This programme contains some strong language
APPLAUSE
WHISTLING
Good evening and welcome to QI.
Right, question number one.
What's a good way to earn bigger tips
if you're waiting tables?
Anybody here ever been...? You've been a waiter?
I worked as a caterer?
You worked as a caterer?
What were you doing?
Catering.
LAUGHTER
Now, I've done a job delivering cakes,
and the recipient of the cakes had moved on
from the time that they were being delivered.
So I just had a flat full of cake.
And I just lived off cake for months.
This is a dream, Bill? Oh, yeah.
LAUGHTER
Well, a top tip, apparently, if you want to get a tip,
is to wear something unusual.
Oh. Unusual? Yeah.
So, for example, waitresses with floral hairpins
earned 17% more than people with plain hairpins. Ah!
Yeah. Would it be, if you were to compliment the diners,
you know, or when they were just coming to the end of an anecdote
as you put the food down, you went, "Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
"Excellent story!"
Well, certainly, the whole thing about being funny,
wearing a funny button apparently helps.
Joke cards work as well.
So French researchers supplied waitstaff
with jokes for customers,
and 42% of those who used them were tipped,
compared with 25% of the staff who didn't.
There you go. So more people will tip you
if you give them a little bit of a laugh. Bit of a laugh.
Bit of a laugh. See, I didn't get two points for that!
OK, three. Three points for that. Three points.
Three points for that. I'm going to give you three points. No, no, no!
I don't... But there's also a thing called postural congruence,
which is weird. So if you squat at the table
and you get your face closer,
apparently that can boost your tips. What?!
Touching customers. But in a, you know...
Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
LAUGHTER
I'm just going to give him money to make him go away!
Go away! Go away!
Let me cut it up for you! Let me cut it up!
I've got a flat bastard! Here it comes! Choo-choo!
Choo-choo! Open your mouth!
Here comes the train!
Argh!
I'm in one of Bill's dreams!
There's also casual touch manipulation.
So basically... Casual touch manipulation?
So don't be unpleasant, don't be weird.
But just very quickly touch somebody on the shoulder pad.
That's, like, you know...
That's proper manipulative.
That is... That's just invading someone's space, isn't it?
And apparently the best thing to do is...
Brush them on the nipple. ..while you're putting the bill...
LAUGHTER
There you go.
That's not right!
That can't be right, surely?
Ooh!
Why, thank you!
Time to do that, Bill, is when you put the check on the table.
That's when to get touchy-touchy?
That's the moment to distract from the amount.
You just touch them at that...
You all right?
There you go, sir.
Service... Is service included?
Say that. Is service...?
No, it's not.
Come on. I'm writing to my lawyer.
In World War I, a horse was killed in what was called no-man's-land.
And somebody thought, "Oh, I know, we'll turn it into a lookout."
And under cover of night, French soldiers
made a papier mache version of the horse,
and a soldier then went in and apparently
used his anus as a gun port,
which I think, you know...
That's something I'm definitely going to google later on.
The anus as a gun port.
The horse... It's the horse's anus.
Yes, the horse... Yes.
JIMMY LAUGHS
Is this going to be a follow up story about the...?
"The greatest hero of that war was, of course, a pantomime horse."
Well, they used papier mache heads. I think you've got some.
They used to use papier mache heads on sticks
to put up over the trench. Oh, hang on.
Oh, no, I have got one. Yeah, look at this.
Oh! Oh! Gosh, there wasn't much diversity then, was there?
No, no. It's not wild on diversity.
They all were...
Ours have found love.
LAUGHTER
Er...
LAUGHTER
# Yummy, yummy, yummy
# I've got love in my tummy. #
I'm always hungry after a blowjob. Yeah!
How dare you!
If you want to kill an auroch... Do you want to kill an auroch?
I don't know what one is yet. Are they in Lord Of The Rings?
LAUGHTER
I know it only because I was in a schoolhouse.
We had aurochs, kudus and elands.
So it's a kind of deer.
Er, well, close.
It's a kind of cow. It's an early kind of cow.
OK. An early cow? Yeah.
They're called calves. Buffalo.
That's right.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
I don't want to start coming on here and running the show, yeah?
Yeah. They don't exist any more, they're gone.
They're gone? Yeah, 1627, the last one died. Oh.
So probably you're thinking of oryx - O-R-Y-X. Y-X.
Yeah, and it's not that, it's A-U-R-O-C-H-S.
So he was right about them? Oh, yes. So...
It was a deer, not an early cow.
..I'm going to give you a point for the misunderstanding.
Wow! I wish that would work in love... Take it. Really?
Yeah. ..just generally.
Oh?
Misunderstanding - you get a point.
Are you not having a good time in the love department?
Oh, no, it's dreadful.
Is it?
I mean, what are you looking for? We could put an ad out just now.
LAUGHTER
I'm looking for someone understanding and patient.
Oh, God, you've got no chance! Why?
Why? Are you a dick?
I'm married and I'm still on the lookout for that.
LAUGHTER
Right, you've all got beside you a loo-roll holder like this.
Put it on your right-hand side
and imagine you're sitting on the lavatory.
And I want you to tell me which way do you correctly hang the loo roll?
Do you hang it...? Do you hang it this way?
Very controversial.
So imagine the wall is here.
OK? Do you hang it...?
You've got to hang it this way. Why?
Why have you got to hang it that way?
Just cos, like, otherwise you're a godless prick.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
So the toilet roll holder was invented
by an American engineer called Seth Wheeler in 1891.
And you can see from his patent that he has made a decision
and it goes this way.
The truth is, there are advantages to both ways of doing it.
So, if the loose end hangs on the front,
it's easier to grab.
But if you hang it the other way around,
there is less chance of -
I don't know, a child or a cat, or indeed yourself -
accidentally unravelling the roll.
I always used to think it should be at the back.
And then, in recent years, I've changed.
Gone to the front? Yeah.
Well, what you could've done is installed something, Alan,
called a Tilt-A-Roll.
Oh! Yeah, a Tilt-A-Roll was invented in 1999,
and the holder swivels and you can orientate the paper as you please.
I have a...
I have a toilet roll butler.
Just...
Just stands there and...
Let him just hand me... Just give you a little sheet.
"From your expression, sir, I would say that's four sheets..."
LAUGHTER DROWNS SPEECH
I've got a doubler with a magazine rack underneath.
Wow! That's just horrible.
That Jonathan Creek money is serious business!
'90s, innit!
Cha-ching!
Another amazing archer was an American.
He was a guy called Howard Hill.
He's considered to be the greatest archer in history.
And he was also a stunt man. Here he is teaching Errol Flynn.
And he even shot a prune from a volunteer's head.
The shocking part of that story is "from a volunteer's head."
That shows both understanding and patience. Yeah!
"Would you have a prune shot from your head by an expert archer?"
"I would." "You're the one for me."
LAUGHTER
That's a good question to ask on... What is it?
Tinder profile? What's the...? Tinder...
So, what is it? Swiping?
Which is it? Right to like someone? I don't know, I'm married.
Don't know why I'm looking at you. Why are you looking at me?
Right is... Oh, you know?
Yes. He knows.
It's not... I've got carpal tunnel.
I just say "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes."
Whilst crying and crying and crying.
"Are you patient?!"
"Do you understand me?!"
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 was the thing.
Would you not be suspicious of somebody buying that off eBay?
Like, what are they going to do with it?
They're going to save all of the animals, Deborah!
Was it you who bought that off eBay, Sara Pascoe?
All you have to do is undermine all of the major cities
so that they crumble down.
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.
You sort of go... You go, "I've got the thing for the job." Yeah.
"And everyone laughed at me when I bought it.
"And now who's laughing?" Yeah.
"Because you can't use it unless you give me loads of money."
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 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."
Oh! And then everyone else laughed at me.
But who's laughing now?
Because it's in my living room.
LAUGHTER
And there will be a natural disaster involving cats,
and I'll have... 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,
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. They'll be wearing human clothes by then.
They'll be standing up. Do you want to make some notes
for your novel, darling.
Sara will come in in a tunnelling machine.
Yeah.
I'm really worried about this, cos all I've got
is a bumper sticker that says "so many cats, so few recipes".
And I just think...
LAUGHTER
There's a guy called Tim Storms.
He's an American voiceover artist.
And he has a vocal range of ten octaves.
He holds the world... Wow! No!
World record for the lowest musical note ever sung.
So, in 2012, he sang a G eight octaves lower
than the lowest G on a piano, OK? Wow. Wow.
This is him speaking.
This is the voice of Tim Storms.
Nice to meet you.
OK, so, he does a lot of movie trailers, Alan.
And he has done the honour of recording a trailer for us.
You, watch this if you dare.
In a world
where everything you think you know is wrong...
..one man stands alone against the forces of ignorance.
Alan Davies is...
..Alan Davies...
..in QI.
The answer is never blue whale.
Terms and conditions apply. QI is not responsible...
APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH
ALAN: Very good! That's pretty cool!
That's pretty amazing. Very cool!
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.
They say they die. Maybe they just change their number. I don't know.
"I've died!"
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!
What? He's there? Like the Tinder Swindler?
Is that him at the back? That dot?
Oh, that little dot, is he?
That little dot is the male.
Aw, he's just a little dot!
So I think, if he dies, you wouldn't give a rat's arse, frankly.
He's swimming along and thinking, "Phwoar!
"She's enormous!" That little tiny dot...?
He's basically sort of a sperm sac, frankly. Yeah.
So if Alan and I...
LAUGHTER
..matched our heights to a blanket octopus' proportions,
Alan would be roughly the length of a thumbnail
or I would be the height of the Gherkin skyscraper in London.
And that is a novel!
LAUGHTER
I have here an assassin's teapot.
I will show you.
Let me bring it out.
Right, so, have a look here.
So I'm going to pour you, for example, some tea.
So, here it is. There's lots of nice tea going out like that.
Now what you want is milk.
So... Oh!
..milk. Honestly, that is the sexiest thing ever!
So, two different liquids from the same pot without them mixing.
Why might you want to do that? For the poison!
Yes. You get two points. Absolutely.
To poison somebody.
Well, to find out how it works,
we have an old friend of the show and YouTube scientist.
Please welcome science communicator Steve Mould.
APPLAUSE
Tell us how it works.
So, I made this 2D version for a YouTube video,
so you can see what's going on inside.
Look, there's two chambers.
The bottom chamber leads to the spout,
but it also leads to this hole at the bottom of the handle here.
The top chamber leads to the spout as well,
and it has a little hole as well.
So, if I cover these two holes and try and pour,
nothing comes out. Yeah.
But if I open this hole and try and pour,
a green drink comes out.
But if I open the bottom hole, a pink drink comes out -
mostly onto the table.
And if I open both holes,
then a sort of kind of chocolate milk,
maybe, comes out.
So, why, Steve? Why does it work that way?
So, it's a bit like when you put your thumb over
sort of a straw in your drink and you lift it up.
Some of the drink comes with the straw,
and that's because of surface tension
and atmospheric pressure and things like that.
But, intuitively, you know that the drink can't come out
of the straw unless air can get in
to replace the drink that was there.
And the air can't get in at the top, because you're covering it
with your thumb, and the air can't get in at the bottom
because of surface tension.
But if you open the hole at the top, then air can get in
and the liquid can get out. No way!
Yes way, Henning!
Witch! He's a witch!
The assassin's teapot is essentially a fancy,
weirdly-shaped pair of straws
that you can put your fingers over to make things happen.
And you could kill somebody. And you can kill somebody.
If you're going to do that, use the same coloured liquid. Ah!
Otherwise... They might spot them.
Yeah.
Steve, thank you so very much for coming in.
APPLAUSE
Here's the thing about skydiving.
You know when you pull the thing like that
and you would think that you'd go woosh up in the air? Yeah.
But that's because when it's filmed you go whoomph, like that,
and the camera person's there and - woosh -
they keep falling.
So you think that it's an up, but it's just an oh!
Sorry, can I just ask, have you ever been skydiving? No, never.
But...
I've never done it.
But I did talk to a cameraman once.
LAUGHTER
Love that. Yeah. I did it.
I strapped onto a bloke and he jumped out.
Why would you do that?
I did it because I'd broken up with a girlfriend
who told me that her previous boyfriend
was much braver than me.
LAUGHTER
And he was braver and cleverer and all that.
And funnier. That was really wounding.
And I thought, "I'm going to jump out of a plane.
"I'll show you." And they said, "Right, put your foot out
"on the wheel strut." And I absolutely shat myself.
If I hadn't been strapped to this fella...
Yeah. ..I would never have gone.
Wait, just to be clear, because you shat yourself.
Is he behind you or in front of you? He was behind.
Guy took it in his stride, Sandi, literally.
And did...? And did you land safely
into your ex-girlfriend's wedding, or...?
Describe the most thrilling way
to come down from the top of the Eiffel Tower.
# That's the way... #
Tossing yourself off?
LAUGHTER
So, not that. Not that.
Thrilling way to come down from the Eiffel Tower.
Any thoughts?
Some kind of massive slide? Yes.
On a magical unicorn made of Camembert.
Bareback 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? Well, I would say certain death.
Certain death. Might be an issue.
Well, the main thing was that they needed something
for them to land in, right?
So he proposed a dive pool 190 feet 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 tonnes. 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.
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... Nope.
..something as mundane as a lollipop lady,
she'd have, like, straps.
Like, if the kids were coming out, little cattle prods on the end.
"Get back, you little prick! Zzt!" 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, "Oh, I just found that under my seat."
LAUGHTER
What do you think might be a reason to visit The Bude Tunnel
in Cornwall, which in 2021 won the Travellers' Choice Award?
The Bude Tunnel. You want to get out of Bude?
LAUGHTER
What kind of tunnel is it? Do we know?
A tiny tunnel? It is quite tiny.
It's a little, tiny tunnel.
It has its own merchandise shop. It sells postcards.
It has over 900 five-star reviews online.
Is it four foot long?
OK, have a look.
This is what it is.
It is a Perspex...
LAUGHTER
This is so British.
It is a Perspex rain tunnel
that connects a supermarket to its car park.
That is thoughtful, though.
In 2018, they decided to light it up,
the supermarket, with 100,000 light bulbs...
..and everybody went mad.
It was literally decided as a joke. It was a joke.
"We're just going to light the thing up."
Anyway, they eventually, TripAdvisor,
had to ban people from adding reviews.
So I thought, "Well, this is marvellous.
"I've never been to Bude."
So I read a website called Top Ten Things To Do in Bude, Cornwall.
Number five was visit Devon.
LAUGHTER
Quick Randy Scandi about military trickery.
There's a great hero,
a Danish hero called Tordenskjold, which means Thunder Shield.
He was born Peter Wessel in 1690.
He looks a mean so and so.
Oh, doesn't like having his picture painted, does he? No!
"I'm in a hurry!"
Do you think he's actually standing behind that suit of armour?
There's a mythical story -
I don't know if it's true or not -
that he once tricked the Swedes into thinking
that there was a huge force in a town called Marstrand
and that he caused them to surrender.
And what he did, he just basically passed the same troops
in and out of the town square, day and night,
over and over again.
And they overestimated how many soldiers were actually there.
And it's called Tordenskjold Soldater.
It was a Danish army in Sweden?
Yeah, we've had a lot of trouble internally.
Oh! Oh! OK. Oh, OK.
I was going to ask a question, but...
What?
No, no, I was just...
No, it's a wrong question. Come on.
Well... It's... You...
I love a wrong question.
I wasn't sure how they could tell the difference
between the Danish and the Swedes. Oh!
Finally, someone said it!
Sandi, Sandi, I'll take this.
Alan, stay out of it, OK?
It's between me and Sandi.
JIMMY LAUGHS
Go on, Sandi. Stand up.
LAUGHTER
Well, we know who's losing, anyway.
JIMMY LAUGHS
Where are you more likely to get a good tip, my beloved Denmark
or South Sudan?
Ooh! Why would you choose South Sudan?
It must be South Sudan.
Come on! JOE IMITATES KLAXON
Let's say... I'm going to go with...
..Denmark! Alan is right.
It's South Sudan. Absolutely right. Well, he should get a klaxon!
He should get a klaxon!
It's South Sudan. So there's a really strong correlation
between tipping and bribery.
The more corrupt a country is, the more people will tip.
And according to the Transparency International's
2021 Corruption Perception Index,
there's 180 countries rated.
Denmark is the least corrupt. Aw.
And South Sudan is the most corrupt.
Also, I have to say, tipping is very uncommon in Denmark.
It's all included in the bill. Yes.
So how do you show your gratitude for an exceptional waiter?
You say "that was fine" and then leave.
No.
Lightly rubbing them on the nipples.
They rub you, you rub them back. Yeah.
Tak. Es fantastisk.
Yeah. Oh, very good, darling.
Thank you. I've been practising my Dansk.
No, that's very good. Yeah.
That was impressive. Fantastisk.
Fantastisk, yeah.
I like it, though. I always thought it sounds like people
who are speaking English - but a little bit drunk, you know?
Yeah. Like when you...
Like Danish for thanks for coffee is just "tak for kaffen".
"There you go. There's 50 quid, love. Go on."
"Tak for kaffen."
And then things like, you know, I'm going to...
I'm going now. I'm going to the shop now.
It is. It is like that.
I'm going to the shop now to get us a couple of bit of cheese.
Do you want a bit of cheese?
Might get a bit of cheese. Do you want a bit of coffee?
A bit of coffee?
We're very chilled.
Very, very chilled.
Do you remember on the horse racing,
they used to have a Citroen with a camera on the roof,
driving alongside? Yes! Yes!
It's like early GoPro, isn't it?
Yeah, really early GoPro. You need a Citroen.
Just driving alongside the horses.
There had to be a bloke on the top as well.
Absolute health and safety disaster now.
There's not a cat in hell's chance they'd let someone...
"It's all right, I'll go on the roof with it!"
They probably started out the window.
"It's terrible out the window! I'm too low!
"We're going to put it on the roof!"
"Are you fucking mad?!
"It's not even a proper road, it's a horse track!"
"They go fast, you know? They're doing 40-odd.
"It'll be fine!
"Holy shit!"
They must have had a couple of them just go, "Ah!"
Why would you not just sit on a horse with a camera.
Oh, yes. That's so easy, Greg. Come on! Yeah, yeah.
The cameras are the size of the horse!
Put it on its head!
Strap it to its head! Strap it to the horse's head!
LAUGHTER
He's then got to keep up with purebred racehorses!
This poor bastard carrying a camera and a man.
I'm just offering solutions! I like that, Greg.
The car was a better idea!
The car was a good idea!
It was just profoundly unsafe.
Like, insanely, madly unsafe!
Inevitably, the driver was pissed.
Everyone always...
Any races after lunch, the driver's drunk.
Everyone was drunk.
Greg, in the '70s, all the time!
Another solution.
Put another jockey on the back of the original horse
who's trained in horses. Train them up as a camera operator.
They're filming behind on the other horse,
and that is your solution. That's a good idea.
But what if the horse with the camera gets ahead of himself?
Yeah.
He sees the finishing line and thinks,
"I can have this!"
And then all you see on TV is just an empty screen.
As he moves away from the horse.
"Jesus Christ, he's good! Look at the speed of him!
"He's filming it and everything!"
What you need to understand, Greg, is he's waited 50 years
to get this off his chest.
APPLAUSE