Well, an unusual episode of QI. First of all, it's a little bit quiet in here and that's
because there is no audience. There is no audience because we are shooting this in
March 2020 during the coronavirus outbreak. We don't know how that's all going to turn
out. So for safety's sake, we don't have 600 people in here. And I can't give a
hug as I usually do to the entire crew. Joining me tonight in a show, well, it's
all about rubbish. Ah, kicking up a sting, Johnny Vegas. Down in the dump, it's Bridget
Christie. There's something fishy about Holly Walsh. Just going to put it out there.
And we're not sure what it is, but we found it down the back of the fridge.
It's Alan Davis. And their buzzers actually serve a purpose, OK? They're
literally repulsive. They are used to repel something. And I want you to tell
me what they repel. So let's start with Johnny.
What do you reckon? What does it sound like? An angry boar driven away. Yes, it's
OK. But it's got snorting. It's got snorting. Is that another animal? Is there
more than one animal? There is more than one animal. So you get a deer
snorting, OK, followed by a dog barking. And it is something that the
Japan Railway Technical Research Institute came up with. They were
trying to prevent collisions with deer. So they do the deer snorting to
attract the attention of the deer and then the dog barking to make them go
away. It was to stop them getting hit by a truck. While they're going along,
they're doing that. Yeah. The bullet train's at 200 miles an hour.
There's a deer going, what the hell was that? It's optimistic. I mean,
a cyclist, maybe. Yeah. But who came up with that? Who went into work
and went, I've had a hell of an idea. Yeah. Just going to put it out
there. I think it's somebody who's done a bit too much sarky, don't
you? Yeah. Are you allowed to drink and drive trains? No. What's the
deal with that? No. Oh, right, it was the person who invented it?
Yeah. Did you think just because it's on a track, it's OK to carry
on having alcohol? Yeah, I was wondering. It's really not. OK,
fine. Yeah. You could have told me this two years ago. Anyway.
You're not allowed to fly planes either. Johnny, what about...
No, but with the crisis right now, I'm having a go.
I want to drive a train. OK, I want to drive one of those big
articulated lorries. You know the ones where you have to get a
ladder? Have you ever been to Diggerland? No. It's incredible.
So basically, it's an entire theme park... Yeah. ..based around...
It's all diggers. ..JCB diggers and whatnot. OK. They let
two-year-olds drive them, and I'm not even joking. I had to go
to court a long time ago for speeding in my car, and while I
was in the court, there were two other people up before me, and
they said, you are charged with taking a bus. And I thought
they'd bunk the fare, but what they'd done was they'd taken a
bus. And then they talked in a very serious, courtly way about
the route they took through the town and the carnage they wrought,
and they really had to try and stand there and keep a straight
face, and obviously the best night of their lives was being
recounted. We got drunk, me and my friend, and climbed under a
covered carousel and slept on the top deck of obviously a
miniature bus. How did you get in it? The tiny little opening?
I didn't go up the stairs. It was so small, I just climbed
up the stairs and I was like, I've done it like Godzilla. Were
you woken by them testing it in the morning? The guy was
telling us how much trouble we was in, and you're going, for
what? Sleeping on a tiny bus. And somehow wishing we were
bigger. Did you get in trouble? No, we just walked up and
left him. I love that, you have also taken a bus. Well, why
don't you pull the tiny police car off and follow us? The best
chaser ever. Go round and round. Fly away in the little
helicopter. I love a merry-go-round, I'd like to sleep on
a merry-go-round. It's great. I've never been more at
peace. People sleep on roller coasters when they're
breaking records. Do they? I've heard of that, they go,
how many days can you last on a roller coaster? And you're
allowed off five minutes every hour to have a... No, you
should have to do all your ablutions off the side of it,
that should be part of it. Well, that's a health safety
issue for miles around. No, girls are not going to stick
their bottoms out over the edge of a roller coaster. Well,
we've all done a motorway moonie. We haven't all done a
motorway moonie, Holly Walsh. Have you done a motorway
moonie? No. Please say no. You're backing me up here. It
was in France, it wasn't here. Oh, that doesn't count. An
auto-route bootie. I thought no-one will know it's me. No, I
was on my own, I wouldn't take my trousers off in front
of... You were on your own? Were you driving? How does that
work? I'm a very talented driver. I was being taught how
to drive a tractor once by a farmer. Right. And I hadn't
realised that the farmer had jumped off. How could you not
notice? There's not doors or anything. He was stood on the
outside and we were talking and I thought, oh, he's been quiet
for a while. He'd fallen to his death. We had gone quite a
long way and he hadn't yet taught me how to stop it. Oh,
my God, what happened? I had to crash into a barn. You began
this story by saying, I have many skills, and then the
first thing you say is you drove a tractor into a barn.
Johnny, can you play us the buzzer again so we can hear
it now that we know what it is? I'm not getting the dog
woof. Oh, there it is. Yeah. I think of all the things on it,
the dog woof was the clearest, if I'm honest. Does it sound like
there's a car driving away in the middle of it? Yeah. That's
a deer reversing. It's a deer doing an impression of a
reversing car. No, it's her farmer jumping off. Right,
let's move on. Bridget, let's have a listen to yours.
That's a swarm. It's a swarm of bees. Why should we have
a sound? What would it repel buzzing bees? Wasps. Gang
warfare. You think, oh, like shark to the jet in West Side
Story, just like that. I do think it might be not a human.
Yes, it's something huge. Elephants. Elephants is exactly
right. It's elephants, yeah. Elephants are terrified of bees.
You get a point. Let me up this moment. Do the bees go up
the trunks? Yes, that's a problem. They can't penetrate
the thick hides, but they can go... Up the nose, up the
arse. Up the arse? I would imagine. But elephants don't
have huge arse holes, do they? Let's not focus on the
arse holes. Can't they blow them out? So in Kenya and in
Tanzania, some farmers have a problem with elephants
trampling on the agriculture. They enclose the land with
beehive fences, so they've got hives doshed all the way
along them. And the elephants try to enter the fields, it
bumps into a wire, it disturbs the bees and they swarm. And
elephants are so bee-averse that they make a specific
rumbling sound to warn each other that bees are in the
area. Wow. Yeah. Have you ever seen the bees in that
documentary that got a taste for beer and broke into the
brewery? Yes. I saw a deer that ate some fermented apples
and fell into a tree. Oh, the monkeys want to eat the
fermented fruit and they just go... And you shouldn't find
that funny, should you? Honestly, a Labrador and a bowl
of champagne is hilarious. If flies or anything ever fly into
my alcoholic drink, I always sober them up. You drop them in
a coffee. I don't know why everyone's laughing. A humane
thing to do. What do you do? I always get them a series
of bitumen to see. A barocca. Dry them out and give them a
back story. Holly, let's have a listen to your one. It's your
best single, I think. Thank you. What would... I mean, it
repels me. Stan at the Comedy Store, he used to be the
stage manager there, he would play Ace of Spades by
Motorhead at the end of the late show at 2am. To just get
rid of everyone? Get rid of everyone. Yeah. Just sort them
out. It worked. That would send me out. Didn't they play
heavy metal outside General Noriega's house when they
were trying to force him to come out? Yes, they did. But
that would certainly send me out, but it's something even
smaller than me. It's cricket. Oh. So there was a tiny
community in Nevada, and the crickets used to invade this
community place called Tuscarora every year, destroying the
crops and swarming houses and clogging out the roads and
so on. So in 2006, they discovered if they played
Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones at full volume, it
stopped the insects in their tracks. Have they thought of
growing sweet corn instead? Do you think the crickets
wouldn't like that? Good point. Bridget knows some farmers or
knew some farmers until they died. You knew a farmer? The one
who fell off the tractor. Was he OK, by the way? Oh, he was
just, like, waving from two fields away. Did you hurt
yourself when you went into the barn, or did you come out
the other side with a cow on the run? It was the worst three
days of my life. The worst three days? You were driving
it round for three days? Three days you couldn't find the
brakes! Go round and round that fathered town. No, I thought
there was more to life than working in an office, so I
thought, oh, I'll be a farmer. Just drive for three days? No,
that was the job on the second day, but I'd already had to
milk cows with my hand and... Did you do the third day for
being a farmer? I said, I'm not cut out for this, I'm
really sorry. Say one that made you milk a cow. They
thought you had to drive but not stop a tractor. What was
the third one? They were like, there's a haystack,
somewhere in it's a needle. I've just remembered the
worst thing. There's more? Yeah, when I was milking the
cows, they know from your touch if you're new. You're in
like a swimming pool that doesn't have water in it, they
don't make you swim and milk them at the same time. It's
just so you're on the level with their feet and you're
here going, oh, come on. And the cow's tail went up and
it pooed all over me because it was new. Why were you
behind it? No, I was underneath it. No, but listen,
that's not the worst bit. That's still not the worst bit.
The worst bit is that the farmer made me stand in the
courtyard while he hosed me down with a hose. That's
abuse. That's what I thought. Oh, I'm sure it's all
off now. Alan. Yeah. What is your buzzer?
When you're in bed and you can hear a mosquito in the
room. That is exactly it. It is a mosquito alarm. Does that
warn you that there's a mosquito nearby? Actually, we
did it so that you can hear it here in the studio. But
when it is at the correct level, it can only be heard by
young people. Can we play that? Only be heard by young
people. I've seen this in one of those silent shows at
Edinburgh and they go higher frequencies and they say sit
down if you can't hear it. So gradually we also sit down
and then there's a few children left and then they
say, right, sit down and then the last one they do and
they're not playing anything. The bit of the ear that
detects higher frequencies. So the bone in the inner ear is
susceptible to wear and tear and it gets worse as you get
older. So this noise can really only be heard by very
very young people. Now we did it so you could hear it but
have a listen to what it ought to sound like. Anybody?
Yes, I can hear it. It's playing now. Can anybody hear
it? Okay, over in the corner we have young Anna. Can
you hear it? I can hear it, yes. Wow, we hate you. How
old are you Anna? 23. Don't play it backwards because it
just says killing your parents. It's going on a loop at
the moment and can you hear that? Yeah, I can absolutely
hear that. Wow, it is the weirdest thing. It was invented
by a guy called Howard Stapleton in 2005. He used
his children as test subjects. Does this stop like youths
hanging out outside Burger King? Yeah, so Burger King,
7-Eleven, Transport for London have used it. They
also find now that classical music or folk music is
another thing that makes young people. Well, I think
folk music probably keeps most people away doesn't it? I
love folk music. We've changed your buzzer to something a
bit better. Let's see if it makes Anna go away. Oh yeah,
she's yeah, she's off. She's leaving. It was not a cool
thing. At Brixton station, they were playing classical
music, but it was to like stop people from getting
violent and aggressive, I guess. Where? Brixton. I got
my teeth knocked out outside Brixton Tube station. What?
It was an angry farmer who'd been searching for you. I
came out of the tube and a man said, oh, give us all your
money and I said, oh, I haven't gotten it and then. He punched
you. Yes. I'm glad I've known you in the better years
because, you know, before, it's not gone well for you.
Your agricultural years, your Brixton years. How old were
you when things started to go right? And how long do you
think that will last?
From repelling sounds to repulsive tastes, what's
brown and sicky? Oh, the taste of vomit. Well, it is
something that has a chemical in it that is also in vomit.
It's American chocolate. It is American chocolate. You're
absolutely right. So if you buy American chocolate, it
tastes, I don't know, more tangy and bitter than European
chocolate. Do you know why? Yes, milk. They use UHT,
don't they, or dried milk or something. The chocolate
factories in the United States are further from the
dairy farms than in the UK, obviously, so you've got to
remove the milk for a bit longer. And so they have a
chemical process which extends the shelf life. And it
produces something called butyric acid. And that is the
same stuff that you get in Parmesan cheese. Yes. And in
vomit. So even chocolate brands that don't use that
process sometimes add that acid anyway, just to mimic
the taste because the Americans have got used to
it. So if you think actually it tastes a bit
sicky, it's because it's the same acid as in sick. But
the American chocolate has a lot more sugar in it and it
has fewer cocoa solids. 20% in the UK, 10% in American
chocolate. That's the fact coming to the surface. You know
when you get chocolate and it goes white if you leave it
too long? When you find it in the back of a drawer.
Yeah. It's the fat comes out of it, it rises out of it.
I was doing a play once in the West End, and this is
in 2003, I think, and an elderly lady came to see it,
I think, four times. And on the fourth time she gave me
a Kit Kat. I said, oh, that's very kind. And the
next day, I ate the Kit Kat and it tasted exactly like
an old lady's cupboard. It's not a euphemism.
And I looked on the cell by day and it was 1998. It was a
five-year-old Kit Kat. I mean, it may have been more.
I don't know how long they last. She bought it five years
ago and thought, I'm saving this. She found it in a
cupboard and thought, I'll give that to that bloke who's
boring me shitless every night at that play.
She saw it and it caught her eye. She thought, I know
who'll like that. Alan, I have to build up his trust over
a number of years and then I'll be able to give it to him and
he'll definitely eat it because he'll trust me. But the
odour of the old lady's cupboard was unmistakable.
I think we're being very mean. OK. You'll be an old
lady-ish soon. We'll all be saying that you smell like
that, but they don't at the moment. You smell of
old lady's cupboard. I've never been less insulted
in my life. Hershey's have a history of making
chocolate with a bitter taste. In the 1930s, they
developed a special bar. It was for the American
military and they wanted it to be deliberately
unappealing. Why do you think they might do that?
Wartime brides. They made shit chocolate and stockings
with holes in them. In order to lure the British brides?
No, to keep them away from American soldiers.
OK. Why would they make deliberately unpleasant
chocolate? Have bromide in it. No, it's meant as an
emergency ration, so you don't want the soldiers going,
oh, lovely chocolate and eating it. I was in CCF at
school and we had a combined cadet forces. I was in that as
well. Which were you? Army. I was RAF. Did you say that like it
was better? That's what they were like. They had this thing
called 24-hour ration kit which we had to have. We did
do like an overnight, you know... Manoeuvre. Yeah, in like
Iraq or something. We did RAF Odeon. Did you? Yeah. You
did it in the cinema? No, Odeon. Oh, sorry, I thought you said
Odeon. I did too. A whole different thing.
And we had those things and they were supposed to sort of
have enough calories in it to last you 24 hours and they
packed into a tiny thing and they did exactly that. It meant
you didn't want to eat the chocolate first. No, you
didn't want to eat it. It's called a derash and it was
also known as a Logan bar. It was named after the colonel
who first ordered their manufacturer. So it was about
high energy content, could withstand high temperatures, but
frankly, barely any better than a boiled potato. Oh, a boiled
potato. A cold boiled potato. Any temperature. Yeah. No, not
one that would burn your mouth. But there it is, look,
and in the... In the Second World War, they upgraded it
to be poison gas proof and so they packaged every single
bar in sort of thick heat-sealed cellophane. Then
they inserted it into a cardboard carton that was glued
shut. They covered it in a wax carton that was then
placed in a master carton and all of this was put in a wooden
case and nailed shut and kept with steel strips around it and
it was often thrown away unopened because the soldiers
hated it so much. They used to call it Hitler's secret
weapon because it made them ill. There's definitely been
nights I would just have eaten it. It wrought havoc with
their teeth and intestines. I know, but even then there's
been nights where I've just been craving chocolate so
badly. I'd have just eaten it. Just gone for it anyway.
Yeah. American chocolate tastes like sick, but don't
worry, it's supposed to. From rubbish tastes to tasty rubbish.
Why did the Romans put their dinner on the floor?
Is it because they were thinking, what would archaeologists
like to dig up in the future? Did they stamp it in because
they wanted really cheap tiling? Well, they did kind of
stamp it in. What they did was they decorated dining room
floors with a mosaic of fake litter. It's kind of an
early humble brag, if you like. It's called
acerotis oikros or unswept room. Basically, the ancient
Greeks did it first and it's discarded leftovers of opulent
feasts so that it looks as though you are incredibly
wealthy. So you'd have grapes and chicken legs and seafood
shells and stray nuts and olive pits and all that kind of
things. That's so weird. So that's basically like their
equivalent of like topstiles flooring was just
putting loads of rubbish on the floor. Well, if you were
rich, so you're saying I'm so rich I could have thrown
all of this stuff on the floor. It's like the
equivalent of getting gold teeth for no reason. I've got a
gold tooth. Do you want to see it? Yeah. Oh, that's very
impressive. If you had it back there wouldn't you have a
little window put in there? So everyone could see it.
When you walk past gas converters there's your jaw drawn to it.
Let's go back to Raymond Ravish. I did see a lad in gas
converters once. He couldn't have been 15 and he
had a sewing machine and they were, what's your reason for
selling it? And he went, unwanted gift.
Right, we're going to go to Rome. So we've already covered the fact
that Rome's built not on seven hills but on eight. We did
that in a previous series. But that's not counting Monte
Testacchio which is a fantastic. So look at this
hill. This hill is 150 foot height in the centre of Rome.
It is actually an ancient rubbish dump. It's made from an
estimated 25 million shards of amphorae. So all the stuff that
they kept oil and wine in. Why do you think they dumped it?
Why would you not use it over and over again? Plague?
No, it would get spoiled if you used it too often is the
problem. And so they had to get rid of them. They
accumulated over three centuries. Well earthen was porous.
Yes, so it can't last forever and it smells. They just used
one time and then got rid of. That was the Roman
equivalent of Starbucks car park. Yeah. When they're empty
they weigh about 30 kilograms. When they're full they weigh
more than 100 kilograms. So somewhat heavier than the
average British adult male. They didn't actually dump them in
the sense that they didn't just chuck them there. There were
people in charge. They were carefully smashed and stacked
and some of them were left holes. They were like pillars
because they didn't want to have landslides. And then they
would sprinkle lime on top of them because the rancid oil
had a terrible smell. And it's an astonishing hill. There's
even a restaurant dug into the side of it. There are caves dug
into the side of it. But it's 25 million shards. Years ago I
did a film with Roger Law, you know, that created Spitting
Image. And in one scene I had to smash £25,000 worth of
ceramics donated by contemporary ceramicists. So they were
genuine. They're not props? No, no, no. They were all
donated pieces. But there was a couple there. And I'd love
to see what they've done with them. Somebody somewhere
will have the most amazing mosaic. Oh, wouldn't it be
fantastic? Of contemporary ceramics. Oh, wow. Yeah. Because
it would be like the park, like Gaudi Park in Barcelona,
which is all made of bits and pieces. Have you ever
listened to The Butterfly Effect by Jim Watson? And he
talks about people with really specific fetishes. So like
one of them was that they sent their stamp collection to
two porn stars and they just had to burn it on camera. It
was like a 40-year collection of stamps. And that's all
he wanted. But that was his fetish. And I was just
thinking, I think that's my fetish, watching you smash up
some vases. How does anybody discover that that's their
particular fetish? Yeah, weird, isn't it? There's everything
online. I was looking something up about something
and... Yeah. Traxar and barn. Yeah. I think it was cheese
and teeth or something. No, I came back from Thailand
where I had discovered a vegetable that I liked very
much called Morning Glory. And I thought, I wonder where
you buy that in London? Well, turns out all over. My ex used
to... Well, he asked me to go cross-eyed just before he
ejaculated. Do you know... What, for a target? In the world of
too much information, Bridget, that's right up there on my
list. Were you on the phone at the time? I didn't see him
after that. Well, not if your eyes are like that. I
didn't see anything. He just wanted to pretend he had a twin.
How did he get that fetish? I don't know. He just went, oh,
go cross-eyed, William, love. Oh, can you imagine him falling
in love online and meeting a cyclops? He'd be gutted.
We're talking rubbish and a similar discovery was made in
1897 by these two rather marvellous Victorian
archaeologists, Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt. I
mean, how can't they look? They're rather marvellous,
aren't they? David Beckham on the right. Not remotely cross-eyed.
They do nothing. They're great. They dug into a sand dune
about 120 miles south of modern Cairo and they found this
astonishing rubbish dump, more than half a million fragments
of papyrus generated by an ancient city called Oxyrenchus
and it's an incredible collection. The manuscripts date
from roughly the third century BC through to the Muslim conquest
of Egypt in 640 AD. All the fragments were taken to the
Ashmolean in Oxford. I mean, obviously that's the right
place for them. Clearly there. Culturally appropriate. But
for more than 100 years they were trying to analyse them
and they managed to transcribe just 5,000 and then in 2014
the whole collection was made digital and algorithms were
used to cross-reference and so on and since then more than
200,000 fragments have been translated. What date were they?
From the third century BC right through to 640 AD. So it was
like a library of ancient manuscripts. Well, it's
everything. There's a third century doctor's report but
there's also literature. They discovered an extract from
Andromeda, The Lost Tragedy by Euripides. I mean, it's
it is the most fabulous and astonishing collection but
effectively it was a rubbish dump and it had all been
thrown away. It does look like an audit and a third
century attempt at shredding. Yeah, it's yes, we're like
just we've done this. Let's get rid of it. Yeah. What's the
little square they've drawn? The three squares. I don't
know whether that's marginalia from the time or
it's a kitchen they're looking into building a side return.
Oh, yes, I can see that. Yeah, I love it. I think it's
so fascinating what else they can discover in there
because not even half of it has been analyzed yet. I
think it's amazing. Now for a question on recycling
material. Alan, what's the point of all this blue whale
shit? What they you can use it. It is vital to the
planet. Is it? Well, it's unbelievably important for
the entire ocean so they don't defecate at depth
because you wouldn't really, would you? Hang on, wouldn't
you? Get to the surface and do it. They do the long
really long stringy ones like a goldfish. 40 miles. Well,
this is this is actually whale poo right here. This is
what it looks like. Who has taken that photograph? I do
not. Well, the whale I presume and then Instagram. Just
out of shit.
Well, people do do that, don't they? Really? A friend of
mine told me Bridget does it. If you were a dietitian
you'd want a more solid stool. If I do two days on cider,
that's what I do. If I stick to me five a day. What cider? It's
a bit more compacted, isn't it? Yes. You take from that
sentence, what cider?
I once went to a swimming pool in Bracknell.
It was basically like with all the flumes and stuff like
that and me and my brother were in the tidal wave
going round and round and round and a turn followed us the
whole way and they couldn't get us out to get the turd out so
they turned it off and we just kept going. So you were chased
by a turn? Yeah, but because we were going round we were
quite small so we were in the current and the poo was
coming so when even when they turned it off you had to
wait for the current to die down and me and my brother
kept having to basically slow down and down and down then
they emptied the pool everyone had to get out. Where
was the person who had done the poo? Were they at the
well? Wales need to conserve oxygen so they shut down lots of
processes when they are down at depth and that includes
digestion and when they get to the surface they release what
can only be described as a fecal plume of a buoyant
excrement but it is incredibly nutrient rich. It's absolutely
full of iron. It's a concentration 10 million times
higher than the surrounding water and this acts as
fertilizer of phytoplankton which photosynthesizes and in
doing so it absorbs enormous amounts of CO2 and it
produces between half and 90 percent of the earth's
oxygen so most of the oxygen that we are breathing
is made by plankton and the plankton need
whale poo. Have we got enough blue whales? We don't have enough blue whales
the IMF has actually put a figure on them and one of the reasons
it's not just the poo that they accumulate carbon in their bodies
and when they die they sink down to the bottom of the ocean and they
take up to 33 tons of stored carbon with
them so that's the equivalent of 600 trees
photosynthesizing for an entire decade and that's locked up in the corpse on
the ocean bed for hundreds of years so the IMF did
this thing they had a look at how much are they worth to us
and each whale is worth about two million American dollars so the
current stock of whales is valued at a trillion US dollars but it's
so interesting how it works within the ecosystem
for each bowel movement they excrete about 200
they should really put it in a little bag it is enough to fill two bathtubs i
don't know it'd be quite a big bag also as they sink to the bottom they
feed almost everything that's in the ocean is there not an argument then
to like dispose of um human bodies that like that
what just chuck them in the sea take everyone who's died out to mariana
trench and just sink them let them be eaten by all the you know
whatever's right and then all the co2 we just
do all that yeah i don't know how we would sell this in the funeral parlor
on the corner of the high street as a as a plan
oh i'm up for it okay uh now for a different kind of repulsion
i want you to point please i'm going to throw this to you too
uh please can you point to the earth's magnetic north pole
on this globe tread carefully
it's not going to be the bit where you blow it up so the magnetic north
pole look we're going to get wrong for
trick sounds like a trick i'll tell you what i'm going to spin it you close
your eyes put your finger on it okay
you ready like okay up there
right oh i'm not pointing now now yeah still not right nowhere still not
right so let's have it back uh how about you
guys well now look has it because i know it can
yeah has it flipped no it's not on the bottom
well it might be but it hasn't flipped it hasn't
because magnetic north yeah can sometimes flip and be south for a
while what we do know is that uh it drifts
the magnetic pole it drifts well then her feeling up the thing was
the right well unless she's completely in the wrong part of the
globe you are right about drifting and
flipping but we are not talking about that i think it's slightly
off north the top of the globe as it were no is the answer slightly off
the bottom can we have it back so it has flipped uh no it's that we
refer to it as the wrong thing so if you think about it the earth is
basically one big magnet and that is why
compasses work so a compass is another
magnet and the earth and the compasses are attracted
to each other okay let us imagine that you have got two
magnets uh i've got the marked here so i've got two magnets marked north
and south okay if i take the north bit of this
magnet which bit of the magnet i'm just worried because your kitchen
cupboards are all flopping over now which bit of the magnet is it going to
be attracted to the opposite it's going to be south it's
going to be like that so that the north is attracted to the
south right uh it's the opposite ends of the
magnet which attract each other so if you've got the north end
of a compass which is a magnet which end of another magnet will it
point to oh it's got to the rubbish tip
we'll find that in a million years yeah just through the world in the
okay so just to finish
compasses are magnets their north end points to the Arctic so therefore
even though we call that end the north pole it must be
the magnetic south pole oh i get it yeah uh the very first person to
realize that the earth had a magnetic field was Elizabeth the first physician
a guy called William Gilbert he was a 16th century
scientist and at the time people believed that magnets had souls
he called it an astral magnetic mind uh for him it explained why the
earth rotated so the earth got too hot when she was in the sun
and then she needed to cool down and so she rotated but it's to do
a bit like a sunbathe turning over when they're too hot
or a don of kebab or a don of kebab exactly exactly that
when we talk about explorers like Scott and Amazon going to the poles they of
course depended on the earth's magnetic
field in order to navigate Amazon delivers all the way to the
north pole Amundsen oh Amundsen but yes they would
rolled Amundsen the Norwegian uh well he rather famously beat Scott to the
south pole oh right yes i didn't but he was supposed to be going to the
north pole at the time right it was in 1909 and news
reached him that the American Robert Peary had reached the north
pole and all of his funding and his the
loan of his ship was all tied to him going to the north pole but he didn't
want to be second so while he was at sea he turned the
ship around and sailed south and he what i like is he didn't tell the crew
his plan for over a month and nobody seemed to notice that they
were heading in the wrong direction and when they started getting
suspicious he said he was just taking a detour
on the way to the north pole but he did become the very first person
to get uh to the south pole uh right a question on a different
sort of attraction the romantic kind what
Danish trick gets English pulses racing this is a long time ago
so who were the Danes that first came to the UK
invaded Vikings okay so we're talking 11th century
and they seduced English women using the power of cleanliness
no yes they washed they washed the great washed met the great unwashed
yeah so when they came and you know they invaded and established the
they tended to come without women they married English women and this upset
the locals very much but according to a monk called John
of Wallingford the Danes cheated by washing this is a new idea
the Danes made themselves too acceptable to English women by their
elegant manners and their care of their person
they combed their hair daily and took a bath every Saturday and even
changed their clothes frequently by which means they undermined the
chastity of the wives which is a totally
different story to all the rape and pillage thing yes yeah no
uh so so there is a theory that all of that was written down by
Englishmen who'd had their wives taken that it was rape and pillage
and there is another theory that in fact they turned up unbelievably good
looking they just rode across the North Sea
had a bath and went on the pool yeah i i that guy
i mean he could pull me he's looking at his
i'd service a man you know have you gone what's that stuff you use it's
a little that was a very little gesture
i would service the man you would almost imperceptibly service the man
just a little bit under the arms please come on Jeff
sure ensure a life um but they did they did wash
and it was a sort of secret weapon so there are some experts who suggest
that we're not much better than the vikings
uh really uh in our washing habits they did a study in 2018 it was the
U.S. Center for Hygiene and Health in Boston and they claim that
modern day bath tubs i don't know whether you guys are
are bathers or showers um a hundred times as much bacteria in a
normal bath as in a rubbish bin apparently they recommend if you are
going to take a bath do it in a rubbish bin well
that or shower before and after i've had a water meter fitted so i just
swim it canal what did you just say he's had a water
meter fitted so now he just swims in the canal
i'm sorry i'm from gilford so why might why might a bath be good for
you even if it's full of bacteria i think it uh you get lighter in it
and it takes stress off your joints and it's almost like being in space but
for the shorter period it improves your circulation and it lowers
your blood pressure which is what you were trying to say isn't it johnny
no i was trying to say it's like being in space but thank you sandy
well this is good news for anybody who doesn't like exercise they've done
studies and people with depression it lifts your mood a bath more than
physical exercise as long as you don't put a toaster in there too
yeah don't do that now can you get these cans that you have beside you
ready for recycling please get them ready to put them in the recycling what
would you do i would normally crush mine okay
we were told years ago by eddie is hard to crush them there were specific
machines to crush yeah so since then there are newer
machines which have become more automated
um so they use the size and the shape of the object in order to
identify them so if you crush the can it might not realize what it is
and it might put it in the non-recycling
i don't think a lot of people know that we're like an information service
it really annoys me when recycling thing says not currently recyclable
as though it's like we wish it was but the science hasn't kept up too
much for it's not our fault but also the thing is
all of the recycling facilities vary throughout the country
so you do actually have to check with your borough the one where we
are currently recording had we crushed them we couldn't recycle them
it just really depends on what the item is so for example
uh i have here paper uh this receipt for the cans that we got so which bin
should these go in i mean i recycle cardboard shiny paper doesn't go in
and magazines that doesn't go in why paper because it's it's got a
the coating yeah about half of all receipts are non-recyclable
that's bonkers like that's a responsibility but people don't know
this though as well yeah but i think this should be like these are the 25
things we recycle and these are the things we don't recycle it's this and
if things like half one thing and half the other and i don't know i'm just
i it's not that i want to give up but i just feel like they're making
it very difficult it is very complicated these are printed on thermal paper
it's the stuff you used to get in the early fax machines so it's coated
in a kind of chemical and they cannot be recycled because you will
release the chemical into the atmosphere uh it's actually a sort of
weird stuff so it works by um the printing on it turns black when
it's exposed to heat that's the way it works so it only heats up the parts
that are written on if you take
sandek sandek you haven't asked if it's going anywhere nice on its
holidays no that's i should do sorry there you can see that it goes
completely black if you it's the chemicals that are are
doing that so don't recycle those but if you are struggling with your
recycling you're not sure put it in your neighbors and let them
solve it out uh time for a last rummage around the
bottom of the bag for the sniff of bin juice that we call
general ignorance fingers on buzzers please
uh name the last commercial flight to fly faster than the speed of sound
is it concord
so officially concord is the only supersonic commercial service that ever
existed but several flights have since then
flown faster than the speed of sound on average a flight from new york to
london takes six hours it's three and a half thousand
nautical miles um but you get this jet stream that pushes you
along so under normal conditions the speed of sand is 760 miles per hour
but it doesn't cause a sonic boom because couldn't afford it
no relative to the air that you are moving in you are traveling under the
speed of sound but if you are in a plane that's
being pushed by the jet stream you are traveling according to your
speed across the ground faster than the speed of sound it's
rather like a man on a train running so the man on the train uh appears
to the rest of us to maybe be doing 100 miles an hour
but in fact he's just running at a perfectly normal speed alan you've
been on the concord haven't you i have been on the concord yeah
you look a bit like a concord in profile what what was it like
that's a compliment unbelievable what it's a compliment yeah
i didn't say you look like a virgin pendolino you look like a great
piece of engineering from the despicable me film
uh new york to london the fastest ba concord flight in 1996 two hours 52
minutes and 59 seconds it hit a top speed of 1350
i used to fly over i used to play cricket in wandsworth
and they flew over wandsworth common and it was loud
but they weren't allowed to really turn the engines on till they'd cleared
why do you think it's spelled uh with an e which is the french version
is it because it was a medieval plane what like
oldie england oldie england no oldie plane the oldie concordie
the argument about whether to spell concord with an e caused an absolute
nationalist uproar in britain uh which rather
pre-echoed the brexit convulsions i'm surprised i know that people
thought concord mean in english it's an you know it's peace it's a
sort of concord i thought that was a i thought that was a french word anyway
concord is a french word it's spelt it without an e in english but it's the
way in which we spell it caused trouble uh the taury government in 1962 when
they made the first agreement said we'll spell it
concord without an e and then tony ben came in 1967 into government
and he said oh who cares we'll spell it with an e but it caused an
absolute uproar uh right look around you and point to a
symbol you can see on the set that tells you you can recycle
something alan pick one uh the one right in the middle of the
so that's a very common symbol uh the interlocking two green arrows it
doesn't mean packaging can be recycled or even uh it has ever been part of
the recycling process it means the manufacturer has made a financial
contribution to recovery and recycling of packaging in europe
but every time i see that i chuck it in the recycling yeah it doesn't mean
that what about that one yes the white arrow pointing to its tail it's
that means um the product is widely recycled by 75 percent
or more of local authorities what about that one and the three
folded arrows uh the product is theoretically recyclable
but there's no guarantee that your borough will take it
definitely you can't assume that it can go in the recycling
i mean it is really complicated it should it should just say this is
recite put this in the recycling bin don't yeah don't exactly uh we produce
in the uk over 44 000 metric tons of non-recycled waste
every single day and if you look at the rubbish that's on the set
around here this is the uk average for the amount produced by one
person per year at home so it's about 35 bin bags
worth uh 222 kilograms i mean this is obviously just household waste this
doesn't count as commercial or industrial waste that we
uh produce as a by-product of the things that we and the things that we
buy um this is my favorite rubbish list uh 2016 uh the waste clearance
company enviro waste compiled a list of the most
unusual things it had discovered in waste in london a dead stuffed
cat dressed in a baby's onesie
a nude painting of albert einstein a shoe box filled with dozens of mouse
skeletons a sealed box full of maggots a bone of st clement of rome the fourth
pope a super soaker full of urine and a
victorian dildo which brings us to the dirty matter of
the scores where there's a definite whiff of corruption uh in first place
with seven points it's holly
congratulations in second place with four
johnny and with minus four in third place bridget
alan fourth place minus 26 well done
thanks to bridget and johnny holly and alan and i leave you with this rubbish
remark from film actor richard burton if you're going to make rubbish be the
best rubbish in it good night
the show you've just seen was one of two episodes of qi which were recorded
without an audience because of social distancing rules
if you enjoyed the novelty i've got some good news for you there's another
one next week if not don't worry week after that
we're back to normal either way we'll see you next time
stay safe