CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello, and welcome to QI.
Tonight, we're in topsy-turvy turmoil as we tackle thrills and spills.
And here to spill the beans are the thrilling Nish Kumar...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..the titillating Suzi Ruffell...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..the tantalising Mark Steel...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..and, tickle my fancy, it's Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Right, please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle
at all times, as Nish goes...
SYNTH VOICE: # Down and up and down and up and down and up and down... #
LAUGHTER
..Suzi goes...
STEADY POP BEAT PLAYS
# Up and down Up and down
# Up and down Up and down... #
LAUGHTER
# I said upside down You're turning me
# You're giving love instinctively... #
LAUGHTER
# You're making me dizzy... #
RETCHING, SPLATTERING
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
Right, then. Question one.
LAUGHTER
Which is the most thrilling part of a theme park?
Well, when you don't die, isn't it?
Yeah. I never die, as I only ever do the thing
with the hook and get the duck with the number on it.
Is that because you're not tall enough for the rides?
Yes.
Is it the expectation? What, the queue to get in?
Er, no. The snaking queue.
"Oh, I love it when the queue does a weird bend! Oooh!"
I can't imagine why people are thrilled at all.
The thrill for me would just be driving past it.
We're talking about roller-coasters,
and your thrill level over the course of a roller-coaster
reaches its peak moment
when you're first strapped into the seat.
Oh. Really? So, really, you could just get out then.
Yes, that's the moment. It's all over at that point.
It's the thrill of anticipation.
It's that moment when you think... SANDI GASPS
Have you been on The Big One, Sandi? I beg your pardon?
There's a massive one in Blackpool.
About 20 years ago, I was filming something in Manchester,
and I tried to get some people to come from the local crew,
and none of them would come. And that should have told me something.
It's absolutely terrifying. And you think you're going to die.
You're absolutely certain you're going to die.
It feels like, well, one day there'll be the final ride.
Yeah. Why not this one?
You go over it, and the kid next to me,
who's been on it loads of times,
when we went down about the fifth bend, he said
he'd tell me when to smile, and he went, "Now!"
And we went like that and then the thing went flash!
And I've got a key ring of me...
I've never seen him since, of course.
Me and this lad who was about 14, going, "Ah!"
NISH: You have given someone an anecdote for their entire lives
that they've been dining out on since that,
because there's a 14-year-old boy who presumably now
is, like, in his, like, late 20s, early 30s, who's like,
"I've got a key ring with me and Jonathan Creek."
Either that or he's watching this now, going,
"That's the bloke from the roller-coaster!"
No, "That's the bloke from my key ring!"
"That's weird. What's he doing on there?!"
When my daughter was about eight,
I thought, "I must go on something with her,"
and I went on the teacups,
and as it started, she grabbed my arm and said, "Don't worry, Dad,
"I can see you're scared."
And she was right! She was absolutely right.
There's one I went on in America where you hang upside-down,
and you walk underneath it,
and when it goes past, there's a terrific noise,
and people scream, and you look up, and there's a net,
and there's all hats and sunglasses and wallets.
So they turn upside-down, and everyone loses all their stuff.
But apparently, screaming is part of it,
and even if you don't feel like screaming,
if you start screaming - as it were, if you fake it -
then eventually it will become real.
It's true of so many things.
LAUGHTER
But there's a guy called Professor Brendan Walker
at Middlesex University, he's the world's only thrill engineer,
and he has done studies about what people's responses are
to these huge vertical drops. So he measures them,
and the level of excitement when you're on the ride
is only ever about 80% of the peak that you hit
when you put the seat belt on. Two things he was looking for,
he was looking for level of arousal and level of pleasure.
And apparently - and I think we all know this -
not always the same thing.
So they... I'm like that in a baker's.
So true, isn't it?
You just think, "Ooh!"
You never like a nice slice more than when you first see it. Yeah.
I met a guy who was the Mayor of Stockport,
and he was addicted to roller-coasters.
There's a group of people who are like that,
and they let them on early in the morning,
and they'll go round maybe 15 times in a row.
Wow. Just going round and round and round.
They call them coasterheads. Really? Is that a thing?
So if you're into roller-coasters, you're a coasterhead.
Coasterhead? Yeah.
They just can't stop,
and they have to wean themselves off it maybe on a trampoline
or something. One of those little trains that go round.
I think I'm a coasterhead,
but I like those little drink mats in pubs.
There's one at Alton Towers, isn't there,
where you go along in a kind of wide sort of car
and then it stops, and you think, "Oh..."
There's no track in front of you,
and then it tips you forward,
and then it hangs you over a hole. Oblivion.
Oblivion. Hangs you over a hole. Yeah.
And if you sit in the cafe, which is nearby,
and you can see the thing go and tip, and then you hear...
ALAN SCREAMS
So you're having your lunch, and about every three minutes...
ALAN SCREAMS
Well, this guy who is the thrill engineer,
he worked out that the calorific value expended
on a roller-coaster ride due to, you know,
you've got an increased heart rate and you're sweating and so on,
is equivalent to a single chip-shop chip.
Oh. I was hoping you were going to say, like,
a spin class. Yeah... I could've been like,
"Let's cut the record. Let's get to Alton Towers."
Let's go straight to EuroDisney.
I remember taking my children to Disney,
and my four-year-old met Pluto.
Now, Pluto is played by a 6ft tall man, OK?
And there's a mesh... What?! Well... He's not...?
Oh. Huh?! It's not a talking dog?
Well, there's a mesh where you can see his face.
He's 6ft tall, and he comes over and he talks to my daughter.
She pats him like that.
And then she said as he left, she said, "That's not a real dog."
And I said, "How could you tell?"
She said, "His nose wasn't wet."
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
When I was at school, and Mr Blobby was at his heyday...
Ah. Those were the days, eh?
..one of my friends had a little brother,
and for his birthday, his dad dressed up as Mr Blobby,
had the mesh thing, but it was in his mouth,
and the little boy lost his shit, and was like...
SUZI GASPS
A quick supplementary question -
why might it be good to go on a ride with a lot of jerks?
Ooh. Is it because a bit of the point, a bit of the seat,
goes up your butt, and that feels nice?
I'm going to go with that's a personal fantasy, Nish.
There are roller-coaster architects,
and speed is not necessarily the thing.
Acceleration is more important, but it's the changes of speed.
Cos it makes your heart go... Yeah, absolutely.
So if it accelerates and then suddenly accelerates a bit more,
that's called a jerk, and that apparently is the thing
that makes you even more kind of...upset.
I was on a ghost train once and it went wrong, it actually broke down,
almost as if it was run by Southern Rail, and...
Yeah, "There will be a skeleton replacement service..."
And...
And the bloke did come through, "Yeah, sorry, er..."
HE SNIFFS
"Er, yeah, you'll all have to get out."
And we had to just walk through and push the doors open and then,
"Woo-hoo-hoo!" and all, just walking through.
It's not quite the same, is it? It wasn't quite the same, no.
I was once on a ghost walk thing with my dad,
and there were all these pictures of, like, famous serial killers
around this, like, haunted house.
And then we got to the one with the guy in the Scream mask,
and he flinched, and it wasn't a picture.
And then the guy climbed out of the picture frame,
and my dad ran,
kicked open the emergency exit...
Just like...
Doosh! Like that.
And we found him in the gift shop.
Did he not even take you with him?
No! Gone? Just gone?
He was like, "I'm going to start a new life."
You're always safe in a gift shop. They never go in the gift shop.
The best bit of a roller-coaster is the beginning,
and it's all downhill from there.
AUDIENCE GROANS
LAUGHTER
Describe a really dangerous trumpet, please.
STEADY POP BEAT PLAYS
# Up and down... #
Nish's bum-bum.
I had eggs this morning.
Is that good or bad? I can't decide.
No, just everything gives me gas. Really? Yeah.
There was a guy at my primary school
who did one outside in the playground at school, and
we all had to go to the other bit of the, the adjoining playground.
And that's genius. He was ten at the time.
And was this admired, or disapproved of?
Well, I think both, really.
An extraordinary achievement.
I can't believe I'm about to tell this story.
ANTICIPATORY LAUGHTER
I'm going to settle back.
Once, when I was at home with my parents,
we were all sat in the kitchen,
and I had to break wind,
and I did it, and it was silent, and I was like, "Fantastic."
And then my dad got the Yellow Pages out,
and I was like, "Why are you getting the Yellow Pages out?"
He was like, "I think we need a plumber, the pipe's burst."
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
There is, erm...
There is a measure of the strength of a pollution source.
It's called an olf, O-L-F.
So your friend there could have measured his olf.
Is it olfactorial...?
It's from olfactus, meaning smell. Yes!
Yes! Yes! I'm going to give you a point for that. Yes!
APPLAUSE
Can I just say? We are so far from the question.
Is it going to be an instrument trumpet,
or is it going to be a trumpet flower
or a trumpet frog or something? Yes. It's a flower.
Absolutely right. Oh... A lethal one?
A lethal flower. Yeah, if you eat any of it, you're a goner.
Do you know about this?
I've heard of them. They're quite pretty to look at.
Very pretty. It's called the Angel's Trumpet.
It's a flower that's native to Central and South America.
Oh, look at it. It's stunning. Isn't it pretty? It's deadly.
I mean, it's a beautiful... Go out the fire exit, Suze!
Go to the gift shop! Run! Run for your life!
Imagine him at Kew Gardens.
There is a place in Alnwick in Northumberland...
Yep. The Poison Garden in Alnwick.
The Poison Garden! Oh, it's a magnificent place.
And there's this marvellously sort of officious woman
who takes you around. And she's one of these sort of guides -
"Right. Now, assemble here. Whatever you do,
"don't do anything unless I tell you to do it,
"because if you touch something and it's poisonous,
"then you'll end up dead and it will jolly well be your own fault, OK?"
I would recommend it, definitely. The Poison Garden.
Well, so, the owner of the Poison Garden in Alnwick Castle
has described this particular flower as "an amazing aphrodisiac,
"before it kills you." Wow!
And there were Victorian women who would keep Angel's Trumpets,
and they would tip a little bit of the pollen into their tea,
it would induce a sort of LSD kind of trip,
even though it was rather risky. And those who did take it,
who died, before they died,
they possibly succumbed first of all to sexual excitement,
then restlessness, then overtalkative,
then aggressive behaviour, convulsive sobbing, psychosis,
intense dream experiences.
Like Glastonbury, isn't it?
There's a story about a young man who amputated his own tongue
and penis after drinking just one cup of tea
infused with Angel's Trumpet. What? Oh...
Did the tongue, and not content with that...
I know! Went for something bigger -
or presumably bigger. I wouldn't know.
And if the plants don't get you at Alnwick, then some of the bugs might
as well. So blister beetles, for example.
There's a little blister beetle.
You can find them around the shore in Essex and Devon and so on.
And they have a defensive secretion,
and that was used as an aphrodisiac since ancient times,
but also toxic in tiny concentrations.
It's actually known as Spanish Fly.
It probably gets its reputation for being an aphrodisiac
because it irritates your urethra when you pee,
and that draws blood into the area and causes an erection
just before you go.
So you would literally die hard?
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
Oh! That was a whole other script.
What toxic thrill can you get from toads?
Oh... Oh, yes, Suzi?
Is it going to be licking them?
Yes! There are lickers of the Colorado River Toad,
and they do it to go on a psychedelic trip, basically.
People who've taken it talk about a total fusion with God,
which gives you some idea how off their heads they are. What?!
No-one wants that.
It does feel a little bit like someone was licking a toad one day,
and they were like, "No, no, it's not weird!
"I'm fused with God!"
Or we're all going to get to heaven, if it exists, and God's going to go,
"Why didn't you lick the toads?" "What's wrong with you?"
Lick the toads! "That's what I put them there for! Millions of them."
"They're everywhere, you idiot!"
All you have to do, in order to get high, first find a toad... Sure.
..and then you lick the toad's back, although, can I say?
Purists recommend that you milk the toad's glands... What?!
..dry the venom, and then smoke it.
How do you milk a frog, then? Go like that.
Apparently, the best way to stimulate it to produce this stuff
is to stroke it under the chin. "Come on! Come on.
"There we go."
What would be the vegan attitude towards this?
You're allowed to get off with animals. That's fine.
Encouraged. If anything.
Now, why is it a good idea
to make a pensioner walk the tightrope?
To cut state spending.
APPLAUSE
New scheme based on the Squid Game.
And, you know, they've had it easy, haven't they, for too long?
But genuinely, it is a medical thing.
And why might it be good for pensioners?
NISH: Helping their balance?
So it's a really good way to detect early muscle degradation.
Is the way that you detect it them falling to their death?
Yeah, I think.
"Come on, Grandma!"
Yeah, "Oh... Yeah. Muscle degradation." Yeah.
God, that's the 15th today!
If you think about tightrope walking, so it involves
much more muscle control, coordination, and strength
than walking on solid ground,
so it can reveal potential issues that ordinary walking can't.
Now, clearly, what you do is you don't do it very high up.
But by doing this, geriatric health care professionals
can check and see whether they're unsteady in any way.
In fact, they use a thing called a force plate.
It has the same sort of effect as walking on a tightrope.
But one of the best things you can do to ward off dementia,
not the top thing, but one of the things you can do
is to work on your balance. And so it's recommended that
while you're brushing your teeth, you stand on one leg,
and it just keeps reminding you to keep your balance at all times.
Does it work with other circus things, like lion taming?
Yeah, lion taming...
Lion taming, juggling...
There was a brilliant guy called Charles Blondin
who was one of the greatest tightrope walkers of all time,
and he was an amazing daredevil funambulist,
which is a wonderful word,
which is the correct word for a tightrope walker. Funambulist?
Yeah, it's fun, and then you need an ambulance.
LAUGHTER
It doesn't mean that at all.
"Funis" is rope and "ambulary" means to walk.
But he crossed the Niagara Falls on a tightrope about 300 times,
and each time, he had a different gimmick,
so he would go out there and cook an omelette,
and then he sat there drinking champagne and eating his omelette.
That's his poor manager that he's carrying.
"You're going to earn this commission."
He would somersault, he would blindfold himself going across.
I mean, he was just astonishing.
But here is a sort of strange thing.
So there is a village called Tsovkra in Dagestan,
and every able-bodied person in this village
can walk the tightrope.
So that is curious, isn't it? What? Yeah, every single one.
It's about a 100-year-old tradition,
and nobody's really sure how it started.
It's rumoured that it was a short cut so that villagers could
go and court potential lovers on the other side of a ravine.
Always a motivation.
Yes, that'll do it. Yeah.
"We're going to the other side of the ravine."
"How are we getting there?"
Yeah.
"Don't worry. I've got a real horn on,
"so I won't need the big stick."
Every single one of the village's children
study tightrope walking at school.
It's a whole village that can tightrope walk. What?!
Is it anything to do with altitude?
No, it's just literally trying to get about.
I think cos they're on top of a hill, they think,
"How're we going to get down from here? Oh, I know."
Haven't they heard about roly-polys?
There's another village in Turkmenistan
where they all do roly-polys.
Grade 3... They go to the next village... Yep?
..and there's a bridge.
They're all like, "Oh..."
"What do you call that?" "It's a bridge!"
"Bloody hell. That's a brilliant idea."
Right, moving on,
how can Santa Claus help you get rid of your partner?
So we're talking about the 17th, 18th century.
Is this when they really thought that someone was actually coming?
What?!
First Pluto, now this?
I'm having the worst day!
There was a product on the market in the 17th and 18th century
called Manna de San Nicola, and apparently,
it was a healing oil from the sweat of St Nick's bones.
In fact, what it was was a very slow-acting poison.
Oh, my God.
Aqua Tofana, and they think, it was one woman, a Sicilian woman,
called Thofania di Adamo, who died 1633, and she sold it
rather discretely to women who wanted to get rid of their husbands.
Glad it's discretely, not yelling it in the marketplace.
"Poison oil! Get your poison oil!
"Your husband looks like a real piece of work!"
"Kill your husband! Kill your husband! Roll up, roll up!
"But discretely! Discretely!"
She lived in Naples, and apparently,
it was observed that many young married women became widows
and many of the husbands were known to be disagreeable to their wives,
and they issued a warning telling people how to spot the symptoms.
This is a cartoon from 1814, and the original caption of it was,
"When the old fool has drunk his wine and gone to rest, I will be thine."
So it's a radical feminist Christmas present.
It is, absolutely, yeah.
But apparently if you used this Aqua Tofana and there was a postmortem,
it was absolutely undetectable.
The theory is that Thofania was actually caught,
but then her daughter went on to become the poisoner
and moved operations to Rome.
It's nice to have a family trade. I know, right?
But eventually, there was a sting operation, and a Roman noblewoman
befriended the gang and said she wanted some poison,
and then they arrested her. Mozart is rumoured to have died from poisoning
by Aqua Tofana. Really?
Well, I mean, we don't know.
There was a lot of arsenic on the manuscript of The Magic Flute,
which was the opera he was working on towards the end of his life,
and arsenic is a key ingredient of Aqua Tofana.
So did...? Was his wife called Constanze? Yeah.
Were there a lot of receipts for this stuff in her drawer?
Yes. "Two bottles of Aqua Tofana."
Right, you've all got beside you a loo-roll holder like this.
I want you to put it on your right-hand side,
imagine you're sitting on the lavatory,
and I want you to tell me which way do you correctly hang the loo roll?
Do you hang it this way - very controversial -
or do you hang it...? So imagine the wall is here, OK?
Oh... Do you hang it? NISH: You've got to hang it this way.
Why? Why have you got to hang it that way?
Just because, like, otherwise you're a godless prick.
APPLAUSE
That'd be a fantastic religion, Nish.
The only commandment,
"Thou shalt hang the toilet paper down from the left-hand side."
So the toilet-roll holder was invented by an American engineer
called Seth Wheeler in 1891.
And you can see from his patent that he has made a decision,
and it goes this way.
The truth is, there are advantages to both ways of doing it.
So if the loose end hangs in the front, it's easier to grab.
But if you hang it the other way around, there is less chance of,
I don't know, a child or a cat
or indeed yourself accidentally unravelling the roll.
I always used to think it should be at the back,
and then in recent years, I've changed. I've gone front.
You've gone to the front? Yeah. Well, what you could've done
is you could've installed something called a Tilt-A-Roll. Oh, yeah?
A Tilt-A-Roll was invented in 1999, and the holder swivels,
and you can orientate the paper as you please.
Wow.
I have, er, I have a toilet-roll butler.
Just...
Just stands there, and let him just hand me, you know...
Give you a little sheet. "From your expression, sir,
"I would say that's four sheets that you'll be wanting."
I've got a doubler with a magazine rack underneath.
Wow. That's horrible. That's Jonathan Creek money.
SUZI: Yeah!
'90s, innit? Cha-ching!
Perforated toilet roll was invented as early as 1871,
but splinter-free toilet paper wasn't available until 1935.
Ooh!
Before there was toilet paper, certainly in the United States,
before it became very popular, people used corn cobs,
people used sheep's wool.
Newspapers and catalogues. Very popular was the Farmers' Almanac.
In the early 1900s, there's the guy who edited it -
can you imagine? - for 59 years.
It was published with a hole so that people could put a string on it
and use it as toilet paper when they'd finished reading it.
What?! Yeah, when they'd finished.
Where does toilet paper come from?
Definitely not India, I can tell you that for free,
because we like the milk bottle.
Yeah, you wash rather than... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, 70% of the world's population do not use toilet paper,
and are absolutely horrified by the fact that we use toilet paper.
There are lots of forms online where people not from the west say,
"Is it true that Americans and Brits don't wash their arses with water
"after pooing?" And just think it's disgusting.
People actually think...
I've got a bidet in my house, and people say that you're posh.
Like it's some sort of... Washing your arse is posh?
..act of social climbing.
Sometimes paper just won't do it. No!
Won't shift it.
Here he is. Jonathan Crack.
APPLAUSE
You need some hot soapy water.
Have you tried those Japanese toilets that wash your arse for you?
Oh, my... Oh! That is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me
in my entire... I saw God the first time I used a Japanese toilet.
It's... Oh, it's...
Oh, God. Just thinking about it now is giving me a semi.
Is it powerful? It's basically calling a drone strike
on your own hole.
So is it like a jet wash at the garage?
Yeah. Yeah.
And you know how much fun they are. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they are.
Has it got five sort of...?
Has it got a cycle of all the foamy stuff...?
You can do the heat.
I'll do the Platinum Supreme.
I want my hubcaps buffed.
SUZI: Wax on, wax off. That's what happens.
But I still don't understand, what does it do?
It washes your arse. Like, there's a jet of water that comes out,
and you can aim it and control the temperature
and control the force of it.
And honestly, I...
You could eat dinner off my arsehole.
But before they had toilet paper, they used sticks,
and in fact, archaeologists have discovered 2,000-year-old poo sticks
in the latrine pit of an old rest stop on the Silk Road.
The archaeologists have got that wrong, I'll wager. Do you think?
What they've found is a shithole with some sticks in.
But we know it was sticks, because they're wrapped with cloth,
and they've got the eggs of...
Oh, yes, a shit stick, that's different. Yes.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
I've heard about them! With the cloth on the top.
Yes. Sort of like candyfloss type shape? Yeah.
Like a toilet brush? For your arse?
You'd wrap cloth around it, and the reason we know this is the case
is they've got eggs of parasites that lived over 1,000 miles away,
which means that disease was travelled along the Silk Road
through people's poo, basically.
Anyway, what can you do with 20 tonnes of unwanted hair trimmings?
Make an awful sandwich.
Make wigs?
Well, so these are trimmings. This is just the bits on the floor
that normally don't get used in hair salons, for example.
Push it all together, make a little pet?
You glue it all onto a remote-control car.
Why? To then drive it round,
and people think it's a very, very fast hairy creature.
You two need to spend time together.
It's an astonishing story, really.
It's used to clean up oil spills.
What? Yeah.
So the idea came from a hairstylist in Alabama,
a guy called Phil McCrory, and he was watching the news -
I don't know if you can remember the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill -
and he saw how difficult it was for volunteers to clean
the fur of otters that were matted with oil.
And he's watching this and he thought,
"If animal fur can trap the oil,
"then I wonder if human hair could do the same."
So what he did is he conducted an experiment.
He poured oil, motor oil, into his son's paddling pool
and then he stuffed his salon's hair trimmings into his wife's stockings.
And those things that he made, these kind of hair booms,
it's still made the same way today with nylon tights and cable ties.
There they are. It's a fantastic way to clean up oil spills.
It's also a great way to recycle all the hair cuttings.
And in fact, until 2021,
when 550 salons in the UK and Ireland
signed up to donate spare hair to oil spills,
99% of the cuttings went into landfill,
but now the leftover hair is used to clean up oil.
Do you not think that's so clever? Incredible. Yeah.
It's just brilliant. Now, hair... LONE CLAP
Someone wants to applaud.
Is it a hairdresser?
APPLAUSE
So here's a supplementary question.
Hair is so good at taking up the oil because it's very...
NISH: Hairy.
Oh, no, it's not absorbent, is it?
That's... Did you say absorbent?
No. Ooh! AUDIENCE: Ooh!
OK, it's not ab-sorbent, it's ad-sorbent.
Oh, I'm adsorbent.
What it means, rather than sucking the oil in, it sits on top...
What's the word again? Adsorbent.
Oh, I said that. It's just my accent.
It sits on top of the hair and covers the entire surface area,
rather than being sucked into the hair, so it doesn't absorb it.
And there's now a charity called Matter Of Trust,
and they co-ordinate donations of hair and wool
and so on from salons and pet groomers and farmers,
and they specifically ask only for head hair.
Going to put that out there.
That's a real shame, cos I'll be honest with you...
..the hair and face is just the beginning.
Oh, really?
I could clean up a few oil spills, if you know what I mean.
Could we keep it on Nish's body and just sort of...?
Grab his feet. I'm here, everyone! Relax!
Send some hairy people in -
"Swim! Swim!
"Until you can swim no more."
This is the sweetest thing.
There's a place called Phillip Island near Melbourne in Australia...
Where the penguins go. Yes. I've been to see them. Have you?
Have you seen them wearing woolly jumpers? No, I haven't.
Yes, I've seen those pictures. Oh, how cute is this?
LAUGHTER
They put woolly jumpers on penguins that are affected by oil spills.
The jumpers stop the penguins from preening
and getting the oil in their stomachs.
And the wool, as we know, helps absorb the oil from the feathers,
and also the oil clumps the penguins' feathers together
so they can't keep warm, so they have to have a jumper!
And they also look cute. And they also look cute. Yeah.
In 2014, the charity organising this put a call out
for penguin-sized jumpers to be donated, and they got so many,
they had to say, "Please could you stop sending them to us?"
So now they put the surplus jumpers on the toy penguins in the gift shop.
Oh, yeah, where no serial killer will go.
No. Anyway, please don't send jumpers. Just adopt a penguin.
Who wouldn't want to adopt a penguin? So cute!
Right, you have glasses of water next to you.
I want you to pop your finger in your glass of water
and tell me if it feels wet to you.
Uh-oh. Is this going to make me wee?
What do you reckon, Mark? Feel wet?
Yeah, it feels wet. Did you say yes?
Yeah. What?!
Here's the thing.
Human beings can't technically feel wet at all.
Oh... So if you think you are detecting wetness on your skin,
what you're actually feeling is a change in temperature and texture.
Other animals, like spiders and insects and so on,
they have hygro receptors, so sensors in the skin
that tells you if something is wet or not, and we don't have that.
If you're blindfolded and you fall in a swimming pool... Yep?
..you'd think...
You'd just think, "Oh, I've landed in a skip full of rubble."
"Oh, my God, it's colder than I expected,
"and therefore it's wet."
It's a perceptual illusion.
You're exactly right. It's a change of temperature and touch,
and we have receptors for that.
We just don't have receptors for saying, "Oh, my goodness, it's wet."
So you know that thing if you try, I don't know,
to take laundry in on a chilly evening,
and the T-shirt is still damp?
Mm-hm? Yeah. Or is it just cold?
Yes. That's a good point. What about when you wee yourself?
I mean, that... That feels wet.
That does feel wet. No, it feels...
It feels warm.
Some skin receptors are also triggered by menthol,
so the chemical in mint,
and that's why that gives us an illusion of coldness.
So drinking cold water after brushing your teeth, for example,
with minty toothpaste. Yeah, that shower gel with the tea tree in it.
Ooh, yeah! Ooh.
That's like a party for the body, isn't it?
It really is, but sometimes you use a little too much, don't you?
Don't put that in your bidet.
Woo!
Oh, yeah. You could really ruin someone's Japanese toilet.
Unscrew the top. Little bit of that in there.
ALAN SCREAMS
Nish would love it.
I'd love it. Yeah.
MARK: Would that touch God?
You can't feel Wet Wet Wet in your fingers and your toes.
AUDIENCE GROANS
But you can feel if Love Is All Around.
How can you make a trapeze more terrifying?
Put loads of those trumpet flowers underneath it.
That would do it, wouldn't it? Or a Japanese toilet?
Yes. Underneath.
So this is turn of the 20th century.
We're talking about a particular stunt.
So you might choose to strap your trapeze to a hot-air balloon.
What? Yeah.
So at the turn of the 20th century, there were stunt performers...
Oh, I actually feel quite ill.
..and they combined ballooning, trapezing, and parachuting
into a single act.
They did acrobatics on a trapeze attached to a parachute
hanging from a hot-air balloon, thousands of feet in the air.
Then they'd cut loose from the balloon,
still on the trapeze, with the parachute attached,
and then hopefully it would open as you came back down to Earth.
Hopefully! Yeah. Well... Was there a sort of little point
where, as you were falling, it went "Psh!"
and if you were really clever, you did it at the right time,
you ended up on a key ring?
I have to tell you about this particular stunt.
Fatalities were common.
Not a phrase you want to hear, is it?
It's the same as being a stand-up comic.
But I tell you this to introduce you to a marvellous entertainer
who was called Dolly Shepherd. She was an amazing woman.
She was carrying out a double jump in 1908
when her partner Louie May's parachute failed,
and she was hanging from a trapeze at 11,000 feet,
and she swung over to her friend's trapeze,
who was - she was hanging from the same balloon - and grabbed it,
and she got Louie to wrap her legs around her,
and they both descended on Dolly's parachute.
And the heavy landing paralysed Dolly,
and they said she would never walk again.
Four months later, she was back skydiving.
I think it's outrageous that WE'RE called entertainers,
and that's what they did.
Look at her, that's her in 1911. Very high, 11,000 feet. What a legend.
And what I love about her, her daredevil career started,
she overheard somebody complaining that he'd lost his target for his
"shoot an egg off a girl's head whilst blindfolded" act.
She was 16 years old, she volunteered to be a replacement.
And that person that she overheard was Samuel Cody. Oh!
And the woman who'd pulled out was his wife,
because he'd grazed her head with a bullet on his last attempt.
I just think she's so worth knowing about.
During one jump, she nearly landed on an express train,
but the driver, with some forethought,
puffed the steam on his engine and blew her into a ditch.
Just...puff!
LAUGHTER
Was she a cartoon?
Yes, she does sound like the Road Runner.
Yeah, yeah. There was another one where she used to
run off the edge of a cliff and dangle her...
..and then an anchor would fall on her head. Fantastic act.
But she had lots and lots of near-death experiences.
She was a remarkable woman.
And she lived to the age of 96, died in 1983,
and flew with the famous Red Devils Parachute Troop
to celebrate her 90th birthday.
Oh, wow! I just love that. I know. It's just so wonderful.
We should pay tribute to her. Right, after that thrilling ride,
we're crashing back down to terra firma with a round
of General Ignorance. Fingers on buzzers, please.
What substance that you often find in a bar
should you use to sterilise an open wound?
SYNTH VOICE: # Down and up and down. #
Nish?
Vodka?
KLAXON
Knew it.
Soap.
Yes!
Sorry. No!
I got excited. What were you going to say?
I was going to say salt.
Salt?! Oh, my God, how painful would that be?!
Do you work for the Spanish Inquisition?
Alan is exactly right. It is soap, you just use soap and water.
I feel quite clever. No, that's really good.
The thing is, alcohol would sting like hell is the first thing. Right.
It also causes tissue damage and dries out the area,
which can slow the healing process.
So you do use things like rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide
in medical settings, but it's always on unbroken skin.
Do not, do not do this on broken skin, it will hurt like hell,
and won't help it to heal.
If you clean a wound, then alcohol should never be part of the solution.
Or salt.
LAUGHTER
I didn't think we had to add that, but really, don't use salt.
LAUGHTER
What do the Germans call those big mugs of beer that they drink from?
SYNTH VOICE: # Down and up and down. #
Is it a Stein?
KLAXON
I love you, Nish, but I don't think you're going to win.
Remember when I said "olfactorial" earlier? Felt so good?
That seems a long time ago now.
I love German pubs. There's something amazing about the way
they get round to you and give you another beer without you having to
get up and go and ask for it.
This last one I went in, it was in Cologne,
and they had a leather strap with lots of cups in,
and a big jug. Yeah.
Just when you thought you were going to run out, someone would appear
with a jug and the strap, and trays full of pints,
in and out of the crowd. It's unbelievable.
And you don't have to go up to the bar.
You don't have to go up to the bar, you never run out.
But if you asked a German shopkeeper for a Stein,
they wouldn't really know.
It's what the English call the German beer mugs.
It is not what the Germans call it. Oh. Oh.
They call it Humpen or Krug.
Easy for you to say.
Yeah.
So Stein means stone, basically,
and it's the ceramicware that the stuff is made of. Ah!
But it's not what they call it.
But a Humpen or a Krug is made from all sorts of materials.
But it has a handle and sometimes a lid.
Fella in the pub I was in didn't look like that, I must say.
Going to give an extra ten points if anybody can tell me the world's
biggest producer of beer Steins, as we would call them,
in the world.
China.
KLAXON
Britain. Britain?
KLAXON
Is it...?
Ugh... Is it Germany?
KLAXON
# Upside down... # Go on, Mark.
Canada!
Oh, they're typing it in now!
No, weirdly, the answer's Brazil.
I've no idea why!
You don't have to be Ein-Stein to know Germans
don't call a beer mug...
Don't listen to them, Sandi! I thought it was very good.
I... You lot, next time, Pointless.
That's where you...
If you're not appreciating this...
APPLAUSE
You don't have to be Einstein to know Germans
don't call a beer mug ein Stein.
20 points if you can tell me the country
where snowboarding was invented.
Oh, well, it's going to be some wacky shit
because that's... This show just loves a,
"Ooh, here's the obvious answer."
IMITATES KLAXON
So I'll say Egypt.
APPLAUSE
Yeah. Down the Pyramids.
No, it's a particular village in Turkey.
It is... What? Turkey?
Yeah. Mesekoy, it's called, and it's in the Kachar mountains, OK?
There it is on the map.
So this village used to be called Petran,
and the story goes that there was a boy who was given the job
of cleaning his father's prayer mat,
and he realised that if you placed the mat on a snowy slope,
he could glide, and a hobby took off in this particular village.
What? The problem was he crashed into a bloke on a tightrope.
But the Petran board has got a string on the front
to help with steering and balance,
and they mould the wood using the steam from a kettle,
and then they put cow fat on the bottom,
and apparently it's fantastic.
The only thing is it's sort of dying out
because the kids of the village now don't think it's cool.
Wow. They're not really doing it any more.
Can I just ask a question? Yes, darling.
Is everyone else seeing that there's a town... Called Batman, yes.
..that's called Batman? Just bottom right of the map.
Can you just point it out, Nish, on the map? Just show us it.
There, if anybody can't see it, there it is. Batman. It's good.
LAUGHTER
You should totally do the weather reports. I love that.
As you can see, there will be snowstorms over this village,
and in Batman, there will be lovely weather.
OK, brilliant.
APPLAUSE
It's SNOW joke...
AUDIENCE GROANS, LAUGHTER
Snowboarding was originally a Turkish delight.
Er...
AUDIENCE GROANS
No, no, you're trying to build up your part now.
OK. When did almond milk become so bloody popular?
When we found their nipples.
APPLAUSE
Oh, it's either going to be 2015 or the year 2000 BC.
Which are we going to go for?
Is it a recent thing or is it an old thing?
Really old. It is really old.
It's going to be really old. Well old.
We have been replacing dairy with almond milk
since at least the 12th century. What?! I was going to say that.
12th century, would've been my guess.
At least the 12th century. Yeah...
Some poor sod, when it first happened.
"Cup of tea, please," in 1183. Yeah.
"What sort of milk do you want?"
"Oh, I don't know."
"Well, do you want coconut milk? Sheep milk? Ewe milk? Iguana milk?
"Llama milk? Milk expressed by Sandra,
"who sits in the back office squirting it...?"
LAUGHTER
You have full fat in the morning, semi-skimmed in the afternoon.
"Milk! Milk!"
"But it's the 12th century now. We've got this."
Well, here's the thing. There are food historians who say
it was the single most important ingredient
in medieval European cookery.
So one of the reasons for it is that cow's milk,
often very unappetising.
You have to imagine, it's pre-pasteurisation days
and apparently you could pull strings of bacteria
and clumps of earth from your glass,
and you couldn't eat animal products on various fast days.
So almond milk, absolutely perfect.
And almonds, of course, the world's oldest domesticated tree.
We think human beings started cultivating them to eat
somewhere around 9000 BC. I mean, it's amazing.
That's what I thought, 9000 BC. Yep.
I should have asked you first.
Can I just say? If you see almonds in the wild, do not eat them, OK?
They're bitter and toxic.
There's enough cyanide in them to kill a child.
I mean, don't do that either. Don't, don't...
There's cyanide in apple pips.
Yeah. The Poison Garden woman, this was part of her...
Part of her thing. She said, "Look at that, look at that, apples.
"They look innocent enough, don't they? But just a few pips,
"and that could absolutely wipe someone out.
"How many pips do you think you would need to give somebody
"enough cyanide to kill them?"
And a woman put up her hand and went, "I reckon it's 50."
And she said, "You know, you're absolutely right.
"How did you know that?" And she said,
"Well, I tried 49 on me husband, and it didn't quite work."
APPLAUSE
All of which ancient nuttiness brings us to the real kernel
of the show. It's time to reveal the scores. Ooh!
Thrashing the competition
with -2...
..today's winner is Mark!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Winner?!
Thriving in second place with -5,
Suzi!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In third place with -15 - and this has surprised me -
it's Nish!
Yes! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Which means in last place,
crying over spilled almond milk,
with -17, it's Alan!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And it's thanks to Nish, Mark, Suzi, and Alan,
and I leave you with this from Irish thriller writer
and former Marine Victor O'Reilly.
"If at first you don't succeed,
"well, so much for skydiving." Goodnight.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE