Good evening and welcome to QI, where we're all reacting
rather roughly in a show that's really rather rude.
Joining me is our rudest panel yet.
The breathtakingly rude John Barrowman...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..the fantastically rude Phill Jupitus...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..the unbelievably rude Aisling Bea...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..and the rudest four-letter word that I can think of - Alan!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
If you really must interrupt, then you can use your buzzers.
John goes...
Oi, you! Aisling goes...
Shove it up your arse!
Wow. Phill goes...
Go to hell!
And Alan goes...
You flipping scoundrel!
Do you remember when those were the worst words you could think of?
"You cad!" "You rapscallion."
"What the flip?" My four-year-old says, "What the flip?"
"What the flip?!" Or fish. My mother says, "Oh, fish!"
When you're in a boat? Yeah, yeah.
It's a Scandinavian way of getting excited.
Open any cupboard in the house - "Oh, fish!"
LAUGHTER
Of if nobody's showered.
LAUGHTER AND GROANING
Our first question is R for risky.
Name something that is so rude you can't say it on a BBC comedy show.
Hell. Yes?
BLEEP! BLEEP! BLEEP! BLEEP! BLEEP!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
JAUNTY MUSIC PLAYS
Let's try this instead.
Name something that you CAN say on a BBC comedy show NOW
that you couldn't say in the 1950s.
We're post-watershed, we're allowed a fuck.
Yay!
Only if it's cleared.
You have to write to whatever the gods of words of television are.
You have to write and get permission. Yeah. Yeah? I'll start.
On the radio, they used to say... There was a list of eight words
they'd give you at the BBC... You must have had this list. Yeah.
..when I started doing the radio, back in the '90s.
But the only thing we got in trouble for, really,
was blasphemy. Well, in the late 1940s, they issued something called
the BBC Variety Programmes Policy Guide For Writers And Producers.
It became known as the Green Book,
and it was what was acceptable for broadcasting.
There was an absolute ban on jokes regarding, and I'm quoting here,
"lavatories, effeminacy in men, immorality of any kind,
"and any suggestive references to honeymoon couples,
"chambermaids and fig leaves."
LAUGHTER
"That should cover it." I know!
The vulgar use of the word "basket" must be avoided.
"Oh, hello, missus. Can I see your basket, please?
"What, have you got some melons in your basket?" Now you do it like that...
Yes, suggestive references to ladies' underwear,
so things like, "Winter drawers on," you wouldn't say that,
and it conceded that "references to Noah were sometimes permissible".
But it added, "Since there is seldom anything to be gained by them,
"and since they can engender much resentment,
"they are best avoided altogether."
You couldn't make jokes about solicitors,
miners or the working class.
And, in particular, you could not make any joke about
a specific Irish family called the MacGillycuddys of the Reeks.
I wonder who they are. They're an ancient family but, apparently,
several jokes have been made about them and they took offence.
And even now, we should not be amused by
the MacGillycuddys of the Reeks.
You know in Ireland
there are certain words like feck, Jaysus and shite? Yeah.
These are OK, they're versions of fudge,
that's why so many people in Ireland say them,
so something like Father Ted - "Drink, feck, girls, arse!" -
those are versions of what you get away with saying...
It's the same in the States. You can say frickin'. Frickin'.
"I don't frickin' believe it." And that's fine. Max Miller, in 1944,
he tells the story about meeting a rather attractive woman
on a mountain pass, and it included the line,
he didn't know whether to "block her passage or toss himself off" and...
LAUGHTER
But he got banned for five years. Five years...
PHILL: Wow! ..he received for that particular...
AISLING: Ooh, it was worth it, though. I know.
The very first song, in fact, banned by the BBC was
George Formby's My Little Ukulele In My Hand. It was 1933.
He was apparently a regular offender.
The BBC described him as "our old friend".
I remember when we were BBC trained for presenting and everything
and we were always told,
"You can say it on air, as long as it is in a medical book."
# Oh, I'm absolutely riddled
# With chlamydia. #
LAUGHTER
That's why Alan is sitting between us.
The music-hall singer Marie Lloyd, she was absolutely fantastic.
She was told off for her song...
She had a song called She Sits Among The Cabbages And Peas,
and it was said to be rude, so she agreed to change it,
and she sang She Sits Among The Cabbages And Leeks.
LAUGHTER
Y'all know the movie Mrs Miniver? Yeah. There's a scene
where the actor - I can't remember his name off the top of my head -
he jumps into bed in his pyjamas,
just after he's got back from helping the rescue at D-Day,
and as he jumps in bed, his willy falls out of his pyjamas...
I was hoping you were going to say pyjamas, not off his body!
LAUGHTER
It leapt off him! Oh, my God. And for some reason,
the editor at that point in the movie obviously missed it,
they didn't cut it out and to this day it's still in the film.
Sorry, Sandi... We've got to go.
LAUGHTER
I was doing a job recently.
As an actor, you have to say what nudity you're OK with
before you do, like, a lovemaking scene or anything.
My agent was texting me - they had to do it the next day,
so I only had the time to text her what to put into the contract
and I was like, "Boob. No nip. Top of crack, fine.
"Bottom of crack, no."
And she printed out that text for me and framed it for me
and sent it to me. "Top of crack, yes. Bottom of crack, no.
"That much I save for my husband."
LAUGHTER
It's good to know you've got standards, Aisling.
Thank you, yeah. Now, you've all got some chopsticks under your desk.
What is the rudest thing that you can do with them?
I think there's some food as well. I say food, it's jelly babies. Oh!
So, what is the rudest thing that you can do with them?
Is it break up the chopsticks into firewood
and then get the sushi in front of the chef and go,
"I'm just going to heat this up"?
PHILL: I've been there. It's to put them...
Oh, leave them in the bowl?
That is rude, but it's not as rude as passing food from one to another
with your own chopsticks.
So, if John was to pass a jelly baby to Aisling, unbelievably rude.
Like that? Do you know why? I feel like I've just become a meme.
Ooh! That's rude, John.
I don't want it. Let's do it again.
HE MOANS
LAUGHTER
Wait, wait, wait, wait. What? Don't show bottom crack. Go.
HE MOANS
You can finish it off yourself.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
I wasn't very clear.
It's passing with your chopstick to the next chopstick.
It was not necessarily in her mouth. Oh! Yeah.
Why do you think that might be?
Is it that you'd be mixing flavours of the foods?
No. So, it reminds everybody of Buddhist funerals. Huh?
PHILL: Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
At least stand them up like terracotta soldiers.
Oh, OK. Let's do that.
I'm trying to talk to you about Buddhist funerals! Carry on.
You're just playing with jelly babies. So, you...
LAUGHTER
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Whoa!
I mean, honestly, this looks like a meeting of my family.
In a Buddhist funeral, they use chopsticks to pick
the deceased bones out of the ashes and place them in the urn.
So, larger bones, you need two sets of chopsticks.
So, two sets of chopsticks touching reminds people
of removing their ancestors' bones and putting them in an urn.
Sticking chopsticks vertically up in food, very rude in both China
and in Japan. Anybody know why? It looks like an "up yours" symbol?
Again, it's funerals.
It reminds people of joss sticks which are used at funerals.
What's the thing, then, when you get it, you place it...?
You know the little table they give you for your chopsticks,
where did that come from?
Well, that's all because you don't want to put them on the bowl,
for example. There are all sorts of words.
So, in Japan, the word for chopsticks is hashi.
And, then, when it's part of a compound word, it's called bashi.
And all of these things are really bad manners. So, watashi-bashi -
placing your chopsticks across the bowl like that.
That's why you have the little rest.
I'm quite in the mood for a watashi-bashi.
LAUGHTER
Neburi-bashi is sucking on your chopsticks.
Saguri-bashi is rummaging, food rummaging.
And then sashi-bashi is skewering your food.
All of these things in Japan are terribly bad manners.
You know at Christmas when someone offers you a box of Roses?
You're like, "I love the orange ones!" That's saguri-bashi.
That's rude. Does anybody know what the world record is for catching
shuttlecocks with a pair of chopsticks?
Oh, I'm in. Yeah. Er...
Look, OK. I have got a racquet and a shuttlecock.
We're going to give this a go. OK, who wants to go first?
John, do you want to go first? Sure. You're going up?
Almost. Yeah.
Aisling, you want a go? Yeah. Ready? OK.
OK. No.
Er, Phill? Are you ready?
Alan? Maybe it's not catching it, you have to stab it a little bit.
I don't know what's the easiest thing...
If I send it high... Well, why don't...? Go high, go high!
AISLING YELPS
JOHN SCREECHES
So, this is a thing.
Do you know what the world record is? 4,000.
"Exterminate jelly babies.
Exterminate..."
APPLAUSE
"Darling, don't say that..."
APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH
"Mother! Mother!" "Exterminate!"
"Oh, no. It's come back as a woman."
THEY BOTH SHRIEK
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Oh, my God. Give a bunch of performers too much sugar...
LAUGHTER
Yeah, but I didn't hit it to you!
Oh. But you didn't say that you HAD to hit it to me.
No, it's the world record for catching a shuttlecock,
but I've got to send it to you. OK. Try now, try now. Are you ready
now you've got the hang of it? I'm going to stand up.
I'll do a gentler one. Oh!
Quickly, do it now, because I can do it really prim. Are you ready? Yes.
Anyway, the record is 54 in a minute.
So you guys are rubbish!
OK. Last one. You ready? Ready.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
I'm out of breath. That's the most sport I've done in years.
Now, here's a real faux pas. You might know that Oedipus
murdered his father, but what was the motive?
Cos he wouldn't give him the car keys to go on a date.
You are, weirdly, in the right area.
Shut up! Shut the front door.
This is Oedipus in the middle. Not quite sure they got the arms
in the right place.
It looks like someone behind doing the arms,
like he's got his arms like that and someone else is doing them.
LAUGHTER
Yeah. Oedipus is talking to Tiresias, who's a soothsayer,
and he wants to know who has killed his father.
He's going to discover it was him. He didn't know it was his father.
So why did he kill his father? Does anybody know?
He thought his father killed his father. Huh?
LAUGHTER
The guy he thought was his father
he thought was the bloke who killed his real father.
That's like EastEnders kind of plot.
You said I was close about the car.
Was it because his dad wouldn't allow him to do something...?
It is to do with driving. The chariot.
It is to do with the chariot. The miracle that Oedipus was told by
an oracle that he would marry his mother
and he would kill his father... I do not recall that. OK.
He wasn't told he was adopted
so he didn't know who his actual father was.
And one day he got into an argument with his birth father,
who was King Laius, over who had the right of way,
and so Oedipus killed him.
But he killed him not knowing that it was his father.
This is chariot rage. This is before modern road rage
and even before that there was carriage rage.
We think it's like a new thing...
ALAN HUMS
What are you humming, darling?
HE HUMS LOUDER
That's the running... Chariots Of Fire, yeah.
Best nickname in the history of sport. What's that? Chariots.
For the Rugby League player Martin Offiah.
It's also the name of a very popular gay sauna in Central London.
I've driven past that. Yeah, I, all the time, drive past them.
LAUGHTER
It's a chain, so it's like a brand like McDonald's that you recognise.
"This is going to be a nice sauna."
So you're not going in for Big Mac, you're going in for a "big mac"!
I think we should move on.
There's always been some kind of rage on the road.
There's chariot rage, there was carriage rage.
In 1817, Lord Byron wrote to his friend that he had just had a row
with a man in a carriage who had shouted at him
and frightened his horse, and expressed, as he wrote,
"An intention of mending the road with his immediate remains
"if he did not hold his tongue." He held it.
And I think that is something we should say in road rage.
"I shall mend the road with your immediate remains
"if you do not hold your tongue."
You rarely see people from the past without a beard. I admire that.
He's a handsome fellow. Very handsome.
He kept a pet bear at university. When you say a bear...
No, I don't mean a... Oh, OK. ..a larger gentleman.
Yeah. "Byron, come upstairs, I'm ready."
"We're going to Chariots."
LAUGHTER
The phrase road rage, when do we reckon it dates from?
1972. '88. Roman times. '88.
'88 is exactly right, you get an extra point.
WHOOPING
First appeared in a Florida newspaper in 1988.
Probably a play on what was called steroid rage, roid rage, road rage.
They did a study of 2,400 drivers in the United States. They found
that motorists who carry guns - more likely to indulge in road rage.
I know. Quelle surprise. I know, right?
A 2019 survey found in the UK, people in Yorkshire most likely to
rage on the roads. But people in Yorkshire, to be fair,
are just being annoyed that there's a road.
"Used to be all fields when I were a lad. Look at this now.
"Bloody roads! Bloody roads everywhere!"
That's very good, darling.
"All going t'south."
LAUGHTER
"Where they drink shandy.
"The bastards."
LAUGHTER
"Look at the state of you in your trousers. Trousers!
"Look at you." The only reason I moved to Scotland is
so I can call people from Yorkshire southerners.
LAUGHTER
Who thinks it's attractive to stand in front of a female
and shout in her face?
The entire Republican Party. So true.
APPLAUSE
That's so true.
So, we are not talking about a person,
we are talking about a creature, and it is an astonishing creature.
It's the white bellbird. So, the correct name is the Procnias albus.
It lives in the Amazon. It's got the loudest call in the avian kingdom.
From a metre away, it averages 116 dB.
So, that is the same as a rock concert.
It's the same as a sort of sports crowd shouting.
Or a white guy in a bar. Yeah. The bird is about this big, OK?
That is its wattle,
can you see this thing that's hanging down? Yep.
It's just a single loud note. I mean, it's just like a fog horn, OK?
Have a listen to this.
WHITE BELLBIRD BRAYS
And what they do is, when they find the likely mate,
they land on a branch and they swivel their body face on,
and they bray into the female's face, and she doesn't seem to mind.
I mean, she risks hearing loss at this point.
And the females judge their mates entirely on volume
and there seems to be no purpose to this.
It is just to try and get the woman to go, "Wow, you're loud..."
Wow, I like it. "..and I really fancy you."
What's the highest note you can sing, John?
I don't know. I've never screamed in a woman's face before.
Well, that's how you get them.
If only there was a woman near you!
If I weren't doing eight shows a week and doing a concert... Yeah.
..I'd go to B flat. Go on. Give us a note.
Sing the word Mary in a B flat. Let me think here.
# Mary... #
HIGHER PITCH: # Mary. #
Go on.
I don't know why I picked Mary, by the way.
What about shuttlecock? Yeah.
SUSTAINED NOTE: # Shuttle-cock! #
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Yeah, John!
How do your ovaries feel now? Exploding, John. Whay!
Oh, my God.
Children at home watching this, trying to pick up dating techniques.
So, from one rude man to another.
Whose genitals are seven feet longer than they used to be?
Don't know where they found that picture.
LAUGHTER
Are we talking specifically male genitals? We are, darling. OK.
We're talking about a penis that's seven foot... A man in the back row put his hand up.
Did you put your hand up, darling? Do you know what it is?
No, I just wanted to brag.
LAUGHTER
KLAXON BLARES
Oh, my word. Put your phone number on there!
LAUGHTER
You do not have a seven-foot long willy. That's amazing!
It's no wonder we had to sit you at the back.
Is that your girlfriend you're sat beside? His girlfriend's six rows in front.
LAUGHTER
It's not how big it is, it's what you do with it. Exactly.
IN YORKSHIRE ACCENT: "It's not what you do with it..."
"It's that you do it in Yorkshire."
"..it's that you do it in bloody Yorkshire.
"I use it to dig me vegetables."
LAUGHTER
Is it to do with, like, a medical condition?
No, it is to do with a piece of art.
It is carved into the hillside. PHILL: Oh!
It's the Rude Man of Cerne. It is. The Cerne Abbas Giant,
or the Old Man of Cerne.
It is indeed known as the Rude Man of Cerne. Oh!
So, he's a 200-foot tall chalk carving in Dorset. Look at that.
Have you ever seen this? I have, I have. Has a notably large...
Well, he's well endowed, let's just put it that way.
But he wasn't always this well endowed. So, initially,
his proud member was just 16ft long.
You would think that's quite big, but if you think about scale, so if
you imagine a 6ft man has a six-inch penis. He's 200ft, you'd imagine him
to have a 200-inch penis, which is about 16ft long. Right.
But sometime around 1908, for reasons we don't know why,
they merged his penis with his bellybutton
and gave him an extra seven foot.
LAUGHTER
AISLING: What's weird, when I look at that,
I see a shy little girl with pigtails licking a lollipop.
Does no-one else see that?
LAUGHTER
A little bun on her head.
LAUGHTER
Yeah, now you say that...
Like, there she is, having a lovely time, going,
"I love my lollipop." Yeah!
Then she's got, like, Pippi Longstocking hair.
Yeah, and then she's just got a little bun on her head. Yeah.
Maybe we've misinterpreted this for years.
So, we don't know how old it is.
There was a survey of land in the area in 1617,
no mention of him at all.
Either it wasn't there or it had been overgrown, I don't know.
By the 1760s, we start to get references to him.
So, certainly, there's a 1764 edition of The Gentleman's Magazine,
and that's got a drawing in it, including measurements, when he had
the smaller... Are you sure it wasn't The Ladies' Magazine? Hey!
Ladies couldn't read at that time.
LAUGHTER
Don't really know why he's there. It's possible that it was
a parody of Cromwell and dates from the Civil War,
that people were taking the mickey out of Cromwell.
There was a wonderful campaign in 1921.
There was a Mr Long from Gillingham, in Dorset,
and he hated this thing
and he had a campaign that the giant's genitals should be hidden
with a huge fig leaf,
and two local bishops thought this was a marvellous idea.
Apparently, the Home Office thought about it but didn't actually do it.
He's been covered up lots of times.
1992, some pranksters made a giant pair of jeans for him.
LAUGHTER
Yes! Yes!
That reminds me of me in high school sitting at a desk -
"Oh, no, it's coming out! Noooo!"
What lesson?
Math. Maths? Yeah. Wow, that's weird.
The teacher was... What was his name? Not telling you.
LAUGHTER
2002 he was given a condom by the Family Planning Association.
And in 2007 a protestor known only as the Purple Phantom
painted his entire penis purple.
Using what? How do you dye grass?
Uh...with dye. Mm.
LAUGHTER
Now, there's nothing ruder than someone with bad timekeeping,
but who is always a little bit late?
Well, is it to do with astrology?
Hmm... We're not all actually born under the star sign we think we are.
Yes, that is the case, but that is not what we are talking about.
It's a small amount of lateness.
Weirdly, the stars are sort of connected to it.
It's very important because of the interconnectivity
of the planet that we all run on the same time.
Is it Greenwich Mean Time, the clock or something, I don't know,
just behind? No, it isn't Greenwich. That was a lovely guess, John.
It's a nice guess. It was a very nice guess.
There's an atomic clock. Is it in Switzerland?
It is to do with the atomic clock. You are absolutely right.
You get an extra point. There are 50 or more national labs
around the world which all run on atomic clocks.
So, what they do is they measure the vibration of caesium atoms, OK?
So, one second is defined as
the time it takes for a caesium atom
to vibrate 9,192,631,770 times.
That's that number of times per second, OK, for it to vibrate.
And then each clock around the world sends all of its data to Paris,
to the International Bureau of Weights and Measurements,
and they collate it. This process is called Coordinated Universal Time
and it is used throughout the world, except in one country.
AISLING: Russia. PHILL: North Korea.
It's not Denmark. It is Denmark.
It is Denmark, and I think an extra ten points there.
They don't play ball with time. Didn't bother. We didn't bother.
We never updated our laws. I don't know. We were busy. There was a herring season. I've no idea...
We just use something called mean solar time,
but because the Danes have failed to play ball,
we are pretty much a quarter of a second late to every meeting.
PHILL: Certainly explains the fashion.
AUDIENCE: Oooh! Phill!
Have you been to Denmark? I have, yeah. Loads. I love it.
Yeah, you won't be welcome now, you know that, right?
It's all right. I'll just say I know you. "Passport?"
"No, Sandi sent me." "Oh, that is OK. Please come in."
LAUGHTER
"You are a quarter of a second early."
LAUGHTER
So, it's called Coordinated Universal Time,
but the acronym is UTC. Why do you think that might be?
Cos isn't that milk? Yeah. Is that milk? No, that's...
AUDIENCE MEMBER: UHT.
UHT. Thank you very much. UHT, sorry. I knew it was something.
And then there's PMT. Do not buy that milk.
LAUGHTER
So, UTC it's called.
So, in French, it would be "temps universel coordonne",
so TUC. And, apparently, nobody could agree,
so UTC was just a compromise. It doesn't actually mean anything.
Why do you think we have 60 seconds and 60 minutes? There was a lot
of early attempts to do timekeeping.
Why do you think we went for 60 minutes? Is it...? I don't know.
Birds. Birds?!
Another lovely guess from John, isn't he great?
Birds, he says, Sandi! You know when your three-year-old says something
and they're trying to be clever and you want to go, "Yes. No, that's..."
Maybe it is birds, John. Yes. 60 birds.
I'm coming off that sugar high right now.
LAUGHTER
"Sandi, is it birds?"
I always thought it was just mathematics. Yes, but why?
Because of all the factors in 60.
Yeah, so, 60 is a fantastically useful number
because it can be divided by 12 other numbers
to make fractions easy.
And you can go back 4,000 years to the Ancient Babylonians,
who are probably the ones that came up with the idea of the 60 minutes.
They just got it from the birds, though, didn't they?
They just got it...
LAUGHTER
Fundamentally, the birds...
Can I do a little bit of Sandi mythology that I'd like to break?
Yes, darling.
I heard a story that a young Sandi Toksvig was at, potentially,
Cambridge University? And someone was talking about how cavemen
or whatever used to use, like... They found old versions of calendars
that cavemen would have, like, 30 things marked out in them
and a tiny, tiny Danish hand went up and was like,
"Why in the hell would it be a caveman and not a cavewoman?"
And they were like, "What?" "Why would a man need to know 30 days
"has passed? That's clearly a woman
"invented those calendars for obvious reasons."
Is that a fact?
It is!
Clever Sandi. It's my favourite Sandi fact.
Yeah, I love that.
This is to do with a particular bone that is thought to be
the world's first calendar, and it's actually got 28 markings on it.
28. I was sitting in a lecture and somebody said,
"This is Man's first attempt at a calendar."
But, clearly, no man needs to know 28 days... Days have passed.
We fucking do!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
It's called the Ishango bone but the thought was first to put to me
by a wonderful woman called Dr Deborah Swallow.
So, this idea of using 60 has been around probably for 5,000...
certainly 4,000 years, and the Romans and the Greeks borrowed that
but they didn't take the bit about 60 minutes for an hour,
and so hours are whatever length you needed them to be.
In the summer you could have an hour that was 75 minutes long
and in the winter you could have an hour that was maybe 45 minutes long.
I have to say, the Scandinavians would have hours that
were 15 minutes long in the winter.
The Vikings had a completely different way of telling time.
They would divide the day into eight parts
and they would do this by splitting the horizon into eight parts
and people would pick a daymark - so a feature of the landscape
that was directly above the middle of each of these sections -
and then you would know what time it was depending on where the sun was
over the chosen hill or tree or field
and each village would have these particular day marks.
Say you're on a Viking rampage, like your people used to be... Wow.
You're somewhere where you don't know. No idea what time it is.
"Oh, we are late again but we have brought bacon and herring."
Someone comes back and he's like, "Guys, I was down there by myself,
"like a fool, rampaging all on my own. I thought we agreed a time?"
Sorry, are these rabbits invading?
LAUGHTER
ALAN: Dutch Rabbit.
Does sound like a euphemism.
LAUGHTER
Why should you not have horns on your helmet?
PHILL: Because they didn't have horns.
They didn't have horns on their helmets. Did they not...?
No, it was invented by a designer for a Wagnerian opera.
But these daymarks that the Vikings had, you still get some names.
So in Norway you might get
Middagsfjeld or Middagshorn or Middagsberg...
Say it again, say it quieter.
I love it when you talk the mother tongue.
Do it more, do it more, I love it.
LAUGHTER
Right. We all know that it's rude to pull faces,
but what comes next in this sequence?
That actually looks like Take That just before Robbie left.
AISLING LAUGHS
Very good. Which end are we adding to? So, we are adding to the right.
What's the next one? Is it vomit? It is vomit. It's known as Barf.
This is the Baxter Animated Retching Faces.
What it is, it's used for children
so when they've got nausea and they can't explain exactly how bad
they feel, then you use this, usually with a computer screen,
so the user can kind of scroll up and down and stop at the one
that describes how they're feeling.
I need to bring that and give it to my friends for nights out.
I don't know...
SHE MUMBLES
Darling, point. Point!
Point! She's about to spew.
Hold my hair. John. Hold...
You're all right, darling. You're fine. You're all right.
I'm so sorry. That's OK. We still love you.
She'll be fine. She'll be fine.
Once I get it out, I can go again. That's why we love you.
Am I still pretty, John? Yeah, you're always pretty.
Just wipe that off a bit. There you go.
Best friend I've ever had, John.
Classic me.
Aisling! Yeah? Aisling! Yeah?
SHE MUMBLES
Just say something so we know you're not dead, love.
I'm not dead, love.
Anyway, the retching scale is based on a similar one called
the Wong-Baker Scale which is used for pain.
So, it's the same thing with kids, if you don't really know how much pain they're in. There you are.
It wouldn't be helpful if your child did NOT look like a moon. Yeah.
LAUGHTER
Why should you always be polite to your doctor?
What's in it for you to be polite to your doctor?
Cos they'll spit in your drip behind your back
before they serve it to you. Well, it's worse than that.
I was in a veterinary surgery and I was behind the scenes
and when the bring the animals in, when you hand the animal over,
you don't want to see how they manipulate it and move the animal.
Cos they'd be like, "Oh, is this your cat?"
Yeah. Move the leg! Put it in!
Argh-argh-argh-argh-argh!
But why should you be nice to them? Because when you go into surgery
you don't want them to take it out on you to flip you around
or do something really violent with you.
Well, you want them to be good at their job, is that fair? Yeah. Yes.
OK, so not that.
LAUGHTER
In 2017 they did a study of surgeons in Israel
and they looked at rudeness.
It makes doctors 50% less good at their jobs.
That's the same answer, though. Well, they don't take it out on you,
they just can't help themselves. They performed a simulated surgery
on a child, all the time while they're being yelled at
by one of the child's parents,
and not only did they communicate less well, they made incorrect
diagnosis, they sometimes picked up the wrong instruments
and lots of the patients they were "operating on" would have died.
So be nice because you don't want your doctor to make
a mess of things. Now, why do the most mature people do this?
SHE BLOWS A RASPBERRY
I'm staying out of this one.
It's nothing to do with birds.
LAUGHTER
Are we talking about the very elderly or losing control?
I think most people do it but it is done by the most mature people
at a certain age. What age might it be?
Oh, it's developmental milestone, blowing a raspberry. Yeah.
It is absolutely.
A very important part of a baby's language development.
It's the way they learn how to manoeuvre their jaw
and their lips and their tongue and so on, making loud noises
and quiet noises, and the earlier a baby blows a loud raspberry,
the earlier they tend to speak
and it is a sign at that age of maturity.
Fascinating. And then parents blow raspberries back
and that reinforces the behaviour and it's how we teach them that
it's worth making that noise cos you'll communicate.
John, please. John.
LAUGHTER
They did a study in 2018 of babies' first words.
London infants are the most rude, apparently. West Midlands...
LAUGHTER
West Midlands are the most polite. I love this - Scottish babies
learn quicker than others to say the word sorry.
SCOTTISH ACCENT: "Sorry, sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry."
The Montessori Method of Education,
when children start to talk back and start to question the rules,
they refer to that as the age of rudeness.
It's a good sign if your child is spirited and rude,
it means they're making a bit of space for themselves in the world.
The alternative is for them to slip into depression.
No, rudeness and talking back is a sign of advanced maturity.
I mean, it's annoying but it's still a thing.
Household assistants like Siri and Alexa are becoming more common.
What is the effect on children?
They don't know to say please and thank you, maybe,
cos they can demand... You're absolutely right.
It is making children more rude.
42% of children 9-16 are using them, and you do not have to say please
or thank you, so they are making children more rude.
Blowing raspberries is a sign of maturity...
ALAN BLOWS A RASPBERRY
LAUGHTER
..but only in babies.
All of which brings us to the fruity matter of general ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
Name a body part that is built only for pleasure.
Oh!
The clitoris?
KLAXON BLARES
Can I just say, that is the biggest clitoris I have ever seen?
LAUGHTER
It's the first one I've ever seen!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Not true. Why do we think that? Oi! Yes, darling? Is it feet?
No, it's not feet.
But I'm just going to say, I'm just going to finish with the clitoris.
So, it used to be thought that it was the only human organ
whose sole function was pleasure.
One of the things that we now know is that it's actually
fantastically clever. So, the clitoris informs the brain
that it's time to create THE very best swimming conditions for sperm.
So it's in men's interests to engage the clitoris in what's going on.
That's right, man at the back, who thinks all you need...
LAUGHTER DROWNS SPEECH
Do you remember when you were younger,
this sort of word that's gone out of use?
There used to be erogenous zones. Zones, yes.
People would say, "What's your erogenous zone?" Yeah.
PHILL: Basildon.
LAUGHTER
Zone six!
But, yeah, people were obsessed with ear lobes.
"Oh, it's the ear lobes." Yes. The ear lobes is not an erogenous zone.
No, not at all. What a day for that lady to go modelling.
LAUGHTER Yeah. Neither here nor there...
You know when you buy a chicken and it hasn't been plucked properly,
you know that?
PHILL: It looks like Desperate Dan's chin.
Is it the perineum? Er, no.
So, we're still on the part that is entirely... The appendix? No.
It's a part of the brain that is entirely wired for pleasure
and it is called the nucleus accumbens. It is...
Oh, I forgot the question was pleasure. Pleasure.
And I was like, "Is it the appendix?" Yeah. I was going to say,
how are you pleasuring your appendix? Yeah.
SHE FEIGNS MOANS OF PLEASURE
No.
So, it's the bit of the brain that when we feel rewarded in some way,
we eat food, or we take drugs, or we have sex or whatever,
it fires in dopamine into the body and makes you feel good.
So, it's the bit of the body that is there just for pleasure.
You should just do that a lot, then.
Well, just help yourself. Hit your head off that.
Yeah. Oh, I feel great. Yeah.
Ow! Sorry!
Notice how I didn't do it. "John, try that."
Remind me not to listen to you again!
I'm just going to say, I don't think that's going to do it. OK.
Which country's national poem begins with the words
"O Lithuania"?
Is it Latvia?
KLAXON BLARES
APPLAUSE
What's the other one? Estonia. Estonia.
KLAXON BLARES
Is it Lithuania? Lithuania. Can we put that up there?
KLAXON BLARES
Er, no, it's Poland. Oh. Ah.
So your family comes originally from Lithuania, do they not?
Yes, my stepdad's family. Jupitus?
Is Jupitus...? They are from... Seputis, yes, from Vilnius.
But the answer is, in fact, it's from Poland.
It's from their national poem.
So, there was a poet called Adam Mickiewicz
and the opening verse begins...
O Lithuania, my country, thou
Art like good health I never knew till now
How precious, till I lost thee.
So, why is it part of the Polish national anthem, do we think?
Are they slagging Lithuania? No.
So, there used to be the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.
We miss you. We miss you, yeah. Basically, we miss you.
Longest national anthem in the world, anybody?
Have a guess. North Korea. It's Greece. It's got 158...
No, that's a musical.
LAUGHTER
It's not a national anthem, Sandi.
It's a great musical. It stars a woman called Sandy.
LAUGHTER
So, 158 stanzas in the Greek one.
They only use two because, you know, like, who would do all that?
My favourite, Congo's national anthem asks,
"And if we have to die does it really matter?"
LAUGHTER
What can it mean when you smell burnt toast?
You're having a stroke.
KLAXON BLARES
What a pleasing image that is to see those words flashing over John.
LAUGHTER
It means you've overheated your bread. Is it really?
It's honestly just that. They say if you smell burnt toast
or if you feel like you're starting to droop...
Who tells you this, a doctor you've shouted at?
LAUGHTER
No, a vet!
That's what I always thought it was.
It's a common misconception.
No, but you know what's really scary, though, because my husband
must be doing something to me because every morning I wake up
smelling burnt toast and there's never any toast to eat.
He's making me think I'm having a stroke!
LAUGHTER
Phantosmia is when you think you can smell something and so you are
having an olfactory dysfunction.
No, I think my husband's actually burning toast in the morning
and trying to get me to think I'm having a stroke every morning.
Yeah. It wakes me up in a panic. He's gaslighting you. Yes. Yes.
So, you are not having a stroke. You are not having a brain tumour.
If you had a stroke, it doesn't affect particularly your sense of
smell and there is no specific scent that you should look out for.
You are unlikely to be having a stroke if you can smell toast.
You're more likely to be having breakfast. Yes.
Why shouldn't you flash in an art gallery?
LAUGHTER
If you take a photograph with the flash... It can bleach the painting.
KLAXON BLARES
I thought it did. Lots of people do think it will, I dunno,
bleach the delicate colours of the painting. It's not true. Why, then?
In order for any damage to be done, you'd have to have a flash
as powerful as the ones inside professional photography studios,
but the effect would be so small, it would be invisible to the eye.
First of all you'll get a terrible photograph.
Also it's very annoying for everybody else.
Also does it make the gallery less money if everyone's just taking pictures?
"You don't need to see it, guys, I got a picture."
Cos you know the Mona Lisa's hard to get a picture of?
Because there's so many people in front of it.
What I found hilarious about the Mona Lisa when I went to see it...
I went to the Louvre. Oh, Phill! And I went...
Well, that's where it is, so that's good. Yeah.
LAUGHTER
So far it was going well for you.
Yeah, you know what? I'll bail out from that anecdote.
Aw, Phill, we want to know.
Tell us, Phill!
AUDIENCE: Tell us, Phill. Tell us.
LAUGHTER
Actually, cos I'm 57, I've genuinely forgotten what I was going to say.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
The best argument for not flashing in an art gallery
is that it's a little bit rude.
All of which ungentlemanly and unladylike conduct brings us
to the slightly tactless moment where we find out just how useless
everybody has been. So, let me tell you, in last place, oh, with -10,
it's the audience.
CHEERING
In fourth place, well, a complete disgrace, with -5, it's Phill.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Sticking their tongue out with -2, it's Aisling.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In second place, cocking a snook with -1, it's Alan.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
-1! That's pretty good.
In first place, flipping everybody the bird, with one point, it's John.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Thank you so much to Aisling, John, Phill and Alan.
I leave you with these wise words from the founder of a nation,
US President George Washington.
"The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing
"is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character
"detests and despises it."
Wow, what a boring twat he was.
Thank you and goodnight.