's a great word comes from an italian word for sluggered lazy person
And dastard, I love somebody who's cowardly acts in an underhand manner. It's more than cowardly though, isn't it?
It's sneaky underhand. It's really an underhand thing. Yeah, what else we got cough tide something to do with Finnish
In your drink, I imagine it is it more time for a drink. I thought it was the the dirty stuff
That's left in the bath after a festival
Quaff tide so half of it is danish which half tide quaff tide tide
So danish word for time is two
So when we say time and tide waits for no man, it's really redundant because tide means time
Do we get an awful lot of the nautical terms from the you viking people?
Yes, these are we are we've been busy
But we also bring you philosophical things like the concept of dreaming is a scandinavian idea really
What did we do before we knew you just slept?
Now wake up screaming
So the cough part comes from irish gaelic and probably means cup
So time for your cup or time for your drink. It's a lovely word, which I think we should bring back
I think we've got one left up there
So putting out a fire
Yeah, so it's an obsolete word for something that puts out a fire, but it was used sort of figuratively
So somebody would put out any wonderful thoughts you might be having
Like a fun sponge it is when you're passionate about something nobody should try and quench coal
If nobody should try and put out the passion that you have. Oh, I mean if somebody said that to me
It would really quench go my whole
quick sticks
Okay, that's a few of our favorite q words, but
Where might you be well advised to skip the q?
Well, they don't like to queue in france or italy or italy
Really very pushy, especially the elderly in italy. Yeah, right
They burrow in the little italian women they burrow right into the heart of the queue and then you can't get them out
They're in the they're in the front
I like that a tiny italian woman just pushing by everyone to the front
I go scoozie scoozie scoozie scoozie scoozie and then she's in the front and no one knows how to stop her
She's not got long left. I think they should be allowed together. Yeah, she's gonna die. People with kids should be right at the back
They've got ages. Yeah
Maybe they should just do queuing by longevity. How long do you think?
You shouldn't queue in hospital. Well, my friend skipped the queue, but she'd cut her finger off
So they were like, yeah come to the front. Yes, that's quite a serious thing
Well as well because she cut when they come out and go
Uh, who's next she was not in a position to go like
So it's not actually about
Queuing in terms of a physical queue. It's about the letter q the letter q. Yes
Oh surname smith you don't need a queue in that skip it
I just give myself 10 points there
Are there some languages where there isn't a queue?
Well, the letter q was actually banned in turkey until 2013 along with two other letters the x and the w
It's language thing. It's a language thing darling
But the real issue is that the turkish language doesn't use the letter q but the kurdish one does
And there was a lot of anti-kurdish sentiment in turkey
And so those letters were not allowed to appear in official documents and people were not allowed to use them when naming their children
Until the early 1990s it was illegal
In turkey for the 15 to 20 million kurds you're talking about about 20 percent of the population to use any kurdish at all
In public and it was only since 2013 that you are actually allowed to use the letter q once more in turkey in turkey
Would they not have quavers then?
Well, that's why there's been an outcry
People are a little bit annoyed about the sort of repression of the kurdish people, but mainly quavers those lovely cheesy snacks
The earliest version of a q is finnishian which was known as the quaff
It dates from about 10 000 bc
Quaff is thought to have meant monkey
I think the idea is that the top bit is a sort of face and then that's the tail of the monkey
Although this is how unsure we are another theory is that it's a sewing needle
And actually we have kind of similar things now, you know the at sign
In dutch, that's known as the monkey's tail
It is called eppensjachter and then the klammer auf in german, which is the spider or the hanging monkey
What's the name for the at sign? There must be a fancy word. I think people just call it the at sign in danish
It's called snabel, which means elephant's trunk. Oh, I thought it meant snail which would make perfect sense
But it kind of looks like an elephant's trunk. Do you not think have you ever seen an elephant bend its trunk?
Behind
By lots and lots of counts q is the least common letter in the english language and actually we don't really need it at all
Are you saying this whole series is a waste of time?
So this series could just be called i well, it could be called kw would make the same sound wouldn't it? Oh, yes
They must be turkish yeah
The romans themselves seem to be aware that the q wasn't really necessary
So in 90 ad a roman emperor stated that the letter q was redundant except for the purpose of attaching vowels to itself
and his name was
quinton
quintillion
Then you'd have to have the k e 2 you'd have to have k w the queen would be k w w
And I don't think people would go with it. No, I don't think
Try and stop the english using the q you'll have a fight on your hands
There's lots of languages without it. Estonian, Icelandic, Latvian, Polish, Slovenian, Denmark abolished the q from native words
1872
Oh, why?
It isn't needed. The danes are very kind of organized
We have a word encled which doesn't really translate into english and it means beautiful through simplicity
And I think we just thought that's not encled enough. We'll just get rid of it. That's not that's a lot
Why they do so many killings though?
You do do a lot of killings and you know you do
I'm going to play the sound of someone typing. What do you think they are trying to say?
No, any shakespeare. We're only monkeys they might we know just from the sound what somebody is actually trying to say
Do they have a slightly different pitch all of the buttons? Yeah, so it's the qwerty keyboard
And it can be translated if you like to work out what we are typing
If you had just a microphone hackers would be able to discover your logins your password
Any other confidential information that you might be typing because each key
Hits a different part of the keyboard's underplate and there is a slightly different sound for every single one and there's an algorithm
Which can be used to work out which sound corresponds with which letter jimmy looks worried. I might have to learn to write again
Presumably for each keyboard it would be different
Well, you just need 10 minutes with one keyboard with the microphone
Is this for a typewriter or for a keyboard for a computer keyboard?
Computer scientists at the university of california in berkeley estimate hackers would need 10 minutes and they could crack anybody's computer code
What about an ipad?
I don't think it would work on that but it would work on a computer. Do your dirty work on an ipad jimmy
My dirty work
And now I imagine that dirty work is jimmy's password
But what is it about boys was you don't type with with two hands like that every time i'm on a train
There's some boy typing and he's doing this
Maybe steven did me proud that little typing thing
When I was at school
We were all taught to type and they used to tie an apron to the top of the typewriter and then round your neck
And then so you had to type underneath the apron so you couldn't see the boys course andy or talk to dick tape
The key part of that word is dick
That was very good, could you just take that down for us we can actually reveal on what was being typed
Say
There was astonishing
Statistician in the early 1900s called roger babson and he came up with a rather odd typing innovation
He suffered from tb and he believed that fresh air was going to be the answer to him and his condition
So his entire office was so flooded with fresh. He always had the windows open and all his stuff female obviously
They wore hooded onesies
It looks like the handmaid's tail doesn't it
And then he got them to type but if you look
Can you see the woman she was so cold that she had to use little hammers?
In order to type see the little hooked hammers there
And apparently she got to got up to a very good speed with the member of kkk or not
Comparatively recently the men have typed at all. Do we know why?
Sometimes men have bigger fingers. I actually don't I was blessed with a narrow wrist
But men men sometimes have wider fingers or especially if you see like a a man who works in the garden
But it's very big fingers. Tell me more about this guy in the garden
No, it's nothing to do with that the very first mass produced typewriters
Um, they advertised them showing women using them. The idea was this machine is so simple. Even a woman can use it and men
Did not want to be emasculated by being seen to do typing and then it generally was
Agreed in offices women would spell and type better
They would raise the tone of the office and then they would marry and leave and not require a pension
If you watch those things like mad men if you watch kind of anything set back then it's just extraordinary
Yeah when I very first started at the bbc, uh, so we're talking about the early 1980s
No man typed all the men were producers
There was a big pool of secretaries and the men would speak into a dictaphone and the women would type it up
So there was no typing done by men at all
I'm using a dictaphone use your finger like everybody else
Um those brothers that we played at the very beginning it's from the typewriter symphony
It was actually the theme tune on the news quiz on radio 4
It still is a guy called leroy anderson american composer who wrote it where the typewriters use as a percussion instrument
It's one of my favorites. Have a quick look at this video
Isn't that wonderful that's a guy that forgot his instrument and refused to back down
It's a trained percussionist who does it they slightly cheat they modify the typewriter so only two keys are working
So otherwise you'd get it jammed wouldn't you if you played like that? I absolutely love it
Now onto a question about spy novels. What was the name of james bond's gadget expert q q
No
In the films but not in the novels q does not appear and you know, there are james bond films
Yes, and he's called q enums. Yes
It's all right, isn't it but in the original novels only the q branch is mentioned and in the question
I did ask about the spy novels. Oh, that's the problem. I don't listen
No, because you're a man and you're too busy dictating
So q the character q is thought to be based on a real inventor called charles frazer smith
And he worked for the clothing department at the ministry of supply
Of course his real job was coming up with gadgets for the secret service
They were called q gadgets after the world war one q ships
So these were warships which were disguised as freighters and they got their name from their home port queenstown in ireland
And they looked like a perfectly ordinary freighter and they had cargo and all that kind of thing
In fact was to lure u-boats up to the surface and as soon as the u-boat came up
They would reveal their unbelievable armaments. I mean unbelievably brave work 44 q ships were destroyed
But they also managed to destroy 15 u-boats. Uh, so that is where the q thing comes from. It's kind of these q ships
This is uh desmond lewellen
He was the very first q in the films showing some of the devices but frazer smith's own devices
Include a map saw and compass hidden inside a hairbrush. Who doesn't want one of those? Oh, yeah, that would stick out with me
I think
The best one was the the man with the golden gun. He gives him a fake nipple
And what was the well because scaramanga this who's like the super baddie in the movie has three nipples
But no one knows it's him. So james one has to pretend to be him
So they give him here's your gadget for the film. It's a fake nipple
This is a genuine one
He designed a pipe which could be smoked without ruining the map which was hidden inside the bowl
But he did this by lining the pipe with asbestos
and he created a map of invisible ink which was
Able to be seen by using dousing it in the only liquid you'd always have to add
Urine absolutely right and he also came up with the idea of developing garlic
Infused chocolate bars for british agents so that when they dropped into france, they would smell convincingly
What's the least plausible gadget from a james bond film that you can't think of wasn't there an invisible car at one point?
Yeah, my favorite is a submarine in the shape of an alligator
Uh
In octopusi, uh, there was dentonite which was explosive toothpaste
Uh a ski pole rocket launcher and bagpipes flamethrower. That is very good
Actually ian fleming had his own sort of bond-like gadget when he finished casino royale
He was so pleased he had a gold plated typewriter made for himself
And his nephew fergus fleming said that his literary acquaintances considered it the height of vulgarity
At least because he was the only man who could type
I love love love the music to james bond. Let's have a quick listen to the original james bond theme
The composer is a man called montey norman and it actually comes from a song about a man with an unlucky sneeze
Which he reworked into the james bond theme
It was originally called bad sign good sign and it didn't sound at all
Like the original song have a listen to this
Can I have some onion barges, please?
This is surely bullshit
A house for mr
Biswas
It's a wonderful novel and mr biswas has a terrible sneeze and it's unlucky for him
And montey norman wrote a musical version of this which was not a huge success
He was later hired to write the music for the first bond film, which was dr
No, he reworked the theme tune into the james bond theme tune
So we thought we'd do a bit of i'm going to call it query oaky because it starts with a q
We're going to try and see if we can sing
The original james bond theme tune so the words are going to come up on the screen for you
So
I was born
You know, I now I now don't believe you when you say it wasn't a huge hit
I can't understand
That than james bond
He fell into the village pond and drowned. It's a very sad story. Is it true story? Uh, no
We've been expecting you mr bond we heard you sneezing all the way down the corridor
Here is my next question, what would you find in mrs q's memoirs
I like the image you've used by the way that you think um,
A key might be needed to undo a piece of string
It's just possibly the key to her heart my darling. You don't know about love to you. I've never experienced it
Well, I joke I joke i've had a lot of love on very short-term basis
My dressing room door is always open
And mine has a key so
Early 19th century mrs q mrs q's memoirs was a a fake name for someone with a salacious
Memoir, yeah, it was a woman called harriet wilson. She was a courtesan. I love that we say sex worker now
So she started her career at age 15 as a mistress of lord craven and she took lots of lovers
Some people say the prince regent
Uh, we have no evidence for that when she announced that she was going to write her memoirs
She said any concerned gentleman could pay 200 pounds to avoid being written about
Among those that she wrote to and said do you want me to leave you out was arthur wellsley duke of
Wellington who rather famously said publish and be damned she was 10th out of 15 children
And three of her sisters also became courtesans. Um fanny was the first to take up the trade
Just saying I love this as she took up the trade with a man called. Mr
Trench and when her sisters asked why she replied I refused him the whole of the first day
Had I done so the second he would have been in a fever
So published in 1825 it was four volumes and it was
I mean unbelievably popular so popular a barrier had to be set up outside the publisher's offices
And the publishers and wilson went on to make 10 000 pounds which at the time was an enormous amount of money
It has the great opening line these memoirs
I shall not say how and why I became at the age of 15 the mistress of the earl of craven
It's a fantastic opening. Um anybody think of a book that kind of mirrors this situation recently
Well, I suppose stormy daniels stormy daniels absolutely, uh, she said that of course that donald trump had paid to keep their affairs
I've not read the book. I've watched a lot of her films, but
A couple similar areas the chapter concerning trump begins. Okay, so did you just skip to this chapter?
What she says is my life is a lot more interesting than an encounter with donald trump
But I get it still of all the people who are who I had sex with
Why couldn't the world obsess over one of the hot ones?
And then she went on to her make america horny again
She's working as a stand-up comedian now really yeah, she's funny she's funny
Most controversial book in history of what should we call it adult literature? Would it be lady chatterley's love?
It would absolutely 1960 was prosecuted under the 1959 obscene publications act presumably those memoirs had very salacious bits within them
I think it was really more socially shocking
Now lady chatterley's lover because you have an upper-class woman having an affair with a working-class man
And that was just seen as disgusting. I always thought the class thing in those kind of books is interesting
Like if you look at 50 shades of gray if that was
A working-class guy driving a van that was doing all that it'd be a very different book. Yeah
He's a billionaire being awful to her you go. Oh, he's very rich though
He's got a helicopter. If he was doing it all whilst he was driving a van that would be
In lady chatterley's lover the in the in the case the defense prosecutor mervin griffith jones pleaded with jurors
Is it a book that you would wish your wife or your servants to read?
He really had his finger on the pulse didn't he? Yeah
The jury returned not guilty and sales absolutely soared
The best bit of publicity they could have asked. Oh darling three million books in three months
It was absolutely fantastic. In fact in america, they used to have a phrase banned in boston
So boston was seen as a rather puritanical
City and if you wrote banned in boston across the book, it helps sell it enormously
Seen as an immoral work. Wow now from one form of artistic expression to another. What is the most disgusting panel?
You can think of
Oh goodness, i've forgotten about that picture. It does look like i'm sort of merging into alan
I'd like to take a moment sandy to thank you for the nasal trimmers. You got me for christmas
Yeah, it does look like you're saying like look i've got nothing on my nose, okay
So it's the letter q we are looking for what else might you have in a i'm absolutely stumped actually
Okay, so the answer is quilts quilts quilts. Well, we were never going to get quilts
But I think that is the point of the program
Well, then we did really well. Yes, you did very well. Um, there's a woman called ana dimitrio
She was the 2018 president of the science and art section of the british science association
And she made a quilt where every panel was impregnated with m r sa
Bacteria now, of course, she'd heavily treated it so it wasn't going to kill you to actually hold the quilt up
It is staph illococcus
Or rios bacteria. So mrsa is the deadly strain of this and uh, what she was trying to do was to highlight
The problem of antibiotic resistance. Oh unpleasantly. I think she got the bacteria out of her own nose and grew it on the quilt
We did that to the native americans, didn't we we gave them quilts with smallpox
You're right
They did give out blankets infected with smallpox in order to subdue they called it the native american
What point was she making with she's just trying to show us the real issue that we're having at the moment with antibiotic resistance
Someone tell me the problem isn't us taking antibiotics when we feel poorly
The problem is if you eat a piece of meat, yeah, they've been pumped so full of antibiotics
So it's not to get ill that it's in all of us. Anyway, yeah
It's in it's in milk is yeah, it is I mean we have far too much exposure to antibiotics
Don't take them as it were willy-nilly. Don't take them willy-nilly. It's very painful. Yeah
The whole thing about making quilts and so on goes much further
So during various wars in the 19th century
It was very common for soldiers to make a rather intricate quilts often made from scraps of uniform
They've been known as convalescence quilts and some of the most complex examples have up to 25 000 pieces of fabric in them
When I was a child duvets were called continental quilts
I just remember going to a hotel and it didn't have sheets and blankets and we really didn't know what to do
Some of them did fall off they slide
They first came to britain in about 1964 and it was habitat who advertised them saying that you could make a bed
Uh so quickly just a few shakes that even a man could do it
How wrong they work is getting that cover on yeah, this is what we're gonna do so you've each got a quilt
And a cover right? Oh, so we're gonna have a very quick competition. Couldn't be easier to see who can
Be quickest. Hang on. Hang on. I haven't done the bow yet. I haven't got my key. Get your quilt out
We're gonna do it all at the same time. Okay. Okay. Is everybody
I can't find the opening sandy. Can we open it? Where do we start? I can't find my thing. Okay, ready one two three
Anyone who's amazed it stayed on
We specially got a duvet cover for you with blue whales on. We were very I think
No question about it. Lou was the winner there. It was absolutely fantastic
Now put your security blankets away because it's time for the round that we call general ignorance fingers on buzzers, please
What happens to dr. Jekyll's trousers when he becomes mr. Hyde
And they they rip don't they rip? Why do they not rip?
Because he's not the hulk
Well, uh, he becomes smaller and kind of hunched in like a beast
Yeah, so they should fall down is the answer because in the book Edward Hyde is much smaller than dr
Jekyll the reason for his short stature is he represents dr
Jekyll's evil side so the bit that he's been trying to suppress as he lives as decently and as morally as he can
It's the films and the tv that show him as big more like the the incredible hulk and the hulk is based on that
Isn't it? Yes exactly and robert louis stevenson's tale was inspired by a man called deacon brody
He lived in 18th century edinburgh and by day he was the most marvelous respectable cabinet maker lockmaker member of the town council
By night he used the keys that he made to break into their homes and steal their stuff
This is him with his accomplice george smith stick out the fact that he was a chicken
Anyway, robert louis stevenson had a wardrobe as a child at the end of his bed, which had been made by deacon brody
So it's probably how he came to have the idea in the first place and brody was eventually
Hanged although the story is that he wore a steel band around his neck and escaped
To paris to live out his life. I had the idea that you would be hung and they would go
Well, don't look we're hanging him and just look the other way. Yeah, why's why's the body going hard? I don't know
He must have buried himself. I suppose. Yeah
Anyway, who wrote this rhyme the queen of hearts
She made some tarts upon a summer's day the nave of hearts. He stole those tarts and took them clean away
Beyonce
Uh
It's louis carroll
Again, I think that was quite
relatively intelligent
So it was popularized by louis carroll
Um, but it was not written by him was first published in 1782. So louis carroll's work doesn't come out till 1865
Uh, there are actually some additional verses about the king of spades the king of clubs and the diamond king
They've actually been forgotten. I think because they're rather ruder
Than the verses about the germ tarts the king of hearts beats the nave until he gives the tarts back
The king of spades kills the maids while the nave of clubs gives winks and rubs
It was a different time it was
It is an amazing book alice's adventures in wonderland never been out of print. Uh, it's celebrated
It's 150th birthday in 2015 lots of working titles for it. He had alice's adventures on the ground
Alice among the fairies alice's hour in elf land. They're rather nice, aren't they?
Finally, what color is the emerald city?
I think I know a weird fact about the wizard of os which I didn't realize until recently which is that it's an allegory
For america the farmers are the straw man and they need a brain an industry was the tin man
An industry doesn't have a heart
And the lion was the politicians and that they didn't have any courage. You're absolutely right
But it's not what we were looking for. We were looking for the color
The color
Well, is the answer green then
Emerald
No red stop naming colors
To you when she first goes to the city of os
She is told she must don a pair of protective glasses in order to avoid being blinded by the brightness
So I have that when I have laser on my jack and danny they make you wear glasses
On your what was jack and danny jack and danny
Jack and danny fanny. Sorry. It's called a jack. What is a jack?
Danny my mom doesn't like me doing rude stuff and she's really pleased i was going to be on qi
And now she's not going to be pleased anymore
She's going to be very embarrassed in front of the gardening club, of course again speaking of the gardening club you had all
Downstairs
I did not know it's rhyming slang. Is it jack and danny who knew for fanny? Yeah
My favorite when I was growing up was always called the uh, a fine china
Oh
Oh, is that because you get it out for special occasions
Back to the wizard of os
What we learned from the wizard at the end is that he makes everybody wear green spectacles so that things appear
Green and when she asks if that means everything isn't really green he replies
No more so than any other city
But my people have worn green glasses on their eyes so long that most of them think it really is an emerald city
Uh, there's a city in america, which is known as the emerald city. It's seattle. It's a beautiful place
That's surrounded by water and evergreen forests. Have you been to see i've been you must have played there. Yeah
I played there last year. It's an amazing place to do a gig as well. It's incredible. They're in portland
Just incredible
I played a place in portland when I was last there the aladdin theater
And said oh anything interesting about the theater and I went oh, yeah, it used to be a cinema
He said we showed one film here for 20 years
I said, what was it? I said what was the deep throat?
And the guy the guy said to me he said don't put a blue light on in there
Green when viewed through emerald tinted glasses and there goes the bell for the end of the school day
Before we leave for playtime. Let's have a look at your report cards in the first place tonight
Well, this is astonishing with a full five points, it's alan
So our guests tom jimmy lou and alan and I leave you with this quick quotation from the quill of american author robert
Benchley
It took me 15 years to discover that I had no talent for writing
But I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous. Goodbye
You