Hello! Good evening, good evening, good evening.
And welcome to QI, where tonight we are victims of fashion and prey to every passing fad.
Sashaying up the catwalk this evening are the daringly see-through Clive Anderson!
APPLAUSE
- The beautifully cut Rich Hall! - APPLAUSE
- The topless and strapless Reginald D Hunter! - APPLAUSE
And an old pair of corduroys we found in the potting shed - Alan Davies!
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Of course, fashion is - ha-ha! - something that goes in one year and out the other. Ha!
Our buzzers tonight are about as fashionable as a sabre-toothed tiger wearing flares. Clive goes...
# But I'm always true to you, darling, in my fashion... #
Rich goes...
# Cos he's a dedicated follower of fashion. #
- Reg goes... - # I'm too sexy for my shirt Too sexy for my shirt... #
I can't complain!
- And Alan goes... - # He looks a proper nana in his great big hobnail boots
# He's got such a job to pull them up That he calls 'em daisy roots! #
Your challenge tonight, gentlemen, is to start a trend, as it's fashion week on QI.
After six years' struggle, this show has never managed to instigate any kind of a catchphrase.
We think it's time we changed that, so you have in front of you
a list of 19th-century catchphrases, as it is QI. You can use one of those, if you like.
- They are genuine 19th-century catchphrases. - Has your mother sold- her mangle? Say that again.
- LAUGHTER - Has your mother sold her mangle?
- That was a genuine catchphrase. - CLIVE: Who are you? - Ah!
- That's your catchphrase. - It is. - This was one of the biggest.
I thought it would be a nice easy catchphrase. "Who are you?"
Has your mother sold her mangle?
It was used on all circumstances. If you caught someone picking your pocket, you'd go, "Who are you?"
Let's turn to our American friends. Are catchphrases a big thing there?
My grandfather used to say, "You're dumber than a bag of wet mice." LAUGHTER
- Very good. - It was funny the first time I heard it, but not my whole life.
LAUGHTER
I don't see anything on the list, but I have one. Do what you do best.
I was back home recently and I visited my cousin. He's got 4 or 5 kids, that we know of.
And we were watching TV and a woman was talking about the right to have children without a man,
they don't need men around. Just sire a child and leave.
- I looked at him and said, "Get to DC and do what you do best." - LAUGHTER
Excellent. So we've got, "Do what you do best", "Dumber than a bag of wet mice"...
- Has your mother sold her mangle? I'm losing enthusiasm for it. - And...?
- Who are you? - If you can work these intelligently, charmingly and brilliantly into the show,
- I will be awarding bonuses. - You're asking for it. - Let's start.
What was the most disastrous haircut ever?
- Some examples for you there. - LAUGHTER
I've got two answers. One is my last haircut. No?
- Or Samson's haircut. - That's a very good answer, actually. - That's me! - Yes!
- You've just noticed. - You must remember posing for these.
I remember the one in the middle. The other two I have no memory of.
I know for a fact that in 1928 the New England Tool and Dye Manufacturing Company
was looking for a new screw that wouldn't slip out of the notch
and a man named Phillips worked for them, who had one of the most disastrous haircuts ever.
It was parted in four sections. LAUGHTER
That would be a disaster that went good.
There are many candidates, but do you know anything about Louis VII?
There he is on the left. 13th century.
- His queen became queen of a more famous king to us. - Aquitaine.
She was Eleanor of Aquitaine. The point is that Louis VII was very religious
and the monks got to him and he cut that hair off
and she was furious at him. So cross that eventually she divorced him. There were other things, too,
- but the hair is mentioned... - He also cut his cock off.
LAUGHTER
Maybe! His mother may have...
Has your mother sold her mangle?
- Maybe it happened! - "I divorce you!" - But the consequences were enormous.
She was incredibly rich, she took her kingdoms with her, married Henry II and they began the 100 Years War.
- So it's the haircut that began a 100 Years War. - That's just in polite company.
You say, "I didn't like what he did with his hair so I left."
You can't say, "The king keeps farting in bed." "I just don't like his haircut!"
What is interesting about this poor king is
he definitely wouldn't have had sexual relations with Eleanor's mother because he was very abstinent
and he became ill. The courtiers suggested it was because he hadn't had sex. He had the queen sent for
and they said, "No, she's too far away. If you don't have sex immediately, you will die."
Genuinely being told he had to have sex or die, he said he would rather die chaste.
That leads you to believe he had a bad sexual experience as a child.
- Yes... - Most men would rather not face death than have sex.
So something happened when he was a kid, maybe a teenager,
maybe his wee-wee got caught in the zipper
- or the mangle or... - Hey! - Yes, the mangle.
Or he said, "I'm not ready for this. Just let me lick your elbow."
And the woman said, "Do what you do best." And...
- APPLAUSE - Very good.
The Simpsons make a reference to the 100 Years War.
- Do you know what they call it? - No. - Operation Speedy Resolution.
Anyway, we've all had bad hair days, but that one takes some beating.
Louis VII's haircut seems to have been a bit of a faux pas.
Many faux pas are just Freudian slits...slips!
But what outrageous item of clothing got the Duke of Wellington thrown out of the club?
- Yes? - I'm going to suggest he wore his Wellington boots... HOOTER
I was about to say how fantastic a career he had.
Not only was he a great general, winning one of the most important battle of all time,
plus he was Prime Minister and he had Wellington boots named after him.
- # I'm too sexy for my shirt... # - I think I know- exactly what happened.
He showed up at this situation that was supposed to be all formal,
but he came in and he said, "Look at this wonderful dish I made with beef." It was inappropriate
to introduce your cooking at a social occasion like that.
His wife tried to say, "Don't do it. Invite some people back. We can eat, have a smoke
"and it'll all be good." But he was like, "No, this is good food!"
And people were like, "We're just drinking here. He's a general. He should know better."
- This is what I believe happened. - You reminded us of another thing. Not just the boots and the battle,
- but the beef in pastry. - Putting pastry pointlessly around beef.
Actually, this happens to be just about my favourite club.
If I could get in a time machine and go anywhere, this is a place I'd go.
Almack's. It was THE club that determined if you were in society,
run by these fierce women. It didn't matter who you were.
- If you didn't get a voucher from them, you couldn't enter. - Something Wellington turned up in?
What must a properly-attired gentleman in the evening wear?
- A hat! - What would he have down here? - Hot pants.
- Close! In as much as... - Britches! - Knee britches.
- Knee britches. And Wellington wore... - Trousers! - Trousers.
- A ra-ra skirt. - He wore trousers.
So he said, "I won the Peninsula War! I can come in any trousers I like!"
- Or did they make him roll them up? - That's my catchphrase -- I can come in any trousers I like!
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Sorry. I do apologise.
I sure enjoyed that long, winding story so we could get to that.
- The trouser was considered shocking and not to be worn in smart society. - Breeches of etiquette.
Exactly!
- That's good. - I bet when they told him he looked at them and went, "Pants to you!"
The Duke of Wellington was thrown out of a club for wearing trousers.
What's the best way of dealing with a wartime shortage of trousering?
Wow.
- That's just a serving suggestion. - They'd run out of trousers?
- In the war there was a shortage of material. How did they deal with it? - Put them in trenches!
LAUGHTER
- Try to use less cloth in each trouser. - Yes. - One-legged trousers.
- In Scotland you'd wear kilts. - Or take them off dead guys -- I mean the enemy.
- No, the first thing was they banned... - Pleats? - Turn ups.
Turn ups?! That saves about an inch!
Out of a million, that's a lot.
If a tailor sold someone extra long trousers, longer than they needed, knowingly really,
- the tailor would go to prison. - What about older gentlemen who pull their trousers right up here?
- Yes, they do! - Up to the nipples. Now first of all, what's going on there?
Why don't they stop somewhere on the way?
No pleasure in life left except to give themselves a wedgie.
Why don't they pull the trousers right up to under their eyes?
- Then they would save on shirtings. - And they could have a really long fly, like that.
You must have an enormous fly, about two feet long.
- By the time you've undone it, you've forgotten why. - You get there... Oh!
"Nurse!
Also, boys under 12 couldn't have long trousers. It had to be shorts.
- Women couldn't wear stockings, so what did they do? - Draw a seam.
- On the back of their leg. - They felt bare legs- made them look available. - What?!
I don't know if boys in the shorts thought the same.
They stained their legs to make them look tanned, with gravy browning,
then they'd draw a line down the back to look like a seam on nylons. It seems crazy, but...
Why didn't soldiers draw pictures of trousers on them?
- Exactly! - APPLAUSE
- I'm in pinstripes. - All kinds of things.
Anyway, during World War Two it became acceptable for women to wear trousers,
but boys wore shorts.
All very good form, no doubt,
but here is the most interesting form I have played with.
This item here is a very extraordinary item.
It's the only mono-monostatic item in the world.
It's self righting. Whichever way you put it, it will always right itself, like this.
- What about Weebles? - Yeah, it's like a Weeble.
There's a glass one here, to show that it's not weighted in any way.
More extraordinary than it looks.
When you get the hang of it, it always ends up like this.
Be careful with it. It's so, well...
We're very honoured because we actually...
We actually have... Have you dropped it?! You haven't.
Have you put it under your hat?
- Lift your hat. - You're cunning!
I thought it was that Kingdom there for a minute.
You were way ahead of me.
Oy!
We have Gabor Domokos, the inventor, here with us. Gabor?
Good evening. Good to see you. He's from Hungary. He and his colleague, Peter Varkonyi, invented this.
Can you explain what it is?
- Well, this is like a Weeble without the weight. - It IS like a Weeble!
- You get a point. - It's just the shape. - Yeah.
But you have to get it right. The tolerance of the shape is about 1/100th of a millimetre.
If these edges here were 1/100th of a millimetre out, it wouldn't right itself?
- It wouldn't. - You could keep it in one position? - Correct.
RICH: Gabor, have you thought of making salt and pepper shakers?
- That's a brilliant idea, Gabor. - Then you might make some money off of it. - Yeah! Dragons' Den!
- Come on! - APPLAUSE
- Actually, you are mathematicians, yeah? - Engineers. - Engineers.
And how did you come to build it?
- What gave you the idea? - First it was a question for a mathematician. We thought about it.
Then we thought we should build it. But after we built it we realised it's already there.
- In what way is it already there? - Well, some turtles seem to have similar shapes.
- So evolution got there first. - A couple of million years earlier.
RICH: So do you feel like you've wasted your life?
You so have not!
Gabor, thank you for coming all the way to explain it.
- It's called...a Gomboc. Or a "Goom-book". - Does it have practical applications?
- I don't think it does. That's what's so beautiful. - Isn't the Rubik's Cube- Hungarian? Yes. - And the Biro.
- Laszlo Biro. - Absolutely. My grandfather was a Hungarian Jew.
He said, "A Hungarian is the only man who could follow you into a revolving door and come out first."
So it's the Gomboc. The world's first mono-monostatic shape.
It isn't weighted in any way, but it will always turn itself up the right way.
- I'm not a great follower of fashion... - Oh, Stephen!
Something of an old fossil, as it happens, but... what would you say if I told you
that this was the first fossil ever identified?
LAUGHTER
Ah, well. Is it? I'd say, "Is it?"
Thank you for not saying, "Bollocks!"
It does look like a handsome pair of human plums, but it isn't.
Robert Plot, first keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford,
he recognised it to be a thigh bone, but it's huge. You can't quite tell its scale.
He assumed it was the thigh bone of a Roman elephant or giant humans.
But he also recognised its shape and called it scrotum humanum
because that's what it looks like, to be honest.
But it turned out to be a megalosaur. There's a real one.
Shame they're not still about.
- It is, isn't it? - Up and down the M1. - LAUGHTER
It's very hard to get a grip on how old life on Earth is,
but if life on Earth began on January 1st and we are now the end of the year,
- when did the dinosaurs appear? - Hang on... - Tuesday.
- No! - Dinosaurs were 200 million years ago.
- About...mid-November. - Not bad. A little later - December 5th.
- That's not bad. - So do we come at five to midnight on December 31st or something?
A few minutes before midnight.
- They became extinct on December 24th, Christmas Eve. - Aww! - December 5th to 24th.
- If they became extinct on December 24th... - Yeah.- ..the human race has about six days
- before the clocks go back or something? - Here's a year.
And that year represents the totality of time of life on Earth. That's the beginning.
- And this is now. - Assuming that time is linear.
- LAUGHTER - Thank you!
So...let's suppose that it's a long pair of trousers, time.
- Man appeared at the top of the fly... - Open your trousers and a dinosaur comes out.
That's sort of what happens, isn't it? Oddly enough, saurus was Ancient Greek slang for penis.
Saurus means lizard. Your lizard. Your knob. Just thought you'd like to know.
- Why thesaurus, then? Is that Latin? - That's a different word.
It means a treasure house, a repository. In this case of words.
You might refer to your backside as a thesaurus.
I'd like to think my bottom is a treasure house, yes. Thank you.
Right. Em...
- "My bottom is a treasure house," is a really good catchphrase. - LAUGHTER
I'll be billed as Stephen "My bottom is a treasure house" Fry. I think I can go with that.
And so we arrive, fashionable late, at the bring a bottle staircase party of General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please. What rhymes with month?
- Dunth. - This word is probably not known to you. It's Sikhism... - Sikhism does not rhyme with month!
I'm taking you into the world of Sikhism. What the Koran is to the Islamic faith, this is to the Sikhs.
- It's their text, and it's called the Granth. - Oh! - There, you see?
- I did every bloody letter except Gunth! - We should know that. It's not that obscure. - No.
- So loads of Sikhs watching this programme will be screaming... - "Gunth! Gunth! You idiots!"
- No, it's Granth. - Granth. - There are words that supposedly don't have rhymes, like month.
There you are. The holy text of Sikhism is the Guru Granth Sahib.
Which city has the most Michelin stars?
- Paris. - HOOTER
- Oh, sorry! - That doesn't count cos I said Paris before I hit the bell.
I get a free guess.
- Hey, I'm black. - Oh! Don't you try that!
- I know for a fact it ain't London. - New York?
HOOTER Wait a minute...
- Canada? - London? - Who said London? Alan said that?- HOOTER
- I didn't say London! You did! - Sorry. - Rich said London.
- I didn't say anything. - And frankly you should be glad.
- You said London. - I would NEVER say London. I said definitely not London.
No, I did. I did!
I will believe you. I will believe you.
Let me tell you why I said that. I'm not just trying to offend London. The UK in general.
But I feel that any country that can produce Marmite started late in trying to make food taste good.
- Um... - This from a country that has spray-on cheese.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
- You're right. It isn't Britain. - Man, you can't cut me off! Give me a chance to insult you back.
Marmite tastes like there's a naked man with hairy legs in your kitchen,
and every now and again you take a plate with toast and walk under his butt and go, "OK, Fred!
"Do what you do best!"
Very good.
- The place that has the most Michelin stars... - Germany! Holland!- ..is Tokyo. Tokyo is the answer.
- I should have thought of that. - It went straight to number one.
It was only put in in 2007 and leapt ahead with 150 stars,
which is two more than London and Paris combined.
If you put spray-on cheese on top of Marmite, you still got something that tastes BLEEP.
All I want to say. Take your favourite food and put Marmite on it, it's BLEEP.
Moving on swiftly, Tokyo has twice as many as Paris and three times as many as New York.
- What colour is a nicotine stain? - Yellowy-brown...
HOOTER
- Yellowy-brown, eh? - Not yellow. - HOOTER
You're going to tell us that the stain comes from the tar. Nicotine is green or something.
- Nicotine has no... - Stain at all. - Colourless. - It just kills you quietly on its own.
Colourless, odourless, invisible, untraceable. A brilliant poison.
- Do you know why it's called nicotine? - "Nick O'Tine. One puff- and your mine!" I remember that!
- He was the Irish cigarette devil. - Why is it called nicotine?- It's a French word.
- Nicot was the Walter Raleigh of France. - Ah, Nicot. - N-I-C-O-T. - I sure didn't know that.
Now you do.
Which dictator definitely only had one ball?
I'm not going to give my points away on that.
I know that was made up about the one we mustn't say. We want another dictator.
- It wasn't Adolf Hitler. - Pol Pot.
HOOTER
- Stalin. haven't you got Stalin? - Oh, yeah.
HOOTER
- Ceausescu? Chairman Mao? - Chairman Mao is the right answer.
- He'd only got one ball? - Yeah. - He was proud of it.
- Monorchism it's called. One orchid. - Only one flower display. - Orchid has the same root as testicle.
- Whose testimony...? - Another word. His doctor. Dr Li Zhisui.
In his memoirs, he describes how Mao had an undescended testicle and was infertile.
He had venereal disease from the '50s and, in the '60s, herpes.
He never brushed his teeth. He rinsed his mouth with tea. So his teeth were green.
- He also slept on a wooden bed and used a bed pan. - That's just convenient.
Hitler's reputation for being uniglobular is, em...
It has no justification at all.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, brings us to the scores.
First, after a fashion, with a plus score... four points, Rich Hall!
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In second place, with minus five, only slightly passe - Clive Anderson!
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And doing what he did well with minus six, Reg D Hunter, ladies and gentlemen.
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And positively paleontological in his outmodedness, it is tonight's living fossil,
on minus 35, Alan Davies!
- APPLAUSE - Thank you.
And so it's good night from Rich, Reg, Clive, Alan and me. We leave with this thought from Oscar Wilde.
"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."
My name is Stephen "My bottom is a treasure house" Fry. Good night.
Subtitles by Subtext for Red Bee Media Ltd - 2009
Email subtitling@bbc.co.uk