Good evening and welcome to QI, where tonight we've gone rogue,
and we'll be ripping up the rule book
in the company of this rowdy, rough-hewn rabble.
A right ruffian, Jack Carroll!
Russkaya rabotnitsa, Olga Koch!
Reckless reprobate, Bill Bailey!
And a ruddy rapscallion, Alan Davies!
Their ringtones relate to some right rascals of rare renown.
Olga's got a Russian.
# Ra-Ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen... #
There we go!
Jack's got a robber.
# They say the great train robbery, he was the mastermind... #
I'm enjoying these ones. Bill's got a Robert.
# Robert De Niro's waiting, talking Italian... #
And Alan goes...
# Rosie and Jim, Rosie and Jim
# Chugging along on the old Ragdoll... #
I mean, that's just creepy, isn't it? OK.
Right, here are some words from the reign of Elizabeth I.
What do you think that they mean?
Well, number two's Bill.
A baretop trickster? How dare you?
Hedge Priest sounds like a '70s rock band, doesn't it?
I like the idea of a hedge priest. Yeah. Just jumps out.
"Want a bit of absolution? Bit of absolution?
"You want a bit of absolution? And cider. Cider, absolution..."
Really? Weirdly, I know.
You're not far off, actually.
It's quite close to the truth.
Any idea, Olga, all those words? Oh, I've seen all of them on Grindr.
Really?
Which one is Grindr, darling? The gay one. Oh, right.
Yeah.
I don't know, it's a dating app?
I mean, "dating". Dating's a loose term. Oh, really?
Yes, I don't think dating. Oh, really?
I don't think it's like, "Would you like to go
"take a turn around the park?" Yes, yes, it's... No...
Are you saying they are kind of wrong 'uns? Yes.
It's a collective of Tudor rogues...
Are they rascals?
Ah! ..is the thing.
So they were recorded by a marvellous man called Robert Greene.
He wrote a book called A Notable Discovery Of Cozenage.
Oh! Yes, and it kicked off an absolute craze
of people having guides to beggars and other sort of vagabonds.
It became known as rogue literature.
We don't really know why it was called "cozenage",
but "cozen" seemed to be a word for a wrong' un. A rascal?
So somebody trying to illicit money from you under false pretences.
It's a con man, basically. A con man. Yeah.
So let's go back to the list and have a quick look.
Now, you mentioned hedge priest.
So medieval priests were paid by tithes,
but supposing you couldn't afford to pay the priest... Yes.
..this would be an itinerant preacher
who was willing to do the ceremonies that you might want,
was willing to marry you, was willing to bury you.
What I like is that they re-interpreted the vow,
"Till death us do part",
and a couple could separate if they just stood
over a dead animal in the road.
"Step lightly over this badger and all will be well."
Yeah, exactly that. Oh.
I think, if I was a trickster, though,
I'd pick a more subtle name than counterfeit crank.
What do you think a counterfeit crank might do?
Oof... Well, a crank starts the engine, doesn't it?
Although they didn't have engines. Yeah, they didn't have engines...
Not crank. No.
Yeah, no engines, so, no, not that.
Well, crank like cranky,
so he's, like, doing crimes, but he's not happy about it.
Well, he certainly is not happy in his look, because...
Yeah, so commonly...
A little bit crazy?
A crazy counterfeiter? A pretend crank?
It's a pretend crank, so it's somebody who pretends
that they've got something wrong with them. Oh, right.
There was a particular one called a clapperdudgeon,
and they used to - this is very unpleasant -
create superficial wounds
by rubbing a mix of lime and soda and iron rust,
and it caused sort of blisters and sores,
and then you would trick people.
The other way of tricking them, of course,
was to cut the festering arm or leg off a corpse.
You know, perhaps from a handy gibbet.
Yes. And then pretend it was yours.
What, just sort of have it stuck to your arm?
You could lie on the ground with a blanket and stick the nasty...
And to what end, Sandi, would you do this?
To get people to give you money, feel sorry for you. Get money.
"I'm dying one limb at a time." Yeah. Yeah.
And you'd have to remember to not just
pick it up with your good hand as well,
like, "Oh, thanks very much... Oh! Blown it!"
"Can you put it right into the hand?"
What else? Come on, Jack, you pick one.
Well, nips and foists sound like
something a plumber would overcharge you to fix. Yeah. Yes.
"Oh, that's your nips and foists, right there."
"Ooh, that's going to set you back a bit. All right, nip."
£40 a nip, isn't it, really? Yeah.
Nips and foists - names for pickpockets.
So, a nip used a knife to cut open a purse and catch the contents.
And a foist dips their hand into the...
Surely that's a cutpurse. Is another name for it.
In fact, there's a very famous play called Moll Cutpurse.
Olga, you pick one. What have we got left?
Crossbiter. Do you want to have that one? A crossbiter.
I mean, who would, like, eat like a vampire?
It's a vampire? Perhaps somebody pretending to be a vampire? Yeah.
They hate...Jesus?
So they're like, "Oh, let's get rid of this."
It was a common con.
People who pretended to be vampires and hate Jesus, it was a...
Yeah.
No. So, it's a rogue, obviously... Yes.
..who poses as a prostitute's drunken husband.
So... Oh, that old one! Yeah, that one.
Bursts into the room, "What are you doing?"
"Oh, no, it's the prostitute's husband!"
The sex worker's husband, Sandi. Sorry.
Yeah, we're Tudor times, darling. Prostitute is absolutely fine.
And the last one is baretop trickster.
Baretop trickster.
Someone without a hat?
Someone who does sort of...
Yeah, again, like a... Nipple act?
What are you doing? Nipple... I mean a...
Somebody with their top off... Yes?
..doing tricks.
With their... Like juggling? Juggling.
Whoo! Whoo! Hey!
Yeah! Uh... No.
Oh, it's like, "Look here!"
and then his partner goes and does some bad stuff.
Yes, is exactly right! Yeah!
Yes!
What?!
Yes, so a woman would flash her... Tits. ..bare top
and then possibly lure a man into a house
and then a gang of men would do robbing, robbing of him.
Really? Yes!
But how long is that going to bamboozle a man, though?
I mean... I mean, how much...
How much bamboozlement is there in, "Wahey"?
I mean, hour, an hour? Just...
"Yeah, keep going, that's great."
Or just a couple of... I mean, ten seconds?
I think you'd be surprised... Really?
..how easy some men are, darling.
What do you mean? Moving on!
There's quite a lot of these.
Dummerers were beggars - this is bizarre -
who pretended to have had their tongues cut out
while they were abroad because they had been disrespectful of Muhammad.
I do not know how they explained this to people.
Laminated cards.
Just have a laminated card to say,
"Tongue cut out because I was disrespectful of Muhammad.
"Very hungry."
Tom o' Bedlam was somebody who would pose as a madman,
wandered about, shrieking, "Poor Tom, mad Tom!"
I've seen a modern version of this in Hammersmith, in west London,
where somebody was pretending to play a keyboard.
He had an electronic keyboard on a stand in the shopping centre,
and he was playing the demo button on the keyboard.
So, the keyboard was effectively playing itself,
he pressed the demo button and was giving it all...
And he was just doing this on the keys, like this.
And me, being an eagle-eyed musician -
other shoppers, not bothered - I went up to him and I said, "Oi...
I said, "You're not playing that, are you?"
And he said, with the most extreme venom - I'm going to
have to swear here - he just went, "Fuck off."
"Leave me alone!
"I've got a good gig going here, clear off!"
My mum and dad said I should never have bought my grandad
that keyboard for Christmas.
Cony catcher is another one that I like, which is
a general name for a swindler. So, it was common for criminals to
call their marks rabbits, that was the thing,
and cony is an old word for a bunny.
So, things like loaded dice and so on.
This is a really simple trick, one of the things you would do
as a cony catcher is you would approach someone from behind,
put your hands over their eyes and say, "Hey, guess who?"
And then go, "Oh, I'm so sorry, it was a complete misunderstanding,
"I though you were a friend of mine."
And then, while all that, "I'm so sorry," and patting them
down and being apologetic, you'd nick their purse.
I feel like I'm giving out top tips now.
Hundreds of years too late.
In a way, this first book I was telling you about,
written by Robert Greene, he is considered to be England's
earliest professional author.
This is actually a picture of him.
Sorry, what? Yes.
the sack for inspiration?
To be fair, darling... Did he get in
"I'm going in the sack, love!
"Do my best writing in the sack."
He's wearing a burial shroud.
"I'm going in the burial shroud, love."
You said that like that made sense! "The burial shroud helps me think!"
He was the country's foremost romance author,
apart from writing all about rogues.
He wrote a book called
Mamillia: A Mirror Or Looking Glass For The Ladies Of England.
The sequel has a very good subtitle.
Wherein, With Perpetual Fame, The Constancy Of Gentlewomen Is
Canonised And The Unjust Blasphemies Of Women's Supposed
Fickleness (Breathed Out By Diverse Injurious Persons)
By Manifest Examples, Clearly Infringed.
I mean, it's catchy... Catchy. Yeah.
Richard and Judy's Book Club, you're there.
He was said to have died aged 34 in a manner that I think
I'm probably going to go in.
It was a surfeit of pickle herring and Rhenish wine.
He's probably best-known today
for making the first contemporary reference to Shakespeare.
Any thoughts what that might be?
Overrated? Overrated!
Well, he thought so.
He called the bard an upstart crow.
Oh, I see. That is a phrase that's kind of about at the moment.
Now, a good criminal needs to work on their getaway,
so I want you guys to reinvent...the run.
What ideas could you suggest
to make life easier for runners?
Well, as someone with cerebral palsy...
Yes, darling. ..I have spent a lot of time
thinking about how I would rework my running style,
and I think it goes beyond a simple matter of technique,
to be honest. Does it?
I think there's something deeper, something deeper at work there.
Yeah, yeah!
Yes, something more philosophical.
But has anybody got any thoughts about...?
We know how you run normally.
Can anybody sort of mime how you run normally?
You run... Wow!
It's like you've turned into a cartoon.
What?! Do you run, Olga? Alan, you're doing it all...
I mean, there is no problem
a Russian athlete hasn't tried to solve with steroids, so...
Yeah.
At school, I won the 400m back-running.
I run backwards faster than I can run forwards.
This was an event he staged entirely alone.
All right, yes.
Would you like to show us?
Yes, I will.
Can you do it down there?
Can you do it in the front there? OK.
Hang on. Right.
So this is me running normally forwards in the traditional style.
Bill, that's surprisingly camp. All right? Surprisingly camp.
You see? OK!
So there was a study done at Harvard University,
a man called Andrew Yegian, and what he found was
that walking with completely straight arms
was more efficient than walking...like this.
What, like this? Yes.
It looks like I've got some live animals in my pocket!
Try running with straight arms. Running with straight arms?
All right, OK. Try that, yeah.
Here we go! Yeah.
I feel I'm...
There's a slight penguin vibe.
Yeah, I'll do the "penguin going round the corner" gag.
OK. You'll love this.
How's that?
That's marvellous.
So, this study, which was in 2019, what he discovered
is that running with straight arms instead of them bent
makes no difference, actually, to the speed or the efficiency.
So they gave everybody oxygen masks
and asked them to walk and run on treadmills, trying these things,
cos obviously, if you use more energy, you're going to
need more oxygen. Yes.
Walking with straight arms, actually more efficient.
Uses 11% less oxygen than walking with bent arms.
And when it came to running, it made no difference, really,
Oh, I see.
in terms of oxygen consumption.
So the truth is, we don't really know why we run with bent arms.
It's just that everybody seems to think
it's harder to run with straight arms.
It's possible it feels like your head is more stable.
Possibly you get less fatigued cos your shoulders are moving?
We don't know, but there was somebody who did invent a brand-new
way of running. He was an Australian farmer called Cliff Young,
he was 61 years old in 1983 and he signed up for
the Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon.
It's 875km, it's a really long way.
Lots of elite runners.
And he turned up at the start in overalls
and Wellingtons over his work boots.
And everybody left, they ran off and, obviously,
he was left behind, poor old Cliff Young.
And everyone knew that a race like this was going to take six days,
so the best strategy was to run for 18 hours and sleep for six.
He didn't sleep.
Every day, he got closer to the elite athletes
before he finally overtook them on the last day
and broke the race record of five days, 15 hours and four minutes.
And now, almost nobody sleeps during ultramarathons
and the Young shuffle, as it's known, has been adopted by ultramarathon
runners across the world because it expends less energy.
So, he invented a new way of running.
I guess I just wonder, like, can anyone reinvent running?
Can I show up and just drive a car?
Yep.
I think that's... "Watch this."
Yeah. "I'm going to take a bus."
"I've got wheels!"
Yeah. "How are we going to sort this out?"
They are constantly trying to find new ways of running.
So, Alphabet/Google's AI company, DeepMind,
they tried to challenge the computer
to see if it could learn a different way of running.
And they used sort of virtual rewards and punishments
to get the computer to see if there was a better way of moving.
I have to say, it's very bizarre, and if this was how you run,
well, I think I would have fallen over immediately, but this was...
This is... The computer reckoned...
This is how the computer reckoned...
It just fell over!
I mean, I run like...
In the middle of... He's fallen over again! That is...
Well, the idea...
The idea was that you're training the computer,
and every time it fails, it has to start again.
So, it was a series of trials. But this, I love... I mean...
Maybe you're right, Al. It's that.
Yeah, there's a sort of angry Benny Hill vibe to that.
Yeah. Yes, there was.
I love this new attitude to physical sport.
Swimming, for example,
I very much adopt the style
of the Queen Mary coming into port when I swim.
I'm much more as if someone dropped a toaster in the bath,
I'm very much more sort of...
Anyway, the video looks very odd,
but it is apparently the computer trying to find
How extraordinary.
the most efficient way of moving.
And it's a good technique, because one day it may help us
to teach robots to navigate unfamiliar and difficult terrain.
Couldn't they just watch Usain Bolt and think,
that's probably how you run.
Right, since we're giving everybody the run-around,
here is a question for you.
How did Olga use a pigeon...
..to wreak her revenge?
Hm?
Do you know this? Me? Yes.
Well, not you, but a namesake.
Oh. I have...an idea.
OK.
The only other Olga I'm competing with on Google search,
which I check every day...
..is the woman who brought Christianity to Russia.
OK, and what can you tell me about her?
I know how her husband was killed,
and that wasn't pretty. OK, go on, then.
So they took two birch trees and they bent them,
and then they tied his legs to each tree,
AUDIENCE GASPS
and then they let the trees go.
Oh, my God. Yeah.
Yeah, that is correct. I'm so sorry.
He was attached? Yeah. To both...? And then the trees...?
I mean, not for long. No. No.
So he was rent, rent asunder.
Yes, by a neighbouring tribe, the Drevlians,
and she was terribly unhappy, so she decided to get revenge. Terrible.
So this is the Russian saint, Olga.
She came from the city... Is it P-S-K-O-V?
Pskov. Pskov.
That's too many consonants in a row. It is, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, she decided to get her revenge,
so what she did was, she laid siege to the capital
of the Drevlian people, Iskorosten? Iskorosten.
Oh, just go for it. Yeah.
Shall I just say it quickly?
Iskorosten! Uh, which...
Totally nailed it!
Which is now in the Ukraine.
So, what she did, she laid siege to the town,
and she said she would only accept surrender
in the form of a tribute of a pigeon
and some sparrows from every single household.
So everybody thought, "That's not too bad."
So the Drevlians, they all sent these birds out,
and she ordered a piece of sulphur to be tied to each bird's leg
and ignited,
and the birds were released, they all flew home,
and burnt the city to the ground in moments.
Good Lord!
AUDIENCE GASPS
I know. As a bird lover, you're horrified. I am horrified by that.
time. Yeah, yeah.
I know! And fascinated at the same
They obviously weren't brave, modern-day pigeons,
otherwise they'd have gone, "No, I'm not doing that, give me some chips."
Yeah, that's true. Yeah!
I've seen a few London pigeons who would have just run that off.
"Yeah, sulphur? Nah, I'll just run that off."
"That's all right." "Bit of sulphur, innit?"
"I'll just dip it in Trafalgar Square fountain, there we go."
Sssss!
"Right, OK, where's that Nando's?"
There's also another marvellous Russian woman who wreaked revenge
called Mariya Oktyabrskaya.
Oktyabrskaya. Yeah, that.
So, her husband was killed by the Germans near Kyiv in 1941
and she sold all her belongings to buy a tank.
Brilliant. She bought a T-34 medium tank.
I don't know if they come in small and large as well, I'm not...
But it was for sale, though?
Well, apparently she just went and got one,
and she said she was going to give it to the Soviet war effort,
on one condition, that she would be the one allowed to operate it
during battle, to avenge her husband.
So, the State Defence Committee agreed
and she had five months of training, and then, in 1943,
she was aged 38, she was fighting in the front line, driving her tank
with the words "fighting girlfriend" written across the thing.
She fought in numerous battles, she rose to the rank of sergeant.
Very sadly, she was killed by shell fragments in January of 1944,
but she was posthumously made a hero of the Soviet Union for her bravery.
I love her!
You just think, "What shall I do now? Pigeons are out, I'll buy a tank!"
Pigeons themselves, of course, have the ability to wreak revenge.
They can recognise humans who have wronged them in the past. Mmm!
Yes, this is a worry...
Good to know, that is good to know.
So, they did a study at the University of Paris
Ouest Nanterre La Defense, and they got two researchers, similar builds,
similar skin colour, wearing different-coloured lab coats,
and they got them to interact with some pigeons.
One fed them and one chase them away.
And repeatedly, when they returned, the pigeons would
flock around the one who was kinder and avoid the other one.
And even when they swapped lab coats, so they swapped the colours,
they recognised their faces.
They reckon they can recognise faces and gait as well.
Perhaps if you were running with your arms...
"There he is, that's the one!"
One group that pigeons are best to avoid are hairdressers.
This is a bizarre thing.
So, they did another study, the University of Lyon,
pigeons who live near hairdressers have fewer toes. Huh?
I know! It's probably the only thing you'll remember when you go home!
Hold on! Yeah. Why is that?
So pigeons landing on people's heads while they're having their hair cut.
"Something off the pigeon, sir?" "Yes, please, just the toes."
No, it's that they're...
Apparently, they get them entangled in human hair
that has been incorrectly disposed of,
and it causes them to lose toes. Good Lord!
And where was this again that we mustn't go?
Hairdressers. Oh, yes. I think you're fine. I'm fine. Yeah.
Remaining in Russia, what's the most powerful drink in history?
I'm going to go... I'm going to just...
Yes?
Vodka.
Aw!
APPLAUSE
I love vodka, actually. Do you like...? Are you...? Yes.
I like vodka because it says so much about Russian people.
Like, Russian people bit into a raw potato and really were like,
"This is amazing, but can we make it liquid AND ruin our lives?"
Vodka is great because it doesn't really have a great deal of taste.
You can have it with ice. It doesn't freeze, does it? No.
It also makes you look thinner the morning after, apparently, because
it thins your blood and therefore it distributes weight differently.
Sales are going through the roof...
I know... I want one immediately.
"The aim is to totally dehydrate you."
So, the most powerful drink in history is not vodka. It is Pepsi.
So, for a very brief time, in 1990, the sixth-largest military fleet
in the world was owned and commanded by Pepsi.
I know.
AUDIENCE MEMBER GASPS
So, 1972, Pepsi executive... There he is, Donald Kendall.
He successfully negotiated an entire monopoly of cola
in the Soviet Union.
So, Coca-Cola were out and it was only going to be Pepsi.
Is he trying to get that can off his face?
Yes.
ALAN GROANS
Yes.
His eyebrows are going...
So, the rouble wasn't worth very much money
internationally at the time, and anyway the Kremlin forbid
the foreign sale of roubles, so a deal was struck initially
where Pepsi Cola syrup was swapped for mountains of Soviet vodka.
That deal lasted until 1990,
when Pepsi decided that vodka was not enough payment.
So, Russia agreed a $3 billion deal that
everything would be paid in Soviet warships.
The official units in Russia are mountains of vodka and warships.
And warships, yes. That's it.
They got 17 submarines, a frigate, a cruiser
and a destroyer for their drink, and they briefly became
the sixth-most-powerful navy in the entire world.
And then eBayed the lot? Yeah.
They sold it to a Swedish company for scrap. Did they?
For scrap? I love there's a little Swede going,
"Erm, hello, yes? Scrap merchant. How many?
"17 submarines? Just a moment."
Yes. "We can do this."
But apparently it's a thing in Russia.
So, they once offered New Zealand MiG fighter jets
and tanks and a nuclear submarine to wipe out $100 million debt
for dairy imports.
Oh, I'm not surprised at all. You're not? No.
They sold ME off.
And here I am.
I mean, also, Coca-Cola must be shitting themselves, just going...
They've got that silly truck that goes around...
Yeah!
..with Santa on it.
Yeah. Pepsi have got a nuke.
Do you know what vodka means, literally? It has a literal meaning.
No. Small water? Yes, yeah.
Yeah. Little water. What is water?
"Voda." Voda.
And so vodka is just, like, slightly harder.
Am I right that the Russians sometimes will keep some
in the house, like bathroom vodka, like for
just kind of cleaning and...?
Is that true? I mean, that's what my mum used to say.
"It's for cleaning, Olga."
Wonderful, this picture.
It's like one of my old Christmases when I was a kid.
Some of my West Country relatives.
It is a mildly offensive picture.
"Oh, this is the West's idea of Russia."
I'd say it's offensive, but that's literally my dad. OK.
But I like their attitude, because it wasn't until
January the 1st in 2013 that beer was classified
as an alcoholic beverage.
Really? No, no, no.
Anything under 10% alcohol was characterised...
Was baby formula!
Was a foodstuff. Foodstuff!
The strongest beer ever made, according to
the Guinness World Records, was a beer called The End Of History.
It was made by the Scottish company BrewDog.
It was 55% alcohol.
So, if you think vodka mostly is 40%...
What the hell?!
When you've had a pint of that, this is what you see.
This is what you see!
They sent ten...
This is like some of my lockdown dreams!
They sent ten of their investors a bottle of this particular beer
mounted inside a taxidermy roadkill squirrel.
And someone got divorced over it. I think, yes.
It's not drunk as a beer, though, is it?
It's drunk in a shot glass.
It says it should be drunk in small servings. That is entirely correct.
I bet this is in the inside locker of every RSPCA warden.
"Yeah, that's right, yeah.
"You care for them on the outside. Inside - yeah, go on.
"Turn them into a bottle, that's what I say.
"Bloody vermin!
"You're bloody vermin, that's what you are!
"That's the best you can hope for, you miserable little git."
"Turn them into an optic, that's what I say."
All the taxidermy ideas.
Yeah. All the legs turned into utensils. That's right.
Somebody tried to sell me a theremin made out of a badger, right?
A badger. You know a badger?
Sorry. A what made out of a badger?
I know what a badger is! I didn't know what the first word was.
A theremin. You know it was invented by the Russian radio engineer
Leon Theremin in 1918? What is it?
It's a thing that goes, "Wooo-ooo."
It's like a pole and when you go near it, it senses you
and makes a noise. Yeah. OK.
Bill's got... He can play it. He was trying to invent an alarm,
a motion sensor.
He inadvertently invented an instrument which had,
you know, as you go closer, it goes, "Wooo-ooo."
And then he sort of calibrated it into an instrument.
Leon Theremin. And there's one shaped like a badger?
Well, somebody... People give me these things.
People give me all kinds of strange things.
"We're never going to sell this.
"Hang on."
I've been given strange things, but it usually results in penicillin.
Well...
No, it was a gift.
We know you love the weasel ukulele.
I love the weasel ukulele. That's given me ideas.
No, somebody knitted me a praying mantis once.
That was the strangest thing.
But, no. The theremin? The theremin was a stuffed badger on a pole,
and you moved your hand closer, it went "Ooo-ooh."
It was one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen.
That just reminded me of it there.
I totally want a beaver that does that. Do you not?
Well, you have...
"Wahey!"
"Whoa!" Calm down, calm down!
Just behave yourself!
"I want a beaver that does that."
"Woo-ooh, oooh." "Woo." "Back off."
"Woo-ooh." "All right."
"I can't help it, you'll have to wear ear plugs!"
"Woo-ooh."
I mean, that sort of sound is directly
out of a Carry On film as well.
That "woo-ooh." That thing. Yeah.
Be careful if you're ever doing a deal in Russia,
as they might add shipping.
Come on!
What one rogue item should you always keep in your wallet?
A condom that isn't expired.
It's not my area, but why do they go off? Eh?
I think they go off due to sort of pity. They just go,
"It's been too long, mate."
No, not a condom in the wallet.
So, there was an experiment done in 2009 by Prof Richard Wiseman
of the University of Hertfordshire,
and his team dropped 240 wallets all around the city of Edinburgh
and each one contained a picture. So, some had a really cute
picture of a baby, some had a puppy, some had a family portrait and some
had a picture of an elderly couple and some had no pictures at all.
88% of the wallets with the baby photo in were returned.
The puppy, 53%,
the family, 48%,
the elderly couple, 28%,
no photo, 15%.
And Prof Wiseman says he always carries a baby photo
now in his wallet.
Of a human baby? Yes.
An alive baby.
That would be a weird one to explain away of it's not his baby, though.
They bring it to your house and they knock on the door
and you answer the door and they say, "Oh, no, that's not yours."
It is extraordinary what people will decide to return or not.
There was a similar experiment led by University of Michigan
Prof Alain Cohn, and they distributed 17,000 allegedly lost wallets
in more than 350 different cities across 40 countries.
Some of them had no money in them at all, others had the local currency
equivalent of $13.45, and they wanted to see who would send the money back.
So, let's have a look, which of these wallets do you think
are most likely to be returned?
Is it the empty wallet, is it the one which has got a little
bit of money in it, or the one that is absolutely jam-packed with money?
I would say the one that's jam-packed with money because people
feel like there might be some legal ramification if they stole that one.
Well, you're absolutely right.
So, the assumption of Cohn and his team was that the one
with lots of money in it, people would be least likely to return,
and in fact, they did a survey of 250 economists
and they all agreed, definitely,
the one with lots of money in it is not going to be the one that
gets returned, which shows you what economists know about money.
So, 72% of the ones filled with cash were returned.
61% gave back the little bit of money
and 46% gave back the empty wallets.
So, I think people are nicer. Generally good.
Do you remember the lost property office? At a railway station?
There used to be an office, and you could go
and see if someone had found your leg.
The numbers are absolutely staggering,
the number of umbrellas on public transport,
and phones and handbags. Thousands.
I reckon a pigeon's gone there to look for one of its legs.
Anyway, no police force in England and Wales handles lost property
any more, it's not a thing. It stopped in 2017.
They'll accept anything with personal data on it, so a phone or...
Anything else, what they do is incinerate it.
They just don't have anything to do with it.
They'll accept money and pornography.
Money, pornography, drugs, anybody?
Passports, anything linked to crime, but nothing else, they won't take
anything else in, you're responsible for it if you find it.
So they won't touch it, even, now, perhaps?
It'll just travel on the trains for eternity, just back and forth.
Just backwards and forwards, umbrellas, yeah.
But the police will not, it's not a thing...
I got off a train once and left me bag on it.
It's not my best anecdote, Sandi, I'll give you that.
It's not bad. I thought it was strong, I thought it was strong.
Left the train, left a bag on a train.
Once, I was in a double act and only one of us got on the train
and did the gig.
So, you know, the rest is history.
I'm just saying...
Who was your double act? Martin, he was a lovely fella.
Is he still doing...? No, not doing the old... Not doing the comedy, no.
And you?
Me? Yeah.
I kept going with it, I tried. Just checking.
Plugged away. For the moment.
First couple of years, he'd look to his left and there was no-one there.
I realised the other night, the last time we gigged together
was in a church, which seems very unlikely.
Oh, gosh, yes! That's right.
Did you do any crossbiting? Yeah, loads of crossbiting.
And I finished off with the baretop.
And then, for the finale, she went "whoo-ooh"!
Oh, what a marvellous evening that was! Happy days!
Now, what kind of creature loves devouring books?
A nerd.
I'm going to give you a point for that,
I think that's entirely true.
A creature, we're looking for animals.
# Robert De Niro... #
A bookworm!
It is incorrect, because...?
Because worms can't read.
Oh. Yeah. What?
No. No, there's no such thing.
Mostly it's beetles, things that eat books.
Beetles are at their hungriest and most destructive at the larval
stage. I have to be honest, they do look a bit like worms at that point.
And, this is what I like,
each species of book-eating beetle has a different appetite.
So, some of them like vellums, others favour paper,
some like the bindings of leather, some of them like glue.
Little bit of romance. Little bit of science fiction, yeah.
Is, like, reading James Joyce or something
a really difficult meal for them?
Or they're really chipper, like,
"I've just had a couple lines of poetry, I'm banging.
"I'm up for a night out."
They have been known to borrow a single hole through a 27-volume work.
Oh, that's annoying, innit? Whole set. All the way through.
Little shit.
So, there are several ways of getting rid of them.
One is to snap-freeze the infested books.
So, there was an infestation of Italian bookworms
at Yale's Beinecke Library,
and what they did was, they froze them to -36 degrees Celsius
for three days.
There's two marvellous libraries in Portugal,
18th-century libraries, and they have a fantastic, I think
rather low-fi bug-prevention system,
they have resident bats.
So, the Biblioteca Joanina at the University of Coimbra,
and the Palace Library in the Palace of Mafra.
This is the Palace Library at the Palace of Mafra, isn't it stunning?
Absolutely stunning, opened in 1755,
and the bats live behind the bookcases,
in these rather ornate breeding rooms, and they set the bats free
every night and they eat all the insects, the biblio-pests.
But do they not shit everywhere?
Well, what they have to do is they have animal skins
all over all of the furniture, and then they have to de-poo
it in the morning to get rid of all the bat poo.
Surely there's more work there than... I mean, really?
These are very, very rare books that cannot be eaten.
Wow, there's a weird sentence.
"This is a very rare book, this cannot be eaten."
Have they thought about getting new copies of all the books?
Can't eat a Kindle, so.
True that.
They could probably do that whole library in one pad.
On a USB stick.
I mean, how beautiful would that be?
Still have the ornate architecture,
just there's one shelf with a USB on it.
Now, what is the most extreme way anyone's ever avoided having sex?
By saying, "Come to this library with a lot of bats in it."
Any kind of self-mutilation involved?
Are you saying that you take one testicle
and strap it to one sapling,
and then you take the other testicle and you strap it to another sapling?
And then...
Boing!
We're talking about creatures, rather than... Oh, creatures.
Animals. OK. Yeah. So, it's something that animals do
to prevent having sex... To avoid, yeah.
..with other animals. So, we are in the world of dragonflies.
I don't know if any of you have noticed, there has been a huge
influx of dragonflies in the UK this last year. Yes.
Is that a 69? That...
No, not strictly.
It's quite difficult. It's quite a high number. Yeah.
It's quite hard to work out who's doing what to who there.
It's a beautiful heart. Yeah. It's...
One of them's saying, "Get off me, you bastard." Yeah. Yeah.
Well, that is in fact correct,
because that is one of the things that the female dragonfly will do.
So, this is a study by a man called Rassim Khelifa,
a zoologist from the University of Zurich.
So, female dragonflies, the ones that are known as the common hawker,
pretend to be dead while being pursued by a male,
in order to avoid amorous attention.
Well, this is something that I've seen frequently.
It's called thanatosis. It's Greek for "putting to death".
And it is a way of avoiding sex,
To be dead? Yeah.
is to pretend that you are dead.
It might not put everyone off. I knew there was a word for it.
I knew it!
So, what usually happens is, after mating,
most male dragonflies will guard their partner, but
this particular species, which is known as the Aeshna juncea,
they just fly off and they allow the female to be harassed
by other males. But if another male tries to mate with her
at that point, as she's had sex already,
her reproductive tract might be damaged or she could even be drowned
by an aggressive male, cos they spend a lot of time on the water,
and so to avoid this, they go into the undergrowth
and lie motionless on their backs,
and the amorous male gives up and goes away.
Ah! I know. That is an extraordinary picture, isn't it? It is.
It's beautiful, actually. Yeah. It's stunning.
It is astonishing, the whole insect world.
Years ago we talked about a male arachnid who gives a gift to
a female to allow him to mate with her, but the gift is often fake
and she doesn't realise until he's had his way and scarpered.
The baretop prankster spider.
Yes, the baretop trickster.
Well, there is a spider species called the Pisaura mirabilis,
and these males go one even further.
The male initiates sex by presenting the larger female, OK,
with a tasty snack. Yes.
Like, I don't know, a fly maybe would be a tasty snack.
distractedly tucks into it,
Of course. And while she
he begins copulation.
And then if she tries to make off with the gift, he plays dead
and holds on to the present, so that she has to drag him with it.
And... I know!
And then, when she stops, he springs back to life
and has another go at it.
I've seen a version of that on a very late night near a bus stop
with a kebab.
"Come back! I bloody love you!"
Now, we venture into the roguish round that's really good
for nothing - General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
Why is the River Thames brown?
# Robert De Niro... #
Is it because of silt?
Absolutely right.
Yeah. Tidal currents.
So, it's nothing to do with pollution, which you might think.
It's silt and sand.
There was a time when a lot of waste flowed directly into the Thames.
In fact, in 1957 the Natural History Museum declared the Thames was
biologically dead and it had become a sort of foul-smelling drain.
sewage was put in in the 1960s,
Hm. But a new modern system of
and today it's said to be one
of the cleanest rivers in the world. It certainly is.
138 seal pups counted in 2018.
Sharks. You wouldn't want to drink a cup of it, though. You wouldn't. No.
But I had to do some filming and I was standing on the very top
of the O2, which we can see there.
I took a photograph. There was a seal... I mean, it's not
a very good photograph because it was miles and miles away,
but I could see about six seals from where I was at the top of the O2.
There's a colony of seals living at Teddington Lock.
Is there? Yes.
There's porpoise, dolphin and whale, I've seen in the Thames,
when I've been paddle-boarding.
I mean, that's not to say there isn't shed-loads of rubbish
in the Thames. Corpses. Yep.
Well, they reckon about a corpse a week in the Thames.
Oh, I... They were just trying to avoid sex.
I know. Yes.
The Port of London Authority removes about 200 tonnes of rubbish
from the river every year.
In just one day in 2019, the PLA removed 70 tangled trolleys
that were spotted clumped together at low tide.
I mean, look at that. Oof. I know. That's beautiful.
And 60% of the rubbish is single-use plastic.
You know... Yes.
Please, use a re-usable bottle, people. OK. Boo!
The colour of the Thames is mostly down to silt.
There is still some pollution in there,
but mentioning that just muddies the water.
AUDIENCE GROANS
Right. Erm...
Uh, what is this wave called?
Big. Freak. It's a freak wave.
wave. Big wave. Storm wave.
It's not a tidal wave. A massive
Wall of water. Look out.
A "look out". A buttock-clench. A shit... A butt...
A trouser-filler. A surfer-drowner.
A boat-smasher. An absolute bloody shit-stormer.
It begins with R!
Rascally rogue.
A rogue wave. Oh, a rogue wave. Oh!
A rogue wave. Well, why didn't you say?
So, tidal waves occur in shallow water, right? Yes. They're caused by
gravitational interactions between the sun and the moon and the Earth.
Tsunamis are giant waves caused by...?
Tectonic shifts under the sea.
Yeah, undersea earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and so on.
The thing here, this is a rogue wave.
They are sometimes called freak waves. They are mountainous swells.
We just don't know why. Is it one of those?
We don't really know why.
What defines them - they have to be twice the height of more than
a third of the waves in the area. Of Richard Osman.
And they appear really suddenly.
I mean, they are unbelievably dangerous for shipping.
And for centuries people thought it was an exaggeration by sailors,
that no such thing really existed.
Then on New Year's Day in 1995, an enormous wave smashed into
the Draupner oil platform, which is just off the coast of Norway,
and it was recorded at an astonishing 85 feet
from trough to peak.
And it was... The standard assumption was that
these waves maybe happened once every 10,000 years or something.
Did it knock it over? Were they all right? No, no!
Everybody was absolutely fine, yeah.
But they analysed about 30,000 satellite images over a three-week
period in 2003 and they discovered ten waves around the world that
had reached that height, so it is not quite as freaky as you thought.
And nobody knows how they're created. Oh.
According to Peter Challenor of the National Oceanographic Centre
in Southampton, "People have been working actively on this
"for the past 50 years at least.
"We don't even have the start of a theory." Oh.
I'm just imagining a load of scientists on surf boards going,
"Oh, shit!"
"This is one!"
"Definitely one. Argh!"
It reminds me of one of those Japanese prints. You know
Beautiful.
those sort of prints of this?
And that's... My phone case, actually, is that painting,
that Japanese painting of the wave. Is it really? Yeah, yeah.
So, that's consumerism for you. Yeah.
Right there. Yeah.
It turns out rogue waves aren't tall stories, but are storeys tall.
All of which brings us to the final scores.
In fourth place, the villain of tonight's piece,
with -29, is Alan.
In third place, with -8, it's Bill. Yay!
In second place, with -6, it's Olga!
Boom!
But sneaking into first place, an absolutely quizzy rascal,
with four plus points, it's Jack.
Wow!
It only remains for me to thank Olga and Bill, and Jack and Alan.
And I leave you with this impish tip from Steve Martin.
"For sincere advice and the correct time,
"call any number at random at 3am."
Goodnight.