CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Good evening and welcome to
a truly revolutionary episode of QI.
Rising up in revolt this week we have four recalcitrant renegades.
The radical Susan Calman.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The rebellious Jessica Fostekew.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The rabble-rousing Gyles Brandreth.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And he's an absolute riot, it's Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And their buzzers are really revolutionary. Susan goes...
# I predict a riot, I predict a riot... #
Nice.Jessica goes...
# The children of the revolution... #
Tune!You like that? That's a banger.I think that's rather fine.
Gyles, a bit of a head-banger, maybe.
# Anarchy for the UK
# It's coming some time and maybe... #
I recognise this, it's one of my favourites. It's the Sex Pistols.
Yes. And once in the 1980s, I met...Oh, dear God.
LAUGHTER
It's true, I met Johnny Rotten... Did you?
..at the Midland Hotel in Manchester. I went up to him
and I said, "Oh, Mr Rotten, I'm so delighted to meet you."
And he said to me, "Fuck off."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
There's literally nothing I could say to you,
you wouldn't have an anecdote...
LAUGHTER
Alan goes...
# You spin me right round, baby, right round
# Like a record, baby, right round, round, round... #
Here's question one. Stop me when you know what these names are for.
OK.
Patriotic Shortener.
Silence Mill.
# The revolution... # Yes, Jess.
Silence Mill's the nickname I gave to my worst ever Edinburgh show.
It's like tumbleweed, isn't it?
We punks will remember a band called Silence Mill.
OK. Charlie's Seesaw, that could be a racehorse.
I like the Necktie of Capet.
They all sound like ailments or afflictions.
OK, I'm going to help you that we have translated all of these.
They were originally in French.
And there was a sound effect that went with each one of them.
METAL BLADE THUDS DOWN
Guillotine. Guillotine.Guillotine.
# I predict a riot, I predict a riot... #
I don't want to not get the point on a matter of admin.
LAUGHTER
So, in French, they were absolutely fantastic.
The Patriotic Shortener was Raccourcissement Patriotique.
Silence Mill - Moulin a Silence.
And the Regretful Climb - Monte-a-regret.
All nicknames for the guillotine used in the French Revolution.
Yes? You met the man who invented...?
LAUGHTER AND SCATTERED APPLAUSE
"I remember it well. I was in Paris." I...
"He told me to fuck off."
LAUGHTER
I do have a personal interest in the subject, as it happens.
Oh, why's that, darling? But before I get to that...Yes.
..let me tell you what little I know about the guillotine.
The guillotine. Le guillotine.Yes.
Do we get bonus points for this information
or am I just wasting time?
LAUGHTER
My recollection is...Yes.
We're going back a bit, it's the French Revolution!
The French Revolution. ..that, when I was at university,
one of my subjects was the French Revolution.Oh, right.
As I remember, the guillotine was named after a man called Guillotine.
And he wanted a nicer way of killing the enemies of the revolution.
Right. And so he was actually meaning it in a kind way.Mm, yeah.
So I think that's who Guillotine was.Yeah. But I know it went on
for years and years and years because in 1977, I went to Paris
for the last use of the guillotine.
And this is your personal interest?
I was a campaigner against capital punishment.Ah.
I went with a group - because we couldn't believe it - to protest...
Right. ..this was still going on...
I know. Did you have T-shirts that said "Quit while you're a head"?
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
I was at university in the 1960s,
so this is a long time ago, but in 1968,
obviously I was in Paris trying to foment, in my pre-punk period...
Yes. ..the revolution in France at the time. When I was at university,
I was simply trying to get laid, I'll be very honest with you.
I wore lots of corduroy and tried to look intelligent.
Sadly, the ruse did not work.
Corduroy - that'll do it for you!
I had one of those sweaters with leather patches on the elbows,
and a little pipe. I thought it looked good. Anyway...
It was named after Dr Guillotine and, in fact,
his family hated this association with the name
and they constantly petitioned the French government saying,
"Please call it something else. Please call it something else."
And in the end, they changed their name cos they got so fed up with it.
Perhaps it was Gillette.Yes.
LAUGHTER
There is a rumour that he was killed by his own apparatus.
It is not true. In fact, he died from an infection
on a carbuncle on his shoulder.
Ugh!I know.
What's a carbuncle?
It's not pleasant, don't get one.
A nice carbuncle at the end of the night, that can warm you up.
That's possibly the most tragic thing you've ever said.
"Do you want a lift home? We could have a carbuncle?" "Oh, yeah!"
"I hear you're trying to get laid!"
LAUGHTER
So the person who did the very first guillotining,
he was Louis XVI's executioner,
a man by the name of Charles-Henri Sanson.
He was the fourth out of six generations of executioner.
He executed nearly 3,000 people.
He was a celebrity because he was France's executioner.
And his uniform that he used to wear,
which was striped trousers and fancy hat and an overcoat,
became a very fashionable look for men.
What do you think women might have worn to celebrate?
Corduroy.
Women wore guillotine-shaped earrings. Wow.
And what's sort of unpleasant
is that's the King and Queen's head below...
Oh.Weird, right?
I think I might quite like them. Yeah.No!
They'd do well at Topshop. Yeah.
LAUGHTER
Anyway, he was supposed to pass on the job to his eldest son, Gabriel.
Gabriel died, unfortunately,
while he was helping his father with an execution.
He slipped on some blood and fell off the scaffold.
Oh! They didn't feature any of this
in Carry On Up The French Revolution.
Wonderful film with Kenneth Williams as Le Grand Fromage.Yes.
Oh, I want to watch that again now. You never see them any more.
Used to be on all the time. They're on ITV2.
If you if you watch television in the afternoon,
if you've got no job - "self-employed..."
Sorry, if you're self-employed...
They do some wonderful programmes. Do they?
I do the voiceover for one of the commercials.
Oh, well, it's worth watching just for that, Gyles. It is.
It's actually... I love doing it.
I'm the voice now of the Tena Flex Plus super soft incontinence pad.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Someone's got to do it, Gyles.
It tells us something about the ITV2 audience, I think.Yes.
The joy is you can watch all the Carry On films right through
the afternoon and evening without needing to leave the sofa.
LAUGHTER
So the executioner,
because his son had died falling off the scaffold,
he passed the job to his second son,
who was called Henry-Clement,
he disgraced the family, I'm afraid.
He had an aversion to blood,
and then he had serious gambling debts,
and he eventually pawned off the guillotine
to pay off his debts.
He turned up at the next execution
with an axe, pretty much.
Saying, "Will this do?" So they fired him,
and the Ministry of Justice had to buy the guillotine back
from... I know...
Who is the woman associated with the French Revolution?
Madame Tussaud, because she took facial masks, didn't she?
Death masks...Yeah. ..of the people.
It's an extraordinary story cos she was the art teacher
and indeed a waxworks modeller for the sister of Louis XVI,
and so she was seen to be a royalist and her head was actually shaved
in preparation for execution. And she was saved by
a leading revolutionary who had been friendly with her before.
And she was made to do the people's likenesses.
And then she was asked to come to Britain to show them
and was going to go back to France, but had to stay
because the Napoleonic Wars started and she wasn't able to return.
Who are these two? This is the King and Queen.
Those are actually the King and Queen of France?
It's Marie Antoinette and the King.
The waxworks of them. The waxworks of them.
I used to work in Madame Tussauds.
Oh, this is marvellous!
Somebody who can out-anecdote Gyles. I like this!
I worked as a zombie.
Cos my acting career got off to a really quick start!
And you had to learn how to put on all different latex and stuff
and make your make-up really awful, to be jumping out at people
in this scary maze.
But you learnt to wax, which was to stand...
Where tourists were walking past you
and you'd stay completely still and then just
move a bit and people would cack themselves.
And I got told after my second stint there
that I was the scariest woman they'd ever had!
LAUGHTER
Now, Gyles, I thought when you said
you have personal experience of this,
that you were going to mention a family connection. I am.
This - seriously - is how I became really interested in this subject
of the guillotine and executions,
because my forebear,
Jeremiah Brandreth, was a revolutionary
and the last person to be beheaded in this country for treason.
I think we have a picture, actually, of Jeremiah.
There he is.Part of the Pentrich martyrs. 1817.
He was a revolutionary. He'd began as a Luddite.
He realised that the Industrial Revolution
was going to make people lose their jobs.
He was determined to overthrow the government of the day.
And...anyway, he led this revolution up in Derbyshire.
He was known as the Nottingham Captain and was arrested,
put on trial and was not just hanged but he was then beheaded,
because he was a traitor.Because they wanted to show the head.
I mean, I think he was already dead by the time he was beheaded.
Now, we were trying to see the family likeness in this.
So we've done a little bit of Photoshopping just to see
how that would look. So there you are.
LAUGHTER
Uncanny.Uncanny. I do think, darling,
if you were ever beheaded, just as they lifted the head up,
you'd be going, "I've got one more story."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
"You know, the head can live on for another 15 sec..."
LAUGHTER
All good revolutions
start with a bit of rioting
but how can you cause a riot with a clown hat,
some vodka,
and a lump of cheese?
Is it to take them as a gift
at the marriage of your ex?
LAUGHTER
Is it a circus riot?
Well, they're three separate riots, in fact.
The one with the clown hat - so it was 1850s,
you're talking about a very tough town.
It must be a Russian circus.
Er, no, it's Toronto. Oh, really?!
So when Toronto started - we are talking about the 1850s,
there was a population of 30,000 people, not very many.
There were 152 taverns.
There were 203 beer halls.
And there were, roughly, we don't really know, 140 brothels.
So it was quite the place for gentlemen to misbehave.
And in 1855, a riot began
after a fireman, a drunk fireman,
knocked off a clown's hat
in one of the city's brothels.
And when he refused to pick it up...
A couple of trapeze artists
swung in...
Well, it started a complete riot
and it went on for days - clowns fighting firemen.
Circus tents were torn down.
The firemen have got hoses,
and the clowns have just got a bucket of...
LAUGHTER
I know, but they kept getting in a car, and there was loads of them!
The wagons were set on fire of the circus
by the firemen.
I mean, it was one of the most extraordinary things.
By the time it was all finished,
the whole of the Toronto police system had to be overhauled.
And they established what they basically, the one that
they have now. But it was days of fighting between clowns
and firemen. Wow.
I know, it's fantastic. So what about the cheese?
Oh, it's not the same event? No, they're different events.
I thought it was maybe a vodka and cheese evening at the brothel.
Yes, I did.
It's rather a niche brothel, isn't it?
"Come in, vodka, cheese! Bring the clowns in."
They do the cheese rolling, does that ever get out of hand?
Well, it did. There's been lots of food riots. Oh, of course
there have. So this would be to do with the price of cheese?
Yes. The price of vodka?
Well, if you think about the French Revolution,
that was instigated by the women in the market over
the price of bread. This is the Great Nottingham Cheese Riot.
It's just a great name, isn't it?
The Great Nottingham Cheese Riot of 1766 -
they felt overcharged for cheese,
they seized the cheese, and you're quite right, Gyles...
They seized the cheese?
Seized the cheese. Seize the cheese!
He seized the cheese!
Seize him!
And they rolled them down the street cos of course
they were big cheese wheels.
They used to come in enormous things like this.
And the mayor tried to quell the violence and was knocked out
by a particularly large cheese!
And severely concussed.
So it was the Great Nottingham Cheese Riot.
The vodka - so this started
really as a vodka boycott.
In 1858, the Russians
did a tax... RUSSIAN ACCENT: Vodka!
..and it tripled the price. So it went up to ten roubles a bucket,
that's how they used to buy it!
Way-hey!
The average clerk made 25 roubles a year. Oh!
So they were not able to buy this.
And the vodka tax was the
main source of revenue and people
just decided - "I can't afford it, so I'm not going to do it."
And so temperance societies started all over the country.
And people took oaths of sobriety.
And this was a nightmare for the government
because they needed the money from the tax.
Vodka started being given away free, to try and persuade people
to be a little bit more alcoholic,
so that eventually they would start paying for it.
Rebels, who didn't want the vodka tax,
were made to drink vodka forcibly,
with a funnel - it was put down their throat. It was extraordinary.
Eventually, the revolt was crushed and the government banned
temperance societies. It was forbidden to want to be sober.
That's triggered me, actually. Has it?
Cos as a teenager, I once snorted vodka.
How does one do that?
With a straw. Up your nostril? Up your nose.Up your nose?!
And then you cry it out of your eyes.
I grew up in the West Country, so we didn't have much to do.
LAUGHTER
Sounds like you had plenty to do!
LAUGHTER
Now, what would you have to do if someone read you the Riot Act?
Hmm.Hmm? Hmm. It's an actual thing.
They would go to the scene and read the Riot Act.
They literally read it out.
Technically, you had an hour to disperse once it had been read out.
So it was introduced in 1715. To clear crowds.
To clear the crowds out. These are the actual words of the Riot Act.
And it meant that if more than 12 people gathered and were disruptive,
a policeman was entitled to read them the Riot Act
and it had to be read with the exact correct wording and after that
they had a full hour... "You've got an hour now to stop rioting,"
which I quite like. It's very British.
"I'm giving you notice and then you'll be on the naughty step."
We don't have it any more.
It was repealed by the Criminal Law Act of 1967.
In fact, the last attempted reading of the Riot Act was in...
Have a guess, anybody. Which city in this country?
Manchester.Glasgow. Oh!
1919. But the policeman couldn't get through it
before somebody took the page from his hand.
LAUGHTER
ATTEMPTED SCOTTISH ACCENTS: Get tae fuck!Fuck off!
Sorry, Sandi - everyone just stop -
was that a Scottish accent you just did?
No, it was an Irishman visiting. To be fair...
..I respect the law as much as the next person.Yes.
If I had decided I was going to make the positive action of rioting,
and someone stood in front of me and said,
"Here's a piece of paper about why you can't riot,"
you would just go, "I'm taking that piece of paper. I'm a rioter."Yeah.
And I don't think that's particularly Glas... You...
If I may, Alan! If I may, Alan!
Order in the court!
If they don't disperse, they don't just go, "Oh, they haven't."Yeah.
They'd shoot you. What I was going to say...
He's right, you could use lethal force.
..sometimes, occasionally, when you said... And I knew you were going to
say Glasgow cos you looked at me with that look, Sandra...
You look at me sometimes and go... "Sandra." Ooh!
.."There's a Scottish thing coming up."
Just because it was Glasgow does not mean that they were violent...
No, I didn't say that. ..in removing the paper.I never said that.
He simply, politely went,
"I'll take that from you, young sir," I imagine...
LAUGHTER
Or said, "Excuse me, officer. Can I take that?"
"I'll take that. Would you like a mint?" Exactly.
So I don't want there to be any suggestion
that the Glaswegians were aggressive.
But if you just... Excuse me!
LAUGHTER
Nowadays, you don't have to read anything out at all.
If 12 people or more are present and they cause any kind of violence...
It's quite challenging for middle-class people to start riots,
as I've discovered.
Well, you've got to wait in for your White Company order, I mean...
LAUGHTER
There's an awful lot to do.
In Paris, when I was trying to take part in the 1968 riots,
we didn't know what to do.
We didn't, because we were nice university people,
we'd gone over to help with the rioting.
And they were instructing in French!
Well, I was studying the French Revolution,
so my French was reasonably OK.
And they advised us what we were to do.
And it was to knock the policeman's hat off.
And apparently knocking hats off goes back hundreds of years
as the way riots are started,
as in the case with your clown.
Knocking their...
The famous, in the 1920s, was there...
The Straw Hat Riots. The Straw Hat Riots. Was that in
New York, Philadelphia?New York.
In America. Because it was a fashion thing.
Yeah. Autumn has come,
you've got to wear a felt hat.Yeah.
People were still wearing their straw hats.
"Knock it off!" So policemen's helmets off, clowns' hats off,
straw hats off.Mm.
I think, to be fair, if I had gone to the effort of wearing
one of my hats - of which I have many,
cos I believe a lady with a hat is a very astonishing figure...
Is it made of corduroy?
The list of impediments to you
getting shagged goes on and on.
LAUGHTER
It's not good, is it? I suit a hat and sometimes you think,
"It's a hat day. I feel like wearing a hat, a cowboy hat, a top hat,
"a bowler hat." And you're walking down the street, you're thinking,
"People are laughing at me but I don't care.
"In myself I have the confidence. I've worked on myself a lot.
"This is how a feel. I feel confident. I'm a powerful woman.
"I'm Clare Balding..."
LAUGHTER
People are going, "How is that cowboy hat moving by itself?"
LAUGHTER
"How's it getting down the street?!
"There must be a dog under there, a tiny dog."
LAUGHTER
"That dog's never going to get shagged wearing that."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
We're moving on. We are moving on. Here's another kind of revolution -
why doesn't your house have revolving doors?
# Anarchy... #
Yes, my darling Gyles. My house does have a revolving door.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
It always has. It's a family house. It's a tradition.Yes.
Because one of my forebears invented the revolving door.
LAUGHTER
I happen to know who invented the revolving door. Theophilus...
Yes. ..Van Kannel. Who married
the daughter of my great-great-great-grandfather,
a man called Dr Benjamin Brandreth, who invented Brandreth pills,
was a pioneer of medicine and advertising...
It's not so much a family tree as a family fucking forest.
LAUGHTER
You're related to Theophilus Van Kannel...?!
Course he is!
Dr Brandreth had 13 children, including 10 daughters.Yeah.
And he was hugely wealthy and he married them off very well.
He also was a friend of PT Barnum, who was a friend of this man
who invented the revolving door. So at home, the point is, we love it,
it's been so useful recently. You know, when we want to self-isolate,
we can have three of the family actually in the door...
LAUGHTER
Is the reason we don't have them in our homes
because of too many terrible pet deaths?
No, it's just the house isn't big enough
and we don't get that many visitors!
LAUGHTER
They're very good in a tall building because what they do
is they let much less air into the building
and it avoids what's called the chimney effect.
So what happens is cold air can be sucked in at the bottom
when a door opens and warm air rises up through the building
and the use of a revolving door stops that.
It's also more energy efficient.
Weirdly, people tend to prefer to use a swing door when they can.
They don't seem to like them.
I like to use revolving doors and pretend to be Wonder Woman.
Cos that's how she would change sometimes,
and Superman did the same thing. And sometimes if you're feeling fancy
when I'm in London where there's more revolving doors available,
I'll just go in a building then come back out
and pretend to be Wonder Woman. I'll just do that.
Because I carry a suitcase with me all the time
and I trip over the suitcase. That's the problem, cos...
LAUGHTER
..I've got a suitcase that's bigger than me
and it makes revolving doors quite difficult.
But you just have to do it
because then people look at you like you can't do a door.
Why don't you get out of the suitcase...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
..carry it through the door and then get back in?Much better.
Or get two little leg holes cut.
"How's that suitcase moving along the road by itself?"
LAUGHTER
Anybody think of other advantages of revolving doors?
You can go in and out at the same time?That's exactly right, yes.
Extra point for Alan. Ah!You can enter and exit
at exactly the same time, so you can get more people in and out
of the building. How can you get more people
in a revolving door than just if you had one big door?
It's faster cos people are coming and going out at the same time,
and they haven't got to get in each other's way.
And if you had a very large door, that's basically called
an open space.
LAUGHTER
That's your up and over, isn't it? Yeah.
It's called a field.Yeah.
It's not really a thing. I'm so sorry!
Now, how can this stop your cherries from popping?
LAUGHTER
There we go. ALL: Whoa!
Oh, that's amazing. Wicked!
Oh. Ah. Yes.
LAUGHTER
It was going really well. Did I kill you?
Anyway, so, how can this stop your cherries from popping?
A full-size one rather than that one?
Obviously, not that.
I like the idea of, like a 16-year-old who's asked
to have a big house party for their birthday and their parents say,
"Yeah, sure, no problem." But then they take all the
curtains down and hire a helicopter and just circle the house!
Checking that nobody loses their virginity all night.
Do cherries pop?
Well, they do. Why might they?
Is it something to do with the harvesting of cherries?
Well, it is sort of to do with that. They absorb water incredibly
quickly, so just one heavy bout of rainfall can cause them to split
and that renders the entire crop absolutely worthless.
So they could spray them with edible wax, that's not so nice.
They could cover the whole crop in plastic.
One of the ways to do it is to blow-dry the fruit
with a helicopter.
It's very expensive, but it is the fastest way to dry a crop
of cherries after unexpected rainfall,
and if every hour counts cos they are quite delicate,
then the best thing to do is to hire a helicopter
and use it as a great, big sort of fan. Wow.I know.
Also hired in sporting events,
so they are used to dry cricket pitches,
sometimes golf courses. Helicopters? Yeah. They are also used
sometimes as fan heaters, helicopters.
They fly over crops in cold weather
and so they push warmer air down onto the crops.
Anybody want to see a helicopter carrying a rhino?
Yep. Yep. Love that.
Who doesn't? OK. Yeah.Have a quick look, see what it looks like.
Sounds good.There. Oh, God. Oh!
I didn't know it was going to be upside down!
So it's being taken away from a poaching area.
This is in South Africa in 2017.
And they airlifted more than 200 rhinos like this.
And actually, it is the best thing.
If they had a net or rope
around their torso, it would constrict their breathing.
They're only in the air for about ten minutes.
They're fully sedated. Does them no harm. Apparently,
the hardest part is putting them back down gently. Aw!
Making sure they're OK. And they do this with
lots of animals. In 2019, they removed more than 700 mountain goats
from a park in Washington state in a similar sort of way.
They thrive, these goats, in this park -
there they are going off. Apparently they thrived in the park
because of human hikers because they really love human urine
because it's salty, so they like it. Goats do?
Goats do, yeah. They were carried to the Cascade mountains
in these special slings.
And were they trying to take the goats away from the urine?
They were damaging the local flora and fauna.
Oh, because they really liked the urine?Mm.
OK, I got you. I was just checking. Yeah. Right.
I was concerned as to why they were moving the goats
if they liked the urine.Yeah.
I think mainly people should stop pissing on the path.
LAUGHTER
It's supposed to be good for you. Wasn't it Mahatma Gandhi
who used to have a little pichet of urine,
of his own urine?Wasn't it the actress Sarah Miles
used to advocate drinking your own urine?
Often confused, those two. Yes, I know.
LAUGHTER
Do you know how old the word chopper is for a helicopter?
LAUGHTER
No, I'm just throwing in a little bit of, um,
the only information I know on helicopters.
Was it your uncle, Sergeant Chopper?
LAUGHTER
Chopper Brandreth. Chopper Brandreth, as he was known.
How did you guess?
Go on, then, darling. The Korean War.
The helicopters in the Korean War made this noise,
like "Chop, chop, chop..." Oh, so, the '50s - 1951.
So that's where it dates from.
Whereas, popping your cherry goes back to 1605.
I think it's been going on for longer than that.
LAUGHTER
Now, for a more well-rounded question -
can you draw a perfect circle? So, let's have a go.
You should have a board here, please. I'd like one of you
to hold the board and one of you to draw the circle.
You may choose.
Would you like to draw? Certainly, madam.
If you let me just... Draw a perfect circle, please.
I think the trick is going to be the same as when you tell
someone you're pregnant, and just do it really fast.
LAUGHTER
Brilliant!
Excuse me!
APPLAUSE
That is a perfect circle. It's going to turn out
that I'm a serial killer or something. I know.
They're not bad at all.
One of Gyles's ancestors!
LAUGHTER
Dear old Pumpkin Brandreth!
LAUGHTER
So there is a guy who is known as the world champion circle drawer.
His name is Alex Overwijk.
And he says the trick is to turn yourself into a human
pair of compasses. So, you should pivot around a part of your body.
So perhaps you could use your elbow and turn like this,
or perhaps you could use the heel of your hand.
I would say that's cheating. If you say to me...
But you're not using any mechanical device, you are simply
using your body. I still think...
JESSICA: You look like you are having an arm wrestle
with your imaginary friend!
SHE STRAINS
So this guy - he is allegedly the world champion circle drawer.
He's a maths teacher and he was teaching a class
and they did a video of him drawing a circle,
and it sort of went viral. Did he draw his own head, originally?
LAUGHTER
Isambard Kingdom Brunel was rather famous for his ability
to draw perfect circles. Although, I have to say,
some of the ones in his notebooks are singularly bad.
Why might they be so wobbly, do you think?
Was he on a piece of machinery when he was doing them?Yeah.
He was on his locomotive. He was on a train, absolutely.
Ah.They were drawn on moving trains.
He was testing the smoothness of rival railway lines. Oh, wow.
So he would draw a near-perfect...
The attention to detail, what a man.I know, I love it.
He does have some genuinely good circles in his notebooks.
I have to say, though, if you look very, very closely,
you can see a little dot in the middle. Yeah, cheat.
Which suggests...? Compass. A compass. Oh.
Now for a question about roulette.
OK, I will give you ten points
to gamble on the next roll of this wheel.
I can tell you that these are all black.
These are the last ones that have come up, the last five.
What would you bet on now?
Would you bet on black or red?
I think it doesn't matter. That is correct.
So why do you think that a lot of people would say red?
There's some gambler's fallacy, some kind of gambler's myth.
I grew up spending a lot of time standing outside Ladbrokes
waiting for my dad on a Saturday morning.
But there's a gambler's myth that if you've lost a certain number times,
you must be due a win.Yeah.
But, actually, whether it's black or red or whatever,
what's gone before bears no relationship to the probability
of what's going to happen next. It's new every time, is it?
The wheel doesn't remember what it did before. It's 50/50.
It's going to be red or it's going to be black. Uh...
What? Well? That then suggests, Sandi,
I may as well not wear my lucky pants.
If I'm doing some... Oh!
LAUGHTER
No.JESSICA: Oh, Susan.
No! Give up. No.
LAUGHTER
Today, for example, Sandi, because I enjoy QI
and I want to do well to impress you, I'm wearing my lucky pants.
Right. If what you're saying is correct,
about the fact nothing matters... Yeah. ..I may as well not bother
wearing these pants that I've had for 20 years.
LAUGHTER
I can't believe that the lucky pants fallacy
has finally come clear to you.
And I think corduroy against the skin...
Yes, yes, you don't need pants, do you, Gyles? Not at all.
I'm afraid it is pretty much a 50/50 bet.
Doesn't matter?No. I'm so sorry.
Although it's not quite a 50/50 bet because there is also a 0,
and that is how they actually make their money in the casinos.
But you're absolutely right, darling, the gambler's fallacy.
If the wheel has landed on black six times,
85% of people will bet on red.
I'm not allowed in casinos.
Can I tell you why I'm not allowed in casinos?
You can't see over the table?
You keep falling into the roulette wheel.
"Aaaargh!"
"How's that Stetson going round and round and round in that wheel?"
I went on a spiritual journey
to Tupelo, Mississippi,
to see where Elvis was born, because I briefly believed
that when Elvis died, his soul entered my body,
but that's a different...
LAUGHTER
That's a different part of my life.
Anyway, so I... What's the point of sex, after that?
LAUGHTER
This is like a day-release scheme.
It was my first time in a casino, like, a proper casino.
I had a credit card for the first time
and I ran up £10,000... No!
..in six hours.
No. I mean, I was I was very young and I was very stupid
and I was quite drunk.
And after that, I decided I liked it so much,
I would never go back into one again because I loved every single second.
They gave me lobster, they gave me beer. It was amazing.
And I just can't go back in to one
because I loved it. You lost £10,000? Yeah.
In one night. Yeah.
I had the complete reverse experience,
but again through ignorance. I was in Monte Carlo,
so I went in and I put £10 on number three and it came up.
So that's 35 times the win, right.
So, I didn't know you're supposed to take the money off the table,
so I just left the money there.
And they spun the wheel, and it came up again.
ALL GASP
And the croupier said, "Madam, you have no idea what you are doing.
"Take your money and go home." So, I did.
LAUGHTER
Wow! That was a good thing to say.
How much money did you win?
It was an enormous amount of money.
I took a helicopter back to the airport.
I was young and foolish. Wow.
I've been once. I've only once played roulette,
and in extraordinary circumstance. It was quite recently.
My wife and I went for our wedding anniversary to Barbados.
We were on the beach. Sun was setting, wonderful golden sand.
And this little old wizened lady
came teetering along the beach towards us.
And it wasn't till she got to about here
that we realised it was actually Mick Jagger.
LAUGHTER
This is a true story. It turned out he was a really enthusiastic viewer
of Countdown, so he knew who I was
and I obviously knew who he was, and my wife was quite excited.
So, anyway, we went off for the evening and we went to a casino
with Mick Jagger and he very sweetly gave us the chips.
And, of course, we...we lost.
But it didn't seem to bother him, which was fantastic.
That's amazing. Lovely.
Right, what's so un-British about a roundabout?
# Anarchy... #
Yes, darling. It's French.
Yes. Ah.
You will...French. ..not be surprised to know
there is a family story.
LAUGHTER
Yes, Gyles. One of my forebears
was married to the Emperor Napoleon III of France.
The Emperor Napoleon III of France,
in exile, lived in Southport.
And... This is true.
And when he got back to Paris,
when he was restored to become Napoleon III again,
he decided that Paris needed to be redesigned
and chose a man called Haussmann to do it.Yes.
From whom we get Boulevard Haussmann
and all those wonderful boulevards in Paris. And he said,
"The design I would like is, I've been in England
"in a place called Southport.
"And I would like it to look like Southport with these wide boulevards
"and these big circles."
And that is why Paris looks like Southport.
Yes. But the actual roundabout was the invention
of a French town planner who was called Eugene Henard,
at the turn of the 20th century.
Haussmann had lots of people working for him and...
LAUGHTER
Sorry. Earlier, before the start of the show,
Gyles told me that my key card for my dressing room
would also work on the Tube. Is that true?
LAUGHTER AND SCATTERED APPLAUSE
I mean, so Haussmann did do a marvellous job
in making the big boulevards,
but the actual - what's called carrefour giratoire -
the roundabout, was a French town planner, who otherwise is, I think,
not really known.
Initially, you were allowed to go in any direction.
See, I like that!
I like that. "Where are you coming from?"
JESSICA: That's how you start a riot.
Absolute chaos. One of the largest was at the Arc de Triomphe,
it was a nightmare. And then Henard suggested maybe we should all
go in one direction, and the rule was adopted nationwide.
So that roundabout - it's eight lanes wide, it's notorious,
it's called l'Etoile. And there's a legend that an American tourist
once found themselves - he was sucked in to the innermost lane
and he kept going until he ran out of petrol. He simply couldn't...
And so in 1907, British researchers were sent
to observe it and they copied it and they installed the very first...
Yes, darling.
You're going to find this almost impossible to believe.
LAUGHTER AND SCATTERED APPLAUSE
My father... This is getting really close now.Yes.
My father was the legal advisor to the Automobile Association.
Right. And a friend of Ernest Marples,
who was the Transport Minister in the 1950s or '60s.
My father went with Ernest Marples
to help him open Britain's first roundabout in Letchworth new town.
You are absolutely right. Thank you.
CHEERING
True! Fact! Brilliant. Fact!
Oh!
I totally love this.
So there's the Arc de Triomphe, which inspired Letchworth's...
LAUGHTER
Can you see the red car? This is my dad...
LAUGHTER
Can I just recommend to you,
if anybody's gone to Letchworth,
you know how we like an old museum?
Mm, yeah, love it.
The Garden City Collection -
it's got the oldest toilet roll in the UK. Aw.
It's 83 years old. Lovely.Unused.
Now it's time to take a turn for the worse as we enter
the head-spinning round that we call General Ignorance.
Fast as we can, please, fingers on buzzers.
What can you put on your fish and chips in a chippy?
# Round, round... # Salt and vinegar.
KLAXON BLARES
No. Not salt and vinegar.
Salt, yes, but not vinegar, because...?
It's not vinegar.
It's all labelled "non-brewed condiment" by law.
Not only can it not be labelled as vinegar, you can't even put it
in a receptacle that would usually hold vinegar.
Sorry, could you...? Tell that to her on the right. She'll have you.
LAUGHTER
It's not vinegar. It's not vinegar?
No, it's a combination of water
and ethanoic acid and flavourings,
and then it's watered down even further to be served to customers.
It's cheaper, it takes less time to make,
you can buy it in concentrated form. And it's lovely.
You have salt and sauce, don't you? No, no, no.
No, in Edinburgh, they have salt and sauce.
In Glasgow, we have salt and vinegar because we're classy.But you don't.
What you actually have is salt and non-brewed condiment.
Are you saying all the bottles of vinegar I've ever owned
never said vinegar on them? No. If you buy it in a shop
and it says vinegar on it, it is vinegar. If you say to
the fish and chip person, "Please, could you put vinegar on it?"
It isn't vinegar. It is, in fact, non-brewed condiment.
But, weirdly, people don't order it like that.
LAUGHTER
Well, they do from now on.I know.
I'm absolutely shellshocked by this news, Sandi.
Of all the things you've ever told me on QI...This is the one
that's upset you? ..this is the one that's really rocked my world.
No, so you could put your vinegar that you bought in a shop...
So you've got malt vinegar
and that is actually made -
you ferment an ale from malted barley.
Much like red wine vinegar's actually made from red wine,
although it has very little alcohol left in it.
Oh, I love red wine!
LAUGHTER
If you ask for vinegar
on your fish and chips, you probably won't get it.
How many trees are there on the planet compared to 40 years ago?
# Anarchy... #
Gyles. Many more.
Many more. Cos they do them in China,
don't they, Gyles?
According to a study in Nature, 2018,
trees now cover 7% more
of the Earth's surface than they did in 1982.
So that sounds good, and NASA says
they've got images that show
a 5% increase in the total area.
But it's not a good thing.
Because it's China, fundamentally,
that has done this very large
afforestation project
in the world, they've doubled their tree coverage.
However, it's forestation for agricultural purposes.
So we are talking about single species of trees,
we're talking about unnatural monoculture.
You don't get ecosystems. Biodiversity.
You don't get wildlife and insects
and...And also, lots of trees have been planted on unsuitable land and
they are, basically, dying.
Who invented the battle technique of Blitzkrieg?
# Riot... # Someone Gyles is related to! No.
Blitzkrieg Brandreth.
The Wehrmacht. German Army.
Ze Germans?
Er, no.
The French.
So... Russians. British.
It was us, it was us, pretty much. We named it.It is a German word -
Blitz, lightning, and Krieg, war.
Very rarely used in Germany in the 1930s and '40s.
Definitely not used by the German leaders
when the Blitzkrieg actually happened,
when they invaded Poland in 1939, France in 1941.
In fact, Hitler called it "a completely idiotic word."
"Ein ganz blodsinniges Wort."
It's not often I quote Hitler.
LAUGHTER
In fact, to the Germans the success of the Blitzkrieg
completely surprised them. They thought it was rather a miracle,
but it wasn't any new innovation. So what happens is
there are short, sharp attacks on the ground with armoured vehicles
and then the air support comes in behind
and kind of finishes things off.
Lots and lots of tanks and lots of peaceful, undefended villages.
That's it. This kind of tank and aircraft warfare,
it had been evolving since World War I,
so it was not really a new thing. But the British and American press,
they decided the advance by the Germans, which surprised everybody,
including the Germans, had to be a revolutionary new kind of warfare
so they claimed that the man in charge of commanding
the mechanised troops, General Heinz Guderian,
was the father of the Blitzkrieg.
Lots of publicity in the press
and in the end, the soldiers on the ground were using it,
but it was not a German invention at all.
Just given it a German name to make it sound snappy.
To make it sound like they had invented something,
a new technique that would explain why the Allied forces
were losing, at that time.
Now, what goes around comes around, so we're back to revolutions.
In which month do Russians celebrate this revolution?
# Anarchy... #
October.
KLAXON BLARES
Oh, no.
So it is called the October Revolution, you're absolutely right.
But it isn't celebrated in October. It's celebrated in November. Oh!
Why might that be? Cos it's my birthday
and everyone has a party on my birthday.
Did they shift the calendar? They did shift the calendar.
That's exactly it. Russia was still using the Julian calendar,
which was 13 days behind.
The Bolsheviks under Lenin revolted on October the 24th and 25th,
but it was, according to the rest of Europe, November the 6th and 7th.
That's my birthday, November the 6th!Is it? Yeah.
Lenin would have been so pleased.
LAUGHTER
And with these revolutionary revelations,
we come to the final scores. I can tell you...in last place
with -14, it's Alan. Oh, Alan!
APPLAUSE
And third place with three points - Susan. Oh, yes! Come on.
Come on!
In second place with four points - Jessica!
APPLAUSE
And with five points in first place, because he is related to the man
who invented first place...
..Gyles!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Thank you to our guests, Jessica, Gyles, Susan and Alan.
I leave you with these words from American actress Lee Grant,
which exposed the real problem with revolutionary ideas -
"I've been married to one Marxist and one fascist,
"and neither one would take the garbage out."
Thank you and goodnight.