This programme contains some strong language
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Good evening and welcome to QI, where tonight
we're vacillating between vices and virtues.
There's no peace for the wicked, so let's meet our baddies.
The lord of misrule, it's Eshaan Akbar.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
The prince of darkness, it's Rhys James.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
The queen of the bottomless pit, it's Jo Brand.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Whatever that means.
Oh, goody two shoes, it's Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Their buzzers are all vices.
Eshaan has sloth.
SNORTING AND SNORING
Wow.
Nice. Rhys has anger.
YELLING AND BANGING
SCREECHING
Jo has lust.
LAUGHTER
I don't.
CREAKING AND EXCITED MOANING
Oh-ho-ho! Oh, very pleasant.
I mean, it sounded more like impaling.
Alan has pride.
Yass, Queen!
Let's start with the ultimate in virtue - a saint.
St Valentine, to be precise.
What are the least-romantic Valentine's Day experiences
that you can think of?
Oh! Oh!
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
In case you're wondering,
no, I don't.
I think the worst thing possible is knowing that the person
you've been in love with for three months doesn't actually want you.
Oh... Awww!
Seriously?
Just wait till you've been married 30 years,
then it's really shit.
This happened to me on Valentine's Day about ten years ago.
Yeah. I was in love with someone,
and on Valentine's Day, I thought it'd be romantic
on my lunch half-hour to get the Tube... Uh-oh.
..from Bond Street to Bank.
I took an Earl grey tea, her favourite book,
and tickets to a West End musical. I did it all. Nice.
And then I didn't hear from her for two days,
and then she called me up two days later and she said,
"Thank you so much for the bouquet of flowers you got me."
And I was like, "I didn't get you any flowers, uh,
"where have you been?" And she said,
"I went to watch an amazing theatre show with this guy
"that I've been seeing for the last two months."
Aww! So... They're married now.
That's good.
OK, I'm going to give you five points. Thank you!
Thank you.
Argh! Yes, Rhys.
Probably my most romantic Valentine's
is when I took Eshaan's girlfriend to the theatre.
That was a good day.
So, 17th-century Europe, including Britain,
Valentine's Day sweethearts were often chosen by lot.
So they were young and unmarried people,
they would get together in an area, and the women
would write their names down on a slip of paper,
and they would pop them in a box. And then men... It was a lucky dip.
Oh, it was like an arranged marriage.
Well, some villages, you were expected to court
until the following Valentine's Day.
In some places, it was just for the day.
Might have worked out better than if you'd actually chosen them.
It certainly would in my case.
It's good that you're not bitter, though, Jo.
I think that's very important. No, I'm not bitter at all.
No.
There was another English tradition, which was that the very first person
you saw on Valentine's Day, that's the person
that would be your Valentine.
And so people would sneak into their sweetheart's garden
so that when they open the curtains, the first thing...
I thought it'd be your, like, postman.
That'd be weird, wouldn't it? Yeah, yeah.
It's in Shakespeare. Ophelia says in Hamlet,
Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's day, All in the morning betime,
and I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine.
The problem with Valentine's Day is, if you get an anonymous one,
you think, "Oh, that's so exciting. Who could that be from?"
Maybe, you know,
some perv that lives down the road.
Or it could be from someone really nice, but you don't know
unless it looks suspiciously
like your mum's handwriting.
I want one that says, "I can't be arsed, can you?"
I gave an anonymous card once when I was ten years old,
to the new girl at school, and I put it in her tray,
and it was from her secret admirer.
And then I witnessed her at the end of school, take it out and show
all her friends, and then screw it up and put it in the bin. Now...
Awww! Yeah, thank you.
This is the heartbreak corner, apparently.
Team Dweeb over here. Team Dweeb. Yeah.
What I would say about that is the anonymity of a card goes out
the window when you're the only one in the playground crying.
That's quite a good little caption for inside the card.
Yeah, that's true.
"Look for the crying boy."
We don't really know why Saint Valentine -
we don't really know why he got chosen.
He's a third-century Roman saint, but there doesn't seem
to be a particular reason why.
That's him on the right, looking mildly surprised.
It looks like he could help the situation a bit there. Yeah.
That's Mary Magdalene at his feet, and that's Anthony of Padua,
who, amongst other things, was the patron saint of the tonsure,
which is that haircut where you've got a sort of bald bit
on the top. Why is Saint Valentine there?
He's got the cross and he's going, "I've had an idea for some merch."
Yeah.
Anthony of Padua was also a patron saint of finding a partner.
So maybe there's... Find a partner.
Hmm? Find a partner.
They used to say that at school.
Find a partner. Get into twos and threes.
That's so stressful,
that whole five seconds before someone eventually goes,
"Oh, fuck it, go on, then."
You're the last one left.
Yeah. The teacher comes over and says,
"Why haven't you found a partner?!"
"No-one likes me!
"That's what this is about! That's what this is about, right?!
"Confirmation! Well done!"
When they pick teams for sport?
You were often the ball, weren't you? Well...
In rugby.
I was no good at netball. I used to get chest passes in the face.
I mean, I was...
It wasn't my thing.
The ancient Roman version of Valentine's Day
is called Lupercalia. Now, this is much more fun.
This is your sexually charged... Lubercalia? Lupercalia.
Not lube. Not lube. I was going to say!
Lubercalia!
It's a ceilidh, with lube. Yeah. Yeah.
So you start with a ritual,
you want to kill a few goats, and then you took these goat hides
and you made sort of whips called februa,
and you whipped women whilst half naked.
You're turning me on, Sandi. Sorry. I'm so sorry.
Why are there children in this orgy? Whys are kids there?!
Yeah, well, they're from the last year's orgy.
Lupercalia, in honour of the she-wolf
who's said to have raised Romulus and Remus,
who founded Rome.
Now, I want you to suggest some novel ways in which animals can help
you on Valentine's Day.
SNORTING AND SNORING
It does sound like a Labrador. It does, yeah.
I'm...
Like a...a rabbit?
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
Thank you, thank you!
Thank you. Well...
If we're going down this route,
a beaver.
I knew you were my kind of guy.
Why rabbit? It's an electronic device.
Oh! Yeah. OK.
LAUGHTER
Sorry, if you're happily married, you don't need one.
I've got 12.
They're all different. All different.
2022, the Bristol Animal Rescue Centre offered to write a name
of your choice on the bottom of a cat litter tray for £5.
What?! Yeah.
So the woman who went with the tickets with somebody else,
you could have her name on the bottom of a cat litter tray.
Their thing was, "Our cats will poo on your ex, your boss..."
Ohh! "..or whoever else you think deserves a great big turd
"on this Valentine's Day." Oh, I see.
Yeah. Yeah. You say that. Anyone who's got a cat
knows that they will shit anywhere but the litter tray.
Exactly. That is true. I've got a kitten.
I've been trying to train her. And all the things on the internet
say you have to spray her in the face with water when she does
something wrong, but that feels so inhumane to me.
So instead of doing that, when she does something wrong,
I just eat one of her treats in front of her.
Oh, and how is she with that?
Well, she shits in the bed.
That's not the point.
But you can't trust animals, really.
So the Seattle Aquarium used to celebrate Valentine's Day
by inviting the public to come and watch the octopuses having sex.
Um... Sorry, what?!
Yes.
"Come in, come in. Live sex show."
Yeah!
So they haven't held it since 2016.
Why do you think they decided not to do this?
Death? Yes, death is exactly right.
Yes. Oh!
So, in some species of octopus, when they've finished,
the female eats the male. Which is fine,
he'd die soon anyway. It's really - it's not a problem.
I tried that one Valentine's Day.
And then the San Antonio Zoo in Texas. I like this -
you can name a cockroach after your ex
and then watch it being fed to another animal.
We used to have cockroaches, and I kind of got rather fond of them
cos I came home one night really late, quite pissed,
and I'd left the telly on earlier,
and there was two of them sitting on the settee watching the telly.
Which I thought was lovely. And I was decorating, as well, one day,
and I was painting the ceiling like that and one fell in my mouth.
AUDIENCE GROANS
I feel bad for all the people who go on Bake Extra Slice
and get their cake slagged off by someone who's eaten a cockroach.
Right, what was the Venus de Milo doing with her hands
before she lost her arms?
SNORTING AND SNORING
Masturbating.
KLAXON
And literally the last thing I would have thought of.
Argh! Yes, Rhys, darling.
Stealing something in Saudi Arabia.
AUDIENCE GROANS
APPLAUSE
Maybe she was trying to start up
a petrol engine chainsaw.
I LOVE a chainsaw. Me too.
Didn't they find the arms somewhere else?
Well, yes. There was a disembodied arm.
The fact is, she was already armless, as it were,
when she was dug up in 1820 on the Greek island of Milos.
So we don't really know, right? But there are some suggestions.
So one suggestion is that she was sort of holding her drapery
and the other hand was holding an apple.
So you're going to get a point. Yes, it's exactly right.
A disembodied hand holding an apple carved from the same marble
was found fairly near.
I imagine there are two other apples in the air.
Yeah.
That's got "delivered safely by Evri" written all over it.
Took a photo of it and legged it.
Possible that both hands were spinning thread -
so that's an activity that used to be used in ancient Greece
to symbolise a sex worker.
Or possibly she was holding a shield and admiring her own reflection.
France bought the statue when it was first found in 1820,
and they placed it in the Louvre, but it originally came with a plinth
which named the sculptor.
So the sculptor was Alexandros of Antioch,
who was rather obscure and not incredibly famous.
But recently the government had returned
Napoleon's looted art collection,
and they really wanted to have something
that was fantastically valuable,
so they took the sculptor's name away
in the hope that everybody would assume
that it was by a famous fourth-century BC Greek sculptor.
So they were sort of lying, but they wanted it to be more important
than the Venus de' Medici, which is widely regarded
as one of the most beautiful representations of Venus
ever made, and which they had had to give back to Italy.
And it was about 100 years before the Louvre went,
"OK, we do know who it was by,
"and it's not as valuable as the one that you guys have got."
The Italian rival, the Venus de' Medici,
she's the one that established the sort of modest pose that...
She's not famous, though, is she?
The Venus de' Medici doesn't seem to be as famous, and it's partly
because Pope Innocent XI thought she was too sexy
and she was encouraging lewd behaviour in students.
So she was sent off to the Uffizi Gallery
and I think probably slightly hidden away.
Now, patience is a virtue, but would you queue two days
and nights for a haircut?
No. Fair.
Six points.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
I think I did queue two days and nights for a haircut
the day after lockdown lifted.
Was it the madness? Yeah.
You get... Having your hair cut by someone who was in a hazmat suit,
really.
With a mask on and a screen and gloves
and going like this.
I'd love to go to a barber's cos it looks quick.
When you go to the ladies' hairdresser's, it takes forever
and they want to know things about you.
I think, before you go in,
you've got to create an identity for yourself.
Just say, "I'm exhausted, I was up all night
"having sex with three men."
"Two of them are in here." LAUGHTER DROWNS SPEECH
Barbers are really stressful for me cos I go to a Turkish barber's
and I take my hearing aids out, and my glasses,
so I can't see or hear anything.
They basically do whatever they want, really.
Yeah. It's quite a traumatic experience.
The Turkish barber near me is famous
for shit haircuts. It's not THAT bad, Rhys.
Single tear rolls down my cheek, Alan.
I stopped going there YEARS AGO!
But he does - he has the barber shop in the day,
and then he has a kebab shop down the road that he does at night.
Is it the same knife?
Right? Yeah! Literally all the same utensils.
Yeah. He puts you on a thing and spins you around, and then just...
For ages, I was thinking, "Why does he still do the barbering
"when he's so bad at it?"
And then I realised it's a perfect business model, right?
Because when do you go to a kebab shop?
You go after a night out, don't you?
Yeah. When would you not go after a night out?
If you've pulled. Why would you not pull?
Shit haircut. Yeah.
It's genius. It is. That's a very good combination.
He's the best businessman in the world.
But I want to know why you might queue for two days and nights.
Special barber.
Yeah, special barber. It's a holy thing.
Is it Mecca? No.
So it's the most-visited Hindu temple in the world.
So the temple in Andhra Pradesh,
which is called Sri Venkateswara Swami,
it is the richest, most-visited temple.
And it is also the world's largest barber shop.
I know.
So this 2,000-year-old temple, they hire 1,316 barbers,
who cut hair for free, 24/7.
They have over 40 million people who visit every single year,
and the site has had to create two queuing complexes
to hold 14,000 people - all of them queuing up for a haircut.
So, in 2023, the queue at the temple reached 5km.
Some people were waiting for 48 hours.
There is a system if you've got a bit more money,
so you can basically pay, and then they'll remember
that you were at that point in the queue and then you can come back.
But that person's having a shaved head, right?
And if you want to maintain that, you have to get that haircut
and then immediately join the queue again.
Yeah. I mean... Two days. Start again.
I mean, is it just shaved heads they offer?
Can you get a perm or something?
No, they want your hair.
So the temple is dedicated to one of the many incarnations of Vishnu.
So the triumvirate of gods, right?
We've got Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva.
And Vishnu has ten avatars or incarnations.
So the story goes that Vishnu was meditating on an ant hill
and his fellow gods -
so Shiva and Brahma - in the form of cows, came to feed him milk
every single day.
And one time the cow herd followed them and he was wondering
what was happening to all the milk, right?
Why does it keep disappearing?
And he saw them pouring it into this ant hill.
So he struck the ant hill - and thus Vishnu on the head.
And after Vishnu's head healed, the hair failed to grow back.
A lot better than the Bible, isn't it?
It's a good story, isn't it?
And so, to help him cover up the bald patch, a princess cut off
her own hair, to plaster on it.
And as a reward, Hindu legend has it that all offerings
at the shrine go to her.
Right. So that is the reason for the endless haircutting.
Uh, let's move on to vice now.
What happens in Vegas to make you stay in Vegas?
Are we talking Las Vegas or Johnny?
Las Vegas. Have you been?
I haven't. My mum, dad and brother went without me.
Awww!
I'm actually quite a happy person!
Just... Just to be clear.
Yeah. Why? We went to America,
and I had to come back home early
because of immigration issues.
And then my mum, dad and brother, they had a great time without me.
Oh, is that what they told you -
"There's some immigration issues, you're going to have to go"?
Yeah.
OK. This immigration officer looks
a lot like my brother holding his finger up.
Well, gambling is addictive.
Might you end up staying because you're addicted to it?
Well, there is that, but specifically,
how do casinos encourage you to stay in them for longer?
There's no windows or clocks.
KLAXON
It's a misconception.
There are time-sensitive bets,
so you have always had clocks.
If you go through the casinos, some of them are really huge. Yeah.
It goes on as far as the eye can see, and you actually don't know
what the time is. It's the same 24 hours a day.
Yeah. Roughly the same number of people in there.
It's very odd. But also it's that maze-like thing.
That's an important part of keeping you there,
because it feels as though there's something new round the corner,
something else. It's like the big Tesco's in Hexham.
People think that there are no windows.
That's not true either.
They were rare because the sunlight used to reflect
onto the slot machines. But nowadays they use tinted glass.
And there's another myth that casinos pumped in oxygen
in order to keep you awake. Incredible fire hazard.
Terrible idea. Yeah.
I've never placed a bet.
What? Ever, on anything.
I don't really practise Islam any more. I drink, I eat bacon,
but I've just not been able to do the gambling thing just yet,
and I feel like I would really enjoy it.
OK. I'm going to give you £100 if you get the next question right.
OK. You want to take the bet?
Yeah, I'll take the bet. OK. This is my first bet!
You've got to give me 200 if you get it wrong.
Ooooh!
Who thinks I should go for it?
CHEERING
You enablers!
Are you going to take the bet?
Yeah. Go on, then, why not?
CHEERING
Oh, can we shake on it?
Can we shake?
OK.
Ready? No.
Why is the dice game called craps?
Cos it makes you shit yourself.
Congratulations, Eshaan, you've just won £100. Yeah!
As far as we know, it probably comes from crapaud,
which is French for toad.
Because you used to have to sort of bend down when you were playing.
He was never going to get that. You've absolutely robbed him. No.
I'd have given you five. I got hustled!
You got hustled by the house.
I got hustled by the house. Yeah.
Unbelievable. As it's your first bet,
I'm not going to make you pay out. But you always, always remember
that you owe me.
I'll never forget.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
It's one of the oldest games in casino history.
Probably began in the 12th century.
You get it documented in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Look at that guy on the left.
He's perving up that second woman.
Yeah. Yeah, he is.
Look at his face.
That's terrifying.
No, I really enjoy it.
What I do is I work out how much money would I be willing
to throw away? And that's all.
You don't pay any more than that.
Oh, that's pointless. Is it?
Yeah, I think if you're going to gamble,
be prepared to lose your house or else there's no point.
Yeah. I went to a casino once. Yeah.
And people were going, "Oh, put £5 on this."
I wanted to put my car on it or something, you know.
One kidney. Yeah.
Now, let's plunge deeper into the world of vice.
Who or what is about as useful as a cow's fifth teat?
My third nipple.
Your two nipples are useless, as well.
Are they? ARE they?
What? Oh!
What have I... What am I supposed to have been using them for?
How do YOU know what the weather's like before you look out the window?
Is this like when I realised
I haven't been paying tax for three years, as well?
Where do you hang your keys? What is wrong with you?
Why is that such a sexy shot of a cow?
There's no way the Pope's allowing a statue of that.
No, that's so true. So it's a quote.
Somebody said this was about as useful as a cow's fifth teat.
It's a job.
It's a job in the United States.
President.
So... Vice President.
Yes.
Ah. The point goes to Alan. Absolutely right.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
There's a long history of the Vice Presidents despising their own jobs.
It was considered such a minor role that they weren't even included
in presidential cabinet meetings until 1919.
The phrase is how the job was described by Harry S Truman
when he was offered it by President Roosevelt.
Here's the thing, though.
So Truman did eventually accept.
He was only Vice President for 82 days, when Roosevelt died
and he took over.
So Truman went from senator to Vice President to President
to authorising, if you recall, the dropping of the atomic bomb
in just under seven months.
I mean, it's the most astonishing career trajectory.
So the important element of the job
is that if the...if the President pegs it, you take over.
Yeah, you're the one just waiting for the guy to drop.
And some people just didn't do it because they thought
it wasn't a significant office. And maybe they should have done so.
Senator Daniel Webster, as a good example -
he was offered the role of Vice President twice -
William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor -
and he turned it down each time.
He allegedly said, "I do not propose to be buried
"until I am really dead and in my coffin."
He ran for presidency three times, and if he had just accepted
the vice presidency, he would have become President because both
those Presidents died in office.
Even the very first Vice President, who was John Adams, said,
"It was the most insignificant office
"that ever the invention of man contrived,
"or his imagination conceived, as can do neither good nor evil."
Does it pay well? So it's a really good question.
So the Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson -
so we're talking 1837 to 1841 under President Martin Van Buren -
he had so little money that, halfway through the term,
he went back to his home in Kentucky
and opened a tavern and spa.
Oh!
I know! Like the kebab shop and the barber's.
Yes, yes!
Yeah. I rather like this guy.
He proposed that the Senate fund a plan
to explore the centre of the Earth.
I just think, why not?!
It involved explorers travelling to the North Pole -
with reindeer, obviously, and sleigh -
and then entering a passageway to go down into the Earth...
He thought there was a door there, did he?
I don't know what he thought. 23 senators supported the proposal.
There are a few successes, we have to say -
not all the Vice Presidents were not a success.
Charles Dawes, he was Vice President under Calvin Coolidge.
So he's the one on the right. Calvin Coolidge on the left.
Charles Dawes not only won a Nobel Peace Prize,
he also wrote a number-one hit single. Oh!
Calvin Coolidge is one of my favourite Presidents of all time.
His favourite thing to do in the Oval Office was to ring
the emergency button and then hide from the Secret Service.
That's great! Yeah.
I used to watch The West Wing, and on The West Wing,
the Vice President wasn't allowed to do anything, and if he made
any speeches or said anything at all, he had to clear it
with the President's office.
I think it is that - I think it is
very much under the tight control of the Oval Office.
Calvin Coolidge, I don't know if he would have complained
because he was the most silent President of all time.
He was so taciturn, he was said to be able to be silent
in several languages.
And when he died, the great wit Dorothy Parker said,
"How could they tell?"
But the Vice President on the right there, Charles Dawes,
he did write a number-one single.
It was called It's All In The Game, sung by Tommy Edwards -
the first black American to reach number one.
That is not Tommy Edwards. Who is that?
That's Bob Dylan, isn't it? It is Bob Dylan.
I was going to ask you the question,
who is the only other person to get a Nobel Prize?
Argh! Hey!
Bob Dylan.
Five points. Yes. Very well done.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Years and years and years ago,
I did meet one of the Vice Presidents -
I met Nelson Rockefeller,
and he was the Vice President under Gerald Ford.
And he died in 1979 of a heart attack.
So the initial reports were that he had died at his desk.
Mm, the speculation was that he'd probably had a heart attack
by having sex with his secretary.
Anyway, the rumour gave New York Magazine a chance to run the quip,
"Nelson thought he was coming, but he was going."
That's rough, that is.
I was very fond of Mike Pence.
He had an Instagram account entirely devoted to pictures
of his pet rabbit.
Which kind of rabbit? Yeah.
APPLAUSE
I might take £5 off your bet for that.
What's the virtue in having a vibrating toe?
Oh... Wow...
No.
Absolutely not. You don't need to waste any money on a rabbit.
Yeah. That's so true.
Meringue making?
I would put all my husband's socks on one by one,
and make holes in them with my vibrating toe,
and then deny all knowledge.
So we're in the animal world here.
Oh! It's going to be, it can crack eggs or it's a hunting device.
It can... Defence. It's a hunting device.
You're absolutely right. Let's have a look at these extraordinary frogs.
They're called holy cross frogs.
Oh, I like them. Or crucifix frogs.
Can you see the sort of shape of the crucifix?
Yeah, yeah. They look like hot cross buns.
Yeah, absolutely they do.
Hot cross frog. Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think hot and not cross,
I think in this instance, because what they're doing is called
amplexus, which is the mating position of frogs.
This is basically frog porn that we're looking at.
How does it work exactly?
So they live in boroughs in New South Wales and in Queensland
and so on. Live mostly underground.
Anyway, they practise something called pedal luring, OK?
And what it does is it involves vibrating a toe
backwards and forwards to mimic a small insect, and then they eat
the large insect that has been tricked into nibbling their toe,
thinking it was a tasty morsel.
So look at the toe there, it's...
And so what happens is a large insect thinks that's a small insect,
is attracted to the toe.
I don't know how they miss the frog.
I don't know how they go...
But apparently it works, cos he looks well fed.
We have to credit the Australian Museum in Sydney for that footage.
Quite right.
But the really extraordinary thing about them is not necessarily
the pedal luring, which I think in itself is amazing,
they give off this gluey substance from their skin.
So first of all, it makes small insects stick to them,
and then they can basically take off that layer of skin and eat that,
bugs and all, a bit like the toppings on a pizza.
It's a little bit like that. So...
GROANING Ugh!
I'm not standing up for the crucifix frog here. But it helps
males and females stick together, so during amplexus
it prevents the male from...
..sliding off. I don't know what...
It's not my area, but it...
APPLAUSE
..means sex apparently can last for hours, which why wouldn't it?
And... Because it's boring.
Oh, I'm definitely going to get you a different rabbit. Um...
I just ca... ALAN LAUGHS
I know how much you like chainsaws,
and now I don't know what this rabbit...
Some sort of petrol-driven sex toy is going to end up in Dulwich.
IMITATES CHAINSAW
Now you mention it...
I know... I know a Turkish guy
who can get you a spinning one if you like.
I'd rather have a kebab.
It may deter predators because they get confused by it -
it has a rather strange texture and may make them...
Oh, I'll bet it DOES deter predators.
Surely it makes it very difficult to escape if you're glued
inside another one.
Yeah, I imagine that that's not a good moment to be interrupted.
I would... I would think so.
There's no other kind of amphibian that creates this kind of glue.
There are lots that eat their own skin.
You remember I said about the pizza toppings? Dermatophagy.
But you do find something called maternal dermatophagy -
basically, the mother keeps growing layers of skin
specifically for her children to scrape off and eat.
MURMURING AND GROANING
So there was a mix of "ahh" and "eurgh".
Just kind of went both ways.
There are some amazing creatures in Australia.
Some, unfortunately, are now extinct.
The gastric-brooding frog.
This is one of the most unusual things
that I have ever seen in my life.
They haven't been seen in the wild since 1981.
So the female frog ingested their own egg,
which they later regurgitated
as a fully formed froglet.
OK? Oh, look at it! Oh, wow!
Oh, yes, "wow"!
Russian doll of a frog. Yes!
So they secrete a substance which forms a sort of jelly
around the eggs while they're in the guts,
and prevents the stomach acid from harming them.
It's nice to see the Microsoft Office paperclip has got a new job.
Can I just say that this image is thanks
to the late Professor Mike Tyler's wife, Ella?
Thank you. APPLAUSE
Also in Australia, red triangle slugs.
Right? They... Oh, here we go. Yeah. So... Look at that!
It's almost like a little heart on the back. Yeah.
Red shape. Evolution's just given up with that one, hasn't it?
Well... Pff. Oh... I don't know.
It looks like a tattoo on my penis, actually.
Did you just say "it looks like the tattoo on my penis"?
Yeah. OK.
Do you not care about being in the edit of this at ALL?
So they give off a defensive glue, but they use it against frogs.
And this is really clever. Against frogs?
Against frogs. So they give off this glue.
The frog sticks to the branch and the slug goes off.
The slug... Really slowly. "Heh-heh-heh!
"Haha-haha!"
And then the frog will get eaten by a bird or something.
What eats slugs?
I mean... That's a good question.
We've got loads in our garden.
Do you know what the best thing is? Beer. Beer?
Then you forget you've got them. Yeah!
If you bury a small glass of beer in the ground,
then they will crawl along and fall into the beer.
Well, what they do, though, Sandi, what they do is
they congregate on top of the recycling bin.
I mean, it's middle-class hell.
LAUGHTER It really...
Right, and back to vice again.
What is your opinion on erotic landscape gardening?
What do we think? Vile or "vonderful"?
I think it's sort of like it's...
Erotic landscape gardening at the moment
is quite tasteful, isn't it?
Because the only people who can afford gardens
are in their 70s.
Are you aware of the concept?
I've got a search history.
Oh, I see. I didn't even know it existed as a thing.
Yes. Is it? I thought it was like trimming your pubic...
..bush.
Bush. Well, it...
No, not, no, OK. Wait.
LAUGHTER
So it's not your personal bush, darling.
Oh! It's cutting hedges into the shape of boobs. Right.
I see. Oh, did you think it was on yourself?
Yeah. Because, like, I mean, too much...
Gardening?
18th-century Britain,
there was an aristocratic craze for erotic landscape gardening.
So the most full-on example belonged to Sir Francis Dashwood,
who's just one of those characters from history...
LAUGHTER
You don't say! Isn't he great?
I love him! And, obviously, what did he do for a living?
Politician? Yeah. Yeah.
Famous for his debauched parties.
He had an estate at West Wickham, near Oxford.
He had breast-like hills, which were topped with pink flowers
that were like nipples.
He had a mound featuring an oval-shaped doorway
leading into a tunnel that was designed to resemble a vagina.
Oh. This is what I mean about it all being sort of tame and tasteful.
Wait till the younger generation can afford gardens.
You'll have bushes that look like ball gags. Yeah.
I don't even know what that is.
Eshaan, do you mind explaining? Yeah.
He added a giant golden ball to the top of the local church steeple,
and he used to use it as a viewing gallery to show guests his estate.
And the story goes that he took the vicar up there, and he arranged
for all the fountains in the garden to burst into life
in each of the garden's erogenous zones.
Apparently the vicar needed a stiff drink afterwards.
So is he the only one, or...? No, no.
And women, too, darling.
So there's a rather marvellous woman who I think has sort of
been slightly forgotten, who was the artist called Mary Delany.
So she was married twice to men, very likely that she had quite a lot
of sexual relationships with women, as well,
although that's not something that was written down.
But she designed gardens with a vulva-like grotto.
She would organise sessions in the grotto
with her female companions.
The most interesting thing - and this is now in the British Museum -
is this huge collection called the Flora Delanica.
So behind, that looks like a watercolour,
behind the picture of her,
these are actually all made of tissue paper.
It's what used to be called decoupage,
she called them her paper mosaics.
She didn't start until she was 72.
She carried on doing them until she was 88
and her eyesight failed. But look at the detail of them.
It looks like it's a painting, doesn't it?
Is this not a thing any more? Erotic landscape gardening?
Is it just a thing of the past?
Well, I'm not aware of it, but then I'm...
Well, they should bring it back. Yeah.
I want to see Chelsea Flower Show After Dark. Yeah. Mm! Yeah.
But there are some places which are sort of natural features.
There's a cave in Bulgaria - the Utroba Cave -
that's been associated with fertility since the Thracian period,
so more than 2,000 years ago. JO SCOFFS
ESHAAN LAUGHS I know!
So the name of it means womb, right?
But apparently the shape of the entrance also casts
a phallic ray of light into the cave every day at midday.
So here's the thing we wanted to show you.
There's a vulva-like sculpture made
by an artist called Fernando de la Jara, right,
and it's in Germany. And in 2014, an American student...
There's the sculpture.
An American student got stuck in it.
Wow! Yeah.
And it took 22 firefighters to get him out.
And there is a photograph of it, but we were not allowed to show it.
OK? And I was so determined that you should see this,
that we have spent part of today as a team...
Doing a collage!
Please admire.
Brilliant. Yeah.
We're very proud.
APPLAUSE
Yes. Thank you.
Now it's time for a wanton destruction of the much-loved
pillars of knowledge that we call General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
What kind of animal is Ratty in the Wind In The Willows?
Oh, come on.
It's a rat.
KLAXON
No.
He's a vole. Yes!
Yes! Oh!
He's a water vole because...?
There is no such... No such thing as a water rat.
There's no such thing as a water rat. Absolutely right.
But rats can swim. They can.
But they are not water rats. They're just...having a laugh.
They just like swimming.
I think voles are lovely.
They're sort of charismatic little creatures, do you not think?
I once visited the island of Skomer off the coast of Wales -
it's a nature reserve, and it's quite isolated -
and on it there is a small creature called the Skomer vole
that actually we should all know about. There it is, it's very cute.
It eats bracken, which is carcinogenic,
and it has no ill effects on the vole.
And we now think, if we can work out why,
this may help us in the treatment of cancer. Oh, wow.
So we've got to learn to speak vole. Yes.
Yeah. And then ask it. Yeah.
Here is something that sounds like a vole.
What kind of animal is it?
Mole.
KLAXON
It's a golden mole.
It's not actually a mole.
And it is more closely related to the elephant,
which is a distant cousin. Oh!
Its closest relations are the shrew-like tenrec
that you find in Madagascar. OK. OK.
And the otter shrew, interestingly, which - neither of them are shrews.
I mean, some things are just badly named.
The golden mole has the best kidneys you're ever going to come across.
They can go their entire lives without drinking
a single drop of water. Wow! They're blind.
And their ears, because they're blind, are so sensitive,
they can distinguish between the footsteps of an ant
and termites walking above them.
How do they know that?
They asked them. Yeah. Yeah.
Is it an ant?! Oh, sorry.
Is it an ant?
"It's a termite."
Correct! Ratty is not a rat
and the golden mole is not a mole.
Right, you are climbing this mountain
and you have run out of water.
What should you do to rehydrate?
Do you drink your own urine?
No...you do not.
Do you drink someone else's urine?
No. So here is the thing.
It contains the waste products that your kidneys have already
got rid of, right? So you're not going to do all that well
because they can cause kidney failure. Is this a trick question?
Yeah. Yeah, course it is. Yes. Yes.
When snow falls... Yeah. ..it gathers within it
all of the crap in the air,
so isn't necessarily good for you.
That's all I know about it.
And all the flakes are different.
Unlike cornflakes.
So are you saying...? So are you...? Many of which are the same.
So are you saying to eat snow or not eat snow?
I wouldn't dream of it. Wouldn't dream of eating snow. OK.
It is a really bad idea to eat snow.
So it's going to dehydrate you even more
because of the additional energy expenditure.
You're trying to keep your internal organs warm.
If you put a whole lot of cold stuff inside you, that's not
really going to help you.
So the safest thing to do is to find some way to melt the snow before.
Melt it and drink it.
When I was eight, I climbed up Snowdon with my dad... Aw!
..and it was, like, a really hot day.
And I was sensible at eight and he wasn't, cos I said,
"Should we take some water with us?" And he went, "No, it's fine,
"there'll be a cafe at the top." And...
LAUGHTER Anyway, we got to the top,
there WAS a cafe, but it was shut.
Aw! I think that's when I started to realise
my dad was a bit of a knob.
Did you get the train back down again?
I don't think there was a train in those days.
My dad made us walk up that and we got the train.
Yeah. "There's a train?!"
Yeah. "Can we get the train down?" "No, we can't get the train down
"because the car's on the other side of the mountain."
"Oh, fuck me."
I don't know how well you're going to do with this question, Alan.
If you are starving, can you cut off and eat your own leg?
Ooh! Yes.
You'd have to be careful not to bleed to death.
Yeah.
You cauterise the wound, Jo.
Yeah, cos you'd have... No.
You'd have some equipment with you.
Yeah. Is there a...? Do you have one of those portable barbecues
with you, at least? Well, in that case,
you could just melt some snow and not bother with the leg,
I think would be the thing.
But, I mean, I imagine the initial shock, the risk of infection -
none of it's a good idea. Although I do like this question.
If you ate your own leg, would you weigh the same afterwards?
LAUGHTER
Oh! Yes.
Until you go to the toilet. Yeah. Yeah.
And then the foot comes out your arse. Yeah.
What a weird day that was.
And the foot's going...
I was hopping around on my bum.
Wouldn't it be nice to be happy all the time?
Argh! Yes.
KLAXON
Yeah. Why do you think yes?
No, I think probably it wouldn't
because you wouldn't have any friends, would you?
Happy people are so annoying.
Yeah.
You won't feel happy if you're happy all the time.
Yeah. You won't feel the highs, man. That's exactly right.
You need the lows to feel the highs, right?
Yeah. Yass, Queen!
WHOOPING AND APPLAUSE
You need to have some negative feelings.
Happier people do less well in negotiation.
You've got to feel a bit of anger when you're trying
to negotiate with people.
It's also a hallmark of being a psychopath,
if you're just happy the whole time.
There was a guy, a French Tibetan monk, in 2012 -
he's called Matthieu Ricard -
he's a close adviser of the Dalai Lama, and he was named
the world's happiest man - there he is -
by researchers at the University of Wisconsin.
And they scanned his brain and he was upset by this.
He said he is usually happy, but he has been unhappy,
like the time his friend threw flour on his laptop.
I mean, that would do it to you, wouldn't it?
Yeah. My niece once poured undiluted Ribena on my laptop.
Ooh. That was rough. I lost, like...
Is she still with us?
So, now let's get a vicelike grip on the scores.
Entirely beyond saving,
with -24,
it's Alan. APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
In third place, with a sinful -7,
is Jo. APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
That's not bad, is it?
And our new patron saints of QI,
joint first with -4,
Rhys and Eshaan. APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Great work. We did it.
That's all from Eshaan, Rhys, Jo, Alan and me,
and to sum up our own twin themes tonight, here's Elizabeth Taylor.
"The problem with people who have no vices is that, generally,
"you can be pretty sure they're going to have
"some pretty annoying virtues." Thank you and goodnight.
APPLAUSE