APPLAUSE
Good evening and welcome to QI.
Right, question number one.
Here are some unusual tools.
I want you to guess what they are for.
Let's start with the middle one. What do you think that is?
Trepanning. Is it? Oh, it is about going into the body.
So, trepanning was when they used to relieve pressure on the skull
by basically... Drilling into the head. ..drilling into the head,
so we do want to go into the body.
Why might we want to do that?
Is it to scoop out your poison?
When you've got poison inside your... Inside your what?
Your penis. Oh, sorry.
I don't know why I asked what bit he was talking about.
I had no idea. A little umbrella opens. We've all heard of it.
We're all terrified of it. Oh, gosh, yeah.
Is it like one of those...
I was going to say cocktail umbrellas, but that doesn't seem right in the context.
There's a fish in the Amazon that does that. Goes up your...
It swims up your urethra and its gills open
and it lodges itself in the urethra, and you can't urinate.
What does it want?!
LAUGHTER
Probably wants to get out, once it's in there.
It just does it out of sheer badness.
Just having a laugh. Yeah.
What's your plan?
I'm safe from predators! Yeah.
Sometimes you have to, you know, because you can't...
Chop it off? Sometimes.
No! Yup.
When you say sometimes, once.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
It's called the candiru fish. The candiru fish. Yes.
Does it eat you? Once it's there, what's it doing?
It thrives off urine. Oh, OK.
Mm! Yum, yum, yum!
Hanging on, like this. "You can't get me out of here!" Yeah.
So, it's like a kind of sort of Oktoberfest for fish.
Yeah, hadn't thought of it like that, but, yeah. I suppose it is.
Drink nothing for a week and eventually it gives up and goes,
"Oh, the pub's shut."
I think there's less singing.
Maybe there is some German.
There's some German singing coming from my genitals!
HE SINGS NONSENSE
Oh, my God! But it would be tiny.
THEY SING SQUEAKILY
Whoa!
LAUGHTER
HE SINGS MATCH OF THE DAY THEME
I'm singing the Match Of The ...
Why am I singing the Match Of The Day theme?! Why are you?!
HE PLEADS
Nein! Bitte! Bitte!
BLOWS A RASPBERRY
ALAN GRUNTS
This is not where I thought we were going!
I had a stuffed otter, and... LAUGHTER
It's not a euphemism, calm down.
I was... So I was in Kilkenny and I won some money on a horse
and I got this money, I was walking past this sort of junk shop
and I saw this stuffed otter
and I thought, "Well, hang on, there's a stuffed otter,
"I've got some money - this is a match made in heaven."
So I got this otter and I spent three days just having fun with it
around Kilkenny, you know, playing pranks on people,
that sort of thing. And then I wanted to bring it back -
I was living in London at the time, and I thought, "Are you allowed to
"import animal products, that sort of thing?" Yeah.
So I went to the police station and I walked in with it
under my arm and there was an old Irish policeman sat there like that.
And I said, "I want to take this otter to London."
And he went, "Oh, that'll be nice for him."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
When I took it back, I got a bin bag and I wrapped it in tape.
So it was sort of in a slight lunging position,
and I...and it wouldn't fit in the overhead locker.
So they put fragile stickers on it and put it in the hold.
So I was waiting at Stansted, and whoever the baggage
handlers were must have had a sense of humour because they put
it on first before any of the other bags, but they stood it up.
So I've stood there at the baggage thing, and this otter just appeared.
Like, it just sort of... Like that.
And then it rolled off,
and then it landed perfectly with its legs in the air, like that.
Have you still got it? No.
What happened to it? It died. He went...
LAUGHTER
He returned to his homeland.
What? Did you return him to the sea?
No. If you must know, Sandi, my house burned down.
I lost everything I own. But let's not mention that.
Is that true? Yeah. Yeah.
LAUGHTER
You know what? I suspect the otter!
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
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 it 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.
LAUGHTER
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!"
Actually, I shouldn't say it on TV -
she'll kill me - but I know
where all the teaspoons are.
Oh. My mum.
LAUGHTER
Every shop we go in,
she steals the teaspoons.
Oh... I don't know why!
Where are they?
In her drawer!
And she remembers where they're all from.
LAUGHTER
I'll have a teaspoon and she'll be like,
"Milan."
It got to a point where we'd go
in a nice cafe,
and we go, "Don't."
"Don't." And Mum goes...
"I won't!"
And then we'll come out
and she'll be like...
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
What kind of tractor can't move anything
heavier than an ant?
Is it a tractor beam?
It is a tractor beam. No way!
But it can move the Millennium Falcon.
Do you think it is just a matter of science fiction?
The Millennium Falcon? No, not...
So, we are talking about tractor beams,
so those are devices that move objects
using a beam of energy. Now, up until fairly recently,
they were confined to the realms of science fiction,
but Professor Bruce Drinkwater and his team at Bristol University
have made one.
It consists of hundreds of tiny little loudspeakers.
They generate sounds that are louder than a jet engine,
but they are too high-pitched
for the human ear to be able to detect it.
And these sound waves, they surround an object,
holding it in place, basically in a sort of invisible cage.
An actual tractor beam? Well, let's find out.
Please welcome Professor Bruce Drinkwater.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Right, Bruce, tell me what you are holding in your hand.
Well, this is the tractor beam.
I mean, it looks like a piece of wood with a bit of wire on it.
Yes, it's a low-cost, battery-powered version.
You can make it at home if you want. Amazing.
So, you've got, in this box here, little tiny polystyrene balls.
Yeah, polystyrene balls.
So, if you'd just pick one up for us... Oh, right.
..and then just drop it down, we can see it just drops, right?
And the idea is that you're going to use the tractor beam
to make this hover in the air, is that right?
It is indeed, yes. OK.
So, as you said, there's a sound field in there
with a little quiet region surrounded by a very loud region,
and so I'm going to try
to put the little object in the quiet region.
You've just got to find the exact spot for it.
There we go. Oh! AUDIENCE: Ooh!
That is extraordinary.
APPLAUSE
So, what's holding it in place?
It's the sound itself making a very, very careful pattern.
Where the particle is, it's like noise cancellation,
so there's no sound. And then, around it, it's very loud.
So, we've sort of sculpted a sound field around the particle.
So, I think of a tractor beam as drawing it towards,
but it seems to be pushing it away.
It might look like it's pushing it away,
but the real proof of a tractor beam is
it's got to be able to pull something
and that will mean that it beats gravity.
So, if I turn this over, hopefully you can see it's beating gravity.
And if I press this button here... Yeah.
..it will pull the particle up.
No! AUDIENCE: Ooh!
Oops! Oh, there, it dropped.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
Tell me, how do you tackle a toddler's tantrum?
Any thoughts? One useful way that I discovered
is you carry a hessian sack around with you,
and I just put it over the toddler. Yeah. It can't be plastic
cos obviously that's bad for the environment. Yeah.
LAUGHTER
You know, hessian... A hessian sack is enough.
And also, you can also whisper through it... Yeah. ..saying,
"I'm going to throw you in the Thames in a minute."
I don't want to keep banging on about Holland, but they have
Saint Nicholas, Sinterklaas, celebrations and they do...
They threaten to take the children away in a hessian sack.
Is that a thing? It's an actual thing.
Yeah, there was everyone thinking I was weird. Yeah.
LAUGHTER
My tour manager once... His daughter threw a tantrum
and he just started filming her on his phone
and then played it back to her as she was having the tantrum. Right.
And that's how TikTok started. LAUGHTER
It's ridiculous what they start saying, as well.
So it's hard not to laugh in their face when they're there,
and that...that makes it even worse.
One of our daughters started with a dispute
about what she was going to wear when she went out.
And Jane, my wife, said, "No, I..."
You know, said, "Look, you need to change the T-shirt cos it's filthy.
"It's got baked beans on it, and we're going out,
"so we want you to change it."
And it got worse and worse, to the point where she just blew up
and just screamed at Jane,
"Well, anyway, you think you're the fancy lady of all London town!"
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
I read a story about that in Australia now.
There's sharks that actually can use their fins to walk
on the bottom of the sea.
They can actually move and actually walk on the land.
Imagine you're, like, getting chased by one, and then you think,
"Oh, nice one, I'm on the beach." And then it gets out after you.
LAUGHTER
Was it an Australian that told you that?
You know what they're like.
Yeah, yeah.
One of my friends went to Australia and went to see some emus
in a wildlife park, and they said, "Now, look..."
Excuse the accent, Aussies.
"If they come at you, they can be aggressive.
"Put your arm up..."
LAUGHTER
"Put your arm up, act like an emu - they'll back right off."
Obviously, that's bollocks, isn't it?
They find it hilarious when the tourists get nervous,
and they start going like that.
LAUGHTER
"Help, help!"
So, the turn of the 20th century, there were stunt performers...
Oh, that actually... Feel quite ill. ..and they combined ballooning
trapezing and parachuting into a single act, right?
They did acrobatics on a trapeze attached to a parachute and 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.
HE CHUCKLES
LAUGHTER
I have to tell you about this particular stunt,
fatalities were common.
Oh, it's not a phrase you want to hear, is it? No.
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.
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...
LAUGHTER
I used to feel bad about going to zoos,
cos they're sort of all locked in.
But then, when we had to do lockdown for two years, I was like,
"Well, I've done my time."
If you rub banana on the roof of your car... Yeah.
..or the roof of someone you don't like's car,
the monkeys go for it. Ooh, that's a lovely trick.
So, you get all the monkeys on your car.
So, I did that because we had an old car and the kids wanted them
on the roof and stuff,
but I did it on my mate's new car, and he was livid.
So... Did he not question it when you were rubbing a bana... I mean...
I've rubbed a banana in plenty of places, so that weren't the worst.
LAUGHTER That's what I've heard about you.
Yeah. Old banana-rubber.
But, yeah, that's a little tip.
Yeah, I did think, "What am I doing with my life?" But I thought,
you know, it's something you got to do for your kids, isn't it?
If you put marmalade on the car, wasps come. Do they?
LAUGHTER
And Paddington Bear.
And just one stuck monkey. Yeah.
Oh, he loved the banana. Oh!
If you've got a neighbour you don't like... Put marmalade on the roof
of their car? ..put marmalade on their car. Not on the roof.
All round the handle. Or just slash their tyres, you know? Wow.
Why are we being so ornate about it?
You hate them? Old school. Yeah. Slash the tyres.
Or just get a Komodo dragon and throw it in their house.
LAUGHTER
It depends on, you know, what you can get.
Or burn it. Just burn their house.
Burn it down, but start off with a little bit of marmalade
around the... Yeah.
So, there was a guy, a guy called George Francis Train.
He was an American entrepreneur. In 1870,
he circumnavigated the world.
He is the person who inspired Jules Verne to write Phileas Fogg.
His name was George Francis Train? Train, I know. Yeah, that's what...
What are the chances? Yeah.
It's a fantastic trip.
It took a long time going round, partly because he was arrested
and held in Lyon Bastille for 13 days.
Did he give it a bad review on TripAdvisor?
Yes, not good. Terrible.
So, what kind of transport did George Train introduce to Britain?
Introduced a mode of transport to Britain? Yes.
Never seen before? Yeah. Paragliding.
No, it's... Funicular. Funicular! Did I get it?
I like just that word. No.
LAUGHTER
Sorry. Train ran Britain's very first successful tram.
Oh, course.
Oh, did he go...? How did he describe it?
He was like, "It's like a train." Yeah, a little bit like a train.
"But it goes on the road." "What are you going to call it?"
"Tram?" "Tram?"
So, his first tram was in Birkenhead.
And what I love about this, he was...
He obviously thought big, George.
He invited all of the crowned heads of Europe to come to Birkenhead
to help open the tram.
Unbelievably, not one of them turned up. Aw.
LAUGHTER
"Oh, no, King of Spain hasn't turned up."
"Princess of Sweden said yes, but I think it's a maybe."
He then set up a line from Marble Arch to Bayswater
in London, very popular, except with wealthy residents
who had to cross the line to get to Hyde Park.
They could not tolerate these new vehicles hogging
a fixed section of the road, on rails sticking up
above the road surface and proving an obstacle to carriages.
Also, not very far, is it, Marble Arch to Bayswater? I know.
"We're off!" Yeah. "We're here." There we go.
LAUGHTER
He's actually a wonderful character. He's wonderfully eccentric.
He used to like to shake hands with himself. What? He was...
LAUGHTER
"How are you doing?" Is that a euphemism, Sandi.
It's a long journey. A long time on his own.
"What are you doing in there?"
"I'm shaking hands with myself."
LAUGHTER
"Get out of my tram!"
"There's no such thing as a tram, you dirty bastard."
"I've just invented it. I'm going to Bayswater."
"But it's only up the road." "Leave me alone!
"I was nearly finished, until you came.
"Oh!"
Anyway, on the subject of right and left handedness,
elephants have tusk-edness.
What, they've got a less good one? Tusk-edness. A preferred tusk?
One is more dominant than the other. Oh, no way. I know.
So, they're born with equal-sized tusks when they arrive.
But then, one of them gets worn down more than the other
because they've used one more than the other.
I don't know, rooting around for food or fighting, or whatever.
I've got a tusk fact. Oh, go.
It's a bit blue. Oh.
Hands up who wants to hear it? CHEERING
I mean, essentially, pretty much everybody.
The Fleetwood Mac album Tusk. Yes.
That is named after...
Mick Fleetwood, apparently, had a very large member,
that he referred to as the Tusk.
Now, this is quite distressing because... Did you...?
I did not need to know that.
LAUGHTER
I paid to meet Mick Fleetwood.
Because you'd heard the rumours about his member?
No.
He's a very tall man. Yeah.
He's, like... Oh, no, you weren't at Tusk height, were you?
LAUGHTER
There's a picture of me and Mick Fleetwood and doing...
I've got my arm around his...his arse.
I was smiling at the camera.
But now I know what was there, I feel quite unwell.
Well, do you know, I...
Good thing you're not a poacher.
LAUGHTER
Now, this leads me on to your connection to teddy bears,
because you have a teddy bear museum, is that right?
I do. My wife and I founded a teddy bear museum many years ago.
And our bears, we now have more than 1,000 of them...
Oh, look! ..and they live in this rather beautiful house
called Newby Hall. Fozzie and Puds...is it Pudsey the Bear?
Yes, that's Pudsey Bear there. Paddington. Paddington.
That's the original Paddington that appeared on television
in the 1970s, when Michael Hordern did the voice.
And that is the original Fozzie Bear.
I love Fozzie Bear. Oh, my God. That Fozzie Bear...
Aaaaargh!
Oh, my God. That... That's so exciting.
..that Fozzie Bear was given to me personally by Jim Henson,
the creator of The Muppets. Oh, my God.
And as a Christmas treat for all of you,
I have been to Newby Hall,
and I have brought the bear down to introduce the original
Fozzie Bear to all of you.
Oh, look! That is so exciting. And he's here.
There he is. Gyles. Look, here he is.
He's genuinely one of the reasons I got into stand-up.
LAUGHTER
I was like, "That's the best stand-up I know." Oh, wow.
Essentially, how it works is you put your hand right up
the inside, you see? Mm-hm.
And you are underneath it like this. Yeah.
So, Frank Oz, who did the voice, would be down here,
operating it from down here. That's how it worked.
I visited the set for The Muppets in LA, and all of the professional
puppeteers are like bin men, in that they all have one
really solid, good arm
and one slightly weaker one that they have hanging here.
And I went into Miss Piggy's dressing room,
and all of her, like, stuff is genuine Chanel...
I got...I got punched by Miss Piggy once.
LAUGHTER
Story alert. I was interviewing the Muppets.
They'd just released Treasure Island, the movie,
and Frank Oz was there.
Anyway, Miss Piggy found out I was Danish, and she didn't like
what we did to bacon, so...
What use is a telepathic rabbit?
Oh. What kind of rabbit? Is it the animal?
Yes, it's a rabbit. OK.
For the one you were thinking of,
I suppose it would know when to speed up, when to slow down. Oh.
Exactly. Wouldn't it be amazing?
Because... Ann Summers has gone psychic.
LAUGHTER
In my limited experience, women don't always want rampant.
LAUGHTER
Don't think I've ever hit rampant. ALAN: No, I've never hit rampant.
Just plugging away.
Rampant's far too sort of...
I get to tiring quite early.
Rabbit? I'll have one of the tiring rabbits, please.
Slows down after two minutes.
Well, that's...when your batteries are low...
Anyway, it's too much.
But you know what happens when you book me. I know, I know.
And it's always a pleasure. So... It is always a pleasure.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
How many holes can you see in this cheese?
Oh, my God. I can't... 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,
exactly the same size. Oh.
OK, good.
So, how do you use a sieve?
She can't.
Can we not talk about sieves?
LAUGHTER
Every...literally every time I'm on this 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 lots... That's just one hole.
There has to be lots of holes together of the same size.
ALAN: Connect 4. So a cheese grater would be bad?
Connect 4.
Why don't you keep listing things... Sorry. I'm so sorry.
..that have got loads of holes in them?
Can you...could you...? What's wrong with you, you psycho?
No. Bridget, I feel like 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.
LAUGHTER
If I asked you to play a game of tennis, could you do that?
Cos a tennis racket... Well, there's...
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.
I'm not insane.
How many holes in this cheese? Two.
Is correct.
So...
What?
Sorry, why is it getting a clap?
Because there's only two... 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!
SARA: Everyone knows there's only two holes. Nobody else said it!
LAUGHTER
I get one thing right, and look... It's like going,
"How many fingers have I got up?" "Five." "Give him 100 points."
Yeah, I think they're patronising Alan.
Let's give Alan one he can answer, that kind of thing.
LAUGHTER
And then, we'll do a bit of colouring-in and it's home time.
While we're on the subject of legendary television dogs,
please give it up for Basil Brush.
Hey! Hello, hello, hello, hello! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
How did I ever get this?
Look at this! Hey!
Woo!
Hello. I can't believe I'm on such a clever panel.
This is wonderful. Now, I know this is a very intellectual show,
and you have those elves foraging away behind the scenes...
Yes. ..hunting for facts.
So, I have, in fact, panel, brought along a fun fox factoid...
OK. ..for you all. Right? Yeah. Here we go.
Now, did you know that there is a species of fox that has evolved
to have no ears?
Oh, I didn't know that. What are they called?
Well, you can call them anything you like. They can't hear you.
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Boom, boom!
APPLAUSE
You walked straight into that comedy corridor.
I... Thank you very much.
The real reason you're here, isn't it, Basil, is you're going
to clear up a little bit of general ignorance for us. Yes.
I've got a question primed for the panel.
So, brushes on buzzers, please.
Just call me "Sandi Fox-vig". Rrrrrrrr!
So, where do urban foxes get most of their food from? Hm?
OK, panel? Yes, Greg.
My bins.
KLAXON
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Incorrect and hurtful stereotyping, if you don't mind. Oh, OK.
Shame on you. Shame on you.
What do urban foxes actually like to eat, then?
Well, I'm more urbane, actually, than urban.
But we're not fussy.
We'll eat rodents...
..worms, birds, rabbits, even fruit and berries
if we're feeling vegetarian, like Mr Alan.
Or we'll eat all the meat, if we're feeling like you, Miss Sandi.
So I'm quite happy to swing both ways for my stomach
in your back garden.
Now, I've got to say...
LAUGHTER
Just thank you for being present at one of the most
surreal moments of my life.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
I mean, we do rummage in your bins occasionally.
You can't blame us. No.
I mean, you do throw away lovely leftovers.
And Sandi... Yes. ..if you don't mind me saying,
that grilled herring the other night was delicious.
So, I'm looking forward to finding out what you're going
to be making for tea when I get home tonight.
So, I'm going to make a quick exit to your back garden,
down my escalator.
HE BUZZES The one and only Basil Brush!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE