APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Well, hello, hello, hello, hello,
and welcome to QI,
where this week our food for thought is food.
Surfing on a smorgasbord of succulence ce soir
is our delicious panel.
The rarest of truffles, David Mitchell!
APPLAUSE
The choicest of cuts, Rich Hall!
APPLAUSE
The strangest of fruit, Jimmy Carr!
APPLAUSE
And something furry that's fallen down the gap between the oven and the dishwasher, Alan Davies!
APPLAUSE
We're sitting comfortably. Let's ring for service. David goes...
TINKLING BELL
Jimmy goes... REVERBERATING GONG
Rich goes...
CHURCH BELL TOLLS
Alan goes...
TICKING...
ALARM BELL...
EXPLOSION
Right,
before we tuck in, I've had a tongue down your... I've put a tongue...
You will find a tongue.
I've put a tongue. Is there a tongue under there?
Is this what you were referring to? Yes!
That is what's known as a tongue map.
During the course of this evening's festivities,
I'd like you to fill in the areas of the tongue that are responsible for which flavours.
There's a certain number of flavours that the tongue can detect.
So each area is a different area of taste?
So if you had that bit of your tongue lopped off,
you wouldn't be able to taste certain stuff?
That's the theory of a tongue map.
But there are only five things that a tongue can detect.
How does the food know where to go?
While you're thinking about that, let's have a question.
What kind of animal
can you eat without killing it?
CHURCH BELL Rich?
Crabs, unintentionally.
In the south, in the deep south in the Bayou,
the Bayou or the Bayou,
yeah, uh-huh, yeah.
The freshwater mussels, they pick them out of the water with tiny pink crabs on 'em
and they're considered a delicacy.
They're alive when you swallow 'em.
These are things you can eat fully, but you don't kill the animal.
Something that comes through like sweetcorn, except it's still running around?
Is that what you're saying?
No! Comes out unharmed. I'm not saying it passes through the digestive system, no.
But it stays in you and sets up a community. Is it what they put in Yakult?
Yes! They witter on about that. Bifidus digestivum. L-casei immunitas.
David, you know these things. I'm impressed.
I spend a lot of time watching TV.
Listening to the new made-up science is entertaining!
I love it when they go, "Do you want to buy a tiny pot of off milk?"
"Yes!" It's such a good deal. "Just try it for nine weeks.
"If you don't feel better, give up, cos if everyone tries it for nine weeks, we're in the money."
Do ladies sit around discussing bloating a lot?
It happens in the adverts.
If there are ladies watching this, and talking about bloating,
have they tried farting like a docker?
Cos it works remarkably well for me!
Try to get someone to pull their finger. Lady bloating is different, I believe.
They bloat differently? I believe so.
They also talk increasingly on TV about being constipated.
That's... The standard of female conversation is plummeting!
That's true! What happened to the little ladies who were so refined?
Anyway, in a sense, you're probably right about bacteria
which would possibly pass through and not be killed.
But this is actually a delicacy. I'm inclined to give the point to Rich
because he's accidentally right... As usual! ..and wrong as well.
That's the story of my life! It's one of the most popular foods,
almost the national dish, of Florida. Tapeworm!
Not tapeworm, no. That is a candidate for the answer.
Didn't that used to be a dieting thing? Yes. People went, "Diet and exercise, BLEEP that..."
They'd take a tapeworm pill. It would eat things. That must work. Why don't we do that. It works well.
There's the awkward moment when the tapeworm gets a bit large. The time has come to remove...
10 yards of worm. Tie a string to it. You have to tempt it out with a little salty drink...
Tempt it with salty drink? This sounds brilliant.
That's how they dealt with tapeworm. One end or another you tempt it out with food...
I know which end I'd prefer.
Yes. Which end would you...?
LAUGHTER
I'm just saying. You'd rather pull it out your mouth than your arse?
I think I'd go arse rather than mouth with tapeworm.
I think I'd have to have experienced a giant worm coming out of both orifices
before I'd decide which was the least unpleasant.
Tell you what... It turns out that's a question I don't want to know the answer to.
Tempt it up, like that, a bit, get it up there, get its head out,
if you don't like it, take the thing away, put it down the other end,
it'll do a bit of a U-ey and...
Which could be agony. Yeah, could be agony.
A tapeworm turning round inside you. Oh! Does it reverse into the appendix and turn round or...?
They don't move anyway. They just sit with their mouths open.
And they clamp themselves onto... The wall of your tummy.
They hang on. When you tempt them out at the end of your preference,
don't you roll it around a biro or something?
You know a lot about this, for a man that's never tried it from either end.
It's obligatory to tie it round a biro. You don't HAVE to. Have you heard somewhere if you didn't...?
What I heard is you tempt out its head or whatever, one end comes out, then you roll it round something.
There must be nothing more depressing than to hear a tapeworm snap.
GROANS "Well, that's stuck down there now."
You're thinking of the guinea worm, which is the one you pull out with a biro.
Is it some sort of shellfish/seafood item? Crawfish... No, it's what... Crab. It's a crab.
It's a particular kind of crab. Hermit crab?
It's a stone crab. Right.
Stone crab tours are very popular. There is a stone crab.
The fishermen catch the crab, they snap off the claws,
and throw the crab back in and it takes a year for its claws to grow back.
It's considered a great delicacy, served with butter and mustard sauce, very popular
in restaurants in America, but particularly in Florida.
What does it do for a year, armless, wandering about?
I mean... He keeps himself to himself.
The crab is dismayed when it loses its claws. "Now I can't get any work done!
"All that stuff. I'm trying to rearrange the sea-bed
"and it'll be a year before I can do anything!
"I'll just have to lay up."
It's almost like they're fruit-bearing animals.
That's pretty similar to that. Exactly.
An apple tree has its apples taken off and next year it grows more apples.
So maybe they're trees.
Just seafoody trees that can walk around.
You could have given me as an answer as well, there are certain tribesmen in the Masai Mara in Kenya
who will drink the blood of cattle, not kill them,
but slit the throat, drink the blood and mix it with milk, actually.
Then they bind up the wound so they don't kill the cow.
But that practice is dying out. So they think cattle have two drinks.
You can have one or the other or a mixture of the two. Fantastic.
These two-drink animals! Anyway,
stone crabs it is. They're returned to the sea alive and their claws have been taken off.
They grow another though it's never as good as the first one.
Now, what can you usefully teach an oyster?
TINKLING BELL
Yes? Is it not to get its hopes up?
Aw! Is it to expect lemon juice and death?
"Don't put up a struggle. It'll never work."
Teach it, "When you get lemons, make lemonade." Cheer it on.
"When you get lemons, you're seconds away from death.
"Cos you're not like that kind of crab."
When you think about it, there's not much an oyster can do.
Teach it to blend into parties and make it look like it was invited.
True. Cos if you go to a party and there's a snack tray, no-one ever says,
"Who invited the oysters?"
True. No-one says that.
Teach them to do impressions. They do a good one of a whelk.
They do. Teach it rudimentary percussion.
If you showed it a castanet,
it would probably think, "I can do that."
You're very close.
What it is is that out of the water, oysters will stay fresh so long as they're closed.
But they live their lives opening and closing their shells
to let nutrients in which they filter.
So the thing is to teach them to keep their mouths closed for long periods of time.
You do that?
Well, the French did.
The French simply hit them with metal rods which makes them close.
They'd do that for longer and longer and they'd learn
cos they know they'll get hit all the time.
The French have a gift for cruelty! They do, don't they?
But what happened in New York, when the settlers first arrived in what is now New York,
there was a profusion of oysters, some a foot long.
But they couldn't transport them across the States
because they'd go off cos they had their things open. There was no ice around.
So they would move them up the bank at each tide
so they had more and more time in the air and that would teach them
to have their mouths closed for longer. So they'd learn
to have their mouths closed for longer and longer
until they were closed long enough to sell them without making people ill.
There we are. That's your oyster.
Now, how did the Mounties use fruit machines to get their man?
When you say fruit machines, is this a friend of yours? I'm sorry?
Fruit machine!
That guy's a fruit machine!
You're right in a sense. The fruit machine was a nickname, it wasn't a one-armed bandit.
It'll be something to do with actual fruit.
No, it is actually the meaning of it that Jimmy,
in his rapacious and, if I may say, politically wildly incorrect way, went for.
Sorry. Well, the Mountie uniform is quite..."fruity".
No. It's easy to forget the Mounties are the Canadian police,
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
That's all of them, there. So they have no unmounted police? Well...
I don't know... It must be difficult on raids of small flats.
"Ow! My head!"
You should see the squad cars! They're a mess, David. A mess.
Imagine trying to chase a heroin addict up a small staircase on a horse!
Ridiculous. The heroin addicts would know to head for the small staircase!
JIMMY: Like trying to police a country with Daleks!
It would never work. With the disabled access, the Daleks can get everywhere.
Jimmy, are you saying that you think disabled access is a Dalek conspiracy?
Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying!
I had a great uncle in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
When you say a great uncle, your favourite?
No, I did one of these family tree things... Oh, yeah. He was in WWI and had his leg blown off.
Oh. He went to live in Canada and became the chief constable of the Vancouver Canadian Mounted Police.
How amazing. I don't know if they were struggling for men.
One advantage of being a mounted policeman, you don't need two legs. The horse has four to do it for you.
Essentially, their whole police force has too many legs to start with.
Essentially, they've got six legs per policeman, which means they're policed by insects.
LAUGHTER
That's just so silly, David, um...
No, we come back to this fruit machine.
In the Cold War period,
they were worried in a lot of Western countries
about civil servants.
There'd been scandals about civil servants being blackmailed. For what reason?
Homosexuality. For being homosexual, being gay.
Now, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were trying to find out the homosexuals in the civil service.
So that they could not be honey-trapped by Soviet spies.
That was the theory, anyway.
So is one of these gay? Never Mind The Buzzcocks. Number three!
Was this before the RAF invented "Gaydar"? Yes!
Exactly! It was a "Gaydar" machine, if you like,
a pretty primitive device which, among other things, showed people pictures of nude men and women
and measured their pupil dilation and their perspiration.
But the awful thing is, if they "failed",
they were sacked. That was their job over with.
They were deemed to be homosexual and they were out of a job.
The system was thrown out by any civil servants who fancy horses!
Or even running the test, riding round the room, saying,
"I can't reach down to the fruit machine. Damn these horses!"
This crude measurement device was replaced, though, by something called... Dancing On Ice!
"Do you like "Dancing On Ice"? Is this a trick question?
"Yes, I do." "You're out."
You answer, "It's to die for!"
It's a plethysmograph.
A plethysmograph is an instrument - there's a male version and a female version
because they want to catch lesbians as well -
so the male version is basically a cock ring
that measures the tumescence of the male member when certain images are played
and for women it's a sort of dildo that measures lubrication.
I wouldn't mind doing that! What?!
I just...
Jimmy, so much is coming out here.
Just saying, the testing... You'd like to do that?
Who got the testing job? That sounds brilliant! Oh, doesn't it?
Lovely(!)
Well, I'm just saying.
It'd be a giggle. When was this?
When did they invent that? Surprisingly recently.
It was used up until the '80s.
'80s?! Surely it was legal and above-board in the 1980s?
Exactly. It's odd. It's weird that they'd go, "We'll double-check."
The odd thing about the fruit machine was the guy who brought it to Canada, Kurt Freund,
had actually invented it in order to do the precise opposite.
It was to catch out people who claimed they were gay
to use it as exemption for serving in the Czech army.
Now, you have a choice of venues for dinner tonight.
Russia or France.
Describe the difference between Russian and French service.
BELL TOLLS
In France they give you lots of vaguely obstetric instruments
to dismantle things like frogs' legs and snails.
Special cutlery. All the stuff you'd have your back yard fumigated for.
And in Russia, they just go, "Here's a turnip."
"If you don't like it, you're going to Siberia."
Do you know what the Russian national dish is? No? Empty.
It's not my fault!
I think I know the answer to this. Go on?
Almost all service now is what you'd call Russian service.
Which means you have food in courses, one after another.
And French service, obviously the French have food in courses like everyone,
like the Russians, but French service was everything coming at once.
Like a kind of buffet. That is an absolutely perfect answer.
David Mitchell, have a handful of points.
And of course there's the tapas principle in lots of Middle-Eastern and Mediterranean cooking.
But the French, right up until the 19th century
all the courses would come in one big go. You'd help yourself to everything.
And then the Russian ambassador to Napoleon's court
came and said, "We've had this brilliant idea in Russia.
"Let's eat one course and then another."
This was considered absolutely staggering and revolutionary,
and it caught on.
Then the Americans improved on it by making it able for you to drive through in a car!
And get it in a bag from a 16-year-old...
They did indeed. ..with shingles!
David, I have to call you my teacher's pet
and you get a special fanfare instead of a forfeit. Brilliant.
FANFARE Teacher's Pet.
I don't feel that cool!
It's not a cool thing to be, but you do get points.
For some people, that's important.
Escoffier was the man who introduced this into private homes
and more importantly, restaurants. What do you know about him? Ask David!
He started frogs' legs. Right. I know that cos I heard it on David's radio show.
Oh, you...
I should at this point say in the QI annual,
I did a page on Escoffier.
So I'm quite well, um... This could be a good bit! First name?
Auguste. Brilliant.
Um, and he... Died in?
I don't know! A terrible house fire!
19...
He died in 1935. He lived a long time. 62 years he was a chef.
He founded the Ritz in Paris and the Carlton in London and was the chef at the Savoy. Brilliant.
What's his most famous dish? He invented Peach Melba for Dame Nellie Melba.
Dame Nellie Melba. Also apparently invented Melba toast for her as well
cos she was dieting in between Peach Melbas!
And who was Nellie Melba? She was an opera singer.
And what was her real name? Mitchell. Yes! Very good!
I think... I'm so impressed. ..her father was David Mitchell.
Get out! Do you know... Do you know...
APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH
I am truly impressed. It's not a set-up. You are tumescent! I know you are!
Where's the fruit machine now?
Talking about... Nude facts! Oh!
There's a fact about Dame Nellie Melba.
Do you know what she'd like to do when she was waiting to go on? What was her profession? Opera singer.
A great opera singer. What did she think was good for the voice?
Oral sex.
JIMMY: I'm not saying anything.
Alan gets the point, oral sex. ALAN GARGLES
# La-la-la-la-la! #
ALAN GARGLES
It turned from a dramatic soprano to a bass unfortunately.
Again... Can I make you a double teacher's pet? Yes!
I'm gonna give you another fanfare because that was extraordinary.
FANFARE
I don't want to rain on your parade, but Stephen's pupils are ten times bigger!
I am, as Alan said, aroused by people who are passionate about interesting facts.
The fact is, until Escoffier introduced "Service a la Rousse", to Western Europe
meals were served all at once and eaten in whatever order you fancied.
Since I gave up Greco-Roman wrestling a few years ago, I've put on a few pounds, as you can tell,
do you have any tips on how I can turn this fat back into muscle?
When you say you've given up Greco-Roman wrestling, you can't change who you are. I know.
Who do you think invented Greco-Roman wrestling? The Greeks and the Romans.
ALARM RINGS
Now all you have to say is Mr Wrestling.
No, it was the French. They gave it a classical thing. "We want men rubbing against each other."
There was freestyle wrestling. "Catch As Catch Can" it was called.
They wanted this other form - you couldn't do anything below the waist,
you couldn't use your legs, you couldn't hook people onto the ground.
You know what Mae West said about all in wrestling? "If it's all in, why wrestle?"
Good, isn't it? Finally, this show gets back on firm heterosexual footing. Exactly.
Hear hear.
You can't turn fat into muscle. Thank you, Alan. They're different things.
That thing if you don't keep doing it, it turns into fat, that's nonsense. You're so right.
That is brilliance on your part and I'm very, very pleased with you.
Oh! Well done. I might give you a teacher's pet fanfare. I have written semen on my tongue though.
At least you've just written it.
Boys who rub me up the wrong way come to a sticky end.
GROANS
This idea that fat turns to muscle, it's nonsense. It's like saying your toenail could turn into your ear.
They're two different substances and parts and structures of the body.
They're not the same. Now, what is the worst thing to eat for tooth decay?
REVERBERATING GONG Crystal meth.
There is some truth. Crystal meth addicts have appalling teeth.
Have you seen the ad for crystal meth? It's an ad against it, surely?
That explains it. I think so.
That makes perfect sense. I've looked at it and went, "Who's buying that? It's horrible."
They sell it in vials. The worst thing you could do - I saw this on TV - is to put them in salsa,
and then run a, um... a current through it.
That must be bad for them.
A guy broke out of jail in Mexico, took him six years, he just kept wiping salsa on the bars.
Oh, my... After six years, the acid broke down the steel. It was that Myth Buster show.
Then they ran a current through it and it just happened in days. Good gracious. How brilliant.
You wouldn't want to do that... If your teeth were like iron bars.
I would just say don't run a current through your teeth. Full stop.
It's not going to be sugar. You're right. There is something worse than sugar. Sugar is quite bad.
The thing is it dissolves quite quickly in your saliva and is away from the teeth,
whereas potato starch is about the worse thing because it hangs around in the teeth more than sugar.
Crisps are particularly bad - bits of them stay up. You may think, "It's not like an Opal Fruit,"
but actually it's really bad.
Do you know having gum disease doubles your chance of coronary artery disease?
That's scary, isn't it? Does it double your chances or is there a correlation between the two?
There's a direct causal link. Bacteria from the mouth find their way to the heart.
A lot of disease in the heart IS disease - it's infection, not bad lifestyle and being lazy.
You can get a virus, the heart can kill people commonly, or bacteria.
So flossing is good for your heart? Yes, that's a good thought.
Don't try and floss your heart.
I saw in America anal floss.
GROANS Here we go again.
It's not a gay thing, Rich.
It's an American thing. It's a way of drying your intimate crack. God bless America.
Drive through hamburgers and anal floss.
It's like a towel... It's a special... You were doing it the wrong way.
Was I?
Oh, I don't know. It's a special towel with a gusset. Basically.
Sorry. Pulling your sleeves up worried me. I thought you were... I'll show you anal floss.
Sweets and chocolate aren't the worst thing for your teeth.
Potato starch sticks to teeth for longer, providing a feast for the acid producing bacteria.
That bag of chips might not just make you fat, it might make your teeth fall out too.
While we're digesting that truth, how about a story? Tell me the tale of the Miracle of the Herrings.
Is it a miracle as in the act of an interventionist god. I can tell you it didn't happen.
It so didn't happen, but it is an official miracle. Just one of the more pathetic...
Is it a raining fish story? JIMMY: The feeding of the three.
No, it's the feeding of the one person who didn't like herring.
He says, "Not too bad actually."
Was it like the feeding of the 5,000? 5,000 people and they want bread and fish,
I reckon that was 4,500 people going, "What you got? Bread and fish? I'm all right, thanks.
"I'll have something at home."
The other interesting thing about that story is that out of the 5,000 people, only two had brought food.
In a way - OK, good miracle -
but the other side of it is 4,998 idiots
with no sense of foresight and Jesus doesn't make them learn a lesson from that.
It's all fine... "This isn't Glastonbury," he could've said.
"You didn't bring any food, of course there's not going to be any food! Plan next time.
"Judea would be better if people planned.
"But, no, it'll work out fine - Jesus will magic up some grub."
"He'll get crucified one day, then what are you going to eat?" Yes!
As you know, the Roman Catholic Church likes to appoint...
After they're dead, it likes to do this thing to holy dead people... Sainthood. Makes them a saint.
They're fast tracking one at the moment, Padre Pio... They're trying to fast track Mother Teresa.
Yeah. This is one of the great 13th century divine creatures,
a theologian philosopher called Thomas Aquinas. They wanted to make him a saint. He's a Dominican friar,
but he didn't mortify his flesh, as you're supposed to. There he is.
That was a bit bad, and he didn't seem to do any good works while he was around,
he wrote splendidly, he was a great philosopher, and they had to find a miracle for him and there were none,
until someone told a story that apparently on his death bed he said, "I fancy a herring."
They were in the Mediterranean where there are no herrings
so they thought, "Bring him pilchards, he won't know."
So they gave him pilchards and he went, "Mmm, they're the best herrings I've tasted."
This is true, the Catholic Church decided to interpret that as the Miracle of the Herrings,
that the pilchards had turned to herrings in his mouth,
therefore he qualified as a saint and he is to this day St Thomas Aquinas.
If you're going to make it up, you might as well make up something better than that. You'd think.
Suddenly he magiced up a unicorn. I know. That's what's so sweet and feeble about it.
They're groping for a miracle. Anyway, they made him a saint.
I like a saint. You like a saint? What's the matter with a saint?
If you're going to have imaginary friends, have loads of them.
The great thing is it's something for people to collect, isn't it? Yes.
It's like Star Wars. There's all the figures. There's a merchandising opportunity.
Anyway, the Miracle of the Herrings was attributed to Thomas Aquinas so he'd qualify for sainthood.
Before we head below the salt, let's have a look at your tasting maps.
What have we got here? We'll start with Jimmy. What have you got?
You taste failure there and success at the back.
The bitter taste of resentment.
Bitter at the back?
What are the tastes? Salt, sweet...
Sour, bitter... Didn't they invent one, which is MSG? Yes.
But they didn't discover it until 1911 or something?
Umami. It's the brothy, mushroomy... I love it. ..slightly savoury.
Sweet, salt...
Sour. MSG. Bitter.
Yes. Is that it? Five. What's Gordon Ramsay wittering on about
in those shows, if that's it? On the tongue.
There's a rainbow of things in the olfactory bulb in the nose.
That's where all flavours can be detected.
But the tongue is only for those five.
What have you got, Rich?
Guilt. Remorse... Can you taste guilt?
Crabby.
David, what have you got? I've got, um...
"Be sick."
Cos it does make you be sick.
And that's "forgotten names", on the tip of your tongue.
Very good!
Excellent.
Alan?
I've got bitter, sour and sweet and then I ran out of ideas.
I had savoury. I didn't think it was right. Umami is savoury.
Then I had one left so I just put jam in!
Jam!
For all we know, your tongue may... Are any of these right? No. The fact is,
all this, the whole tongue map idea is actually nonsense.
Thank you. Throw your tongue over your shoulder.
JIMMY: If I could do that...
You wouldn't be working here, for a start!
I'd be a happy man! She wouldn't let me leave the house!
Because you could lick your shoulder blade?
Well, the inference being... I suppose, yes.
There was a French restaurateur, quite a famous one, in London...
Don't tell me... No. He used to say to women, "Excuse me, can I smell your pussy?"
They'd go, "No." He'd say, "It must be your feet then."
COY LAUGHTER It's a horrible joke.
How many of those people then stayed in the restaurant?
He didn't do it in the restaurant. He'd come up to the table. That sounds like a horrible restaurant.
I mean, how good would the food have to be?
He'd do it when relaxing off duty. Right. That was one of his jokes.
We detect those five primary flavours all over the tongue
and not in that... That used to be held to be the tongue map.
Amazingly, it's still in a lot of text books.
But it is absolutely not true.
And so we come to the highlight of our feast,
the piece de generale ignorance.
Elbows off the tables and fingers on the buzzers.
Name a poisonous snake. GONG
Yes? Piers Morgan.
KLAXON Jimmy, Jimmy!
Poison is not the same as venom. It can't be.
Because there are load of poisonous snakes.
You sounded so like Jonathan Creek just then!
You suddenly hit it with the pen. It was so right.
You went, "Got it! I've got the answer! In a locked room..."
There's lots of them. Well, we haven't name one yet.
I'm not going to. They're all gonna be up there.
I refuse! You're so right.
We were hoping you'd say cobra and... He said it! ..rattlesnake...
And all those things. But "poisonous" does not apply to them.
It means if you eat it, it makes you very ill or kills you.
Venom goes... Venom is injected into your blood.
Those are all venomous snakes. There are only two poisonous snakes,
ones that if you ate would kill you, like a poison fruit or berry.
And they are, there's the Japanese grass snake,
Rhabdophis tigrinus, becomes poisonous by eating toxic toads.
It stores them in glands in its neck. If you eat that, you'll die.
Or there's the Thamnophis sirtalis... Of course!
..which is the common garter snake. Stephen...
Yeah? What are you talking about?
LAUGHTER
It eats a poisonous newt, an orange-bellied rough-skinned newt.
Now, what shouldn't you eat before bedtime?
And again, once again, it's a trap!
Us?!
TINKLING BELL Cheese!
KLAXON
Gives you bad dreams. Supposedly. But apparently,
according to a study, it's been debunked.
In 2005. Apparently it gives you good dreams.
But the study was instituted by the British Cheese Board!
They may have an axe to grind! Are you suggesting corruption? Cheese Board?!
I think they're aware of the joke.
They say there's an amino acid in cheese as there is in milk and all dairy products called Tryptophan
which gives you peace and joy and tranquillity and helps you sleep.
No, that's Temazepam! Temazepam! But Tryptophan is a natural one.
I don't think it makes it better that they're aware of the joke.
They've made their name a joke. The British Cheese Board. Manufacturing cheese is not a joke.
Make the name of your organisation a joke, it sits there dying, like a joke on a fridge.
A joke should be cracked, then you forget it, but, no, it's there... On stationery... Yeah.
The British Cheese Board. It becomes less funny each time.
It's like a headline... I work for the British Cheese Board. Please don't say anything.
There was a headline on the BBC website when BA's profits went up - BA's Profits Soar.
Oh! Why's that better?
No-one's going to laugh because you said "soar" - just say "go up".
Not "go up" because plane's go up, say "increase".
Do anything to avoid that awful, half-limping... You're so right. ..foetus of a joke.
You're right. You're so right. From your lips to God's ears.
APPLAUSE
So the British Cheese Commission has determined that cheese is very good for you.
What are those people doing, by the way?
I'm pretty sure there's an opera singer in that fridge.
He's reaching in, "I keep the semen in here." Oh, dear.
Didn't the Romantic poets used to eat off meat in order to give themselves crazy dreams?
I haven't heard that. That's interesting. They certainly toyed with morphine.
I heard they used to eat gamey meat and they'd notice they had extraordinary dreams
because the rotting flesh would give them...
ALAN: And extraordinary poos. JIMMY: Hallucinogenic. Extraordinary poos, did you say?
I dreamt I had to get up ten times last night and sit lonely squitting.
That's the only dreams off meat has ever given me?
Biting the inside of the lavatory door for miserable hours.
Maybe that's why you get so many poems... Byron actually wrote on a lavatory wall a classical poem,
which was asking for a good stool. "Cloaca" is the Latin for "sewer", for lavatory,
so he wrote, "Cloacina, goddess of this place,
"look on thy supplicants with smiling face.
"Smooth and consistent may their offerings flow,
"neither rashly swift nor insolently slow."
That's a genuine poem... Better class of graffiti in your school.
LAUGHTER
When he says, "rashly swift," is that really possible?
It's what known as the pathetic fallacy in poetry.
You impute an emotion or an ability to an object that is not capable of it.
OK.
LAUGHTER
The British Cheese Board says, "Let them eat cheese."
But who said, "Let them eat cake"?
That French woman - Dawn French.
Very good.
She said, "Let them eat brioche"! Who did?
I'm not saying it!
But I'm asking you. I need to know!
Ooh! Was it Mr Kipling? KLAXON
Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy!
Marie...Osmond. Marie Osmond? Kirsten Dunst.
No. Kirsten Dunst in that shocking film,
the worst film ever made since Revolution with Al Pacino.
Did it involve cakes? Four people. A Marie Antoinette film.
Yes. So did you say what? Who said it? What you said. Marie Antoinette.
Why do you keep saying Marie Antoinette? KLAXON
Because I wanted that to happen!
Marie Antoinette didn't say it, or if she did, she was quoting it.
She was born in 1755, as every schoolboy knows.
The phrase was seen in print in 1760
and Jean-Jacques Rousseau claims to have seen it in 1740.
So this whole idea that it was Marie Antoinette is not true.
You want to hear the whole conversation.
"They've no bread." "Let them eat cake." "They haven't got cake, either." "Oh. This is a problem."
Yes! "I'll talk to the ministers about it and see what we can do."
They're probably... That may well be it.
The accusation that one grand lady or another committed this gaffe
was in circulation at least 15 years before Marie Antoinette was born.
Now, what makes up more than 70% of the internet?
Ooh!
It's my personal collection, isn't it?
Of what? Of gentlemen's special interest literature.
KLAXON I didn't say that! I think we know
what you're talking about! If you're gonna be like that...
It's quite surprising. They did a survey on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union
who were annoyed about some legislation Bush wanted to pass,
which they thought prohibitive of personal liberty
and they discovered that less than 1% of the internet is pornography. Less than 1%.
You say that, but the other day I wanted to know why German people are so fastidious...
Mmm. ..so I typed in German anal and it was...
I lost a week, Stephen.
You are so bad!
He emerged bleary-eyed, finally pulled back the curtains...
I need fluids.
Of all email traffic, 85...
In fact, up to 89% is spam. Simple as that.
Trying to sell you Zanex and penis enlargement. Yes. Soft Cialis, whatever that is.
I get loads of 'em. Most are from my girlfriend.
It's the ones from my mum that really hurt.
A recent study has established that the World Wide Web is less than 1% pornography
and 89% of all emails are spam,
good news if you're looking for pills or want to increase your extremities.
That brings us to the coffee and liqueurs, as it were.
The end of our little dinner. L'addition, s'il vous plait, garcon.
Let's look at the scores. It's pretty unsurprising to those who've been paying attention
that our runaway winner with a full ten points is David Mitchell.
Hoorah!
Well done to David with ten and it's medium with minus two to Rich Hall.
Minus two?
And it's a very rare third place for Alan Davies with minus 12!
Looking decidedly blue, it's Jimmy Carr with minus 46!
So it only remains for me to thank my fellow diners, Rich, Jimmy, David and Alan
and to leave you with the reproving words of our Dame Nellie Melba
on being presented with a gelatine-based pudding
which had not been allowed to set properly.
"There are two things I like stiff", she said, "and one of them's jelly." Goodnight!
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