Good evening, and welcome to the qi cutting room floor,
where tonight we are sifting through the most scintillating snippets
from series s.
Let's dive right in. Roll the first clip.
The international space station has had a lavatory upgrade.
Here it is. Ooh, look at that!
It's called the universal waste management system,
and it cost $23 million.
What? That costs $23 million? Yeah.
So... For one?
Yeah, for one.
So everybody has to share on the international space station.
Here's the thing. This particular toilet has the ability
to sort faecal bits from the rest of the waste
to allow the liquid to be recycled.
23 million! Wait.
You can buy a sieve for 4.99.
Well... What are they recycling it as?
No, no, don't you dare.
They're recycling the liquid as... Lucozade.
No. As water?
Drinking water. Drinking water.
Drinking water. No!
For them on the spaceship?! Mm.
Oh, come on! No, for the royal family.
Sandi laughs
but there was a problem. It was a really big problem
in the early days. They used to have to put some germ killing liquid
in the bag with the faeces,
and then they had to knead it for a few minutes.
Gasping
they, themselves? Yes, so it could be stabilised.
And then it was stowed away for re-entry.
Re-entry?!
Wow!
Surely they could just put it in the bin?
You know, we're all stronger than we realise.
I learnt this when I was a very little boy because I was born
in Germany after the second world war.
The late 1940s. Not a lot of work for the circuses.
And my parents engaged a couple to look after me,
as a sort of nanny and governess.
And they were strong people from the local circus.
So almost the first things I learnt were to walk the tightrope
and to stand on my head and to be a strong baby.
We can all do this experiment now.
Put your hand on your head - like this. Ok.
Oh, I've got to find my head.
Now, with your other hand, attempt to lift
your arm off your head - from underneath.
Just push it. Please do this at home if you're watching.
You can't do it, can you? No. You really cannot do it.
The strongest person in the world,
that strong woman, could not lift my hand from my head.
It's all done with mechanics.
They're not particularly strong at all.
That's the trick I learnt when I was two,
and I'm pleased after all these years to be able
to share it with you now.
Someone told you that when you were two?
Yes. And you remembered it?
Yes. How?!
I treasured it. Yeah.
I don't... never ask giles a follow-up question.
We now think that munch's figure was in fact inspired
by a Peruvian mummy, which he saw when he went to a visit
at the ethnographic exchange museum in Paris.
It's a chachapoyas warrior who lived in the Amazon,
maybe around 1,000 years ago.
He's just got his orthodontist bill.
Yes, argh!
Teeth aren't bad for 1,000 years. They're not bad, are they?
No. No, that's all right.
But when it was brought to Paris, it did have a big effect
on a lot of people, because Paul Gauguin is thought
to have been inspired by exactly the same mummy.
There's a marvellous painting of his called where do we come from?
What are we? Where are we going?
And if you look down in the bottom left hand, you can see.
It's thought that he was inspired by the same 1,000-year-old figure.
That's someone saying, "nine, ten - coming, ready or not!"
"I'm on my way! On my way!"
"Put your top on!"
Oh! "Don't like it! Don't like it!"
"I don't want to. I like being like this.
"I like being free. I like being outside.
"Mum!
"You're the only one with your top off!
"The only one on the beach!"
Here's the thing, we shake hands.
We also shake heads.
I think we've said this before on this show, Alan.
In some countries, like Bulgaria, they shake for yes
and nod for no. Mm.
So we're going to try a little experiment.
I'm going to ask you a series of quickfire questions
with yes or no answers, right?
You have to answer immediately, but whatever answer you give
with your voice, you have to give the opposite with your head.
Oh! Ok? And I'll ping my pinger if you get it wrong.
Does everybody understand?
You pinging your pinger? No.
Yes, I do understand. Yes.
I just want to catch you out.
Yes. Ok, all right. I'm ready.
John, was the first James Bond film the one about the doctor?
Yes.
I don't know! That's right.
Is it right? Yes.
What was the name of the doctor?
No.
Eshaan, do you know what band featured
the keyboard player Rick wakeman?
No.
You don't know?! No.
Ok... But it's...
It's...
..Yes!
The band is called yes. Yes is the band.
But you didn't know? I...
No. They laugh
so, invisible ink, not the only way to send secret messages.
You can also do it with eggs.
Does anybody know how? Oh, with the egg white?
Is it the egg white? No, with an actual egg.
So you send somebody an egg. Mm-hm.
This. And it's got a secret message. But how?
You can see nothing written.
Do you have to put it in something? Like, liquid?
So it was a 16th century Italian scholar
called giambattista della porta,
and he was really interested in cryptography.
He was known as the professor of secrets,
and he used to use eggs to send messages.
So what it is, is you leave the egg in vinegar for four hours.
Ok? This softens the shell.
Then you make a tiny little incision in the shell.
You slot a small message through the incision,
so the paper sits basically between the shell and the egg white.
You then repair the cut using some plant gum or something
and put the egg back into cold water,
and that will harden the shell again.
So let me show you.
There we go. Like that. Whoa!
And in here is a message that says...
Oh, wow! Wow! ..Top secret.
Isn't that great? That is beautiful!
Yeah. That is so cool.
That's so cool, isn't it?
Are some of my other records on your list?
No, darling. What are your other records?
Oh, well... oh, I can't believe I asked you that.
They laugh
the longest ever screen kiss.
You? Me.
Were you alone?
The record was held for many years by Regis toomey and Jane Wyman,
the first wife of Ronald Reagan. Yes, indeed.
In a film called you're in the army now,
in the 1940s, they had an osculatory marathon that lasted
about two and a half minutes.
And I thought it'd be rather fun to see if I could beat this
on screen and be in the guinness book of records again
for the longest sustained screen kiss.
And this was in the 1980s,
and I was on a programme called TV-am
with a lovely presenter, Anne diamond.
And she agreed on Valentine's day to give it a go.
And so we began kissing.
The clock was ticking, but these were the early days of TV-am
and we had a mission to explain,
and unfortunately, about two minutes into our kiss,
we had to go live to Moscow for coverage
of president brezhnev's funeral.
They laugh
you killed brezhnev?
And it was felt inappropriate.
They wanted to put the picture in the corner of the screen.
But actually, as madame brezhnev was weeping
and the body was being put into... They felt it was inappropriate.
Anyway, so we did not break the record on that occasion.
But a year later, I thought, "I'm going to do it again."
So here we are, on Valentine's day, and there is the lovely
Cheryl baker from bucks fizz. I remember.
She's still lovely. She's still brilliant.
Anne said no? Anne said two minutes was enough.
Anne said, "how's the Russian president before we start?"
Anyway, the long and the short of it is I've held the record
for the longest ever screen kiss - with Cheryl baker.
Thank you. Thank you.
What might make you suspect that someone was a spy?
James gasps
ok, I've actually got to say I'm very overqualified for this.
Oh, are you? Ok. Well, I've met a spy.
Have you? Yeah.
My father's an African politician in Malawi.
A few years ago, he was arrested.
His office blew up.
And, panicked, he asked me and my brother
to find him a spy...
Daliso laughs ..Essentially...
..To investigate stuff.
And all of this culminated in us meeting a spy at wetherspoons.
Was it "shaken not stirred" Saturdays?
So the nursery rhyme that we were talking about at the beginning,
that was very first published in 1813
in Peter Piper's practical principles
of plain and perfect pronunciation.
And it has a tongue twister for every single letter
of the alphabet. So here is the one that we think
is based on this character, Pierre poivre.
But this is the s series, so we've got the rhyme for s.
Who wants to try? Let's do it.
Do it? Jason? Go for it.
Sammy smellie smelt a smell of small-coal.
Did Sammy smellie smell a smelt of small-coal?
If Sammy smellie smelt a smell of small-coal,
where's the smell of small-coal Sammy smellie smelt?
Applause yay!
Woo!
Wow!
I'm having the same sort of surge of rage that I used to have
when one of my siblings would get praised for doing a simple task.
Yeah, yeah. We also haven't...
No, it's amazing.
Whoa, whoa! What are you clapping that for?
He's just read it! All right.
All right, Billy big balls, you have a go. Yeah, go on.
Sammy smellie smelt a smell of small-coal.
It's on the bloody screen! All of it! All of it!
Did Sammy smellie smell a smelt of small-coal?
If Sammy smellie smelt a smell of small-coal,
where's the smell of small-coal Sammy smellie smelt?
Did do it faster.
I don't want applause! It's reading!
Well done, Alan.
Ok, no, that's terribly impressive.
Well done. Oh, my god!
Do you know what small-coal is?
No, and care not.
So, I'm going to tell you a tragic and yet sort of farcical story
of one man's attempt to witness a transit of Venus.
Does anybody know what the transit of Venus is?
Is that where it lines with the other planets?
Yeah, amazing. That's it right there.
It's when the planet of Venus can be seen passing.
It's like a little tiny shadow across the face of the sun.
They happen eight years apart,
but only every century, so the last pair was 2004 and 2012.
So, in our lifetime, we will never see this again,
it won't happen.
So, there was a man called Guillaume le gentil,
he lived in the late 18th century.
He was a leading French astronomer,
and he was sent by the royal academy of sciences to India
to observe the 1761 transit.
So it was all part of a scheme to measure the distance
from the earth to the sun.
So, first of all, he was held up in Mauritius for a year
due to the war between France and britain,
so that disrupted shipping.
What a terrible place to spend a year. Yeah, a whole year.
A whole year. "I still can't move. No, it's awful.
"There are no boats here." He imitates horn
"shut up! Stop it!"
"No, I'm stranded." He imitates horn
"pack it in!"
He's blown off course for five weeks by monsoon winds.
"I've been blown off course, you see."
Chink, chink.
"Put the ice down!"
Alan blows "it's terribly windy."
The place that he was going, pondicherry,
was conquered by the British, so he couldn't land there.
That meant that, on the day of the transit,
he was still at sea
and he couldn't do precise measurements.
So he thought, there's another one in eight years' time.
So he stayed. "I'll go back to Mauritius for five years."
He did. He was determined not to miss the 1769 transit,
so he gets up in the morning,
he has a lovely dinner with the governor.
It's a beautiful thing.
And then what did he see?
Clouds. Clouds.
Oh! Transit came and went.
Entirely invisible.
He never saw it.
He spent two weeks almost unable to speak.
And then he got dysentery.
They laugh
that'll have been the ice in the drink.
But what about when you get to the last box
and you realise you've got two eights in it?
Yeah. Yeah.
And somewhere right in the depths of it, there's a mistake.
You'll never find it.
And you've been doing it for four weeks.
You get your pencil,
repeatedly stab yourself in the palm of the hand
and then smear blood on your face.
But you'd only do that in a lockdown. Yeah.
It's all right.
Would you like to stroke my pussy? They laugh
seriously. There you go.
Have a stroke of my pussy. You'll feel better.
Cat shrieks
Whoever is on sound duty is on the top of their game.
Because...
..You riffed that on the spot,
and as soon as it went towards you, they were like, bam!
And they were just...
Give that person a bafta.
People don't appreciate how good that was.
Brilliant.
It was Lizzie in sound. Lizzie in sound.
She's got a real cat. Cat shrieks
come here, come here. Quick, quick. Stay in the room, stay in the room.
And a very sharp pencil.
Ok, so have a look at this.
Whoa! It looks like a flat window with one end
shorter than the other.
I'm just going to make sure that you guys can see this. Yeah. Like this.
It's called the ames window.
I'm too short to do this sitting down,
so I'm going to spin it
and just look at the effect that it has...
Oh, I don't like that. ..When it's spinning.
Isn't it interesting? It appears to stop halfway.
It doesn't look like it's spinning all the way around.
Yeah, that's the thing. That is really weird!
I thought you just weren't doing it right. No, I am spinning it.
I thought you were just getting ready to do it.
I'm spinning it all the way around, but it appears to stop halfway
and go back the other way. Oh! Whoa!
Oh, stop it!
Oh, my god! Have a look at this. Put a pencil through the window.
You can stick things on or through the window
and then the objects appear to lift... oh, my god!
..Out of the window. No way! Oh, my god.
What's the absolute... Please...
Isn't it weird? ..What's going on?
So weird. I know.
There's an... even more apparently ambiguous is the head bobble.
So this is a form of non-verbal communication.
It's commonly found in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
So according to... hi, guys. Laughter
I'm looking at John. According to
a behaviourist from tamil nadu, pradeep chakravarthy,
it may have evolved to give a deliberately ambiguous signal,
so it's a sort of you can disagree with somebody
while not saying anything. That's it, yes. That's the head bobble.
It means yes, no, maybe, it means everything really.
We do it in Bangladesh as well. Right.
But you're being noncommittal, is that it? Yeah, and you're...
Do it and I'll give you the verbal. The movement is more from the chin. Right.
So it's just a...
Yasss, queen.
But this neck move is very clearly kind of like a no, isn't it?
You know it's a no.
Well, I would... in the gay world, we disagree. That's like,
"get over here."
That is great! Yes, queen! Yes! No!
Another swallowing phenomenon of the era is one of my favourite
vaudeville acts of all time, the great hadji Ali,
the great regurgitator.
So this guy, he was billed as the Egyptian enigma.
One of the things I like about him is this is Judy garland's
favourite vaudeville act, ok?
So he would swallow... "I love him!"
"I think he's fabulous!"
He would swallow increasingly improbable things and then reproduce
them in an order specified by the audience.
Oh, brilliant! So he could swallow 50 hazelnuts and an almond
and bring the almond up at the moment requested by the audience.
No! Yeah. And his greatest...
"What a great show!"
I love that! The almond!
His greatest trick, right?
He would swallow some kerosene, then some water, then he would
regurgitate the kerosene, set it on fire,
regurgitate the water from six feet away
and put the fire out.
How do you discover you're good at that?!
This is le petomane in reverse, isn't it?
It is exactly le petomane in reverse.
Le petomane was a similar period, I think. Yes, I think that's
about right. A similar vintage of act, and he was somebody
who broke wind. Out of his backside, le petomane could blow out candles
at a distance. Darling, he could do
the whole of the la marseillaise, apparently. Oh, yes!
You can do that. No, I can't do that.
I can't... look, all... look, ok?
Rosie and I spent a lot of 2018 and '19 on tour together,
and I... all that would happen is, I'd have a nando's slightly
too close to the show and, unfortunately, there wasn't as much
privacy in the dressing rooms
of the regional art centres of the United Kingdom.
And so, just every so often I'd hear Rosie go, "can you not?"
You cannot imagine the stench!
Has anybody ever smelt a skunk? Yes. Yes, I have.
So, if they are facing you with their bottom and their face
at the same moment, you are in terrible, terrible trouble.
The spraying they do is actually usually the last resort,
but the little spotted ones - you can see the one on the outside -
will do a handstand to warn predators, and they'll even charge
while doing a sort of headstand before they unleash the stink.
But, I mean, it can be terrible. If it is an intense, targeted attack
and they aim right for your face,
I mean, it's enough to knock a human out.
That would be a hell of a routine at the rhythmic gymnastics. Yeah.
And also, the thing is about their scent glands, they're right by the
bottoms, they're the size of grapes, and they have these hugely powerful
muscles and they squirt the spray up to ten feet.
Listen, if we could do it, we would do it. I had a friend,
and I'm sure I've talked about him on this show before,
and we used to call him the squirt.
What was his skill set?
Well, there was a pub that we used to go to and in the toilets,
there was a row of urinals and then high up, there were windows,
I mean, about eight feet up.
No way! Not too high for the squirt. Whoa!
He could stand in front of the urinal and wee out the window.
It was a really brilliant thing to do!
Wow! It's the sort of thing
that girls just never know about each other, do they?
No, you'd never greet somebody in the pub and go,
"oh, here comes Lucy, 'the squirt'."
"All right, luce!
"How's your windows?" And did you all just,
did you stand, just watching? Yeah! Yes?!
What is wrong with you?! You would stand watching that!
No, I would not stand... someone is weeing eight foot up in the air
and you'd be like, "oh, I don't need to see it"? Out of a window?!
I think I'd have to give that a look. If that started happening,
I would continue to watch.
I'm not sure if I'd make the trip. Yeah.
I think if he'd pointed at the urinal,
he'd have driven himself backwards back into the pub.
Do you know what happened to him? He emigrated to Australia.
Under his own steam!
Shadow portraits, you know, the portraits where you just get
the, sort of, outline of a person done in black. Yes.
They're known as silhouettes and it is because his, well, the normal
explanation, his austerity policies, which eventually got him fired,
caused his name to be associated with sort of general thriftiness.
And these were cheaper portraits for people who couldn't afford
to have oil portraits.
I think they're very beautiful, but it's not for me to say.
We have an expert with us. Please welcome master silhouettist,
Charles burns. There he is.
Charles, tell me, how did you learn to be a silhouettist?
How did that happen?
When I left art college, I worked for a number of years as a street
portrait artist in covent garden, drawing portraits originally,
and then I started cutting silhouettes more or less
as a sideline, but they completely took over my life.
They became very popular in Europe when they came over,
didn't they, from France? They did.
They became very popular throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries,
but they, they died out really when photography was invented and all the
silhouette artists went out of business. Which I think is a great shame.
In fact, studios used to be equipped sometimes with a physionog... Physio...
A physionotrace is the word you're looking for, yes.
Yes. The physionotrace was like an arm, like a metal bar,
which used to be passed around someone's profile,
and at the other end of the bar was a little pencil,
which on a small piece of paper, would draw upside down
and in reverse their profile.
But you don't do anything as a...
No, I rely entirely on a pair of scissors... a pair of scissors.
..And a technique I call cut and hope. Ok.
I like that.
So, you're going to do our silhouettes while we're carrying on chatting.
Yes. So can I get you to sit and carry on with...
I shall go and explore your profile. ..Your cutting away?
Helen of Troy had a face that launched how many ships?
Careful, maisie.
Oh, maisie, what is it? Come on, maisie!
I can't remember the number now. Help me out here, maisie.
Oh, shall I do it for you, maisie? 1,000.
Hey!
But at the time there weren't 1,000 ships in the world.
There weren't enough shipbuilders.
Yeah, yeah, something like that.
There weren't any oceans.
There was no such thing... No-one had sailed anywhere.
No?
None of those?
People rowed. People rowed. They didn't launch ships.
They didn't have a slip thing.
They didn't have the champagne bottle.
They would take the ship out a bit at a time.
She didn't have a face. She was faceless!
There are two British artists, Tim noble and sue Webster.
They developed a technique
and they create silhouettes from heaps of junk.
They started their work in 1997.
This is one of their pieces that was at the royal academy,
so that's just junk.
It's old wood and rusty tools and toilet roll
and all sorts of things. And that's them in silhouette.
That's amazing. I think it's one of the best things I've ever seen.
I think Charles is finished.
Darling, are you going to reveal for us? I can reveal for you, yes.
All right. So we'll have Victoria first. Ok.
There she is. There we are. There you are. Oh! Wow!
Applause
just take a couple of inches off the nose, just...
Laughter
right. Shall we do Alan?
Oh! Oh, wow.
Yes! That's great.
Oh, look at the very little hair detail at the top.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Applause
eshaan?
As long as I don't look like rubbish in this one. Right.
He snorts, laughter
I look so much older!
But the glasses are so brilliant. Yeah, the glasses are brilliant.
That's so clever.
Right. John, let's try you, darling.
Oh, you handsome devil.
So handsome!
Applause
brilliant! You're so handsome even as a cut-out. Wow.
I think those are brilliant. So you...
You were literally just doing that with a pair of scissors?
Yes. That's amazing! A freehand cut with scissors.
I can't even cut a straight line on wrapping paper.
Straight lines are much harder. Charles, it's been such a pleasure.
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks.
Applause
how would you use this to send a secret message?
That's going to need a big egg.
Someone would know the Cypher
and so e = b...
You don't need to know anything.
Oh, is it the way you fold it? Does it then make a message?
It is the way you wrap it around something. It's called a scytale.
It's an ancient Greek way to hide messages.
So all it required was that the person sending
and the person receiving had the same size stick. That's cool.
And then you would just send this,
which could be wrapped up quite small,
and you wrap it around like this
and it says, "this is a scytale."
Wow! Isn't it clever? That's really clever.
I know! I'd love it if you'd got it, and that was the message.
And then you just had to reply, "I know what a scytale is!"
"It was my idea to use them.
"Can you please stick to the plan?
"We're trying to bring down the government here.
"I don't need you to tell me what the equipment is that we're using."
They reckon female bootleggers outnumbered men
by about five to one. I mean, it was a really... really? Yeah.
In some states, it was illegal for women to be strip-searched,
so they would provoke officers by saying,
"ooh, it's hidden down the bra," or, you know, wherever,
and threaten to sue the officers if they...
Don't know why I suddenly turned into...
You're always like that with the police. I know!
The sworn enemies were two prohibition agents
called isidor "Izzy" Einstein
and his partner, moe Smith, and there they are.
They specialised in costumes,
so they would turn up as German pickle packers,
Hungarian violinists or whatever.
My favourite is that several times Einstein,
who's the one on the right, went into a bar and identified himself
as a prohibition agent,
and the barman thought it was hilarious and let him in.
Laughter
to be fair to those two gents,
if they were going to disguise themselves as anything,
it would be people who were too drunk at a bar.
Yeah, but wait till you see some of the disguises. So look at this.
Laughter
I love the one on the right.
Oh, yes!
That's very some like it hot.
Can you name any south American countries due south of Mexico?
Brazil?
Klaxon
it's going to be... None of them.
Is it Argentina?
Klaxon
but what is it? There aren't any?
Chile!
Klaxon
I could do this all day!
What do you reckon, Alan?
Well, it feels like there can't be any, then. There aren't.
Ok. Must be twisted around. Yes.
So when you look at the map,
the whole of the south American mainland is east of Mexico.
Indeed, 99% of it is east of Florida.
The only exception is easter island,
which does politically belong to Chile.
So you could have said Chile... I did actually say Chile.
Did you? Yeah, so scrub that.
Yeah. That was right. Sorry!
Klaxon
one way to remember that South America sticks out like that
is to sort of imagine it on its side.
And then the Americas look uncannily like a duck.
If we can swivel that around like that...
Oh, wow. That's very cool, isn't it? Yeah.
I mean, it helps that you've coloured it in.
Yeah, I think that's true. A lot of things can look like a duck
when they're coloured like a duck.
Which country are ponchos from?
Mexico?
Klaxon
shall we go through other countries?
Let's do lots of countries. Central and South America? Bolivia.
Bolivia, no. Portugal. No.
Rosie: Peru. Alan: England!
England? I want it to be england. Is it Denmark? Denmark.
Laughter
no. What did you say then? Peru.
Is correct. Screams: Yeah!
Laughter
this is the greatest moment of my life.
Yes! You knew that, right? It wasn't a guess.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
She's got a few follow-up questions about how you knew it.
No, it's not all about me.
Laughter
applause