CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello, and welcome to QI.
Tonight, we'll be looking at
a bit of this, a bit of that, and maybe even a bit of t'other.
Let's meet our tribe of troubadours. The mellow Jo Brand.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The melodious Sally Phillips.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The mellifluous Guz Khan.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And, ding dong, it's Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And this is all about that.
Sally goes...
# That's life That's life... # Oh, I like that.
# That's what all the people say. #
Jo goes...
# That's the way, ah-ah ah-ah I like it. #
Guz goes...
# When the moon hits your eye Like a big pizza pie
# That's amore. #
And Alan goes...
# That's not my name That's not my name
# That's not my name That's not my...name. #
Right, question number one. Complete the following -
Sigmund Freud, Catherine the Great and Che Guevara
walk into a karaoke bar...
# That's amore! #
Catherine the Great
told Che to drop kick Sigmund in the chest.
Oh! Because he was running round
saying everybody wanted to tickle their mum.
Is the karaoke significant? Yes. It's all about singing.
Freud hated music. OK, so now you're heading in the right direction.
Why do you say he hated music?
Because he hated music.
What it was was that he claimed that he was tone-deaf, so he wanted
to sing, but he was almost totally out of tune.
He just thought that he was completely tone-deaf.
But the two people who do seem to have been tone-deaf are
Catherine the Great and Che.
They do seem to have been properly tone-deaf. Oh, really?
She was a tremendous patron of the arts in Russia.
She wrote her own libretti for operas and so on,
but she couldn't personally perceive the music.
And Che, he wrote that he would ask a friend to nudge him
whenever a tango was played so that he could dance.
A friend nudged him one time, he got up, danced a very slow, passionate
tango, and it was, in fact, they were playing a quick
Peruvian folk dance, so...
Che Guevara was really into rugby. Did you know that?
He published his own rugby magazine called Tackle.
And he said... And he said, "I love it so much
"that I don't care if I die playing rugby." Yes, he said even if it kills me,
I'm happy... You'd think if he were born English, he wouldn't
have been bothered with all these revolutions? He'd have just played for the Lions?
Yeah. There's a technical word for tone deafness. It's amusia
and congenital amusia -
so proper, untreatable tone deafness -
is about 1.5% of the population.
There's a colloquial term for tone deafness, as well,
which is East 17.
I was on the Big Breakfast once - a long time ago in the '90s -
and East 17 were on guesting and someone came in with headphones
and a clipboard. It's live, you know.
"Would the boys sing a Big Breakfast jingle?"
And the manager said, "Boys don't sing."
There's a lot of facts in this show.
I'm... I'm trying to process all this stuff.
There's facts firing off left and right.
I feel bad now. Do you want me to do less?
I want you to be happy. No, I'm happy. OK.
Che Guevara, rugby.
The thing is, you just tell me things you know that I don't know.
That's how it works. We just knock it backwards and forwards.
Is that what he is? Yeah. Tell me something I don't know. Go on.
I once accidentally kicked a turtle off a roof in Morocco.
There you go. I mean, there's a lot to unpack there, really.
You rarely see a turtle on a roof. I know!
What were you and the turtle doing on the roof?
I didn't know he was there. No. Fair.
And I had very slippy, local, like, Moroccan slippers on.
Yeah? And somebody pinged me a size five football
and, as I volleyed that... Yeah.
..the turtle's come out from behind that plant pot...
..and the ball and the turtle have gone off the roof.
It was an accident. Pure accident, swear down. Yeah, what are the chances? Innit? OK.
What happened then? You just went, "Oh, shit. Oh, well."
Did you go down to see if it was all right? Somebody did go and check if it was all right. And?
It weren't all right.
Most people who say that they are tone-deaf, it's just that they lost
confidence as a child.
But there is a thing called congenital amusia, and that's
because you have a loss of connectivity between your left
and your right auditory cortex and they jumble the sounds.
But, as I say, it is very rare.
The thing that's not so rare is perfect pitch.
Probably one in 20 music students have it.
Here's the thing - if we all sang a song of which there's one famous
recording - like, Hey Jude would be a good example of a song -
about one in five of us in this room
will probably hit the first note exactly.
And that's called remembered pitch. Many of us have that -
certainly a large proportion of the population.
If you don't have it, it is perfectly possible to learn it.
What we're going to do
is we're going to see if there are any amusics on the panel, OK?
I'm going to get a note played and we're going to see
how sharp or flat you are.
We're going to start with Sally, OK? We're going to play you a G
and then I'd like you to try and sing it. OK, so here's the G.
NOTE PLAYS
# Aaaaaaah!
SINGS HIGHER: # Aaaaaaah. #
Wow, you went to an E. I don't know what happened there.
All right, Guz, let's try you. You're going to hear a D,
then I want you to sing it, OK?
NOTE PLAYS
Er...
Doing!
APPLAUSE DROWNS OUT SPEECH
Alan, you're going to do an A.
NOTE PLAYS
# Bong! #
Oh! Oh, that was pretty good.
Jo, a B.
NOTE PLAYS
# Aaaaaaaaah!
Ah. Ah.
Let's try the audience, OK? You're going... Oh, not this lot!
You're all going to do an E.
This is what it sounds like.
AUDIENCE: # Aaaaaaaah!
AUDIENCE CONTINUE
I mean... Three of them have died. SALLY: Wow!
JO: One thing I've been trying to do my whole life...
You know that song by Minnie Riperton - Loving You?
# Loving you... # Then it goes...
# La la la la la La la la la la
# La la la la la la la la la la la
# Doo-n-doo-n-doo-doo....
# AAAAH! #
I've always wanted to be able to do that.
You all did very well, so I have got you some chewing gum.
And while you are chewing on that, here is another question.
How can I get Kylie Minogue's I Can't Get You Out Of My Head
out of my head?
Play another song. Is a very good answer, indeed.
Absolutely right.
So when you can't get a song out of your head, it's called
an earworm, also known as stuck song syndrome.
And it tends to appear when you've allowed your mind to wander.
But it can also happen when you're very stressed or overloaded with work.
But there are the following treatments.
The one you suggested - substitute a different earworm is one way
of doing it. Distract yourself with a puzzle.
Do you do puzzles at all, Guz? I do. Yeah.
Are you good at it?
They... When things get bad, when you've got technology, let it assist you.
Yes. There's a thing called wordlecheater.co.uk.
I did not know that. I'm really annoyed.
So the other thing is to chew gum. Chew gum for three minutes
and it sometimes does the trick.
# Can't get you out of my head. # It's not working.
It's not working?
I don't know what would happen if the thing you've got in your head is Lonnie Donegan's
Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight?
How long do you think people have been chewing gum?
Thousands of years. Yeah.
Thousands and thousands. I'd say...
Go. Well, there's no written history, of course,
but oral traditions would suggest... This is what you do, Guz.
Are you impressed? See what I'm doing? Smashing.
Yes, smashing.
4,600 years, I think, was the earliest, um...
It's the Neolithic period. It's about 10,000 years.
So close!
I've forgot about the Neolithic... You were!
Were they chewing gum before they're brushing their teeth?
What came first? Yes is the answer to that.
The ancient Greeks did it.
They chewed something called mastic tree resin.
The Mayans chewed tree resin, as well, and Native Americans chewed
spruce tree sap.
It may be that it's just a way of freshening the mouth,
or it just is a nice kind of repetitive thing.
This is such a good show. Thank you.
Like BBC Bitesize, but real life.
It's shown that chewing gum has a better effect on performance
than caffeine, and nobody knows why. There is some kind of connection
between chewing gum... Stick it under the desk,
it'll still be there next year. Do not do that.
We don't know why there's this connection between chewing gum
and cognitive performance. It can't be the sugar,
because sugar-free gum has exactly the same effect.
There is a thing called mastication-induced arousal.
Wow. Mm-hm.
How do you achieve that?
How you achieve it is you have, like, a really massive sausage roll.
I mean how are you masticating, when are you masticating?
Is it what you're masticating? Is it who you're masticating with?!
I thought it made you go blind.
So the best way to avoid getting earworm is to only listen to music
that you don't like. That's it.
It's the ones that you like - they get stuck in your head.
Also listen to the song all the way through.
Then you won't get an earworm.
And there are no songs that are more earwormy than others.
I don't think Kylie's more earwormy.
You're looking at me like I've strayed too far into
the fact area.
So much going on.
You've got mastication arousal.
Does your ponytail stick up straight?
Pete Baynham's mum - the comedy writer who wrote Borat -
his mum had Dad's Army theme tune playing in her ears
solidly for 20 years.
Is she just on BBC Two the whole time?
# If you think we're on the run. #
Don't! Now you've got to do it all the way through or we'll all have it.
ALAN SINGS
to my beloved audience.
OTHERS JOIN IN: # We are the boys
# That will make you think again!
AUDIENCE JOINS IN: # Who do you think you re kidding
# Mr Hitler If you think old England's done?
# Mr Brown went off to town... #
APPLAUSE DROWNS OUT SINGING
Right. What item beginning with T
do people use for fun today but was once a serious punishment?
# That's life. #
Tom Cruise.
You know, there was a whole thing on the internet of people morphing
Tom Cruise's face into mine. And I don't... I don't know...
# That's life. # Torture chambers.
So, kind of. So it begins with T.
Today, people use it for fun. Thumb screw.
No, no. I mean, generally... People in this audience would...
Many, many would use it for a bit of fun. Toilet.
# That's life. # Trampoline.
Trampoline? You're just saying words beginning with T. We are!
# That's amore. #
I'm going to kill these buzzers in a minute. Stop it.
Testicles.
Oh, I know! Yes?
Tottenham Hotspur.
Treadmills. Treadmills - yes!
What?! What?
I feel like there's a lot of people and you see them sometimes in town
centres, sometimes there'll be a window on the first floor
and they're all at the glass, looking like they're trying to cycle
out of the window and land in the street.
What are they doing? They're pounding and running
towards the window, but never get there. I don't know what
they're seeing, where they're trying to get to. I wish, one day,
the window would just open up and they'd all fly out.
Maybe take off, maybe just fly around the town
and, eventually, like a balloon -
when you release a balloon and it goes...
And all of that energy! They're all doing that and it's just going it's
going nowhere. They're not even powering the lights.
They should be... They could be going into the National Grid.
Yes. Yes.
You're right, Alan. There was a prison in Brazil, in 2012,
and they gave the inmates the chance to reduce their jail sentences
by generating electricity pedalling exercise bikes.
Inspired. Yeah, absolutely. Isn't that fantastic?
It was one day off for every three eight-hour shifts that they did.
I can't remember where I was, but, somewhere in the world, you could
charge your phone with an exercise bike.
And, oh, my word, I got, like, 1%.
Today, the treadmill is a popular tool of voluntary exercise.
But, in the 19th century, it was a punishment device.
So it was introduced in England in 1818 by the engineer
Sir William Cubitt and he devised a tread wheel with a handrail
that acted like a sort of endless staircase.
He put one into Brixton prison and it ground grain
for a nearby mill, then they went on to do some that pumped water.
Up to 40 prisoners at a time.
And, by 1865, every male prisoner over the age of 16 serving
a sentence for hard labour was forced to walk the treadmill.
But it became a punishment rather than something practical.
Are you an exerciser? Is your thing?
Absolutely not. No. Good man.
Er, extra point.
There we go!
There we go. That's what it looked like - a sort of continuous...
Oh. That's exactly what people now pay £250 a month...
Yeah.
There was a satirist called William Hone and he recorded
the amount of vertical feet claimed by prisoners
at various British jails.
And at Warwick, in the peak of summer, prisoners were forced
to climb 17,000 feet in ten hours.
That's about the height of Mount Kenya, which is the second
highest mountain in Africa.
I mean... This is quite sad, you know. People were injured
falling off them. And if you fell off it, then you were flogged.
You couldn't win either way - you could be injured falling off
and then flogged for being injured and falling. Mad.
They should bring that in at Virgin Active.
1889, the Broadway stage play of Ben-Hur included a chariot race
with real horses on stage running on treadmills.
I mean, that's the film. That is not from the stage play,
but a panorama would move as the horses galloped
and then they were blowing machines down below
the stage, forcing powder up so it looked like it was dust.
And the very same year - it was obviously very popular -
the Union Square Theatre staged a play, also in New York, called
the County Fair, and they used a similar sort of effect - a horse
that was pipped to the post in a race
and the race took place live on stage.
These are some of the drawings of how they managed it.
It's amazing, isn't it? Wow, yeah. Look at that.
The treadmills are fantastic.
Now, what's the perfect underwear for the underworld?
# That's the way. #
This just gives me a chance to say
my top-ten most-hated word ever. OK.
Is it panties?
Why do you not like the word panties?
It's something that gynaecologists say
and you know you should call the police.
"Would you just like to slip your panties off?"
"No! I'd like to slip off my bloody great navy school knick-knocks,
"if you don't mind." So you're right about panties.
Whose panties might it be that we are talking about?
We are heading back in time. We're heading back to Egypt.
Is it Tutankhamun? Yes, absolutely right. Bloody hell!
Tutankhamun. So he was buried with hundreds of objects
to use in the afterlife.
The clothing included 12 tunics, 28 gloves, four socks with separate
toe sections - so he could still wear sandals in the afterlife -
and 145 pairs of panties
all neatly folded.
Which is the good thing. The less good thing -
they have discovered that they were all used and probably... AUDIENCE: Oh!
Hmm, right? Dirty panties.
They were dirty. He didn't do his laundry before he went off.
We've made a sort of mock up, Sally, next to you.
A pair of dirty pants?
They're a mock up.
So this is what it would have looked like.
It was a triangular thing.
So what you do is you put it around your waist
from behind and tie those two quarters round.
I've got a label here -
"property of Tutankhamun".
So, from behind, put it round you
and tie it.
At the front. At the front.
Like that. Yes. Then bring the other bit up between your legs,
like that. It's a nappy, basically.
Basically, nappies. Yes.
That is your basic Egyptian panties right there.
Wow. Tutankhamun was rolled into heaven with skid marks.
That's not a....
APPLAUSE
Maybe they put a washing machine...
Maybe there was a top loader in the corner.
I thought loin cloths weren't... Can you give us a twirl with those on?
A twirl? Yeah, sure.
Yeah. Let's just see how they...
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
AUDIENCE: Ooh!
It's as though the boy king was in the room.
Absolutely fantastic. So they haven't washed them or cleaned them.
Why not? Can't be bothered. Yeah.
Lazy. They're untouched because they want to keep their options open.
There may be new investigative techniques in the future, and so...
Undoubtedly there will be.
Maybe there were loads of dirty pants because he was a teenager.
Well, this is it.
It was a replica of his bedroom. Yeah.
That's about right. Look at it.
The pants were discovered in the early 1990s in a box covered
by a copy of the Egyptian Gazette,
dated just six weeks after the discovery of the tomb.
People just thought, "Oh, pants."
Stick a newspaper on top of it and not bother.
But here's the thing that makes me so excited.
This is going to blow your mind, Guz. Are you ready? Yeah, go on.
He was buried with a dagger.
In 2016, researchers from the Polytechnic University
of Milan found that the blade's composition of iron, nickel
and cobalt strongly suggests an extraterrestrial origin.
# That's amore. #
Mad.
Mad!
So the metal is identical to that found in a meteorite
in the city of Marsa Matruh, 150 miles west of Alexandria.
Isn't that amazing? Do you know what makes me think, as well? Hmm?
If that is genuine, ET was on a mad one, wasn't he?
Yeah.
Going crazy. Going crazy.
And I talked about his socks that he had the divided toes
that he could wear his socks with sandals. It's not a good look.
Aliens have weird feet. Everyone knows.
The soles of Tutankhamun's sandals
were decorated with traditional images of African and Asian enemies
so that he could symbolically trample upon them as he walked.
They really thought of everything. Oh, they covered everything.
Tutankhamun was buried with 145 pairs of used underpants.
I mean, I'm going to say there's a joke in there about men
needing their mummy to do their laundry, but let's move on.
Why does David Mitchell stand in the midday sun every day
and yell the news to anybody who will listen?
THE David Mitchell? Ah!
Is there a THE David Mitchell?
You'd think so for the amount of times he's on telly.
I know why I think it is. Go on, then.
Is he a town crier? You are absolutely right.
There's only one place in Britain where there is still the tradition
of regular midday town crier proclamations.
And there's two official town criers - David Mitchell
and his wife, Julie.
And David Mitchell is in the audience.
Where are you, David?
Good evening, my lady.
How would you start a town cry?
Always with the three oyez. OK, can you do that for us?
Oyez! Oyez!
Oy...
..ez!
So it just means "hear ye", doesn't it, or "hearken"?
Do you give out news - is that the main object?
Not like national news.
We never announce the result of battles or kings dying
or anything like that. It was very local things.
Mainly lost things.
Like, for example, if parents had lost a child, or a farmer's
livestock had strayed, then we would announce that kind of thing.
If I lost Alan, could I call you?
The strap you use to put the bell in, has that got a particular name?
It shares its name with Lord Blackadder's servant.
This is, in fact, a baldric.
PANEL: Ah!
And your wife is also a town crier? She is.
Do the two of you shout at each other at breakfast? I just...
SHOUTS: Pass the marmalade!
SHOUTS: We're out of marmalade! We're out of marmalade!
Thank you for letting me know!
I hope you have children -
the last two town criers in all of England.
We're by no means the last. There are probably 240.
But Chester is the only place in the world that chooses its town
criers on the basis of their photogenic good looks.
Wow.
Well, we're delighted you are here. Thank you so much, David Mitchell.
You need one of those in Cov, Guz. We need one of them.
You could be that. I could be... I could be that.
But, to be honest with you, the way that David described what he does,
by spilling all the local goss, that would make him a snitch.
In Cov, he's getting shot, so I wouldn't bother, mate, to be honest with you.
There used to be royal heralds and they informed townspeople
of new proclamations - so terms of truces and new taxes,
that kind of thing. Then there were non-royal criers
and they were the ones who used to talk about
there's a child missing or a horse missing, or whatever it is.
One of the major duties of the town criers of the German town
of Goslar was to ensure the purity of the local beer
by reminding locals not to urinate or defecate in the local river
the day before the water was going to be drawn for the beer.
So David had a bell there, as a notification instrument.
In fact, they appear in the Bayeux Tapestry.
You can see the guy is carrying the bells there,
announcing Edward the Confessor's funeral.
If you ever get a chance to go to the wonderful town of Ribe
in Denmark, in the summer, they still have night watchmen
who sing to you that bedtime is approaching. Aw.
It's really nice. A good time to go drinking.
What did the anti-toast movement object to?
# That's the way. #
Is it gluten?
Anti-toast movement? Yeah.
They were an early far-right-wing group who didn't like the fact
that when you went through the process of making toast, it went
from white bread to brown bread.
Is it to do with the International Toastmasters Alliance?
There is an organisation of Toast... International... Toastmasters. Yes.
They have small groups of about 20, and then they share tips
for being more mesmerising.
So they developed a really strange way of giving speeches
to get attention. I'm mesmerised by that bit of toast.
Wouldn't it be brilliant if you could actually have a bit
of toast that big for your breakfast?
You could sleep on it and then eat it in the morning.
So an anti-toast movement is against alcohol.
It's basically against toasting.
Louis XIV banned anybody from toasting at his court -
so raising your glass and cheering somebody else.
Possibly, there was heavy drinking going on publicly - that was the reason.
In 1628, there was a Puritan pamphleteer called William Prynne
and he wrote an entire anti-toast tract -
said that toasting originated with the devil himself.
That's him there in the pillory. He was imprisoned.
He had his ears chopped off, but went on to become an MP.
And you just think, yep, couldn't hear -
perfect person to represent...
The word toast comes literally from toast.
So, in the 17th century, it was a practice of wishing somebody
health by offering them a drink with spiced toast bread inside it,
and it would flavour the drink. In the Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff
says... He calls for a quart of spiced wine and says,
"Put a toast in it."
And toast was often moistened with wine.
Even if you were making something as simple as cheese on toast,
you might moisten it with a bit of wine. That defeats the object -
making your toast soggy?
Or just flavourful, if you didn't have any butter.
There were no fridges, so it might be a nice way of making it
flavoursome. Toast water was a Victorian health drink made
by pouring boiling water onto toast,
letting it cool and then straining it and drinking it. Ugh!
Anybody ever seen a toastmaster's glass?
So the toastmaster... Oh! That's a euphemism, isn't it?
Eh? Yes, I've seen a toastmaster's glass.
I've seen a toastmaster's arse.
OK. Does that count? Well, let's take a look at the glass.
So what's different about it?
Got a massive diamond in it. What it is, it's mostly solid glass.
So it holds a quarter as much alcohol as a normal glass of the same size.
That way, the toastmaster can keep toasting without falling over.
Showing his arse to people.
There's a thing you would really like, Jo. Is it about health?
Yeah. No. Because you love toast, right?
I love... Yeah. At the University of Pennsylvania,
they have an American football team called the Quakers.
Between the third and fourth quarters of each match, the band
plays a song called The Highball.
They sing, "Tell the story of glory of Pennsylvania.
"Drink a highball and be jolly, here's a toast to dear old Penn."
And then they used to all drink at the last line.
But alcohol was banned from the stadium in the 1970s.
So, on the last line, they started throwing a slice of toast, instead.
And up to 30,000 pieces of toast are flung.
That's like a holiday for me.
30,000 pieces in a season. Lots of people show up
just to throw the toast and then leave -
not interested in the football at all.
They've got a special sweeping machine to scoop it all up.
Then the students all donate to food banks to atone
for the wasted bread. Shall we go to that?
Yeah, let's. OK. You and me, we'll be there.
Describe the most thrilling way to come down from the top
of the Eiffel Tower.
# That's the way. #
Tossing yourself off?
Have you been up the Eiffel Tower? I have. Yeah.
Did you enjoy it? There's a lot of queuing.
I hated it. The lift's terrifying.
I walked up and fainted at the top, so...
How long did that take? I started on the Tuesday.
So not that, not that. Thrilling way to come down from the Eiffel Tower.
Any thoughts? What would be a cool way?
Some kind of massive slide? Yes.
On a magical unicorn made of Camembert.
Bare-back riding with Robert Pattinson.
So this is fantastic.
There was a French engineer, 1891, called Charles Carron,
and he proposed a giant bullet that people would sit
inside as it fell down from the Eiffel Tower
into an enormous pool of water at the base.
OK? The fall - about 1,000 feet -
and it would allow 15 brave riders
to reach speeds up to 180mph,
whilst not restrained by a seat belt or anything else
in any way. I just wonder if any of the panel can think
of a practical problem that might arise with
this particular idea. I'd say certain death. Certain death.
Well, the main thing was that they needed something for them
to land it, right?
So he proposed a dive pool
190ft deep,
shaped like a giant champagne flute. Once they're in the bottom
of the pool... Yeah? ..how are they getting out then?
That's the other thing.
Well spotted.
The bullet is 11 tons. Ooh! Yeah.
And he did say, probably, we'd have to get them out quite quickly -
before they asphyxiated or drowned -
presuming, I think, that they hadn't died from the impact.
AS ENGINEER: "They're tied with a tiny dog."
ALAN MIMICS BARKING
The Boston Globe suggested that those who survive
will be decorated with the Medal of Legion, or something
like that, to commemorate their bravery - the others will be
decently buried by the state.
Anyway, never built, weirdly. No?
Health and safety has ruined everything. Yeah.
I like the fact that it's got quite an elegant lamp above them.
Yeah. As if they might... In the final seconds,
they might be reading a bit of Zola.
I'm just thinking, like, look at this guy - free thinker.
Like, imagine if he was around designing, like,
lollipop ladies' lollipops.
If that's where his mind is with this...
..something as mundane as a lollipop lady should have, like, straps
and go, like, brrrr, if the kids were coming out.
Get back, you little prick! Zap! Like that.
This is the kind of guy we need in today's society, innit?
It certainly is. My brother had a friend who,
when they went to something like,
you know, a scary theme park,
he would take a massive kind of rusty bolt with him
and he would wait till the ride started
and he went, "I've just found that under my seat."
"Aagh!"
OK. What sort of things do Australian talking ducks say?
Ah, look!
And then something else. They always start with "ah, look".
"There's an egg." Look at that.
"Ah, look, I've laid one!"
Struth! I seem to have a testicle under my beak.
What have I swallowed here, Sheila? Look at that!
So it's a particularly curious duck from Australia
called a musk duck.
And it's part of a rare group of vocal language learners.
That includes humans, some bats, elephants who can reproduce sounds
that are around them. There's a duck in the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve
in Canberra, Australia. The duck was obviously called Ripper.
Ripper? Ripper. WITH AUSTRALIAN ACCENT: Yeah. 1987.
It was recorded making a noise.
It sounded like a human being saying, "You bloody fool!"
Now, this is what I've been told.
We've got a recording.
You tell me if that's what it sounds like.
Have a listen to this.
GENTLE COOING: You bloody fooool.
Apparently, there's a musk duck
in Pensthorpe Natural Park in the UK.
It sounds like a snorting pony.
There's one at Slimbridge Wildfowl Trust that coughs like his keeper
and squeaks like a turnstile.
There used to be a sensational German vaudeville act called
Don the Talking Dog.
And, in 1912, he went to America. He arrived
and everybody was very excited to meet Don the Talking Dog.
But he was too seasick to converse with anybody. Aw!
In the event, he only spoke German, apparently.
He could say yes, no, quiet, cake, have, hunger, and his owner's name.
He was very like Alan. And, um...
Could he say "sausages"?
Well, OK.
Most famous talking dog in Britain was called...?
I was thinking of Esther Rantzen. Yes! It was the dog called Prince.
1979, Prince and his owner, Paul Allen, appeared
on the Esther Rantzen That's Life to demonstrate his vocabulary.
His vocabulary included Elvis, Esther and, most famously, sausages.
I know Esther and she says there was a time in the '70s when she
couldn't walk down the street without people yelling, "Sausages!"
Shall we have a look? Oh, yeah.
Now for our latest talented pet.
This one is quite unbelievable,
but, we promise you, it really is true.
We didn't believe it ourselves when we heard that Paul Allen,
who lives in Leeds, has a talking dog.
George, next door, gives him sausages. He comes out every
Thursday with a plate of sausages
and puts them on't back door step
and Prince goes and has a good tuck-in.
Tell us what you have on a Thursday, Prince.
What does George give you, Prince?
Saus... A what? Sausage.
LAUGHTER DROWNS OUT PRINCE
So brilliant.
That would get you on the telly in the '70s. I know!
Right, time to talk turkey in the round we call General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
What kind of nail is most likely to give you tetanus?
# That's life. #
Yes? Jimmy Nail.
A rusty nail.
KLAXON BLARES CHEERING
It's a bacterial infection. It is.
Bacterial infection is nothing to do with rust. No.
Is it one smeared with human saliva?
Well, it's most commonly found in human and animal faeces.
Oh, super! Yeah.
But it's also in soil and dust. It tends to hide in the soil.
So a sprig of holly would be a greater threat to you
than a rusty nail. All these years!
Why did everyone say, "Oh, don't stand on a rusty..."
Someone would have to shit on the nail first?
Or wiped it with Tutankhamun's nappies.
You get lockjaw. You do. It's very, very unpleasant.
Then you can't say what's happened to you.
"But, what's wrong with you?"
MUFFLED SPEECH
"Ask the dog!"
AS DOG: I shat on a nail.
Rusty nails don't inherently cause tetanus,
but best just to avoid them, in case.
What do you call the spot where an earthquake starts?
Is it the epicentre?
KLAXON BLARES
Yay!
So the epicentre is the point on the Earth's surface
above the location where an earthquake starts.
The place where it actually starts is the focus or hypocentre.
The hypocentre? Hypocentre.
We've got one of those at Brent Cross.
Next to the blue car park.
So, quakes start along fault lines.
So it's where two tectonic plates rub against each other.
They cannot physically occur on the surface of the Earth.
So most earthquakes start very, very deep within the Earth's crust.
Earthquakes are proper scary. I experienced one for the first time
in my life in LA and, apparently, they're quite common there.
But I didn't know that. So I was... You don't know, do you?
I'm from Coventry - you don't have flipping earthquakes there.
I was in my hotel room in only my pants.
Then, sort of when the building starts shaking...
Yeah. ..I shit myself.
And I ran in the hallway.
All my tits are out flying everywhere.
And I was so scared that I had the strength to kick
in the door opposite.
And there was just one - bless him - little Chinese dude sitting
on his chair. And I've kicked his door in, tits flailing everywhere.
He's screaming. I'm screaming.
It was scary, man. That's the end of the story. Yeah.
I was once in a hotel in Madrid lying in bed,
and there was a bit of activity on the balcony.
And then the balcony door opened.
And a little Japanese man came through...
..did a courtesy bow and just went out into the corridor.
Next day,
a younger Japanese man knocked on the door and, behind him,
I could see the same little man. And he goes, "So sorry, so sorry."
And he handed me a very tightly folded up 100 US dollar bill.
I said, "You didn't have to give me this.
"Just tell me what on earth happened."
Then he was in the next room. We were on the seventh floor
and he got locked out on his own balcony
and he climbed across the gap
onto my balcony
and came in.
I kept the money.
The spot where an earthquake starts is called the hypocentre.
How do you walk like a Neanderthal?
Ah, now... Yes?
I think they're quite upright. OK. Why do you think that?
Because they're very similar to humans. They bred together.
You are absolutely right.
Oh, a point! Absolutely right. Yep. Yeah.
The walk is just the same as ours. The reason we think they have
this sort of stooped, knuckle-dragging thing -
in 1909, there was a French palaeontologist called
Marcellin Boule and he reassembled the very first Neanderthal skeleton
and he found it was stooped over - a sort of permanent slouch.
He decided he'd found the missing link between the primates
on all fours and modern humans walking upright.
In fact, what he had discovered was an old man
suffering from arthritis. Oh, really?
Neanderthals were fine, upstanding folk,
or so it turns out. Which brings us to the scores.
But why should I proclaim the scores when I've got David Mitchell
here to do it? David, please tell us the results.
Oy...ez!
In fifth place with -20 points
is Alan.
Oh, Alan!
In fourth place with seven points -
Guz.
In third place with 11 points
is Sally.
In second place with 14 points -
Jo.
But tonight's winner,
boosted by the incomparable Chester town crier -
with 15 points is
the audience!
Thank you, David, and thank you, Guz, Sally, Jo and Alan.
I leave you with this - the American actress Tallulah Bankhead
was once at a party in New York when a man rushed over and said,
"My God, Tallulah, I haven't seen you in 30 years."
And she looked him up and down and said icily,
"I thought I told you to wait in the car." Goodnight.