CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Good evening and welcome to QI,
where tonight we'll be pirouetting our parasols
and mixing martinis in our Shady & Shaky show.
Joining me are a shady lady, Victoria Coren Mitchell...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..the shadow Minister of Mirth, Eshaan Akbar...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..the Sheikh of Shenanigans, John Barrowman...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..and shaking it all about, it's Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Right, let's hear their shady, shaky signature tunes.
Victoria goes...
# Cos I'm Slim Shady Yes, I'm the real Shady
# All you other Slim Shadys are just imitating. #
Eshaan goes...
# The shadow of your smile... #
Nice! Really nice!
Oh, be careful, Eshaan, you'll pull.
John goes...
# I see you, baby Shakin' that ass
# Shakin' that ass
# Shakin' that ass. #
Perfect.
He comes to life! Perfect. And Alan goes...
# Put your left arm in Your left arm out
# In, out, in, out You shake it all about. #
Right.
Name something that was invented in either Shaky Town or Shady Town.
I mean, I'm hoping this is a Shakin' Stevens question.
Oh! Oh.
Because I know a lot about him. Why? Yeah.
Because I was a big fan of him as a child,
and you know the stuff you learnt - well, child - as a teenager. Yeah.
It's inexcusable. Yeah.
It's not inexcusable! Well, he was, let me tell you,
tomorrow is Shakin' Stevens' 73rd birthday.
No!
And I still would. Because...
Yes.
..not only is he gorgeous, but when you're young,
those kind of things go in.
I know his birthday, favourite colour, indigo,
real name Michael Barratt.
Stage name, taken from his old school friend Steven Vanderwalker,
he took the name.
Can I just say, I've no idea how we got here.
That's what's slightly... I-I wanted to get
to seismology and geology.
And we...
Is it something to do with,
is Shaky Town something to do with, like, an earthquake machine?
It's exactly right. So modern seismology began in Comrie village,
so it's in Perthshire. It's your part of the world, is it not?
Up in Scotland.
Yeah. An earthquake machine in Scotland?
Yes. It's known as...
IN SCOTTISH ACCENT: "Shaky Toon." How was that?
Very good. That was good. That was brilliant!
"Shaky Toon." So an incredible number of earthquakes,
which you maybe wouldn't even think of in Scotland.
The late-18th to the mid-19th century, thousands of earthquakes.
There is a thing called the Highland Boundary Fault,
and the position of this town is astride the fault.
And it still records more
and stronger tremors than anywhere else in Britain.
It is officially Britain's shakiest town.
And so they wanted to measure it and it's the very first purpose-built
seismology station in the world, known as Earthquake House.
It's basically a hut in a field, if I'm honest with you.
It looks like a public toilet! I know.
It does! It's so British - "Look what we've made!"
I bet you open the door and you can see to the core of the Earth.
It was instigated by the Comrie Pioneers,
basically the local postmaster.
He devised one of the earliest measures for earthquakes.
So a ten was a quake that they had in October of 1839,
which was felt over most of Scotland.
IN SCOTTISH ACCENT: That's when the teapot rattles!
Yeah. So the Comrie Scale is different scales of quake.
So number ten, massive quake in 1839.
And then number one, I like, is called Just Sensible.
What? What? Yeah.
Just capable of being sensed.
It's a quiver. Oh. It's more of a...
Oh. We've all had those.
That's a different kind of earthquake! That is, yeah.
So incredibly simple mechanism - you get two wooden beams,
you get one going north and south and one going east and west,
like that, with wooden cylinders of various sizes on top.
And it took various sizes of quake to get the cylinders to fall off.
It's not very complicated.
And then sod's law stepped in, they built the Earthquake House
and that coincided pretty much
with the end of the great era of earthquakes in Comrie.
It's as if the earthquake had just moved on.
Yeah. "Oh, they've built something, let's go." Yeah.
What happened to the postman? Uh...
Well, he is remembered for having done this,
not so remembered that I can tell you what his name is.
I reckon he invented it to explain why whenever he delivered things, it was always broken in the box. Yes.
But, we now realise that this hut is of historic significance, and they
have in fact updated it with modern equipment so sensitive, it picked up
the tsunami on Boxing Day 2004 in Indonesia, so that is extraordinary.
Wow. Wow. No way.
So it wasn't related to the Richter scale? Yeah, is not different?
No.
Yes, the Richter scale is entirely different, yeah.
So this was the first measure that we had.
Right, so we've Shaky Toon, let's go to Shady Town.
It is, I can tell you, also in Scotland. Any thoughts?
A place where the sun never shines?
Yes, darling, it is. Lochranza on Arran.
It is the UK's, possibly the world's, shadiest town.
It gets fewer annual hours of sunshine than anywhere else,
because it sits on a sort of north-facing glen on a rainy island.
It has no street lights.
I have to say, I've been there, and it is extremely beautiful.
But it is also the birthplace of modern geology.
So we've got two places in Scotland that have done
wonders for the study of the planet,
and the man known as the father of modern geology,
James Hutton, he visited in 1787,
and he discovered, it was the very first example
of what's called Hutton's Unconformity.
And I love this, because I notice it and don't know what it is,
but it's a junction between different types of rock formation.
And he developed the idea that such formations could only have
resulted over unimaginable time,
so the Earth could not be young, as the Bible claimed.
So I think we can just show you, with some writing on the top.
Can you see how you've got the ones that are the structures
that are going up, like that? Yeah. And isn't it incredible?
So, he has supported what was called Plutonism,
which is that rocks are formed by volcanic action
against Neptunism that rocks were formed by the biblical flood.
It's stunningly beautiful, I think, the way the Earth has shifted and moved like that. It's wonderful.
Anyway, he wrote a line in a 1788 paper which has,
well, it's echoed through geological science ever since.
"The result therefore of our present enquiry is that
"we find no vestige of a beginning - no prospect of an end."
It's really lovely. Modern seismology and geology
were invented 60 miles from each other, in Scotland.
Describe the dark side of puppeteering.
Well, surely it's everything that goes on...
Yeah. Underneath. ..below the desk!
"That's the way to do it!" I dread to think.
Alan, stop playing with your puppet under the table.
Yeah. What do all the other puppets do when you put them down?
Yes, keep the hands up here!
It's a specific kind of puppetry that we're thinking of.
The dark side of puppetry. Any thoughts?
Shadows? Shadows.
What about Hank Marvin? Would you or wouldn't you?
I tell you what, Cliff Richard I definitely would.
Don't say anything - I would.
We're talking about a specific type of shadow puppetry.
I've got some examples here.
So it's Java, Indonesia, Southeast Asia.
Oh, wow. Oh, right.
It's a 1,000-year-old form of shadow puppet theatre called
wayang. So they often tell Hindu epics.
The only thing is, the shows can last eight or more hours, right.
Of course they can.
I mean, have you seen a Bollywood film? They last 16 days.
Yes, exactly that. I mean,
all puppet shows FEEL like they've lasted eight or nine hours.
Yes, that's true. The ninth hour of the Punch & Judy epic.
Unfortunately, it is a skill which is very slightly dying out,
so some of the puppeteers have taken to performing
Star Wars-themed shows, for example, to younger audiences.
And they take some liberties.
So there we've got Chewbacca and Han Solo.
I am all for that. You think that's OK?
Love it, still have my original Star Wars toys.
I have a whole section of the garage devoted to Star Wars memorabilia.
I even have my Star Wars
pyjama, you know, pants.
And I go to... Don't laugh at me! I go to bed dressed in Star Wars.
Where else is he going to keep his lightsaber at night?!
You see? I mean, I've got nothing.
But, yeah, massive Star Wars fan.
I think that's a great idea. Do you only have the trousers?
No, I have the top too, but it's, like, I have one that's
Darth Vader pants and then on the top it says,
"I'm your daddy."
LAUGHTER
That is just so wrong. I've never watched Star Wars. Did you want
to confess anything? I'm turning it into therapy. Well, yeah, maybe.
I don't know. I think not seeing Star Wars is a confession in itself.
That's a big confession, isn't it? That is quite big.
Alan, anything you want to reveal to the rest of the world? Oh, many.
Actually, I asked you this once and you told me
you'd pooed on Hampstead Heath or something. Oh, yes.
That's right. And I'm not falling into this trap again.
Lovely.
Anyway, they are now using wayang shows, which is
what this puppetry is, to explain all sorts of things.
They've used it for Covid-19,
they use it for the destruction of coral reefs.
I mean, all sorts of kind of educational stuff.
It's quite complex and traditionally there's just one puppet master,
who's called a dalang,
and they are highly respected,
and it used to be that Indonesian children wanted to grow up
and be a dalang. Ah.
Usually boys would work the puppets and girls play the "gender",
which a bit like a glockenspiel.
And the puppets, as you can see, are really intricate.
And, perversely, considering they're there to create shadows,
they're very brightly painted. Yeah, that is odd, isn't it?
Yes. It's just a curiosity.
I've got a very, this is a move. "Yas queen!
"Yas queen, yas!
"Yas queen, yas, yas, yas! Yas queen!"
What's that thing called, darling? Is it called a GIF or whatever it is where a TikTok thing?
Cluck? Yeah, could I say something
and you just stand behind me going, "Yas queen!"?
Yas queen! I love that!
I'll do a soundbite for you, you can use it. Yes, please. I'd like that very much.
I really enjoyed the talk about social media. That was cute.
LAUGHTER
I definitely have no idea what I just said.
"Could I do a GIF on TikTok?" "No, you can't."
LAUGHTER
I don't do any of it. You do it, don't you, darling?
You do all that social media.
No. No. I... No. No.
TikTok is it... It is a dancing thing. I think you would be great at it.
You could do a musical thing which is like...would, wouldn't, would, would, wouldn't.
It would be...
"Tell me you want to sleep with Shakin' Stevens
"without telling me you want to sleep with Shakin' Stevens."
LAUGHTER
And the puppeteer, it's improv. They improvise most of the play.
Do they come out and say, "So can someone give me an object?
Yes. "An object, situation, then let's have a feeling,
"let's have an emotion."
Unusual occupation. Yeah.
Let's go for that. "Gynaecologist!"
Yeah.
Can I tell you this, about when I first took my daughter
to a puppet show? I found this very, very annoying.
The puppeteer came out and, you know, had the puppets
and spoke to the audience, and I wanted to say, "Look, fine.
"After the age of about 30, magnificent,
"break it down, deconstruct it."
She, my child is three, she thinks it's real.
Just bring it up behind a hay bale.
It's fine. Let it be a talking creature.
I used to watch Rainbow.
I was 15 before I wonder why Zippy was always behind something.
LAUGHTER
They're having a picnic. He's behind a bush.
Oh, they are in the kitchen, he is behind the washing machine.
Never asked the question.
Have you ever worked with the Muppets? I have.
Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing to be like with Kermit or Miss Piggy or anyone.
It's very difficult not to reference them if you don't.
But Kermit's the weirdest one, cos it's, like, on his head.
It's on his head. Yeah. And he's working the hands like that.
I still would. Of course.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Come on!
Shall we see if we can revive a traditional shadow puppet
artform ourselves?
Shadowgraphy is the art of making shadow shapes with your hands.
I'll just show you the sort of shapes that we are looking for, OK?
So there is a wolf, and there's a goat and there's a swan
and a rabbit, OK?
And I want you to see if you can recreate those.
So, you two, go behind the screen and you two try
and guess which ones that they are doing.
Oh, don't go behind a screen and then... What's going to happen?
I know, you never know. Right. OK.
Eshaan, you've got such tiny hands.
Oh, look! I beg your pardon!
Right, let's... I don't know... What do you think Eshaan is doing?
Is it a jellyfish?
I don't know. Eshaan is telling us where to go, I think.
I think it's something...
ROARING
It's a frog with an enormous vulva.
That's a rabbit. Or a squirrel. Squirrel? Squirrel?
Is it a rabbit? Rabbit. Is it a rabbit? It's being attacked!
It's Rod Hull and Emu.
A swan with a hand coming out of its arse. What is this?
The thumb is not working for me.
What do you mean the swan is not working for you?!
Well, make it speak or eat or something. There we go. Well done!
Let's have a go with you two having a go.
Off you go, round the screen.
Luckily, I'm known for my knock-about, physical comedy.
I can't wait to see this.
I can't believe Alan said I've got small hands.
Darling, it's perspective. It's not the size. Yes, exactly. Thank you!
OK, here we go. Alan is doing a spider.
It looks like a...duck.
Oh, a fox. Oh, Victoria's very good.
That is very good. Yeah.
Yeah! I literally don't know...
ALAN: I don't know what mine is either.
Oh, hang on a minute, it is a bit more bent.
And as for the fingers...
LAUGHTER
Alan's looks like a tapeworm.
Yeah. What is that?
It's exploding out of John Hurt's...
It's a goat. It's a goat?
It's a goat? Very well done.
Yeah! It's a goat.
Who knew that you had wolf in you?
I think I have made that perfectly clear.
Now, what's shady and two dimensional about this guy?
So, if I give you his name it may help.
He was the French Minister of Finance for just eight months
under Louis XIV and he was called Etienne de Silhouette.
Is that why...silhouette, because he's thought of as a shadowy figure?
It's why shadow portraits, you know the portraits where you just get....
Yes. ..the sort of outline of a person done in black? Yes. Yeah.
They're known as silhouettes and it is because his, well, the normal
explanation, his austerity policies, which eventually got him fired,
caused his name to be associated with sort of general thriftiness.
And these were cheaper portraits
for people who couldn't afford to have oil portraits. Oh.
I think they're very beautiful, but it's not for me to say.
We have an expert with us.
Please welcome master silhouettist Charles Burns. There he is.
APPLAUSE
Charles, tell me, how did you learn to be a silhouettist?
How did that happen?
When I left art college, I worked for a number of years
as a street portrait artist in Covent Garden,
and drawing portraits originally.
And then I started cutting silhouettes more or less
as a sideline, but they completely took over my life.
They became very popular in Europe,
and they came over, didn't they, from France?
They did, they became very popular
throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries.
But they died out, really, when photography was invented
and all the silhouette artists went out of business.
Which I think is a great shame. In fact, studios used to be
equipped sometimes with a physio...physionog...
A physiognotrace... Physiognotrace. ..is the word you're looking for.
The physiognotrace was like an arm,
like a metal bar, which used to be passed around someone's profile,
and at the other end of the bar was a little pencil which, on a small
piece of paper, would draw upside down and in reverse, their profile.
But you don't do anything as a...?
No, I rely entirely on a pair of scissors.
A pair of scissors. And a technique I call "cut and hope".
OK. I like that!
So, so you're going to do our silhouettes,
while we're carrying on chatting.
Yes. So can I get you to sit and carry on with your...
I shall go and explore your profile. ..cutting away. Oh, OK!
Imagine you're on a coin.
While he's cutting away,
I can tell you there was even an automaton called Prosopographus.
So prosopon is Greek for face,
and it was set up in the 1820s on the Strand in London
by a silhouette artist called Charles Herve.
And it was a sort of small robotic figure sitting on a box
with a tablet in one hand and a stylus on the other.
And it drew an outline of your face
which could then be cut into a silhouette.
We have no idea how this, the automaton worked, although
some visitors reported seeing "human eyes behind the curtain".
So... We are assuming there was a human inside.
Have a quick look at this and tell me what you see here.
Two faces looking at each other. Two faces looking at each other.
I can see both. All right! I see two faces or a vase.
Or a vase. What do you see, Victoria? Um...
Shakin' Stevens...
A sort of goblet or two people. Yeah. Yeah.
It is in fact known as Rubin's Vase.
So, Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin, 1915.
And it's very interesting how the brain decides what is an object
and what is the background.
So, an object sometimes has a sharper colour,
there are visual clues.
Maybe it's closer, or it gives you an emotional response.
If you remove all of those things, the brain cannot consistently
distinguish the object from the background. Right.
So, depending on how we look at it, might think it's a face immediately,
might think it's a vase immediately. Really?
Yeah. There are two British artists, Tim Noble and Sue Webster,
they developed a technique,
and they create silhouettes from heaps of junk.
They started their work in 1997.
This is one of their pieces that was at the Royal Academy.
So that's just junk. Shut up!
It's old wood and rusty tools and toilet roll and all sorts of things.
And that's them in silhouette. That is great. That's amazing.
I think it's one of the best things I have ever seen.
People are so creative. I mean, as an Asian kid growing up,
imagine if I told my dad,
"Dad, I want to do stuff with rubbish and make silhouettes."
Yeah. He'd be like, "What are you talking about? Just go on QI."
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Don't even need to make silhouettes.
Although tonight we can make rubbish and silhouettes,
because I think Charles has finished. Darling,
are you going to reveal for us? I can reveal for you, yes.
Oh, right. So we'll have Victoria first. OK.
There she is. There we are, there you are.
Oh! Wow!
Cute. Ah, clever. Yeah, amazing. APPLAUSE
Could you just, just take a couple of inches off the nose?
Just bring...
LAUGHTER
Right, shall we do Alan?
Oh! Oh, wow! Yes. That's great!
Oh, that's very good. Wow, you look at the little hair detail
at the top, even. That's amazing. APPLAUSE
That's very clever. Uh, Eshaan.
As long as I don't look like Romesh in this one. Right.
LAUGHTER
Pff!
I-I look so much older.
But the glasses are so brilliant. Yeah. Yeah, the glasses are great.
That's so clever. Right, Johnny, let's try you, darling.
Oh! Oh, look at that. You handsome devil.
So handsome. Yeah, amazing.
That's brilliant.
You're so handsome, even as a cut-out. Lovely. Wow!
I think those are brilliant. That's so clever.
You were literally just doing that with a pair of scissors?
Yes, I have, yes. It's amazing. A freehand cut with scissors.
Because I can't even cut a straight line on wrapping paper.
Straight lines are much harder.
I think you're a secret Doctor Who.
You've got the coat, you've got the look. You're a secret Doctor.
Yeah. Now, this contains everything I need. See?!
Charles, it's been such a pleasure. Thank you for coming in.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Right. What's a McKinley grip?
Ooh. Oh...
So, the whole show is shade and shake.
A shaky grip? A shaky grip...
Is it? A shaky grip, yeah. So what do we do?
We shake parts of our body, we shake...?
The only McKinley that I know is William McKinley,
the President of the United States?
Absolutely right, is the McKinley grip, yeah. He was assassinated.
Yes, he was, yeah. I don't know if he was a Mason or whatever,
but I know he's a Republican.
So there might have been a secret handshake?
It wasn't a secret,
it was that he was fantastically good at shaking hands.
There was a tradition throughout the 19th century
in the United States that if anybody wanted to, they could turn up
at the White House on New Year's Day and shake the President's hand.
And President McKinley was, he was in office 1897 to 1901,
he was an enthusiastic hand-shaker, said to have once shaken
5,000 hands in a single session, but it had to be quick.
So he developed something called the McKinley grip.
What you do is, you give a beaming smile, you grab somebody's hand
before they have a chance to take yours, you give it a swift squeeze.
In your other hand you take hold of the elbow and push them away.
Ah. Oh, yeah. OK.
This was the McKinley grip, just get rid of them, like that.
What a metaphor for all social interaction! I know.
How hysterical. "Come here, go away."
But you're quite right, he was engaged in just such a thing
when he was murdered. September 6th, 1901,
he was in Buffalo, New York,
at the Pan-American Exposition, when an anarchist called Leon Czolgosz
turned up and he had his right hand covered with a handkerchief.
And the President thought he had some injury or other,
but in fact he shot him point blank.
He died of infection about eight days later.
Now, here's the thing, we shake hands, we also shake heads.
I think we've said this before on this show, Alan.
Some countries, like Bulgaria, they shake for yes and nod for no.
So we're going to try a little experiment.
I'm going to ask you a series of quickfire questions
with yes or no answers, right?
You have to answer immediately, but whatever answer you give
with your voice, you have to give the opposite with your head.
Ah... OK. And I'll ping my pinger if you get it wrong.
Does everybody understand? You pinging your pinger?
No, I'm just asking. Yes, I do understand. Yes.
Yes. Just I'm trying to catch you out, that's all. Yes, damn it.
OK, all right, ready. John, was the first James Bond film
the one about the Doctor?
Yes.
I don't know. That's right.
Is it right? Yes. What was the name of the Doctor? Yes, Doctor No.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Eshaan, do you know what band featured
the keyboard player Rick Wakeman?
LAUGHTER
No. You don't know?
No. OK.
But it's... It's... It's... It's...? It's...
Yes.
The band is called Yes.
Yes is the band. But you didn't know. I... No.
This would be a great drinking game! It is.
Yeah, very weird. Victoria, do you know what it means when you nod?
Do I know what it means when you nod?
Yes, I know what it means.
Or, yes, I KNOW what it means. KNOW what it means.
Alan, have you stopped kicking the dog?
Yes. I never kick the dog! Yeah.
It's quite complicated, isn't it? It's quite, it's quite weird.
Yes. Nobody knows why the Bulgarians do it the other way round.
So, there's a folk tale that they were forced to
change their religion by invaders, and so they pretended
no meant yes when they were interrogated about their faith.
It's a bit like crossing your fingers when you tell a lie.
That's great. I did a movie in Bulgaria,
and I was diving in the movie,
and that was part of the reason I also got the movie,
because I was, I'm a registered diver.
They said I had to go in this big tank.
And I was given a small canister with oxygen in it.
I would breathe, put the oxygen away, then escape from the tank.
But I went down and I said to the guy, "Is it unlocked?"
And he went, "Yes."
Like I'm not going down.
And he's like...I'm, "Is it locked?" "Yes, it is."
What was the film, darling? Oh, you don't want to know.
No, I really want to see it. Yeah, we do.
It's called Shark Attack 3: Megalodon.
LAUGHTER
Oh, my.
All I'll say is that it bought me my first place.
There's an even more, apparently ambiguous, is the head bobble.
So this is a form of nonverbal communication.
It's commonly found in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
So, according to...
Hi, guys!
I'm looking at John.
According to a behaviourist from Tamil Nadu, Pradeep Chakravarthy,
it may have evolved to give a deliberately ambiguous signal.
So it's sort of you can disagree with somebody while not saying
anything. Yes, that's the head bobble. It means, yes, no, maybe.
It means everything, really. OK. They do it in Bangladesh as well.
Right. But you're being noncommittal, is that it?
Yeah, and... Just do it and I'll give you the verbal.
The movement is more from the chin, actually. Right. So it's just a...
Yas queen.
Cos my parents would use it with me as well. Every time when I was like,
"Oh, Mum, can I go out with my friends?"
She'd be like, "Yeah. No. Maybe."
I went to India one time and lots of people did that and it is...
It is something that is really non-confrontational is what I...
Yeah. Sort of diffusing things. I quite like it.
I mean, the last time I was on, I talked about Bollywood dancing and I'm doing it again.
But, this neck move is very clearly kind of like a no, isn't it?
You know it's a no. Hm.
Well, I would, in the gay world we'd disagree.
That's like, "Get over here!"
That's pretty good!
That is great. Yas queen.
Yes. No.
Is there any gesture that ISN'T that?!
I'll do gay Bollywood. You do gay Bollywood.
So the head bobble. Yeah, the head bobble is from the chin, I think.
From the chin. It's really hard. That's pretty good actually, Alan.
That's a good one. It's a very relaxed thing.
No. I mean, I look like I'm trying
to decide which kind of herring
to have for dinner. That's really, that's...
Right, here's a pretty shady way to carry on.
What's the best way to sabotage a sewage system?
# Shadow... #
# Of your smile. # It begins with S, I'm going to say.
S? Yes. Shit. Oh, I was going to say blocking.
but there you go.
LAUGHTER
Oh, you're not going to flash "shit" at me, are you?!
What were you going to say?
It was similar to that, let me have a drunken kebab.
Right, and that would be the way forward? Yeah.
Have you ever been sabotaged? No. Anything ever happened to you?
I've... Speaking of shit.
And you've pooped in Hampstead Heath.
It is well-known. How is this still coming up?!
That was a number of years ago now!
Oh, it is still there!
Since lockdown, most of Hempstead has gone at least once on the Heath.
Yeah, that's true. Since they shut all the toilets.
You know it is now called wild toileting? Is it? Yeah.
I was doing a show in Nashville, Tennessee where
I was dressed in white polyester.
It was the '80s. And...
To qualify. To qualify.
And I was doing a number called I Got Rhythm.
And I felt like a little rumble in my tummy
and I thought, I'm just going to fart.
And I just felt heat. No!
Heat in my polyester white pants. Oh!
I kept kicking and I was trying to get offstage, still kicking,
still the professional, still singing and kicking.
I was spraying the audience... Oh!
Brilliant!
I literally got off stage and my understudy was laughing backstage.
He'd put Ex-Lax... No! Yes! Which is a laxative in my drinking water.
And I literally...
My bowels emptied on stage in my pants, in my white polyester...
In the front row. And I still felt fabulous.
And the front row knew about it.
That was really a shitty performance!
LAUGHTER
Can we get a silhouette of that?
I think that might be the worst thing I've ever heard.
Anyway... None of that has anything to do with the answer.
In 1944, the US Office of Strategic Services, that's
the sort of predecessor organisation to the CIA, produced this.
And it's a Simple Sabotage Field Manual.
Oh. And it's a guide to a range of different ways where
you can undermine the enemy's... their economy, their morale,
their military offensiveness, and so on.
And it's fantastic in the scope of stuff in this rather narrow book.
Demolishing bridges, how to cause trouble,
quarrels on public transport, that kind of thing.
So here's how to sabotage a lavatory.
So, what you do is you saturate a sponge, OK,
with a thick starch or sugar solution, right?
You squeeze it tightly until it is a ball.
You wrap it with string to keep it in the ball and then you let it dry.
And once it is dry, you remove the string
and you flush it down the lavatory.
The sponge will gradually expand back to its normal size
and it will entirely plug the sewage system.
Oh. And why would you want to do that?
Yeah, I was just... If you want to mess with your enemy,
mess with their toilets. Oh. Yeah.
I mean, it's really simple. It's...
Or just shit straight on their faces from the stage! Exactly!
You know. Cut out the middleman.
So, some of the stuff they suggest, it's like schoolboy pranks in here.
Yeah. But it's just stuff that the enemy would go,
"Oh, now the toilets are backed up in the main office!
"It's just annoying." So let's try.
The lighting system in a factory,
how would you sabotage the lighting system in a factory?
Cut a wire? No, it's got to be more subtle than that, you see. Oh.
So what you do is, you turn the lights off, unscrew a light bulb,
put a coin into the socket, put the light bulb back in again.
As soon as somebody turns it on, the whole system will blow.
Because of the copper. Yeah.
I mean, it's... I'm going to do that to some of my mates' houses. Don't,
I mean, it's terrible. Electricians and plumbers back in the day would
have been making an absolute killing. Yeah, just stick a coin
in it. "Oh, it's a sponge, it's a coin," and they charge you 600 quid
for the privilege. What about the petrol tank of a vehicle?
Oh, that's sugar, isn't it?
You can do sugar or you can urinate in it, if you haven't got sugar.
Oh. Urine?! Yeah, just wee in it.
I don't know why I'm giving all this away.
Please don't do any of these things.
I've heard of them putting, like, a potato in the exhaust.
Yeah, I've heard of that.
I like this, the one in here that I think would only work in Britain.
"To start an argument on a train, if you work for the railway,
"issue two tickets for the same seat." Ah, yes.
That's every day. Yeah. Yes.
Moving on. What use are shadows anyway?
Oh, look at them! Oh.
It is nothing to do with music, it is everything to do with...
What would you use a shadow for?
Discipline. What? Is that what they called the cane in your school?
The shadow? No, no, no.
"You will see the shadow, my friend!"
No, no, no.
When I was like six or seven years old, I used to go to mosque
and before we used to go for the evening prayers at sunset, we
would hang out in the park because we were cool, young Muslim boys.
And on one particular day, one of the kids said,
"The longer your shadow is, the more sin you've committed.
"So you are going to go to hell."
And so, of course, as the sun was setting, our shadows get longer
and you would see six or seven of us
just running around trying to get the shadow as small as possible.
Then... I found bacon and so...
It's weird you can use your shadow to work out what time it is.
It is to do with time, so I have here, for example,
a pocket sundial.
And if you raise up this little part here,
you would be able to tell the...
I mean, you could just wear a watch, is the other way of doing it.
But this is an old way of doing it. It's got a compass and a shadow.
The thing about this is it would give
a very crude approximation of the time.
The larger it is, the more accurate it is going to be.
The one that possibly would give you the best time at 22.6m,
it is about 75 foot high - Vrihat Samrat Yantra.
It is the "great king of instruments" in Jaipur.
It was completed in 1734
and it gives the time accurate to two seconds.
Wow. Wow.
I know! It's amazing. So the shadow moves at a millimetre per second.
It is fast enough to see. I think that is incredible.
And then the shadow of the even taller Sundial Bridge,
that is over the Sacramento River in Redding, California,
moves at 5mm/s. It's a stunning thing.
That one, in Sacramento? Yes. Well, it's in Redding, California.
It is the Sacramento River.
Smaller, but no less impressive,
and I certainly would like one for the garden,
were the sundial cannons.
This is a sort of niche accessory from the 17th to the 19th century.
It is a sundial with a magnifying glass positioned on it
to concentrate the sun's rays at midday.
So that it would go down onto some gunpowder and fire a cannon!
Who doesn't want one of those?!
You wouldn't want to be standing in front of it. No.
There was one in the Palais Royal in Paris.
Used to go off at midday. People used to go and watch.
And the only one remaining that is functioning is the sun
cannon in Atvidaberg, Sweden.
You can use shadows to power a digital watch.
So the scientists at the University of Singapore have
unveiled their shadow-effect energy generator.
And when it is completely in shadow or fully in light,
it produces a very low amount of electricity or nothing at all
and it is the contrast between shadow and light that makes it work.
And it generates enough current to power a digital watch.
Why is it best to weigh yourself in the dark?
So you don't know how much you have eaten?
I presume when you say best, you mean it gives you a lower reading?
It does. So light falling onto a surface exerts a tiny amount of pressure.
That's what it is. I know! You would think...
Your bathroom is too bright. Too bright!
Tiny amounts of pressure.
If you remove light from a surface, you remove that tiny
amount of pressure and this pressure can be used to power spacecraft.
So the Japanese IKAROS is a spacecraft that was launched
in May 2010... Icarus?
That is not a spacecraft I would get on.
Stands for the Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun.
Of course. It is an acronym.
It has a 46 foot square sail,
which uses light pressure plus the solar wind
as its means of propulsion.
Wow, that's amazing. I know!
Cos you only need a small amount of power
as there is no resistance in space. So it's enough.
And so we descend into the shadowy realm of shaky misunderstandings
that we call General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
I'm looking forward to my summer holiday,
how can I prepare to get a nice, deep suntan without burning?
Sun lotion? Would you not, sun cream?
Yes, probably the very correct answer, my darling, yes.
People used to think that the idea was to lay down a sort of base tan,
possibly in a tanning salon or something.
And it's a widespread thought, but it is entirely wrong.
The only way you can protect yourself is with suntan lotion.
Or clothes. Clothes, but not, or you and I would just sit in the shade,
wouldn't we, Alan? Drinking heavily.
So they wanted to demonstrate this, so they needed some skin that
had zero exposure to the sun, so they chose British bottoms.
Yeah. And they were exposed to simulated sunlight.
They replicate conditions at the centre of the Earth.
I know, exactly. Can I just say what an awful
representation of the United States of America that picture is?
Yeah. It's not pretty, is it? No! No.
Would you or wouldn't you, Victoria?
I think he looks all right.
Anyway...
Two weeks they spent with simulated sunlight on naked buttocks,
and the resulting tan gave them a tiny bit of protection.
Basically it meant you could spend an extra ten minutes in the sun.
And tanning parlour sun beds are really as bad
if not worse than natural sunlight.
Indeed, indoor tanning causes about 420,000 cases of skin cancer
a year in the US alone. What?! Yeah.
If you go to indoor tanning place
and you think that is going to save you from getting skin cancer because
you've got a base tan, it probably is going to exacerbate the chances
of you getting skin cancer because you think you are safe,
so you think you can lie out in the sun for a bit longer.
And I'm from Essex, so this is a good public service message.
Yes, darling. And you're the one who said suntan lotion, so well done you! Thank you.
Now, why do you call it the dark side of the moon?
Oh, The Clangers, look at them! HE IMITATES THE CLANGERS
Because it's the title of the album.
Which album, darling? The Pink Floyd album.
OK, in the words of Pink Floyd, there is no dark side of the moon.
The reason we can't see the far side of the moon is that the moon
is tidally locked to the Earth. So let me show you.
Oh, I love a visual.
So, here is the moon and you can see
that it is facing towards the Earth.
You can't see that arrow, can you, because where we are on Earth,
you just see the point of it, but it is invisible.
But it is there!
If you look at the moon,
because of the way the moon orbits the Earth, we only ever see one
side of it, but that doesn't mean that the unseen side is always dark.
Because the moon is orbiting the Earth and they are both orbiting the
Sun, so all the sides of the moon end up facing the Sun
at various times.
There are bits of the moon which are in permanent darkness.
There's a sort of crater of eternal darkness.
It is a bit like why Lochranza is Shady Town, where we started.
"Crater of eternal darkness."
I'm going to call my house that.
Crater of eternal darkness!
"Hello, crater of eternal darkness.
"Yes, we deliver."
It's a great name for a restaurant.
It's a place called the Shackleton crater at the moon's South Pole
and it receives no sunlight
because it is so deep and so close to the pole.
The opposite of this is the peak of eternal light, which is
what I'm going to call my house.
Somewhere where there is always sunlight
and we haven't found that yet on the moon.
Oddly enough, the rim of the Shackleton crater gets pretty close,
it is sunny 94% of the time.
But the actual crater itself is... Is not.
Is not at all.
Now, pause for thought. What happens to your pores in a sauna?
When they warm up, do they open up and when it is cold they close up?
KLAXON SOUNDS
OK, so here is the thing.
Pores allow us to sweat and so that regulates body temperature.
But they don't have muscles. They cannot open and close.
So if you want to use warm water, for example,
that cleans your pores, it doesn't change their size.
At all. OK.
They do and can increase in size as you age,
but it has nothing to do with your washing regime in any way.
I love watching videos on...
No, not...
Key change. That's another story. LAUGHTER
You know how people watch like, hear certain sounds
and it soothes them and it calms them?
I watch videos of people popping pimples.
What?! They are very popular. I watch them too.
But why would you watch... Why would you watch that?!
I don't know. I don't understand it myself,
but I found out just by one night going...
There is a show called Dr Pimple Popper... Yes. Oh, my God.
I thought, I'm going to search this on YouTube and, Oh, my God,
it is a whole community!
Do you ever pick your spots or blackheads?
I don't have spots or blackheads - I'm 4,000 years old!
LAUGHTER
The pores are always with us, sadly.
Now, this is exciting,
we've done a bit of research on who is in line for the throne,
and we know the correct answer to this question.
Which of you on this panel is closest to inheriting the crown?
I look good.
I think we all deserve a "yas queen."
Yas.
KLAXON, LAUGHTER
I love it, I'm a klaxon!
It must be Alan.
KLAXON
Well... Well, it MUST be.
Explain how it's not Alan.
Here's the truth of it, it's none of us. No, it can't be
none of us, you said, "Who's the closest?" Yeah, closest.
We could all be far away, but somebody must... No. No?
Nobody. No. Most people think that
we're all somehow in line to the throne
eventually, even if you're number 52 million and 14 or whatever.
Yeah. In fact, the list of succession is extremely limited.
You have to be a direct descendent
of Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover,
who was born in The Hague in 1630.
Oh, Great-granny Sophia?!
That's where the family hair began.
It could be as well!
This was painted just a week after she shat on Hampstead Heath.
Do you not think it's weird that she looks surprised
to be having her portrait done?! She's going, "Oh, really?!"
I like the look of her. She is rather fun.
She was the granddaughter of James I,
so she was chosen as heir to the throne to ensure a Protestant
lineage in the event that William or Queen Anne died without issue.
And it was to block the Old Pretender, James Stuart,
who was a Catholic.
Unfortunately, she died two months before she was due to take over,
so we got her son, George I.
And it's a shame because she was extraordinary.
She spoke five languages, she was educated in theology,
history, mathematics, law.
She was buried in the Berggarten Mausoleum in Hanover
and ironically,
considering that all British Royalty is descended from her, that was
almost completely destroyed by Allied bombers during World War II.
Wow. Buckingham Palace has never published a full record of Sophia's
descendants, but two American men did a full investigation
and they both independently found that the last
person in line to the throne,
the 4,973rd, is a German pain therapist called Karin Vogel.
A German pain therapist? Yes.
Try typing that into Google. I know, right!
LAUGHTER
Goes straight to images.
Which brings us to the scores. Looking distinctly shaky in last place,
with minus seven,
it's Alan.
Thank you. Thank you.
Third place, with minus three, Victoria. Hooray!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Second, with one point, John.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Yas queen, yas, yas, yas queen.
But overshadowing everybody is tonight's winner, with five points,
Eshaan!
No!
My thanks to Victoria, Eshaan, John and Alan.
I leave you with this shadowy sign-off
from Chinese philosopher Lin Yutang.
"When small men begin to cast big shadows,
"it means that the sun is about to set."
Goodnight.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE