This programme contains some strong language.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello and welcome to a sick episode of QI,
where we'll be sneezing and sniffling,
but always socially distancing, of course.
I think our guest list this evening must be some sort of sick joke.
They are - sick as a parrot, it's Jo Brand.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Sick as a dog, it's Maisie Adam.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Sick as a pig, it's Lee Mack.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And sick as a blue whale, it's Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And their buzzers don't sound quite themselves.
Jo goes...
MAN GROANS
Maisie goes...
MAN RETCHES, STOMACH GURGLES
Lee goes...
MAN COUGHS AND VOMITS
And Alan goes...
Mate, that is well sick!
LAUGHTER
Right, on with the questions.
Which weirdo genius left a plague zone to test his eyesight?
MAN GROANS
Mine sounds the most like sex, doesn't it?
Well, my kind of... I was going to say, not to me, Jo. No.
That's quite an insight, there. To me, sadly.
I was going to say possibly some kind of wanker.
LAUGHTER
I mean, you can't... No, no, no,
just because he's got failing eyesight
and that's what they say, isn't it, if you...? If you...?
Oh, I see! It's a bold statement for the only person wearing glasses.
LAUGHTER
"Who said that?"
LAUGHTER
Did you want to say something? Dominic Cummings. Dominic Cummings!
KLAXON
He did what any good father would do! Yes.
As the age-old saying goes,
if your eyes are given your hassle, drive to Barnard Castle.
LAUGHTER
When was there a plague before?
The bubonic plague? Yeah, the Great Plague.
Round about 1380-something, wasn't there?
Wasn't there one more recent than that? 17th century? 1665.
Yes, yes! A point!
1665. Yes, I know, right?
I retire.
I knew what century the Great Plague was in. Come on!
A plague swept the south-east of England and Sir Isaac Newton
fled Cambridge and shut himself up at the family farm at Woolsthorpe.
So what do we know about Newton? Theory of...? The apple on his head.
It's gravity, isn't it? Except that didn't happen. It was a myth. What?!
That apple thing's a myth?! Are you telling me the apple went up?
He propagated it as a bit of a myth, the story about the apple, but it is
from exactly the same time. So his theory of gravity is from then.
But he also studied optics
and he wanted to work out how the eye worked.
And this was a guy who was fully committed, OK?
So in order to work it out, he took a bodkin,
which is like a little hatpin,
and put it between... No. ..his eyeball... No.
..and the socket to see what effect that would have on his vision. Why?!
This is very coincidental.
Only a week ago, this is genuinely true, I had to have a tear duct...
Have you ever had it flushed?
No. They basically get a syringe.
The needle, I kid you not, is about that big, but it bends, right?
And I didn't have any clue what was going to happen to me,
and then the reason I knew this was going to be painful is because
a lady came in, and without asking,
she held my hand.
Oh, that's when you know. And I went, "What are you doing?"
She went, "Just holding your hand."
Just in case. Bang!
Yeah. It was the most painful thing imaginable.
And then they pushed the saline through,
and you feel it in your throat when it - pop - it's unblocked.
What was...? You could no longer show emotion?
I was constantly crying out of this eye,
and this was emotionally northern and depressed.
It felt like I was very upset about things,
but only at this side of my face.
They could have just made you watch ET
or an episode of Little House On The Prairie.
Nice topical reference for you!
Anyway, he poked around and apparently it does
affect your eyesight, affected what colours he saw,
and he could see spots before his eyes and so on,
and I think that's kind of a dedication to his work right there.
Wow. And years immediately following the plague,
he studied the best way to cure the disease and he decided
the best option - to make toad vomit lozenges.
Anybody want the recipe? Yes, please. OK, so first of all,
hang your toad upside down in the chimney for three days, OK? What?
I hope that's not a euphemism. In the chimney?
He was full of ideas. I know. With the fire going underneath it?
It doesn't say, it doesn't say about the fire. Just says,
"Collect vomit emitted before it dies on a dish of yellow wax.
"Be sure to include the detritus from the bottom of your fireplace" -
so bits of ash and so on -
"and then grind the vomit with the frog remains and form lozenges."
And then you place the lozenges around the affected body parts.
And the idea is the tablets would draw the poison out of the body.
So they're not lozenges to suck, then? No. How disappointing.
Yes, I know. Right? Who doesn't want a toad lozenge?
At some point, he must have said to his mate, "Do you know what
"I've discovered? That toads will only vomit in a chimney."
Yeah, how many times do you reckon his mates had conversations
behind his back? Like, "We're worried about Isaac,
"he's put toads in the chimney again."
Anyway, do you think it worked?
No. No, of course not. Yeah. Oh.
It's a time when mysticism and alchemy were pretty much
indistinguishable from chemistry and biology.
So it was just his best guess. I have to say that the prescription
was not worthless because it was sold.
The handwritten recipe by Newton was sold at Bonhams in 2020 for £60,000.
So... In 2020? Quite ironic, isn't it, really,
given what he was like with his eyes? 20/20. Yeah.
LAUGHTER
The similarities between the 2020 coronavirus epidemic
and the Great Plague of 1665 are sort of startling.
So King Charles II, he shut down the pubs, he shut down the universities,
he banned most public gatherings.
Every day, the death tolls were publicly posted.
Mourning was limited. What about afternoon? Ha-ha-ha! Sorry.
LAUGHTER
And, actually, plague doctors sort of wore PPE,
it's the rather famous mask... There it is, the beaked mask,
and it probably worked. It's a bit like face masks today.
I mean, incorrectly, they thought it was the sweet-smelling perfume
that you placed in the beak that protected them from the bad smells.
Oh, I thought that was a socially distancing thing.
That's not foolish... Surprisingly, that is exactly right.
Well, then, don't use it in the edit, I've got my brand to think of.
LAUGHTER
You've got a brand, darling? Of course. Paddy McGuinness
can't do those Greggs adverts forever.
LAUGHTER
And they also wore thick gloves and they had long sleeves and stuff,
basically preventing fleas from biting their skin.
Now, who has shooting stars coming out of their bottom?
Are you...? What? Oh, this is a question. I thought you had...
It's a philosophical question.
I thought you were being very middle class and
you wanted to know who's farted.
Yes, I say, who's got shooting stars coming out of their bottom?
What do you call it in your family, with the children?
Like, my family called it trumping.
We say pumps. Pumps. I'm old school. I say fart. Yeah.
But, you know, they like to say bottom burp. "Who's bottom burped?"
I go, "Not me, I farted."
LAUGHTER
And we've got a dog now and you know how smelly their farts can be.
Yeah. And you can't call that a bottom burp,
it's too nice and delicate a word, isn't it, for what they do?
It's nuclear. We call it attempted murder. Yeah, it is, isn't it?
Shooting stars out of the bottom?
Well, I could imagine that I might have had a row with Vic Reeves
when we were pissed and he might have shoved a DVD up
and then had to pull it out again. I don't know.
One of Jo's crazy nights out.
LAUGHTER
We're up in space.
Shooting stars out the backside.
Is it what methane does when it reacts with a vacuum?
Wow. That's VERY scientific. What happened to that brand?
Oh, God. I know.
NORTHERN ACCENT: Eh, is it a fat bloke who's eaten
too many silver star biscuits?
LAUGHTER
Much better, Lee. Use that one.
So the International Space Station has had a lavatory upgrade.
Here it is. Look at that.
It's called the Universal Waste Management System
and it cost $23 million.
That costs $23 million? For one? So, yeah, for one. Yeah.
Everybody has to share, up on the International Space Station.
Here is the thing. This particular toilet has the ability
to sort faecal bits from the rest of the waste to allow the liquid
to be recycled... 23 million?!
Wait... You can buy a sieve for 4.99.
Well... What are they recycling it as? No, no, don't you dare.
They're recycling the liquid as...
Lucozade.
Water. Drinking water. Drinking water. Drinking water.
No, no. For them on the spaceship? Mm. Oh, come on.
No, for the royal family!
LAUGHTER
That's unbelievable. It is unbelievable.
But the good news is if you're a woman and you want to go into space,
there is an improvement for women astronauts.
There's now a funnel especially designed for women
and they're a sort of - how can I put this? - there's, like, ridges
to help women position themselves.
But we still haven't found a truly unisex lavatory
that works for everybody.
Are they holding their personal toilet? They're all... Yes.
Where is the...? Where are the ridges? On the inside of the...
So the women have to, yes, position their bottom exactly right.
Where are the ridges? So there is a serious issue, OK -
the old toilet did not allow astronauts to urinate and defecate
at the same time. And that is more difficult for women to control.
It's just a thing. Can we just do a quick sort of straw poll? Mm.
Is it difficult for you not to defecate when you've had a piss?
Sorry, can I just check, Jo, have you been speed dating before?
LAUGHTER
"Can I just check,
"do you find it difficult to defecate and piss at the same time?
"No? You're in, get your coat, you've pulled." I was so excited
about being on this show. I told my mum and dad, they said,
"Oh, you're on with Jo Brand? Let me know what she's like."
I'm going to tell her. "You'll never guess what that she asked me, Mum."
If women defecate, they nearly always urinate at the same time.
I'm 52. I don't think I ever knew that. Yeah.
Never crops up, though, does it? It does when I'm speed dating.
That's how I met my husband. Anyway... What they have now
is they have, like, a training potty on the ground
which has got a camera in it to teach you how to position yourself.
And so what they have is a vacuum-cleaner-like contraption
to suck away the urine and then a hole with a bag for the faeces, OK?
But how...? Surely just a cork would do.
A cork would certainly sort it out. But there was a problem.
It was a really big problem in the early days.
They used to have to put some germ-killing liquid in the bags,
the bag with the faeces, and then they had to knead it
for a few minutes. They themselves? Yes.
So it could be stabilised and then it was stowed away
for re-entry. Re-entry?!
LAUGHTER
Wow! Surely they could just put it in the bin?
So, when the toilet container is full of sealed poo bags,
it jettisons them into space
and they eventually burn up in the Earth's atmosphere
and become shooting stars.
Oh. That's not going to be quite as romantic now we see... No.
"Oh, look, you know that, I reckon that was Neil Armstrong
"having a shit, that one." Anyway, moving on.
Now, what's the best way to survive in the Sahara? Oh.
JO: Are we allowed to ask you about this? Yes, go on, then.
Cos I reckon you know quite a lot
about the Sahara cos you're SANDI.
Hey-hey!
Heeeey! Thank you.
Thank God that was a joke cos I thought your geography was terrible.
I thought you were going to go,
"You know about the Sahara cos you're Danish."
What was the question?
What's the best way to survive in the Sahara?
Wear a hat. Yeah. I know how to get water.
You can get a bit of plastic with four sticks in the corners
so it dips in the middle,
and you put a cup under it... Mm-hm.
..and then the condensation at night will get under, on the underside,
and will all run to the middle and drop in the cup.
AUSTRALIAN ACCENT: That's a tip from the outback in Australia that I learned when I was in Australia.
AUSTRALIAN ACCENT:
NORMAL ACCENT: But what if you've got some water?
Should you make it last for a long time or drink it all?
What should you do? Sip it slowly. No. No.
I know that. I meant gulp it all down in one.
In fact, only have half of it and throw the other half away.
LAUGHTER
Lots and lots of hikers who have been found in a poor condition
have been found with plenty of water in their bottles.
If you're thirsty, you should drink. The water is better inside you than it is inside the bottle.
And you should use relatively large gulps, to be honest,
cos if you use small sips, the body does not recognise
that it has been rehydrated and you stay thirsty.
But the first thing... And you should, by the way,
once you've emptied your bottle,
fill it up with your urine and drink it. No. No? Yes.
You shouldn't do that? No. Bear Grylls does that. Absolutely not.
No matter what Bear Grylls says, drinking urine
will only further dehydrate you.
Why might that be? Because it's very salty. Unbelievably salty.
It has a salt content of about 2%, depending on the person. Oh, Bear.
That's not much lower than seawater, which is 3.5%.
And kidneys will waste water trying to remove the salt from the body
for a second time.
So one of the other things is what you said about wearing a hat,
save sweat, not water, so you can reduce the amount of water
you're losing by finding shade.
Don't eat too much because your body will waste water digesting it
and even keeping out of the wind,
because air can speed up sweat evaporation.
What about taking water out of a cactus? What do we think about that?
I'd say that's a good idea.
So you're in the Sahara... Yeah. Yeah, you'd struggle to find one.
Oh, you're still in the Sahara? I'm still in the Sahara.
You didn't say that. Oh, in that case, if you're in the Sahara,
I'll tell you what, I wouldn't even bother, there isn't any.
There is only one naturally occurring species of cactus
outside America, the mistletoe cactus, which grows in forests,
and anything that looks like a cactus is a member
of the Euphorbia family, and they are mostly highly toxin.
What do you think kills more people than thirst in the desert?
I bet it's hypothermia. No, it's not hypothermia.
It's counterintuitive is what it is. Chapped lips.
What would be the very, very, very extreme opposite of dehydration?
Drowning. Drowning is exactly right.
Drowning? Drowning in the desert? Drowning is exactly right.
People neglect the threat of flash floods.
So dry channels, ditches, what are sometimes called wadi,
they can fill with water really quickly.
And it's fantastically strong and very, very violent.
And it can suddenly create a wall 10 to 30 feet high.
More people will die of drowning than they will die of thirst.
I tell you what, God has got a good sense of humour. It's a laugh.
Days and days of looking for water,
you find it, and then you drown. Yeah.
Don't go to the desert without a life jacket.
I just love the idea of Alan walking around in a life jacket, going,
"You'll see. You'll see."
I was filming in the Sudan, and we were in a wadi,
which is an empty dry riverbed, and it was a perfectly nice day,
and suddenly water came rushing, we never even saw it com...
It was terrifying, absolutely terrifying,
and we just got up the bank,
and by the time I was standing on the bank, there was a full river
flooding down below us. Sandi, you are only a little person -
was it a puddle? Yeah.
GROANING AND LAUGHTER
To me, the whole of life is a massive adventure.
Speaking of a lack of water,
what Olympic sport could you do in an empty swimming pool?
So are we looking for a sport that roughly takes place in that size?
Well, it's a sport that developed from empty swimming pools.
Skateboarding. Yes! What about comedy diving?
You'd only have the event the one time, I think.
Like that TV show "Splash!"
that you did, but it'd be called "Thud!"
I was just going to say synchronised swimming,
cos then it's just dancing, innit? That would just be nice.
Just dancing in a floral bonnet.
There was a drought in California in the late 1970s and it meant
there were a lot of pools that were left empty and it coincided
with the rise of skateboarding and it helped develop the concept,
first of all, of something called bowl skating. And then...
Not a pool like that, though.
They're called kidney-shaped pools. Yeah. Yeah.
In fact, sometimes they would sneak in and drain them,
if people were away. Really? Just to have a go?
And then go and use them till the cops showed up.
There's a rather good film called something Dog something,
I can't remember. Anyway...
Skateboard films, google that.
Lords Of Dogtown. Yeah, that's it.
I used to skateboard, you know. Back in the day. Did you?
Yes, I loved it. Had Kryptonic wheels.
Is that good? Red. 65mm. There are people at home going, "Oh!"
When you see, like, the sort of '90s grunge music videos from California,
they're often skateboarding around... Doing the stuff. Yeah.
Alan's quite pleased that you associate his skateboarding with the '90s!
It was a long time before that!
They're all skateboarding round
and Alan's there going, "I'll pick you up at five, love."
LAUGHTER
Anyway, it took a while for everybody to get used to it.
Norway banned skateboarding completely, 1978-1989.
Said it was too dangerous.
But actually, apparently, it has many benefits.
Cities with skate parks do actually have lower rates
of crime and antisocial behaviour.
Is that cos they've all got broken legs?
Yeah, they can't walk. They can't go anywhere.
But apparently it's a great way to exercise, particularly...
I don't get it. It's brilliant fun. Anyway, some tricks.
Let's see if anybody can tell me what they entail.
A stiffy.
That's when you skateboard with an erection.
LAUGHTER
And it's very important not to fall.
Is a stiffy when you go along those metal railings
cos they're stiff? No. So you jump off the top of the ramp,
you keep both your feet on the board,
and then you straighten your legs and hold your board with your hand.
OK, how about a hippy jump? Oh, well, that's easy.
You just get a fella with long hair
to lie down and try and jump him like a double-decker bus.
A little bit. Is it a bit like that? A little bit.
Basically, you jump off your board, so over an obstacle,
it keeps rolling and then you land back on it.
Oh, I've seen these. Have you? Yeah. Salad grind.
That's just a lunch break from it all, isn't it?
So the back wheels slide across the top of a ramp
while the front is raised upwards. It's named after the inventor, a man
called Ed Dressen, who was known to his friends as "Salad" Dressen.
Oh, clever. Oh, now you've explained it, I can't believe I didn't get it.
Yeah. The opposite of a salad grind is a willy grind,
where the front slides on the ramp and the back is depressed.
And your cock goes along the edge of the ramp.
It's named after a Filipino boarder called Willy Santos.
This one's very unpleasant. This is called a sack tap.
I know what a back, crack and sack is. Have you ever had one?
No. I've often thought about it. Why have you thought about it?
Are you particularly hairy? No, but I'd like to be smooth.
LAUGHTER
Wow. Just for once, you know.
Do you know what the correct term is for hairy buttocks? I do not.
Dasypygal. Wasn't she a judge on Strictly?
Sack tap. Well, a sack,
it'll be something about you go so low down... Yeah.
..that you're tapping your sack on the board.
Oh, you'd, like, teabag the floor. Teabagging the floor to put it
in more youthful terminology.
So the skater has jumped off the top of the ramp, OK,
they grab the board with both hands
and then they tap the scrotum with the board and then put the board
back under the feet. Who thought that was a thing?
Tapping your scrotum with a skateboard?
Let's have a look at this picture.
Be awful if you started,
and you didn't even have to lift the board up! Lee!
That's horrible.
That's called a Christ Air, where you grab the board in one hand,
and you stretch out the body in a cross position, like that.
Wow. I know.
What is so solid about the siksik squirrel?
What are you calling him, the squirrel? Siksik. Siksik?
Also known as the Arctic ground squirrel.
Siksik. He's called siksik because that's the sound he makes.
It's onomatopoeic. Oh. Very strong teeth.
No. This is... You know, every now and then we do a creature on here
that I go, "Oh, isn't the world amazing?!"
So it hibernates for eight months of the year, during which time
it freezes solid - the whole squirrel, OK? What?!
It can supercool its blood to minus three degrees centigrade.
So that's colder than any other mammal can survive.
Humans die if our temperature fluctuates even by a few degrees
either side of 37.5.
So a liquid needs something for its molecules to grab on to
before it can form ice crystals.
And to avoid this, all imperfections are removed from a siksik's blood
and we do not know how they do this. Whoa.
But here's the really unfortunate side-effect.
They hide away, so you can... I can imagine what the side-effect is -
people finding them. If you picked one up, darling, and you shook it,
it would freeze and die. Oh!
So its heartbeat slows down to just twice a minute.
So that's the same pace as a... Blue whale. A blue whale, exactly right.
Every three weeks, it comes out of hibernation
because it has to go to sleep,
because, even though it's been frozen,
the brain still needs sleep from time to time.
Well, my true story.
We used to have a tortoise, and there was an overnight snowstorm,
and I found my mum in the garden, I was just about to go to school,
and my mum was digging in her nightie, with a shovel...
I thought she'd buried Dad again! But no.
I went, "What's up?" And she went,
"The tortoise was out all night and now it's under the snow."
She was looking for it. And then she finally found it -
its head and legs were out and it was absolutely solid,
so obviously we assumed it was dead. My mum being my mum,
instead of just contacting the vet,
she put it under the warm tap, just held it under.
I said, "I'm sure you're not supposed to do that,"
and then put it in front of a three-bar fire.
Just set it there.
And even tried to teaspoon brandy in its mouth.
Aww! I swear to God, it came back alive.
Singing!
# Oh, Danny boy... #
Saying, "Do you want some?!"
"Who's going to the garage?"
"Give us another warm bath, love, that were lovely."
What was it called? Brutus.
Brutus? Yes. Perfect name.
Yeah, Brutus, and it lived for many more years after that.
God knows what effect it had had on its brain, but it seemed all right.
Well, the brain is the bit that's really interesting because
the day it comes back from having been completely frozen,
it suffers from a form of amnesia,
and the brain resembles those of human dementia patients,
from which it recovers really quickly.
And I love this because scientists are trying to work out again
what is the process cos you might be able to help human sufferers. Whoa.
And also, before they go into hibernation,
this is a bit like your brandy with your tortoise,
they gorge themselves on magic mushrooms, and nobody's sure
if it's for some psychedelic benefit or because...just nutrients.
Sounds like they have a great time.
It's not a bad life, is it? They have a great life.
Eight months a year.
Imagine that, and their little book is just open at the page.
And they wake up and go...
Now, for a question on syc-ophants.
What's the worst result of excess arse kissing?
A promotion you didn't want, surely.
I think that's probably true.
I like this picture. Somebody has actually kissed his arse.
Are there not lipstick marks on his right buttock?
Oh, yeah. OK, the worst result of excess arse kissing,
we are going back to the Romans.
Emperor Caligula got sick, 37AD,
and everybody wanted to show how upset they were.
There's Nero on the left and Caligula on the right there.
Anyway, there was one particularly sycophantic plebeian
called Publius Afranius Potitus,
and he publicly announced that he was willing to give up his own life
if it meant that Caligula would get better.
The Emperor did recover, and he forced Potitus to keep his word,
and when he didn't kill himself, Caligula had him executed.
Oh, my God! Wow, that's a bit harsh.
But Nero, on the left, he hired professional sycophants.
He would enter a singing competition and pay people to applaud
so that it looked, you know, as realistic as possible when he won.
He would have groups of 5,000 soldiers called Augustals,
who would cheer him while he was singing.
There was a French poet in the 16th century called Jean Daurat,
and he read about the Augustals, these guys that Nero paid
to cheer him on, and so he bought a number of tickets
for a performance of one of his plays,
and he gave them to people who promised to applaud and to cheer,
and they became known as claqueurs.
Oh, yes, that's what a claque is, isn't it? Yeah.
So that's arse kissing, but who gave us the insult "kiss my arse"?
Mother Teresa?
There was a Teutonic mercenary called Gotz von Berlichingen,
and he was known in Germany as one of the bravest soldiers
in history, said to have used the insult as a response
to the Swabian army when they besieged his home town in 1516,
and the act is immortalised in a play by Goethe,
as leck mich am Arsch, lick me in the arse,
it's now known as the Swabian Salute.
Lick me in the arse? Lick me in the arse.
It does work, doesn't it? If you are facing up to someone
and they go, "Kiss my arse," it gets you more aggressive.
If someone says, "Lick my arse," you go, "You all right, mate?"
You'd back off.
You'd walk away, you'd go, "I'm not messing with him, he's mental."
Why's he got such a tiny arm? I'll tell you why.
He can't tap his own sack, can he?!
No, but he is very famous in the history of prosthetics.
So, a decade before inventing kiss my arse,
he lost his arm to cannon fire, and he had some very impressive
iron prosthetics made, so, at the time,
there was only a simple hook usually
for somebody who had a prosthetic for gripping things,
and he had one with finger joints
that allowed him to still brandish his sword.
He carried on being a mercenary until he was 60, and this is the exact arm.
It's now on display in Heilbronn.
Does anybody know where the Pogues got their name from?
Yes, pogue mahone, and that means kiss my arse.
MAISIE: Does it really? Oh! I like that.
So that's your arse kissing, and for the rest of the show
I'll be awarding bonus points for sycophancy.
But don't go too far or I'll have you executed.
How can laxatives help the lovesick?
VOMITING
I don't know the answer, I just wanted to say you're looking lovely.
An extra point for Lee. Thank you.
SCATTERED APPLAUSE
I think you're heading to a good win today.
Thank you.
Yes? I don't care about winning,
just being here and looking at you is enough.
Have him killed!
Yes! Damn!
What is it, how can laxatives...? How can laxatives help the lovesick?
RETCHING, GURGLING
Probably just give you a bit of perspective, I imagine, you know?
Like, if you're worried about soiling yourself, you've got bigger
fish to fry, you've got a bigger problem at hand, I would imagine.
It's a very good point. Do we think lovesickness is a real thing?
No! Yeah. Yeah. Oh! I think it can have physical effects.
Yeah, absolutely does.
Loss of appetite, depression, inability to sleep.
Weirdly, historically, also supposed to have resulted in excess blinking.
You can literally die of a broken heart, that is a thing.
Is that a real thing? I've heard people say it, but...
So, if you have severe emotional stress, it can weaken
the left ventricle, that's the heart's main pumping chamber,
and it gives you a condition called takotsubo cardiomyopathy.
I have to say, more than 90% of the cases are reported
in women aged 58 to 75.
I mean, most people recover. There's a very low death rate.
But there's never been a case in Yorkshire.
NORTHERN ACCENT: "Oh, well, I'll just buy a whippet instead."
I mean, today we blame it on an imbalance of hormones,
although historically they used to blame it on the four humours.
Anybody know what the four humours were?
Frankincense and myrrh.
It's phlegm and blood and black bile...
Blood's one, yes, bile. Two kinds, black bile and yellow bile.
But their medical science was based on the humours for centuries.
And lovesickness was supposedly down to an excess of black bile,
and so the best cure was thought to be laxatives
right up until the Victorian times.
No! Yes. So if that didn't work, then purgatives to make you vomit
or leeches to drain your blood, that was the way to cure people.
Actually, the worst story, in the fifth century there was a Roman
collection of biographies called the Historia Augusta, and
Marcus Aurelius's wife Faustina, she had terrible lovesickness
for a hunky gladiator,
and it was cured by having the gladiator killed,
and she and Marcus Aurelius had sex in a pool of his blood.
Oh, my... No! No!
He was always seen as the sort of good Emperor, Marcus Aurelius.
Yes. All of history is full of stories trying to undermine
powerful women with fanciful sexual stories.
I mean, it is depressingly common throughout history.
So, probably we should take this story with a handful of salt.
The best cure for love sickness is sex,
but what happens to your body if you engage
in too much spelunking?
Spelunking... Is it one of your skateboard moves?
Oh! No. I like that, though. We've done a quick spelunk.
So the Latin "spelunca" is cave.
So it's the hobby of exploring caves - spelunking.
Oh! Ah. So, in 1989, they did an experiment.
They took a 27-year-old Italian interior designer called
Stefania Follini and it was an experiment about circadian rhythm,
so about the way in which your body normally functions.
And she lived in isolation in a cave in New Mexico.
This is the actual cave where she lived. She had a guitar,
she had computers not attached to the internet.
She found two mice in the cave,
which she named Giuseppe and Nicoletta,
and they became her sort of companions.
I thought you said she found a mouse called Giuseppi and Nicol ate her.
Don't know who Nicol is but it's her only friend, she could have left him alone.
She lost weight. She had very low vitamin D. Her periods stopped.
Her body clock changed completely.
She would stay awake for 20 hours and then sleep for 10. Oh.
And when she came out after 130 days,
she guessed she'd been there for 60 days. Whoa! Did she have...
She had the lighting, right?
She had that lighting, but she didn't have any natural light...
She had no form of time-telling. ..whatsoever.
And when she came out, it was really way, way too bright for her.
She had to have dark glasses and so on. There she is, coming out.
Oh, yeah. Looks all right. Looks all right, but that's her going in. Yeah.
LAUGHTER
How long do you think you would last
in a plain room with no stimulation whatsoever?
What did she do? She... She was an interior designer.
LAUGHTER
Well, she was there a very long time,
but I'm talking about a completely plain room with no stimulation.
So you saw her room, she had a guitar and she made friends with the mice,
and she had a computer and stuff, she had books. What if you'd had
nothing? Just a cube of white.
I mean, a month is going to be hard, innit?
It's going to be a small amount of time, isn't it?
I'm going to say three days and you're cracking up. Really?
That short? Yeah, it's really a very short period of time.
So the CIA were researching supposed Chinese brainwashing techniques
in the 1950s, there was a Canadian psychologist called Donald O Hebb,
and he performed an experiment, so the participants got $20 a day
to sit in a cell with everything that might stimulate them removed.
They wore cotton gloves, they had cardboard cuffs,
soft goggles to prevent the eyes, even, rusting,
and nobody could last seven days, you couldn't last a week.
And in the corner was a $23 million toilet. Yeah.
And all of them reported hallucinations. Really?
Yeah, so to begin with, it's just sort of dots and geometric patterns.
Some of them are great.
One person saw parade of squirrels with backpacks
marching along a snowy field,
another saw a bathtub being steered by an old man in a metal helmet.
But none of them could last seven days?
No, they were too depressed to have no stimulation whatsoever.
Caves - we go back to spelunking - can obviously cause claustrophobia,
but I just wanted to show you this
cos it's one of my bucket list things I want to do.
It's the Sarawak Chamber in Borneo. It is... Look at that. Wow, yeah.
There's some caves in Vietnam that are enormous, amazing places.
And in some places in northern Vietnam,
they are still discovering them.
So you'll go down a hole, some of them only appear when the water
goes down and you go through a hole and...
So people are still looking for caves.
That's the nice bit of caving, though, isn't it? You have a stroll.
That bit's fine, it's having to get through a tiny little hole
where there's loads of water down there.
That's what people are doing, they are going into all those holes,
in the belief that eventually they'll come out
into something like that.
But what you get in there is not claustrophobia,
because obviously it's a large space.
You get agoraphobia, which is...
A lot of people call it a fear of open spaces
but, basically, it's a situation where you feel
there may be no escape from it. Isn't it ag-raphobia? It... Yes.
It's not called agoraphobia... OK, so the Elves and I had
had a long discussion about this...
Isn't the Agora the name of the public square?
Is that where it comes? Yes. It is to do with wide open spaces.
And I said ag-raphobia and they assured me it was agoraphobia.
They're wrong. But everybody says "ag-raphobia". Everyone says...
It's the same word with different pronunciations.
Listen to them backtracking in your ear.
"It's the same word, it's the same word!
"It's a different pronunciation!" You've got it wrong!"
You Elves... El-ves, I call you.
LAUGHTER
People in that cave might be suffering from megalophobia,
which is a fear of huge structures. Me-gail-o-phobia.
You could fit ten Wembley stadia inside there.
Stadiums!
We just say Wembleys. You don't need a plural of Wembley Stadium, do you?
There's only ever going to be one. Unless you need to fit ten of them.
They must be Wembley Stadiums because they can only ever be
one Wembley Stadium. OK. Thank you. Goodnight.
LAUGHTER
It's a shame, cos you really were looking as though you were going to win and now I don't know.
I never win on this show. Do you WANT to win?
More than you could possibly imagine, Jo. I always come last, Jo.
OK. And with that, it's time for a round of killer questions,
the plague on all your houses that we call General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
Which of these soaps will clean me up best?
Oh. Oh, yes, Lee. Gotta be the antibacterial.
KLAXON
It's got to be. Are the Elves wrong again?
LAUGHTER, KLAXON
Oh, no, sorry, sorry, no, no, no, no, no.
Is it the antibac-terial? Did I pronounce it wrong?
Maisie. Normal. You're absolutely right.
There is no clear evidence that antibacterial soap is any better.
May even be worse.
So soap works by dissolving fats, which helps dislodge the dirt...
What?!
Do you think if you'd just showered more? No-one told me that!
I eat three bars a day.
You've not been overeating, you've been under-washing. Yes!
LAUGHTER
A lot of those beauty bars, the ones that smell really nice,
are technically not soap at all. They're cheese.
Just lathering yourself up with Brie. Philadelphia.
Are they toad vomit?
"Oh, God, I've left the toad in the chimney again!"
They're technically synthetic detergents and not soap at all.
Soap has to consist of alkali salts, of fatty acids.
How can you tell that your toe is not broken?
You can wiggle it.
KLAXON
I forget with this show to say it in your head first. Yeah.
Edit. Yeah. So it is an old maxim if you can move it, it's not broken.
It's not only unsympathetic, it's untrue.
I mean, the toe is the least of that person's worries. Yeah.
You've managed to find the only picture of somebody
who hasn't broken their toe.
The poor person is going to wake up and they've just got somebody going,
"Great news is - wiggle them toes!"
I think the best clue is if you hear a loud snap,
that's usually... That's the best clue.
Do you remember a goalkeeper from Manchester City
called Bert Trautmann?
Yes, he broke his neck in the Cup Final.
He did, and carried on playing.
Terry Butcher did that as well. Really?
I said to him, I was doing a radio show, and we had him on
for an interview, and I used to like to ask the guests,
"What's the worst injury you've ever had?"
And he said, "Broken neck."
Wow. And I said, "Did you go off?"
And he said no.
MAISIE GASPS Carried on heading. That's insane!
Well, Bert Trautmann collided with Birmingham City forward Peter Murphy
during the 1956 FA Cup Final.
Is that the moment it happened? Or is that a different...?
I think that is the moment.
Have a look at this picture of Bert Trautmann. Look at that.
Wow. Those are fantastic photos. Yeah.
Is a broken bone stronger afterwards?
I'm going to say...
VOMITING
Maybe.
I'm going to say yes and no.
Yes.
VOMITING I'm going to say I agree with Jo.
There is some truth to this because extra-tough bone will form
around a fracture to protect the healing bits, but it's temporary.
I broke my leg when I was a kid,
and when I got older, I trained for the marathon,
and I only got about halfway in the training and then the doctor said,
"Your problem is that one leg is much shorter than the other leg,
"so you're putting more pressure on one leg when you're running."
And you're going round in circles.
I used to always run right next to the kerb
and even it out, it was fine.
And he said, "It will be connected to the fact you broke your leg as a kid."
And I still want to know, has the healing made it longer
or has the healing made it shorter?
Cos I can't remember which leg was the longest, you see.
I mean, if it worked, I'd break both my legs...
And then ten years later,
find out it's the opposite, it makes you smaller.
How does eating food help you get less drunk? It lines... Hmm.
Oh! Go on, Maisie! Go on, Maisie! Come on!
Maisie was going to say line your stomach. No!
KLAXON
That's not me, that's for you.
What's Kate Middleton doing in the kitchen?
If you were there you'd go,
"You need to take a look at yourself, love."
Yeah. She looks like... Eating a pizza, swigging...
Come on, Lee, that's your dream girl.
Anyway, here's the thing. When you drink alcohol,
it can enter your bloodstream one of two ways - either through
your stomach or your small intestine.
The intestine obviously has a much larger surface area,
so it absorbs alcohol much more quickly.
And which of these is going to end up doing the job
depends on what you have eaten.
So if you are full, the sphincter between your stomach
and your small intestine is closed, and more of the work will be done
by your stomach, so a fatty meal
can reduce your peak alcohol concentration by 50%.
Never mind all that, we ordered olives - where are they?
So what's the right thing to eat?
You want to have something... It doesn't actually line your stomach,
it just keeps your stomach very busy
so that it can't get through to the intestine. Keeps it busy.
It's the same reason, darling, that low-sugar mixers, you know,
like slimline tonics, you get drunk faster...
I've never had a slimline tonic in my life.
Never been so insulted!
They get you drunk faster than normal mixers. Oh. Do they?
Yeah. So with a normal... I'll try it, then.
With a normal sugary mix, there's lots of calories to burn,
it keeps your stomach working and it keeps the alcohol away
from the intestines for longer.
The effect can put you over the limit on a breathalyser.
That's the difference. There's a curious thing.
When you drink, the brain creates a substance called galanin.
It has a role in addictions. If you inject it into mice,
the thing they want to do is to eat
really fatty foods and drink alcohol.
MAISIE GASPS
And do they get emotional and tell you about their ex-boyfriend?
The more alcohol and fatty foods...
Then walk home carrying their shoes.
The more alcohol and fatty food they have, the more galanin they produce,
and the more fatty food and alcohol they crave. Aww.
Eating might help you slow how drunk you get,
but it doesn't do it by soaking up the booze.
Helen of Troy had a face that launched how many ships?
Careful, Maisie. Oh, Maisie, what is it? Come on, Maisie.
I can't remember the number now. Help me out here, Maisie.
Oh, shall I do it? Maisie, I'll do it. A thousand.
KLAXON
But, at the time, there weren't a thousand ships in the world.
There weren't enough shipbuilders. Yeah, something like that.
There weren't any oceans. There were no such thing as... No-one had sailed anywhere.
LAUGHTER
No? None of those?
People rowed. They didn't launch ships.
They didn't have a slip thing. They didn't have the champagne bottle.
They would...they would take the ship out a bit at a time.
She didn't have a face. She was faceless!
Totally smooth and faceless like an AI robot.
The face that launched a thousand ships, it dates back to
a 1592 play, Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe,
and it's a rounding down.
Homer's Iliad specifically says there were 1,186 ships
in the Greek fleet that sailed to Troy for the Trojan War.
Actually, there's lots of misconceptions about the Iliad.
It makes no mention of a wooden horse whatsoever.
That's actually referred to in The Odyssey, which is the sequel,
and then only in sort of flashback form.
And, of course, Helen of Troy was actually Helen of...
Birmingham.
LAUGHTER
Sparta. She was actually Helen of Sparta.
That's why I won't read The Iliad. There's too many misconceptions.
Yes, there's too much stuff. It's like The Crown. Yeah. Yeah.
There were 1,186 ships in Homer's Iliad
and anyone who says it's 1,000 is almost 20% out.
Which brings us to the exact science of the scores.
Come on, not last. I'll take it. I'll be happy.
Losing the game and their lunch in last place, with minus 27...
..it's Maisie. Oh.
APPLAUSE
Feeling green around the gills in third place, with minus 15 is Jo!
APPLAUSE
On the road to recovery in second place, with minus three, it's Alan.
APPLAUSE
And in first place... Has that fuckwit won?
LAUGHTER
The eighth chunder of the world...
I don't think me and you as the Chuckle Brothers would work.
..with no points whatsoever... I'll take it. It's Lee! Yay!
APPLAUSE
Thanks to Maisie, Lee, Jo and Alan
and I leave you with this sickly sign-off from the late, great
Ken Dodd - I just read a book about Stockholm syndrome.
It started off badly, but by the end, I really liked it. Goodnight.
APPLAUSE