CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello and welcome to QI,
where tonight we've gone totally tubular.
Let's see who's around.
Firing on all cylinders, it's Sara Pascoe.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Channelling her inner tube, it's Bridget Christie.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The light at the end of my tunnel, it's Deborah Frances-White.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And in the conservatory with the lead piping,
it's Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Please mind the gap between the train and the platform.
This service will be stopping at the following stations.
Sara goes...
# Winding your way down on Baker Street... #
Bridget goes...
# When I get to Warwick Avenue... #
Deborah goes...
# Waterloo, I was defeated You won the war... #
And Alan goes...
# Ealing Broadway, Fulham Broadway, Tooting Broadway, Arsenal
# Stockwell, Chigwell, Seven Sisters
# Blackhorse Road, Blackfriars, Temple
# East Acton, Oval, Bow Road... #
RECORDING SPEEDS UP RAPIDLY
MIMICS TAPE BEING CHEWED UP
EXPLOSION
Right, question one - what can you do on the London Underground
in summer that a cow can't?
Find the Central line, cos they can't see red.
Oh! So, inadvertently, you're heading in the right direction.
Central line is the clue.
Central line is the clue?
Central line is the hottest of the lines.
Yes, that is correct.
What people do on a really hot Tube in the summer
is say, "They wouldn't even treat livestock like this."
You couldn't say that if you're a cow, cos you are livestock.
LAUGHTER
That is actually, weirdly, the correct answer.
So...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The Central line is the hottest line on the Tube.
It regularly reaches temperatures in the summer
that exceed the legal limit for transporting cattle. Oh!
In 2019, a journalist recorded a temperature of 36.6 Centigrade,
100 degrees Fahrenheit, in old money,
on a Central line carriage when leaving Mile End.
So one of the problems is, it's one of the early lines.
And those early engineers, they didn't leave any space
around the trains for ventilation or air conditioning and so on.
So it's snugly wrapped in the surrounding clay,
a bit like a blanket.
But here's a really good thing.
What do you think they do now with the abandoned stations,
of which there are several?
Do they put big air conditioners in?
Well, that'd be pointless. It's abandoned. I don't know quite how...
Listen, I don't know a lot about air conditioning, as is apparent. Yeah.
But I wondered if they could use it at the next station
and somehow puff it down the line.
You're right. You don't know very much...
I'm going to give you a point for not knowing very much.
In fact, they use them as heat reservoirs,
which warm homes in the winter.
So City Road, in the Old Street area,
currently heats 1,000 homes in Islington.
So it's almost what I said, only the opposite of what I said.
I live in Islington. How do I know if it's my house?
I would ring up and ask.
My house does smell like the Tube, though.
That may be just you need to throw some of those nappies away.
Some of them have beds in, don't they?
Yeah, Down Street has got baths and showers. Nice!
You wouldn't mind living in an underground station. It'd be nice.
I wouldn't like it. Oh, why?
I need a window.
You can probably have a window but there's nothing to see.
That's the only thing. Yeah, just a window propped up on the side.
That's Bridget's window.
Before the Tube, first tunnel in London, any thoughts?
Under the Thames? Yes, under the Thames. Greenwich Foot Tunnel?
No, the Thames Tunnel. The Thames Tunnel? Yes.
Where's that one?
So, it was started in 1825 and it still has trains going through it.
That is a picture of it, entitled A Correct View of the Thames Tunnel.
It was the first time engineers had tunnelled under a major river.
Sir Marc Brunel, Isambard's father.
He said he worked out how to do it
by watching shipworms pooing.
Yeah. So, when a shipworm, technically called a Teredo,
burrows into wood, its head is protected
by a sort of tough, helmet-like shell,
and it digests the wood
and then it excretes it out behind itself as a sort of hard residue
that lines the tunnel and strengthens it - it's really clever.
So clever. Isn't it brilliant, right?
And he imitated this with a tunnelling shield.
So it was an iron grid, right?
And it pressed against the face of the tunnel when the workers
were digging out the earth between the grid squares.
And as they did that, others followed behind
and reinforced the tunnel that they were creating.
It took about 16 years to complete.
They progressed about four inches every day.
Who hasn't been there? LAUGHTER
And it was never really suitable for horse-drawn vehicles.
In the end, it was just filled by souvenir sellers.
And that Correct View, passive-aggressive labelling
of that picture. Yeah? Was that one illustrator having...
..throwing some shade at another illustrator?
No, it was throwing shade at the fact that it should
have been just nice ladies and gentlemen walking up and down.
And in fact, it was full of vagrants and acrobats and ne'er-do-wells.
Acrobats? Yeah.
People used to go down and entertain... Street entertainers.
They love a tunnel. LAUGHTER
The past is a very odd place, isn't it? Yeah.
I don't know if you remember the 580-tonne
Channel Tunnel boring machine.
Do you remember that? Yeah, I do. I do remember it.
I pitched a novel, which was about some people who wanted
to save the remaining endangered species. Mm?
So, what they did was they wiped out humanity
by using that boring machine to...
So, anyway, it didn't get commissioned.
LAUGHTER
"No, thank you."
For a while, the machine,
once they'd finished the Channel Tunnel, it was for sale.
It was sold in 2004 for just under £40,000 to a bidder on eBay.
No. Yeah.
Price did not include delivery. No returns.
That's the thing.
Would you have bought such a thing?
I'd like to have just had it, put it in the garden.
It'd be quite interesting. I think... How big is your garden?
Quite a lot bigger, if you had that. Yeah, that's so true.
LAUGHTER
If your normal amount of... You know, you have money,
you have a debit card, occasionally you do go on eBay.
You're drunk.
You think, "I don't have any roller-skates."
You buy them, you forget about it.
Next Wednesday, the postman comes, "Oh, my gosh, who got me these?"
Um... LAUGHTER
But it would be good if you bought that, right?
And there was never any use for it, ever. Yeah.
And then, like, some natural disaster happened
or something. Yeah. So, you go, "I've got..." And you go,
"I've got the thing for the job." Yeah.
"And everyone laughed at me when I bought it." Mm.
"And now who's laughing?" Yeah.
LAUGHTER
"Cos you can't use it..." No.
"..unless you give me loads of money."
Oh. A similar thing happened to me at an auction... OK.
..which is that I bought a painting of a cat that was dressed
in human clothes, and it was £50.
And at the auction, I expected everyone to go,
"Oh," you know, and for it to go up to hundreds of pounds.
But it was... I think it was...started at 50 or something.
And I went like that, and the auctioneer went,
"Thank God that's gone. It gives me the creeps."
SANDI GASPS Oh. Oh, unkind.
And then everyone else laughed at me. But who's laughing now?
Yeah. Cos it's in my living room.
LAUGHTER
And there will be a natural disaster involving cats, and I'll have...
Yeah. You'll have the very thing.
..the thing.
You're laughing now, but, you know, something's going to happen.
I know what it's going to be. Yeah? Yeah?
I think it's going to be, like, the cat revolution... Yeah?
..when they finally make human beings subservient to them.
That's exactly... And you'll be the only one they forgive
cos they'll go, "She was respectful."
They'll come into my house to arrest me. Right.
And... The cats? Yeah, the cats.
And they'll be wearing human clothes by then.
They'll be standing up, going...
Do you want to make some notes for your novel, darling.
Sara will come in in a tunnelling machine.
I'm really worried about this, because all I've got
is a bumper sticker that says, "So many cats, so few recipes."
And I just think... LAUGHTER
You are not long for this world. After the glorious revolution...
Meow!
It's a terrible thing, though, buying at auction.
I was at Epsom Racecourse once, and I was asked if I would
auction off a racehorse.
And they used to do it in guineas, apparently.
So, I said, "Go on, who'll start me off at 1,000 guineas?"
And nobody moved. And I said, "I'll start us off at 1,000 guineas."
I was the last person that bid. Oh, no!
And I've come in the sports car.
I have no idea how I'm going to get it home.
Did you actually have to take the racehorse?
No, very nicely, the man who sold it to me bought it back.
Sorry, guinea...? Not guinea pigs?
Guineas.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
I actually think 1,000 guinea pigs is a really good...
It's a good buy, isn't it? It's a good buy. That's a good...
For one horse?! Yeah. I feel... That's a lot of guinea pigs.
I think that's too many guinea pigs for one horse. For one horse?
I think you should get two horses. Two horses for 1,000....
I can't believe we're having this conversation.
But when there's a guinea pig revolution... Guinea pig revolution.
Bridget? Yes. Enough now.
What's as long as a telephone pole, and comes out of a person?
Oh, I know this guy.
It's not true. No.
It's just what he puts in his bio.
I think it's got to be something communicated, hasn't it?
OK, it is to do with sound, certainly.
Maybe this will help you. Have a listen to this.
TUBA PLAYS A MELODY
That's a tuba. It is a tuba.
It is Tubby the Tuba.
As long as a telephone pole -
that's how far you can make air travel through an ordinary tuba.
So, if you press on the valves in trumpets and tubas,
it effectively makes the instrument longer.
If you press down on the valves, then your breath travels a distance
of just over 30 feet, which is an average telephone pole
or a London bus, or three-quarters of the height of a brachiosaurus,
if that's how you measure things.
Can you tell us in guinea pigs?
Yeah.
The air will take even longer if you are playing
the subcontrabass tuba.
This is an incredible thing.
It is a seven-foot-tall tuba.
It usually takes two, sometimes three, people to play it.
There's only four that remain today.
The one that is playable is at Harvard University.
Look at that thing. Wow.
Nobody's really sure, originally, where it came from.
Maybe somebody was trying to stand out by having
a seven-foot tuba. That would do it.
That would certainly do it. LAUGHTER
There's been a spate of tuba thefts in the US in the past 20 years.
Smuggled, we believe, over the Mexican border.
Can you have a 20-year spate?
Oh, I think if you measure things as brachiosauruses, then probably.
There's been a spate of Christianity over the last 2,000 years.
Why are they worth so much in Mexico?
There's a kind of music called Banda.
It's a genre of Mexican music.
It dates from the mid-1800s and it's fantastically popular.
I don't like watching people blowing things because a lot of...
No, because a lot of people aren't really, really fit. Right.
And you're just thinking, "I think they're going to die."
OK. Do you want to see a clip of somebody playing?
No, because I bet they're going all red...
I tell you what - you shut your eyes and I'll let you know
if they're going red. If they look fit, like they run or something.
OK, here we go. Let's have a quick look.
TUBA PLAYS
You'd worry if you were next door. LAUGHTER
What's going on?
I mean, I think he was enjoying that more than anyone else.
I think that's fair.
But if you...say you were playing Wigmore Hall, and you had to go
on the Tube, you'd rather have a cow with you, wouldn't you, than...?
Quick supplementary question.
Do you think the world's longest tuba is taller
than the world's tallest tuber?
No.
Which do you think is taller? The tuba or the tuber?
Tuber. The tuber is absolutely right.
The tallest one was a cassava harvested in Nigeria.
Did you know this? Yes.
No.
No. You did not know this. I am deeply...
You'd have mentioned it before.
You would have said, "What about that cassava?"
I know this guy.
How dare you?
The veg wins - 2.46 metres,
whilst the Harvard contrabass is 2.13 metres tall. It's amazing.
And the other thing that was originally a type of trombone
was the bazooka, which is a kind of weapon.
There was a radio comedian called Rob Burns in the United States.
He invented it in 1905 as a child.
A sort of... So, comedians can do anything.
I know. Exactly right.
And there he is. And it was a brass instrument with a lip reed
and a sliding tube, like a trombone.
So, when the Americans started using portable rocket-launchers
in World War II, they called them bazookas because it looked a bit
like Robbie Burns's original home-made instrument.
And then who are these chicks? The Bazooka Bitches?
They are the Bazooka Bitches.
The guy on the end with the hat and the woman at the front,
there's been an...there's been a situation here. Oh, has there? OK.
He's gone, you know, "The safety catch is..." whatever,
and she's gone, "Don't tell me how to use a..." Bazooka?
"What I could tell you.
"Just keep it... All right?"
Yeah.
"I know what you're doing."
And he doesn't like it because he's been emasculated
in front of all those boys.
And he's very cross.
Again, Sara, I'd write that down as a long story
you could possibly turn into a novel.
I'm more interested in this woman behind her.
I think... She's... Like a wedding.
Like, "I'm never going to get married.
"Do you want to hold the end of my bazooka?
"Just walk behind me."
So, now that you've boned up on your brass instruments,
who slept on lion skins and could play two trumpets at once?
Is it going to be Ancient Greek?
It IS ancient Greek!
Oh, I thought it might be. Yes.
Where might it be in Ancient Greece?
Jazz Club.
The ancient Olympic Games featured competitive trumpet-blowing,
and the undisputed champion
was a man called Herodorus of Megara,
and he won ten titles from 328 to 292 BC.
He could play two trumpets at once.
He slept only on lion skin.
And the lions weren't in them, presumably. No, no, no.
No. They're shivering in the corner.
"Oh."
He was quite the guy.
He ate about eight loaves of bread every day, nine kilos of meat
and six litres of wine.
Six litres of wine a day? Six litres of wine.
And then he could play the trumpet out of two...
Doesn't say he could play it well. Doesn't say that.
Do you think the Ancient Greeks, when they wrote things down,
they just wrote it down wrong?
Yeah. If anyone...
Because he clearly hasn't had all that, has he? No.
It's bollocks.
I think what they found there is his shopping list.
There's another marvellous trumpeter from history called John Blanke.
He's the only identifiable black British Tudor,
of whom we have a picture.
So this is on the Westminster Tournament Roll 1511.
He trumpeted in Henry VII's and Henry VIII's courts.
Probably, he came to England as one of the African attendants
of Catherine of Aragon when she first arrived in 1501,
in fact, to marry Henry VIII's brother.
Now, what peaceful use can you think of for a torpedo?
That's a massive torpedo being loaded onto a ship in 1943
by the women's Royal Navy Service.
God, I thought that was me, second from left.
LAUGHTER
That does look very like you.
I thought, "Have they done one of those things?"
They do that on this show sometimes. They Photoshop me in.
Usually...
..usually, it's a female from the past.
And that's what they've done.
We're looking for a peaceful use. Fill it with flowers. Fill it...
Where does "torpedo" get its name from?
It's a town in Spain.
No, that's Toledo. I had...
My little godson, when he was six,
told me he was playing a video game,
one of those ones online, with other children.
And he said, I have to name my animal, and it's a shark.
And it goes really fast.
So, I called him shark-pedo.
And the game banned it, and I wasn't allowed.
And I said, "I can sort of see why." Yeah.
And he said, "I think it's cos it's got a rude word in it.
" 'Pee'. " AUDIENCE: Aw!
"Torpedo torpedo" -
scientific name for something that is not a bomb.
Oh. Torpedo torpedo? What...? Torpedo torpedo.
So, this is an electric ray found in the Mediterranean.
There it is.
There was a first-century Greek physician called Dioscorides,
and he recommended applying a live one of these electric rays
up the seat to cure haemorrhoids.
The thing is, if they haven't gone away for ages,
you will try anything. Yeah.
Well, weird...
I've heard. Are you sitting comfortably?
One of the few ancient remedies that actually worked.
Was it? It did actually work. Did it? Yes.
Electrotherapy is still used today to treat, well,
less severe haemorrhoids.
Although, can I just say, the electricity is no longer
administered by a fish?
That's not...
Less severe? You could use a toaster.
Yeah, you could use a toaster. Yeah.
Hair-straighteners. Yeah. GROANING
I think hair-straighteners is better than a toaster.
Oh, you didn't like that one, did you?
That's an image you can take home with you.
"Are they hot enough yet?" "Yes!"
It's so fascinating to think about the back story
to that discovery, and the person who just happened
to be mucking around... Yeah. ..with a fish and go,
"Oh, my haemorrhoids have cleared up."
Well... Dressing-gown fell open.
They would have known that the ray had a painkilling effect.
So...so torpedo comes from the Latin to numb, "torpor".
But the torpedo, as in the weapon,
gets its name from the Napoleonic Wars,
was named after the fish, which incapacitates its enemies
when it touches them.
There was a thing called a coffin torpedo in the 19th century.
It was to stop body-snatching.
They made coffins that operate like shotguns.
And if you lifted the lid, it fired, shot into the air.
Unfortunately, not all that successful.
So there was one review.
There was an Ohio grave torpedo, and it was tested on a mule.
And they reported, "He lifted up one foot when the explosion occurred,
"but never stopped munching fodder."
So, he was like, "Meh," and carried on.
Mm. They should shoot the body out at the person.
That's much scarier. Yeah.
But if you're a body-snatcher, you might just catch it, then.
If the body... Yeah, but then you're a body-catcher.
It's a whole new career. APPLAUSE
Now to those tubes below the torso.
What's so terrible about trousers?
They say they're a size 14. They're definitely not.
They're never a size 14.
I have trousers that are a size 12, 14, 16, 18 and 20.
All of them fit me.
And I don't understand why the designers can't get together
and just make a plan and then decide on that.
Because I've had enough.
And the women in this audience have had enough.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
I ordered a Christmas dress,
and it came and it was that wide.
And I said, "Oh, I'm sorry.
"I ordered a medium and it's that big."
And they said, "Well, that's what size it is."
And I said, "Yeah, but it's too big."
And they said, "Well, it will fit someone."
But you can argue with that. That is true.
And I said, "Yes, but it doesn't work like that.
"Clothes have sizes.
"You can't just make it one size."
And they said, "Well, we do.
"And then we send them out. And just give it to someone
"if you don't want it."
No. And that's how they operated.
That is going to ruin Christmas when someone opens it, and you go,
"Yeah, yeah, I was far too thin for that. Please..."
LAUGHTER "Please enjoy."
But what's so terrible about trousers, historically?
Well, we couldn't wear them for a long time.
You could be arrested for wearing trousers.
It was illegal for women to wear trousers in about 40 cities
in the United States. People were arrested.
They were charged with impersonating a man.
Right up until...
Why would you want to?
Right up until 1923, when the Federal Government
overrode the laws and made it allowable.
Before that, even when serving in the army or mountain climbing,
for example, women had to wear heavy woollen skirts.
Also in Europe, Henriette d'Angeville,
she claimed to be the very first woman to climb Mont Blanc in 1838,
and she did so dressed like that.
Is it cheating to use a ladder to climb a mountain?
They've deliberately taken her a tricky route, haven't they?
Yeah. "You go first, love. We'll come..."
"This is the only way we could do it."
"And why is there a...?" "Could I not have the plank?"
"No, it has to be a ladder."
And it looks like she's going to go along there,
over the next ladder... Yeah.
..and then just bring her back round again.
"Isn't this the ladder we went over before."
"No, no, you keep going.
"You're doing very well."
It's like a sort of Escher drawing, isn't it?
Going round and round and round.
The first woman to controversially climb Matterhorn in trousers, 1895,
was Annie Smith Peck.
And if you don't know her, she is just incredible.
She once climbed a mountain
and hung a "Votes for Women" banner at the top when she got there.
But there were no other women up there...
LAUGHTER ..to appreciate her sign.
I don't think it was women who needed the message, darling.
Same trouble with hats that you've got with your trousers.
DEBORAH: It's true. She's ordered that online. Yeah.
They said that was a large. It's for a...
It's a three-year-old's hat.
No, no, it looks good. It looks good. It'll fit someone.
But if you were a woman in Paris, for example, 1800 to 2013,
you had to have a special permit, "permission de travestissement",
to wear trousers. So, for example,
this is the permission that was given to the great artist
Rosa Bonheur.
Rosa Bonheur is very famous for painting farm animals and so on,
and in order to do so, she wanted to wear trousers
for these agricultural scenes,
but she had to get permission to do so.
Did you say till 2013?
February 2013, it was finally overturned.
I can't say it was constantly enforced.
I...I'm sure I went to Paris in trousers before 2013...
No, it wasn't... ..but I didn't know I was dicing with the law.
No. They did amend it slightly, once in 1892 and once in 1909,
and women were allowed to wear trousers without a permit
if they were holding the bicycle handlebars or the reins of a horse.
There was a rule that forbade women from wearing trousers on the floor
of the US Senate.
That wasn't revoked until 1993.
When I was a law student,
you were not allowed to wear trousers as a woman
if you were in the Inns of Court.
And there was a wonderful story about a woman who went to do one
of these compulsory dinners in the Inns of Court.
She was wearing trousers, and the clerk said to her,
"Madam, you can't come in here wearing those."
So she took them off and gave them to him. Oh.
But there's other times in history it was not wearing trousers
that could get you into trouble.
So, in the Hebridean Island of Seil,
there's a pub called Tigh na Truish,
and it translates as "the house of trousers".
Look at that. It looks fantastic.
See that bridge?
That's the bridge to the mainland.
It's called the Bridge over the Atlantic.
And the British government in the Jacobite rebellion, so 1745,
they banned the wearing of tartan and the kilt.
And so, if you broke those laws,
you could face transportation to Australia.
Can you imagine, darling? I mean... I know.
It'd be horrendous.
If the locals were heading over the bridge to the mainland,
where the authorities might see them in a kilt, they'd pop to the pub
and change out of their kilts and into trousers.
And there are still hooks where you can make the change
if you want to in the pub.
Right, how comfortable would it be
to snuggle up under a blanket octopus?
I'm going to say not very comfortable if you're a female
blanket octopus, because the male blanket octopus dies after mating
and won't cuddle.
When I was a nanny, I had to take children to the London Zoo.
And I remember them saying this, that after the octopuses mated...
Yeah. ..the man would die. Right.
And... Or claim he'd died. LAUGHTER
I mean, they say they die. Maybe they just change their number.
I don't know.
I've died!
The woman then starves herself to death...
Right. Yeah. ..because she doesn't want to leave them
to go and get food for herself.
I remember this because I remember the children I nannied for saying,
"What's mating?"
I'm going to say yes, it would be comfortable under a blanket octopus.
But the thing is, she wouldn't even notice the male.
That's the truth of it. They have extreme sexual dimorphism.
Oh. A massive difference between the females and the males.
The female can grow to about two metres.
Can you spot the male in the picture?
Oh. Ooh.
What he's there? Like the Tinder Swindler?
Is that him at the back? That dot?
Oh, the little dot, is he? That little dot is the male.
What coming in behind?
Just a little dot.
So, I think if he died, you wouldn't give a rat's arse, frankly.
Is he swimming along, thinking, "Phwoar"?
That little tiny dot is the man? "She's enormous!"
He's basically sort of a sperm sac, frankly. Yeah.
So, if Alan and I matched our height to a blanket octopus's proportions,
Alan would be roughly the length of the thumbnail,
and...or I would be the height of the Gherkin skyscraper in London.
And THAT is a novel.
APPLAUSE Well played, we've found it.
We've got it.
I mean, they are...
Yeah, the women are... They're badass, they're really badass.
They are immune to the stings of the Portuguese man-of-war.
So, when one floats by, they sometimes rip off its tentacles
to wield as defensive weapons.
Speaking of octopuses, what's unusual
about the seven-armed octopus?
They can't get trousers to fit.
It's got seven arms.
KLAXON
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Game's getting harder, if anything. Isn't it?
Ten arms? No, not seven. Not ten.
There is one with ten, though, isn't there?
Or there used to be one with ten. They found it the other day.
It was a fossil.
Was it? I mean, it was something like 300 million years old.
It's actually named after Joe Biden.
The ten-armed... Is it? Yes, it is.
It's nearly as old.
So, the seven-armed octopuses, so-called because the male looks
as though it only has seven tentacles, but in fact,
it does have eight.
So, the eighth one, the one on the left there
is that it's coiled up in a sort of sac
beneath its right eye for most of the time.
And then it has a specialised arm called a hectocotylus.
Technical word for...? Penis?
Yes, it's basically a removable penis.
So, it uncoils and detaches during mating to deliver the sperm,
and then it regenerates.
That's very civilised.
I think the new Doctor Who should do that.
Every time they change actors, that would be...
So, do octopuses have tentacles?
Is that correct?
The way you've said it makes us think no.
Yeah. No, it has suckers all the way up.
Tentacles are when you just have the sucker
on the sort of pad-like end of the thing.
So, Portuguese man-of-war have tentacles.
You do find tentacles on some carnivorous plants.
There's an amazing plant called the pimpernel sundew,
and it has two types of tentacles.
So, insects walking near the plant can trigger a touch-sensitive,
sort of lightning-fast snap tentacle,
which catapults the prey into glue tentacles
that then slowly draw it to death.
Can I say something about glue?
An...
..when an aphid has had her young...
Yeah? ..she turns herself into a blob of glue... Right?
..in front of them, so that when predators come,
they just stick to her.
Oh, my God. Can you imagine how traumatising for the children?
But isn't nature amazing? Yeah, that is an embarrassing parent.
Yeah.
I... "By the way, my mum's come to pick me up.
"She's a big blob of glue."
I live in quite a high-crime area.
Oh, right. So, I was thinking of doing that on my front step.
Do you remember that story about Beefeaters
who live in the Tower of London, couldn't get home insurance
because, strictly speaking, they live in Tower Hamlets,
and they haven't got window locks?
But couldn't they say, "But we don't need window locks because we've got
"men at the gates with spears?"
Darling, have you tried to fill in a form with an insurance company?
So, the very best use for a tentacle
comes from the Octopus for a Preemie community.
Look next to you, and you will find... Oh!
..little tiny octopuses. For little babies? Little octo-pals.
Oh. Mine's only got six legs.
I don't want to make a fuss, but that's two short.
Why might you give this to a premature baby?
Oh. A premature baby?
Yeah, the preemies, yeah. The preemies.
Tiny hands? Is it to cover their wires?
Well, sort of.
So, it's the sweetest thing.
Volunteers crochet and knit these... LAUGHTER
I don't think that's what the babies are doing.
They're not? I don't think it's that.
Sandi, can I say something? Yes, darling.
When my premature baby was born,
they did something weird with her umbilical cord,
and I was like, "Oh, my God, what are you doing?"
And the consultant said, "It's OK.
"You could swing a baby around by its umbilical cord,
"and it would be fine."
And we're going to try that now.
So, babies hold on to the umbilical cord for comfort.
Oh, do they? So when a baby is born, the tentacles mimic the cord
for the baby, and they soothe them in the neo-natal units.
And it also stops them tugging on the tubes in the intensive care.
Oh, my... And can I say, anybody can get involved.
You can knit these for the charity. Branch out. I don't know. Yeah.
You could also do a jellyfish or aliens or whatever.
The important things are the tentacles.
And so, what we're going to do is we're going to give
all your octopuses a jolly good wash and donate them to charity
after today's episode.
Why might Victorian women have actually had a lot of fun
on their period?
They used to free-bleed on the Northern line?
Is it because, before there was ibuprofen,
there was laudanum?
You're heading in the right direction. Would it...?
It's drug-related.
They thought we were mad, didn't they?
When you say "they thought", what you mean is, "they noticed".
I think I know this because I think I had an expert
on The Guilty Feminist podcast tell me that they used to dip
their tampons in the same sort of white powder
that sometimes stockbrokers use to make themselves overly confident.
And that's why you get the stereotype that women talk a lot
when they're on their period.
They invented the cocaine tampon. Yes. Absolutely right. Did they?
Absolutely right. APPLAUSE
Can I say, not always cocaine, sometimes opium?
Don't want to muck about.
It wasn't just for women.
So, cocaine tampons were used for both sexes.
For painful haemorrhoids.
Perfect. Yes.
Any haemorrhoids - they don't have to be painful.
In the war, they used tampons to plug wounds.
And then I think a woman who was working in a hospital went,
"Do you know what else that would be useful for?" Yeah.
Soaking tampons, or the equivalent, in opium, that dates back
to Ancient Rome.
But Pond's Tampons, which was a 19th-century product,
they were laced with opiates and deadly nightshade.
You can still get a sort of version of it.
There's something called a B&O -
so Belladonna and Opium suppository.
And they're sometimes prescribed as muscle relaxants after surgery.
Sounds heaven. Mm.
People at my university used to do it with vodka.
What? Soak it in...? Tampons and put it up the bum.
OK, I'm just going to do a thing with the audience.
I'm going to count to three, and we're all going to say, "Why?"
So, here we go. One, two, three...
ALL: Why?
The theory was that you absorb things,
things get into your bloodstream quicker. Oh.
So, there was a film, Kevin And Perry,
where they were doing vodka in their eyes for that reason.
And I think the thinking was, "Where else can you put it?"
Just, um...
Where's the most dangerous place for a toilet?
Oh, just slightly further than where you thought it was.
A bit more along.
So, we're talking about one particular day.
Oh, a day? It's not a dangerous place?
In 1900, there were very few ladies' toilets,
and a lot of men thought it was a very bad idea for women
to have a toilet at all.
Men's toilets were ubiquitous, but ladies' toilets not so.
They did exist, but far fewer.
Now, this is a wonderful story.
George Bernard Shaw, who was an incredible human being
as well as an amazing playwright, he was working in local government
in north London at the time, and he advocated for women's rights
and pushed for a ladies' loo to be built in Camden,
in north London, beside the men's.
And there was lots of people who said it would lower property values
and it would cause traffic problems.
So, they built a wooden...
This is absolutely true.
So, they built a wooden mock-up of the toilet to see
if there was a traffic risk.
And in one day alone, it was hit by vehicles 45 times.
And it was protesters trying to make a point. Wow.
And Shaw accused the bus companies of taking bribes, and so on.
And the company said, "No, no, no, it was all accidents."
It took five years for the toilet to finally be built.
And I have to say, there is still a ladies' loo in exactly that spot
that George Bernard Shaw decided.
I actually live in Camden, and can I tell you,
it has not lowered house prices? OK.
What were they thinking?
It was a key component of the suffragette movement,
was to get loos for the...
But that's also why they didn't want them,
is because it did restrict women so much, socially.
Except if you were pregnant. If you were pregnant, a woman,
you were allowed to wee anywhere.
And the policeman had to give you his hat.
That was the theory.
But the hat-peeing law is a myth, unfortunately. Oh, was it?
Yeah, the policeman thing. Well, I mean, the one that I...
He didn't mind at all.
Yeah. That wasn't actually a policeman, just got to say.
No-one tell the policemen it's a myth.
The first person to sort of do gender equality for toilets
was the 15th-century mayor Dick Whittington.
He actually had a 128-seat latrine for both men and women.
And it used the Thames to flush away,
but you used to sit with everybody. It wasn't like you had separate
cubicles or anything. So, you all had to go at the same time.
You all had to do exactly the same...
Three, two, one. And then you all went.
And now for the moment, when the whole show goes
straight down the tubes - it's time for general ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
Name the animal with the longest neck for its torso.
Ooh! For its torso.
Ooh. Ooh.
Longest neck for its...
LAUGHTER It's like a gas leak.
You've got to think about the neck,
but you've also got to think about the torso. Torso. Yeah.
Seahorse. Oh, good choice. Yeah.
Good choice. Got a really long neck. Hardly any torso.
Yeah, I should have said I'm talking about an extinct animal.
It's probably one that you haven't even heard of.
It's from the late Triassic period.
Oh, is it a kind of eel?
Cos you could actually argue that that's all neck and no torso.
Yeah. Yeah.
Or a snake.
KLAXON Oh! Oh, God!
APPLAUSE
I'm furious! Furious.
So, there's a thing called a Tanystropheus.
It was a reptile 242 million years ago.
You know, roughly. Can't tell you it was a Tuesday. It was a while ago.
This is the reconstruction.
When they first found the bones...
So, the palaeontologists thought
that all these small bones were a bit like the wings
on a pterodactyl.
And it was actually, they realised, lots of elongated neck bones,
three times as long as the torso,
made of about half of the length of the entire animal.
So, you're talking about six metres long,
maybe about the size of a large crocodile.
The neck is six metres long?
The whole thing is about six metres long, so...but half of it,
three metres is the neck. Can it lift its head up? We don't...
The thing is, we just... Little wheels under it.
..we just don't know.
But a giraffe has the same number of neck vertebrae as a human,
which is seven.
This one had 13, OK? Ooh. 13 neck vertebrae.
So, the giraffe's neck is amazing because it's really flexible.
It can sort of bend and thwack with it.
These were relatively stiff.
Did it use it as a sort of periscope?
Did it use it as a sort of fishing rod? Did it reach up?
Do they think they found sort of bits of two, and they've actually
made it a bit longer than it really...? Yeah.
You know what we should do? Yeah. Knit these for premature babies.
Yes. Because it's just like an umbilical cord.
Yeah. With, like, a spooky end.
But if it ate something on Tuesday,
it wouldn't digest it till Wednesday. Yeah.
The Tanystropheus had a lot of damn neck. That's all I'm saying.
Which city has the most French-speaking people in it?
Oh. Ooh. Very careful.
Ooh, oh. Not Paris.
I'm going to guess Quebec.
KLAXON
Non. Non. Non, non, non!
Is it somewhere in Africa? Yes.
A lot of French-speaking countries, aren't there?
It's the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Kinshasa. Kinshasa. Kinshasa. Kinshasa, yeah.
It officially overtook Paris and Montreal a few years ago.
The country has the largest francophone population in the world.
More French speakers than France.
Yes.
So, there are about as many Spanish speakers
in the United States as there are in Spain.
Spain is already the fourth-biggest Spanish-speaking country.
So, the UK, does it have the number-one city
for English speakers?
I think we speak it best.
Just putting that out there.
Which city do we think in the world has got the most English speakers?
It's Mumbai. Oh. It is Mumbai.
Yeah.
In fact, in terms of population of English speakers,
the UK only comes sixth worldwide.
And that is colonialism for you.
How many holes can you see in this cheese?
Oh, my God. I can't... Right. Oh, don't look.
You don't like holes, do you? Every time.
Every time, we have holes on this show.
Every time, it's holes.
I'm so sorry.
Don't look,
but also you won't get any points for this one.
It's OK cos they're not right next to each other. Oh.
Or exactly the same size.
OK, good.
So, how do you use a sieve?
I...
C... Can we not talk about sieves?
Literally, every time I'm on the show, they show me holes!
I'm sorry! The world has got a lot of holes in it.
Could you play golf if you never actually looked?
No, it's not... That's just one hole.
There has to be lots of holes together of the same size.
Connect 4. So a cheese-grater would be bad?
Connect 4. SHE LAUGHS
Sorry. Why don't you keep listing things
that have got loads of holes in them? Sorry.
Can you...could you...? Drop it, will you, you psycho?
No, no, no.
Bridget, I feel I've known you a long time.
I feel like we're quite close. It's never come up.
Only cos you've got no holes in you, Deborah.
If I asked you to play a game of tennis, could you do that?
Cos a tennis racket... They're squares.
There's holes in the net.
Do they have to be round? Got to be round, Deborah.
I'm so sorry. I've not been filled in. No.
I'm not insane.
How many holes in this cheese?
Two. Is correct.
So... LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Sorry, why does he...? Why is he getting a clap?
Because...? Because I never get anything right.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
He's right. There's only two holes.
But you can see there's only two holes? Everyone knows
there's only two holes. Nobody else said it.
It's like going,
"How many fingers have I got up?" "Five" Give him 100 points.
I only have to get one thing right, and ta-da! Yeah.
I think they're patronising Alan.
"Let's give Alan one. He can answer that kind of thing."
And then we'll do a bit of colouring in, and it's home time.
LAUGHTER DEBORAH: Aw!
Can I have a story?
We're talking about topology.
There are only two holes.
But the other things you can see are dents and deformations and so on.
The only way there could be another hole in the cheese
is if there was a hole inside that was fully enclosed
that we couldn't see. So, there's a branch of mathematics
called topology, and it deals with shapes and spaces
and holes, and so on. So, a topologist, and indeed Alan,
would only see two holes in this picture.
Let's try an easier one.
How many holes does this have?
Two. Two. It's got one to blow it up,
and one in the middle.
You're sort of right, but your reasoning is not right.
It's impeccable. What are you saying? We're not...
We can't count the one with the valve in it
because it's closed in this picture, so that's not a hole.
OK? Mmm... So, you've got the one that the person's body goes through,
and then another one that makes up the hollow tube
going around the outside.
But that only counts as a second hole if it's hollow.
So, for example, a ring doughnut is different to a rubber ring
because it's filled in with dough, and it's not hollow.
So a doughnut only has one hole. Mmm.
But the rubber ring has two holes
because the hole of the hollow space counts as a hole.
Oh. But... I happen to have a doughnut.
So... I've got a doughnut, as well. ..there are doughnuts for everybody.
And that's the truth of it.
So, the doughnut, at no point is it hollow in this part.
It's only got one hole.
I'll just check that, Sandi. Yeah, just see...how that is.
All right. Sure. Ooh! That's bloody lovely!
Yours is vegan, darling. Is it?
And on that cheesy note,
it's time for the tallying and the totting-up.
At the tail of the pack, in last place with minus 12,
It's Sara! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
But I've got a doughnut, though.
In third place, with minus 2,
it's Alan! Thank you very much. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In second place, with six whole points is Bridget!
Yay! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Topping the charts, in first place with seven points,
it's Deborah! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So, it's thanks to Bridget, Sara, Deborah and Alan.
And I leave you with this food for thought from a user on Reddit.
When two people kiss, they make one long tube
with an arsehole at both ends.
LAUGHTER Goodnight.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE