1 00:00:32,440 --> 00:00:34,520 Good evening and welcome to qi, where tonight, 2 00:00:34,600 --> 00:00:37,040 we will be separating the saints from the sinners. 3 00:00:37,120 --> 00:00:41,920 I'm your heavenly host and joining me are the virtuous Johnny Vegas... 4 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:45,000 Cheers and applause 5 00:00:45,080 --> 00:00:47,160 ..the blessed Bridget christie... 6 00:00:47,240 --> 00:00:49,520 Cheers and applause 7 00:00:49,600 --> 00:00:54,000 ..the diabolical Mark Watson... Cheers and applause 8 00:00:54,080 --> 00:00:56,000 ..and the well wicked Alan Davies. 9 00:00:56,080 --> 00:00:59,440 Cheers and applause 10 00:01:01,120 --> 00:01:04,560 right, let's see if the devil really has all the best tunes. 11 00:01:04,640 --> 00:01:07,560 Bridget goes... Heavenly harp 12 00:01:10,480 --> 00:01:13,720 wow! That... that doesn't suit me at all. Not in the slightest. 13 00:01:13,800 --> 00:01:17,920 Mark goes... Choir sings hallelujah 14 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:22,560 Johnny goes... Heavenly choir 15 00:01:25,480 --> 00:01:28,320 and Alan goes... Thunderclap 16 00:01:28,400 --> 00:01:33,040 music: O fortuna from carmina burana (the omen) 17 00:01:44,520 --> 00:01:47,080 Finally! Is it going to do that every time? 18 00:01:47,160 --> 00:01:49,640 Wouldn't it be great if every time you opened a door, 19 00:01:49,720 --> 00:01:53,320 that music played? Every time you opened your fly. 20 00:01:53,400 --> 00:01:56,200 Right, I think we can take our halos off. 21 00:01:56,280 --> 00:02:00,800 We begin with a question about not shaving and soul saving. 22 00:02:00,880 --> 00:02:02,960 Are beards good or evil? 23 00:02:03,040 --> 00:02:06,560 Opening notes of o fortuna 24 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:11,240 oh, that's a bit disappointing! I want the whole thing. 25 00:02:11,320 --> 00:02:13,200 It's like you're not the devil after all. 26 00:02:13,280 --> 00:02:16,360 I've no idea. I just wanted to press my buzzer. Good. They're good. 27 00:02:16,440 --> 00:02:20,200 Jesus had a beard, at least he's depicted in all imagery as bearded. 28 00:02:20,280 --> 00:02:23,520 Yes, he is. He's famously good. Yes. Anybody else? 29 00:02:23,600 --> 00:02:26,080 I would argue there's baristas. 30 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:32,520 On the one hand, Jesus, on the other hand coffee snobs. Baristas, yeah. 31 00:02:32,600 --> 00:02:35,000 We're talking hipsters, aren't we? Yeah. Yeah. 32 00:02:35,080 --> 00:02:37,960 So here's the thing, every major religion at some point has 33 00:02:38,040 --> 00:02:41,560 had a debate about whether beards on men are good or evil. 34 00:02:41,640 --> 00:02:45,320 And then there was a guy called bouchard in France in the 1160s 35 00:02:45,400 --> 00:02:49,640 and he complicated things by talking about the inner beard. 36 00:02:49,720 --> 00:02:52,720 Yeah. Any thoughts? You two have got actual beards. 37 00:02:52,800 --> 00:02:56,240 Any thoughts on the inner beard? We're not meant to talk about the inner beard, are we? 38 00:02:56,320 --> 00:02:58,960 Yeah, the whole point of inner beard club is you don't 39 00:02:59,040 --> 00:03:01,040 talk about inner beard club. 40 00:03:01,120 --> 00:03:04,680 Bouchard and his fellow monks, they were all clean shaven, ok? 41 00:03:04,760 --> 00:03:09,560 All the lay people had beards and he inadvertently offended them 42 00:03:09,640 --> 00:03:11,400 by writing a letter in which... 43 00:03:11,480 --> 00:03:15,000 Frankly, it was misinterpreted as an anti-beard comment 44 00:03:15,080 --> 00:03:17,960 and even, some people thought, a threat to burn their beards off. 45 00:03:18,040 --> 00:03:20,400 So he wrote... Talk about overcompensating. 46 00:03:20,480 --> 00:03:25,000 He wrote an entire treatise called in defence of beards, 47 00:03:25,080 --> 00:03:27,960 the apologia De barbis, in which he wrote of the great strength 48 00:03:28,040 --> 00:03:30,120 and wisdom beards denoted. 49 00:03:30,200 --> 00:03:33,360 Now, he risks offending the monks because they don't have beards 50 00:03:33,440 --> 00:03:35,560 and he said, "but they had an inner beard." 51 00:03:35,640 --> 00:03:38,640 What about the inner top of the head? 52 00:03:38,720 --> 00:03:43,120 Yeah, the tonsure. You could do a lattice work... so... Like a tart. 53 00:03:43,200 --> 00:03:48,400 ..Have nuns got inner beards? Well, some nuns had inner beards, some... 54 00:03:48,480 --> 00:03:51,360 Had outer beards. ..Had outer beards, yes. 55 00:03:51,440 --> 00:03:54,800 Why might a woman, a Saint, decide to grow a beard? 56 00:03:54,880 --> 00:03:58,800 For equal pay? A false beard? A fake beard? A disguise? 57 00:03:58,880 --> 00:04:02,160 No, so there's lots of stories in Christian tradition that 58 00:04:02,240 --> 00:04:07,200 women want to ward off men, so for example, st wilgefortis, 59 00:04:07,280 --> 00:04:09,960 her dad was desperate for her to marry a king 60 00:04:10,040 --> 00:04:14,160 and she didn't want to, so she prayed to be made repulsive 61 00:04:14,240 --> 00:04:18,640 and she immediately sprouted a beard, at which point her father... 62 00:04:18,720 --> 00:04:20,240 Opened a circus. 63 00:04:20,320 --> 00:04:22,520 He should have done. Instead, he had her crucified. 64 00:04:22,600 --> 00:04:25,520 That is quite cross, isn't it? That's an overreaction. Yeah. 65 00:04:25,600 --> 00:04:28,880 He could have just grounded her for a bit. There she is, with her full beard. 66 00:04:28,960 --> 00:04:31,120 Did you see that thing with the lions, 67 00:04:31,200 --> 00:04:34,920 where one of the lionesses grew a mane? 68 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:38,840 And she's running the pride. Well, good for her. 69 00:04:38,920 --> 00:04:41,200 She was like, "we don't need a bloke coming in here 70 00:04:41,280 --> 00:04:43,520 and messing things up..." So I'll just grow a beard... 71 00:04:43,600 --> 00:04:46,560 So they thought that she was... A man. 72 00:04:46,640 --> 00:04:52,320 Yeah? There's presumably other stuff on a male... on a female... Yeah, but this was... 73 00:04:52,400 --> 00:04:56,240 Anyway, st wilgefortis and st Paula the bearded are two 74 00:04:56,320 --> 00:04:59,040 of the most famous women who did this in order to get men... 75 00:04:59,120 --> 00:05:03,200 St Paula the bearded... To get men to go away. 76 00:05:03,280 --> 00:05:06,440 My grandmother used to say, "a man with a beard is a man to be feared." 77 00:05:06,520 --> 00:05:08,480 But she also said to never have mayonnaise 78 00:05:08,560 --> 00:05:10,040 and that didn't really pan out. 79 00:05:10,120 --> 00:05:14,400 What did she...? What did she have against mayonnaise? 80 00:05:14,480 --> 00:05:18,000 She told me it was horrible and I was about 30 until I dared to have it. 81 00:05:18,080 --> 00:05:20,280 It's quite nice. I love mayonnaise! Yeah. 82 00:05:20,360 --> 00:05:23,320 No disrespect to my late grandma, but she was way off with that, 83 00:05:23,400 --> 00:05:25,720 so makes you wonder if she was right about beards. 84 00:05:25,800 --> 00:05:28,600 Both your beards, are they like short on purpose? 85 00:05:28,680 --> 00:05:30,000 Is that as far as it goes? 86 00:05:30,080 --> 00:05:33,280 If allowed, and currently I'm not in a relationship, 87 00:05:33,360 --> 00:05:36,160 I grow it as long as I can and I go on picnics 88 00:05:36,240 --> 00:05:39,760 and if the date doesn't go well, I just sit at home, laughing, 89 00:05:39,840 --> 00:05:43,160 picking out bits of lost food and feeding meself. 90 00:05:44,720 --> 00:05:47,320 Wow! I can't think why you're single, darling! 91 00:05:47,400 --> 00:05:50,760 I've never seen you with a beard, Alan. Have you had a beard? No, me neither. 92 00:05:50,840 --> 00:05:52,960 Sandi laughs 93 00:05:53,040 --> 00:05:56,800 a had a bit of growth once for a role, but I found I was 94 00:05:56,880 --> 00:06:00,400 fiddling on with it a bit and never really wanted to go through with it. 95 00:06:00,480 --> 00:06:03,000 When I was in cinderella at the old Vic 96 00:06:03,080 --> 00:06:06,640 and I played the storyteller and it was a man, 97 00:06:06,720 --> 00:06:09,760 so I had a fake moustache, and I so quickly got used to it. 98 00:06:09,840 --> 00:06:14,160 I found myself in the wings on the second night, going, "hm, it's going rather well!" 99 00:06:16,120 --> 00:06:19,560 It's day three when you find yourself tying someone to 100 00:06:19,640 --> 00:06:23,600 railroad tracks and going... ♪ da-da-da... ♪ 101 00:06:23,680 --> 00:06:25,400 so, what do we think about moustaches? 102 00:06:25,480 --> 00:06:28,360 Like them, don't like them? You can do anything with a moustache, I think. 103 00:06:28,440 --> 00:06:30,600 I don't think you can do "anything" with a moustache. 104 00:06:30,680 --> 00:06:33,000 Well, you can do that. Yeah, you can do that. That is true. 105 00:06:33,080 --> 00:06:35,560 Bouchard, the monk who was in such trouble about beards, 106 00:06:35,640 --> 00:06:39,800 argued that it's a monstrous sign and should be avoided. 107 00:06:39,880 --> 00:06:42,280 And in fact, it has caused controversy in the past, 108 00:06:42,360 --> 00:06:46,320 so in April 1907, all waiters in Paris' top restaurants 109 00:06:46,400 --> 00:06:49,960 went on strike over the right to grow moustaches. 110 00:06:50,040 --> 00:06:52,600 And the strike cost the industry 32,000 francs a day, 111 00:06:52,680 --> 00:06:55,800 it was quite a thing, and it led to assaults on clean shaven 112 00:06:55,880 --> 00:06:57,360 waiters who were still working. 113 00:06:57,440 --> 00:06:59,840 Why do you think moustaches were banned? 114 00:06:59,920 --> 00:07:02,240 Hygiene? That's the only thing I can think of. 115 00:07:02,320 --> 00:07:05,080 It'd be a long moustache before it dangled in the soup. I know. 116 00:07:05,160 --> 00:07:08,760 This is around the time you first get modern restaurants in Paris 117 00:07:08,840 --> 00:07:12,120 and they wanted to recreate the experience of dining in an upscale 118 00:07:12,200 --> 00:07:15,880 home and domestic servants were not allowed to have facial hair. 119 00:07:15,960 --> 00:07:19,840 For a long time, I just associated it with geography teachers. 120 00:07:19,920 --> 00:07:22,160 That and corduroy. Yeah. I was... 121 00:07:22,240 --> 00:07:24,320 They're all a bit undernourished as well. 122 00:07:24,400 --> 00:07:27,800 Everyone in the geography department was a bit skinny and bearded 123 00:07:27,880 --> 00:07:31,880 and in corduroy... yeah. ..And they looked like they were on the verge of orienteering 124 00:07:31,960 --> 00:07:34,960 at the drop of a hat. 125 00:07:35,040 --> 00:07:39,640 No, there's a real kind of moustache on a teacher like that 126 00:07:39,720 --> 00:07:42,800 when you walk in and you go, "divorced." 127 00:07:45,000 --> 00:07:46,840 My housemate when I was at university, 128 00:07:46,920 --> 00:07:49,960 he had to shave twice a day. He had just very rapid growth. 129 00:07:50,040 --> 00:07:52,000 I could see if you had extremely rapid growth, 130 00:07:52,080 --> 00:07:55,160 you'd just give in and have a beard. Yeah, just think, "can't be arsed." 131 00:07:55,240 --> 00:07:59,040 What did he shave twice a day? Everything, or just one... Just his face. 132 00:07:59,120 --> 00:08:01,480 Right. But was everything else growing at the same... 133 00:08:01,560 --> 00:08:07,520 I made no enquiries about it with him. There's certain blokes and here 134 00:08:07,600 --> 00:08:13,600 looks like that and then the rest of them looks like an untamed gorilla. 135 00:08:13,680 --> 00:08:16,640 Sometimes you get a surprise hairy back. Someone you wouldn't expect. 136 00:08:16,720 --> 00:08:18,160 Do you know what I do? 137 00:08:18,240 --> 00:08:21,120 I just put loads of double-sided tape against the wall 138 00:08:21,200 --> 00:08:22,840 and throw meself at it. 139 00:08:26,240 --> 00:08:27,840 You go to throw the cat... 140 00:08:31,120 --> 00:08:35,720 You peel her off and there's a cat shape. 141 00:08:35,800 --> 00:08:38,280 The worst thing is, you realise you live alone, 142 00:08:38,360 --> 00:08:41,240 you've got to ring a friend... "Can you come and get me?" 143 00:08:44,040 --> 00:08:45,440 Have a look at this. 144 00:08:45,520 --> 00:08:49,320 This is a very strange idea of a possible method to improve shaving. 145 00:08:49,400 --> 00:08:52,920 It's a satirical print, I have to tell you, from 1749. 146 00:08:53,000 --> 00:08:55,240 A horse-powered mass shaving device. 147 00:08:55,320 --> 00:08:59,720 You put your face in a hole and the razors whirr around the inside. 148 00:08:59,800 --> 00:09:04,680 That's a lot of pressure on one horse, isn't it? I know! 149 00:09:04,760 --> 00:09:08,200 It says it can shave 60 men a minute and also oil, 150 00:09:08,280 --> 00:09:10,320 comb and powder their wigs. 151 00:09:10,400 --> 00:09:14,240 There'd be some fatalities, i'd imagine, if you got it wrong. Yeah. 152 00:09:14,320 --> 00:09:18,440 What a way to die, though! Being shaved by a horse! Yeah. 153 00:09:18,520 --> 00:09:22,440 You've got one bloke who thinks it's a peep show and he loses a nose. 154 00:09:22,520 --> 00:09:27,800 It's like yo! Sushi. It is like yo! Sushi! 155 00:09:27,880 --> 00:09:31,040 That's where they got the idea from. But if they... 156 00:09:31,120 --> 00:09:34,880 So the blades are going to cut one fellow and then cut... 157 00:09:34,960 --> 00:09:37,480 Cos they're going round, it's the same blades... 158 00:09:37,560 --> 00:09:39,120 One cheek at a time, I imagine. 159 00:09:39,200 --> 00:09:44,480 You'd end up with more hair if you were at the end. Off the razor? 160 00:09:44,560 --> 00:09:47,880 Yeah. I don't know, Bridget, if it's possible you're overthinking it. 161 00:09:47,960 --> 00:09:49,760 I... I have got that... 162 00:09:49,840 --> 00:09:53,320 How would you learn how to shave somebody else, do you think? 163 00:09:53,400 --> 00:09:55,360 They used to do it with cutthroat razors, 164 00:09:55,440 --> 00:09:57,480 but you don't want to start on somebody's face. 165 00:09:57,560 --> 00:10:00,800 On a dead person? Wow! That's... Dark. 166 00:10:00,880 --> 00:10:02,760 No. Well, you know your... 167 00:10:02,840 --> 00:10:05,480 It's worrying how quickly you came up with that. Yeah. 168 00:10:05,560 --> 00:10:08,680 Because there's... it's quite risky, shaving somebody. Yes. 169 00:10:08,760 --> 00:10:11,440 If they're already dead... The stakes are low, yeah. 170 00:10:11,520 --> 00:10:14,760 I want to go to barber school, but it gives me nightmares. 171 00:10:14,840 --> 00:10:16,360 I was going to say a balloon. 172 00:10:16,440 --> 00:10:18,920 I know, a balloon or a corpse, whatever. 173 00:10:19,000 --> 00:10:24,640 Look at all those weird dead people. It's a balloon. Do you know what? 174 00:10:24,720 --> 00:10:28,240 They didn't pop along to the morgue and go, "I need to practise me cutthroat razor." 175 00:10:28,320 --> 00:10:30,280 I think it's much better... 176 00:10:30,360 --> 00:10:34,360 I'm sorry if you're lost, but I'm a barber in training. Yes. 177 00:10:34,440 --> 00:10:37,920 "Hi. Would you like to see the body?" "That can't be daddy. 178 00:10:38,000 --> 00:10:39,440 "He had a massive beard." 179 00:10:39,520 --> 00:10:42,360 It would be less frightening cos those balloons, 180 00:10:42,440 --> 00:10:44,040 they pop very easily. 181 00:10:44,120 --> 00:10:48,240 I would have more nightmares popping a balloon with a weird face 182 00:10:48,320 --> 00:10:51,120 drawn on it... you don't like popping balloons, do you? 183 00:10:51,200 --> 00:10:52,960 That's your go-to answer on anything. 184 00:10:53,040 --> 00:10:58,040 What's the best way to lean chiropody? On a dead person! Dead body! 185 00:10:59,520 --> 00:11:02,800 Paula the bearded grew facial hair to save her soul, 186 00:11:02,880 --> 00:11:06,360 but what's the best way to weigh arseholes? 187 00:11:06,440 --> 00:11:08,000 No, sorry, I'll say it again - 188 00:11:08,080 --> 00:11:10,920 what's the best way to weigh our souls? 189 00:11:11,000 --> 00:11:13,720 Someone did do an experiment like this. They did, yeah. 190 00:11:13,800 --> 00:11:16,800 The scientists in the old days weighed people just before 191 00:11:16,880 --> 00:11:20,920 and just after they died. 21... 21 grams. Yeah. Yes. 192 00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:24,640 It's an interesting question. Does the human soul have substance? Does it have mass? 193 00:11:24,720 --> 00:11:26,800 So there was a doctor in Massachusetts called 194 00:11:26,880 --> 00:11:32,880 dr Duncan macdougall in 1901 and he decided to fit a bed with weighing scales 195 00:11:32,960 --> 00:11:36,640 and he got six dying patients to lie in it in their final moments 196 00:11:36,720 --> 00:11:39,880 and then he recorded their exact weight just before they died 197 00:11:39,960 --> 00:11:41,240 and then just afterwards. 198 00:11:41,320 --> 00:11:44,880 What I like about this is first of all he persuaded six dying... six? Six, yeah. 199 00:11:44,960 --> 00:11:48,880 He specifically chose people who had got conditions 200 00:11:48,960 --> 00:11:52,560 caused by physical exhaustion, so things like tb, for example, because 201 00:11:52,640 --> 00:11:55,400 he wanted them to remain still, so he could get good measurements. 202 00:11:55,480 --> 00:11:57,680 It wasn't a flawless experiment, I have to say. 203 00:11:57,760 --> 00:12:00,360 One patient was thoughtless enough to expire 204 00:12:00,440 --> 00:12:02,160 while he was calibrating the scales. 205 00:12:02,240 --> 00:12:04,640 So he has to stand them on the scales? No, no. 206 00:12:04,720 --> 00:12:05,960 The bed is on scales. 207 00:12:06,040 --> 00:12:08,600 This is quite an elaborate machine. Yeah. 208 00:12:08,680 --> 00:12:12,200 He measured on subject as losing 21.3 grams when he died 209 00:12:12,280 --> 00:12:14,880 and he concluded that must be the weight of the soul 210 00:12:14,960 --> 00:12:17,240 and for a very long time, that is what people thought. 211 00:12:17,320 --> 00:12:19,480 People thought the soul weighed about 21 grams. 212 00:12:19,560 --> 00:12:21,560 So they carried on making more experiments cos 213 00:12:21,640 --> 00:12:25,440 he wanted to make sure, so he got 15 dying dogs... 214 00:12:25,520 --> 00:12:28,320 I mean, I don't know where you get them from. 215 00:12:28,400 --> 00:12:30,000 Is your dog dying? Can I weigh it? 216 00:12:30,080 --> 00:12:33,920 Well, he believed that dogs didn't have souls and sure enough, 217 00:12:34,000 --> 00:12:36,080 none of them lost any weight when they died. 218 00:12:36,160 --> 00:12:40,280 Didn't lose the 21 grams. I don't know, what does 21 grams weigh like? 219 00:12:42,480 --> 00:12:45,200 I know if you're making a macaroni cheese for the family, 220 00:12:45,280 --> 00:12:47,120 you need 40 grams of flour. 221 00:12:47,200 --> 00:12:49,760 Imagine the idea that your soul weighs half as much as you 222 00:12:49,840 --> 00:12:52,080 need of flour to make a macaroni cheese. 223 00:12:52,160 --> 00:12:53,440 It doesn't seem like a lot. 224 00:12:53,520 --> 00:12:56,960 Well, the fact is two of his six subjects didn't give any measurements at all, 225 00:12:57,040 --> 00:13:00,640 but also, at the time, there was a physician called Augustus p Clarke 226 00:13:00,720 --> 00:13:03,800 and he noted that there's often a sudden rise in body temperature 227 00:13:03,880 --> 00:13:07,000 when people die because the lungs stop cooling the blood 228 00:13:07,080 --> 00:13:09,360 and there's a subsequent rise in sweating 229 00:13:09,440 --> 00:13:13,120 and that would account for the 21 grams. That makes more sense! 230 00:13:13,200 --> 00:13:16,760 But he's not the very first person, so in the 13th century, the holy 231 00:13:16,840 --> 00:13:19,720 Roman emperor, Frederick ii, took a condemned man 232 00:13:19,800 --> 00:13:24,480 and he sealed him in a barrel and he waited for him to die... sorry! 233 00:13:24,560 --> 00:13:26,160 The reasoning that when he did, 234 00:13:26,240 --> 00:13:28,800 his soul wouldn't be able to get out of the barrel. 235 00:13:28,880 --> 00:13:31,240 Right? And then he could then open the barrel up 236 00:13:31,320 --> 00:13:33,760 and he'd see the soul, if the theory was true. 237 00:13:33,840 --> 00:13:36,840 What do you think he found? Had the man gone? 238 00:13:36,920 --> 00:13:38,880 Just... a trick. 239 00:13:38,960 --> 00:13:41,320 He trapped a magician. 240 00:13:41,400 --> 00:13:44,880 He just found a dead guy. Yeah. Yeah. There is a thing 241 00:13:44,960 --> 00:13:48,200 though about the soul leaving the body in Latin America. 242 00:13:48,280 --> 00:13:51,280 Has anybody ever heard of susto, it's Spanish for fright. 243 00:13:51,360 --> 00:13:54,240 It's a sort of folk illness and sufferers believe 244 00:13:54,320 --> 00:13:56,720 that their soul leaves the body while they're still alive. 245 00:13:56,800 --> 00:13:59,400 So it's the belief that you've had something so terrible happen 246 00:13:59,480 --> 00:14:02,720 to you that your soul has actually briefly departed from your body. 247 00:14:02,800 --> 00:14:06,080 I've had that when I've been offered gym membership. 248 00:14:10,320 --> 00:14:12,440 They have a tradition in Denmark, 249 00:14:12,520 --> 00:14:14,880 in other Scandinavian countries as well, which is 250 00:14:14,960 --> 00:14:17,960 that when somebody dies, you open the window to allow... 251 00:14:18,040 --> 00:14:20,040 Yes... The soul to depart. 252 00:14:20,120 --> 00:14:23,040 Let them go. And cover the mirrors. Oh! 253 00:14:23,120 --> 00:14:26,400 Always cover the mirrors to prevent the soul from becoming trapped inside. 254 00:14:26,480 --> 00:14:31,760 I remember when my hamster died, that pivotal first pet dying moment, and my mum tried to cheer me up, 255 00:14:31,840 --> 00:14:35,480 saying, "I expect that pets can go to heaven, wouldn't you, Chris?" 256 00:14:35,560 --> 00:14:40,480 To my dad. And my dad said, "I wouldn't have thought so." And... 257 00:14:41,960 --> 00:14:44,960 He wasn't trying to upset me, he was a science teacher 258 00:14:45,040 --> 00:14:48,000 and he couldn't really see a way that could happen. 259 00:14:48,080 --> 00:14:53,560 Right, why should you never envy sloth lust? 260 00:14:53,640 --> 00:14:57,440 Oh, look at his little face! Are these sins, or...? Well... 261 00:14:57,520 --> 00:14:59,320 So it depends which way we're going. 262 00:14:59,400 --> 00:15:02,920 Let's talk about sex with sloths first, shall we? Yes, please. 263 00:15:03,000 --> 00:15:04,920 It'd be weird if we didn't talk about that. 264 00:15:05,000 --> 00:15:07,040 I'm first in the queue for that one. 265 00:15:07,120 --> 00:15:10,360 Isn't he the...? She? I don't know. 266 00:15:10,440 --> 00:15:14,600 There's a look on that face, isn't there? I mean... ready! 267 00:15:14,680 --> 00:15:16,920 That come to bed nose. 268 00:15:17,000 --> 00:15:22,800 I would not be kicking that out. Of whatever tree you were hanging in. 269 00:15:22,880 --> 00:15:26,680 That is definitely a come hither look, isn't it? Really. 270 00:15:26,760 --> 00:15:28,560 So, sloth sex begins with the female 271 00:15:28,640 --> 00:15:31,920 screaming at the top of her lungs that she's available. Oh! Wah! 272 00:15:32,000 --> 00:15:35,840 And then the males... Four years later... yeah. 273 00:15:35,920 --> 00:15:38,000 Slowly, the man comes. Did you hear that? 274 00:15:40,760 --> 00:15:43,760 Before copulation takes place, he comes slowly towards her, then 275 00:15:43,840 --> 00:15:48,040 it lasts as little as five seconds and that includes the foreplay. 276 00:15:48,120 --> 00:15:51,760 Well, I think she's probably sorted herself out before he gets 277 00:15:51,840 --> 00:15:53,880 there, hasn't she? Do you reckon? 278 00:15:53,960 --> 00:15:59,360 Well... and then... What a lovely turn of phrase. I've been screaming... yeah. 279 00:15:59,440 --> 00:16:01,960 Sorted myself out before you arrived. 280 00:16:02,040 --> 00:16:05,360 Yes, you were too slow, I'm afraid. I've had to sort myself out. 281 00:16:07,760 --> 00:16:11,680 Stopped at the pub again? Up to half the females in the area can have children 282 00:16:11,760 --> 00:16:15,120 from a single male because they just think, "he's here, this one's here. 283 00:16:15,200 --> 00:16:18,080 "I can't wait for another one." He's on the branch. 284 00:16:18,160 --> 00:16:21,360 "He's taking too long." As they say in sloth world. 285 00:16:21,440 --> 00:16:24,760 Was he on the branch? He was. I'll be ready in a minute. 286 00:16:24,840 --> 00:16:28,520 Just fix me wig. Yeah. Really reminds me of somebody and I can't... 287 00:16:28,600 --> 00:16:32,120 It's ozzy Osbourne, it looks just like ozzy Osbourne. It does. 288 00:16:34,160 --> 00:16:38,000 Do you say "sloth" or "sloath"? Both are correct. I say "sloth". 289 00:16:38,080 --> 00:16:41,280 I say "sloath". Yeah, I say "sloath" as well. I don't know... 290 00:16:41,360 --> 00:16:44,320 Anyway, so the sloth itself was named after the sin. 291 00:16:44,400 --> 00:16:47,160 You see them in the trees, obviously, 292 00:16:47,240 --> 00:16:50,080 and they go along the telephone wires, 293 00:16:50,160 --> 00:16:53,040 kind of hanging upside down, quite impressive, you know, the sort 294 00:16:53,120 --> 00:16:55,840 of all-action, hanging upside down, go from tree to tree like that. 295 00:16:55,920 --> 00:16:58,240 You want to be careful though, if they're above your head 296 00:16:58,320 --> 00:17:02,240 because a sloth can poo one-third of its body weight in a single go. 297 00:17:02,320 --> 00:17:04,360 Oh, that's so impressive! 298 00:17:04,440 --> 00:17:06,840 That is amazing! That is weight loss right there! 299 00:17:06,920 --> 00:17:10,800 That's 25 to 30 kilos, for me. You know... woo-hoo! 300 00:17:14,240 --> 00:17:17,480 If you look at that photograph, the thing that's intriguing me 301 00:17:17,560 --> 00:17:21,440 is that eye there looks like I'm in the mood for love, 302 00:17:21,520 --> 00:17:25,120 and then that one looks like - did I leave the grill on? 303 00:17:25,200 --> 00:17:26,760 It does! 304 00:17:31,600 --> 00:17:32,960 It'd be a very different world 305 00:17:33,040 --> 00:17:36,920 if animals could use appliances like that, wouldn't it? That'd be great. 306 00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:40,000 If they just picked up appliances from dumps and things, 307 00:17:40,080 --> 00:17:43,640 running cables up to trees and rigging up walkmans and stuff. 308 00:17:43,720 --> 00:17:46,040 Take forever though, if you asked a sloth to do it. 309 00:17:46,120 --> 00:17:49,040 Well, they'd burn their shirts, ironing, wouldn't they? 310 00:17:51,200 --> 00:17:54,760 So let's have a quick look at the seven deadly sins. 311 00:17:54,840 --> 00:17:58,640 There's pride and wrath and envy, lust, gluttony, 312 00:17:58,720 --> 00:18:00,920 avarice or greed, and sloth. 313 00:18:01,000 --> 00:18:02,920 Are they in order? No, not particularly. 314 00:18:03,000 --> 00:18:04,840 They can put them up for you. There you go. 315 00:18:04,920 --> 00:18:06,480 Pride, wrath, lust... 316 00:18:06,560 --> 00:18:09,320 So which one is the woman brushing... combing her hair, then? 317 00:18:09,400 --> 00:18:11,320 Lust. She's getting ready for... 318 00:18:11,400 --> 00:18:14,560 Yeah, she wants sex so much that she's literally combing her hair. 319 00:18:14,640 --> 00:18:16,000 Yeah. What, with herself? 320 00:18:17,640 --> 00:18:22,400 What she's doing there, Bridget, she's sorting herself out. Yeah. 321 00:18:22,480 --> 00:18:25,840 Going to sort herself out. For herself. Yeah. 322 00:18:25,920 --> 00:18:28,400 The original Greek list had eight sins, including acedia, 323 00:18:28,480 --> 00:18:31,240 so that was like melancholy, listlessness, that kind of thing. 324 00:18:31,320 --> 00:18:34,880 Has saying "I'm going to love you and leave you" ever been one of the deadly sins? 325 00:18:34,960 --> 00:18:37,600 It should be, really. Yeah. Or "it's not you, it's me". 326 00:18:37,680 --> 00:18:40,000 Yeah, or having a mug that says "coffee o'clock". 327 00:18:40,080 --> 00:18:42,440 There's a lot that's missed out by this. 328 00:18:42,520 --> 00:18:46,720 Tristitia is despondency as well, on the first Christian list. 329 00:18:46,800 --> 00:18:50,120 Why did they get rid of the eighth one? They kind of folded them all in together. 330 00:18:50,200 --> 00:18:53,440 Pope Gregory I decided to fold lots of things in together. 331 00:18:53,520 --> 00:18:56,240 Pope pourri was the... Pope Gregory I. 332 00:18:56,320 --> 00:19:02,520 Pope pourri. I cannot believe there isn't a pope called pope pourri. 333 00:19:02,600 --> 00:19:06,400 The most fragrant pope of them all. There should be! Yeah. 334 00:19:06,480 --> 00:19:10,280 But we have now some breaking sin news. 335 00:19:10,360 --> 00:19:13,320 News-style jingle 336 00:19:15,400 --> 00:19:18,600 pope is about to add a new sin to the catechism. 337 00:19:18,680 --> 00:19:19,800 Oh! This is true. 338 00:19:19,880 --> 00:19:22,880 So that's the text listing the beliefs of the catholic church. 339 00:19:22,960 --> 00:19:25,080 Anybody know what the new sin is going to be? 340 00:19:25,160 --> 00:19:28,800 Is it to do with the modern world? Yeah. Uh-oh, the modern world. 341 00:19:28,880 --> 00:19:31,760 Uh-oh. Is it something to do with social media? 342 00:19:31,840 --> 00:19:35,560 No, it's ecological sin. Oh! Thou shalt not litter. 343 00:19:35,640 --> 00:19:39,560 Pretty much, yeah. Pretty much. It's going to cover everything from dropping litter to 344 00:19:39,640 --> 00:19:42,000 permanently destroying parts of the environment. 345 00:19:42,080 --> 00:19:44,120 That's going to be a new sin. Wow! 346 00:19:44,200 --> 00:19:48,160 I'd have gone with thou shalt not road rage. Yeah. 347 00:19:48,240 --> 00:19:50,720 That's just annoying, isn't it? Just don't like road rage. 348 00:19:50,800 --> 00:19:53,400 It's become part of our daily existence and it shouldn't. 349 00:19:53,480 --> 00:19:55,640 And I shouldn't follow them back to their houses 350 00:19:55,720 --> 00:19:57,200 and burn their garages down. 351 00:20:03,440 --> 00:20:06,240 Maybe the pope will get on to that. Yeah, that'll be the next thing. 352 00:20:06,320 --> 00:20:09,840 Why did this guy get so many column inches? 353 00:20:09,920 --> 00:20:14,480 I know this. Yes, I'm willing to wait. Saint blokes... monks... 354 00:20:14,560 --> 00:20:18,760 Saint blokes? ..Stood upon pillars. Stylites? Yes! That's exactly... 355 00:20:18,840 --> 00:20:22,000 They're called stylites. People who deliberately live like that? 356 00:20:22,080 --> 00:20:25,160 Yes, darling. Absolutely. People who deliberately lived like that. 357 00:20:25,240 --> 00:20:26,680 The David blaines of their time. 358 00:20:26,760 --> 00:20:29,840 Well, so, we're talking about a monk called simeon. 359 00:20:29,920 --> 00:20:32,720 He could suffer more than anybody else. 360 00:20:32,800 --> 00:20:35,560 We're in Syria, we're near what is aleppo now. 361 00:20:35,640 --> 00:20:38,440 423 ad and he decided, simeon, that he 362 00:20:38,520 --> 00:20:41,400 wanted to live an incredibly simple life, so he was going to 363 00:20:41,480 --> 00:20:45,160 decide to live on top of a pillar, a 60ft high pillar, 2ft square, ok? 364 00:20:45,240 --> 00:20:47,280 He built up to this. You don't do this... 365 00:20:47,360 --> 00:20:51,160 It's not the first thing you decide. First, he entered into a monastery 366 00:20:51,240 --> 00:20:53,440 and embarked on a lifetime of austerity. 367 00:20:53,520 --> 00:20:56,280 Even the other monks thought it was a bit too extreme. 368 00:20:56,360 --> 00:20:58,240 He dug a waist-deep hole in the garden 369 00:20:58,320 --> 00:21:02,200 and stayed in that for two years. The monks threw him out. 370 00:21:02,280 --> 00:21:05,240 He moved into an empty cistern for a while. 371 00:21:05,320 --> 00:21:08,680 And then, aged 20, he had himself chained 372 00:21:08,760 --> 00:21:11,280 into a two-square-yard roofless sort of enclosure. 373 00:21:11,360 --> 00:21:13,080 £1,000 a week in London. Yes. 374 00:21:13,160 --> 00:21:16,160 Eventually, he climbed a column, 60ft high, 375 00:21:16,240 --> 00:21:19,120 and lived there and he became known as simeon stylite, 376 00:21:19,200 --> 00:21:22,240 or the stylite, and he stayed there for 40 years. 377 00:21:22,320 --> 00:21:26,560 And unfortunately, he died the year before top trumps was invented. 378 00:21:29,000 --> 00:21:31,880 He sounds quite mad. Quite bonkers, darling. 379 00:21:31,960 --> 00:21:34,680 He was fed with parcels of flatbread and goat's milk. 380 00:21:34,760 --> 00:21:37,320 We don't really know how, either he lowered a bucket down or 381 00:21:37,400 --> 00:21:39,240 small boys would climb up and give it to him. 382 00:21:39,320 --> 00:21:41,656 The thing is, it had the opposite effect of what he'd intended. 383 00:21:41,680 --> 00:21:44,920 He was trying to get away from the world... away from people. ..And everybody went, 384 00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:49,120 "oh, I want to go and see the crazy guy who lives on top of a pillar!" Huge crowds used to come 385 00:21:49,200 --> 00:21:51,760 and then he would either stand with his arms extended like that, 386 00:21:51,840 --> 00:21:55,080 or he would repeatedly touch his toes with his forehead. 387 00:21:55,160 --> 00:21:56,880 As many as sort of 1,200 times, 388 00:21:56,960 --> 00:21:59,680 while the audience shouted out the count from down below. 389 00:21:59,760 --> 00:22:02,440 And then he would defecate a third of his body weight. 390 00:22:03,920 --> 00:22:05,080 I'm an avid collector. 391 00:22:05,160 --> 00:22:07,240 I'd turn up and go, "where did you get the column?" 392 00:22:07,320 --> 00:22:10,040 Yeah, well, it's an interesting thing about the column. 393 00:22:10,120 --> 00:22:12,840 This is 423 ad when he decides to... 394 00:22:12,920 --> 00:22:15,080 When do you think the column was destroyed? 395 00:22:15,160 --> 00:22:18,040 How long do you think it survived for? If it's near aleppo, 396 00:22:18,120 --> 00:22:20,600 it makes me think it was in one of those recent antiquity... 397 00:22:20,680 --> 00:22:25,720 2016, it was destroyed by a missile. Oh! I know! Really? Wow! 398 00:22:25,800 --> 00:22:28,320 Yeah, it stayed there for all that time. Oh! 399 00:22:28,400 --> 00:22:31,120 And he then had lots of imitators, called stylites, 400 00:22:31,200 --> 00:22:33,640 so literally pillar-dweller in Greek. 401 00:22:33,720 --> 00:22:36,640 There was a guy called st simeon stylite the younger. 402 00:22:36,720 --> 00:22:39,400 He spent 69 of his 76 years up a pillar. 403 00:22:39,480 --> 00:22:41,880 So that means he had to decide to do that when he was seven. 404 00:22:41,960 --> 00:22:44,000 He'd come down and someone would say, 405 00:22:44,080 --> 00:22:47,760 "have you ever been to the cinema?" And he'd be like, "oh, shit." Aw, what a shame! 406 00:22:47,840 --> 00:22:49,480 But if you're chasing humility, 407 00:22:49,560 --> 00:22:53,080 he's actually built just a very tall pulpit. 408 00:22:53,160 --> 00:22:56,720 He gave sermons from up there. The emperor asked his advice on things. 409 00:22:56,800 --> 00:22:58,600 He was hardly ever left alone. 410 00:22:58,680 --> 00:23:01,400 I've never felt closer to god. Ah... oh! 411 00:23:04,840 --> 00:23:08,720 I think it became like a thing in america as well. 412 00:23:08,800 --> 00:23:11,760 Well, there is a sort of spiritual descendent of it, which is 413 00:23:11,840 --> 00:23:14,120 the flagpole sitting craze. In New York. 414 00:23:14,200 --> 00:23:18,400 In the United States, so there was a guy called Alvin shipwreck Kelly... 415 00:23:18,480 --> 00:23:23,440 Yes, that Irish guy! Irish guy. This is him, sitting on top of a pole. 416 00:23:23,520 --> 00:23:26,160 It was a big craze in the 1920s and '30s 417 00:23:26,240 --> 00:23:30,360 and you see how long you could stay on top of a public flagpole. 418 00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:32,280 He was called Alvin shipwreck Kelly 419 00:23:32,360 --> 00:23:35,120 because he claimed to have been in 62 shipwrecks in his life. 420 00:23:35,200 --> 00:23:37,600 But have a look at this next picture. 421 00:23:37,680 --> 00:23:40,520 He didn't just go and sit on a flagpole. 422 00:23:40,600 --> 00:23:45,200 This is him on the chanin building, opposite the empire state building... oh, that makes me sick. 423 00:23:45,280 --> 00:23:48,480 Oh my... ..Having doughnuts and coffee. 424 00:23:48,560 --> 00:23:51,160 That's really extreme. How long did he do that for? 425 00:23:51,240 --> 00:23:53,720 Well, on this particular occasion, I don't know exactly, 426 00:23:53,800 --> 00:23:58,440 but he spent over two decades doing this, 20,613 hours in total, 427 00:23:58,520 --> 00:24:00,400 he sat on top of a flagpole. 428 00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:04,080 The thing we do know, which is very sweet, he met his wife, Frances... 429 00:24:04,160 --> 00:24:06,000 Whilst falling from a pole. 430 00:24:06,080 --> 00:24:09,440 She was an elevator operator, so clearly, didn't mind going up, 431 00:24:09,520 --> 00:24:13,640 and she went up the pole to shake his hand and they fell in love 432 00:24:13,720 --> 00:24:16,480 and he married her because she went up to say hello. 433 00:24:16,560 --> 00:24:18,320 And then she plummeted to her death. 434 00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:20,160 It is an extraordinary picture, isn't it? 435 00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:24,560 The thing you have to think about the photograph is someone was higher up than him. 436 00:24:24,640 --> 00:24:27,960 Right, what's transparent, consistently thick, 437 00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:31,320 a bit of a pain and comes from st helens? 438 00:24:31,400 --> 00:24:32,920 Hello, mate. 439 00:24:33,000 --> 00:24:37,280 Is it a piece of glass? It is glass, absolutely. 440 00:24:37,360 --> 00:24:40,680 It is the second best thing to ever come out of st helens 441 00:24:40,760 --> 00:24:45,520 after our very own Johnny. And we invented... two things we invented. 442 00:24:45,600 --> 00:24:47,680 Go on, then. Float glass. Yeah. 443 00:24:47,760 --> 00:24:49,920 Which was floating the glass on hot tin, 444 00:24:50,000 --> 00:24:53,240 so you didn't have to Polish the other side of the glass. 445 00:24:53,320 --> 00:24:56,800 And we gave the world porn, because we came up with fibre optics. 446 00:24:56,880 --> 00:24:59,040 You're absolutely right about float glass. 447 00:24:59,120 --> 00:25:03,040 It used to be very expensive to make perfectly flat glass and this guy, 448 00:25:03,120 --> 00:25:05,520 Alastair pilkington, in the 1950s, he realised 449 00:25:05,600 --> 00:25:09,520 if you pour molten glass onto molten tin, then it lies completely 450 00:25:09,600 --> 00:25:12,800 flat and it cools and hardens and it made it so much cheaper. 451 00:25:12,880 --> 00:25:17,360 Other heroes of st helens, the first photographs clearly showing 452 00:25:17,440 --> 00:25:20,800 a human face were taken by a son of st helens. Really? Mm. 453 00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:23,360 John William draper and his sister Dorothy. 454 00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:26,520 They worked out new ways of making what we call daguerreotypes, 455 00:25:26,600 --> 00:25:30,600 they put flour on women's faces to try and get more contrast before taking the shot. 456 00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:34,440 He was also the very first person to take a picture of the moon. 457 00:25:34,520 --> 00:25:38,360 I never knew this! Did you know that the largest bug hotel in the world is 458 00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:40,120 in your former school? 459 00:25:40,200 --> 00:25:43,480 They have a bug hotel more than 80 cubic metres in size. 460 00:25:43,560 --> 00:25:45,280 It's the largest one in the world. 461 00:25:45,360 --> 00:25:48,920 Oh, wow! You must be proud. I've always been proud. 462 00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:53,320 I'm just dead chuffed with this! What's the bug hotel? A bug hotel? 463 00:25:53,400 --> 00:25:55,840 You build them and it's where bugs hide in winter. 464 00:25:55,920 --> 00:25:58,400 Yes, if you have any outdoor space of any kind, it's a 465 00:25:58,480 --> 00:26:00,640 really good idea to try and create a bug hotel. 466 00:26:00,720 --> 00:26:02,800 Can you charge them, like a normal hotel? Yes. 467 00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:05,360 It depends on what services you're offering. 468 00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:08,720 If you turn down the beds at night, that kind of thing, that kind of service. 469 00:26:08,800 --> 00:26:10,480 A chocolate on the pillow. 470 00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:14,560 I'm just dead happy we're talking about st helens on telly! 471 00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:16,320 How lovely! Thank you! 472 00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:21,040 No, it's a pleasure. It is. We were innovators back in the day. 473 00:26:21,120 --> 00:26:24,600 And then Thatcher! 474 00:26:24,680 --> 00:26:29,320 Bloody hell! If you're as close to him as I am, that... 475 00:26:29,400 --> 00:26:33,400 That was quite frightening. Sorry, sorry. One answer to everything. 476 00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:37,040 That would have come out a different question and it wouldn't have been apt. 477 00:26:37,120 --> 00:26:39,160 I thought he was going to deck me for a second. 478 00:26:39,240 --> 00:26:41,640 I'm glad you're all right now. But is there a theatre there? 479 00:26:41,720 --> 00:26:46,680 Yeah, theatre royal and the citadel, where I cut me teeth, basically. 480 00:26:46,760 --> 00:26:50,880 I went and I heckled. And they asked me to come back and compere. 481 00:26:50,960 --> 00:26:54,680 We had a verbal agreement, they couldn't afford to pay me, 482 00:26:54,760 --> 00:26:58,880 but me drinks were free and the second gig, they're going, 483 00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:00,800 "we'll give you 30 quid." 484 00:27:03,040 --> 00:27:07,200 And you have to buy your own drinks! True. You can buy your own drink! 485 00:27:07,280 --> 00:27:11,200 My first gigs at the comedy store, I was paid in beer. We all got... 486 00:27:11,280 --> 00:27:14,960 Yeah, I know, but I turned up at 6am. Ah! 487 00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:19,320 Fair enough. No, it was great. It was great. I love me home town. 488 00:27:19,400 --> 00:27:24,520 You've really... ooh! Oh, I'm so... I can't... I'm lost for words. 489 00:27:24,600 --> 00:27:31,040 It's lovely. Anyway, moving on, why does nobody respect the Spanish inquisition? 490 00:27:31,120 --> 00:27:34,560 The Spanish inquisition, I didn't realise this, 491 00:27:34,640 --> 00:27:37,040 went on for about 350 years. 492 00:27:37,120 --> 00:27:39,120 Yeah, it went on for an extremely long time. 493 00:27:39,200 --> 00:27:41,920 The thing about it is that it wasn't anywhere near as bad as 494 00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:46,160 they had suggested. It's kind of a low level... yeah... Polite inquiry. 495 00:27:46,240 --> 00:27:51,760 Well, there are lots of... More like a pub quiz, really. Yeah! 496 00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:58,480 Optional form filling. Multiple choice. 497 00:27:58,560 --> 00:28:01,720 Yeah, it was exaggerated. The catholic church has looked into it and said, 498 00:28:01,800 --> 00:28:04,400 "we're really happy to say sorry for all the things we've done," 499 00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:07,000 and there's a few, you know, "but we didn't do this." 500 00:28:07,080 --> 00:28:09,760 Torture was very much a last resort. They had rules. 501 00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:12,680 You could only do 15 minutes and there had to be a doctor there and 502 00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:15,840 you couldn't give anybody permanent injury and you couldn't draw blood. 503 00:28:15,920 --> 00:28:19,920 Like Joe wicks' thing really. Yes, it is like a workout, isn't it? 504 00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:23,520 Yeah. If you're going to waterboard them, use evian. 505 00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:27,680 Ask if they want sparkling, yeah. 506 00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:32,520 Most sentences were prayers and fasts and lots of punishments were 507 00:28:32,600 --> 00:28:35,280 commuted - the life sentence, which was known as perpetual 508 00:28:35,360 --> 00:28:37,840 imprisonment, lasted for three years. 509 00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:40,920 The only people they executed really were what they called relapsers, 510 00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:43,880 people who has said I'm sorry and gone off and done it again. 511 00:28:43,960 --> 00:28:46,960 Secular prisoners sometimes blasphemed in prison in order 512 00:28:47,040 --> 00:28:49,440 to get themselves transferred to an inquisition prison 513 00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:51,760 because they thought they'd get a fairer trial. Oh! 514 00:28:51,840 --> 00:28:54,600 Have you got any examples of what any of them said? 515 00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:58,960 "Ooh, blast!" "He's rubbish, that god!" "Ooh, I say!" 516 00:28:59,040 --> 00:29:02,240 "Ruddy catholics!" Yes. They were rather meticulous. 517 00:29:02,320 --> 00:29:05,280 There was an inquisitor called Salazar frias and he did 518 00:29:05,360 --> 00:29:07,880 a meticulous investigation of the basque witch panic... 519 00:29:07,960 --> 00:29:12,280 Is that Jude law? It does look like Jude law, doesn't it? 520 00:29:13,880 --> 00:29:17,000 But he did a meticulous investigation of the basque witch 521 00:29:17,080 --> 00:29:20,280 thing and determined in the end it was all made up by the accusers. 522 00:29:20,360 --> 00:29:24,640 And the actual conviction rate was incredibly low. It was about 6%, on average. 523 00:29:24,720 --> 00:29:30,760 And from 1560 to 1700, they put 3,687 people on trial 524 00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:33,560 for witchcraft and only 101 were found guilty. 525 00:29:33,640 --> 00:29:37,080 It just is not quite the thing that maybe we all thought it was. 526 00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:39,400 Almost as if there weren't that many witches. I know! 527 00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:43,080 That's the weird thing, isn't it, Mark? Yes. Hm... 528 00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:45,720 And being unpopular was very handy 529 00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:48,960 because inquisitors realised that lots of people were using the 530 00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:51,640 inquisition as a way to settle local scores 531 00:29:51,720 --> 00:29:53,456 and all you pretty much had to do if you went 532 00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:55,840 up on a charge of something was to say, "nobody likes me." 533 00:29:55,920 --> 00:29:58,440 The accused were allowed to provide a list of anybody who had 534 00:29:58,520 --> 00:29:59,960 a grudge against them. 535 00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:02,920 One judge just produced a list of people that he had sentenced. 536 00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:04,640 He said, "all these people hate me. 537 00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:07,920 "It's not possible that I wouldn't be falsely accused." 538 00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:09,480 That was the end of that. 539 00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:12,840 Now, who was younger than James the younger? 540 00:30:12,920 --> 00:30:15,000 James the even younger. 541 00:30:15,080 --> 00:30:17,240 Klaxon 542 00:30:19,240 --> 00:30:22,480 James the tiny little... yeah. 543 00:30:22,560 --> 00:30:24,680 Who was James the younger? A disciple, is it? 544 00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:28,440 He's a disciple, yes. Also known as st James the less, 545 00:30:28,520 --> 00:30:30,920 which is not as good, is it? Imagine being called "the less"! 546 00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:32,960 This is him sitting... Who's this on the end? 547 00:30:33,040 --> 00:30:37,800 Is that Simon with his hand going like... oh! "Shut up, James!" Shush! 548 00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:42,200 "Listen, I'm not less, I'm very much the same size as the other James." 549 00:30:42,280 --> 00:30:45,040 "Don't you ever talk about anything else?" 550 00:30:45,120 --> 00:30:47,320 "Simon, look at me. Look at me!" 551 00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:49,840 "There's something weird on your left." 552 00:30:49,920 --> 00:30:52,440 Don't look now... 553 00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:56,200 So st James the younger, some people think he's 554 00:30:56,280 --> 00:30:58,840 identified as one of Jesus' brothers and... 555 00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:00,960 I love a relic, ok? 556 00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:05,920 And for more than 1,500 years, the Saint apostoli church in Rome 557 00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:09,880 had had fragments of a thigh bone that belonged to James the younger. 558 00:31:09,960 --> 00:31:12,360 I mean, who wouldn't want to go and see that, right? 559 00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:13,480 Fantastic! 560 00:31:13,560 --> 00:31:15,840 And then, 2020, it was radiocarbon dated 561 00:31:15,920 --> 00:31:18,200 by the university of southern Denmark. 562 00:31:18,280 --> 00:31:19,640 Those spoilsports. Yep. 563 00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:23,600 And they showed the bone belonged to the body of someone born 564 00:31:23,680 --> 00:31:29,280 between 214 and 340ad. So, the body, the thigh bone 565 00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:31,720 was younger than James the younger. 566 00:31:31,800 --> 00:31:34,760 James the younger shouldn't be confused with James the great. 567 00:31:34,840 --> 00:31:37,680 See, there was James the less and James the great. Right. 568 00:31:37,760 --> 00:31:40,256 Both apostles. There must have been a rivalry between those guys. 569 00:31:40,280 --> 00:31:42,920 They must not have got on, I would have thought. 570 00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:46,120 What I like about James the great, is he was the son of zebedee. 571 00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:51,560 Anyway, the hand of James was the sort of star relic at reading Abbey, 572 00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:55,760 founded in 1121 by Henry I, and they also had fragments 573 00:31:55,840 --> 00:31:58,400 of the true cross, which is... Of course. Yeah. 574 00:31:58,480 --> 00:31:59,880 One of Christ's sandals. 575 00:31:59,960 --> 00:32:03,360 Oh! James' hand disappeared at the dissolution 576 00:32:03,440 --> 00:32:06,680 of the monasteries that Henry viii instituted, 577 00:32:06,760 --> 00:32:08,400 and then it was rediscovered, well, 578 00:32:08,480 --> 00:32:12,480 rather, a left hand was rediscovered in 1786. 579 00:32:12,560 --> 00:32:16,800 And now it is in the Roman catholic church in Marlow in buckinghamshire, 580 00:32:16,880 --> 00:32:19,096 but it's also been carbon dated and I'm sorry to tell you 581 00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:22,600 it's about 900 years off. Ah. Hm. Thought to be. 582 00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:25,840 So that's holy hands and holy legs, 583 00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:30,240 but why might you come home from a pilgrimage with a vagina? 584 00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:38,280 So, just like today, medieval holy sites did a roaring trade 585 00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:41,400 in souvenirs, and people brought back badges as tokens 586 00:32:41,480 --> 00:32:44,280 of the journey, and they were often in the likeness of saints, 587 00:32:44,360 --> 00:32:47,520 but sometimes they were much, much weirder 588 00:32:47,600 --> 00:32:49,400 and I have a replica here. 589 00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:50,880 Let me show you this one. 590 00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:57,120 This is a replica of a 14th century Dutch vagina shooting 591 00:32:57,200 --> 00:32:58,840 an arrow on horseback. 592 00:32:58,920 --> 00:33:02,000 Oh! You don't often see them do that. You don't. You don't. 593 00:33:05,960 --> 00:33:09,720 I can also offer you, I have here a phallus. 594 00:33:09,800 --> 00:33:11,960 I... a phallus... 595 00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:14,920 Where the... I don't know if it's a man or a woman pushing 596 00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:16,720 a wheelbarrow of phalluses. 597 00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:18,800 I didn't think you could top st helens, 598 00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:22,520 but this is really... replicas of the various badges. 599 00:33:22,600 --> 00:33:25,560 What else have I got here? I've got, I've got a penis on a boat. 600 00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:27,560 I don't know why. 601 00:33:27,640 --> 00:33:29,640 I know, I know... We've all met those. 602 00:33:29,720 --> 00:33:31,600 Tell me... 603 00:33:31,680 --> 00:33:35,200 The guy on the, on the, the phalluses. 604 00:33:35,280 --> 00:33:38,080 Yes, the phallus. There, on the top one, to the left. 605 00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:41,640 Oh, this one, here. Yeah, it looks like he's got a penis puppy farm. 606 00:33:41,720 --> 00:33:43,840 He looks like he's selling fireworks. 607 00:33:43,920 --> 00:33:46,160 Laughter I... 608 00:33:46,240 --> 00:33:51,400 They could be like little monopoly, erm... yep. 609 00:33:51,480 --> 00:33:54,120 Oh, that would be a good idea. 610 00:33:54,200 --> 00:33:56,960 Do you want to be the penis or the vagina? 611 00:33:57,040 --> 00:33:59,480 Can I... you've not been buying fireworks off that bloke 612 00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:01,240 with a massive cock again, have you? 613 00:34:03,160 --> 00:34:04,560 Now, why might you do this? 614 00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:07,720 Why might you have phalluses? Why might you have vaginas? 615 00:34:07,800 --> 00:34:09,720 What is the reason for them? 616 00:34:09,800 --> 00:34:11,760 Light entertainment. 617 00:34:11,840 --> 00:34:15,920 Are they little fertility, good luck charm things? 618 00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:18,800 Oh, yeah. It's protection from the evil eye possibly. Ok. 619 00:34:18,880 --> 00:34:21,880 Ok, so if somebody's sick, you do not want to look them in the eye. 620 00:34:21,960 --> 00:34:24,120 Is that a penis you're wearing? 621 00:34:24,200 --> 00:34:27,040 I say! Don't look him in the eye! 622 00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:29,880 And then, the other thing is that the tourist trade has not changed, 623 00:34:29,960 --> 00:34:34,120 people have not changed. People buy bawdy and humorous objects, 624 00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:35,320 and they sell well. 625 00:34:35,400 --> 00:34:38,160 Was it ever called a vadge badge, sandi? A vadge badge? 626 00:34:38,240 --> 00:34:39,400 Yeah, I like that. 627 00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:42,280 Yeah. I just, I think this is a thing that can be monetized, 628 00:34:42,360 --> 00:34:44,880 I might as well copyright that now. I think vadge badge is good. 629 00:34:44,960 --> 00:34:47,320 Right. Now, prepare for judgment day as we enter 630 00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:49,200 the limbo of general ignorance. 631 00:34:49,280 --> 00:34:51,480 Fingers on buzzers, please. All right. 632 00:34:51,560 --> 00:34:54,400 Who designed this staircase? 633 00:34:54,480 --> 00:34:56,360 Oh, what's his name? 634 00:34:56,440 --> 00:34:58,400 Ahhh... Yes, darling? 635 00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:00,320 What you're thinking of is escher... 636 00:35:00,400 --> 00:35:02,360 Klaxon ..but it could be a trap. Oh! 637 00:35:02,440 --> 00:35:05,160 It is a bloody trap. It's a bloody trip. 638 00:35:05,240 --> 00:35:08,160 So he is the one most famously associated 639 00:35:08,240 --> 00:35:11,800 with the impossible looped staircase that you would climb for eternity, 640 00:35:11,880 --> 00:35:16,360 but these are the penrose stairs figure, and they were created 641 00:35:16,440 --> 00:35:18,720 by a British psychiatrist and mathematician called 642 00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:20,760 Lionel sharples penrose - marvellous name - 643 00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:24,680 and his son, sir Roger penrose, first published in 1958. 644 00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:28,120 Imagine calling your son sir Roger. Yeah, that's ridiculous, isn't it? 645 00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:30,600 It's aspirational. What are you going to call him? Sir Roger. 646 00:35:30,640 --> 00:35:34,640 Sir Roger. What happened is, the penroses had been inspired 647 00:35:34,720 --> 00:35:37,000 by escher's earlier work on impossible figures. 648 00:35:37,080 --> 00:35:40,520 They sent a copy of their staircase to him to see if he liked it. 649 00:35:40,600 --> 00:35:44,280 He liked it so much that he decided to make a staircase of his own. 650 00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:46,840 So, the penroses, the British penroses, were the ones 651 00:35:46,920 --> 00:35:50,320 who inspired escher to do his drawing. 652 00:35:50,400 --> 00:35:52,480 Richard penrose is a really interesting guy. 653 00:35:52,560 --> 00:35:55,880 First of all, he won the nobel prize in physics for work on black holes. 654 00:35:55,960 --> 00:35:58,640 The other thing he's famous for - this seems really unlikely, 655 00:35:58,720 --> 00:36:00,640 you win the nobel prize for physics - 656 00:36:00,720 --> 00:36:04,000 he's also famous for tiling. So he created a mathematically 657 00:36:04,080 --> 00:36:08,720 revolutionary way of arranging floor tiles so you could cover an infinite 658 00:36:08,800 --> 00:36:11,480 plane without the pattern ever repeating. 659 00:36:11,560 --> 00:36:13,400 Ooh! Which is amazing. 660 00:36:13,480 --> 00:36:18,120 So, more than 20 years after he came up with this pattern, penrose sued 661 00:36:18,200 --> 00:36:20,000 kleenex for using it on toilet paper. 662 00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:24,240 Why might they have decided to recreate this never repeating 663 00:36:24,320 --> 00:36:27,360 pattern on toiler paper? Hallelujah! 664 00:36:27,440 --> 00:36:29,920 Angles of grip when you're removing. 665 00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:31,280 That's exactly right, darling. 666 00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:33,120 The toilet paper would not stick together. 667 00:36:33,200 --> 00:36:35,240 That's brilliant! You get an extra point. 668 00:36:35,320 --> 00:36:37,640 Yeah, and so the sheets were less likely to stick together. 669 00:36:37,720 --> 00:36:40,000 And he sued them, and the case was settled out of court. 670 00:36:40,080 --> 00:36:42,080 Imagine winning the nobel prize, but also, 671 00:36:42,160 --> 00:36:44,920 suing a toilet paper manufacturer. I know! It's great, isn't it? 672 00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:47,960 That seems like the full portfolio career. That's everything. 673 00:36:48,040 --> 00:36:52,920 Now, where would you find the largest body of water in Africa? 674 00:36:53,000 --> 00:36:55,160 It's not going to be that massive, massive lake. 675 00:36:55,240 --> 00:36:56,720 Is it going to be the nile? 676 00:36:56,800 --> 00:36:58,800 Is the nile the largest body... Klaxon 677 00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:00,160 oh! 678 00:37:00,240 --> 00:37:03,680 Is it, therefore, that massive, massive lake? 679 00:37:03,760 --> 00:37:04,880 That massive, massive lake. 680 00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:07,360 What lake are we talking about? Is it not Victoria? 681 00:37:07,440 --> 00:37:09,000 Klaxon 682 00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:14,920 is it a river that goes into a lake that never ends from one, to the top 683 00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:17,840 of the continent to the bottom or something? Are these all traps 684 00:37:17,920 --> 00:37:20,840 and it's just someone with a massive paddling pool or something? 685 00:37:20,920 --> 00:37:22,320 Yeah. No. None of those things. 686 00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:24,240 Is it underground? Yes. Oh... it's underground! 687 00:37:24,280 --> 00:37:26,240 It's underground! A reservoir. Underground. 688 00:37:26,320 --> 00:37:27,720 It's the most unlikely place. 689 00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:30,480 Sahara desert. It is exactly right. 690 00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:31,640 50 points. 691 00:37:31,720 --> 00:37:32,920 Yes, well done, Alan. 692 00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:35,600 Very well done. Underneath the eastern end 693 00:37:35,680 --> 00:37:40,760 of the Sahara lies around 150,000 cubic kilometres of water. 694 00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:44,840 That is three-quarters of the total amount of water held in all lakes 695 00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:49,720 in the world. It's basically a huge mass of very wet rock 696 00:37:49,800 --> 00:37:52,440 and every single crevice, every nook, every cranny 697 00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:55,040 is filled with fossil water, so water that's been trapped 698 00:37:55,120 --> 00:37:58,160 deep underground, rather than it's part of the water cycle. 699 00:37:58,240 --> 00:38:02,360 And the nubian sandstone aquifer system is the largest known fossil 700 00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:04,280 water aquifer system in the world. 701 00:38:04,360 --> 00:38:08,480 It spans a land area of two million square kilometres, lying under much 702 00:38:08,560 --> 00:38:10,960 of Egypt, Sudan, Chad and Libya. 703 00:38:11,040 --> 00:38:14,200 Africa was once home to the largest freshwater lake in the world. 704 00:38:14,280 --> 00:38:16,880 It was known as mega Chad and it covered an incredible area 705 00:38:16,960 --> 00:38:19,320 of central Africa, more than the whole of the British isles. 706 00:38:19,400 --> 00:38:21,880 So if we superimpose the British isles on top, this will give 707 00:38:21,960 --> 00:38:25,400 you some idea of how big this water mass was. 708 00:38:25,480 --> 00:38:27,800 And then, a thousand years ago, it suddenly shrank. 709 00:38:27,880 --> 00:38:29,960 I had an idea for a television series once, 710 00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:33,000 where you would move britain to a different part of the world 711 00:38:33,080 --> 00:38:36,280 and then discuss the consequences. You know, with climate, neighbours, 712 00:38:36,360 --> 00:38:40,120 nearest war zones. It feels like quite high-budget stuff. Yeah. 713 00:38:40,200 --> 00:38:42,120 I was told by quite a well-known producer 714 00:38:42,200 --> 00:38:43,720 that it might work as a segment, 715 00:38:43,800 --> 00:38:45,560 but not as a whole show. 716 00:38:50,080 --> 00:38:53,080 Looks like I might have to podcast the bastard! 717 00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:57,256 I mean, what you'd have to deal with is all the people on the island 718 00:38:57,280 --> 00:38:59,480 who didn't want to move. 719 00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:02,840 Yeah. "Come on. We could go to the Indian ocean for a couple of years." 720 00:39:02,920 --> 00:39:04,440 "No, this is where we are." 721 00:39:04,520 --> 00:39:08,720 "But you hate Europe! You don't want to be in... we can move you!" 722 00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:12,440 I think it's definitely a segment, darling, I do. 723 00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:14,920 Or a podcast. 724 00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:16,760 Lake Chad is tautological. 725 00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:20,160 Does anybody know what that...? Does it mean Chad means lake? 726 00:39:20,240 --> 00:39:22,560 Yes, Chad means lake in the kanuri language. 727 00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:24,840 I love things like that. Sahara desert is another one, 728 00:39:24,920 --> 00:39:26,520 tautological. Canvey island, 729 00:39:26,600 --> 00:39:28,440 wookey hole cave. 730 00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:30,800 Pendle hill, this is lancashire, "pen" means "hill", 731 00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:32,760 "dle" means "hill", and hill means hill, 732 00:39:32,840 --> 00:39:36,040 so it basically means hill hill hill. Hill hill hill! 733 00:39:36,120 --> 00:39:37,840 All right, I heard you. Was it, 734 00:39:37,920 --> 00:39:39,720 was it named by someone who fell down it? 735 00:39:39,800 --> 00:39:41,040 Yeah! 736 00:39:41,120 --> 00:39:43,320 "Mind that hill hill hill!" Hill hill hill! 737 00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:46,040 "You fell down the what?" "The pen." "The what?" 738 00:39:46,120 --> 00:39:49,720 "The dle." "What?" "The hill." "Pendle hill?" 739 00:39:49,800 --> 00:39:51,000 "What happened?" 740 00:39:51,080 --> 00:39:53,080 Shouts: "I fell down it!" 741 00:39:55,160 --> 00:39:58,440 Which country's air force did this plane belong to? 742 00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:00,720 This is a trick. You can see a klaxon here. 743 00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:04,160 Oh! It's a trick. The Germans didn't have the swastika 744 00:40:04,240 --> 00:40:06,880 on their, on their plane, the luftwaffe. 745 00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:08,400 Whose do you think it is? 746 00:40:08,480 --> 00:40:11,920 It's going to be a Buddhist airforce. Yes! I love that! 747 00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:16,040 So the great sanskrit symbol of good luck found in many ancient 748 00:40:16,120 --> 00:40:17,800 cultures, the swastika. 749 00:40:17,880 --> 00:40:21,200 The Nazis adopted it as a party emblem in 1920 750 00:40:21,280 --> 00:40:24,840 and then as a national symbol for Germany in 1933, 751 00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:28,760 but it had already been in use for two years by the Finnish people. 752 00:40:28,840 --> 00:40:32,240 Really?! I was just about to buzz in with ryanair. 753 00:40:34,160 --> 00:40:38,600 In 1918, a Swedish nobleman, count Eric Von rosen, had donated a plane 754 00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:41,240 decorated with one to the newly formed Finnish air force, 755 00:40:41,320 --> 00:40:43,400 and they carried on using it until 1945. 756 00:40:43,480 --> 00:40:45,360 Maybe it was just getting a bit awkward. 757 00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:47,840 "Shall we change the badge?" "What should we have instead?" 758 00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:50,240 "I've seen this brilliant thing. You won't believe it. 759 00:40:50,320 --> 00:40:51,640 "It's like a penis with feet." 760 00:40:56,200 --> 00:40:58,640 The cross of freedom, which is a variant of the swastika, 761 00:40:58,720 --> 00:41:01,560 still features today in the top left-hand corner of the official 762 00:41:01,640 --> 00:41:05,360 flag of the Finnish president. And the Danish brewery Carlsberg used 763 00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:09,080 swastika as a logo from the 19th century to the mid-1930s. 764 00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:11,840 They dropped it, obviously, with the Nazis taking it on. 765 00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:14,720 But you can still see it in the carved stone Indian elephants 766 00:41:14,800 --> 00:41:17,720 that stand at the gates of the company's headquarters. 767 00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:20,280 Now, what does this stand for? 768 00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:26,840 Rhythmic beeping 769 00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:28,960 hallelujah! 770 00:41:29,040 --> 00:41:31,080 It's not sos. 771 00:41:31,160 --> 00:41:34,080 Oh, ok. What does it stand for? 772 00:41:34,160 --> 00:41:36,280 No, we're just going to, we're going to rule that out. 773 00:41:36,320 --> 00:41:38,576 Just things that it's not. It's... It's not my home address. 774 00:41:38,600 --> 00:41:41,280 It's not rsvp either. It's not rsvp. Thank you. 775 00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:43,920 Well, it is dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot. 776 00:41:44,000 --> 00:41:46,760 Yes. Are we confused? Does that mean o-s-o? 777 00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:48,600 The thing is, it doesn't stand for sos. 778 00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:51,880 Oh. If it was going to be the letters, you'd have them with a gap. 779 00:41:51,960 --> 00:41:54,240 So you'd have, dot, dot, dot, gap. 780 00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:57,000 Dash, dash, dash, gap. Dot, dot, dot. 781 00:41:57,080 --> 00:41:58,480 It's a continuous stream. 782 00:41:58,560 --> 00:42:01,560 We say sos as a convenient way of remembering what the signal is, 783 00:42:01,640 --> 00:42:06,680 but it could just as easily be rendered as v-t-b and remembered 784 00:42:06,760 --> 00:42:09,520 as vacate the boat. The thing is, the distress is universal, 785 00:42:09,600 --> 00:42:11,040 it doesn't depend on language. 786 00:42:11,120 --> 00:42:13,920 You don't need to know what the sos stands for. 787 00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:15,680 We just know that that is the signal. 788 00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:19,440 Before that, they used to signal c-q—d. 789 00:42:19,520 --> 00:42:23,840 And then it was agreed in 1906 that they would make it simpler. 790 00:42:23,920 --> 00:42:26,640 There was a big international wireless telegraph convention 791 00:42:26,720 --> 00:42:29,120 in Berlin and that's where we get the sos from. 792 00:42:29,200 --> 00:42:31,200 But it doesn't actually stand to save our souls. 793 00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:33,160 And then they invented texting. 794 00:42:33,240 --> 00:42:35,576 It took a while to catch on, actually. When the Titanic went 795 00:42:35,600 --> 00:42:37,720 down, they still transmitted c-q-d. 796 00:42:37,800 --> 00:42:39,760 They might just think it was sos, but it was not. 797 00:42:39,840 --> 00:42:41,640 And so it's time for another sos, 798 00:42:41,720 --> 00:42:45,240 sandi's 'orrible scores. Let's see who's on cloud nine and who's 799 00:42:45,320 --> 00:42:49,320 in the sin bin. In fourth place, languishing in the pits of eternal 800 00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:51,720 damnation with minus 22. 801 00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:52,800 Oh, Alan! 802 00:42:52,840 --> 00:42:54,840 He chuckles, applause 803 00:42:54,920 --> 00:42:57,520 thank you. Thank you. 804 00:42:58,920 --> 00:43:02,120 In third place with minus 8, it's Mark! I'll take that. 805 00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:03,880 Cheering and applause 806 00:43:05,800 --> 00:43:09,320 in second place with seven whole points, Bridget! 807 00:43:09,400 --> 00:43:11,880 Cheering and applause Johnny! 808 00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:14,200 Holy mackerel. 809 00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:15,560 In first place... 810 00:43:17,640 --> 00:43:19,800 Take your time with this! 811 00:43:19,880 --> 00:43:23,200 He laughs hysterically 812 00:43:23,280 --> 00:43:26,720 ..the man from st helens, Johnny, with 13! 813 00:43:26,800 --> 00:43:29,240 Cheering and applause 814 00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:37,800 All that remains is we thank Mark, Johnny, Bridget and Alan, 815 00:43:37,880 --> 00:43:41,000 and I leave you with a sagacious sign off from Audrey hepburn. 816 00:43:41,080 --> 00:43:44,560 Make-up can only make you look pretty on the outside, 817 00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:47,120 but it doesn't help if you're ugly on the inside... 818 00:43:47,200 --> 00:43:49,800 Unless you eat the make-up. Goodnight.