CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello, and welcome to Ql
where, tonight, we're discussing rays, radio and radiation.
Joining me are a panel positively glowing with talent
from across the comedy spectrum.
An alpha male,
it's Josh Widdicombe!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hard to beta, it's Shazia Mirza.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Gamma for a laugh, it's Joe Lycett.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And give us a microwave,
Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And let's hear their buzzers.
J°$h goes:
WOMAN'S VOICE:
Shazia goes:
MAN'S VOICE:
Wow. Joe goes:
ROBOTIC VOICE:
LAUGHTER
And, of any kind of radioactivity,
the most dreaded sound imaginable, Alan:
ARCHERS THEME PLAYS
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
Now, before we start, I happen to know that one of you
encountered a lot of radioactive material when you were a child.
Do you know who it was?
Warning!
Yes, Josh.
It was you.
You are positively...
Positively glowing.
Er, why is that?
LAUGHTER
Yes.
Yeah.
LAUGHTER
Do you really believe that?
It sounds like some toy your children...
Mucking about.
No, but you're right.
Especially the middle of Dartmoor is the worst place in the country
for radon. ls that why he's so small?
LAUGHTER
No, because you know that radiation causes mutations.
Yes, the largest source of radiation the UK public gets
comes in the form of gases, radon and thoron,
and being in the middle of Dartmoor,
that's absolutely the worst place.
Now, you two are the Birmingham team.
You both grew up in Birmingham.
It's actually an island of low radiation, it's very low risk.
A bit like Essex. Should we be proud of that?
Yes.
I love Birmingham. I think Birmingham's fab.
Yeah, I do as well.
I love the canal. I think the canal's fantastic.
In Birmingham?
God, he is mutating.
LAUGHTER
You live in the most beautiful county in England
and you go to Birmingham on your holidays!
LAUGHTER
That's true. It has.
LAUGHTER
It wasn't canal-ly enough for our tastes.
People have stopped going to Venice.
They go to Birmingham now.
Pop round if you're ever there.
I had my kitchen extension opened by the Lord Mayor.
Oh, you did, didn't you?
That's a euphemism. It's not!
I emailed her, and I said, "Will you open my kitchen extension?"
To give you an idea of how big it is, this is bigger.
She said no because she said she doesn't do private events,
so I made it a public event and sold tickets to the public,
and she came and opened it. She cut a ribbon.
There's a plaque on the wall.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
I love that! I know!
Josh, do you know why residents in Devon and Cornwall
are exposed to quite as much radiation as they are?
It's the ground rock. It's largely granite.
So, the granite contains small amounts of uranium -
that decays, and that produces radon, and you can be exposed
to as much as seven millisieverts of radiation per year.
So, that's the same as having a CT scan.
It's the same as taking 85 transatlantic flights.
It is weirdly the same as eating 70 kilos of what, do you think?
LAUGHTER
It's Brazil nuts.
Oh, I eat so many Brazil nuts.
They contain quite a lot of radium
because they have very deep roots which can get
right down to the soil that's high in radium.
What's an unsafe amount of Brazil nuts?
I mean, I, I think anything under 70 kilos,
you're probably going to be OK.
So now, all new houses in high radon areas have to have an airtight
membrane, which stops the gas from kind of seeping into the buildings.
I always wear one of those.
Yes. What?
Airtight membrane, yeah.
It's a wonder you've got as many children as you have.
So, Austria has one nuclear plant,
which was built in 1978.
What do you think they did with it?
It looks like a Premier Inn to me.
LAUGHTER
It's got the potential to be a Premier Inn!
Yes.
If you get a room with a window, you pay a bit more.
They have a referendum when it was finished,
and the country voted to not open it.
So they didn't. Really?
Yes, they never switched it on and it became a research centre instead.
Imagine if we had done that with the Shard. Yes.
Not going to work. We basically did that with the Millennium Dome. Yeah!
How would you sell a house right next to a nuclear power plant?
How do you sell it? Yeah, how would you sell it? Rightmove?
LAUGHTER
Yes, go to the estate agent's.
Well, when you take photographs...
Yeah? ..face the other way.
Yeah. OK.
And then try and distract people.
You are exactly right.
Have a look at this. This is 2009.
This was a charming three-bedroom Kent cottage that was for sale.
The estate agent failed to mention the view
if you stood behind the house.
Let's just have a look at the view from...
There we are.
LAUGHTER
Wow!
That is the biggest Premier Inn I've ever seen!
It's 100 yards from Dungeness nuclear power station,
one of the largest nuclear power stations in Europe,
and they didn't mention it.
When they were asked about it,
they said, "The thing is, anywhere on Dungeness
"is close to the power station."
LAUGHTER
It's a bit hot!
But Alan gets an extra point for saying you would face the pictures
away from the nuclear power station. Absolutely right.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Which ray changed the world of fashion for ever?
Oh! Why Billy Ray Cyrus?
OK.
Can I just say how cute that ray is? Isn't that the sweetest thing?
I'm not sure if it's cute or deadly.
Might be both.
Yeah, it might be both.
Is this what we're going to evolve into?
Is this like something from a Doctor Who episode?
This is where we'll be in a billion years.
Well, obviously...
LAUGHTER
Obviously Josh will mutate first.
LAUGHTER
Lovely, it's lovely colours.
It is beautiful.
Some of the very first beneficiaries of X-ray technology
were fashionable women.
So, if you have to imagine, the mid-19th century
it was very, very fashionable... Oh, that sort of a ray.
Oh... We'd have been here all night. X-rays.
I've come here to help.
LAUGHTER
So, mid-19th century, women wore heavily boned corsetry,
so sometimes more than 100 whalebones.
It was incredibly popular, but it obviously restricted movement,
breath and so on.
Not for whales. They were feeling great.
Yeah, they were...
LAUGHTER
Oh, I feel so much freer. Freedom!
I can't sit up at dinner, but I don't care.
Anyway, there was lots of concern for many years,
but people couldn't prove it until X-rays came along.
So, there was a French doctor called Ludovic O'Followell.
Anyway, 1908, he took some photographs and he wrote
a book called Le Corset,
and it showed women's ribs being displaced by Victorian corsets.
And partly thanks to him, fashions changed,
and you get the Edwardian basques
with more straight lacing, and they end higher up.
And that really helped women because it was... it was killing them.
It saved lives. It did save lives. Absolutely.
Anybody know who discovered X-rays?
Oh, is that it was that German man.
It was. And his middle name's Conrad.
Is that right? Yes, it was a German man.
Yes, indeed.
His name was Wilhelm.
See? Yeah, very complicated. Not easy to remember.
No. Wilhelm Roentgen.
LAUGHTER
She doesn't like that at all. That date was going so well.
LAUGHTER
"And later on, I shall be introducing this into our play."
Well, you see, it is interesting, because his wife needed to be there
because the very first X-ray that he took was of her hand.
Is that his wife? Yes. What?!
Well, I think it's a poor depiction, if I'm frank with you. Oh, I see.
In 1895, he discovered the X-ray almost,
it's one of those things that was almost sort of by accident.
He took an X-ray of his wife's hand
and you can see the dark shadow on it.
And that is caused by her wedding ring.
Oh, I thought it was a drone.
LAUGHTER
It's an Oreo drone in 1895.
LAUGHTER
Why is it so irritating when your children take apart an Oreo
or a Bourbon?
Why do I find myself saying, "Don't pick it apart.
"Just eat it as it is"?
Every time, I can't... It's the noise.
I know!
LAUGHTER
I don't doubt that, but, but why?
Of all the many messes that they make...
They're children, they're curious.
No, I don't wish to turn this into therapy,
but I'm going to suggest it's not about the biscuits.
LAUGHTER
They go like that...
LAUGHTER
Just eat it!
All right!
Eat your Oreo. It's good for you.
I've never let them have a Hobnob because of the potential mess.
LAUGHTER
JOSH LAUGHS
Anyway, I need you to imagine that nobody had ever seen an... An Oreo.
Oh, an X-ray.
LAUGHTER
Nobody had ever seen an X-ray before.
This was the very first time that anybody had seen the bones
inside the human body.
And his wife, Mrs Roentgen, looked at it and said,
"l have seen my death."
I mean, it was really shocking to people.
He did get the first-ever Nobel Prize in physics,
six years later, for it.
And there was a kind of mania. It was known as a Roentgen mania.
In fact, his name is still used in Denmark for X-rays.
There were 50 books published on X-rays in a single year,
there were theatre plays with X-ray-themed plays.
Newspapers advertised special X-ray-proof underwear for women.
Yeah. Yeah.
Thomas Edison demonstrated something called a fluoroscope.
You could put your body parts in and see your bones on the screen.
Is it very dangerous, though?
Yes, darling, it is really dangerous.
Incredibly dangerous. When did they find out it was dangerous?
The next year. LAUGHTER
23 cases of severe X-ray injury reported in scientific journals.
And despite that, they used X-rays to cure things for decades.
And doctors would prescribe sort of an X-ray seance for cancer
and tuberculosis, acne, ringworm.
I mean, all sorts of things.
They said it could remove unwanted body hair -
it did but it also left patients ulcerated, bedridden and...
Dead. Some dead, yes.
Yeah, but so smooth.
There were all sorts of claims.
There was a claim by a scientist who said he could make a dog salivate
by projecting an image of a bone into its brain.
I mean, it was... That sounds like absolute nonsense!
I know, but you want it to be true, don't you?
X-rays even used to be used to measure shoe sizes.
This was a common thing in a shoe shop
from the 1930s to the 1970s - it was called a pedoscope.
LAUGHTER
I don't know why, but I want one!
The advantage was you... I don't know why it's an advantage,
you could have your feet measured with your shoes still on.
I mean, it's not that difficult to take them off!
Disadvantage, you could only have 12 shoe fittings a year.
Is that all? Yeah.
Why did they stop using them?
Because people died out?
It was the health of the shop workers.
When I was a kid, there used to be a machine you'd go in and it'd go...
Oh, yeah! Did you have that? Yeah!
Yeah!
That was so exciting.
That was kind of exciting. I loved that.
But once again, to repeat, I grew up in the middle of nowhere.
LAUGHTER
And you had feet that glowed.
Now, speaking of scans, we going to see how good you are at radiology.
Can you see anything abnormal in this scan?
Oh, like... Can anyone else see a face?
No, I can see like a figure in the top right...
Oh, yeah, there's a monkey!
There's a gorilla.
I'd just like to withdraw my comment that I could see a face.
These were researchers at Harvard Medical School,
and they deliberately inserted an image of a gorilla
into people's scans, to see if trained radiologists
would notice it,
and 83% missed it. What?!
People who have been on Ql before,
Alan, why might they use a gorilla for this particular thing?
It's an homage. It's...
Yes». Josh?
So, there's a thing where they are bouncing basketballs
to each other, and a gorilla walks past, waves and walks on
and never sees it because they are counting the basketballs. Yes.
It's a famous invisible gorilla study.
It was done by two psychologists from the University of Illinois.
People are asked to watch a basketball
and while they're counting how many times the ball is being moved,
a gorilla runs through the middle,
and most people missed the gorilla, they just didn't see it.
This is a phenomenon known as inattentional bias.
We miss big, obvious things
because we're looking really hard for something specific.
So a radiologist, who would know how to read that,
is clearly looking for some kind of illness,
and not looking for an ape, not expecting one,
and so they don't see it.
With my toddler, she will watch Sarah and Duck, or something,
Sarah and duck is great. It is so good.
It's about Sarah and a duck.
Her friend, Duck. I'd say it's the best TV show of any genre
on at the moment, and I mean that. OK! It's so good.
Anyway, she'll be watching Sarah and Duck,
and I'll say something, and she'll...
I think she's ignoring me... N0.
Is that just attentional...
She's doing that though, isn't she?
LAUGHTER
Does the theme tune not go,
# Sarah and Duck
# Do-do-do
# Sarah and Duck. #
I'm going to suggest that the two of you are not getting enough sleep.
There's no doubt about that. She's not being rude,
she's just focused. Yes, it's hard to say with kids.
It could be a bit of both.
LAUGHTER
How do you think we've got kids?!
Why might a pigeon have spotted the gorilla?
Um... Yeah?
Because it wouldn't be looking for the scan...
Well, here's an extraordinary thing.
There was an experiment by the University of Iowa,
and they trained pigeons to spot diseases in scans,
and it turns out, they have pretty much the same skill at doing it
as humans, so what they did was they put 16 birds in boxes
and they were trained to peck,
so a blue rectangle they had to peck if they saw healthy tissue,
and a yellow one for malignant tissue,
and they got a reward if they got it right.
And when they were trained, they were correctly able
to distinguish between normal and cancerous slides
pretty much the same extent as human beings.
Yes.
Imagine waiting for your results and a pigeon walks in. Yeah.
"We're not 100% sure, so we brought in Polly."
We brought in Sarah and Duck.
Do you know what's amazing? The pigeons got it right 84% of the time
on images which they had been trained on,
and 72% of the time on images which they had never seen before.
It's roughly the same as human observers,
and they did this, despite the fact that
a pigeon has a brain no larger, frankly, than a hazelnut,
and then, if you took the responses of four birds and you combine them,
it's something called flock sourcing,
they have a 99% accuracy.
If you have a pigeon doctor,
you might want to ask them to look at an eggs-ray.
GROANING
Stay with me, people!
What's the defining characteristic of Nazi toothpaste?
No. LAUGHTER
No, I've never had haemorrhoid cream. That must be awful.
In America, they have haemorrhoid aisles in the chemists.
I was in a chemist in New York, and there was a whole aisle
dedicated entirely to haemorrhoid cream.
I know!
Have you been in the pile aisle? I've not discussed this on TV.
No, do it.
So, I had suspected haemorrhoids.
Congratulations. So, I phoned up the doctor... And he went, "What?!"
...and I was like, "Can I get an appointment?
"L think I've got haemorrhoids."
They were like, "Oh, we've got to do an over-the-phone consultation.
"The doctor'll phone you back." And she phoned back and she was like,
"Could you describe your symptoms?" I've never really had, like,
an embarrassing illness down there before.
So, I described my symptoms downstairs
and it was... I was quite embarrassed by it.
As you can see, I'm stumbling here.
And then I got to the end and she went, "Um...
"..are you the comedian Josh Widdicombe?"
LAUGHTER
Oh! I had somebody ask me that WHILE I was having a colonoscopy.
JOE: What, they asked you if you were josh Widdicombe? Yes!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
They wanted to know if I was Josh Widdicombe,
and it turned out there'd been a misunderstanding with a phone call.
I like that idea, they're in your colon, they're going,
"That looks like josh Widdicombe!"
"l'd recognise that anywhere!"
Can I just say to everybody as a health warning,
you do not need a colonoscopy
if all you've had is beetroot. I'm just going to put it out there.
LAUGHTER
So, I had basically the same... ..sort of the same thing.
I had a... What, is this like a haemorrhoid helpline? Yes!
Have your fibre, that's all I can say.
I went to the GP - I had a haemorrhoid -
and I sat down next to this quite elderly lady,
and she went, "You're that comedian, aren't you?"
She says, "l keep thinking I see famous people around here.
"L thought I saw the Pope in B&Q."
And then we were we were chatting a bit and she sort of said,
"What are you in for?" And I tried to sort of find a euphemism.
So, I said it... And it was around Christmas.
I said, "l'm growing a little cranberry,"
is what I said.
And she was like, "Oh..."
And she went, "How festive."
Right. The question was, what's the...
...what's the defining characteristic of Nazi toothpaste?
How did we get on to arseholes with that?! No idea.
It was your fault.
I haven't had them. JOSH: She just had beetroot!
I just had beetroot.
So, what happened - in 1944, there was a German chemist
in occupied Paris, and he'd been tracking down stocks
of uranium and thorium and sending it back to Germany.
And there was enormous fear that the Nazis were about to develop
their own nuclear weapons.
And so a team of spies, who were collectively known as Alsos,
were tasked with discovering what the Nazi's nuclear plans were.
And they worked out eventually that all of this radioactive material
was being stockpiled by a company in Germany hoping to gain
a post-war monopoly on radioactive toothpaste.
That was the plan. There was a very popular product called
Doramad Radioactive Toothpaste.
It was advertised as making your teeth shine
with radioactive brilliance, which it absolutely would do.
But they wouldn't stay in your mouth for very long.
So, there was a huge boost in things
that were thought to be radioactive.
After radium was isolated by, famous woman chemist?
Marie Curie, extra point. ls that Marie Curie on the right?
That is... Yes. She's the one without the beard.
That's her husband in the middle there,
and a professor colleague of theirs.
It was Marie Curie who coined the term "radioactive",
and there was a huge boom in products which contained radium.
There was something called the Revigator.
It was a water jug lined with uranium ore,
and it steadily gave off radon gas as the uranium decayed.
It claimed to "bring back that lost element
"of original freshness - radioactivity."
There were lots of things for sexually weak men.
Keep talking. Mm.
Your ears have pricked up.
Something called Magic Radium Massage.
It was to be rubbed into the sex part...
"..for firmness and strength and a pink, healthful appearance."
JOE: I'm sorry, where do we get this? Sorry.
Well, the thing about it is, it would seem to work.
So, if your body is exposed to radiation, it begins to fight it,
and it gives you a sort of short-term high
as the blood flows around your body.
So, for a brief moment, it probably would seem rather marvellous.
The long-term effects, obviously devastating.
There was something let's have a look at one of these strange
jockstraps that a gentleman could have a look at.
So, "new energy for weak, sagging men".
Er...
Marie Curie, I think she's amazing.
She was Polish and she worked in Paris
because her native University in Krakow would not allow her to study
because she was a woman,
And in 1903, she and her husband, Pierre, in the middle there,
were invited to the Royal Institution in London
to give a lecture on radioactivity, and she was not allowed to give it,
even though she's the one who made the discovery.
Her papers from the 1890s are still considered
too dangerous to handle, they are all in a lead box,
and you have to wear special protective clothing to look at them.
And, even her home recipe book is in a lead box.
It must be annoying if you just want a recipe for soup.
Now to a new kind of radio activity.
What did the man who invented radio really want to hear?
AUDIENCE OOH
Me too, darling!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Anybody know who that is?
Marconi?
It is Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio.
Well, certainly one of the great pioneers of radio.
He formulated a theory that sound never died,
it just got weaker and weaker.
And towards the end of his life, one of the things he wanted
to discover was the right apparatus to be able to detect
all sounds ever made.
He hoped one day to invent some kind of apparatus sensitive enough
to hear Jesus delivering his Sermon on the Mount.
That's Jesus there, in case there's any doubt.
"It was THIS big." Yeah.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
So, would he be right? ls it possible to detect sound
from the past? JOE: N0. N0. Why not?
To where? Where's it gone?
OK. What did you do before you were a comedian?
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
So, here's the thing about sound waves - they're gradually absorbed
by air molecules till they're no longer audible,
they're just absorbed. But he is astonishing, Marconi.
He got his first wireless patent when he was just 22.
He had no formal education in science. I love this -
he was aided by a series of tutors and man servants.
I know. I suspect his valet came up with it.
In fact, his very first transatlantic message
depended on a device called a coherer.
It seems to have been based on an unpatented design
by an Indian physicist called Jagadish Chandra Bose,
who had been demonstrating wireless -
there he is - wireless telegraphy two years before Marconi managed it.
But he's from Bengal and he wasn't allowed to work in a lab
on the grounds of his race,
so he had to build a makeshift lab at home.
So, did Marconi steal his idea by listening into the past
when he first said it?
What I love is the detail that you've grasped in this entire...
LAUGHTER
They were both at the Sermon on the Mount, and...
The very first transatlantic transmission,
so it was from Cornwall to...
Can you remember if it was "New-fin-land"?
We did this. New-fin-land or New-FOUND-land. New-fin-land.
It is New-fin-land, isn't it? Newfoundland.
The very first transatlantic transmission,
Cornwall to Newfoundland. People thought it was impossible.
It's Corn-WAH L. Hmm? LAUGHTER
"WahL"
Corn-wahl to New-fin-land.
I absolutely hate Cornwall.
I can't believe it's come up.
I can't believe they were involved in the future of radio.
One of the nice things about touring
is that you find out which bits of the country hate one another,
and Devon and Cornwall, holy shit!
Do you know what the main dispute is?
Is it cream on the scone? Yeah.
It's whether you go cream on top and jam below,
or the other way round. But, I'm from Devon,
and I actually think the Cornish way is better. Oh, my God!
CROWD GASP You'll never go home again!
Controversial.
Let's do a quick vote. Who thinks the cream should go on first
on a scone? Hands up! Idiots.
Who thinks the jam should go on first? Oh, overwhelming!
So that's the Cornish way?
My kids just take the whole thing apart.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Anyway, we were discussing the first the first transatlantic transmission
of radio. Sorry!
Why did people think it was impossible to go...?
Curvature of the Earth? Curvature of the Earth.
Absolutely, because radio waves travel in a straight line
and the Earth is curved.
Wow. What a science teacher you must have been.
What they didn't know, of course, was that there's a reflecting layer
in the atmosphere, the ionosphere, which the radio waves bounce,
they bounce off. That's amazing!
Also, if you said something loud enough, wouldn't the Earth turn
and then people would all hear it eventually?
LAUGHTER
Yes. That's right, because sound travels forward.
LAUGHTER
It's a good question.
I remember being in a revolving restaurant with my cousin...
You just said it's a good question to your own question! Yeah!
And I'll tell you why. JOSH LAUGHS
I was in a revolving restaurant in Sydney with my cousin,
and she put her handbag down, and it didn't turn up again for 40 minutes.
You're right. Sound is just like that.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Darling, the atmosphere turns with the Earth.
Oh, it does.
Yeah, it's not like the Earth's going and the atmosphere's saying,
I'll stop here till you come back.
Sorry, carry on!
The thing that will please you, darling, is that Marconi
didn't know why it was working, so you are not alone in your ignorance!
LAUGHTER
He won the Nobel Prize in 1909, and in his acceptance speech
he freely admitted that with many of his inventions, he had no idea
exactly how it was working. And I love that.
So, there's lots of good things about him. Less good -
he fell in with Italy's fascists.
When he died, the largest wreath was from Hitler.
So, there are bits about him that I think are less good.
But over a half a million people lined the streets
for his funeral procession, and to commemorate his death
radio stations in Italy, and indeed in the UK and the United States
and Canada, all went silent for a minute.
Is that a way to discredit someone after they've died?
To get someone really objectionable to send a massive wreath?
Oh, that's a good... I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you,
the atmosphere was moving. What?
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Come back in a year and it'll still be here.
LAUGHTER Right, moving on...
Where does this man keep his radio transmitter?
ALAN CHUCKLES
Well...
That...
Weirdly...
...that is part of the answer.
ALL:
All of us that have penises...
...keep our radio transmitters in them? Careful... You could.
What?!
OK...
Who were you shagging?! LAUGHTER
So, during the Cold War, the CIA developed a radio...
...obviously just for the boys.
It was a secret radio hidden in a fake scrotum.
ALAN GASPS
I know, it's a...
AUDIENCE GASPING DROWNS SPEECH
All right, that is an overreaction to this story...
Do you know what's offensive about that? I had to pose
for eight hours for that... LAUGHTER DROWNS SPEECH
And they airbrushed you out. Yeah, airbrushed me out...!
They said it'd be tastefully done.
Looks as though you're not the only comedian with a detachable scrotum!
That's why you got the job...! It was the pilots who might...
Pilots who might be captured and searched, for example.
Obviously, our Action Man could not, uh...
I don't know, couldn't pull this off, I was going to say,
but I don't know what the... LAUGHTER DROWNS SPEECH
Anyway, I am told spies could slip it over an existing...
Oh, right, so it would go... ..scrotum. ..over the normal...
Yes. And then... I don't think you
could slip anything over your scrotum...
Well, apparently, you had to put it on one testicle at a time.
I'm just telling you...! ALAN WINCES
What, and then staple it?!
LAUGHTER
I think it would just... Suction?!
Those nuts look like a swimming hat!
LAUGHTER
I think it... Yeah, I think... What... I think you pop...
If it's suction, it's not the getting it on I'm worried about,
it's the getting it off! Yeah...
I... I've run out of information.
LAUGHTER
What I can tell you is that, tragically,
although built and tested,
it was never, ever used in the field.
Well, did it overheat? That's all I'm worried about.
I mean, it looks like a kitchen timer.
Like it would eventually go... HE MIMICS BUZZING
It would be awful if you hadn't turned it off and you suddenly heard
the Archers theme tune come on!
SHE HUMS THEME TUNE, GRUNTS
You can see this particular scrotum...
SHAZIA GIGGLES ..should you wish,
in Washington DC's International Spy Museum.
There is also, and I don't know what I think about this,
there is a tool kit with ten different drill bits and saws
and knives and so on, and those all fit in that canister which can go
up a spy's bottom.
LAUGHTER
What I don't understand is how meticulous a spy would you be
because the second one from the right looks like a letter opener.
I mean... LAUGHTER
Well, at least three of them look like they do the same job.
Don't you think? Yeah...
Now, how many radiators are there in this picture?
Bear in mind it's Ql.
Say two, josh. Say two.
Two. Two is right. You get an extra point. Yes!
All on my own! All on my own!
No!
BUZZER SOUNDS
We tried to save you, Joe!
You can see that one coming, Joe. Surely?
OK. They are misnamed radiators
because most of the heat comes from convection.
So convection is when you warm up the air, which then rises,
it pulls the cold air down,
which then heats up before the cycle starts all over again.
That is what happens in a radiator.
Only a fifth...
I'm saying they're misnamed.
Only a fifth of the heat actually comes from radiating,
which is the transfer of heat from electromagnetic waves.
They should really.
So when I got some radiators put into my house...
Yes, they were mis-sold to you.
...l could have, at the end, gone to the builder,
"A little quibble over the bill here." Yes!
So, humans would be described as radiators
because 60% of our body heat leaves us through radiation.
So the heat is transferred to blood vessels at the body's surface.
Has she got hot boobs or cold boobs?
I'd say those tits are hot. I'd say.
She's covering her modesty, as if... He's not!
No! He is very happy with himself, isn't he?!
Anyway, so we radiate heat all the time,
so we are a form of radiator.
Toucans radiate even more, and they are astonishing.
So they use those big bills,
which you would think was just to attract mates,
or to identify toucans of the same species...
I tell you what, Sandi, my radiators have led to quite big bills.
GROANING AND APPLAUSE
I like that. I like that.
Double meaning. Double meaning of bills, you see?
That really should have got a "ohhh".
Have you ever had "two cans" of beer?
GROANS AND LAUGHTER
Er...
S0 fickle!
Toucans use their bills as radiators to warm themselves up,
and cool themselves down.
In hot weather, the bird sends blood to its beak
to cool down, and then in cold weather,
the toucan constricts the blood vessels to avoid losing heat.
It can change temperature by ten degrees Centigrade
in just a few minutes. Wow.
Now it's time for the X-rated round that we call General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
What's the busiest man-made waterway in the world?
Yes». Joe?
Birmingham Canal.
KLAXON BLARES PANELLISTS GROAN
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
SANDI CHUCKLES I'm so livid.
I'm guessing it's not going to be one of the really famous ones...
Which ones? ..like Suez...
Suez... ..or Panama... Panama...
Not those. No. No?
God, see what I did there? Saved us! Very good.
Eh? It's not those... It's only taken you 16 series to learn!
LAUGHTER DROWNS SPEECH
ls it in the UK? Give us a clue, give us a clue.
Uh, it's German. BOTH:
Er, das Canal?
LAUGHTER
The Kiel Canal. So it cuts across the north German...
Oh! I was going to say that! The Kiel...
...it cuts across the north German state of Schleswig-Holstein,
part of which, can I just say, actually should belong to Denmark.
Just going to put it out there! LAUGHTER
Anyway... So, in 2018, more than 42,500 ships passed through
the Kiel Canal, as well as about, I don't know,
20,000 yachts and private motor boats and so on.
It was originally conceived as a way, inexplicably, for German ships
to avoid Denmark. I mean... Oh... AUDIENCE AWWS
The Kiel Canal is the best way of avoiding Denmark.
Not that you would want to... AUDIENCE LAUGHS NERVOUSLY
Imagine you're on the Panama Canal and you're heading east,
which body of water will you end up in?
Is it the Caribbean?
KLAXON
So, you're heading east. Just think it through. Yeah.
The Atlantic Ocean is... East towards Essex.
...is on the east side of the United States.
The Pacific Ocean is... On the west.
The Pacific is on the west. Yes, so the Atlantic is on the east,
the Pacific is on the west,
you're going to go through the Panama Canal...
The Panama Canal goes quite northy-southy, doesn't it? Yes...
OK. Just trying to think.
But when you come out of that end, you'll be in the Caribbean.
If you're heading east... Don't you dare do it twice.
"You'll end up in the Atlantic Ocean. OK, so...
He said Atlantic!
KLAXON
You thought you'd get away with that!
You were telling on me! Well, I was!
I was telling on you because you said it and it didn't go off,
and that sort of thing really gets my goat.
LAUGHTER
It's not my fault!
OK, so let us go through this.
OK, so the Atlantic is on the east and the Pacific is on the west,
the Panama Canal is down there. It runs north-south, see?
Yeah, but because of the way the Panama Canal curves,
if you head from the Atlantic to the Pacific, you will actually end up
further east than you started. Oh.
So you go south-east to get to the Pacific,
and you go north-west to get to the Atlantic.
I can't believe I've been done with a trick question on Ql.
I love canals.
I think they're just extraordinary.
I like the peacefulness of it,
the slowness of it, I like that you can get off for a walk
and somebody else is steering the boat,
and you can still get back on again.
You could storm off in a huff... I know.
...and still return to the holiday.
I interviewed a guy once who wanted to do
the whole canal system of Britain,
and he had been away sailing for three weeks,
and there was an emergency at home,
and he got a taxi and he was home in an hour.
LAUGHTER
The smallest toll ever paid on the Panama Canal was 36 cents.
It was paid by adventurer Richard Halliburton to swim along it.
Where did he keep the money?
LAUGHTER
Now, if you are pregnant, what is the best way of inducing labour?
Oh, I know this one...
Vote. KLAXON BLARES
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
What, the curry thing? Curry doesn't work. Hm...
Yeah. Beckoning with an Oreo at the opening.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Wow. Weirdly, all the studies we looked at,
that wasn't one that came out. No? I don't know why.
SING-SONGY: Come on! Come on...
There's lots of myths about how to get labour started
in pregnant women. Most common ways, there's walking, sex,
ingesting spicy food and nipple stimulation.
So, sex does not work.
This is not a general statement. It's...
LAUGHTER
They did a study of about 1,500 women.
It doesn't work, it makes no difference.
There are no studies which deduce that spicy food or even walking
definitely would work. I love the fact there's studies,
like they've been giving pregnant women curries,
hotter and hotter curries. Nothing. Um...
So... So... Take it up to a phall!
LAUGHTER
Women... Is it coming? No.
Women who say it does work, it may be something we call
confirmation bias, so, you know it's supposed to help to have curry
and therefore, you say that was a factor,
but it's very unlikely to be true.
Castor oil, raspberry leaf tea...
There's all sorts of things...
LAUGHTER
Was it Mrs McIntyre?
Was she watching him do stand-up?
Just watching him from his garden.
The one thing that does seem to work?
Nipple stimulation. JOE GASPS
Ooh... JOSH CHUCKLES
LAUGHTER
Oh, it's coming!
So, here's the weird thing - this is from the study, OK?
Women whose nipples have been stimulated, so...
...rolled between the fingers for one to three hours a day...
AUDIENCE LAUGHS AND GROANS
This scientist needs locking up! Oh!
LAUGHTER
...and it has to be one nipple at a time, are 33% more likely
to go into labour within 72 hours
or kill you, I think.
LAUGHTER
Oh! I've got... I've got Chris Moyles!
LAUGHTER
According to the largest study on the subject, this stimulation also
reduces the risk of heavy bleeding after delivery by 84%.
So this is the thing. Top tip!
Top tip - nipple stimulation.
Can I just say -
always ask your doctor before spending three hours
rubbing your nipples. LAUGHTER
I always do and he hates answering the calls!
I'm going to say that every time I ring the surgery now!
"Hello, it's Josh Widdicombe here..."
So, the entire audience, OK?
Let's all pretend we're ringing the doctor. Ready? One, two, three...
ALL: Hello, it's josh Widdicombe here...
My medical history's going to be a mess!
LAUGHTER
"lt says he has a problem with his vagina!"
That's nothing, his scrotum fell off last time he was here...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Right, it's time for the scores.
Glowing with health in first place...
Oh, my goodness. With minus one, it's josh!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In second place with minus eight, it's Shazia!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And in third place with minus 17 - Joe!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
I'm happy with that. Yeah, happy with that.
And, having an absolute meltdown -
in last place with minus 25, it's Alan!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE HE MOUTHS
And it's thanks to Shazia and Joe, Josh and Alan. That's it from us.
I'll leave you with the rallying cry of the protesters from the campaign
to save Radio 4 long wave in 1993.
As they marched, they shouted, "What do we want?" "Long wave!"
"When do we want it?" "Now!"
"And what do we say?"
"Please, thank you and goodnight."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE