APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening and welcome.
Welcome one and welcome all once again to Never Mind The Buzzcocks.
I'm Natasha Kaplinsky and I'm not wearing any pants.
No, no, I fooled you. Actually, I'm Stephen, really, and this
is QI, though I'm not wearing pants.
Tonight, we are playing footloose and fancy free with the
facts as we filter the fabrications of fakes, frauds and fakirs.
Let's meet our four finagling fraudsters.
We have World Heavyweight boxing champion, Sean Lock.
APPLAUSE
We have the President of Mauritius, Jimmy Carr!
APPLAUSE
His identical twin sister, Marcus Brigstocke.
APPLAUSE
And the late Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd.
APPLAUSE
Right. Now, you might like to reveal who you really are,
but, before I sell you all - thank you, you can bring that down.
Thank you very much.
Before I sell you all a pup, let's hear your suspicious noises.
Sean goes...
ELECTRIC SAWING
Jimmy goes...
CLICKING AND WHIRRING
- Marcus goes... - SIREN BLARES
- And Alan goes... - PHONE RINGS
Which brings me to my first sleight of hand. Could you tell me
all what your buzzer noises are? Jimmy first.
CLICKING AND WHIRRING
What's that noise?
A camera, like a like.
ALARM BELLS RING
No, actually...
ALAN BUZZES - PHONE RINGS
- That's a phone. - Is it not...
is it not a...a bird that can mimic sounds and it learned
- how to do the camera shutter. - So what sort of bird would that be?
A Kodak bird.
- It's not that. It's from Australia. - Oh, the kookaburra. - No.
- Sheila. - No. The audience knows, say again loudly?
Lyre bird!
Lyre, they're all shouting lyre at you!
You've robbed my point.
You get one, the audience gets five.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In fact, they're a specific breed of lyre bird called
- the superb lyre bird. - It can mimic anything?
- Almost anything. - I'd make it woof.
How funny would that be if you had a bird that woofed?
I'd get it to do limericks.
- It does dogs. - I'd probably get it to do Bill Oddie.
Surely that should be a bearded tit if it was any bird.
You're thinking of Rory McGrath.
True! Yours was a superb lyre.
Marcus, let's hear yours.
SIREN BLARES
It could easily be a builder, couldn't it? Seeing a lady go past,
but it sounds like a car alarm.
ALARM BELLS RING
- Oh. Thank you for joining in. - I just wanted to see that happen.
Lyre bird!
Yes! He's right!
APPLAUSE
And here it is making that noise.
BIRD SINGS LIKE A SIREN
It's lyre, incidentally - L-Y-R-E, not...
I knew that. Would I have got a point if I'd said that?
No. Because it's tail is said to resemble the shape of a Greek lyre,
the plucking instrument, a lyre.
And let's hear your buzzer, Sean, if we may?
It's a lyre bird.
ELECTRIC SAWING
- I don't know what it's mimicking. - It's doing a saw, isn't it?
- It's mimicking logging. - Chainsaw.
It is indeed doing a chainsaw.
Is it a lyre bird?
It's a lyre bird. You seem to have got the hang of this.
That's very annoying. So Alan...
PHONE RINGS
- That's a lyre bird. - Nooo!!
ALARM BELLS RING
- No. No. Oh, dear. No. - Even as I said it, I knew it wasn't.
Even as it was coming out of my mouth, story of my bloody life.
- That was a telephone. - Yeah?
- Couldn't you tell? - No, I thought it was...
Ironically, Alan, the big siren that went off there - it was a lyre bird.
I can't see that bird surviving for much longer - if it's doing
impressions of the chainsaw that's coming towards it.
But how does it benefit it, in the wild -
being able to mimic the noises of other things?
It does a lot of kids parties and a lot of...
They're not really words, though, are they? When birds say words,
- they're not words. They're noises. - No, to our ears, they are.
Cos people want to learn to talk to animals.
People say, I'd like to talk to animals.
It would actually be quite dull, talking to animals.
- What did you do? "Got up, had some food." - Grunt and squawk.
Didn't get killed, turned out all right.
Got out of bed, shat right next to the bed, got back into it.
- Oh. - It's the sort of thing they do. - Yes - disgusting.
Anyway, moving on, the first three were, of course, the work of the
finest fibber of the forest, the superb lyre bird, which can imitate
just about any sound it hears.
So, now, what was unusual about the pig-faced lady?
She had eight tits.
She wasn't really a lady, she was a pig.
- You know, if that's her, that is a pig. - No, no. There was a
very famous, in fact there were a number of famous pig-faced ladies
- in the 19th century. - They'd be a curiosity in a tent.
That's it - say that again, so the ladies and gentlemen at home can
- hear you. - A curiosity in a tent. - Exactly.
My favourite sort of curiosity. A tented curiosity.
It was a big draw in the 19th century for people to go
pay to see the pig-faced lady.
The thing I think about those freak shows is, rather than pay
to go in the tent, why don't
you just wait til they finish work and go down the shops?
You don't get all the build up.
If they're just down the shop, you don't get someone saying,
Prepare for the wonderful... Oh, she's just buying biscuits.
It's not the same thing. Was it a bearded lady that they shaved?
- No, but it was a shaved...? - Pig.
- No. - Monkey. - She was a...
Not a monkey. Monkeys would have to be huge. It'd have to be a gorilla.
- Horse? - All right, a gorilla. - Horse!
- Cat! - A cow. - Not a cow. - A pig. - No, a pig
- would be too small to be convincing as a woman. - Well, pigs are massive.
You're thinking about little pigs in cartoons.
They're not going to stand up and look human.
You put a dress on most things, they can pull it off.
- I look like one, I put a dress on. - I think I've heard of this. - Yeah?
- Is it a bear? - Yes, thank you! It's a bear. - They shaved a bear.
They would get a bear drunk, shave the bear's face.
Get a bear drunk and shave it?! They've got the show backwards!
That's what you want to see.
Don't care about the pig-faced woman, I wanna see a man trying to
- shave a bear. - A drunken bear.
Have another drink, I'm not going to do anything to you. That's insane!
And then they stick his arm in a beehive.
When they got them drunk, was this like paralytic so it would then pass
out and they'd shave it, or drunk enough to persuade it that this...
Drunk enough for it not to wipe your face of with...
- with one swipe of its paw. - With its claw, right. - Hot towel, sir?
Rrrrrrarr.
Oh, go on then, ha ha. Go on then, whatever, go on.
Go for your life, go on.
- Here's a quite interesting thing. - Yeah.
- Water softens beard bristle up better than shaving foam. - Does it?
Yeah. Shaving foam is a con.
I think there's a current advert on for some skin preparation for
men that goes on about how your skin can get stronger.
Obviously they don't want to market moisturiser to men, so they call it
- face protector. - Yes. - Like it's stopping bullets hitting it.
It's not to do with making me all soft and lovely,
it's actually bang and bash it.
People are throwing kettles at me.
They have bearded ladies, you've mentioned - long tradition of those.
There was one rather sweet story
of a bearded lady who fell in love with a contortionist in...
This sounds like an old joke.
It does sound like it. But it wasn't. He wouldn't marry
her because he couldn't really face the idea every morning of staring at
a bearded woman, but also, if she shaved, they couldn't get married
cos they wouldn't have enough income because hers came from
the fact that she was a very successful bearded lady and...
So he shaved the bear and married that?
No. Someone else suggested that she
shave and cover herself in tattoos and she became the
first tattooed lady and they married and lived very happily ever after.
- Rather touching. - But if he was a contortionist,
they could've had sex and he could've been in a different room.
Indeed, the nature of exactly that. Samuel Gumpertz was considered
the King of the freak show people at Coney Island.
He had a 1911 show that included Ursa the Bear Girl, Bonita...
Was she just a naked lady?
- No, no. - The bare girl is misleading. - B-E-A-R.
A lot of people paid their money and went, "Oh, this is rubbish."
She looks like a bear. If anything, I'm turned off.
There was Bonita - I don't know why this is funny, the Irish Fat Midget.
- You don't know why that's funny? - Yeah, I was going to say that.
Lionel the Dog-Faced Boy and Sharif Affendal, the human salamander.
- Salamanders can go in fire, can't they? - That's the legend.
- So he would stand in the fire? - Presumably that's what happened.
- How long can a salamander go in fire? - Till it's cooked.
Well, there you have it, anyway.
The pig-faced lady was neither pig-faced nor lady.
She was in fact a drunken bear with a shaven head.
Now, what was Count Victor Lustig's dastardly scheme
for Guy de Maupassant's favourite restaurant in Paris?
Did he put a creepy black and white cardboard cut out of himself
in the middle of the place?
Guy de Maupassant - 19th century French writer - like many French
writers, a surprising number of French writers and artists, in the
- 19th century, objected to something new to Paris in 1889. - Eiffel Tower.
The Eiffel Tower. They absolutely loathed it.
- They hated it. - Guy de Maupassant loathed it so much
that his favourite restaurant was?
- The Eiffel Tower Is Crap" bistro. - No - it was in the Eiffel Tower.
- Oh, so he didn't have to look at it. - So, exactly, the one place in Paris
where he couldn't see the Eiffel Tower was inside the Eiffel Tower.
Could he not just ask for, perhaps, a chair facing the other way?
He was a French writer trying to make a point and therefore a git.
That's only half the story.
What did Count Victor Lustig do to the Eiffel Tower?
- He sold it to someone. - Oh, Alan, you're on fire tonight!
- I'm on fire, I'm a salamander! - On fire! You are a salamander.
He did indeed sell it.
Congratulations. A million points.
I'm on fire.
That's quite a good salamander, actually.
- Do they do that foot thing? - They probably do.
Cooling foot, cooling foot.
A salamander is amongst us.
So he sold the Eiffel Tower?
To a gullible tourist?
Well, actually, in this case, it was scrap metal dealers. He claimed that
he had the single right given to him by the Ministry of Posts
and Telegraphy to the sale, and that he could personally decide who would
get the scrap metal rights and he told this to two scrap metal dealers
and they realised that as he was a French official,
he could be bribed, so they paid him a large bribe for the rights to it.
He told them it was to be pulled down and he had the rights to it.
It was never permanent. They put it up for a couple of years.
Yes, so it was a convincing...
It's like that big wheel on the South Bank. Meant to be up for two years -
they kept it. Fairground people, New Labour, when they came in.
They went, "We need the Millennium Dome and a big ferris wheel.
Come on, if you want to go faster, you've got to scream louder.
There's loads of pregnant teenagers knocking on Number Ten, going,
Where are you, you've moved on?.
There was a great former actor from Glasgow called Arthur Furguson.
He sold Nelson's Column, lions included, to an American
tourist for £6000, and on a trip to Paris, he managed to sell the Eiffel
Tower as well, also for scrap to another gullible American.
- I love these people. - He then moved to the US.
Do you think they try lots of people and eventually someone buys it?
- He sold the White House to an American. - Just brilliant.
Sell me, sell me!
He then tried to sell the Statue of Liberty to an Australian
and that's where it fell down.
Oh, come on, mate.
He didn't even have the keys.
How am I going to get it home?
Where's the guarantee?
Well, in case we think this is something that's gone away, only
this year, 2008, ladies and gentlemen as we go, two businessmen,
called Terry Collins and Marcel Boekhoorn, were conned out of
£1 million by an unemployed lorry driver named Tony Lee who claimed to
be acting for the real owners in the sale of the Ritz Hotel
and they paid £1 million for a sort of down payment on the Ritz.
Now, you are the detective for these
questions coming up.
We all think we can spot a con, but
tell me how you would have dealt with these situations.
You become suspicious of three buxom young women who are coming out of
the telephone exchange carrying heavy suitcases and jangling.
Where is the jangling coming from? Is it coming from A,
the telephone exchange, B, the suitcases or C, their bosoms?
D, my trousers.
Right, and we're in Miami
in 1950 and this was a very well-known scandal at the time.
These women were responsible for the money that got collected
from the phone boxes and their job was to
put the money into these counting machines and they worked out that
as long as they stole the money before it went into the counting
machines, the phone company had no idea of how much money there was.
- So they would take money and... - Put it in their bras.
And then put it in the counting machine. Once it's in the machine, it's accounted for, but
over a number of years, no-one knows how much they got away with,
maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars, in their breasts,
and eventually they got found out.
- There we have a picture. - It looks like she's gone
to a really bad strip club.
People have only got change, "There you go, love."
It might be cold, sorry about that.
The headline on the day that this happened was "Justice, as elastic
as the items in which they carried their loot, snapped back today, on
members of Miami's Brassiere Brigade.
- Is that a headline? - That was a headline. It was a huge story.
If you were The Sun, you'd go, "Money in their tits!"
- I'm afraid it would be exactly that. - Titty cash".
Tit bag grab slag.
And then there'd be a girl on Page Three and it would say,
Zoe is very disappointed by the Brassiere Brigade.
She thinks it's wrong to steal.
You do seem to know their ways very well, Alan.
Saddam Hussein has been found in a hole, that was one of them.
That was my favourite one.
Stefanie is delighted that Saddam Hussein has been captured.
Then you'd say, "When I found out he'd been captured...
- ..I took a moment to celebrate. - I'm ashamed of you.
It's not real. It's your imagination, I'm just doing that.
That will not answer.
- I wish I could do that. - I can, oddly enough.
- Did you ever celebrate with them? - My nipples are going in the wrong
direction, they're dropping an inch a year. It's terrible.
- However I have... - Can you get a pencil underneath them?
I can get Colin Montgomery underneath them.
APPLAUSE
He must have been livid about that.
In 1950, the Brassiere Brigade defrauded the
Southern Bell telephone company line by hiding the takings in their bras.
Now, what's the trick behind sword swallowing?
Wipe it first.
- Yeah. - Stop when you reach the handle.
Never use a scimitar.
- Doesn't it just...fold up? - No, no. There are people who believe...
Euuuuhhhh!
There are people who insist it is a fake somehow but it is genuine.
I wonder if it ever comes out and it's got a bit of meat on the end?
- Yeah. - I think the actual secret of doing it is to do it really
quick and if it gets caught on anything, just jab it.
What do you think the most common complaint is when they see doctors?
- I imagine it's gastric. - It's a sore throat. - Is it?
Pretty obviously, but they genuinely do suffer from sore throats and they
pop it down and there's a limit.
61cm. Any longer than 61cm, you could gravely injure yourself,
but anything less than 40cm and you are not
recognised as a sword swallower by the Association of Sword Swallowers.
What if you're short? I mean, surely height...
You'd think, but unfortunately
the Society of Sword Swallowers had laid down 40cm.
Cos if you're a midget, you've got to stab yourself in the ass.
How do you not just gag immediately?
That's the point, there's a trick - not a trick,
but the secret is you have to learn to overcome your gag reflex, first.
That's hard. That's why I can't wear contact lenses, because
- I gag when I touch my eye. - Well, you're putting them in wrong.
Put them in the front.
You know if you pull a pekingese's tail, its eyes pop out.
That's the rest of my week sorted, I'm buying a pekingese.
I line them up.
HE HUMS CIRCUS TUNE
It's like that, I touch my eye and I actually go...
Really? It's a 4,000-year-old art, it seems - sword swallowing.
It's not a trick at all, it's a real skill. That's the point.
And so we reach the toast of conmen, fraudsters and swindlers everywhere,
general ignorance.
What's New London Bridge doing in Arizona?
PHONE RINGS
Yay?
It was bought as a tourist attraction
and it's the third most popular tourist attraction in America.
And it acts as a dry way of getting across some water.
- That sounds pretty good to me. - Nothing's gone off.
- No. - Sometimes the obvious answer is the truth.
Is it true they thought they were buying Tower Bridge?
ALARM BELLS RING
APPLAUSE
No, that was the one. It was a man called McCulloch of McCulloch's Oil
who bought it and he bought it after much negotiation and
indeed there are photographs of him looking round it and working out how
to transport it so he knew perfectly well what bridge he was buying.
It was called New London Bridge because the Old London Bridge had
been crossing the Thames at that point for how long?
- Million years. - 300 years or something?
Since the time of the dinosaurs. They built it.
- 600 years. - It was big enough for a blue whale to go under.
It held good for 600 years and was covered in shops and buildings.
It was much quicker to get a ferry across than to try and walk across
the bridge. It was so filled with entertainment and shops,
- ragamuffin pubs. - I want a bridge like that again.
I know. I wish it was still like that.
Anyway, Robert McCulloch. He took New London Bridge to
Arizona to promote his new settlement at Lake Havasu,
where it's been a huge success.
Contrary to the myth, he never thought he was buying Tower Bridge.
A lot of what we eat seems to be faked these days.
If I send you down to the shops for some butter and they don't have any,
- what can you get me instead? - Some beer, get you some beer.
Yes, you could, but instead of beer...
Margarine? People get margarine?
ALARM BELLS RING
You can't palm me off with margarine, I was about to say, but
that sounds rather rude.
You can... No, you can't.
You literally cannot buy margarine in England any more.
Can you get it on the internet?
- Possibly, but not from Britain. - Yeah. There's dodgy...
dodgy margarine sites.
The UK Spreads Association
used to be called the Margarine and Spreads Association.
We would like to make it clear, their spokesman told a startled QI
researcher, "we would like to make it clear there are no brands of
margarine on sale in Britain today.
Is it because margarine contains...
Did they just change the name?
Because it contains 80 to 90% fat.
Its natural colour, margarine, is?
Blue.
White, in fact and in America, the dairy industry
was so horrified by it in the 19th century when it was invented
that they had various laws insisting
that it not be coloured yellow to look like butter, so it stayed
white, or in some states where the dairy industry was very powerful,
like New Hampshire, they insisted it be coloured red.
So it really put people off spreading it on their toast.
- Now, how many commandments are there? - Oh. - Yes?
Are we talking about the commandments that God
dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai?
- Yeah. - Literally, none. Never happened.
I'll go along with that!
APPLAUSE
- How many...how many are there in the Bible? - Oh, yeah...
Well, now, you see, I've buzzed but I fear if I said ten...
ALARM BELLS RING
I think the Catholic church have just added some new ones.
No, I'm talking about the original.
- The original ones. - Nine. - Eight.
ALARM BELLS RING
There used to be that story, where the angel is sent down and he goes
to the French and says, "I've got some commandments,"
and the French say, "Give me an example." He said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."
They said, "I'm not interested, go away."
He then goes off then to Germans and says, "I've got these
commandments," and the Germans say, "What do they say?" and he says,
Well, for example, thou shall not kill. "I don't think so."
And to the Italians, "Would you like some commandments?
Here's one - thou shalt not steal. "Ah, go away."
Then he goes to the Jews with these commandments. "How much are they?"
They're free. "I'll take ten."
If you look at the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not kill,
which should be the major one, it should be at the top.
It comes in about number five. It's got quite low billing
and it should be in bold, shouldn't it? The other stuff is just nicking,
staring at other people's wives, girlfriend, boyfriend.
Well, in the list of those commandments taken
from the mountain, there were actually 14 in both
Exodus and Deuteronomy, not ten, but in Exodus, generally speaking, there
are 613 commandments, including the
really important ones that should be, as you say, put in bold, like
you shall not suffer a witch to live or you should never vex a stranger.
Well, this show should be taken off.
Whosoever lies with a beast shall be surely put to death.
Well, especially when it rolls over.
- Exactly. - It just happened by accident.
I didn't know she was a bear.
I thought she was a pig. No, that doesn't do.
Why do we think there's ten then?
- It's referred to as ten in other books. - But, there is list of Ten
- Commandments. - Yes, but if you go to Exodus 20, Deuteronomy five, it's
not ten. They're actually divided, some are divided.
- It doesn't mention anything about smoking, does it? - It doesn't.
Where can you smoke now?
It should just say, be good, if you can't be good, be lucky.
Always wash your brushes and put your ladders away.
So anyway, in the book of Exodus chapter 20,
there are 14 commandments.
If you include the rest of the book, we'd get up to 613.
When I flip this coin that I have handily perched here,
- what are the chances of it coming up heads? - 50:50.
ALARM BELLS RING
- You just keep walking into that lamp post, Alan, don't you? - I'm with Alan,
- everything's 50:50. - Everything? - Winning the lottery's 50:50.
You either win it or you don't.
- Rolling a six, you either roll a six or you don't. 50:50. - Yeah.
Naturally tossed coins obey the laws of mechanics and their flight
is determined by their initial conditions and it's been discovered
that if a human is flipping them, as opposed to a machine, and you do it
thousands and thousands of times, rather than exactly 50:50,
it will actually be 51%, the one that's upwards, in this case, heads.
I bet that if you did it 100 times, it would never come down 51:49.
Never, are you saying that? I think most people
would say 100 isn't enough for 50:50 to establish itself.
It could easily be 50 heads in a row.
This is true, but what are the chances?
I still can't get my head round the notion that it's just as likely to
have one, two, three, four, five, six on the lottery
and I still go, it just wouldn't happen.
But you know why, you know why? Because it's a lottery.
- I mean, the clue's in the title. - It is, yeah.
And, after all that, I hope you believe me when I tell you that
that's all we have time for - our 100% guaranteed authentic
winner this evening, wow, this is so close, it's very exciting.
With -16 points, it's Sean Lock.
Thank you.
APPLAUSE
This is a night of firsts -
still as sound as a pound with -18 is Jimmy Carr.
APPLAUSE
In third place, far from last with -21, Alan Davies!
APPLAUSE
You probably think you know who is coming last. I will tell you.
In fourth place with -26, it's Marcus Brigstocke.
Thank you.
APPLAUSE
So it's goodbye from Jimmy, Marcus, Sean, Alan and myself.
We hope that this show has been a warning to you all against choosing
the paths of fraud and fakery.
As Groucho Marx said, "The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing and
if you can fake that, you've got it made. Goodnight.
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