CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Good evening and welcome to QI,
where tonight we are Roaming around the world,
taking in a remarkable range of people and places
beginning with the letter R.
Joining me tonight on riding the rails,
it's Benjamin Zephaniah.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Roving the roads, it's Josh Widdicombe.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Racing down the rapids, it's Sara Pascoe.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And running to the restroom,
it's Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And let's go round the horns.
Benjamin goes...
TRAIN WHISTLE
Josh goes...
CAR HORN
Sara goes...
FOGHORN
Butch.
And Alan goes...
CLOWN CAR HORN
Fair enough.
Right, let's start with a really riveting question.
Who is this woman and what can she do?
She looks like my primary school teacher.
Terrifying. She's beautiful.
Does the audience know who it is?
AUDIENCE: Rosie the Riveter.
KLAXON
Oh, no, you're on minus points already, audience. I know.
LAUGHTER
It's a common misconception. So she was a poster girl, apparently,
for women's contribution to the war effort in the Second World War,
that's what it is commonly thought.
The poster does date, in fact, from 1943,
but it was actually used only for ten days
in the American Westinghouse Factories.
But it was part of a series of 42 posters,
and the idea was to halt union activity.
It was to prevent strike action.
Then what happened was the poster was rediscovered in the 1980s
and it was given a sort of new lease of life.
The real Rosie the Riveter
is based on somebody that you might have heard of.
So that is the real Rosie the Riveter.
Who do you think it looks like?
Is it Roseanne Barr?
LAUGHTER
I think it looks like Jo Brand.
SARA: It does look a little bit like Jo Brand.
Do you not think? Yeah.
But it is based on somebody famous.
It's painted by Norman Rockwell and he based it
on the Prophet Isaiah from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.
Oh, wow. I know.
You wouldn't think it. That's rather cool, isn't it? Yeah.
I know, it's absolutely marvellous.
So when you say we might recognise them because it's someone we know...
LAUGHTER
No, I said it was based on somebody famous. So... How famous is he?
Isaiah? Isaiah? Yeah.
JOSH: I reckon they'd book him for this show.
Yeah. LAUGHTER
So Rosie is eating a ham sandwich, you can't quite see it
in this picture, but her foot is crushing a copy of Mein Kampf.
It was actually based on a 19-year-old telephone operator
called Mary Doyle Keefe.
She was paid $10 and she wasn't a riveter at all.
But the image of actual Rosie the Riveter fell out of use
due to copyright restrictions,
and the gap in the market was sort of filled
by the "We Can Do It" version that we saw earlier.
The real name, Rosie the Riveter, came from a song
and we think we can have a listen to it.
# Keeps a sharp lookout for sabotage
# Sitting up there on the fuselage
# That little frail can do more than a male can do
# Rosie the Riveter. #
I love that. "That little frail can do more than a male." Yeah.
It makes you feel good about yourself, doesn't it?
On the subject of QI panellist resemblances,
I said how much I thought that poster looked like Jo Brand,
in July 2018, there's a Twitter user called Sam Jordan,
and he tweeted the following,
"Going through some old photos, a welcome surprise..."
Oh, yeah!
LAUGHTER
"..to find my great grandmother is, in fact, Alan Davies."
Wow!
Can you stand up next to it, Alan? Let's have a look.
Well, I think she's gorgeous.
LAUGHTER
Oh, yeah. JOSH: Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
APPLAUSE
Now, for a bit of Randy Scandi.
Here are some words of Scandinavian origin.
To be more specific, they're of Norwegian origin,
since the Danes would never use such stupid words.
Who can tell me what they mean? Have a look at some of these.
Crotching is obvious. Yes? What, is it?
What Michael Jackson does.
Oh, yes, like a bit of a move, a crotching move. "Ooh!"
JOSH: Oh, I thought you were thinking
of a very different thing there.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
You're thinking of flushbunking. Yeah.
I saw something the other day online...
I don't know if I can talk about this, cos it's really dirty.
Come on, come on. Darling,
you've already gone down to Michael Jackson's crotch, help yourself.
No, it was...these people who, they're kind of pranksters I guess,
and they literally lick toilets.
What?! What? Yeah.
As a...as a hobby, like a sort of niche hobby?
I guess they get lots of likes and views on YouTube,
and stuff like that.
Wow. I mean, I've been worrying about shaking hands, but...
LAUGHTER
And you think that's flushbunking?
Sounds like a whiffswiddle to me. Yeah.
Well, I can tell you that biffsquiggled means confused.
Flushbunking actually means making no sense.
Whiffswiddle is something that happens or moves very, very fast.
And all of these words were invented by one person.
Who do we think that might be?
A Norwegian person? Norwegian person?
Well, of Norwegian origin. Is it a footballer?
No, it isn't. I'm out.
It was for the BFG. Oh, Roald Dahl. It is Roald Dahl.
His parents were Norwegian immigrants.
I mean, the Danes would never have anything so absurd.
Here are a few Danish words, just to see if you can see what they mean.
LAUGHTER
Bagslag? See, not funny to me at all.
What? Bagslag?
No, it's "Bowslei"
"Bowslei"? "Bowslei".
"Bowslei". Yes. And is it still a slapper?
LAUGHTER
Dancing round the handbag.
IN SCANDINAVIAN ACCENT: Oh, Sandra, come away, you "bowslei".
LAUGHTER
No, it means backfire.
Bagslag.
Isn't that what fart?
It's a fart, yes.
Fart is the Danish word for speed.
So, you have to mind your fart.
What about the other one? Anybody want to try?
Boghandel. IN SCANDINAVIAN ACCENT: Boghandel.
SARA: Yeah, how do you pronounce that one? "Bo han'l".
"Bo handle"? No, "Bo han'l".
"Bo han'l". "Bo han'l".
LAUGHTER
This is so fun.
"Bo" means book and "handel" is the handler of the books,
so it's the book shop.
"Bo han'l".
Book shop? Yeah.
Boghandel.
So you'd go, "I need to go..." Fart down to the bo handel.
"..fart to the book shop", yeah.
"I want to read Fifty Shades of Grey because I'm a bagslag".
LAUGHTER
Roald Dahl is actually a very interesting fellow.
He was a spy, briefly.
He was a spy for the sort of covert operation
set up by MI6 to spy in the United States.
But he used his spy experiences to write screenplays.
He wrote two Ian Fleming screenplays.
He wrote the James Bond film You Only Live Twice,
and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, as well. Oh. Wow.
But he made up over 500 words in BFG. Yeah.
Scrumdiddlyumptious.
Snozzcumber? Snozzcumber, yeah.
Snozzcumber, yes, which was?
It was like a kind of bitter cucumber, wasn't it? Yeah,
a black and white striped cucumber. With little knobbles on the outside.
I wish James Bond had eaten one of those instead of having a Martini.
LAUGHTER
"I'll have a Snozzcumber, please."
"Sliced." "Yeah, if you wouldn't mind."
That is an incredible book, published in 1982,
it has sold over 40 million copies.
Amazing. It sells another million every year.
I know, right? The BFG does?
Yeah, The BFG, yeah.
One of the dreams in one of the jars is that a book sells so well
that even footballers on the pitch,
that everyone in the world is reading the book.
And it kind of is like that, isn't it? Everyone's read The BFG.
Not footballers.
Dahl, when he was buried, I love this,
he was buried with his snooker cues, some very good Burgundy,
chocolates, HB pencils and a power saw.
Which I just think is... What's he planning? I don't know.
What would you be buried with, Alan?
What would, if you were to choose the bits and pieces?
I was just going to say my children!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Ladies and gentlemen, Dad of the Year!
Yeah, no, I don't think that's appropriate.
No, it's not.
What about you, Josh? Um...
Oh, ah...
I completed a jigsaw for the first time this week.
Two piece or one? Yeah, how many...?
I'll tell you how many pieces it was meant to be, 1,000. Yeah.
And it was 999 pieces. Yeah.
So you didn't complete a jigsaw. No.
Just so proud about something you failed at.
I didn't fail, but... You did, darling,
because when you say you completed a jigsaw, that is not what happened.
You didn't complete it. Yeah. Thank you.
All right, I want to be buried with the final piece of the jigsaw.
Anybody else got thoughts about it?
I think, yeah, just in case, a big book. Yeah.
Cos quite often, there's big books
that you wish you had time to read, like...
It'd be dark, though.
Oh... And a torch.
How many things are we allowed to take down there?
In Birmingham Museum... Yeah?
..one of the exhibits is my first typewriter,
and it's a typewriter that's almost 100 years old. I was a little kid...
Wow, you've aged well!
I was a little kid and this bloke looked at me and he went,
"What do you want to do when you grow up?"
And I said, "I want to be a poet."
And he went, "Well, here's a typewriter."
And it's a beautiful piece.
And I'd like to be buried with that, so that...
..when I'm decomposing I'm still composing, basically.
Oh, I think that's lovely! Ah, that's nice.
That is really nice. That's very nice. That is so nice.
But I am a little bit worried
that the Birmingham Museum is going to be empty.
What else have they got? Yeah.
JOSH: They've got Jasper Carrott's stool.
Oh, that's gone off by now, surely. Not his stool... Oh, I see!
LAUGHTER
I mean, sweet of him to offer it, but...
Ah, this is the weirdest show I've ever been on.
Where am I?
I met Jasper Carrott
and I asked him about why he's called Jasper Carrott,
and he said it's cos his real name is Davis,
and it's so boring.
LAUGHTER
His name is Bob Davis.
Is that right?
Yeah, and that's the name of my middle child.
Who you want to buried with. Yeah!
Now, onto the Romans. What did they ever do for us?
I know what they didn't do. What did they not do?
Cos I've seen this programme before. Yeah.
They didn't build roads.
No, they really did, darling. They did. They did.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
In Monty Python's Life Of Brian they ask,
"All right, but apart from, you know, the sanitation, the medicine,
"education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads,
"a fresh water system and public health,
"what have the Romans ever done for us?"
In fact, most of those items on the list already existed.
They were improved upon, rather than invented by the Romans.
So they didn't invent roads, but they did certainly make them.
Did they invent aqueducts?
No, they did not invent aqueducts either.
They were used by the Egyptians and the Babylonians
for hundreds of years before the Romans. Underfloor heating?
I mean, again, there is underfloor heating in other parts of the world.
Really? Yes, I'm afraid so.
Pasta. Pasta, they invented pasta, absolutely.
No, all sorts of things that we think, so for example,
straight roads is one of the things that we think,
but we know straight roads existed in Ireland,
which the Romans didn't even reach.
And they didn't even invent paved roads.
The world's oldest paved road, which this is part of...
This looks like one of Josh's puzzles.
LAUGHTER
It's probably 4,500 years ago
that this road was laid down. It's in Egypt. So it was laid down
in order to build the monuments at Giza along the Nile.
Who said aqueducts? Who said aqueducts? I did.
You did. Cos that's what I remember from learning...
The first things we learned about Romans at school.
Aqueducts were pretty big
and I thought I was going to see more of them in my life
in the way that they were bigged up.
Like, before then, water couldn't even go over bridges.
Yeah. This one is in Nimes, in France. Beautiful...
What happened there? So they didn't go high enough for first time?
And then, where is the water then?
It's down below in the river.
LAUGHTER
So, on that very top of the bridge?
Yeah, on the very top of the bridge.
In the seventh century BC, the Assyrian king built one
to bring water all the way from the nearby mountains
to his palace in Nineveh.
So, lots of aqueducts before the Romans.
There is something the Romans did give us,
which is the wicker man.
So, the very first evidence that we have
of the wicker man style of pagan sacrifice comes from Julius Caesar.
He claimed that the Druids burned people alive inside wicker cages.
Oh, wow. The thing is, he's thought to have invented it,
cos he wanted to show how barbaric everybody was in Britain.
Although maybe the wicker man has not...
..we have no evidence of it, because...
Cos they took it apart to make some cool chairs in the '80s.
LAUGHTER
Does anybody want to see a Peter Rabbit wicker man?
Yeah. Oh... Yes, please. Always. OK, well...
So, in 2016 they made a 40 ft - there it is -
straw statue of Peter Rabbit.
It was created to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Beatrix...
And it's full of rabbits.
Well, it was set alight by arsonists.
AUDIENCE: Aww.
Or Mr McGregor, which is the one I'm voting for!
We had a picture of it on fire, but I couldn't bear to show it.
Oh. Show it! No.
Show it! Show it! Show it! Show it!
It's too, no! Show it!
Come on, you lot, what sort of rabble are you?
I'm trying to rouse you!
You want to see the burning rabbit, don't you?
No! AUDIENCE: Yes!
Have you got it? What is wrong with you?!
It's not a real rabbit, it's just a picture of a fire!
I'm not showing Peter Rabbit on fire.
It's not happening. Aw. Yeah.
SCATTERED BOOING And so was it supposed to...?
Boo! Boo! Don't boo Sandi! Don't boo Sandi!
Wow! I'm being nice for the odd child who watches.
It's not happening.
Be a very odd child, watching this show.
LAUGHTER
Anything else that they invented?
Benjamin, in your field, there is something that they invented.
They invented bound books.
Oh!
So, it wasn't until the Romans that it was thought a good idea to
put lots of pieces of paper into some leather.
Up until then, it had been scrolls entirely.
So, bound books we owe to the Romans. And Latin, obviously.
But the welfare, the idea of welfare is a Roman concept.
So they had something a bit like a sort of corn dole,
so if the poor were really suffering,
they would give out and look after the needy,
and that is a concept that hadn't existed before.
I think there are some African scholars
that would really disagree with that,
cos there's lots of evidence that African villages
used to share and they would never let anybody go poor.
There's a Jamaican word called paadna.
It's like partner, but paadna,
where people put money into a kitty in the village
and it's to make sure that no-one goes poor.
I think there's a serious issue in history
that probably a lot of that stuff that happened
was not written down, and so it has been lost. Yeah.
Well, you know, this...
I'm going to talk about what I teach at university,
but I teach the oral tradition.
And so a lot of it is handed down word to mouth. Yeah. Mm.
And a lot of western scholarship just missed it,
because it wasn't written down.
In West Africa, they used to have this thing called Ananci stories.
Anancies were this kind of trickster spider that would
always get in trouble and somehow work its way out of it.
And there's always a little bit of wisdom left for you to
learn from, especially for children.
And, I mean, these have been going for hundreds and hundreds of years
and they went to the Carribean.
And then, I think it was in the mid-'90s,
a British publisher published them and it upset a lot of people.
Cos they're supposed to move and change with the times,
but now you've set them in stone.
Ah. Ah.
And this is the point, you know, Ananci now,
if you were telling an Ananci story to make your children wiser,
it would involve the internet or whatever it is,
whatever is going on...
And keep it moving along. Yes, yeah.
So that was the Romans, but what about the Romanians?
What did they ever do for us?
SARA: Oh, this is interesting.
Yeah. Is it to do with agriculture?
Oh, in what way?
Just they're good at it.
Or vampires.
Is it something like the feudal system?
Is it something about kind of how people divided work?
What's he going to get out of his trousers, there?
What's he reaching for?
You know what he's going to get out of his trousers.
"You're not going to do that here."
I'm specifically talking about Transylvania.
BOTH: Oh, vampires.
CLAXON BLARES
We all lost points. I said vampires about two minutes ago.
Did you? Keep up!
CLAXON BLARES
LAUGHTER
I never before realised that that was sentient.
Oh, yeah... It's an actual person.
It's the nature of AI.
Over years, through the constant back and forth.
The trouble is this brain is developed mainly off of me.
LAUGHTER
So, not vampires.
Myths about undead beings who come out at night
and gorge on the blood of the living.
I mean, that's been around in almost every single culture for millennia.
So, it isn't that,
but I can tell you it begins with the Edict of Turda.
I'm further away from the answer now.
And it comes... I can tell you there is a town called Turda, which is...
LOW LAUGHTER
Did somebody snigger?
It's called Turda.
Yeah, it's twinned with Poo-a.
It is one of the THE most beautiful places in the world.
It's a tiny Romanian town in Transylvania. It is stunning.
Is it Turda or is it
Ta-da!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Well, in a way, in a away it was kind of Ta-da
because nobody had ever thought of this before.
They invented religious tolerence.
It had never really existed before.
So, in most of Medieval Europe,
you absolutely had to agree with the Church.
And then, in 1556, there was a student, a Polish student,
who said, I don't understand why we all have to believe in the Trinity.
I would prefer to believe just in God.
And this started a new religion called Unitarianism.
And the world's only Unitarian king, King Janos Zsigmond,
he set forth this Edict of Turda and it stated that,
"A preacher may preach the Gospel by his own personal conception
"at any place if that community is willing to accept him,
"or if it isn't, no-one should force him
"just because their soul is not satisfied with him."
And it's amazing that that was a revolutionary thing.
So, that was 1568 that you can believe what you like.
It was absolutely revolutionary.
Here's my other favourite thing that Romania gave the world.
December, 2014, the world's longest sausage.
Oh! It measured 38.99 miles.
JOSH: What? I know.
Yeah, it holds the Guinness world record.
And it was... I don't know why we went back to him with his...
"Would you like to see the beginning of the world's longest sausage?"
LAUGHTER
Did you say 38.99...? 38.999 miles...
So close to 39 miles. I know.
62.75 km.
I just think when something's that big,
it's just not a sausage, is it, really?
No, it's just a meaty line, isn't it?
Also, what's the point?
No offence if it's any of you,
but why do people want to break stupid records?
Like, why?
JOSH: "No offence if it's any of you".
Hang on. Is there anybody in the audience who holds a record at all?
Anything at all. Yeah. Yes?
Where are you? SARA: More than one.
I knew there were dweebs.
Where are you? Stand up.
Who said yes? Yes, what's your name?
My name's Dave. Hello, Dave, what you hold the record for?
I was part of a team who broke the longest line of baked pizzas.
LAUGHTER
I'm not clapping it, I'm not clapping it.
I'm not clapping it, Dave.
Can I ask Dave a question?
Yes, ask Dave a question? Did all the pizzas get eaten?
They got given to homeless people.
OK, now I'm clapping.
APPLAUSE
You were a second away from saying
it's just the long line of cheesy dough.
Yes.
But the long sausage was also given out and local charities benefited.
OK.
The Romanians gave us religious tolerance
and the world's biggest sausage.
Who would be the worst person to borrow a glove from?
OJ Simpson?
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
SARA: True, it's true.
The guy that gave me a strip search at Heathrow Airport.
I wouldn't want to borrow a glove from him.
LAUGHTER
Did they do the whole...? Yeah. The whole...?
I don't know why I'm doing that, that's... Really?
I imagine there's not that much movement in it, actually.
Yeah, you're not changing a light bulb up there, Sandi. Yeah.
I was coming from a particular part of the world
which is known as a source of narcotics,
and I look suspicious.
LAUGHTER
Was it Kensington?
LAUGHTER
And they gave me a strip search. That's horrible. Sounds awful. Yeah.
What did they find? SARA: It's my worst nightmare.
Two kilos of cocaine, but that's not the point!
They found the world's longest sausage.
LAUGHTER
They found nothing, I am innocent, I'm a good boy. Quite right.
I haven't broken the law for...months. A while!
So I'm going to give you a clue,
the worst person to borrow a glove from,
he was Russian, he was romantic.
Oh. His name begins with Ra, Ra...
Rasputin. Rasputin. Rasputin. KLAXON
They've done it to us again.
JOSH: That was a trick of the highest order, Sandi.
That's so much fun!
Rachmaninoff.
Oh. Oh. Oh.
Sergei Rachmaninoff.
He had huge hands.
You should have keyboards. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So if you have a look at the keyboards,
he could span 12 keys.
So that is Rachmaninoff's hand that you have there.
So put it up against your hand.
He could span 12 notes.
How many can you span with a single hand?
Oh, I've got really small hands.
JOSH: I'm on ten. You can do ten.
Nine, just about. Just about nine. Yeah.
And Sara, what about you?
Using all five fingers.
15! Yeah!
So there is an argument that some of the virtuoso pieces on piano
are inherently sexist, because women simply can't manage.
This is impossible!
The thing about him that makes me so angry
and about the world, in a way, is that his very first symphony,
he was so severely criticised by a man called Caesar Cui
that he didn't actually compose again for four years,
it put him in such a depression.
Yeah, it's like my first Edinburgh.
Been there.
JOSH: You should never Google your own name.
But, actually, that's an important life lesson,
is that the biggest hurdle is that some people won't like what you do
and it mustn't stop you from doing it.
No, I think you're right, he's a really good example of that.
So there is an issue for women playing piano pieces,
because if you want to play large chords and so on,
you really need a span of at least eight and a half inches,
and that eliminates 24% of men.
SARA: Does it really? 87% of women.
But there's very few women in virtuoso piano playing.
I didn't know that. And it's partly to do with the span of the hands.
The world record for biggest hands,
held by an American, Robert Pershing Wadlow, this is...
I know, this is, look at the hands! Wow!
LAUGHTER
It is faintly astonishing, isn't it?
His hands measured 12.75 inches,
so 32.3 centimetres from the wrist to the top of the middle finger.
He's also the tallest man on record.
OK, that's good, yeah. I was just going to say, is it to scale?
Is it...? Yeah. He was eight foot, 11.1 inches.
I mean he was astonishing. Oh, yeah. Whoa!
You sometimes see a model of him
outside the Ripley Believe It Or Not museums. Yeah, yeah.
Poor man. And really sadly, he died quite young. Yeah.
He was still growing by the time he died, and his ankle brace chafed him
and he got an infection and he died because... Oh. Oh.
I know, it is really sad. Yeah.
There is one woman who is said to have had absolutely huge hands
and it's George Eliot, the author, AKA Mary Ann Evans,
and when she died - so we're talking about 1880 -
the family were dismayed that a neighbour told an anecdote
about her having a giant right hand the neighbours said
she used to show it with some pride
and it was because she worked in the family dairy as a teenager
and she had to turn the churn to make the butter
and so that made her hand enormous.
But they were so embarrassed that any potential biographers had to
absolutely guarantee that they would include a rebuttal of the story
that she had had large hands
because it is not something that women want to be...
But people are awful about her.
All of the descriptions of her at the time
were that she was very unattractive,
like that undermined her other work, wasn't it?
Yeah. You can visit George Eliot's childhood home, maybe, I don't know,
a tiny disappointment,
it is now the Nuneaton Premier Inn and Beefeater restaurant.
LAUGHTER
Massive door handles. Isn't that far from Birmingham... Yes. ..Museum.
Why don't we all do? Yeah, let's all go.
Do you think they have a salad bar with bacon bits? I like that.
You're asking the wrong team.
LAUGHTER
Ah, yes, the vegans. Do you think they've got a...
LAUGHTER
I'm vegetarian. Am I the only sensible...
You're the only pig-eater on the table, yeah.
LAUGHTER
You're the only one with blood on your hands here.
Your tiny hands. I know.
Am I the meat in the sandwich? You are...
LAUGHTER
You know what they say about people with big hands - big spans.
Right, let's put the hands away.
How would you rate your chances in a Chihuahua race?
Oh, I'd beat the shit out of them.
LAUGHTER
They can't be that fast. They're small and nip...
I mean, it depends how long the distance is,
cos I feel like they are fast.
Problems if, like, long-distance if there's any,
like, Kenyan Chihuahuas.
LAUGHTER
Well, it is long distance that we are, in fact, talking about
and we are talking about the place Chihuahua.
So there is a tribe, the Raramuri tribe, in Chihuahua, Mexico.
They are brilliant, brilliant long distance runners
and in 2017 a woman called Maria Lorena Ramirez,
she beat 500 other female runners to win a 50K ultra marathon
dressed like this. She was wearing a long skirt, she was wearing sandals,
she had no running gear. You can see she's holding a sort of baseball cap
and a bottle of water - that was it.
And she beat all 500 other runners in this race.
What were they wearing? Diving bells. No.
LAUGHTER
In 2016 she came second in a 100K race.
In similar sort of racing... Why is she not in the Olympic Games?
Well, this particular tribe are built to do endurance and not speed
and so marathons are actually too short for them...
They're just warming up.
They're really just getting themselves going. Wow.
So the sandals, they're a traditional Mexican sandal,
they're called huaraches, and they're surprisingly good
running shoes because they allow the foot to splay
and move rather naturally.
They are infinitely adjustable cos they have this
sort of multi-strap system and they are extremely durable.
No room for a swoosh on there, though.
No, you'll not get a swoosh on there.
But there's about 50,000 to 70,000 people in this tribe,
and they live in dispersed communities,
so they do have to communicate by running very long distances.
They can run 270km nonstop.
They can comfortably cover 700km in a few days... Wow.
..and their secret weapon is that before they start running,
they drink beer.
Wow. Is that where I've been going wrong? Yes!
Corn beer, tesguino.
It is sacred amongst the Raramuri, and they use these running skills
not just to go and connect with people, but to hunt wild turkey.
So, you want to get a wild turkey, you chase the birds for hours,
the birds can't fly for very long,
so, they repeatedly have to take off and land,
it's very energy consuming,
and eventually the turkey goes, "OK, you got me."
Again, I'd say, wrong crowd. Yeah.
LAUGHTER
"It's so great how they murder this bird!"
LAUGHTER
But beer is a huge thing, and they use it as a cure.
Apparently it only works if the doctor drinks some, as well.
That's nice.
The thing I like about their attitude to drinking beer
is that what they believe is that there are two souls in the body,
there's a large soul and a little soul, and the beer
gets rid of the large soul and just leaves the little soul,
and that's why we are more like children when we've had a drink. Oh!
I think that's quite nice, don't you? That's wonderful.
I-I've never drank... I drank once.
One night, I was at a party,
and I thought, "I'm going to try a drink," and I got DRUNK -
and I remember walking into this room and seeing a settee,
and I just kind of fell on it, and I thought I fell asleep.
Apparently, I woke up and then I did all kinds of things,
I was like the life and soul of the party,
and then I fell back on the settee and fell asleep,
and I woke up the next morning, and I'll never forget it,
there was this woman - and you know when you're young,
everybody looks really older?
She was probably 40 or whatever, but... That is old.
She looked like she...
She looked like she'd been in the ring with Muhammad Ali.
She had no teeth, she looked really rough,
and I'll never forget her looking at me and going,
"You were great last night."
LAUGHTER
Wow, and... And she's here tonight.
LAUGHTER
She's 110!
Is that the only time you've had a drink? That's the only time.
If I drink that much, I'm drunk. I just cannot drink.
Oh, wow, I wish I had that ability. No.
I have to drink...you know...
SARA: Two.
LAUGHTER
Right, moving on. What could this man do in 28 seconds?
MAN LAUGHS
Where's the silly laughter coming from? 28 seconds...
Who was sniggering at the back of the class?
He's Scottish, his name is Robert Liston.
19th century.
19th century... He was a surgeon.
He could amputate a leg in 28 seconds.
Whoa! That's too quick. Yeah.
Yeah, I reckon I could do it quicker, actually.
Look, what's that, half a second?
No, but you have to tie all the veins together.
Oh, you've got to finish the job. Yeah. You've got to finish it off.
His catchphrase was "Time me, gentlemen." So... I know.
LAUGHTER
In those days, theatres were called that for a reason,
because people sold tickets and there were spectators. Yeah.
So what happened on this one particular occasion,
it did not go all that well, one time he accidentally chopped off
a patient's testicles along with his leg. Oh, no!
Too high up the leg! I know, right?
He's gone too high.
So, you can see his assistant is holding tickets,
and there's lots of spectators around.
Holding two spherical objects.
"You might want to put these back on."
On one occasion, he was doing the amputation...
So, you have to imagine, he has to be fast, cos there's no anaesthetic.
He brought the knife down,
he managed to severe three of his assistant's fingers... Ooh!
..and as he brought it back up, he slashed the cloak of a spectator.
The patient and the assistant both died later of gangrene,
their wounds became infected,
and the story is that the spectator died of fright,
because he thought he had been stabbed.
It is the only operation on record with a 300% mortality rate.
LAUGHTER
So... Did he lose his licence?
No, darling, people queued up to see him.
They absolutely did.
Because his mortality rate was one in seven, and...
One in seven?! Well, the average was one in four.
So, you know, people thought...
Before anaesthetic, doctors used to have a brandy before operations,
because it was actually horrific. It was awful... Yeah.
..cutting into people who were awake,
so, they would have a couple of brandies, and then...
I don't think he thought it was awful.
He wore blood-spattered clothes,
and people didn't know about sterilisation.
People thought it meant he was experienced.
And there was sawdust on the floor to soak it up... Oh, that's good.
..sometimes a flautist would come in to play - I mean, it was not like...
So, it was a proper good night out, then. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's why operating rooms are still called theatres today.
And they had the same architects.
People like Inigo Jones built theatres for plays
and theatres for people to watch operations,
because they were entertainment.
It's the same genre.
When was that photograph taken?
This is Charing Cross Hospital in 1901.
1901? Wow. It looks like there's a Caribbean nurse there.
Yeah. Oh, yes! I mean, back then...
It's a nice addition to that picture,
which I hadn't even thought about. Mm.
But the idea that people don't make mistakes now,
ha-ha, let me tell you,
in 2019, a hospital in Leicester paid out £20,000
to a man they had circumcised by mistake.
He'd gone in for a procedure on his bladder.
No!
He said he got distracted chatting to the nurses. What? Yeah.
So he didn't notice he was having the wrong operation
until it was too late.
Oh, no. He described it as "a real surprise.".
20 grand, though.
I'd take it.
What was the biggest revelation in Bridget Hitler's diaries?
Hold on, is there...?
Is there really somebody called Bridget Hitler? Yes.
You don't really hear much about any other Hitlers. No.
Yeah, I always thought that...
Just change your name to Carrott, it's much easier.
Can I just point out
that we're not suggesting that Renee Zellweger is a Nazi, can I just...?
I think she's... You have to do that
at the start of every show, don't you? Yes, I do. It's...
Just, once again, Renee Zellweger is not a Nazi.
At the time of recording. Yeah.
LAUGHTER
But there was really a Bridget Hitler. SARA: OK.
She was married to Hitler's half-brother, Alois, in 1910,
and they lived in Liverpool.
And that is Bridget, right there,
and she wrote about her life with Hitler's half-brother.
She claimed in her diaries that Hitler came and stayed with them.
But academics dispute this, I have to tell you.
But the thing that she revealed, which I really love,
is that if Hitler won the war, what he wanted to do
was to take Rochdale Town Hall, brick by brick, back to Germany.
That was... What?! Yes.
And that's what it was all about? Yeah.
LAUGHTER
Why Rochdale?
Well, it is very beautiful, isn't it? Yeah. It does look beautiful.
And the Luftwaffe did use it as a landmark,
so it was saved during the war. Oh, was it?
Ironically, the Luftwaffe destroyed Bridget Hitler's house.
Maybe Adolf Hitler didn't have a nice time
when he stayed with her. Yeah.
"Just go for Bridget's house, it's the third one from the end."
It's just the most fantastic Victorian Gothic architecture.
Beautiful. Yeah. It contains a toilet that has never been used,
because it was built for Queen Victoria,
and as she didn't use it, nobody else has either.
They definitely have, Sandi. Yeah.
Yes. Of course they have!
Whoever's got the key... Yeah. Yeah.
But the idea of moving, you could have done this,
you could have taken Rochdale Town Hall down and moved it to Germany.
And there are lots of historic examples
of big buildings being moved.
Anybody remember when London Bridge was moved?
Anybody know where it went?
United States. To Arizona. Yeah.
1976, it was put up for auction and was won by a man
called Robert McCulloch and he moved it to Arizona.
It is now the second largest tourist attraction in Arizona,
after the Grand Canyon.
Anyway, he paid two and a half million dollars for it
and it has certainly paid itself back,
and he's sold lots of residential property on the back of it,
and all that kind of thing.
And the other one is Rosa Parks' house.
So Rosa Parks, famously...?
On the bus. On the bus.
Refused to give up her seat on the bus. Yeah.
That was in December the 1st, 1955.
She later moved to Detroit to live with her brother,
and that house, which was a tiny house...
They lifted it on a huge bunch of balloons.
LAUGHTER
No, it's in Berlin. Oh. Oh. Berlin?
I know! Isn't that the strangest thing? Yeah.
It was an artist called Ryan Mendoza.
They were going to demolish it and he couldn't bear it,
so he bought it and he rebuilt it in Berlin,
and he does sort of sound performances.
You can't go in it, apparently, it's not safe.
Is it a tourist attraction?
Well, he does sort of, he's a performance artist,
so he does performances in and around it.
The strangest tourist attraction I've ever been to
was Hotel Lorraine, or Lorraine Hotel.
It's the hotel where Martin Luther King was shot.
And I think they don't do this now, but when I was there,
you could stand on the balcony where Martin Luther King was shot.
And they literally had his footprints,
so you could stand in them. Oh, wow!
And a laser would shoot you... No! Wow!
..as if you were being shot,
just like Martin Luther King was shot. Oh, my God, that's terrible!
There's an amount of time, like in...
..for the anniversary of the Titanic, to go full circle,
there was a theme park ride that opened in Japan
of the Titanic sinking.
And actually, there's an amount of time where it just,
it becomes a historical fact and the kind of empathy disappears. Yeah.
But I think it's really weird now,
that, you know, you have tourist attractions
and pubs and things called Jack The Ripper.
Yeah. Yeah. I always find that really weird. Well, that...
That, again, there's a whole cultural conversation now
that's so much more about the women...
Number one, poverty in London,
the women who were in danger, sex work at the time,
the history of London, and it isn't just about...
..yeah, a psychopathic killer.
There's a new biography recently released, isn't there?
It's about the five women. The Five, yeah. About the victims.
No, it is very, very good.
And now we've roamed way off course and right into the twilight zone
of General Ignorance. Fingers on buzzers, please.
Which is the British lake with the greatest deep-ness?
I'm going to give you a hint,
its depth is absolutely monstrous.
Oh, come on!
TRAIN WHISTLE
Windermere.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Good playing of the game!
Extra point for playing the game well.
So it is not, it's not...?
Loch Ness.
KLAXON Oh, no, it's not fair!
That is not fair!
I said it's not. It's not Loch Ness. I'm getting the hang of this!
The deepest lake in the UK is Scotland's Lake Morar.
It is 310 metres deep. Really?
And Loch Ness is 247.5.
There is, however, in Loch Morar,
a cryptozoological monster that rivals the Loch Ness Monster.
It's called Morag. Aww.
Which is so cute.
It was last spotted in 2013,
and the new theory about Loch Ness, actually,
cos there was a team of researchers from New Zealand in 2019
and they analysed water samples,
they think there may be several giant eels
that are living in the lake.
Loch Ness gets its name from an old Scottish legend
that featured the Gaelic lines,
"Tha loch 'nis ann, tha loch 'nis ann."
Just means, "There's a loch now, there's a loch now."
So, who knows?
Loch Morar is deeper than Loch Ness and has its own monster to boot.
Here's someone who's absolutely full of herself,
but where was this doll invented?
Oh... It's...Ukraine.
Yes, Josh? Um...
Minsk.
Good answer! Yeah, very good. Good answer, yeah, really specific.
It's specific and it's wrong. Oh, not Minsk.
But we hadn't thought of it.
LAUGHTER They're called matryoshki,
but it started its life in China... Oh...!
..so more than a thousand years ago, and then to Japan -
but then, in the 19th century,
a Moscow workshop called Children's Upbringing took this idea,
and they created their own versions of these nesting dolls.
I've got one at home. Yeah? And it's got me,
and then my wife and then my three children.
And the likenesses of everybody are pretty good,
apart from me, I look a bit ridiculous.
We've done this one, which we think looks like you.
LAUGHTER
It's got the shirt on, got the shirt on. Yes, yeah.
And then if we open it up, inside...
Aw!
Let me see if I can get them all out.
So then we've got Benjamin, and then we've got you...
Aw, we all live in Alan. We've got... Yeah.
And where's Josh?
Josh... Unbelievable.
There you are.
LAUGHTER
And even smaller, even smaller than Josh...
Is that you, Sandi? ..is me inside.
And what's inside the...? Who's inside you?
Oh, it's a blue whale. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
We should try and do that after the show. Yeah!
Now, where is the biggest rainforest in the world?
Ah, well... Is it Brazil?
Oh, here we go. KLAXON
Yeah, I know, I know. Someone had to do it. Someone had to.
So there are two types of rainforest -
there is tropical, and there is temperate.
Temperate? Temperate? Temperate. Isn't that just a forest?
LAUGHTER
What is the thing that classifies a rainforest?
The amount of rainfall? The rain, yeah, absolutely.
So the largest one is in Alaska.
It's the Tongass National Forest, it covers 17 million acres...
Whoa! ..and is breathtaking. That's big.
But you also find them in Australia, in Japan, in Iceland,
and indeed in the UK -
so, Snowdonia, Devon, Cumbria, Northern Ireland,
the west coast of Scotland, they're all temperate rainforests.
It's about 6% of the Earth's land surface area,
but it's amazing, because it's home
to 50% of the species of flora and fauna.
The Amazon alone is home to 10% of all species,
including this, which is one of my favourite things,
the South American Goliath birdeater spider.
It's the size of a puppy.
Oh, no, thank you!
Each...
Each of its legs is one foot long.
What?! Yeah, yeah.
Oh, you've ruined my dreams for, like, a week.
That... And you like that, Sandi?
You wouldn't show us a rabbit on fire, and you're...
..and you're doing this to us!
APPLAUSE
I have got a friend who went to the world's largest rainforest,
so if you want to know what it's like, "Alaska".
AUDIENCE GROANS
OK, we've run out of time. Lovely stuff.
As our voyage draws to a close,
let's take a look at the range of scores.
In last place tonight, rambling in the Rotherham rain,
with minus 23...
..it's Sara! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Yay!
In fourth place, with minus 19, it's Alan.
Thank you so much. APPLAUSE
In third place, with minus seven,
it's the audience! CHEERING
The audience!
With minus six, beating the audience into second place, it's Josh!
Yeah! Losers, losers! CHEERING
Losers.
And our winner tonight, relaxing in a romantic resort
with three points, it's Benjamin! CHEERING
I'm so happy to be here, and I want to thank my mother...
LAUGHTER
Anyway, it's thanks...
..it's thanks to Sara, Benjamin, Josh and Alan,
and I leave you with this holiday reminiscence from Henny Youngman.
"This hotel I once visited was incredible.
"The towels were so fluffy I could hardly close my suitcase."
That's all from QI this time. Goodnight.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE