WOLF HOWLS
MOURNFUL BELL TOLLS
WIND WHISTLES
A WOMAN SCREAMS
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello.
Good evening and welcome. Welcome to the QI Gothic special.
It is a dark and stormy night and four contestants are sat in my cave.
The ghostly Jimmy Carr!
APPLAUSE
The gruesome Jack Dee!
APPLAUSE
The ghoulish Sue Perkins.
APPLAUSE
And the gibbering Alan Davies!
APPLAUSE
So let's hear, if we may, your bloodcurdling buzzers. So Jack goes...
SHARP "PSYCHO" MUSIC Jimmy goes...
THUD! THUD! THUD!
"Here's Jimmy!" A WOMAN SCREAMS
Sue goes... "Aaaaow!"
And Alan goes... Arsenal 0 Norwich City 4
I can dream! Wake up!
Here's something Gothic that starts with a G. What would you call it?
Gargoyle. I'll go.
I think you were first! HOOTER
It's not a gargoyle. It is. No, it isn't. Well, it is.
That is a gargoyle. No, a gargoyle is a special, particular thing.
It's not a gargoyle because you can't pour milk out of it.
Well, milk is perhaps an unusual use of a gargoyle, but... Isn't that what the little jugs are?
Oh, yes. But it's a water spout. That's a gargoyle. It's a draining implement for guttering.
It's from the French "gargouille", meaning throat.
Same root as our word gargle. So what was the thing before?
Grotesque! A grotesque! Help yourself to a handful of points. Thank you.
A grotesque, not a gargoyle.
It's useful to know... It would have been useful to know two minutes ago. Now it will never come up again.
You'll be walking your best girl along the park near the cathedral... My best girl!
And your second-best girl's at home!
Water pouring out of her mouth. Anyway, the point is
gargoyles spout water. Ones that don't are grotesques.
What is Gothic about the Goths?
"Aaaaow!"
Er, the Goths were an ancient German tribe who wore crushed velvet and very thin drainpipe trousers.
And spat in shopping centres.
And Goths carry on that tradition to this day. A rampaging army of horny-headed warriors?
Yes. And you should have some points because, oddly enough,
people think Goths were German, but they were originally Scandiwegian.
Glaswegian Scandinavians?! Norwegian Scandinavians.
They sound dangerous. They came from Scandinavia
and defeated the Vandals... Who hung around bus shelters. Exactly.
So you are, oddly enough, the most Gothic of the Goths.
Gothic has been used to mean all kind of things. What kind of things?
Cathedrals. Why are they called Gothic? Is it anything that isn't classic? Yes, it was an insult.
In Renaissance Italy, they called them Gothic to mean barbarian.
They were conceived to be the people who destroyed Rome and civilisation. Gothic was a huge insult.
What else was called Gothic? Literature.
That's where you get Gothic as the macabre.
Yes, and the sort of Byronesque sort of anti-hero, maybe. Yeah.
Bad monks and women who always fainted and slightly lezzed it up. Yes.
They did a bit! Bad monks is a great idea for a book. They've done that.
The Da Vinci Code. They should have called it Bad Monks.
"It's a film about some BAD monks! These monks have turned nasty!"
This is now stuck to my head. Do take it off. Thank you.
What other forms of Gothic are there? Carpenter Gothic? Carpenter?
An interesting phase in their recording career.
She was quite skinny and had the mascara. It looked good. No.
Carpenter Gothic? Was it a death-obsessed Geppetto?
Oh, that's American Gothic! That's right. By? I thought it was Norman Rockwell. Grant somebody.
Grant Wood. Grant Wood. Sounds like a porn star.
It does rather. "I grant wood!"
LAUGHTER
"Thank you!"
That is the actual building there, in Eldon, Iowa. Looks better in the painting, really. Dilapidated.
How have they got Gothic from that? From that pointed ecclesiastical star window.
It's a Gothic arch. It's a bit of a lame effort. Considering the trouble we went to over here.
Americans think they can put a window like that in and call it Gothic. Lazy Gothic.
Half-arsed Gothic. Couldn't be bothered Gothic.
It's just so it fits under the roof, really, isn't it? Yes.
APPLAUSE
"What are we gonna do with the window?" "I don't know." "We'll tell them it's Gothic."
Wasn't the guy in that painting his dentist? Absolutely right.
It was Grant Wood's dentist. Points for Sue Perkins.
APPLAUSE
And the woman...? Is it Gail from Corrie?
I'm sure that's her. Gail from Corrie. Helen Worth. Nice woman.
She looks exactly like the character she plays.
Very talented.
There is an incredible similarity.
So there are lots of things we call Gothic. And the young people who go about in black eyeliner
and stuff. I like the fact that the Goths sacked Rome
only after being nagged by their mums for a fortnight. "Oh, do we have to? It's rubbish."
I like Goths. They're emotional and soulful.
If they're emotional, they're... Emos. Aren't they?
I love an Emo.
I was a Goth for a while. Were you? I was asked to leave. I was just too miserable.
"You're a bit of a downer." Bringing them down?
Bringing the Goths down. I was an emu for a while. Aww. When did the hand come out?
What is the difference between an Emo and a Goth?
One's a flightless bird. And one's... The other one is a horny-headed vandal.
You know you've got Fields of the Nephilim and Sisters of Mercy,
then My Bloody Valentine and Death Cab For Cutie? It's different.
LAUGHTER
It's like being on a show with your dad. "You don't get it. I hate you."
No, they say that Emos want to kill themselves and Goths want to kill everyone else.
I think Goths have just decided to bring together all the things parents hate and fear most
and put it all into one look. The pasty face, horrible dyed hair,
punk clothing and rubbish music... Ohhh(!)
..and too much cider.
Ohhh(!)
I wanted to paint my bedroom black. What's the urge there?
That seems to be very common. What colour is it? "Black. All of it. Ceiling's black."
Were you allowed to do that? No.
I got some wallpaper from Fads, right? And after I'd had it put up, I was quite pleased with it.
And I was watching Coronation Street. This is 1982, I think.
And Mike Baldwin was on at home with a glass of wine, flirting.
And I realised he had exactly the same wallpaper as me.
Ahh! And I felt really unwell then.
I've got the same taste as Mike Baldwin!
A very lowering thought.
Then I settled on that as a role model. In my bedroom - Hyacinth Bucket...my bedroom.
Identical.
Goths are a little like vampires. They're sort of the same - they can't go out in the day or summer.
They just sort of melt. And the white face. Alice Cooper, was he...? It's almost a Goth look.
Looks pretty Gothy to me. Goth-ish. Robert Smith of The Cure?
He defines it. Siouxsie Sioux. Indeed. You look like her.
But we both know I've got ridiculous glasses on top. That is quite Goth.
That is...librarian Goth.
It's a new movement! Maybe a supply teacher.
Just over the glasses. Slightly licking the pencil.
Oh, that's coquettish. I'm too old for that. The point is there are many things we call Gothic.
Just about the only thing they have in common is no connection to Goths.
But who painted this picture?
"Aaaaow!" Yes?
Van "Goff". HOOTER
We're after...
I'm going to go Van Goth.
HOOTER
Wha...?! Van "Go"! Van Go?
HOOTER
"Here's Jimmy!"
Cezanne.
LAUGHTER
At least you don't lose points for that. Van Ho.
Closer... Van Heugh. What?
Van Heugh. Now, listen. We can help you out with that name.
Jolly close, Jack. Were you aware there's a Dutch version of QI? Yes.
Would you like to see the presenter? Not really.
He will tell us how the name is pronounced. Pretty good. Sho shexy.
Come on! The correct Dutch pronunciation is Vincent Van "Hoch".
But, please, don't try this at home.
There you are. What would he know? He wears more makeup than you, Stephen!
You ought to be polite. He's in the audience.
Arthur Japin, there he is! Hello! Thank you.
THEY SPEAK IN DUTCH
Excellent to see you. Very good. How is QI? Is it a success in Dutchland?
Yes, people love it. Good. Do you have a regular person ever week?
I do. He's called Thomas van Luyn. Is he a bit...?
Is he...?
What's he like? LAUGHTER
How can we put this delicately? He is a bit like Alan.
He's sharp, funny, clever... We have to be kind to them. Yes.
See that behind Van Gogh? It's very similar to Mike Baldwin's wallpaper.
It's really uncanny. You had taste after all.
I also should say Arthur is a very, very, very brilliant novelist.
That's Arthur Japin, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much.
Are we talking about Van Hoch now?
Yeah, go on. He gave his ear to a girl, didn't he? To a prostitute. Well, yes.
I was wondering if that was a very primitive bugging device.
He thought she was cheating and he went, "I'll leave that."
Like that John Sayles film Brother From Another Planet.
Really good film. A guy lands - he's an alien - but he just looks like a black guy from Harlem.
So he goes and lives there and gets a job fixing fruit machines.
He can take his eye out and leave it and still see. Much as I have done there.
I don't know why I've shut my eye!
You think Van Hoch was eavesdropping using his own ear? Almost certainly.
There is now a theory that it was cut off by Gauguin in a fight.
It's not pronounced Gauguin.
Hoo-hon! There we are. I'll have you know.
He looks like he'd have your ear off in a second. He was a bit unfortunate, Van Gogh,
in his reactions to things. There was a girl he was in love with. The parents denied him access.
He put his hand in a flame and said, "She can see me for as long as I keep my hand there.
"I'll keep burning it." The father just blew it out and said, "Go away!"
Thanks to our friends on the Dutch version of QI, we were able to give you the correct pronunciation.
Sounds like an outbreak of pneumonia in a frog pond, but speaking of infectious issue, Alan,
you're a zombie. You bite Jimmy. Jimmy, you're now a zombie. You bite Jack.
Jack bites Mel and so on. Sue.
What? Sue. LAUGHTER
Gosh.
Stephen, 10 points now if you know her name.
It's that warm, personal touch that you get on this show.
I am so... Get the conveyor belt! Come on!
I am so ashamed! Oh, Sue...! No one noticed, Hugh.
Oh... So I've just been bitten and been called the wrong name!
I'm sorry, Sue. So sorry. The point is the reciprocation. You've all been turned into zombies.
How long would it take for the whole planet to be turned into a zombie?
15 minutes.
6.8 billion people. I reckon it would take about...
How are they travelling? Just...uugh!
That is like holding a tea tray on a cruise ship.
That is... Oh, years. I think it's a trick question.
You're a vegetarian. You wouldn't bite me. You'd have a salad.
I wouldn't consume you, but I would be prepared to kill you and turn you into one of me!
And we'll all live in windmills and solve crime!
Well... I look like the character.
LAUGHTER You do, actually!
Whereas Mel looks nothing like herself. You don't, Mel.
You look like the other one! I know.
Zombies? Yeah. I don't know how long it would take.
They're all biting...? It multiplies out?
It's exponential growth. Isn't there that thing that the Chinese emperor did?
He did the thing with the chessboard. Some guy said, "Pay me one grain of rice the first day.
"Two for the second day. Then four, then eight." "No problem."
By the end of the chessboard, it's all the rice in the world. It's WAY more than that.
It's a staggering amount. 64 squares. I'll have to read it. It's not a number you can memorise.
18 quintillion, 446 quadrillion, 744 trillion, 73 billion,
709 million, 551 thousand,
615 grains, which is what the whole world could possibly produce in 80 years
if all arable land was converted. So if that's 64...30 days.
Not bad. 38 days. 38 days. For a full infection rate?
Do you know what this progression is called? A geometrical progression.
As opposed to arithmetic.
But if it was really happening, you wouldn't care what it was called. You'd just bloody run.
The zombie thing. I think zombie is a Haitian word.
You're wrong. Oh. It's associated with Haiti. Voodoo, isn't it?
But voodoo originated in...? Haiti. Croydon! Whitby.
Haiti is a Caribbean island peopled by... Africans. West African.
So don't zombies actually exist in Haiti? I read - probably nonsense -
that they get venom from a puffer fish... Yes. ..and they appear dead, like in a coma,
and then they wake up like real zombies and that's where it's from. You're very right. Really?
An ethno-botanist called Wade Davis in the '80s discovered - it's his theory -
that the puffer fish poison was being used to create a zombie trance, a death-like trance.
From "nzambi", the West African word.
Going back to Alan zombieing, due to the power of exponential growth,
it would take just over a month for everyone in the world to be like Alan. I'd love to see that day.
I really would. Now, where's this fish going?
A massive cat!
It's got "decoy" written all over it. LAUGHTER
A bird. We're in Ghana. Accra, in fact. Can you see a line along the fish? The lid!
Cockpit. It's a mini sub. What? Cockpit. I thought you said coffin.
It's not! It's a coffin. In Accra, there's a tradition... Buried in a fish with a painted face?!
Whatever you like. It can be a mobile phone, a Bible is common. Was he cremated or grilled?
LAUGHTER
Could you have a floating one with a domed top?
You can have an aeroplane. Or a car. That's wrong. Do you think?
It's just one final chance to be a bloody nuisance to everyone.
"I want to be buried in a 15-foot fish." "Oh, do you? Great(!)"
- I like the big shoe! - "You were a pain when you were alive and now you're even worse."
What about the red hot chilli pepper in the background? And a giant shoe!
"I'd like to be buried in a pair of Oxfords. A pair, mind!"
They cost 400, you know. A year's wages. What a waste of money.
A year's wages? You're not going to need it once you're gone. True. Jack, you're angry at this.
It's made me cross, that. Shouldn't there be fun in death?
If you can't be convenient when you're dead, then you know... You might as well forget about it.
It's quite a recent tradition. I'd imagine it is!
They've got better things to spend their money on, like food!
Oh, Lord. Anyway... There's a tiny little fish on the back shelf.
Is that to put your cat in or something? Rather a sad thought.
Maybe it's just a model. How quickly does he knock these up? That must be quite depressing.
"There's good news and bad news. Bad news is you're not going to make it.
"Here's a brochure.
"Pick your favourite." Absolutely.
I was once in a graveyard... You can't begin a story, "I was once in a graveyard"!
Quite nonchalant. You know the old gravestones with curly bits? Yes.
My little brother thought that was where chefs were buried. Ohh. Funnily enough, you know,
we have a question about graveyards.
If you saw a graveyard like this, what would it tell you? That signifies... Yes. Decapitation?
No. He... It looks a bit old and derelict and disused and not using it any more... No.
When a column is brand-new like that... Was it that distressed look that Kirsty Allsopp goes on about?
There is an element of that. Is it like "died young"? Yes, it's a symbol of life being cut short.
There's a lot of symbology going on in graveyards.
I bet people have fixed those.
I bet councils have been in there and gone, "This needs redoing."
It might be true. That's a horrible thought.
So it's an untimely death, like a lightning strike?
Yeah, a life cut short.
There must be an age at which they died where they went, "That's fair enough, that'll do."
There's a broken chain which symbolises...? Messy divorce?
Well, a loss in the family. Goth?
Everyone's death is a loss in the family, isn't it?
Apples? A greengrocer?
Sin. They represent sin.
Fallen women. Fallen women might have an apple.
Why would scientists be interested in lichen, particularly in graveyards on tombstones?
It's a pollution indicator, all that moss? Very good. Absolutely right.
Why is it particularly useful in graveyards? It absorbs pollutants like heavy metals, cadmium.
You've got the dates on the gravestones. Very good. You know how much of it there is.
And also they tend not to spray graveyards with chemicals.
It's considered disrespectful to spray them with pesticides.
That's good on the grave. Well done, everybody.
What's the best way to ensure that your family never forgets you after you're gone? Haunting. Yeah.
If he insists on being buried in an exact replica of your house
that they have to pay for and therefore sell the house they live in to...
You're still angry, aren't you? ..finance it. Yeah.
Being stuffed. Well, yes, being stuffed. Preserved in some way.
There's a very extreme example... Leaning on the mantelpiece. With a pipe.
Just slightly in front of the television, so they can't see it.
Just one arm, so you just...
There was an artist called Hananuma Masakichi.
Yeah. Have you heard of him? He's bloody good. He's excellent.
In the 1880s he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and knew he would die,
so he made a statue of himself so life-like
that when he stood next to it, people couldn't tell which was which, apparently.
He hand-crafted glass eyes, then bored tiny individual holes for every pore of his body,
then took the hairs from every pore of his body and put them into the other pores.
He pulled out all his own fingernails and put them in like that. His toenails and his teeth.
Obviously, this is a replica because it's quite shiny and not anything like a real person.
Imagine if he did all that and someone went, "It doesn't look that much like you." You're left with...
Bald. No teeth, no nails.
He pulled his teeth out while he was still alive? He wanted it to be real.
Who was it for? Gunther von Hagens. His girlfriend and his family.
Imagine if he'd taken his eyes out at an early stage and realised what a stupid mistake that was.
"Oh, damn!" It found its way, the original, to Robert Ripley's Odditorium in Los Angeles,
but unfortunately, it was injured in an earthquake in '96 and it's currently awaiting restoration.
There is a replica in London's Odditorium. I didn't know we had one. On Piccadilly Circus.
Where did they get this one from? This one is from the Odditorium.
You can also be turned into compost.
You're dipped in liquid nitrogen, then vibrated. Liquid nitrogen makes you so brittle. Vibrated?
That's a sales pitch, isn't it?
"Well, if that doesn't kill you..."
They use a magnet to get rid of mercury and other metals which can then go into the making of something
or into an ordinary recycling thing, so they just make a car or bits of a car.
Then you've got 25 to 30 kilograms left over which is put into a coffin made of maize or potato starch
and you're then buried and you rot into the earth and you're biodegraded in six or twelve months.
It's weird how the world has changed. It used to be people wanted to leave a mark on the world.
"I'm going to leave a mark, people will know I was here." Now just the opposite. "I won't leave a mess!"
You're known as a big grow-bag! "You won't know I've been here."
"That's your Uncle Jimmy there." "That tomato sticking out of him!"
"I've done pak choi this year on him."
"I'd be very happy."
What about letting your family see you disintegrate, see you in your coffin, have a camera...?
Have a camera in your coffin? A webcam. There is a Seattle-based company called SeeMeRot.com.
I'm not making it up. No!
They have a light and you can watch your loved one basically rot.
There you go. Can I...
When you say... The only problem I've got with that is "loved one".
Their slogan...
"Being dead and buried doesn't mean you can't have friends over."
Imagine if you were watching the webcam, watching and watching and watching, then suddenly it went...
You would be so freaked out by that, wouldn't you?
They used to bury people and sometimes they would be scratching on the coffin lid
because they were in a coma and then they woke up.
Nowadays, they should just give you a mobile.
That does happen. A lot of people are afraid of being buried alive.
I'm quite afraid of it.
Now you mention it!
What I mean is, they have a real... It doesn't bother me! They're obsessed by it.
Yeah, whatever, bring it on!
I'd prefer it not to happen, but I don't think about it.
There are people who really think about it and plan against it.
I get frustrated enough if I can't get a signal if I'm in a hotel.
You'd be annoyed if your battery had run out. Six feet under, you've got no chance!
You'd make that call, but only after checking your e-mails. "I'll just check... Oh, the battery's gone!"
Now, perhaps the most macabre posthumous gift was that Japanese chap there, Hananuma Masakichi,
which he constructed entirely out of his own body parts.
But tell me about the vampire squid from hell. What's scary about it?
It going through your digestive system and the havoc it wreaks?
It does look like... I had a meal like that in Spain.
When you say it's FROM hell, is it quite nice and it didn't fit in in hell, so it came back?
Its name is Vampyroteuthis infernalis.
It has the biggest eyes of any animal relative to its head.
In a human, the eyes would be a foot wide.
It would be Natalie Imbruglia.
There one is. They're rather ugly.
I think she's all right. You like that, do you?
My God, that's hideous! It sort of looks like an organ of some kind.
It's rather like a baked potato at the moment. Yeah.
They live in the dark? They live really deep.
There are the big eyes. A tendril comes out. I bet that's off-putting.
They are so deep that their defence is not ink which would be no good cos the water is so dark down there,
it's jets of bioluminescence - countless bright blue orbs that dazzle anyone who attacks them.
In the dazzle, they escape. Their defence is to dazzle? Yeah.
Showtime!
Yeah. Not... Ta-da!
It's the John Barrowman of deep-sea...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE Of deep-sea survival.
"Get back or I'll show you my teeth!"
"Aagh!"
Despite its name, the vampire squid from hell is a docile creature.
It releases a firework display from its arms when threatened.
What is the toughest way, though, to become a mummy?
Well... I'll take it.
'Here's Jimmy!' A WOMAN SCREAMS
Reverse cowgirl?
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
They understand that. You're going to have to explain it to me.
I'll need a volunteer from the audience.
If you were having sex with me... Yeah. Or Mel. Or Mel.
Say you're having sex with Mel and you're lying down on your back
and Mel is... I can't use her name.
Jordan. She's sitting on top of you, but looking away - reverse cowgirl.
Oh. I find they're much happier without looking away from me.
Really? Especially if they can see out the window. It's like a budgie.
She could be reading a book or watching telly. If she can see the telly or outdoors, she doesn't mind.
That's wonderful. It's catch-up time for women.
So she's doing sudoku or whatever. Yes, whatever you need to do.
You're thinking of making babies, aren't you? That sort of mummy I realise now as well.
Can you turn yourself into a mummy? Probably.
You could probably wrap yourself up in... Haven't you got to take your liver out through your nose?
They took the organs out through the mouth and nose? The brain they would take out through the nose.
They'd agitate it with hooks, so it turned into a liquid mush. Oh! Worse than being buried alive or...?
Then after that, they would kill them!
But the Sokushinbutsu were members of an obscure Buddhist sect
who, in Japan, used to practise the macabre idea of self-mummification.
It's quite complicated, it's really interesting.
For a thousand days, a priest would eat nuts and seeds
while taking part in vigorous physical activity, so that he had no body fat.
He'd then only eat bark and roots for another thousand days,
then drink a poisonous tea made from the sap of the urushi tree, causing him to vomit and lose bodily fluids.
Then he'd lock himself into a tiny stone tomb with an air tube and a bell.
Every day, he'd ring his bell to show he was alive.
When the bell stopped, the tube was removed and the tomb was sealed.
Then other monks waited for another thousand days, then opened the tomb
and if the monk had succeeded in preserving his body in his death,
he was considered to have achieved the state of a truly enlightened Buddha. Who made that up? Buddhists.
It's a terrible photo of him.
If I was going to go to all that trouble, I'd have a decent photo taken of me.
A lot of people think that Buddha is like the sane religion, Buddhists are normal and decent.
But even Buddhism has "weirdery" beyond belief, really, I'm afraid.
They don't do it like that any more? It's now an illegal form of suicide.
They have a webcam now.
As a form of suicide, that should be promoted.
If you jump off something high, it's all over very quickly. You've not been able to think it through.
With that, you can change your mind. "You know what? I fancy a drink."
After about 900 days, you'd go, "Oh, a pizza wouldn't go amiss!"
If you open it after a thousand days and he hasn't turned into a mummy, do you say, "I told you he had a Twix"?
Members of an obscure Buddhist sect in Japan went through a rigorous process of self-mummification
until the practice was stopped in the 19th century.
In the 1960s, two-thirds, right, two-thirds of the Americans who accidentally lost a limb,
of all Americans, two-thirds of them, came from one town in Florida.
Why? Well, because that enormous thing dropped on their limbs.
The enormous doughnut from outer space took their legs.
Is it because it cost an arm and a leg to live there?
No, there's more.
I'm here all week. It was all men, funnily enough. I don't think any of them were women.
Is it the town where they put the diabetic clinic next to the doughnut shop?
Oh, my God... What?
It happens. It does. Is it the town where the helicopter pad was next to the taxi rank?
Oh...! No.
An unnatural amount of... Sharks.
Not sharks. This is self-harm we're talking about.
Oh, amputee wannabes.
I think I've made that sound disrespectful.
# Amputee Wannabes... #
It's new on ITV-2. You are going to love it. I'll present it.
Welcome to Amputee Wannabe!
No, it's not that form of dysmorphia. It's self-harm for another reason.
To avoid the draft, is it? No, but it is for gain.
Oh, insurance. Insurance is right.
When you said avoid the "draft", I thought a cardigan would have been an easier way.
My legs are freezing! Hack 'em off!
Really... You put your jumper on, then wrap your arms round your neck.
They did. It's a bit chilly. They sawed them off.
It just became a fever of it. More than 50 occurrences in a town of a population of 500.
Most limbs were shot off with hunting rifles.
Triggers pulled unexpectedly as victims climbed fences, guns misfiring. These were the claims.
All the mishaps involved men.
Somehow they'd always shoot off the parts they seemed to need least.
Your left hand. Yeah. "A foot while protecting chickens." "Lost a hand while trying to shoot a hawk."
"A man lost two limbs in an accident involving a rifle and a tractor."
The time has come to see what skeletons are lurking in our closet of general ignorance,
so skeletal finger bones on buzzers, please. What does this tell you?
RHYTHMIC BEEPING
SHARP "PSYCHO" MUSIC It's your heartbeat, isn't it?
CONTINUOUS BEEP But this? It tells you you're dead.
KLAXON SOUNDS Oh, Jackie baby!
You've fallen into another trap.
It's called flat-lining and in films it tends to mean you're dead,
but in real life, if you died, you wouldn't get that.
So why do they panic when that comes up? In real life, if you tripped on a cable and pulled it out...
Someone could have died. They tripped on a cable. It doesn't tell you that they're dead.
It tells you the cable's missing, then you would find out...
The fibrillator is used like that. What do you use those for? To start the heart up again.
I use them for making paninis. Ah! Very good.
They're paddles to get the heart working again.
It's for an arrhythmia. It's not to start a heart that's stopped, but in movies, that's what it's used for.
It's no wonder I failed my finals. It's probably as well for the world.
If an ECG monitor goes flat, it probably means somebody has tripped over the cable.
After the Vietnam War, who was buried in the tomb of the Unknown Soldier?
We don't know. All of them were anonymous deliberately.
KLAXON SOUNDS
The whole nature of this show will mean the Unknown Soldier wasn't a soldier, they knew him,
and he wasn't dead. He wasn't dead.
Yeah, the Unknown Soldier was actually buried in a replica of a large red chilli.
Was he an unknown soldier when he was still alive as well?
He kept turning up and everyone said, "How are you doing?" "Who's that?" "I don't know."
He seems keen to join in. "I don't know who he is."
"What happened to that unknown soldier?" "He died. Let's bury him."
After the Vietnam War, there was an unknown soldier buried,
but a family thought they heard that the Unknown Soldier had died in a helicopter crash.
They thought their son had died in the same crash,
so in the 1990s, they persuaded the US government to do a DNA test on the Unknown Soldier
and it was indeed their son, so the remains were returned.
It's unlikely there'll be another unknown soldier as all American and British soldiers are DNA-profiled,
so they will always be known.
That's a happy ending, isn't it(?)
But the original Unknown Soldier, do you know the first time it was done?
After World War One? Yes. It was done in 1920 in France and Britain.
In Britain, there were four unknown soldiers
and a general pointed at one body and that became The Unknown Soldier
who was honoured with a state funeral in Westminster Abbey,
entombed with a medieval crusader's sword
in the presence of a guard made up of 100 VCs.
The guests of honour were 100 women, each of whom had lost her husband and all her sons in the war.
That is sobering. Wow! An amazing ceremony.
The Cenotaph is a memorial to the Unknown Soldier, isn't it? Yes.
It was designed by Lutyens, wasn't it? Yes.
I think you must have points. I hope so.
To make up for your large collection of negative points.
That's a very funny round, I think(!)
It'll be interesting to see if we can pick it up from there.
It was quite interesting, if not quite funny. It was amazing, the story of that service.
Anyway, moving on... Where does the saying "saved by the bell" come from?
SHARP "PSYCHO" MUSIC I know what's going to happen now.
I'm going to get the klaxon for this. Is it a boxing reference?
Yes! Well done. APPLAUSE
We thought...
It is actually... Is this where the bell's going to go off? Don't do it.
He's going to lead you... It's going back to being buried alive.
No... KLAXON SOUNDS
How can you get it wrong after he's got it right? That's extraordinary! Only Alan...
You were saved by the bell. He got it right. You couldn't say the stupid thing and went there anyway!
I find it quite interesting. I thought that was the true one.
People do think that. You had a bell tied to your toe and if you were buried alive, you'd start kicking.
There have been people who have been so afraid of premature burial.
There was an old film of a man who was so afraid of being buried alive
that he equipped his tomb with these different emergency things,
but when he came round, it had all rotted and the string for the bell had corroded.
There's an Edgar Allan Poe story called The Premature Burial. It'll never be that premature.
Maybe five days max. It's premature enough for most of us.
What can you tell me about Mozart's burial?
'Here's Jimmy!' Did they play Angels by Robbie Williams?
Was it Bohemian Rhapsody? They do have a top ten of the play-off tunes that people choose for going into...
Do you know what one of the most popular is? Countdown.
No!
As they go in... THEY SING "COUNTDOWN" THEME
There's a quite interesting fact about this.
One of the most popular ones is Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.
And the next track on their Best Of, if you bring the CD, is Another One Bites The Dust.
You've got to be really quite quick. Yes, you have.
It's a better choice, isn't it? Much better.
This is a terrible way to hear he's dead. Contrary to popular belief, it was not a pauper's funeral.
Only the aristocracy had tombs and vaults in those days.
His funeral cost quite a lot of money - 8 guilders and 56 kreuzer. To hire the orchestra.
That was all paid for by Guten Tag, which was their version of Hello magazine.
They covered it very tastefully. It was really nicely done.
In Mozart's lifetime, he had a pet starling whom he buried in 1784.
Its whistling inspired the principal theme of the last movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto K453.
BIRD WHISTLING That's the starling, obviously.
ORCHESTRAL MUSIC That's the Piano Concerto.
Mozart wasn't buried in a pauper's grave. He had the same kind of funeral as everybody else in Vienna.
Finally, it's time for the scores.
And...oh! Oh, my goodness me!
Well, I'm sorry to say that in last place with minus 28, it's Jimmy Carr!
APPLAUSE
A little better with minus 26, Sue Perkins!
APPLAUSE
But there's no question about it,
tonight's winners, tied on minus 17, it's Alan and Jack!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So before the show breathes its last, I've just got time to thank Jimmy, Jack, Sue and Alan.
I leave you with this boo-boo from baseball great Yogi Berra.
"Always go to other people's funerals," he said, "otherwise, they won't come to yours." Good night!