APPLAUSE
Gooooood evening! Good evening, good evening, good evening,
and welcome to QI where we have prepared for you
a veritable gallimaufry of gaffes, gammons and other gingambobs.
On the panel tonight we have the gotch-gutted Hugh Dennis.
APPLAUSE
What does that mean?
A glimflashy grinagog, Phill Jupitus
APPLAUSE
A gravy-eyed, gundiguts, Andy Hamilton.
APPLAUSE
And a proper gilly gaupus, Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE
And to attract my attention tonight, the buzzers are all on a Georgian theme. Hugh goes...
OBOE PLAYS STATELY MELODY
Ah. Andy goes...
BASSOON PLAYS JAUNTY TUNE
LAUGHTER
Phill goes...
JOLLY MELODY ON STRINGS AND FLUTE
LAUGHTER
Wow! And Alan goes...
MUSIC: "When I'm Cleaning Windows" by George Formby
LAUGHTER
It's George Formby.
# When I'm cleaning windows. #
Yes, George Formby. Excellent.
APPLAUSE
You might have been able to tell, that I've been reading my 18th century book of Georgian slang.
And I called you gravy-eyed. What do you think that means?
Eyes like gravy?
Well, rheumy, runny eyes. Glimflashy?
It means an angry person. I think their eyes are flashing, the glims of their eyes.
There is a great phrase called "whiddle my scrap". Do you know what that means?
Does that mean you can
exchange your car for £2,000?
Very good!
No, to whiddle somebody's scrap means to see their game, see what they're up to.
He whiddled my scrap.
And so, I have decided to institute a game of whiddle my scrap.
It's an early version of Call My Bluff.
So let's play whiddle my scrap. Let's have a word.
Let's have your team. You've got to do it as Robert Robinson or I'm not playing.
AS ROBERT ROBINSON: Ah, it's a gentleman of three outs.
What can it mean? What can it mean? Andy has the answer.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
A gentleman of three outs was a genteel Georgian expression
and it meant, someone without money, without wit and without manners.
So they were the three "withouts". It was someone without money, without wit and without manners.
Like a sort of Piers Morgan of the 18th century.
Well, before he got rich, yes.
Yes, yes! Good.
A gentleman of three outs is a status thing.
The 18th century was a period in which many of the great homes were built.
Lesser people couldn't afford massive houses, so they built smaller houses.
But they put lots of outhouses on them.
So if you were a gentleman of three outs it would mean you had
three outbuildings and that would have been a mark of your status and your means.
Or, it was Punch Magazine's genteel description of the notorious highwayman, Jonny Tripplearse.
LAUGHTER
Now, one of those is maybe more plausible...
than the others, I don't know.
Right, so... Ah, team, who's your captain? Who's going to guess?
It's a...
THEY GRUNT INCOHERENTLY
I never really used to like Call My Bluff. I thought it was quite boring because of this bit.
I always used to like the bit where someone would go,
"I'm leaning towards Hugh..."
And they look at you and try and see if you crack.
Sometimes they say, "Have a plump, have a plump".
Plump for something. The first one.
The gentleman without manners. Reveal yourself, is it true?
It's easy to go for the first one because you couldn't actually remember what it was.
What he said. I wasn't really listening.
I can't stand Call my Bluff.
This is why... Why are we playing Call My Bluff? It's a shit game!
We've invented a really good game and we're playing a shit one.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
It's a way of allowing our brilliance to stand out.
On Call my Bluff, they're busy playing QI. They're having a right laugh!
Shall I do it the way Diana Rigg would do it? Go on.
You're right!
APPLAUSE
Now let's have the next word.
And it's...
Grog blossom. Would you like to explain what grog blossom is?
It's actually the, kind of, mould
that you get around the inside of a barrel of beer,
that you have to clean out before you can use it again.
I'd like to, if I may, do it in the style of the usual, customary, out-of-work actor they used to have
on Call My Bluff who would then really lean into his definition, in an effort to beg for work.
Imagine if you will...
So true!
..a lone figure walking across Hampstead Heath...
the sun glinting in his very eyes, for, he is making his way back from an evening at the inn.
Where he has partaken...
of mead and other lascivious beverages.
LAUGHTER
Adorning the chin of said stout fellow...
are pimples, for they betray his excesses.
And these, at the time, were known as...
Marty Fitch, 01287 469,
available for panto.
Grog blossom.
Ah, bravo!
APPLAUSE
So it's some kind of spot caused by drunkenness,
or it's the mould growing on the inside of a barrel of ale. Would you like to confer?
I think it's the stuff around the barrel. Do you? The dull one.
Yeah. We're going for the dull answer please.
Alan, true or bluff?
It's a bluff! GROANS
So the true answer... So then I have to do it like they do,
And of course, the man walking across the common, it was he! Ha-ha!
Yes...it is.
APPLAUSE
That's enough gratuitous Georgian grossness, let's look at a notable gaffe now.
How did Captain Schlitt's number two sink his own U-boat?
I'm assuming that the good captain was in the bath. This couldn't have happened in an actual...
No, it was a real...
You mean playing with a toy U-boat?
And it was a number two.
Oh, I see, a number two in that sense.
Yes. Not in the "yes, number one, carry on, number one".
He might have blocked the loo and caused some sort of terrible backup...
affected the ballast.
Imagine how the lavatory on a submarine works. Ah!
Sorry, a bit of a clue. A ruthless competitor!
LAUGHTER
It's something to do with the flush on the toilet.
How does that work when you're underwater?
It sucks it out, but lets water in?
Yes. The point is that obviously the lavatorial arrangements of a boat that is submersible are complex.
Because you can't just flush the water out, the way you can in an aeroplane or train,
you have to have special training to operate the flush.
Or...
you shoot a sailor out of the torpedo tube, tied to a rope.
He relieves himself, and you pull him back in.
LAUGHTER
Well it seems that what happened was Captain Schlitt, in his U-boat, U-1206, this is April 14, 1945.
Just before the end of the war...
Oh, how annoying. Very annoying for him!
And he has a poo. And he claims that the loo was faulty and didn't work properly.
Klo. Klo as they would say, klo...gebrochen.
IN GERMAN ACCENT: It was not working.
But there is a theory that, in fact, he'd just done a rather monster and unpleasant poo,
and was too embarrassed to ask the sailor, who was responsible for the doing of the flushing, to come in.
Because there was a bit of a...
And so he did it himself and got it in the wrong order and he filled the place with sewage and water.
AUDIENCE GROANS
But more importantly... He just left it? Yeah.
As you would if you're in a hotel for example!
IN GERMAN ACCENT: There, it was...that was like that when I went in. It was...
Ja, ja. Don't go in that one. My God!
So has he climbed out of the tower of the submarine, and the...
No, they're underwater, that's the point. Did they perish?
Well, what happened is there was this leak, the water came in
and it leaked into... what powered those U-boats? Diesel?
No.
They had a battery. A huge acid battery.
And when the seawater hits the battery it creates?
Chlorine gas, toxic chlorine gas.
And so they had to rise up to the surface to vent, and they were spotted and blown out of the water.
So just because he basically...
That's very unfair to shoot a man with his trousers round his ankles.
It is a bit.
Toilet's blocked. This doesn't count!
Captain Karl-Adolph Schlitt sank his own U-boat using nothing more deadly than its own lavatory.
Now, getting up. What gets you up in the morning?
LAUGHTER
Bizarre picture to choose. But, erm...
I'm a writer,
and getting up in the morning, isn't really part of my job.
LAUGHTER
I used to leave the World Service on overnight,
just very quiet on the radio, so I thought I'd wake up quite naturally.
But I was listening to Radio Four on the way to work the next day and I heard the news on the radio
and I thought, I dreamed this?
For two days I thought I was psychic.
Because I'd been dreaming what I was listening to on the World Service.
I thought, oh my God, I've got the powers!
Are there ones you know of? Did you ever use as a child, if you didn't have an alarm clock?
This is the old wives one. Bang your head on the pillow, the number of times...
So, one, two, three, four, five, six.
And you would... Wake up at six. With concussion.
Have you not tried that? Maybe you have to have been to a boarding school.
If you were doing a raid on the kitchens or something,
we'd say, OK, we'll get up at three and we'll go down to the kitchens
because they had these big blocks of catering jelly, and you'd eat the blocks of jelly...
Left out especially for the ones who were going to raid the kitchen.
Probably. The kids have been raiding the kitchen again - better leave some jelly out.
We would go, bang, bang, bang, like that. Three, and you'd wake up at three. It seemed to work.
We were convinced it did. Sleep researchers say it doesn't. You just wake up a lot
because you're not sleeping. And you look at your watch and you only remember the one that works.
You've got a tremendous headache.
You don't get up early. Are you a night owl, do you work late?
No. I can get up early if I have to.
Yeah. It's reckoned that 20% of people are genuinely...
you know, it is a difficulty for them because they are larks or owls, as you might say.
They are early or late, and that's to say they fall asleep at dinner parties if they're a lark,
and just can't get up if they're an owl.
Teenagers are owls, aren't they? Young children are larks,
teenagers are owls. Very old people tend to get back to being larks again and rise early.
It's very irritating if people do get up very early, they will justify that by saying,
best part of the day. Best part of the day.
It's not! It's just part of the day.
I see another bit of the day... When nothing's open.
There are things that happen early in the morning that are different if you've stayed up for them,
than if you've woken up to them. Like, it's three or four in the morning
and you're having an all-nighter and you hear the binmen and you feel guilty.
You hate the fact the morning's come. If you wake up to it, you think, yes! It belongs to me!
It's a big difference, isn't it.
I used to live in a house in Hernhill and I had the room at the front.
And there was one binman who thought he could sing.
And at six in the morning he would sing, Don't Cry For Me Argentina.
But he could never get the last note. So you had...
LAST NOTE INCORRECT: # Don't cry for me, Argentina... #
LAUGHTER
No!
It used to vary, morning to morning.
And it was... I was that close to insanity,
cos he was my lark, every morning.
Rex Harrison did your bins?!
He had two sisters called Marge and Tina, didn't you know?
Hee-hee!
Do you know what the American Indians supposedly did to ensure they got up for a dawn raid?
They didn't have alarm clocks.
Leave the window... leave the curtains open?
No. Dogs?
They would drink lots of water. So they needed a wee.
So you would have to get up for a wee. MIT produced a clock
which, when you press the snooze button, it runs off and hides...
Ha-ha!
..so that when it rings again you have to get up to stop it.
And it's programmed each day to hide in a different place, so it's never in the same place. Quite clever.
They are working on really important projects.
And there's another one, which is an alarm clock in the shape of a dumbbell.
You can't shut it up unless you do 30 reps. So it's a way of getting fit
and waking up at the same time.
What a deeply demoralising - that clock thing - demoralising start to the day.
You've been outwitted by a clock.
The first thing that's happened in your day, the clock's given you the run-around for half an hour.
There's another one, which every time you press the snooze button, it's got an on-line connection,
you donate money to a political cause you hate.
That's quite clever, isn't it.
We've got a clock, it's like a cuckoo clock, but it's a monkey.
And he comes out and goes, Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! on the hour.
But only ever when I'm saying something important.
Unbelievable. I'll be saying, now look, no. The thing is, what you've got to understand...
Ooo! Ooo! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
And one day it's going to end up like the cuckoo clock in Steptoe And Son.
Like waiters is restaurants, when you've reached the punch line of a joke.
And so she says... And who's having the lamb? Very annoying.
Well there you go, there are of course many cunning ways of waking yourself up without an alarm clock.
American Indians swore by a nice full bladder.
Here are samples of handwriting from our panellists.
I want you to match the handwriting to the panellist and see what you can say about it.
Give reasons if you can. Obviously don't say your own, cos you'll know your own.
"Hello, my name is Phill Jupitus."
I wonder who that could be. I think there's a clue in that one.
It's rather good handwriting. It's quite, sort of, calligraphically learnt.
"Dear Points Of View, I wish to complaint about QI."
Can I ask why I'm wearing a beret?
LAUGHTER
In my photo, that's the eyebrow I can't control.
People always think that I'm being quizzical when they say something. I can't, It's just up there.
Is it on its way up, or on its way down?
I've no idea.
So, any thoughts? What about, I must not answer back to...
D is Phill. D is Phill. I think there's a strong chance it's Phill.
I know that D is Andy, cos he writes on my scripts.
Rude things,
when we're filming.
Does he have that fine handwriting? It is very fine.
Yes, that is me. Congratulations on fine handwriting.
A graphologist would say of yours, that cos it's mostly joined up, logical, systematic thinker.
Some words are more spaced than others, therefore open, honest, but deep in thought.
Sociable because of the slightly forward slant to the right.
Right. So, OK that's good. We can eliminate D as being Andy Hamilton.
I think C is Alan.
Because it's the untidiest?
No, I just think it's Alan.
Don't know why. Is it you, Alan?
Yes. It is. Oh, that's really good.
How did you know?
Did you watch me doing it earlier?
No, I just thought, that looks like Alan wrote it...
LAUGHTER
..which is the only way you can play this game.
Close lettering is unstable apparently.
Oh.
There wasn't much room on the bit of paper. No? Ah...
I had to squeeze it in to get it in.
Letters not mostly joined up - sometimes does things without thinking.
It was a big, fat pen! You can't do joined up.
You gave me a marker pen!
B and A left. I think Phill and I can probably work out...
The logical thing. So B is Phill, yeah?
No. B is Hugh. It's quite good handwriting. It's quite flowing,
quite feminine almost. Well, you know...
I'm very in touch with that part of my nature.
It's very nice handwriting. Does it say anything about me? Yeah.
Joins up most, but not all letters. Artistic and intuitive.
Self-control, egotism and coldness on the other hand because it's upright.
Why's being upright mean that...
It doesn't. It must be understood, the British Psychological Society, and any imperative test ever done
has shown that graphology, as a way of interpreting character, has zero validity.
Like astrology.
So this is a bit of a, kind of, non-round? Yeah.
But no, it's interesting to know that. And even in America it's not allowable in court.
Forensic...
Sorry!
I mean, you know, but...
Forensic graphology, where you prove that this person did write this, that is allowable.
But the idea that you can interpret character is absolute nonsense.
I must say, I'm not looking forward to the DNA round.
The worrying thing about it is that 3,000 British businesses use graphologists for recruitment.
They actually hire people on the basis of a completely specious...
Good a way as any though, isn't it?
But it's botty water!
Girls have nicer handwriting than boys though, don't they?
That is one thing you can often, not 100%, but you can tell gender.
And you thought I was a girl!
Not always, I said not 100%.
We actually Tipp-Exed out the smiley-faced dots over the eyes.
I like yours, Phill, your "A"s. It says here, about self-control, egotism, coldness,
unstable, sometimes does things without thinking.
I'm with you there. Yeah. Unstable.
Whoa!
Thinking of having a fight. Who is the coldest?
Let's both get a 99 and just stand there with it.
First one to melt loses.
Whoa. I thought I was cold.
Phew! He is cold. So you did a handwriting test?
Yeah, I sat a test to become a French train driver.
What?!
My friend's dad was psychologist for SNCF, and in France they had this idea that, you know,
a responsible job like a train driver, you ought to find out if the person's a maniac or not.
We don't bother with that. And...
So I sat the test, and there was a handwriting element.
What they did was, you had to hold the pen in your wrong hand, and there was a kind of rubber ring
around the middle, and you had to try and trace over what was written there.
If it drifted up the page, you were assertive, or possibly too aggressive.
And if it went down the page, you were deemed to be too passive.
Good Lord.
What was really interesting was the tests were all actually common sense. There was one
where they said, press that pedal if it's green, that if it's red, that if it's yellow
and you'll hear a hooter if you get it wrong. You did it for about 15 seconds
and then they arbitrarily sounded the hooter. And it was just to see if you went to pieces or not.
I'm fascinated how you can drive a train too passively though. What do you do?
How can you be too passive? Ooh, we're going terribly fast.
Ooh, no! You're turning into Alan Bennett.
Well there you are. How can you tell when you're a victim of the Goldilocks effect?
BASSOON PLAYS JAUNTY TUNE
You feel just right.
Ah.
That's sort of exactly what a Goldilocks anything is. Because that's the nature of Goldilocks.
Absolutely right. It's all about, this one's too much, that one's too little,
this one is just right.
The Goldilocks effect is used in business.
You set a price for something.... Then you set three bears on them.
You have a range of three and the most expensive one is unbelievably expensive.
The second on is really a quarter as much and it seems just as nice, really.
Then there's a third one that's really very cheap and most people will go for the second one.
They think it's just right. They think, The first one's too expensive. That's a bargain!
A good example, supposedly, of Goldilocks pricing is the airfare.
Basic economy price for a transatlantic airline is about £500.
There's business class for a mere £3,500.
Then first class with a full size bed and the ability to order food whenever you want for £8,000.
And, according to Goldilocks pricing, business class with all its perks
looks like a bargain compared to the £8,000 even though it's still seven times as expensive as economy.
I was talking to Steve Cram once. He's a very nice chap, very fast runner.
He said that when they make trainers,
they have to make some that are extremely expensive because people will buy them.
If they don't, the other manufacturer will charge £200 for basically...
Once you get to about £60, this was ten years ago so maybe it's a bit more now,
then they're really about the same after that.
Once you get to £100, £120, £150, you're just giving them money.
That's prestige pricing, which is, again, bizarre.
If something is expensive enough, people will believe it must be quality and they see me coming...
They see those people coming!
There are other Goldilocks things.
There's a Goldilocks zone - the distance from the sun a planet has to be in another solar system,
which would support water where it wouldn't be too hot or too cold.
There you are, anyway, Goldilocks pricing is a technique where one item is given a huge price tag
to help persuade us that the next one down is relatively good value.
Now we're off to Ireland where the policemen are called...?
Guards. Guards, the Garda, exactly. Did you hear about
the Irish policeman who tried to arrest a Polish driving licence?
Do you know this story? You do?
I sort of... Someone was done for speeding or something in lots of different parts of Ireland? Yeah.
That's exactly right.
He had 50 offences against him and was fast becoming the most wanted motorist in Ireland.
But Prawo Jazdy is a master criminal because he had different driving licences with different addresses.
This Prawo Jazdy had all these... Goodness knows what he was up to apart from the driving offences!
That was what everyone was puzzled by. They really wanted him but it turned out one Garda member said,
IN IRISH ACCENT: I think, I may be wrong,
but Prawo Jazdy is the Polish for driving licence.
And, red faces all round, the Garda had... There it is - Prawo Jazdy.
Hang on a minute! The fact it said permis de conduire above it might have been a hint but there we are.
They're still looking for his brother, Rzeczpospolita Polska.
On the subject of driving licences, guess who had the first driving licence in the world?
The Queen.
No, oddly enough, you couldn't be "wronger" because the Queen has...?
No driving licence. No driving licence.
She's the only person in Britain who doesn't have a driving licence yet who drives. Cheat!
I mean, in a legal way. She's the only one who has no legal need for a driving licence.
What does she show them at Blockbusters to prove her address and that?
A £20 note.
LAUGHTER
That would do it.
APPLAUSE
Well, no, but the first ever driving licence, not surprisingly, perhaps. Who invented the motorcar?
Mr Benz. Mr Benz, Karl Benz, as in Mercedes Benz. Yeah, exactly.
He just made one for himself? No, the citizens demand...
IN GERMAN ACCENT: I think I need a licence! It's a dangerous machine.
I need a licence to drive.
Now I can drive.
IN GERMAN ACCENT: Driving licence number one. Zero zero zero one.
'I bet the first thing he did when he got on the road'
was stop the next bloke and go,
IN GERMAN ACCENT: "Where is YOUR licence?"
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE Oh, dear.
IN GERMAN ACCENT: I will issue you with the licence.
It's five marks.
Zero zero zero TWO!
Good day to you!
Where is your licence?
I will issue you with a licence.
Five marks.
Zero zero zero three.
I don't know how he kept making the cars. Yeah, he was so busy!
The authorising body was called the Dampfkessel Uberwachungs-Verein
which means the Steam Boiler Supervision Association,
which granted the first mandatory licences in Prussia.
IN GERMAN ACCENT: The SS...A.
LAUGHTER
Until the 14th of May, 2002, women in Lithu... He was still doing it! No.
Number one million one thousand...
Five euros.
Where is your licence?
LAUGHTER
In Lithuania in that year, women had to undergo a certain test in order to get a licence.
What do you think that test was? In where? Lithuania? Yes. Smear test?
Yes, a gynaecological examination. You're joking!
I don't know... There was one man who ran the entire office. He paid... Oh, right.
It is rather bizarre. Well... The Chinese have multiple choice driving test questions, 100 of them.
One of them includes, "If you come across a road accident victim whose intestines are lying on the road,
"should you pick them up and push them back in?" Is the answer yes or no?
I should think you don't push them back in... You're right. ..I would have thought. I'm not a doctor!
Didn't they have that weird thing in the cultural revolution in China?
Traffic lights here are green for go and red for stop.
They thought, during the cultural revolution, that that was incorrect and red should mean go
because, culturally, Communism and all the rest of it...
But they failed to change all the traffic lights,
so on some traffic lights green was go and on some red was go and they had thousands of accidents
and then they had to, sort of, change it back. Wow. Hence the probability of intestines lying on the road.
Probably where it came from in the first place. A practical question.
They're not actually green. They're kind of blue. Yes, they can be.
Because red and green is a very common colour blindness,
so when they first did red and green it was a disaster for some people, who just carried straight on.
They couldn't tell whether it was the top or the bottom. No, so the green...
If I see a black and white film, I can tell which light's on, can't you?
But not in the dark, Stephen!
You are relying on the colour, let's face it, usually. You're right. I'm sorry.
Can we not argue? That is what the terrorists want.
LAUGHTER You're right!
Thank you, voice of sanity.
I did hear a character in a film once say, "Don't look at the lights, the lights never hit anyone."
That's quite a good motto for driving. It is.
IN GERMAN ACCENT: This is one I will use!
Don't look at ze lights, ze lights never hit anyone.
Ausgezeichnet.
We're motoring along nicely here, so can you tell me
what travels from Land's End to John O'Groats every year
at about one third of a mile per hour but it slows down a bit on hills.
Does it specifically go from there to there or...
It goes from the south to the north but it includes going from Land's End... Is it a tectonic wave or..?
No, not a tectonic wave. I don't know if they exist. I just made it up, I think.
It's something slightly more abstract. It's a phenomenon, which you were sort of getting towards.
Is it dress sense?
If we're talking about moving from the south to the north... Ooh, careful! Now, now. Now, then.
The Gulf Stream or something? Is it a windy thing? It's seasonal. It is a season.
Winter? Spring.
Spring is the answer. Spring takes eight weeks to get from the very south coast,
all the way up to the very north and up to the Orkneys. But what's the definition of spring?
There's a phenotype analysis you can do of particular common plants blooming.
Anyone from the Midlands who goes to London will say, "Oh, my God, they've already got daffodils out."
Or they'll go north and say, "They haven't got tulips yet."
It's very noticeable. They're too lazy to sow the bastards!
It's like when the weather man on Radio Four goes,
"You might like to make note that it's the first day of spring today."
IN SCOTTISH ACCENT: No, it's not! I think you'll find I'm still freezing here.
Eight miles a day it does? Spring?
Is that what we're saying?
It takes about eight weeks to get from John O'Groats and that's about a third of a mile per hour.
You could walk and just beat spring. Yeah. You could. It's a weird thought. Very weird.
If you timed it with a daffodil and walked at exactly the right speed, it'd go pop-pop-pop-pop.
And it would be rather beautiful.
I'm in touch with my feminine side!
You're responding to your handwriting beautifully.
It's the phenological observations, as they call them, of the various things that trigger spring.
It's a rather wonderful thought, spring moving up like that.
Why do birds fly south in the winter?
I thought you were going to sing Close To You! To go to Margate.
Because it's too far to walk. Bah.
They're going because it's warmer presumably, aren't they?
What's the advantage of the warmth? Well, you feel nicer.
More food to eat. There's nothing like the sun on your feathers.
It's the insects. In the north, in the frozen earth, you can't get at them
or they've died or are in a dormant state and are not available. Food for the birds is not there.
So it is food.
Spring travels north through Britain at around one third of a mile per hour
but arrives two days later for every hundred foot of elevation.
As we're travelling at a snail's pace,
never mind snail mail, what happened to the snail telegram or telegraph?
LAUGHTER
That's not it, is it? That's just... No.
An amazing young Frenchman called Benoit had a theory that when two snails, male and female, mated
that forever afterwards they had a telepathic power. There's some mating snails for you.
And that, no matter how far away they were, that they could communicate thoughts to each other.
So, he raised money to develop this system where he had a sort of dish
to which he glued 24 snails
which he labelled A to Z, missing out, I think, Q and X possibly.
And then the mates of each one he did the same to on another dish
and the other dish could go to New York,
all he had to do was wibble the A and the A in New York would wibble because it had mated with the...
And so you'd send your message by typing snails
and the person at the other end would watch the snails vibrate and read out the message.
But, as I say, the amazing thing is, he found someone to invest in this.
LAUGHTER
And that, gentlemen, is how we broke the Enigma code.
Isn't it fantastic? It was called the Pasilalinic -
a sympathetic compass using "escargotic" vibration.
Those snails are just disgusting. Lying all over each other. Will they stop it! Get a room!
Technically, they have got a room. They carry their room around with them! That's their thing.
Is it wrong to be aroused now? Because I am.
Anyway, sadly the Pasilalinic Sympathetic Compass or snail telegraph simply didn't work.
Whilst on the subject of gadgetry, however, what's the point of those machines?
Ah. That's, eh, an eternally filling glass in the middle. Never empty.
Perpetual motion. Oh, points to the man, absolutely! They're all perpetual motion machines.
Or attempts to design perpetual motion machines. What is a perpetual motion machine?
One that never stops? One that is in motion in perpetuity, Stephen. Yes.
You're asking a silly question. Think, boy! There's more to it - there must be no input of energy.
No energy in but you should be able to get energy out.
Because it's moving. And it transgresses what law?
Thermodynamics. The first and second laws of thermodynamics.
There's a Simpsons episode where Lisa builds a perpetual motion machine.
Homer says, "In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"
It is a great line, but the point is they can never work.
Leonardo actually did drawings of attempted perpetual motion machines.
He realised... He's drawn a chocolate orange from the top.
Oh, yes! LAUGHTER
How boring have you got to be to draw a diagram of how to take a chocolate orange apart?
He invented a lot of things but I didn't know he invented that.
He wrote in his notebook, "Oh, ye seekers after perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you pursued?
"Go and take your place with the alchemists."
So he spotted quite early on that it was never going to work. Sadly, our universe is not made in such a way.
You'd only need one and you could power the world from it, in theory.
You only need one and you could power the world from it! Sorry, Mr Bond.
That brings us now, grumbling to the gizzards of general ignorance,
so fingers on buzzers, if you would.
Take a child and give them a really sugary drink. What happens?
I haven't got any kids. I've no idea.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
But, speaking as an uncle,
I'm often discouraged from giving them too much chocolate because they go, in quotes, mental.
Aah, right. Is that it?
No, it's odd.
Almost every mother watching this will disbelieve me
when I say that medical evidence shows that sugary drinks do not cause hyperactivity.
They do NOT cause... I know, it's shocking.
You're all going, "You should see mine. It does. I swear to you, it does!"
It doesn't. Maybe it's just any sort of fuel so if you gave them a drink of water or an apple...
You do test the children who do this by giving them drinks which have no sugar at all,
though the parents THINK they have sugar...
It's the parents that change! The parents PERCEIVE it.
And the parents who perceive it are the ones who most hover over their children
and are most critical of their children's behaviour anyway.
They're the ones who apparently notice it. Was this research funded by Coca Cola?
We trialled this question on the QI website and none of the mothers believed us.
They all said, "I don't care what the scientists say, my child goes nuts."
I don't believe it either but then I am very in touch with my feminine side.
Kids dip quite quickly anyway, don't they?
If you keep giving them something to snack on, they'll go up again.
That's how it works with my nephews. They run around for a bit then go, "Oh... Uh... Oh..."
They go, "Ugh, I want to go home." The you give them a sandwich and they go, "We're up!"
It seems to be quite hard work keeping an even keel through the day.
I think that's generally true.
We know you won't believe us but sugary drinks don't make children hyperactive.
That's why we call it general ignorance.
However, what happens if you leave teeth in a glass of cola overnight?
They completely dissolve and disappear.
KLAXON WAILS
No, it turns out they don't.
There was a famous occasion in 1951.
A doctor appeared before the House Of Representatives special committee.
He was called Clive McKay of Cornell University.
To dramatise his testimony, he said that a tooth left in a glass of Coke
would begin to dissolve after two days.
Even if his claims were accurate, it is of absolutely no relevance whatsoever
because you don't soak your teeth in it. Isn't that the one that cleans your money?
I believe it does. HP sauce. That's really good at cleaning money.
It's the vinegar - that's what does it. Is that it?! Yeah.
All that money I've been wasting on HP sauce...!
I used to drink a lot of Coke in my early teens and my mum used to say,
"You shouldn't drink Coke because it stains the inside of your stomach."
LAUGHTER
That's going to put the girls off, isn't it(?) Yeah.
How do you know that's not true? You don't but you think, "If I ever see the inside of my stomach,
"it's probably going to be a bit late to worry about what colour it is."
I can't wait, Andy. I don't like to talk about a friend's death but at your post-mortem...
Look at this, terrible stained intestine... Coke-coloured tripe.
My goodness. Well, they do cause tooth decay but not as much, as we discovered in a previous QI, as...?
Jam. No.
Crisps, potato crisps. There is far more tooth decay caused by them. No!
Yes. Because they stay on your teeth? Yeah, they stay there and hang around.
Here's one you might actually believe. Name an ape that walks just on two feet and isn't human.
Because we obviously walk on two feet rather than on our hands. Only on two feet?
Yeah, it doesn't... Orang-utan? No.
KLAXON WAILS
They use the back of their hands, like this. Is it a monkey with a tail? I seem to remember seeing...
A monkey with a tail? It's got a tail for balancing. We need more from you there, Phill!
Baboon, gibbon, chimp... Oh, you've said it! Baboon. No. Gibbon, chimp. Yes.
KLAXON WAILS
Gibbon is the right answer. The funky gibbon, in particular. The funky gibbon especially.
Here are some gibbon.
Look at it go! Look at it go! It looks so shifty, like it's just nicked something.
It looked like he had the Mission Impossible music in his head.
I can do this - do-do... That's rather good, isn't it? That's Russell Brand!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Do they do that just to taunt the other apes? They probably do. "Can you do this? I can."
It's considered to be a more primitive way of walking, the way we do and gibbons do.
Seems to have been earlier than the four. I know, that's weird.
Let's finish with an easy one.
I want you to sort these creatures and phenomena into age order.
Which is the oldest? Oldest to youngest.
I'd put A first. The Himalayas.
Yeah. Hmm. No, they're quite young, that's why they're tall.
Tall mountains are young because they haven't been worn down... They are the youngest thing on the board.
They are the youngest of all. They're ONLY 20 million years old.
I think D, C, B, A.
D, C, B, A is not bad... D, C, A, B. It's actually C, D, B, A. Oh, right.
The oldest is the spider, then the cockroach,
then the triceratops, then the Himalayas.
In fact, it's quite interesting, which is, after all, our business.
Ants are contemporaneous with dinosaurs but cockroaches pre-date them by at least 55 million years
and spiders are even older - 300 million years ago.
If the spider's first, what did it catch?
LAUGHTER Damn, that's good.
Flies but not cockroaches. So, the fly was first?
Ha! Which came first, the spider or the fly? A really good question.
There's a lot of webs and spiders going, "Come on."
Out of innocent ignorance, childish wisdom spills out.
I'm only teasing, you know! No, the dinosaurs lived from the Late Triassic, 230 million years ago,
to the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago.
And Mount Everest was only 25 million years.
So, it's 25 million years younger than the youngest dinosaur.
Hmm. A whippersnapper. That looks like the pictures from the worst spelling book ever.
LAUGHTER
There's a "dockroach" in the corner
and I saw a "binosaur"...
LAUGHTER
..and Alp. Alp, Alp! I get Alp!
That's very good.
Well done, everybody.
The "Himal-ee-as" or "Himal-eye-as" or "Hima-lay-las"...
or the Himalayas, as human beings say...
LAUGHTER
The Himalayas have only been around for 40 million years.
The last dinosaurs died out 25 million years before they were formed.
Spiders and cockroaches are even older than dinosaurs. That's it. Let's look at the scores.
Oh, my goodness gracious me! We have a clear winner with plus four points, would you believe?
Hugh Dennis! APPLAUSE
A good score. Thank you very much.
But also in the black with plus two,
it's Andy Hamilton! Gosh! APPLAUSE
That's never happened before!
17 behind, with minus 15,
Phill Jupitus! APPLAUSE
Ooh! Aw!
Oh, and way down with the cockroaches at minus 56, Alan Davies!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Thank you.
So, it's farewell from Hugh, Andy, Phill, Alan and myself.
I'll leave you with the story of a couple who went to the Natural History Museum
and they saw the big dinosaur skeleton and asked the attendant how old it was
and he said, "It's 65 million and 14 years and three months old."
They said, "That's amazing. Is that carbon dating? How can you tell so precisely?"
He said, "No. When I first came here, they told me it was 65 million years old
"and I've been here 14 years and three months."
Thank you. Goodnight.