CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Good evening! Merry Christmas, glaedelig jul, and welcome to QI.
Tonight, we are unwrapping the Yuletide edition
with the unfailingly jolly Jo Brand.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The unflappably festive Eshaan Akbar.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The uncompromisingly jingly Jimmy Carr.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And the uproariously unsteady uncle, Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And now, let's hear their jingle bells. Jo goes...
# All I want... #
Eshaan goes...
# For Christmas... #
Jimmy goes...
# Is... #
And Alan goes...
THE CHIPMUNKS: # Frosty the Snowman... #
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Let's have a look at my first Christmas card.
Where can you find Santa Claus these days?
Is it the kind of kink section of sex shops?
LAUGHTER
Next question, please.
What do you mean, the kink section?
The whole thing is a kink.
Well, five years ago... Yes. ..my girlfriend at the time... Yeah.
..she wanted me to dress up as Santa. It was around Christmas.
She wanted me to give her a big gift.
She wanted, presumably, to empty your sack.
LAUGHTER AND GROANING
Exactly what happened. Writes itself. Precisely that.
Santa's little helper.
Oh!
LAUGHTER
But you don't have to go to a sex shop for that, darling.
It's just available in a party shop.
I found that out afterwards
because the woman at the counter had no idea what I was talking about.
So then I did go to a party shop. Right.
Bought a Santa outfit, which didn't fit.
It was too small. That feels like a red flag. It does.
My mother, who is now 92,
she once accidentally went into a sex shop in New York thinking...
Accidentally? Sure.
She told me anyway. I said, "What was it like, Mum?"
She said, "I had a very interesting conversation
"about knitting your own chainmail."
LAUGHTER
Anyway. So, no, not a sex shop. Oh. No. Lapland.
Lapland is not correct.
Lapland is the name of a strip club I once "accidentally" walked into.
Imagine if you book to take your children
and that's where you end up. "Here already?"
I once saw one of the best names of strip clubs of all time.
There's one in Florida called The Booby Trap. Oh, that's good.
I had a friend who was in Amsterdam and he ran out of money
and he saw an ad outside a club saying,
"Live sex shows," looking for staff to do the live show.
So he thought, "Right."
And so off he went in there and went,
"I've come to do the live sex show."
And they went, "You need to bring a partner."
LAUGHTER
I mean, you tell someone something in confidence...
LAUGHTER
I'm so innocent. What do I know?
I'm still actually talking about the real Santa Claus, so...
Where would you find real Santa Claus?
Yes, who's the real Santa Claus?
Do you mean the original? Yes, the original. Saint Nick.
Saint Nick. Thank you very much. Saint Nicholas.
What country was he originally from?
Turkey. Yes, modern day Turkey.
He was a fourth century Roman bishop. We are in the town of Myra
and they decided they need a new bishop. And he was a priest.
And they said, "We'll have the first priest that comes through the door."
And he came through and went, "Hello." And that literally...
Accidentally became Santa Claus.
What year was this? Fourth century. OK.
And some people claim that they know where he is
because they've got his relics. But it's a bit confusing,
because they are sort of all over the place.
So his tomb was raided in the year 1087.
JIMMY GASPS Lara Croft. Yes. It was Lara Croft.
Yes. His bones were moved to a basilica in Bari in Italy.
I thought you were going to say Barry in South Wales.
WELSH ACCENT: "There's only a little piece of him in Barry.
"The very top of his head."
It could be because they didn't manage to take all the bones.
We don't really know. There's a number of pelvic fragments
that were taken a decade or so later and held in Venice.
There's still... There's about 500 bits and pieces of bone in total
because, famously, a sailor - and this is all we know about him -
called Matteo stepped on them while they were drying.
He's gone down in history as the guy who broke Father Christmas.
Anyway, we've got a sort of skeleton that shows...
If you boys can pick it up, it's just down there between you.
But it sort of shows where he is all over the world.
I always wondered what happened to Stephen Fry. There he is.
LAUGHTER
Bits in Italy, bits in the Netherlands,
bits in the United States. That's him all over, frankly.
He's literally everywhere.
But there is an anatomy professor at the University of Bari,
the one in Italy,
who thinks that the Bari and the Venetian collections
are complementary and make up a whole skeleton.
LAUGHTER
Pieces of him all over the world. There's bits...
There's nothing in there.
Bits in Denmark and so on. But the Turks say he's still in Turkey.
So the truth is that we don't really know.
Where are the bits in Denmark? Yes... At your place?
LAUGHTER
Actually, lots of the stories about him are very weird.
He's said to have, one point, to have resurrected three children
who had been pickled in brine
and were about to be eaten as pork during a famine. What?!
I mean, I've done a bit of first aid training,
I can do the Heimlich kind of stuff. Yeah.
But once someone's been brined... Yeah.
Really, they say probably best just to leave it.
Also, you said you did the Heimlich,
but that was the wrong thing to do for the Heimlich.
Oh, that bit, OK. Yeah. Not that bit. Yeah.
That's Stayin' Alive. Yeah. That's your Heimlich.
Jo, if anything happens to you during the show, go that way. Go...
There's a pelvis piece in the United States.
It is apparently exactly the right age for Saint Nick.
It was bought in France by a Father Dennis O'Neill
and he kept it at his church in Chicago.
He believes it was sold by a group of nuns called the Poor Clares.
Oh, bottom left is an absolute come on.
LAUGHTER
She's the poorest of the Clares. Yeah.
She's holding her book... The wrong way round!
She can't read.
She's... She's gone to sleep. Is this a jury?
LAUGHTER
It's a very early take on Blankety Blank.
Bottom left's my favourite. I notice as well
there was a bit in Scotland on the map... Yeah.
Where's that, like a takeaway or something?
Aberdeen, apparently.
If you do go - for example, to Aberdeen to see the relic -
his bones ooze myrrh.
It's known as Nicholas's miraculous seepage.
Don't even start, Eshaan. Don't even start.
I actually... I had to be smuggled out of a comedy club in Aberdeen...
What, for miraculous seepage?
No, the reckless seepage was onstage.
That's why I was smuggled out.
In 1925, they tested some of the myrrh and it was found to be water.
Oh!
Santa's body has been stolen many times.
I guess that's why he's called Saint Nick. JO: Hey!
APPLAUSE
JIMMY: That's what we do.
SPEECH DROWNED BY APPLAUSE
I'm Sandi and I'm 35 foot tall at Christmas. Why is that?
# Is... # Yes.
Did you get your wish?
LAUGHTER
I'd love to be tall for a day.
What would you do if you were tall for a day? Look down on everybody.
You'd be a long way away from your dinner.
LAUGHTER
Be better off having everything a bit nearer. OK.
If you fall over, it's serious.
Like, if YOU fall over? Meh. Yeah, no.
LAUGHTER
So we are in Florida. We're in West Palm Beach.
Is it a tree?
It is a kind of Christmas tree made out of...? Made out of sand?
Yes. You see? Yes, it's made...
There was a clue in there, wasn't there?
It's made out of 700 tonnes of sand.
Wow. That's a shit tree.
LAUGHTER
You don't like it? No, what is that? Well...
I can't wait for a kid to come over and just kick it over.
Yeah, you need to be a 35-foot-tall person to take that home.
It's kind of missing a dad
with his head poking out of the top, isn't it?
There are trees made out of all sorts of things all over the world.
Filey, which is a fishing town in North Yorkshire,
they build their tree out of 140 lobster pots.
Northville, Michigan - I love this one -
2021, a local dentist put up a 16-foot-tall tree
made out of 1,111 foot-long fake teeth.
I know. Chandler, Arizona.
They've erected a tree made of tumbleweed every year since 1957.
And anybody ever seen a singing Christmas tree
which is made out of people? They do, like, choirs,
stacked on top of each other in a sort of triangle. Alive people?
Real. Real, yes.
A pile of corpses.
LAUGHTER
"Merry Christmas, everyone."
No, it can be up to 15 rows high with about 300 people singing.
Really? The bottom must be very strenuous.
I... I think there's a platform.
Oh, thank God. It would be fun, though, wouldn't it,
if you had, like, really skinny, weedy people at the bottom,
then a really fat person on top.
I'm going to do that outside my house.
Quick extra question. Why might you decorate your tree with urine?
Can I just say that "decorate" is a rather odd...
LAUGHTER
Well, you know, I suppose my dog did "decorate" our duvet with diarrhoea.
Does it look a bit, like, tinselly?
What, like... Like it's glistening?
Like a golden shower.
AUDIENCE: Oh!
Do you know, there's a whole side to your life that I had no idea...
He's very open, though, isn't he? It's good, isn't it?
I'm just imagining if you've got, like, a stream of wee... Yes.
..and you froze it, it would look like tinsel, like gold tinsel.
And that man there with the golden...
That look like it could be glistening piss.
On his head.
I'm so sorry, Dad.
LAUGHTER
Territorial, so it's your tree?
Yes. Yes. So people know it's your tree. So you piss on it
so the neighbours can't steal it. OK.
Is that...? So... "That's my piss on that, give it back."
It stops the cat climbing up it! I... No.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Some people... I'm going to give you a point for enthusiasm.
Take a run at the tree. Yeah, baah!
Make it smell lovely? No, quite the reverse. So why would you...
It smells horrible? It smells horrible.
So then what would it stop people doing? Coming round. Shitting on it.
LAUGHTER
"I can't shit on this, someone's already pissed on it."
OK, so is this to stop people stealing... Stealing the presents!
Yes. Two points to Jimmy.
Stop people stealing the tree is absolutely correct.
No. No. I'm not having that. Yeah. I knew that. I knew that.
How can my piss tinsel be more ridiculous than that?
I'm not having that. Well, you just said piss tinsel.
I feel like you've answered your own question there.
We are back in the United States, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
They had a real problem with people stealing fir trees.
Oh, in America? In America, yes.
LAUGHTER
So they would decorate the campus with fir trees
and people would steal them. But if you put urine on them,
the smell is unnoticeable
when it's outside because it's frozen outside.
It's very cold in Nebraska in the winter,
but if you took it inside, it would stink.
And that apparently was sufficient to deter people,
also helped by the fact that they put up warning signs
that that's what they'd done. Sorry, who's...
Who was... Who had the job...
Yeah. He's a senior member of staff who's been caught with his dick out
and he's gone, "Oh, I'll tell you what I'm doing, actually,
"funny you should mention it, we had a..."
He's a fast thinker.
Yeah. The guy's a professor and a perv.
Washington State University uses skunk scent,
and I don't know where they get that from.
Skunks. He's right, you know.
Two points.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Right, moving on. Why did Osborne go cold turkey at Christmas?
George Osborne? I didn't say that. I just said Osborne.
Oh. It's to do with... To do with turkeys?
It is to do food... Cold? Cold food.
We're not talking about either of these two Osbornes.
Osborne House? Osborne House. In the Isle of Wight? Yes.
No. Is it really? Yes. Yes.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Really?
Osborne House belonged to whom? Who went there? Queen Victoria?
Yes. Queen Victoria. Sorry.
So here's the problem, the kitchen was too small.
So in 1894, she had 18 items on her festive menu.
But all of the dishes were cooked at Windsor Castle.
And what they did was, they put it on a train to the coast
and then onto the Royal Yacht, and they took it to the Isle of Wight.
And it took more than three hours to get from Windsor Castle
to the Isle of Wight. Now, can you imagine the extraordinary menu?
Foie gras encased in a giant pork pie.
Which I think just sounds disgusting.
Oh, it sounds brilliant.
Pheasant in macaroni cheese and tomato sauce.
AUDIENCE: Oh! ESHAAN: Yes, please.
It's a mixed house on that one, I think.
Yeah. That was a bit Marmite. Calf's head soup. Ew.
Yeah. Calf's head soup? On a train? Yeah.
LAUGHTER
"Tickets, please." They serve you this soup
and then suddenly it just came out...
Pheasant in macaroni cheese and tomato sauce.
And the pheasant's dead, yeah? Well, it had been pureed,
so I hope so. I mean, it doesn't sound...any of it sounds good.
There were 18 items, but they were all substantial.
It was big stuff, you know. When was Gaviscon invented?
That very week.
Came on another boat.
Even in my time, it would have been kaolin and morphine,
is what you would have taken.
You would have taken a chalk-based morphine thing
and everybody would have felt... Sorry, when were you born?
When I was a nurse, in the - ahem - '70s,
I worked on the drug unit for a bit and what people would do -
this is why they stopped doing kaolin and morphine -
was they would...because the morphine rises to the top,
so you get a layer of morphine.
So they'd just...the top layer and they wouldn't have to buy any.
No, the trick with kaolin and morphine is to let it settle
and let all the chalky shit go to the bottom
and just take the bit off the top.
I mean, I imagine that's how it works.
LAUGHTER
What do you think Japanese people tend to eat for their Christmas?
KFC. KFC, yeah. I've been to Japan.
They're, like, crazy for it. Can't get KFC on Christmas Day.
You have to book ahead. People order in advance. Yeah.
So it is an unofficial holiday.
Only about 1% of the population is Christian. But in the 1970s,
Takeshi Okawara, who was the manager of the country's very first KFC,
he thought it might be nice
for people to have it as a celebratory dinner.
And by 2020, an estimated 3.6 million households in Japan
had KFC for Christmas.
A friend of mine went to Japan at Christmas time
quite a long time ago, and they had a huge inflatable Santa
on the front of a department store.
They just got it slightly wrong because it was crucified on a cross.
LAUGHTER
I grew up in New York and we had many Jewish friends
and they often had Chinese at Christmas,
which is one of those just curious things about... Food? Chinese food.
LAUGHTER
Weren't they the only restaurants that were open on Christmas Day?
So the only ones that were open,
but also, we're talking about in the 19th century,
people immigrating in, so the Jewish and the Chinese
pretty much moved into the same sort of neighbourhoods
because it's what they could afford.
And the Chinese were not anti-Semitic
because it never occurred to them.
They didn't even know it was a thing.
And for a lot of Jewish people, it was sort of easier to keep kosher
because the Chinese, on the whole, didn't mix meat and dairy.
Right, what was the most unbelievable thing
ever broadcast on Christmas Eve?
Was it QI?
KLAXON
CHEERING
Well, there was a story about, like, a virgin having a child.
Really? Which seems...
LAUGHTER
It is to do with religion.
Anybody know who the patron saint of television is?
Yes. Gyles Brandreth. No...
LAUGHTER
You did know Osborne House, darling. Yeah, I'll shut up now.
A friend of mine bought me a little glow in the dark model
of the patron saint of television as a present.
I can't remember her name. You're absolutely right, it's a woman.
Is it Theresa. No... Close?
Alison Hammond.
Catherine?
C... C... Clare?
LAUGHTER
# Frosty... # Clare. Yes.
It's St Clare of Assisi. She's the patron saint of television
because of this extraordinary thing that happened.
So she was born to very wealthy parents, 1194.
So she's a contemporary of Francis of Assisi.
And she just hero-worshipped him.
And she founded the Order of Poor Ladies,
which is the Poor Clares
that I mentioned when we were talking about the relics.
Anyway, she really took the whole poor thing really seriously.
The Pope offered to say,
"Listen, you don't have to be poor the whole time."
She went "No, we really want to be poor."
So he granted Privilegium Paupertatis,
which means nobody could force her to have anything.
Francis of Assisi was like that.
I've been to that church in Assisi... So have I.
..and he lived in a little hut
and he said he didn't want any fuss made when he died.
So they kept the hut and then they built an enormous cathedral
around the hut.
So you go in and the hut's still there in the middle.
But this is like a sort of teenage hero worship thing
because when she was a teenager, she saw Francis of Assisi
and she was so obsessed, she decided to follow him
for the rest of her life. But as she got older and her health declined,
it is said that one Christmas Eve, she was too unwell to attend
Midnight Mass and the Holy Spirit appeared
and obligingly projected the entire mass live,
full sound and colour, we imagine,
on the wall of her convent bedroom.
And as a consequence, she's the patron saint of television.
Is there anything they won't believe?
LAUGHTER
Anyway, moving on.
Why do shepherds not need a watch at Christmas?
Have sheep learned how to tell the time?
The sheep just, like, go clockwise, depending on where the sun is.
And then...
LAUGHTER
Sheep go clockwise? Yeah, yeah.
So sheep go clockwise and then anticlockwise
in the southern hemisphere. Right. Right. And then...
LAUGHTER
Do you mean like a watch-watch?
Or do they need to watch their flocks?
No, it's to do with telling the time. Is it like a solstice thing?
Yes. So it's to do with using a sundial.
A day is always 24 hours long, right?
However, time that we measure with sundials is slightly different
depending on where the sun is. Because the Earth is at a tilt
and its orbit around the sun isn't a perfect ellipse, OK,
an ordinary clock day and a day that the sun measures
are slightly different lengths.
In fact, there are only four times of the year
when it is exactly 24 hours -
on 15th April, 30th June, 1st September, 25th December.
But only one of them would be useful for a sundial
because it's British Summertime in April, June and September.
It is only on Christmas Day
that the sundial tells the time with perfect accuracy.
But before time was standardised, different towns and cities
across the country would have their own local time.
And it was based on when the sun was highest in the sky for them.
And then the problem was when the railways arrived,
everybody had to catch the train... Are you writing all this down, Jo?
I'm going to learn it and go around the country doing lectures.
Train schedules are what caused us to have to have universal time.
But there is still a remnant in Oxford of local time.
So the great Tom bell at Christchurch in Oxford...
Tom...? Bell.
LAUGHTER
Rings nine o'clock Oxford time,
exactly five minutes and two seconds AFTER GMT has struck nine o'clock.
So it's still, according to that clock, it's five minutes out...
So everyone's late for the trains there.
Well, have you ever been to the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh?
Yes. It's right by Edinburgh Waverley Station. I know it.
They have a big clock on the hotel
and it has always run three minutes ahead
so that travellers don't miss their trains.
Yeah, but if you're getting Avanti West Coast,
it's not to going to turn up anyway.
LAUGHTER
In 2020, they decided to take a break with that tradition
and they put on their Facebook post, "For the first time in history,
"our iconic clock will remain on Balmoral Standard Time
"on New Year's Eve, as we would gladly have three minutes less
"of 2020 and be the first to bring in 2021."
I love that. I think that's very good.
When in the year - you won't know this, Eshaan -
when in the year do shepherds watch their flocks by night?
When they've got lambs about? Is exactly right. Yes.
So the only time you would watch your flocks at night
is during lambing season and that's one of the reasons
people say Jesus must have been born in the spring -
slightly foxed by the fact that lambing season
in first century Palestine was in December. Oh, was it?
I went to Israel once and I saw a goat herder and they use stones.
What, to throw at the goats?
If a goat wandered off a bit too far, he had a little pouch
and he would throw a stone. Incredibly accurate.
And it hit the thing on the backside and it would come back.
I think it came back because it thought, "Oh, I've gone too far,"
and ran back to be in the safety of the herd.
I do that with my husband.
LAUGHTER
The accuracy of that is meant to be the story of David and Goliath.
It's meant to be, well, of course, David beat Goliath...
Because... Goliath was a giant and very sort of ominous-looking,
but would have moved very, very slowly.
And David had a slingshot and those guys were so accurate.
Well, presumably been rounding up goats.
Yeah. Right, Christmas Day is when sundials have the best time.
Ha-ha!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Wonderful. Wonderful.
OK, try this on for size.
Why would you have a horse at the Christmas party?
You've got the French coming?
LAUGHTER
Wow. I loved it. Need to make some nibbles.
For fun? For fun?
Well, we're back in the United States.
We are in the 1910s, 1920s,
and the Christmas party's held specifically for horses.
Oh, the party was for the horses? It was for the horse, yeah, yeah.
Look, there they are, having a Christmas party.
Why might you do that? To confuse the horse?
It seems very odd. Well... Because how do you have a party for a horse?
How do you know what they like? Apples. Mad for apples.
If you look there, it's the Washington Animal Rescue League,
and the idea was to raise awareness of how hard the horses worked
and make people pay attention. So they gave them carrots and apples.
I love how they've got a sign there that says "Free horse dinner",
like they're going to read it. LAUGHTER
There we go. There was a woman called Emma Robinson.
She ran a horse Christmas dinner in Kansas City
from 1910 to her death in 1934.
And she left in her will $10,000 to pay for future parties.
And all of her nieces and nephews got 13,000 between them. Wow.
There's a thing about horses that make them very good party guests.
What do you think it might be? Manure? Big dick.
LAUGHTER
They are, of course, famously hung like themselves.
So here's a curious thing about horses. They don't throw up.
That's why I think they make a great guest.
That's what colic is, isn't it? They can't vomit.
They have a muscle that closes the sphincter to stop...
I mean, we have one as well. Ours doesn't work so well.
Yeah. But that thing at New Year's Eve, where people go,
"I really love you."
The horse is just going to love you and not vomit on you.
Except they can't do it. It's got to get it out of the other end. Right.
Yeah. Which I think is fine.
So you'd rather someone at a Christmas party shat on you...?
I once felt a bit unwell at a party.
LAUGHTER
So I went to the outside loo
and I was a little bit sick - in the loo, thankfully.
And then I went back into the party and they were playing Monopoly.
I said, "When did you start playing Monopoly?"
And then I realised that I had hotels and houses
and all the properties and they said,
"You've been gone for two hours."
LAUGHTER
I mean, it could have been worse. "They moved out 40 years ago!"
There are things that have changed, and quite rightly,
in relation to horses.
In 1881 there was a sharpshooter, a champion rifle shooter
called William Carver in the United States, and he used to open his show
by getting his horse to go diving, OK?
So he got the idea from an incident in Nebraska.
He was riding over a bridge and the bridge collapsed
and threw him and his horse into the water.
And he thought, "What a marvellous idea for a show."
So he decided to do it. And his act was hugely popular
and so popular that other people started to do it. What? No.
Is that real? Yes. This is extraordinary.
This is a woman called Eunice Winkless in Colorado.
Where's the water? You can't see it.
I believe that's the... That's the last known photo of Eunice.
LAUGHTER
There was a permanent horse diving platform in Atlantic City...
..getting the horse going up that ramp.
"No, no, no."
I think, well, they do like a swim.
I remember once being about two miles off the coast
of somewhere like Barbados.
I was in a boat and we just saw this little thing...
What, just a horse going past? A horse, yeah.
And then someone was on the back of it going, "All right?"
Just cooling off, like a really hot day.
They go for miles and apparently, it's incredibly good for them.
Yeah. No, I think... I mean, that isn't.
But also, it must have been a surprise for the horse
because we're pretty sure...
Can you see the bit that's hanging down the wooden platform?
That was up and then they pulled it... That's a blind... Yeah. Yeah.
So the horse didn't even know it was coming. It didn't even...
Oh, that makes it worse. So it's not diving,
it's falling, isn't it? Yes, it's more falling than diving,
if I'm honest with you.
But there was a permanent diving horse platform at Atlantic City
from about the 1920s until the 1970s.
And then... 1970s? Yes.
They tried to open it again in 2012 and people objected.
Oh, what is wrong with people?
PC gone mad.
Animals on platforms suddenly being dropped into water.
I can't believe these "neigh-sayers".
AUDIENCE GROANS THEN CHEERS
JO: Wahey!
OK. Here's a genuine question.
Why do you always have room for unlimited Christmas pudding?
Oh. # Is... # Yes.
Greed.
LAUGHTER
Separate pudding stomach. Is the correct answer. Is it? Yes.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
We have different appetites.
In fact, we have five different appetites.
So scientists at Oxford University, 1990s, they fed 200 locusts
with meals which contained different proportions
of protein and carbohydrates.
And they found that they ate until they'd got all the protein
that they needed, regardless of what else was in their meal.
So a low-protein, high-carb meal,
they ate lots of it and got very fat. Low-carb, high-protein option,
they ate much less and they lost weight.
And it's exactly the same with human beings.
You never hear that about locusts.
You always hear about locusts... I know, right? ..going on a spree.
Yeah. You never hear about the locusts in the Bible going,
"We've had a little bit of your crop and we've fine now." We're fine now.
The conclusion is that human beings do actually have five appetites.
What are the five appetites?
So it's protein, carbs, fat, sodium and calcium.
What about sexual?
Cos when I get that feeling... Yeah. ..I need sexual healing.
I don't know why that's weird when you say it to me. Yeah.
I don't know why it wouldn't be, Sandi.
Anyway, it explains why when you've had your fill of turkey,
then you've still got room to have some Christmas pudding.
Anybody know why we set the Christmas pudding alight?
Is it to give the fire brigade something to do? Yeah.
You might think there might be something on the outside
you wanted to burn off, or is it sort of something to clean it up
a little bit? It's symbolic.
It's nothing to do with that. No.
It was a good offer, wasn't it? It was a good offer. Very good.
According to Christian tradition, there are 13 ingredients
in a traditional pudding, and they represent Jesus and his apostles.
It's how he would have wanted to be remembered.
The holly on the top represents the crown of thorns, and the fire
represents the passion of Christ. When was brandy invented?
Was it before the pudding or after?
Well, brandy distilled in France from early 1300s, but as a medicine.
A "medicine".
SLURRING: "This medicine's...
"I've spilt it on the pudding."
We had a fire once, when I was a student, we had a fire.
It was Christmas. We had paper decorations and candles
and then a bit of brandy or something, and then something...
One of them caught fire and then very, very quickly,
because they were hanging from the light fitting,
the whole thing was aflame. Oh, my God. There's a lot of smoke.
And then it started to fall on the table on fire.
And then someone got some brandy and threw it on that.
LAUGHTER
And that went, whoomph! And then one of my friends put on
Burning Down The House by Talking Heads.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Right, it's time for a blazing row over pointless semantics
or, as we like to call it, general ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
Who invented the traditional Dickensian Christmas?
# All... # Oh, go. Gyles Brandreth.
LAUGHTER
He was definitely there. Yeah. It's going to be a different writer.
Is it Charles Dickens?
KLAXON AND CHEERING
Sometimes it turns out it is. She just goes, "Yeah, that's right.
"Two points." Yeah. No. So, not even British.
A German one. I bet it's German.
No, it isn't. Dutch. French.
AUSTRALIAN ACCENT: Is it Australian?
LAUGHTER
No. We are crossing the Atlantic. Americans. It is American.
It is the great American author Washington Irving.
So he described what we would now refer to...
ESHAAN LAUGHS
LAUGHTER
Wait a second. I mean, Dickens is hammered. Yeah.
Look at him. He's an absolute disgrace!
..medicinal brandy.
LAUGHER
He looks a bit like Gonzo from the Muppets.
He was a very odd soul.
But one of his favourite writers was Washington Irving,
who's there on the left.
And he published what we would call a Dickensian Christmas
a quarter of a century before Dickens published
his Christmas Carol.
People think that Charles Dickens' book A Christmas Carol
is the reinvention of the modern British Christmas.
But, in fact, it's Washington Irving's book,
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, which was written 1819, 1820.
And he talks about Christmas at this fictional place,
Bracebridge Hall, and he talks about mistletoe and carols
and ghost stories and Christmas dinner with pheasant pie
and plum pudding and a character who is very much like Scrooge.
And he even helped popularise the sort of lovable Saint Nick.
And Charles Dickens was one of Irving's biggest fans,
and he reportedly said, "I do not go to bed two nights out of seven
"without taking Washington Irving under my arm upstairs with me."
So it was, in fact... You doing your own jokes? A little titter.
It got a bit Brokeback Mountain towards the end there.
"I forcibly took an older author with me to bed."
He was very odd, though, Dickens.
When he was touring in the United States, he wrote letters home
saying, "I do hope my ink pot
"is still one inch from the right-hand side of the desk."
I mean, he was slightly obsessive.
He made sure when he slept, he faced north.
He lay straight in the middle of the bed with his arms out,
hands equidistant from the edges.
Why? Why was he...?
He just was obsessed with everything being equal.
And everything had to be measured precisely in his life,
including when he was asleep in the bed.
I imagine you're like that, though, to be fair.
I just think, for a man that wanted everything ordered and equal,
maybe the hair department...
He somehow managed to get all of our haircuts in one there, look.
Yeah. Actually, he suffered from isom...imsom...
He suffered from INS... He couldn't sleep, Sandi!
He couldn't sleep. Cos he had Washington Irving in bed with him.
"I need to be in the middle."
"You brought me up here!"
"Keep your arms on your side! I'm in the middle.
"I have to be." "You're OCD, mate."
"I'm just CD, actually."
The traditional British Christmas was invented by an American.
Time for a root around through the leftover Christmas trimmings.
What would you call these?
Vegetables?
KLAXON AND APPLAUSE
So, botanically speaking,
there is no such thing as a vegetable.
It's... I mean... Oh, God. There is, though.
So... There absolutely is.
No, it's a culinary term for the edible parts of a plant,
the bits that aren't fruit.
Yes, that's what we meant when we said vegetables. Yes.
Oh, the edible vegetable? Yeah. Yes. So if you ask a cook, then, yes.
Well, who else would you be asking? Well, you might ask a botanist.
A botanist would say that carrots are roots, potatoes are tubers,
asparagus are stems, onions are bulbs
and broccolis are inflorescences.
Botanists sound bloody boring, don't they? Jesus.
The botanist on Ocado must be really... Yeah.
"Search - tubers.
"They haven't got anything on this website."
I can hear hundreds of thousands of kids when their mum goes,
"Eat your vegetables." "Botanically speaking..."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
It gets more complicated if you ask a lawyer, OK?
Which we often would about vegetables.
Botanically, a tomato is a...? Fruit. Fruit. Fruit, yes.
But under United States law, it's both fruit and veg.
So there was a case in 1893 called Nix vs Hedden,
and the US Supreme Court ruled
that tomatoes are vegetables for tax purposes,
but fruit for botanical ones.
And carrot jam, very popular in Portugal...
Carrot jam? Carrot jam, yes. And there are... Sounds euphemistic.
LAUGHTER
It's a Boxing Day job, that one, innit?
"Oh, she was covered in carrot jam."
"Oh, no, carrot jam."
I nearly got carrot jam in my eye once.
LAUGHTER
When it's being made into jam, it's a fruit. OK? Under EU law.
Oh, for Christ's sake.
Everyone knows it's a root.
Lachanophobia, anybody, lachanophobia?
ITALIAN ACCENT: Lachanophobia.
It's when you don't have a phobia. Yeah.
You're Italian with no phobias. No phobias. "I lach-a no-phobia."
"I got no phobias. I lach-a no-phobia."
The fear of vegetables. Lachanophobia.
I mean, it depends if you think...
You've nothing to be afraid of. I know, exactly.
There's no such thing as a vegetable.
That's a "turnip" for the books. Wahey! AUDIENCE: Wahey!
APPLAUSE
After Christmas dinner,
what's the best way to save water when doing the dishes?
Oh, my technique would be to get blackout drunk,
and then someone else will have done them.
Get in the bath with the dishes? OK.
LAUGHTER
I did washing up one summer at the Wimbledon...
The Wimbledon Tennis Championship.
Oh, I thought you just meant that was your only experience. No.
So it was a good job, actually, because you'd sneak out
and watch tennis. But if it rained,
everybody would come back to the tents and the food hall
and it'd be rammed.
And then suddenly there were just thousands of plates and cups
and saucers and you were bent over a sink
and the water was just black with salad floating in it
and you were just dipping plates in and out, in and out.
AUDIENCE GROANS
It was horrendous. But we didn't use much water.
LAUGHTER
So what do we reckon, washing dishes by hand or using a dishwasher?
Washing dishes by hand is better...
KLAXON
# Frosty... #
Dishwasher.
LAUGHTER
The most water-efficient, full-size dishwasher
uses almost ten times less water
to wash the same number of dishes by hand. Wow. I know.
Should you rinse dishes before they go in the dishwasher?
Who gives a...? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah. Yes.
KLAXON
SPEECH DROWNED BY APPLAUSE
So there are enzymes in the dishwasher tablet
and it needs some food to latch onto,
otherwise they basically just get washed away.
So you're not only wasting time and effort and water,
but you're also making for a less effective dishwasher.
So you should scrape the leftovers into the bin, by all means,
but do not rinse any further.
And, finally, which Olympic event was won by a ten-foot woman?
Long jump.
LAUGHTER
No.
So every time there is an Olympics, there is also a Cultural Olympiad.
And in 2010, it was in Vancouver.
The Cultural Olympiad sculpture competition
was an ice carving of a ten-foot woman
leaping over a starburst at the time.
So the clue was in the picture here because it's the Olympic rings
and it's an ice sculpture.
They start with ten blocks of ice, maybe about 300 lbs in weight,
and then they make the basic shape using a chainsaw
and then they add details with chisels and sandpapers and so on.
And the whole process can take about 17 hours.
I mean, surely the sculptors, one by one, they freeze to death
and they have to bring in a new sculptor.
You have to work fairly fast is one of the things.
You also have to know what you're doing with a chainsaw.
And as it happens, that is something that I like to do.
So we thought we'd have a go
at making a QI chainsaw ice sculpture.
Are you trying to get £200 off ITV if something goes hilariously wrong?
Well, there's four of my friends in the audience
who I have been chainsawing with. Do you guys think I can do this?
Where are my chainsaw team? Do you think I can do this?
That one's got a bandage on...
LAUGHTER
"I'm over here."
LAUGHTER
We had a go earlier
to see if I could indeed make an ice sculpture with a chainsaw.
And this is what happened.
MUSIC: Back In Black by AC/DC
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Like a sequence on Question Of Sport
and at the end you have to guess who the sport...
I had a wonderful teacher in Matt
and I had a wonderful time making it. Shall we have a look
and see the finished article? Yes. Yeah. Come with me. Come with me.
CHEERING
There we are. Do you want to grab some shot glasses here?
I think it's going to come out at that end. What, sorry?
It's going to come out here. I've got vodka.
Normally, we would come to the scores, but it is Christmas,
we have health and happiness, we've got a bottle of vodka
and a QI vodka ice sculpture to drink from,
so I don't really give a damn about the scores.
From Eshaan, Jimmy, Jo, Alan and me,
it's Merry Christmas and bottoms up. Goodnight. Here we go.
CHEERING