1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:05,880 This programme contains some strong language and adult humour 2 00:00:31,840 --> 00:00:33,440 Good evening and welcome to qi, 3 00:00:33,520 --> 00:00:37,040 where it's silly season with a silly sausage - 4 00:00:37,120 --> 00:00:38,400 ivo Graham! 5 00:00:38,480 --> 00:00:40,320 Applause 6 00:00:41,560 --> 00:00:43,400 a silly so-and-so - 7 00:00:43,480 --> 00:00:44,760 Holly Walsh! 8 00:00:44,840 --> 00:00:47,440 Applause 9 00:00:47,520 --> 00:00:48,920 a silly mid on - 10 00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:50,280 Stephen k Amos. 11 00:00:50,360 --> 00:00:53,360 Applause 12 00:00:53,440 --> 00:00:56,120 and a sumptuous seasoning of Alan Davies. 13 00:00:56,200 --> 00:00:58,440 Thank you. Applause 14 00:01:00,560 --> 00:01:03,920 and their buzzers are all extremely silly. 15 00:01:04,000 --> 00:01:05,480 Ivo goes... 16 00:01:05,560 --> 00:01:07,720 Cartoon running sound effect 17 00:01:07,800 --> 00:01:09,920 oh, I like that. Holly goes... 18 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:11,920 Cartoon arrow twangs 19 00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:13,640 Stephen goes... 20 00:01:13,720 --> 00:01:16,040 Cartoon bullet ricochets 21 00:01:18,240 --> 00:01:19,560 and Alan goes... 22 00:01:19,640 --> 00:01:23,280 Music: Looney tunes/merrie melodies by London music works & Evan jolly 23 00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:27,520 woo! 24 00:01:27,600 --> 00:01:31,720 It's silly season, so let's start with some silly questions. 25 00:01:31,800 --> 00:01:34,720 Now, we got these by feeding hundreds of questions 26 00:01:34,800 --> 00:01:37,840 taken from the qi database, which is called blue whale, 27 00:01:37,920 --> 00:01:40,720 into an artificial intelligence program, 28 00:01:40,800 --> 00:01:43,800 and we asked the program to come up with new questions 29 00:01:43,880 --> 00:01:45,640 in the same style. 30 00:01:45,720 --> 00:01:48,440 So this is artificial intelligence qi questions. 31 00:01:48,520 --> 00:01:52,560 First of all, what happens if a flamingo is your wife? 32 00:01:52,640 --> 00:01:55,000 People are very judgey about it. Flamingoist. 33 00:01:55,080 --> 00:01:56,240 Flamingoist, exactly. 34 00:01:56,320 --> 00:01:58,520 And people talk about animal husbandry a lot, 35 00:01:58,600 --> 00:02:01,320 but they don't talk about birdwifery a lot. 36 00:02:04,280 --> 00:02:06,360 If a flamingo is your wife... Yeah? 37 00:02:06,440 --> 00:02:08,560 ..Probably the best option is to dress up as an egg 38 00:02:08,640 --> 00:02:10,360 so you're guaranteed to get laid. 39 00:02:12,200 --> 00:02:13,800 Here's a question for you, Alan. 40 00:02:13,880 --> 00:02:15,920 What is the best way to get a radiant 41 00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:17,440 complexion of trousering? 42 00:02:20,320 --> 00:02:24,720 Well, you need to emerge from within the trouser, sandi. 43 00:02:24,800 --> 00:02:27,080 I'm not a massive fan of the qi supercomputer... 44 00:02:27,160 --> 00:02:28,200 No. ..With these... 45 00:02:28,280 --> 00:02:30,520 But the question that it asked over and over again, 46 00:02:30,600 --> 00:02:31,840 which I am extremely keen on, 47 00:02:31,920 --> 00:02:34,600 is, how many legs does the queen have? 48 00:02:36,840 --> 00:02:39,880 She has one of her own legs 49 00:02:39,960 --> 00:02:42,160 and then the other one's a sort of official leg. 50 00:02:42,240 --> 00:02:44,640 Official leg. I reckon she's on coasters, isn't she? 51 00:02:44,720 --> 00:02:45,840 Yeah, you're right. Yeah. 52 00:02:45,920 --> 00:02:47,560 When you see her in all those big gowns, 53 00:02:47,640 --> 00:02:50,040 those official events, you never see her walking. 54 00:02:50,120 --> 00:02:51,400 She sort of glides, doesn't she? 55 00:02:51,480 --> 00:02:52,600 Oh, I see what you mean. 56 00:02:52,680 --> 00:02:55,120 I thought you meant she was on some kind of a drinks mat. 57 00:02:55,200 --> 00:02:56,720 You don't want her to Mark your table! 58 00:02:56,800 --> 00:02:59,456 So, it asked over and over again - how many legs does the queen have? 59 00:02:59,480 --> 00:03:02,680 And then suddenly announced, "I'm naked." 60 00:03:02,760 --> 00:03:04,920 And it also answered one of its own questions. 61 00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:07,680 "How did the romans?" Was the question. 62 00:03:07,760 --> 00:03:09,360 And the answer was "nobody knows". 63 00:03:09,440 --> 00:03:12,280 They laugh 64 00:03:12,360 --> 00:03:14,880 so there's an American research scientist 65 00:03:14,960 --> 00:03:17,520 called Janelle Shane, and she programmed a similar 66 00:03:17,600 --> 00:03:20,800 sort of neural network to read existing love hearts slogans. 67 00:03:20,880 --> 00:03:23,640 Do you remember love hearts? Oh, yeah. Those little, sort of, sweets? 68 00:03:23,720 --> 00:03:25,840 So they're usually fairly tame. 69 00:03:25,920 --> 00:03:29,080 But she reprogrammed the ai to do it, 70 00:03:29,160 --> 00:03:30,480 and this is what it came up with. 71 00:03:30,560 --> 00:03:33,920 "Loving horn", "buns, buns, buns," and "all hail the chicken". 72 00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:36,080 I think they would sell like hotcakes. 73 00:03:36,160 --> 00:03:38,360 Next Valentine's day, all hail the chicken. 74 00:03:38,440 --> 00:03:39,760 Yeah, right. 75 00:03:39,840 --> 00:03:41,176 So, she has a point in doing this. 76 00:03:41,200 --> 00:03:42,920 It's not just sort of a bit of silliness. 77 00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:44,720 Ai still has lots of limitations... 78 00:03:44,800 --> 00:03:46,400 Ivo scoffs making love hearts - 79 00:03:46,480 --> 00:03:47,600 that's the main one. 80 00:03:47,680 --> 00:03:50,216 One of the things we need to look at is neural networks are prone 81 00:03:50,240 --> 00:03:52,120 to something called catastrophic forgetting, 82 00:03:52,200 --> 00:03:55,240 so forgetting old information as new data is fed in. 83 00:03:55,320 --> 00:03:58,360 And ai also has a problem with giraffing. 84 00:03:58,440 --> 00:04:01,320 Anybody know what giraffing might be? 85 00:04:01,400 --> 00:04:03,440 Sticking your neck out? They laugh 86 00:04:03,520 --> 00:04:05,400 getting things off high shelves? 87 00:04:05,480 --> 00:04:10,080 Yes. No. So it constantly identifies things as giraffes. 88 00:04:10,160 --> 00:04:12,280 Ok! Yeah. Or anything unusual. 89 00:04:12,360 --> 00:04:13,840 Why might that be? 90 00:04:13,920 --> 00:04:15,760 I don't know! Because it's... 91 00:04:15,840 --> 00:04:16,960 Because it's stupid? 92 00:04:17,040 --> 00:04:18,480 No, what it is, it's trained online, 93 00:04:18,560 --> 00:04:21,280 and online people tend to post unusual things 94 00:04:21,360 --> 00:04:24,240 more than they'll post a sort of featureless rock or something. 95 00:04:24,320 --> 00:04:27,200 They're much more likely to post a giraffe, for example. 96 00:04:27,280 --> 00:04:29,240 I hate it when people post featureless rocks. 97 00:04:29,320 --> 00:04:30,920 Featureless rocks are very irritating. 98 00:04:31,000 --> 00:04:33,440 Put some features on that rock, for god's sake! 99 00:04:33,520 --> 00:04:36,040 Ai thinks that giraffes are more common than they are 100 00:04:36,120 --> 00:04:38,560 because people, on the whole, tend to put up unusual things, 101 00:04:38,640 --> 00:04:40,680 and therefore it thinks that they are more usual. 102 00:04:40,760 --> 00:04:42,920 I mean, if you live in, like, Namibia or somewhere, 103 00:04:43,000 --> 00:04:44,160 you might see a giraffe... 104 00:04:44,240 --> 00:04:46,840 I mean, I don't know if giraffes live in Namibia. Do they? 105 00:04:46,920 --> 00:04:49,840 Yes. They do? Yeah. Ok. 106 00:04:49,920 --> 00:04:52,376 Let's say yes. Well, then, you're going to see a lot. Go zebra. 107 00:04:52,400 --> 00:04:53,736 You're going to see a lot of them. 108 00:04:53,760 --> 00:04:55,360 It's just that when you live in lewisham, 109 00:04:55,440 --> 00:04:57,320 you don't see that many of them. Right. 110 00:04:57,400 --> 00:04:59,520 The old Namibia-lewisham paradox. 111 00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:05,200 I'd love to see one in lewisham! 112 00:05:05,280 --> 00:05:07,120 I've always thought that fox hunting... 113 00:05:07,200 --> 00:05:09,240 It's fine, they ban it in the country cos it's mean. 114 00:05:09,280 --> 00:05:12,280 Be great in London. It'd be great to have all those guys in the red coats 115 00:05:12,360 --> 00:05:14,560 on a horse, racing through. Alan trumpets 116 00:05:14,640 --> 00:05:15,680 yeah. 117 00:05:15,760 --> 00:05:19,080 You say that, but the foxes in London tend to have attitude. 118 00:05:19,160 --> 00:05:21,640 Yeah. Know what I mean? I've come back from a gig, midnight, 119 00:05:21,720 --> 00:05:23,360 there's a fox in my driveway - 120 00:05:23,440 --> 00:05:25,080 cos I've got money, big house - 121 00:05:25,160 --> 00:05:27,760 and as I go into my drive... They laugh 122 00:05:27,840 --> 00:05:29,400 ..the fox is looking at me like that, 123 00:05:29,480 --> 00:05:32,280 "what? Walk around me!" 124 00:05:32,360 --> 00:05:34,320 Yeah. No, they do have attitude. 125 00:05:34,400 --> 00:05:37,920 We've got a fox, it comes and it sits at the back door, 126 00:05:38,000 --> 00:05:39,920 basically saying to the dog, "eh!" 127 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:42,760 We've got exactly that! We've only just got a dog, 128 00:05:42,840 --> 00:05:44,840 and it was sleeping on the mat by the back door 129 00:05:44,920 --> 00:05:47,440 cos it's cool there, and the fox came and just looked at it. 130 00:05:47,520 --> 00:05:48,760 What kind of dog did you get? 131 00:05:48,840 --> 00:05:50,920 It's half spaniel, half husky. 132 00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:52,600 Oh, sweet! Spusky. 133 00:05:52,680 --> 00:05:54,120 It's a husky... haniel? 134 00:05:55,960 --> 00:05:57,920 Does it...? Is that a thing? It's very pretty. 135 00:05:58,000 --> 00:05:59,760 No, it's quite unusual. 136 00:05:59,840 --> 00:06:02,640 My daughter wanted a spaniel, my son wanted a husky. 137 00:06:02,720 --> 00:06:04,920 I love... by some miracle, we found one with half each. 138 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:07,800 King Solomon... 139 00:06:07,880 --> 00:06:09,960 You sewed two together and... Yeah. 140 00:06:10,040 --> 00:06:12,760 Oh, yeah, the front half is the spaniel. 141 00:06:12,840 --> 00:06:16,160 The back half is a husky. See, that was your error. 142 00:06:16,240 --> 00:06:18,600 Everybody knows they've got those fluffy little arseholes 143 00:06:18,680 --> 00:06:19,840 which get really clogged up. 144 00:06:19,920 --> 00:06:22,160 You'd have been much better having the front as the husky 145 00:06:22,240 --> 00:06:23,360 and the back as the spaniel. 146 00:06:23,440 --> 00:06:25,520 You've sewed your dogs the wrong way round, Davies! 147 00:06:25,600 --> 00:06:27,480 The other two halves are in the freezer. 148 00:06:27,560 --> 00:06:30,920 Holly, everybody does not know... 149 00:06:31,000 --> 00:06:33,440 ..Does not know that they've got a fluffy arsehole! 150 00:06:33,520 --> 00:06:35,200 That's not a thing! 151 00:06:35,280 --> 00:06:38,080 So, there is the thing now of ai cameras, 152 00:06:38,160 --> 00:06:41,280 and they're trained to follow the ball in some football matches. 153 00:06:41,360 --> 00:06:43,720 There was a match at inverness caledonian thistle 154 00:06:43,800 --> 00:06:46,840 football club, and the ai became fixated 155 00:06:46,920 --> 00:06:49,120 on the linesman's bald head. 156 00:06:49,200 --> 00:06:50,920 And the camera would do nothing... 157 00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:52,680 They laugh 158 00:06:52,760 --> 00:06:57,200 it would do nothing but focus on it. 159 00:06:57,280 --> 00:07:00,280 Ok, after all that ai nonsense, 160 00:07:00,360 --> 00:07:03,400 here's a perfectly sensible question 161 00:07:03,480 --> 00:07:05,880 written by a real-life human. 162 00:07:05,960 --> 00:07:10,520 What use is a penguin erector at cucumber time? 163 00:07:12,760 --> 00:07:14,800 Penguin's fallen over? Yes. 164 00:07:14,880 --> 00:07:16,400 Why would the penguin fall over? 165 00:07:16,480 --> 00:07:17,720 Is it because...? 166 00:07:17,800 --> 00:07:19,280 Well, a, they're stupid. 167 00:07:19,360 --> 00:07:21,200 And... Come on, Stephen. 168 00:07:21,280 --> 00:07:22,520 You're not making any friends. 169 00:07:22,600 --> 00:07:24,560 You've got a big house and you hate penguins! 170 00:07:27,200 --> 00:07:28,800 If they look up at something... Yes. 171 00:07:28,880 --> 00:07:30,760 ..They just sort of fall backwards, don't they? 172 00:07:30,840 --> 00:07:32,920 So, if an aeroplane flies over Antarctica, 173 00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:35,400 they all fall on their back. No, it's a myth. 174 00:07:35,480 --> 00:07:37,480 Oh, is it? It's a myth. Yeah, I'm afraid so. 175 00:07:37,560 --> 00:07:39,760 But what I like is that this doesn't stop newspapers 176 00:07:39,840 --> 00:07:41,000 reporting on these things. 177 00:07:41,080 --> 00:07:44,200 In 2018, a Scots newspaper's reported that Edinburgh zoo 178 00:07:44,280 --> 00:07:46,840 denied employing a penguin erector... 179 00:07:46,920 --> 00:07:48,760 Right... Following a rumour it had hired staff 180 00:07:48,840 --> 00:07:50,400 to pick up penguins who had fallen over 181 00:07:50,480 --> 00:07:53,040 after looking up at aeroplanes. I believed that story! 182 00:07:53,120 --> 00:07:55,480 I've told thousands of people that's true! 183 00:07:55,560 --> 00:07:56,840 None of them believed you. Yeah. 184 00:07:56,920 --> 00:07:59,480 Cos the reason, I thought it had something to do with making sure 185 00:07:59,520 --> 00:08:01,520 that the cucumber was straight. Yeah. 186 00:08:01,600 --> 00:08:03,440 Because we all love a straight cucumber. 187 00:08:03,520 --> 00:08:06,000 We all love... speaking on behalf of the nation again. 188 00:08:08,000 --> 00:08:09,640 Who doesn't love a straight cucumber? 189 00:08:09,720 --> 00:08:11,480 No-one's ever expressed a preference! 190 00:08:13,280 --> 00:08:15,440 Literally no-one! 191 00:08:15,520 --> 00:08:18,920 Basically, we're talking about silly newspaper stories 192 00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:21,160 and they take place in the silly season, 193 00:08:21,240 --> 00:08:24,040 which in lots of countries is known as cucumber time. 194 00:08:24,120 --> 00:08:26,400 Great. So, as well as being the title of today's show, 195 00:08:26,480 --> 00:08:27,640 silly season refers to... 196 00:08:27,720 --> 00:08:30,160 You know that period in late summer when people are on holiday 197 00:08:30,200 --> 00:08:32,000 and there's not really much news around? 198 00:08:32,080 --> 00:08:35,320 And it first came out as an idea in 1861. 199 00:08:35,400 --> 00:08:37,280 Also known as giant gooseberry season. 200 00:08:37,360 --> 00:08:40,920 So lots of outsized fruits get stories about them. 201 00:08:41,000 --> 00:08:43,920 The sightings of sea serpents and mermaids, 202 00:08:44,000 --> 00:08:45,560 showers of frogs. 203 00:08:45,640 --> 00:08:47,880 And lots of countries call it cucumber time. 204 00:08:47,960 --> 00:08:50,520 So, in the Netherlands, komkommertijd. 205 00:08:50,600 --> 00:08:52,680 And in Poland and Germany and so on. 206 00:08:52,760 --> 00:08:54,160 And nobody really knows why. 207 00:08:54,240 --> 00:08:55,600 Because cucumbers are funny. 208 00:08:55,680 --> 00:08:57,920 Apart from when they're bendy, which isn't funny at all. 209 00:08:58,000 --> 00:08:59,080 No, we don't like that. 210 00:08:59,160 --> 00:09:00,960 I'll tell you what's not funny - a gooseberry. 211 00:09:01,040 --> 00:09:03,360 He's not impressed at all by his own gooseberry, that chap. 212 00:09:03,440 --> 00:09:05,280 That's not a gooseberry, is it? It is, darling. 213 00:09:05,360 --> 00:09:08,000 It's a giant gooseberry. It's enormous! 214 00:09:08,080 --> 00:09:10,720 The silly season thing has worked completely on Alan, 215 00:09:10,800 --> 00:09:13,800 because you've said silly seasons are times when silly stories 216 00:09:13,880 --> 00:09:15,200 emerge, like a giant gooseberry. 217 00:09:15,280 --> 00:09:17,000 And then five minutes later, Alan's gone, 218 00:09:17,080 --> 00:09:18,720 "that gooseberry's enormous!" 219 00:09:20,600 --> 00:09:22,160 But I'm slightly confused. 220 00:09:22,240 --> 00:09:23,720 You're not coming across that way. 221 00:09:23,800 --> 00:09:25,040 No.. 222 00:09:26,160 --> 00:09:29,040 Is it silly season because they're not true stories? 223 00:09:29,120 --> 00:09:30,320 Sometimes they're not true, 224 00:09:30,400 --> 00:09:33,440 and sometimes they're just something that might not normally 225 00:09:33,520 --> 00:09:35,080 be thought of as newsworthy. 226 00:09:35,160 --> 00:09:37,480 Right. Ok. It's like all the "and finallys" 227 00:09:37,560 --> 00:09:39,440 get the first slot. Yeah. 228 00:09:39,520 --> 00:09:42,080 So there have been some marvellous silly season headlines 229 00:09:42,160 --> 00:09:43,280 from recent years. 230 00:09:43,360 --> 00:09:46,480 There was the "world oinksclusive" we had. 231 00:09:46,560 --> 00:09:49,960 Ooh! "The mail saves the bacon of the tamworth two." 232 00:09:50,040 --> 00:09:52,440 Oh, that's about pigs. Do you remember the story? 233 00:09:52,520 --> 00:09:54,240 They were called butch and Sundance, 234 00:09:54,320 --> 00:09:56,760 and they escaped from an abattoir in wiltshire... 235 00:09:56,840 --> 00:09:57,960 Oh, no! ..In 1988. 236 00:09:58,040 --> 00:10:00,920 Oh, my god! They swam a river and went on the run for a week, 237 00:10:01,000 --> 00:10:03,920 and 100 journalists tracked it across the country. 238 00:10:04,000 --> 00:10:05,640 The ham swam to tamworth? 239 00:10:06,840 --> 00:10:10,120 The newspapers printed full-page maps of the route 240 00:10:10,200 --> 00:10:11,560 that they were taking, 241 00:10:11,640 --> 00:10:14,920 and eventually the daily mail bought them to save their bacon. 242 00:10:15,000 --> 00:10:17,760 Right. They "escaped" from an abattoir? 243 00:10:17,840 --> 00:10:19,960 Abattoir, yeah. I mean, why didn't the others follow? 244 00:10:20,040 --> 00:10:22,920 Why just two of them? Did they lock the door behind them? 245 00:10:23,000 --> 00:10:25,160 "We've got to go now! 246 00:10:25,240 --> 00:10:26,760 Alan snorts "now! 247 00:10:26,840 --> 00:10:28,360 "Oink! 248 00:10:28,440 --> 00:10:30,760 "Come on! Oink! 249 00:10:30,840 --> 00:10:32,840 "All right, we'll just go - the two of us. 250 00:10:32,920 --> 00:10:34,480 "Oink!" 251 00:10:34,560 --> 00:10:36,720 I think it went something like... 252 00:10:36,800 --> 00:10:39,360 "A little something like this." 253 00:10:39,440 --> 00:10:41,320 But it's a marvellous time for publicists, 254 00:10:41,400 --> 00:10:43,600 because if they've got a show that they want to promote, 255 00:10:43,640 --> 00:10:45,040 this is a great way to do it. 256 00:10:45,120 --> 00:10:48,160 In August, 2005, the sun reported that a constellation 257 00:10:48,240 --> 00:10:50,800 that looked like Richard Wilson of one foot in the grave 258 00:10:50,880 --> 00:10:52,840 could be seen by anyone with a keen eye. 259 00:10:52,920 --> 00:10:55,080 But it was actually publicity for summer nights of gold 260 00:10:55,160 --> 00:10:56,400 on uktv gold. 261 00:10:56,480 --> 00:10:58,040 Bet he couldn't believe it. 262 00:10:59,800 --> 00:11:01,960 I love these ones where they're like, 263 00:11:02,040 --> 00:11:06,320 "face of Jesus found in apple" - or something like that, 264 00:11:06,400 --> 00:11:07,920 or in a kfc bucket. 265 00:11:08,000 --> 00:11:09,800 Do you know, I was one of those. 266 00:11:09,880 --> 00:11:11,320 So... Someone found your face? 267 00:11:11,400 --> 00:11:12,600 No. 268 00:11:12,680 --> 00:11:15,160 Sunday sport ran a picture, 269 00:11:15,240 --> 00:11:18,280 and a full-page story. A picture of you in the Sunday sport, sandi? 270 00:11:18,360 --> 00:11:20,520 Well, no. What it was... Holly laughs 271 00:11:20,600 --> 00:11:25,040 ..they claimed to have found my face on Meghan markle's knee. 272 00:11:33,280 --> 00:11:34,760 There you are. 273 00:11:34,840 --> 00:11:36,920 I've never been so pleased! 274 00:11:37,000 --> 00:11:39,480 It's like the turin shroud all over again. That's amazing! 275 00:11:39,560 --> 00:11:41,120 Who's on her other knee? 276 00:11:41,200 --> 00:11:43,240 I don't know who I'm sharing with. 277 00:11:43,320 --> 00:11:46,480 Is it Alan? Alan on the other knee. 278 00:11:46,560 --> 00:11:49,520 Do you think we could escape and be tracked across the country, 279 00:11:49,600 --> 00:11:51,920 and then eventually bought by the daily mail? 280 00:11:52,000 --> 00:11:54,920 It does beg the question, sandi, if she were to kneel down... yes. 281 00:11:55,000 --> 00:11:57,200 ..Would your face hurt? 282 00:11:57,280 --> 00:12:01,360 I mean, that's literally, like, one of the questions I've got in here. 283 00:12:03,680 --> 00:12:05,800 If Meghan markle were to kneel down, 284 00:12:05,880 --> 00:12:09,120 would sandi toksvig's face hurt? I don't... 285 00:12:09,200 --> 00:12:12,160 2010, the sun made a really big splash about a donkey 286 00:12:12,240 --> 00:12:15,080 that was being made to parasail by its Russian owner. 287 00:12:15,160 --> 00:12:16,400 They were very upset, 288 00:12:16,480 --> 00:12:20,320 and so they had a big campaign and they decided to buy the donkey. 289 00:12:20,400 --> 00:12:23,520 What I love about this story is that they did buy the donkey, 290 00:12:23,600 --> 00:12:25,120 but they had been tricked by the owner 291 00:12:25,200 --> 00:12:27,120 and rescued the wrong donkey. 292 00:12:27,200 --> 00:12:29,240 Oh, no! I know. 293 00:12:29,320 --> 00:12:33,520 What are the chances that donkeys don't all look exactly alike? 294 00:12:33,600 --> 00:12:35,920 August, 2001, there was a man called Philip Peters, 295 00:12:36,000 --> 00:12:38,360 and he returned to his parked car, ok? 296 00:12:38,440 --> 00:12:40,720 Now, he had parked it in a perfectly legal place. 297 00:12:40,800 --> 00:12:43,480 But while he'd been gone, contractors in west London 298 00:12:43,560 --> 00:12:46,200 had winched his peugeot off the ground, 299 00:12:46,280 --> 00:12:49,440 painted two yellow lines underneath it, 300 00:12:49,520 --> 00:12:52,400 put it back down again, and he'd got a ticket. 301 00:12:52,480 --> 00:12:53,600 Wow! Yeah. 302 00:12:53,680 --> 00:12:55,760 We once did an episode of Jonathan creek, 303 00:12:55,840 --> 00:12:59,800 and the scene was Jonathan creek gets a clamp off... 304 00:13:01,000 --> 00:13:02,440 A very dramatic plot! 305 00:13:02,520 --> 00:13:04,920 Very dramatic. I had to lie down and fiddle about with keys. 306 00:13:07,120 --> 00:13:11,640 Anyway, the prop department had put a couple of fake yellow lines down, 307 00:13:11,720 --> 00:13:15,160 and the traffic warden came along and gave us a ticket. No! Yeah. 308 00:13:15,240 --> 00:13:16,400 Did you get a ticket? 309 00:13:16,480 --> 00:13:20,080 I parked a car and they painted the lines underneath the car 310 00:13:20,160 --> 00:13:22,920 and we got a ticket, even though we pulled out, 311 00:13:23,000 --> 00:13:24,760 took a photograph of our car, 312 00:13:24,840 --> 00:13:27,240 took a photograph of the gap where our wheels were, 313 00:13:27,320 --> 00:13:29,160 and then we had to spend about four months 314 00:13:29,240 --> 00:13:31,720 going to a small claims court, trying to clear our name. 315 00:13:31,800 --> 00:13:33,720 So the same thing happened to you as happened 316 00:13:33,800 --> 00:13:35,040 literally in that...? 317 00:13:35,120 --> 00:13:37,760 I didn't get winched up, because in lewisham they're quite lazy, 318 00:13:37,840 --> 00:13:40,520 but they just painted round it. In Namibia, it's very different, 319 00:13:40,600 --> 00:13:42,920 obviously. Did you have to pay in the end? No, we won. 320 00:13:43,000 --> 00:13:44,600 But the whole thing was so stressful. 321 00:13:44,680 --> 00:13:46,400 I should say, I didn't realise we were meant 322 00:13:46,480 --> 00:13:48,360 to bring our own stories. 323 00:13:48,440 --> 00:13:52,000 I once swam up the thames with a couple of pigs 324 00:13:52,080 --> 00:13:53,680 and it was very dramatic. 325 00:13:53,760 --> 00:13:55,480 I had to take a day off work. 326 00:13:55,560 --> 00:13:57,640 I don't think of pigs as swimmers, do you? 327 00:13:57,720 --> 00:13:59,200 No, in Swiss family Robinson, 328 00:13:59,280 --> 00:14:01,320 the pigs swim from the boat to the shore. 329 00:14:01,400 --> 00:14:04,280 Oh, in that case, I'm completely sold on the story. 330 00:14:04,360 --> 00:14:06,040 If it's in the Swiss family Robinson. 331 00:14:06,120 --> 00:14:09,200 What's the Swiss family Robinson? Um... how old are you?! 332 00:14:09,280 --> 00:14:12,400 To be fair, it was written in about 1838. 333 00:14:12,480 --> 00:14:17,760 Now, in British tabloid slang, what is an fmd? 334 00:14:17,840 --> 00:14:19,920 An effing something. Yeah. 335 00:14:20,000 --> 00:14:23,520 Feapon of mass destruction? They groan 336 00:14:23,600 --> 00:14:27,800 imagine a middle-aged man is reading in bed and he turns to his wife 337 00:14:27,880 --> 00:14:30,320 and he turns a page like that in the tabloid and goes, 338 00:14:30,400 --> 00:14:32,600 "fuck me, Doris, have you seen this?" 339 00:14:32,680 --> 00:14:34,600 It's known as an fmd... 340 00:14:35,720 --> 00:14:38,000 ..In the tabloid press. 341 00:14:38,080 --> 00:14:43,160 Now, which pointless c can be found off the coast of cornwall? 342 00:14:43,240 --> 00:14:45,800 Is it the silent c in the word scilly, 343 00:14:45,880 --> 00:14:48,000 of scilly isles? Darling, very good. 344 00:14:48,080 --> 00:14:49,640 Oh, thank... You got a bit overexcited. 345 00:14:49,720 --> 00:14:51,680 I thought you were going to have an asthma attack. 346 00:14:51,760 --> 00:14:53,920 I was remembering a holiday to tresco in 2005. 347 00:14:54,000 --> 00:14:55,920 Did you have fun? I had a terrific time. 348 00:14:56,000 --> 00:14:58,320 Wonderful. I fell off a quad bike and cried. 349 00:14:58,400 --> 00:15:01,160 Listened to a lot of James blunt. Great time. 350 00:15:03,680 --> 00:15:08,320 So, the scilly isles used to be spelt silly, as in s-i-l-l-y. 351 00:15:08,400 --> 00:15:09,920 There was no c in it. 352 00:15:10,000 --> 00:15:13,280 But the locals added the c around the 1570s 353 00:15:13,360 --> 00:15:15,400 because the word "silly", at one time, 354 00:15:15,480 --> 00:15:17,360 it meant sort of happy and blessed, 355 00:15:17,440 --> 00:15:19,800 but it had become the word that meant foolish, 356 00:15:19,880 --> 00:15:21,920 and they didn't want to be described as such, 357 00:15:22,000 --> 00:15:23,880 so they put the letter c in. 358 00:15:23,960 --> 00:15:25,920 The scillonians, as the islanders are called, 359 00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:27,760 refer to the isles of scilly, or just scilly, 360 00:15:27,840 --> 00:15:29,120 but not the scilly isles. 361 00:15:29,200 --> 00:15:31,920 I'm going to give a shout-out to the Turks head on st Mary's. 362 00:15:32,000 --> 00:15:33,760 It's literally the best pub I've ever been to 363 00:15:33,840 --> 00:15:36,000 in my whole life - as far as I can remember. 364 00:15:36,080 --> 00:15:38,760 What were you doing in the scillies? I was making a documentary. 365 00:15:38,840 --> 00:15:41,160 I recommend it. It's worth the trip. I love the... 366 00:15:41,240 --> 00:15:43,800 Have you been, darling, to the scilly isles? No. Stunning. 367 00:15:43,880 --> 00:15:46,840 Absolutely stunning. Or, as they say, "scunning". 368 00:15:46,920 --> 00:15:49,320 Yeah. According to legend, king Arthur fought 369 00:15:49,400 --> 00:15:51,600 his last battle and was buried between cornwall 370 00:15:51,680 --> 00:15:55,080 and the isles of scilly, in the mythical kingdom of lyonesse. 371 00:15:55,160 --> 00:15:57,480 Looks like him being taken from the Turks head, doesn't it? 372 00:15:57,560 --> 00:15:58,920 "I-I've had a marvellous time." 373 00:15:59,000 --> 00:16:01,200 "I will finish my documentary tomorrow." 374 00:16:01,280 --> 00:16:03,920 The story goes that there used to be land connecting cornwall 375 00:16:04,000 --> 00:16:05,120 and the isles of scilly, 376 00:16:05,200 --> 00:16:07,720 and then it was swallowed up by the ocean in a single night, 377 00:16:07,800 --> 00:16:09,280 about 1,000 years ago. 378 00:16:09,360 --> 00:16:11,760 And there are people who claim, if you listen very carefully, 379 00:16:11,840 --> 00:16:13,560 you can still hear the bells of lyonesse's 380 00:16:13,640 --> 00:16:16,200 140 submerged churches ringing underwater. 381 00:16:16,280 --> 00:16:18,160 What, so there's a whole island that went under? 382 00:16:18,240 --> 00:16:20,600 Well, it isn't true, darling. Water has separated cornwall 383 00:16:20,680 --> 00:16:22,280 from the isles for longer than britain's 384 00:16:22,360 --> 00:16:25,400 been separated from France. You provide us with these little thrills 385 00:16:25,480 --> 00:16:28,080 and then you take them away. I know. Just steal it from you. 386 00:16:28,160 --> 00:16:30,280 We were separated from France? 387 00:16:30,360 --> 00:16:32,440 Yes, darling. So britain and Europe were linked 388 00:16:32,520 --> 00:16:35,240 by a landmass, doggerland... What is this wizardry?! 389 00:16:35,320 --> 00:16:37,080 Yes. Until it was flooded, 390 00:16:37,160 --> 00:16:39,480 about seventh millennium bc. 391 00:16:39,560 --> 00:16:42,360 Wow! I tell you something that can be found in the area - 392 00:16:42,440 --> 00:16:44,920 in the waters there - which I do think is amazing, 393 00:16:45,000 --> 00:16:47,200 is the salp, s-a-l-p. 394 00:16:47,280 --> 00:16:49,280 Anybody heard of salp? I love this. 395 00:16:49,360 --> 00:16:51,840 So it's hollow, it's jellyfish-like, 396 00:16:51,920 --> 00:16:54,520 barrel-shaped, it's transparent, it's a sea creature. 397 00:16:54,600 --> 00:16:56,520 So it's a group of animals known as a sea squirt, 398 00:16:56,600 --> 00:17:00,280 but basically it's the size of about the palm of your hand. 399 00:17:00,360 --> 00:17:03,520 It occurs worldwide, but in britain it's mostly found in the water 400 00:17:03,600 --> 00:17:05,600 around the scillies and cornwall and so on. 401 00:17:05,680 --> 00:17:08,920 Basically, it's a tube with an opening at either end 402 00:17:09,000 --> 00:17:10,920 and it moves by jet propulsion, 403 00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:15,080 so it pumps water through itself by contracting bands 404 00:17:15,160 --> 00:17:17,240 of muscle that ring the body. 405 00:17:17,320 --> 00:17:20,560 When they swim together, it's a bit like synchronised swimming - 406 00:17:20,640 --> 00:17:23,840 because each member of the chain continues to function 407 00:17:23,920 --> 00:17:27,320 as a separate individual, but they swim with their own rhythm, 408 00:17:27,400 --> 00:17:29,080 but at a really steady pace together. 409 00:17:29,160 --> 00:17:31,920 We've got some film showing them doing this. Oh, lovely. 410 00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:34,640 It is. Do you not think that is miraculous? 411 00:17:34,720 --> 00:17:36,560 Oh, it's like a murmuration. Yes! 412 00:17:36,640 --> 00:17:38,160 Of used condoms. 413 00:17:38,240 --> 00:17:40,360 They laugh 414 00:17:40,440 --> 00:17:42,760 they're often described as jellyfish, these salps. 415 00:17:42,840 --> 00:17:45,760 But the truth is that salps and humans are actually 416 00:17:45,840 --> 00:17:49,040 more closely related to each other than either is to a jellyfish. 417 00:17:49,120 --> 00:17:52,200 Because the salp larvae have spinal cords. 418 00:17:52,280 --> 00:17:55,480 Next time someone's having a go at me for getting off with a salp, 419 00:17:55,560 --> 00:17:56,960 I'll say, "I'm more like this than 420 00:17:57,040 --> 00:17:59,080 "that's like a jellyfish, thank you very much. 421 00:17:59,160 --> 00:18:01,200 "It's not the same as getting off with a jellyfish. 422 00:18:01,280 --> 00:18:02,840 "Look at the spinal cord!" Yeah. 423 00:18:02,920 --> 00:18:05,400 It's only the young salp that have spinal cords. 424 00:18:05,480 --> 00:18:06,800 The adults never... Oh, great! 425 00:18:06,880 --> 00:18:09,280 You're going to get double bad nicked for that one. Oh, god! 426 00:18:09,360 --> 00:18:11,360 That's no way to view new species. 427 00:18:11,440 --> 00:18:14,040 "I wonder what they'd be like as a sexual partner?" 428 00:18:15,560 --> 00:18:17,720 Imagine if you had a hollow pet, 429 00:18:17,800 --> 00:18:20,520 and then you could keep things in it. 430 00:18:20,600 --> 00:18:22,760 Is this your next dog, Alan? 431 00:18:22,840 --> 00:18:24,360 I'm thinking of getting a salp. 432 00:18:24,440 --> 00:18:26,760 Half husky, half salp. Half salp! 433 00:18:26,840 --> 00:18:28,920 Still got the lovely, fluffy hole at the end, though? 434 00:18:29,000 --> 00:18:30,520 They groan 435 00:18:30,600 --> 00:18:32,400 they reproduce in alternating generation 436 00:18:32,480 --> 00:18:33,880 of clones and individuals. 437 00:18:33,960 --> 00:18:36,400 So a solitary mother gives birth, asexually, 438 00:18:36,480 --> 00:18:39,080 to thousands of young clones, all female, 439 00:18:39,160 --> 00:18:40,480 which then form chains. 440 00:18:40,560 --> 00:18:42,760 And these chains are then fertilised en masse 441 00:18:42,840 --> 00:18:45,520 and they swim up to the surface through clouds of sperm 442 00:18:45,600 --> 00:18:47,600 deposited by chains of men. 443 00:18:47,680 --> 00:18:49,160 I mean... What?! 444 00:18:49,240 --> 00:18:52,720 Not men. Males. Not men. Males. 445 00:18:52,800 --> 00:18:54,440 Male salp. 446 00:18:54,520 --> 00:18:55,840 To be absolutely clear. 447 00:18:55,920 --> 00:18:58,920 Yeah, sorry. Ivo goes for a swim, and then suddenly... 448 00:18:59,000 --> 00:19:00,800 No! ..Half salp, half ivo. 449 00:19:00,880 --> 00:19:03,400 "Here come the salp! Oh!" 450 00:19:03,480 --> 00:19:05,920 Each female clone then has a single female offspring 451 00:19:06,000 --> 00:19:08,520 before turning into a male. I mean, it's just very interesting. 452 00:19:08,600 --> 00:19:10,920 There was rather a good Attenborough thing on the other day 453 00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:16,120 where all these fish gather and then the sperm is awash... 454 00:19:16,200 --> 00:19:18,280 There was sperm everywhere in the sea 455 00:19:18,360 --> 00:19:19,760 and they're all fertilising. 456 00:19:19,840 --> 00:19:23,600 And then these giant stingray-type fish 457 00:19:23,680 --> 00:19:25,240 come in and eat the sperm. 458 00:19:25,320 --> 00:19:29,280 And it only happens once a year at a particularly high tide 459 00:19:29,360 --> 00:19:30,920 when the moon's in the right place, 460 00:19:31,000 --> 00:19:33,080 and they just happen to know it's going to happen. 461 00:19:33,160 --> 00:19:34,640 But you can understand it once a year, 462 00:19:34,720 --> 00:19:36,560 cos once you've had that one time, you think... 463 00:19:36,640 --> 00:19:39,160 Yeah. I mean, part of me thinks, are they thinking, 464 00:19:39,240 --> 00:19:41,520 "yeah, it's the time when we get the sperm!" 465 00:19:41,600 --> 00:19:44,920 Or are they thinking, "oh, no, sperm day. 466 00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:47,400 "And I have nothing to eat the day before. 467 00:19:49,800 --> 00:19:52,840 "Take something sweet with you, because it's very, very..." 468 00:19:52,920 --> 00:19:54,480 They laugh 469 00:19:54,560 --> 00:19:56,840 anyway, we should really love salps. 470 00:19:56,920 --> 00:19:58,960 I am slightly obsessed with them. I do. I love them. 471 00:19:59,000 --> 00:20:00,120 I already love them. 472 00:20:00,200 --> 00:20:02,720 But the other reason is that they help with carbon capture. 473 00:20:02,800 --> 00:20:04,480 This is a weird thing to think about. 474 00:20:04,560 --> 00:20:06,920 Their faecal pellets are very large and very heavy, 475 00:20:07,000 --> 00:20:08,400 and they sink down to the seabed - 476 00:20:08,480 --> 00:20:10,920 as indeed do the dead salps themselves - 477 00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:13,720 and take thousands of tonnes of carbon with them. 478 00:20:13,800 --> 00:20:16,680 Because apparently nothing eats a dead salp. 479 00:20:16,760 --> 00:20:20,320 Just when you thought salps couldn't get any more sexy. I know. 480 00:20:20,400 --> 00:20:22,320 Lots of things will eat a live salp. 481 00:20:22,400 --> 00:20:24,240 Nobody wants to touch a dead one. 482 00:20:24,320 --> 00:20:25,640 It's not a thing. Goodness me. 483 00:20:25,720 --> 00:20:28,080 Apart from ivo. Getting off with a salp and then watching it 484 00:20:28,120 --> 00:20:30,520 race its own poo to the bottom of the ocean. 485 00:20:30,600 --> 00:20:32,400 What a treat! 486 00:20:32,480 --> 00:20:35,160 So you're thinking you're going to get off with it until it dies? 487 00:20:35,240 --> 00:20:37,640 Yeah. Well, at least till it loses its spine. 488 00:20:37,720 --> 00:20:40,640 They laugh 489 00:20:40,720 --> 00:20:42,920 "I had to leave her. She was spineless." 490 00:20:43,000 --> 00:20:45,520 "I saw her emerge from a cloud of sperm and I thought, 491 00:20:45,600 --> 00:20:48,280 "'that's my salp.'" Oh! 492 00:20:49,560 --> 00:20:52,560 Now, these are five s words which are going to come up on the screen. 493 00:20:52,640 --> 00:20:55,600 Can you rank them in order of silliness? 494 00:20:55,680 --> 00:20:57,280 Who wants to have a go? Alan, have a go. 495 00:20:57,360 --> 00:20:59,760 Skunkpoople's the most silly word there. 496 00:20:59,840 --> 00:21:01,880 Skunkoople is very silly, yes. 497 00:21:01,960 --> 00:21:03,320 I mean, I know what a shart is, 498 00:21:03,400 --> 00:21:05,616 but I don't think I want to say it out loud on television. 499 00:21:05,640 --> 00:21:08,840 What is it? Use the expression "faecal pellet". 500 00:21:08,920 --> 00:21:11,720 Sandi laughs 501 00:21:14,000 --> 00:21:17,800 when you, yeah, you think you're going to be doing a fart, 502 00:21:17,880 --> 00:21:20,440 but you actually faecally pelletise your pants. 503 00:21:20,520 --> 00:21:21,720 Yep. 504 00:21:24,680 --> 00:21:26,160 It's a... it's a... 505 00:21:26,240 --> 00:21:28,360 You pelletise?! 506 00:21:28,440 --> 00:21:30,920 "I've pelletised my pants again." 507 00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:32,840 "I suspect you've pelletised your pants. 508 00:21:32,920 --> 00:21:35,160 "You wanted to do a skunkpoople, 509 00:21:35,240 --> 00:21:37,480 "but you've sectoried." 510 00:21:37,560 --> 00:21:41,400 I don't fart, so I couldn't shart. You don't fart? No. 511 00:21:41,480 --> 00:21:43,920 I've only ever farted three times in front of my husband. 512 00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:46,600 But they were all sharts. No, once I was very ill. 513 00:21:46,680 --> 00:21:49,040 Second time, I sort of tripped on the stairs 514 00:21:49,120 --> 00:21:50,240 and it was out of shock. 515 00:21:50,320 --> 00:21:52,456 And the third time, cos he was telling me off in the car 516 00:21:52,480 --> 00:21:53,880 and the timing was too perfect. 517 00:21:56,520 --> 00:21:57,760 Right, let's have a quick look. 518 00:21:57,840 --> 00:22:00,160 The correct order for these words is... 519 00:22:00,240 --> 00:22:01,920 Of silliness? ..Skunkoople... 520 00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:05,160 That's the silliest, yeah. ..And subvick are both silly. 521 00:22:05,240 --> 00:22:08,600 Sectori and suppect are not silly. No. 522 00:22:08,680 --> 00:22:11,400 And shart, its status as a word is undetermined, 523 00:22:11,480 --> 00:22:12,880 as to whether it's silly or not. 524 00:22:12,960 --> 00:22:15,600 Because it sounded rude and might amuse people for that reason, 525 00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:17,120 rather than its silliness. 526 00:22:17,200 --> 00:22:20,360 So these were researchers in 2015 at the university of alberta. 527 00:22:20,440 --> 00:22:22,840 They were trying to establish whether you could objectively 528 00:22:22,920 --> 00:22:25,640 measure the silliness of words, 529 00:22:25,720 --> 00:22:29,160 and participants were shown various computer-generated nonsense words 530 00:22:29,240 --> 00:22:32,200 and asked to rate how humorous they actually were. 531 00:22:32,280 --> 00:22:34,200 And the results were remarkably consistent. 532 00:22:34,280 --> 00:22:37,400 Made-up words tend to be measurably funnier 533 00:22:37,480 --> 00:22:39,720 the more unusual their combination of letters. 534 00:22:39,800 --> 00:22:42,440 So the less you expect to hear certain letters together, 535 00:22:42,520 --> 00:22:44,960 the more amused you're going to be by them. 536 00:22:45,040 --> 00:22:46,600 And once they figured the pattern out, 537 00:22:46,680 --> 00:22:48,920 researchers were able to predict whether test subjects 538 00:22:49,000 --> 00:22:51,480 would find a word funny with an accuracy of about 92%. 539 00:22:51,560 --> 00:22:53,920 Subvick and skunkoople were classified as silly, 540 00:22:54,000 --> 00:22:56,240 along with quingle, probble, finglam and wook. 541 00:22:56,320 --> 00:22:58,920 I've no idea what I'm saying. I could be saying terrible things! 542 00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:01,240 Anyway, sectori and suppect are not silly 543 00:23:01,320 --> 00:23:03,440 since they're more similar to actual word forms. 544 00:23:03,520 --> 00:23:05,440 I actually thought, sandi, it could be a little 545 00:23:05,520 --> 00:23:06,680 trick you were playing on us. 546 00:23:06,720 --> 00:23:08,720 I thought they might be Scandinavian words. 547 00:23:08,800 --> 00:23:11,080 No, no. Scandinavian words are all terribly sensible. 548 00:23:11,160 --> 00:23:13,160 Sectori sounds very Latin. 549 00:23:13,240 --> 00:23:14,640 That sounds Italian, doesn't it? 550 00:23:14,720 --> 00:23:16,440 "Eh, you, sectori!" 551 00:23:16,520 --> 00:23:18,600 "Donde esta mi sectori?" 552 00:23:18,680 --> 00:23:20,280 I mean, that's Spanish, but, you know? 553 00:23:20,360 --> 00:23:22,560 You say Scandinavian words are quite sensible, 554 00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:26,920 but the things in Ikea have all got quite sort of strange names. 555 00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:29,000 I've got a theory about Ikea, right? 556 00:23:29,080 --> 00:23:32,680 At night, what they do is they write out price tags, right? 557 00:23:32,760 --> 00:23:34,680 And then they throw them in the air in the dark. 558 00:23:34,760 --> 00:23:39,720 So you can get tealights for £500 or a sofa for 50p. 559 00:23:39,800 --> 00:23:41,480 You can make up Ikea products - 560 00:23:41,560 --> 00:23:43,280 if you just go down to the bottom and say, 561 00:23:43,360 --> 00:23:47,200 "I'm looking for a bonk or a skicklefluff." 562 00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:49,720 "I'm looking for a shart." They'll look for it for ages. 563 00:23:49,800 --> 00:23:52,760 I need a subvick and a suppect. Here's some more slang. 564 00:23:52,840 --> 00:23:55,280 If you need to convince somebody that you're not a robot, 565 00:23:55,360 --> 00:23:57,360 there is another silly word that you should use. 566 00:23:57,440 --> 00:23:59,600 Does anybody know what it is? 567 00:23:59,680 --> 00:24:02,400 One that would suggest that you are a human. 568 00:24:02,480 --> 00:24:04,920 It's a really silly, childish word. 569 00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:07,560 Is it a flubble? Flubble? 570 00:24:07,640 --> 00:24:08,920 It's poop. Ah! 571 00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:10,280 I hate that word. Yes! Poop? 572 00:24:10,360 --> 00:24:12,640 The americanism of a perfectly good poo. 573 00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:17,720 Yeah, look, 2018 study by cognitive scientists at mit, 574 00:24:17,800 --> 00:24:20,800 1,000 people were asked to come up with the most human word 575 00:24:20,880 --> 00:24:22,040 somebody could say. 576 00:24:22,120 --> 00:24:24,120 Different participants were shown pairs of words 577 00:24:24,200 --> 00:24:26,680 taken from the list that the original 1,000 people generated, 578 00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:29,216 and were asked which word in each pair was chosen by a computer 579 00:24:29,240 --> 00:24:30,840 and which one was chosen by a human. 580 00:24:30,920 --> 00:24:32,520 In fact, they were all chosen by humans, 581 00:24:32,600 --> 00:24:34,760 but the word they most often believed had been selected 582 00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:37,160 by a human was poop. 583 00:24:37,240 --> 00:24:38,760 Anyway, moving on. 584 00:24:38,840 --> 00:24:43,920 How can you make sure that nobody takes you seriously online? 585 00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:45,640 I think it's very difficult. 586 00:24:45,720 --> 00:24:49,800 I put a tweet out, because it was heavy lockdown, 587 00:24:49,880 --> 00:24:51,080 and I ordered a bicycle. Mm. 588 00:24:51,160 --> 00:24:52,600 So I thought, very funny, humorous. 589 00:24:52,680 --> 00:24:55,880 I went, "new bike has arrived, the seat is so high. 590 00:24:55,960 --> 00:24:58,920 "However, my testes get a good workout." Yeah. 591 00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:00,920 In my mind, quite funny. 592 00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:04,080 Somebody wrote back to me, "have you tried eBay? 593 00:25:04,160 --> 00:25:06,480 "Get yourself an inflatable seat." 594 00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:08,440 Some people are quite literal-minded. 595 00:25:08,520 --> 00:25:11,800 That's much nicer than the shit I get when I post a tweet. 596 00:25:11,880 --> 00:25:13,680 Are people mean to you? Yeah! 597 00:25:13,760 --> 00:25:15,320 I don't do any of it, so I don't know. 598 00:25:15,400 --> 00:25:17,440 You're wise. It's pretty unpleasant. 599 00:25:17,520 --> 00:25:20,040 Apart from Stephen, who can post any old rubbish about his balls 600 00:25:20,120 --> 00:25:21,720 and just gets sent to eBay. 601 00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:23,600 Sandi laughs 602 00:25:23,680 --> 00:25:25,720 er, so there's a thing called poe's law, 603 00:25:25,800 --> 00:25:27,640 and it's an Internet truism. 604 00:25:27,720 --> 00:25:30,920 So, however ludicrous a statement you make on the Internet, 605 00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:35,240 if it doesn't include a smiley face, somebody will take it seriously. 606 00:25:35,320 --> 00:25:37,600 And it's named after somebody called Nathan poe. 607 00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:39,720 So if you had done the thing with the bicycle 608 00:25:39,800 --> 00:25:42,760 and then added a smiley face, it would have been fine. 609 00:25:42,840 --> 00:25:44,760 Ah! I'll tell you what, sandi. 610 00:25:44,840 --> 00:25:46,440 Yes, darling? You're missing nothing. 611 00:25:46,520 --> 00:25:48,600 No. Really, honestly. 612 00:25:48,680 --> 00:25:50,680 Do you do the...? I went back on Twitter 613 00:25:50,760 --> 00:25:53,640 after a few years off it because I'd published a book, 614 00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:57,520 and I've had lots of nice comments and stuff about my book, 615 00:25:57,600 --> 00:25:58,720 which is very gratifying, 616 00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:00,600 but if you dare to venture an opinion 617 00:26:00,680 --> 00:26:03,160 on any subject whatsoever... Anything at all? Yeah. 618 00:26:03,240 --> 00:26:05,160 ..Someone will be after you. 619 00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:07,480 Oh, right. So the most famous example of this 620 00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:09,400 was the Twitter joke trial. 621 00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:11,200 So there was a Twitter man called... 622 00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:13,280 Twitter user? Twitter man? Twitter man's good. 623 00:26:13,360 --> 00:26:15,880 Twitter man called Paul chambers, and he wrote, 624 00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:17,760 "oh, crap, Robin hood airport is closed. 625 00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:19,976 "You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, 626 00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:21,960 "otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky-high." 627 00:26:22,040 --> 00:26:23,440 I remember this, yes. 628 00:26:23,520 --> 00:26:25,480 He was charged with sending a menacing message. 629 00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:27,600 That really was apparently not... 630 00:26:27,680 --> 00:26:29,760 No, but he lost his job and so on. Yeah, he did. 631 00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:32,920 But if he had apparently just added a simple smiley face... yeah. 632 00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:36,040 ..At the end, everybody would have thought, "just kidding." 633 00:26:36,120 --> 00:26:38,920 There are other sorts of laws a bit like poe's law. 634 00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:40,280 There's Parkinson's law - 635 00:26:40,360 --> 00:26:42,840 work expands to fill the time available for its completion. 636 00:26:42,920 --> 00:26:44,040 There's sod's law - 637 00:26:44,120 --> 00:26:46,080 the worst possible outcome always happens. 638 00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:48,880 And sod's law... a slightly less extreme American equivalent, 639 00:26:48,960 --> 00:26:51,720 Murphy's law, which is anything that can go wrong 640 00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:53,200 eventually will go wrong. 641 00:26:53,280 --> 00:26:55,920 But what do you think this is? Muphry's law? 642 00:26:56,000 --> 00:26:58,640 What do we think that is? So, I talked about Murphy's law. 643 00:26:58,720 --> 00:27:00,560 Anything that can go wrong will eventually... 644 00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:02,240 The law of typos? It is. 645 00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:05,040 If you write something which points out a spelling 646 00:27:05,120 --> 00:27:07,960 or a grammatical error in somebody else's work, 647 00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:10,160 there will be a similar error... Oh, yeah. 648 00:27:10,240 --> 00:27:12,440 ..In what you've written yourself. It is just a thing. 649 00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:15,360 Yeah. The one that's extraordinary is the cobra effect, 650 00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:18,360 which is where the consequences of an attempt to solve a problem 651 00:27:18,440 --> 00:27:20,640 actually make the original problem worse. 652 00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:22,720 Oh, god, that's my life. Thank you. 653 00:27:22,800 --> 00:27:26,200 So, the story is told - possibly apocryphal, but it's been told 654 00:27:26,280 --> 00:27:27,720 since the 1870s... 655 00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:30,280 Every sitcom plot ever created. Yes, absolutely. 656 00:27:30,360 --> 00:27:32,880 So, there was a 19th-century scheme to rid Delhi of cobras 657 00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:34,160 by placing a bounty on them. 658 00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:38,560 So, what happened is people started breeding cobras to claim the bounty. 659 00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:40,320 So the scheme was cancelled. 660 00:27:40,400 --> 00:27:44,080 Then people had all these cobras, so the farmers just released them 661 00:27:44,160 --> 00:27:47,720 into the wild, and there were then many more cobras by the end. 662 00:27:47,800 --> 00:27:50,680 The problem was worse than it had been in the first place, 663 00:27:50,760 --> 00:27:52,680 and it's called the cobra effect. 664 00:27:52,760 --> 00:27:55,920 Do you know what the Barbra Streisand effect is? No. No. 665 00:27:56,000 --> 00:27:58,560 There was an aerial photograph of her house online 666 00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:00,480 and she wanted to have it removed. 667 00:28:00,560 --> 00:28:04,040 Now, she launched a $50 million lawsuit against a guy, 668 00:28:04,120 --> 00:28:06,360 he was a retired software engineer, 669 00:28:06,440 --> 00:28:09,000 and he had taken the photo to document coastal erosion, 670 00:28:09,080 --> 00:28:11,400 but she didn't want people to know it was her house. 671 00:28:11,480 --> 00:28:13,720 Well, before the lawsuit, nobody knew it was her house. 672 00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:18,080 The photo had only been downloaded six times, twice by her lawyers. 673 00:28:18,160 --> 00:28:22,600 And after that, thousands of people, thousands! 674 00:28:22,680 --> 00:28:25,720 We've pixilated it, just to save any upset. 675 00:28:25,800 --> 00:28:28,640 I've got a law, I think. Walsh's law. Yeah? 676 00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:32,560 The smaller the hand, the creepier it is. Ok. 677 00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:35,400 I've got small hands, they're quite creepy. 678 00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:37,880 Are they creepy? I think so. Why do you think they're creepy? 679 00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:39,160 They just sort of a bit like... 680 00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:41,720 They're not quite the right size for what they should be. 681 00:28:41,800 --> 00:28:44,680 Do you know dom irrera, the American comedian? Yeah. 682 00:28:44,760 --> 00:28:48,120 He's talking about watching porn with his wife, 683 00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:50,800 and his wife goes, "now, that's a cock." 684 00:28:50,880 --> 00:28:53,120 And he's going, "they've all got tiny hands. 685 00:28:53,200 --> 00:28:55,120 "The girls have got tiny hands. 686 00:28:57,200 --> 00:28:58,560 "They seal their mouths together, 687 00:28:58,640 --> 00:29:00,800 "they've got tiny mouths and tiny hands." 688 00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:05,960 He's so funny. 689 00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:10,800 I clearly am watching the wrong stuff. 690 00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:13,680 Have you got a law you'd make for yourself, darling? 691 00:29:13,760 --> 00:29:18,000 Graham's law - no showers ten minutes before leaving the house. 692 00:29:18,080 --> 00:29:21,160 The amount of times I've made myself later by having a shower, 693 00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:23,520 had to break into a run for a train 694 00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:26,800 and then being sweatier and dirtier than if I hadn't had the shower... 695 00:29:26,880 --> 00:29:29,120 In the first place. Yes, cursing myself... 696 00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:32,120 It's a bit like the cobra effect, you've made the problem worse. 697 00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:33,920 Anybody else? 698 00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:36,440 There is a law called Stefan's law. Right? 699 00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:38,680 If anyone is into physics, you know this. 700 00:29:38,760 --> 00:29:41,640 I'm not into physics or anything, but I do know that there's something 701 00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:44,320 called Stefan's law, and I took it upon myself to find this out. 702 00:29:44,400 --> 00:29:49,120 And basically, what this law does is it measures the heat 703 00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:51,320 coming off a black body. 704 00:29:51,400 --> 00:29:54,760 Is that right? Yeah. So I'm guessing right now, you're all sweating. 705 00:29:54,840 --> 00:29:57,880 There's a thing about oxygen readers... what are you doing? 706 00:29:57,960 --> 00:30:00,720 You know you get these oxygen readers on your hands? 707 00:30:00,800 --> 00:30:02,920 Oh, is that...? I didn't know what you were doing. 708 00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:05,120 Sorry, yeah. For years, they've been giving... 709 00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:06,920 Can you stop doing the mime? 710 00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:09,520 Holly, it's the combination of the disgusting mime 711 00:30:09,600 --> 00:30:11,080 and your creepily small hands. 712 00:30:11,160 --> 00:30:12,680 For years, they've been... 713 00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:17,400 They've recently found out that 714 00:30:17,480 --> 00:30:21,120 they've been reading black people's results not right, 715 00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:24,360 because it's to do with light penetrating skin, 716 00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:25,880 and they give really incorrect... 717 00:30:25,960 --> 00:30:28,920 Because they obviously tested on white people, not on... 718 00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:31,800 That's terrible. Sandi's just found out about racism. 719 00:30:31,880 --> 00:30:33,640 I know! What? What?! 720 00:30:35,240 --> 00:30:39,280 I think I would like a law, Amos's law. 721 00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:43,840 It would be to ban your elderly parents staying with you 722 00:30:43,920 --> 00:30:46,480 for longer than three weeks. 723 00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:51,160 And I'll tell you from my personal experience, my dad did stay with me 724 00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:55,120 for four weeks, over the recent lockdown, and he's 82, 725 00:30:55,200 --> 00:30:59,760 and I had no idea, in all these years, that he is a bell end. 726 00:30:59,840 --> 00:31:01,240 Because he... 727 00:31:03,280 --> 00:31:05,640 Did you never wonder where you got it from? 728 00:31:10,440 --> 00:31:14,160 Don't you criticise me with your small hands! 729 00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:17,240 He put the heating up to lava, for example, and I'm like, 730 00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:19,440 "are you not burning in my house?" 731 00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:23,760 I like watching real-life murder documentaries, that's my thing. 732 00:31:23,840 --> 00:31:25,320 And I got him into it. 733 00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:28,280 If you watch them, you know that they have re-enactments with actors, 734 00:31:28,360 --> 00:31:32,440 and at the end, the final shot is the real accused in a courtroom. 735 00:31:32,520 --> 00:31:34,840 I was watching it one day with my dad, and my dad went, 736 00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:36,840 "oh, look, they've got the wrong man. 737 00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:39,160 "He wasn't the man we saw earlier." 738 00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:44,560 Just go home! 739 00:31:44,640 --> 00:31:46,880 What would you have? Like, an alarm go off? 740 00:31:46,960 --> 00:31:51,680 A three-week thing and then suddenly, "whooooo!" 741 00:31:51,760 --> 00:31:53,920 "You've got to leave, old man." 742 00:31:54,000 --> 00:31:55,440 Anyway... 743 00:31:55,520 --> 00:31:59,000 What's the downside of being sucked in a salt mine? 744 00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:00,320 Oh, god. 745 00:32:03,560 --> 00:32:06,000 A lot of men would say it doesn't matter where they're sucked. 746 00:32:06,080 --> 00:32:09,640 Wow. I wasn't aware there was a downside of getting sucked anywhere. 747 00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:13,480 Do you not think it looks like his wife was just there a minute ago, 748 00:32:13,560 --> 00:32:15,480 and he's going, "darling? Darling!" 749 00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:20,560 This is in Havana, in 2005, it was after hurricane Wilma. 750 00:32:20,640 --> 00:32:23,120 And you can see that the water is swelling down, probably 751 00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:24,720 down into a drainage system there. 752 00:32:24,800 --> 00:32:29,560 So, it's worth thinking about how water can make that swift movement. 753 00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:31,120 This is an absolutely true story. 754 00:32:31,200 --> 00:32:33,760 Lake peigneur, which is in Louisiana, 755 00:32:33,840 --> 00:32:37,560 was a shallow, freshwater lake and it sits above... 756 00:32:37,640 --> 00:32:42,080 Well, it sat above a large underground salt mine. 757 00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:45,600 So, in 1980, there's an oil company and they're drilling in the lake 758 00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:48,640 and they inadvertently bored a hole straight into the mine, 759 00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:51,960 and the lake water drained into the hole - a bit like the photograph 760 00:32:52,040 --> 00:32:54,240 we saw at the very beginning - 761 00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:57,880 it created a 400-metre, in diameter, whirlpool. 762 00:32:57,960 --> 00:33:03,000 It sucked in the drilling platform, 11 barges, a tug boat, 763 00:33:03,080 --> 00:33:08,040 many trees and 65 acres of the rip Van winkle botanic gardens, 764 00:33:08,120 --> 00:33:10,960 including all of their greenhouses. 765 00:33:11,040 --> 00:33:13,480 From one drilling! 766 00:33:13,560 --> 00:33:15,520 Did all the people get away? 767 00:33:15,600 --> 00:33:18,400 Everybody was absolutely fine, remarkably. That's extraordinary. 768 00:33:18,480 --> 00:33:21,240 Not even the people working underground got hurt. 769 00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:23,320 What are the rip Van winkle greenhouses? 770 00:33:23,400 --> 00:33:26,960 No, the rip Van winkle botanic gardens, in Louisiana. 771 00:33:27,040 --> 00:33:29,160 Who's rip Van winkle? Are you serious? 772 00:33:29,240 --> 00:33:30,680 I'm very sorry. Oh! 773 00:33:30,760 --> 00:33:34,240 Rip Van winkle is a wonderful American tale about a man 774 00:33:34,320 --> 00:33:37,160 who goes to sleep and sleeps for... You don't know this story? 775 00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:39,320 No. Watch that, and read Swiss family Robinson. 776 00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:42,000 Yes, I've got a lovely lockdown night in ahead of me. 777 00:33:42,080 --> 00:33:44,680 Well, you're fine, I'm doing porn and sharting. 778 00:33:49,120 --> 00:33:51,640 The flow of the canal, which normally drained the lake 779 00:33:51,720 --> 00:33:53,280 into the Gulf of Mexico, reversed. 780 00:33:53,360 --> 00:33:57,000 It sucked sea water into the lake and fed this terrible maelstrom, 781 00:33:57,080 --> 00:33:59,320 which then became a 50-metre-deep waterfall, 782 00:33:59,400 --> 00:34:02,240 and the water then erupted upwards through the mine shafts 783 00:34:02,320 --> 00:34:04,000 in the form of 400-foot geysers. 784 00:34:04,080 --> 00:34:05,760 And remarkably, nobody was injured, 785 00:34:05,840 --> 00:34:07,960 including 55 miners who were working underground. 786 00:34:08,040 --> 00:34:11,440 But what was a three-metre-deep freshwater lake is now 787 00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:13,640 a 400-metre-deep saltwater lake. 788 00:34:13,720 --> 00:34:16,040 Do you not think that's extraordinary? 789 00:34:16,120 --> 00:34:18,760 That is extraordinary. It sounds mythological, doesn't it? 790 00:34:18,840 --> 00:34:21,240 It sounds like those sort of maelstroms that you hear about. 791 00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:24,200 I mean, there are genuinely natural whirlpools which exist 792 00:34:24,280 --> 00:34:26,240 in some seas and rivers. 793 00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:29,680 Norway has two of the biggest - saltstraumen and the moskstraumen - 794 00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:33,520 but the number-three slot is taken in the hebrides, by corryvreckan. 795 00:34:33,600 --> 00:34:35,880 There we are, there's the corryvreckan. Oh, look. 796 00:34:35,960 --> 00:34:38,720 They did a documentary in 2000, a television documentary, 797 00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:41,800 they threw a mannequin into the corryvreckan with a depth Gauge 798 00:34:41,880 --> 00:34:45,000 attached to it, and it came to the surface some distance away. 799 00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:49,160 It had been dragged along the bottom at a depth of 860 feet. 800 00:34:49,240 --> 00:34:51,760 Wow. In fact, there's a story, George orwell... 801 00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:53,160 Do you know who George orwell is? 802 00:34:53,200 --> 00:34:55,400 I do know who George orwell is, thank you. 803 00:34:55,480 --> 00:34:57,840 George orwell almost died in corryvreckan. 804 00:34:57,920 --> 00:35:00,680 He was living nearby, he was writing 1984. 805 00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:03,160 He decided to take his three-year-old son, along with some 806 00:35:03,240 --> 00:35:05,800 nieces and nephews, out on a boating trip past the whirlpool. 807 00:35:05,880 --> 00:35:08,640 And they got sucked in and capsized and just about managed to swim 808 00:35:08,720 --> 00:35:11,680 to a small island, where orwell tied his shirt to a fishing rod 809 00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:13,880 and waved it about until they were rescued. 810 00:35:13,960 --> 00:35:15,800 And now for some silly misunderstandings, 811 00:35:15,880 --> 00:35:18,200 it's general ignorance. Fingers on buzzers, please. 812 00:35:18,280 --> 00:35:20,800 How many seasons are there? 813 00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:22,680 Oh... gah... 814 00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:24,520 Be very careful. 815 00:35:24,600 --> 00:35:26,800 First time on the show - four seasons! 816 00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:28,320 Ah, yes! 817 00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:31,560 Yeah, it's a rite of passage. It's a rite of passage! 818 00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:34,720 Yeah. It really depends where you live, and it also partly depends 819 00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:37,280 on who colonised you in the first place. 820 00:35:37,360 --> 00:35:41,440 So, the UK will recognise four seasons, haven't always done so. 821 00:35:41,520 --> 00:35:43,640 We once just had summer and winter. 822 00:35:43,720 --> 00:35:46,680 The English language didn't have sort of established names 823 00:35:46,760 --> 00:35:49,080 for spring and Autumn until about the 16th century. 824 00:35:49,160 --> 00:35:51,400 What did they call four-season pizzas then? 825 00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:53,120 Yeah, weirdly, didn't have 826 00:35:53,200 --> 00:35:54,960 four-seasons pizza in the 16th century. 827 00:35:55,040 --> 00:35:56,920 Did they just call them two-seasons pizza? 828 00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:00,360 Where's the fun in that? So, how many seasons are there, sandi? 829 00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:01,760 Well, it depends where you are. 830 00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:03,680 So, south Vietnam, there's three. 831 00:36:03,760 --> 00:36:05,840 Hot and dry, rainy, cool and dry. 832 00:36:05,920 --> 00:36:08,360 Parts of the United States, sort of the southwest, 833 00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:10,720 they have four seasons for historical reasons, 834 00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:13,520 because the colonies, where they came from, they had four seasons, 835 00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:14,960 so they rather imposed it. 836 00:36:15,040 --> 00:36:17,280 The traditional hindu calendar's got six seasons. 837 00:36:17,360 --> 00:36:19,960 I hope all of these places have their own qi and everyone's 838 00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:22,400 getting it wrong there as well. Yeah. 839 00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:25,440 There might be four seasons, or three, two, one, six. 840 00:36:25,520 --> 00:36:27,400 Even none at all - it all depends. 841 00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:30,040 What's the most popular Volkswagen? 842 00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:34,120 Cartoon bullet ricochets yes? Polo. 843 00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:35,880 Polo. Holly there with the Polo. 844 00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:41,280 Cartoon gunshot it's the beetle. 845 00:36:46,640 --> 00:36:48,360 Any more for any more? 846 00:36:48,440 --> 00:36:50,560 Cartoon gunshot oh, it's a golf. 847 00:36:55,880 --> 00:36:58,880 Cartoon gunshot passat. 848 00:36:59,920 --> 00:37:02,120 Cartoon gunshot scirocco. 849 00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:10,960 Cartoon gunshot kombi bus. 850 00:37:11,040 --> 00:37:12,880 Oh! Oh! No. 851 00:37:12,960 --> 00:37:16,080 So, we're measuring by the number of items sold, 852 00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:18,480 rather than by the value, 853 00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:23,120 and vw sells more sausages than cars. 854 00:37:23,200 --> 00:37:26,280 So, I have some here. 855 00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:30,440 These are Volkswagen originalteil, 856 00:37:30,520 --> 00:37:32,000 "the original part". 857 00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:34,720 They're curry-flavoured sausages they originally produced 858 00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:36,240 in vw factories to feed the staff. 859 00:37:36,320 --> 00:37:41,000 They became so popular, they're now sold by them for ten Euros a pack, 860 00:37:41,080 --> 00:37:44,520 and they're given as gifts in vw dealerships in 11 countries, 861 00:37:44,600 --> 00:37:46,480 but not in the UK. 862 00:37:46,560 --> 00:37:50,160 When you buy a car, you get given free sausages, 863 00:37:50,240 --> 00:37:54,200 and the vw base in wolfsburg has got 30 butchers on the payroll 864 00:37:54,280 --> 00:37:56,640 and they produce these. Do you not think it's wonderful? 865 00:37:56,720 --> 00:37:58,520 These are original Volkswagen sausages. 866 00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:00,760 But I've got you something, Alan, that I think you're 867 00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:03,000 going to really like, which fits in with the sausages 868 00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:05,280 but yet vegetarian. Is it a live pig? No. 869 00:38:05,360 --> 00:38:08,520 So, this is marvellous. This is about corporate sausage tie-ins, ok? 870 00:38:08,600 --> 00:38:11,120 There is a football club called bedale afc. 871 00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:14,880 They're a non-league football club and they're from north Yorkshire, 872 00:38:14,960 --> 00:38:16,640 and they have a sausage sponsor, 873 00:38:16,720 --> 00:38:18,680 a local sausage company called heck. 874 00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:20,920 And in 2017, they took to the pitch, emblazoned... 875 00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:23,840 Ooh, I like heck sausages. ..Emblazoned, the kit - 876 00:38:23,920 --> 00:38:25,120 this is the one on the right - 877 00:38:25,160 --> 00:38:27,200 with hundreds of sausages, and pink shorts. 878 00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:30,560 It was described as the wurst football kit ever. 879 00:38:30,640 --> 00:38:33,800 Managed to make the news as far as Turkey and Canada. 880 00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:36,560 And then, in 2018, they looked like hot dogs. 881 00:38:36,640 --> 00:38:38,320 That's the next one along. 882 00:38:38,400 --> 00:38:40,160 2019, it was bangers and mash. 883 00:38:40,240 --> 00:38:43,640 And then 2020, each strip featured a big carrot for a vegetarian thing. 884 00:38:43,720 --> 00:38:45,680 They've got one more they're thinking of, 885 00:38:45,760 --> 00:38:48,800 which is to do a toad in the goal strip for the goalie. 886 00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:52,160 But we're very pleased we've managed to get hold of, for you, look, 887 00:38:52,240 --> 00:38:56,400 darling, sausage and mash kit for you. With peas, darling. I love it. 888 00:38:56,480 --> 00:38:58,720 So, I hope that that works for you. I love it. 889 00:38:58,800 --> 00:39:00,560 Yes, I think it's rather fine, isn't it? 890 00:39:00,640 --> 00:39:03,240 Those four lads don't look very happy about it, do they? 891 00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:07,320 Vw's wurst product is a bit of a banger, if we're honest. 892 00:39:07,400 --> 00:39:09,440 Audience groans yeah. 893 00:39:09,520 --> 00:39:10,720 Thank you. 894 00:39:10,800 --> 00:39:13,040 Thank you very much. 895 00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:16,480 How should you handle rare, old books? 896 00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:18,640 Oh, in white gloves, the... 897 00:39:22,720 --> 00:39:25,000 No. Not at all. Why not at all? 898 00:39:25,080 --> 00:39:27,800 In the British library, it's all very dim 899 00:39:27,880 --> 00:39:30,920 and the light and the air temperature and all that... 900 00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:34,160 Yeah. But in fact, on your hands, you should have nothing at all. 901 00:39:34,240 --> 00:39:37,080 You should have extremely clean, but naked, hands. 902 00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:39,800 I like the phrase "extremely clean butt-naked hands." 903 00:39:39,880 --> 00:39:41,440 Butt-naked hands. 904 00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:43,040 Butt-naked hands? 905 00:39:43,120 --> 00:39:45,280 Butt-naked hands! 906 00:39:45,360 --> 00:39:47,880 So, organisations like the national trust, the Smithsonian 907 00:39:47,960 --> 00:39:50,080 in the United States, the British library and so on, 908 00:39:50,160 --> 00:39:53,040 they don't approve of white gloves because you lack the dexterity 909 00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:55,080 and the tactileness of fingers, 910 00:39:55,160 --> 00:39:57,360 so you're more likely to tear a page. 911 00:39:57,440 --> 00:39:59,560 And they're slippery, so you might drop the book 912 00:39:59,640 --> 00:40:00,720 if you've got gloves on. 913 00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:03,840 And also, there are tiny fragments of pigment more likely to stick 914 00:40:03,920 --> 00:40:07,400 to the material of the glove than if you've just got your skin. 915 00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:09,640 But you definitely shouldn't do this. 916 00:40:09,720 --> 00:40:12,720 No, that's definitely a mistake. 917 00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:14,200 And gloves can also retain dirt. 918 00:40:14,280 --> 00:40:16,080 Also, you look like a creepy mime artist. 919 00:40:16,160 --> 00:40:17,360 It is quite creepy, isn't it? 920 00:40:17,440 --> 00:40:19,360 Yeah, so just stick to snooker refereeing. 921 00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:21,920 Just keep your hands butt-naked and get on with it. 922 00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:24,720 One group of people who do tend to wear gloves 923 00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:26,520 are Japanese police officers. 924 00:40:26,600 --> 00:40:29,360 Any thoughts as to why that might be? 925 00:40:29,440 --> 00:40:32,520 Sushi. It's all that comes... Sushi! 926 00:40:32,600 --> 00:40:34,480 Oh, is it shoving people on trains? 927 00:40:34,560 --> 00:40:35,920 They love that, don't they? 928 00:40:36,000 --> 00:40:38,520 So, there's an interview in 2010 with an officer 929 00:40:38,600 --> 00:40:41,560 who had been in charge of security at Beatles concerts. 930 00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:45,280 So, the band visited in 1966, and he says he introduced the rule 931 00:40:45,360 --> 00:40:48,560 because they had to manoeuvre lots of screaming young women, and he 932 00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:51,800 thought it was inappropriate for them to do this with their hands. 933 00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:55,320 So, it dates from screaming fans of the Beatles in 1966. 934 00:40:55,400 --> 00:40:58,120 Wow. The Beatles' legacy, it's just so diverse. 935 00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:01,520 It's so diverse. Japanese police officers. 936 00:41:01,600 --> 00:41:03,480 Now, here's an easy one. 937 00:41:03,560 --> 00:41:05,280 Ignorance of the law is...? 938 00:41:06,280 --> 00:41:08,000 Cartoon arrow twangs 939 00:41:08,080 --> 00:41:10,080 not an excuse. 940 00:41:13,720 --> 00:41:16,880 But it should be an excuse. Well, it can be, that's the thing. 941 00:41:16,960 --> 00:41:19,160 I mean, it's a terribly well-known legal axiom, 942 00:41:19,240 --> 00:41:22,200 but lots of legal systems... Why is there a badger? 943 00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:23,720 What's going on? 944 00:41:23,800 --> 00:41:25,960 It's toad of toad hall. Oh, it's toad of toad hall. 945 00:41:26,040 --> 00:41:27,560 I couldn't see toad in the dock. 946 00:41:27,640 --> 00:41:30,560 So many legal systems, including ours, have recognised exceptions 947 00:41:30,640 --> 00:41:32,520 which slightly erode the principle. 948 00:41:32,600 --> 00:41:35,400 In fact, the Germans, the French, the Austrians, they have 949 00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:38,000 criminal codes explicitly recognising a defence 950 00:41:38,080 --> 00:41:40,360 of a reasonable mistake of the law. 951 00:41:40,440 --> 00:41:42,840 In South Africa, as long as the accused is genuinely 952 00:41:42,920 --> 00:41:44,800 ignorant of the law, that is a defence. 953 00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:47,280 I think that's fair. There are laws in this country, 954 00:41:47,360 --> 00:41:49,080 which are called strict liability laws, 955 00:41:49,160 --> 00:41:51,800 and it doesn't matter whether you knew or not, then you are guilty. 956 00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:54,440 So, things like speeding. But that's clear, that's clear. 957 00:41:54,520 --> 00:41:57,440 Yeah. But did you see, in 2020, there was a woman who got a parking 958 00:41:57,520 --> 00:42:00,720 ticket because she was giving cpr to a dying man in a car park, 959 00:42:00,800 --> 00:42:04,360 and she overstayed by 12 minutes and got a £100 car-parking fine? 960 00:42:04,440 --> 00:42:07,120 It's like when people have to pull over for ambulances and they pull 961 00:42:07,160 --> 00:42:09,896 into a bus Lane and then they get a ticket. They get a ticket for that, 962 00:42:09,920 --> 00:42:12,681 yeah. Which brings us to this silly thing we do at the end of the show 963 00:42:12,760 --> 00:42:15,160 of giving everybody meaningless scores. 964 00:42:15,240 --> 00:42:18,320 So, in first place, captain sensible tonight - 965 00:42:18,400 --> 00:42:21,520 well, I'll be damned - with minus five, it's Holly! 966 00:42:27,320 --> 00:42:31,200 Second is the slightly foolish, with minus six, it's Alan! Second! 967 00:42:35,160 --> 00:42:38,320 Third is the pretty dopey, with minus 13, ivo! 968 00:42:43,760 --> 00:42:47,920 Tonight's silly-Billy, with minus 27, it's Stephen! 969 00:42:56,640 --> 00:42:58,960 It's thanks to ivo, Holly, Stephen and Alan. 970 00:42:59,040 --> 00:43:02,200 And I leave you with this silly sign-off from the French epicure 971 00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:04,160 anthelme brillat-savarin. 972 00:43:04,240 --> 00:43:07,080 "Burgundy makes you think of silly things, 973 00:43:07,160 --> 00:43:09,360 "Bordeaux makes you talk about them, 974 00:43:09,440 --> 00:43:11,520 "and champagne makes you do them." 975 00:43:11,600 --> 00:43:13,280 Cheers and goodnight.