Well, hello!
Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, and welcome to QI,
where we bring you a television first - a quiz show with no answers.
Yes, tonight we depart from the certainties of
everyday life to explore the realm of hypothetical questions.
Or do we?!
It's a job for only the very finest minds, by which I mean the potential Johnny Vegas...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..the possible Sandi Toksvig...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..and the increasingly-unlikely Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Now, tonight is the 99th recording of QI, and to celebrate, we have with us
the man who thought it all up in the first place.
He can dish it out, but let's see if he can take it. Mr John Lloyd!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
They all have appropriately-quizzical buzzers. Sandi goes...
- 'Erm.' - ..Johnny goes...
- 'Hmm.' - ..John goes...
- 'Ooh, erm.' - ..and Alan goes...
'Oh, sir, sir! I know! Me, sir!'
Oh, as if! And let's open our minds now to the possibilities of question one.
What's the best way to weigh your own head?
Any thoughts?
Well, cut it off, obviously, would be the most accurate way.
Yes, then someone else could weigh it, but you couldn't, you see?
KLAXON BLARES
- That would be the problem. You wouldn't... - You introduced us, and you normally introduce me last.
- Yeah. - It slightly caught me out, and I was applauding myself. - Oh!
"Alan Davies!" I was applauding myself insincerely!
That's what Soviet leaders do, isn't it? Or chimpanzees.
- One or the other. - One or the other.
Why would you want to weigh your own head? It's a boys' thing.
Imagine a woman married to a scientist, she's wormed the dog
and fed the children and got everything sorted and her husband gets home and says,
"Good news, dear - I've weighed my own head."
It may not seem the most useful thing to do, but it employs
interesting scientific ideas on which we all depend.
Is it that thing...? David Frost used to tell that joke for years and years.
Do you want to lose 12lbs of unsightly fat?
Cut off your head.
- Is that his joke? - He used to tell that a lot, yeah.
What is one of the most famous ancient moments of scientific discovery?
- Is it Archimedes in the bath? - Archimedes in the bath. What did Archimedes do, and why did he...?
Just put your head in a bucket?
- Oh, right. Is that right? - I have no idea.
- Join in! - I was going to weigh meself -
go to the swimming baths, right,
and bob, and then get people to feed me until I sank.
Then come back out and weigh meself again, yeah?
It sounds much more scientific!
So by displacement of the water, you can tell?
Yeah, take a bucket of water, and you drop your head in,
and because water and the density of your head are about the same, you get a very close approximation
by the water that you displace.
- You could put apples in to make it fun. - You could bob for apples, yes.
And what did your head weigh when you tried this?
What would you say is the average weight?
The University of Sydney has a department where they weigh heads quite a lot,
- and they have a pretty good average. - By dunking them in buckets?
- They don't actually dunk them in buckets. - Is it 12lbs?
- It's four and a half to five kilos, which is...? - That's 2.2 kilos, something like that.
- Not far... Yeah, 2.2... - It's about 12lbs.
Yeah, about 12lbs. Well done.
I'll give you the point for 12lbs, John.
- I think I've negotiated some points! - Yeah!
Surely you should give those points to David Frost!
- If only he hadn't cut his head off! - What if you get an air pocket in your ears?
- A pocket? - You know, the air pockets.
Yes. But the air cavities are cancelled out...
Take your fingers out - you won't hear the answer.
APPLAUSE
The bones. You have bones that are denser than water and air pockets that are lighter than water.
And together, it does seem that the head averages about water, so it's a good displacement test.
But there is a modern piece of technology that can do it to frightening degrees of accuracy.
- Bound to be a laser or something like that. - No, it's a CAT scan, a CT,
and they can tell the density of every little tiniest part of the brain and the skull
- and all the rest of it and tot it all up. - My dad's got heavy eyes. - Has he now?
Yeah.
- You've weighed his eyes? - No, we've not weighed 'em, but he's very fearful of leaning forward.
Is he?!
Honestly, he doesn't like leaning forward because he thinks they're going to come out.
Are they on springs, like those things you can buy?
No! We got rid of Novelty Dad!
- This is Mental Dad! - Right!
My grandfather had two glass eyes, and yet he could see.
So what happened was sad, he lost one eye - he wasn't careless, he was ill -
and he had a glass eye made which was exactly like
his other perfectly-working blue Scandinavian eye,
and then he had one made that was bloodshot, and it was known as Grandpa's party eye.
He kept it on the mantelpiece. When he was going out,
he'd take out the false one and he'd put in the bloodshot one
- and he'd say, "I'm going out now and I shan't be back till they match." - Oh, that's brilliant!
- Absolutely brilliant! Fantastic! - APPLAUSE
I thought he had two glass eyes like that!
Did he have a hole at the back where somebody put their hand? Was your granddad Nookie Bear?
On the subject of heads, do you know anything about Sir Francis Drake?
I don't mean Sir Francis Drake.
But as I've mentioned him, do you know anything about him?
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
- Something to do with bowling. - Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
He was in the Navy!
Let's move on from Francis Drake! Thanks!
What do you know about Sir Walter Raleigh?
He invented the bicycle.
His wife carried his head around after he died.
- Excellently correct. - In a velvet bag.
- In a velvet bag. - A red velvet bag, yes. Sir Walter was executed...
I see why John had to invent a show for this kind of information he carries around with him!
Much as Lady Raleigh carried around the head.
- It was on Buzzcocks last week. - Was it?!
- What sort of a bag? Was it a sealed bag, like a cool box? - I don't know. People did keep heads.
There was an Archbishop of Canterbury who was killed
in the Peasants' Revolt and they've still got his head in the church in Sudbury where... There it is.
The flesh has rotted off, but it's been there continuously since he was killed...
- As it rots away, you empty the bag out and rinse it and pop it back in? - Nature helps.
The flies and the maggots eat it all up, and the bacteria.
I bet it was years before anybody wanted to sit next to her at dinner.
I'm sure that's true.
People going, "Oh, she's not going to bring the head, is she?"
Very fine. Don't know how we got there but, like many of
the questions in tonight's show, there's no one correct answer.
But dunking your head in a bucket might be a good start.
And if that hasn't got you scratching your head, when might you engage in paradoxical undressing?
It's a known thing, paradoxical undressing. It's a phrase that is used.
- It's not made up by us. - You're undressing but you're actually dressing?
No. It's not really paradoxical.
- Is it physics? Something physics or mathematics? - No.
- Is it counter-intuitive undressing? - That's much more what it is.
So taking your clothes off if Jeremy Clarkson asks you would be...?
- Meow! - Would be silly. - It's taking your clothes when
taking your clothes off looks like the worst-possible idea you could have.
Is it some effect of hypothermia?
It's exactly what it is.
It may be mental, it may be physical. It's not quite understood.
Oh, that is very unpleasant!
Yeah, it is!
Can we go back to the previous picture?!
Yeah, it's one of the peculiar side effects of hypothermia, when you're actually dying of cold,
almost the last thing you do, very commonly - not always - is take all your clothes off.
People think it may be a delusional thing, but it is also part of the fact that
your blood vessels near your skin tend to just give up and open, and it may be that people feel very hot.
Because you never survive once you've got to that stage,
you can't ask someone why they did it, but it is a common thing to do.
I went in freezing water once, and I screamed a lot and swam about,
and then I got out and I was completely shocking, livid pink and felt hot.
Perhaps seconds from death, then.
Maybe you were! Maybe you're one of the few who survived it.
- Yeah. - Well, what sort of temperature do you think would start you on the road to hypothermia?
- Body temperature - I don't mean outside temperature. - What's the temperature in here?!
Really, I'd say pretty quickly.
I don't think it would have to drop much. Maybe four or five degrees below normal body temperature?
Basically, that's right. 35 degrees Celsius.
Once your body temperature starts to get below that.
And, interestingly, in the coldest cities in the world, hypothermia is very rare.
It's more common where it doesn't get very cold at all.
There's a very remarkable Briton called Lewis Pugh.
Have you heard of Lewis Pugh? He's a man who's able to control his own body temperature.
He does endurance cold swimming.
He's the only person known to science who can do what he can do.
He can swim in cold conditions unlike anybody else,
and he is able to raise his body temperature at will.
It's completely startling.
- He's a superhero. - He can stop himself shivering.
He's really an incredible figure, and we contacted him.
And he said that he thought...
He said he's not coming in here cos it's freezing!
He said he thought he could do this because he had trained himself over years
to do these endurance swims in incredibly-cold waters,
and then his body, as it were, saw it coming and prepared for it.
- That was his only explanation. - Cold water has a bad effect on a boy.
- I bet he doesn't fill his swimming trunks when he gets out. - There may be that!
Actually, this is not that unusual.
We went on this yoga thing recently.
- Mmm? - And the yoga teacher was saying that
these sadhus in India can do this body-raising thing.
And in fact, they did some scientific experiments in the States,
where they shipped in these guys, you know, little wiry guys with turbans on,
and they put wet towels on them. And they'd turn up their own body temperature and they would
literally steam the towels dry in a few minutes. Extraordinary.
- Can you hire these people? - Yeah!
What an act. They'd get on Britain's Got Talent.
That would be really good! "What are you going to do?" "I'm going to dry this wet towel."
You could do patterns on wet towels with your hands. It's art!
I thought if you were going into cold, you needed to lower
your body temperature so it wasn't such a shock.
You have a cold drink in a cold place, a hot drink in a hot place.
- Yes, it does seem likely, but... - Are the SAS just wrong about that?
Well, maybe. But maybe for the extremes that he goes under, it's more important for him to stay warm.
But when people do that sauna thing
and jump into the snow, why don't they get hypothermia?
They're not in it long enough, I think.
Also, they're pissed, usually.
- Cos they're Scandiwegian. - Scandiwegian.
We can't resist a drink, I'm afraid.
Very true. Anyway, paradoxically, the last thing people do
when they're freezing to death is take their clothes off. But how can I tell if I am actually dead?
- Well... - How can one tell if a person is actually dead?
A roomful of people are cheering.
The 20-year-old malt is being broken out.
- We would weep at your death. - You can feel someone putting a pen in my hand and just going...
Rewriting my will.
- You mean the vital signs don't count? Is that what's going to set the ringer off? - No.
It's a moot point. There's the difference between legal death and medical death.
There's also... It's quite recent.
In the 1830s in France, there were about 30 different symptoms, if you can call them that,
that people thought were determining symptoms of death.
But nobody could be sure, so they held a prize -
quite a big prize, over 1,000 francs -
for the person who could come up with the best way of determining if a person was dead.
They're watching EastEnders without reaching to turn it off.
Unfortunately, it just pre-dated the first episode of EastEnders, 1830...
The prize wasn't given till 1848, and even when it was awarded, most of the medical establishment
refused to believe the winner, who was a young medical chap.
The Victorians used to use a trembling scarab.
It looked like a little scarab, with legs on,
and they put it on the head of somebody and watch to see if it moved. If it didn't, that was...
There were things like that. These were some of the ideas that didn't win.
Sticking a thermometer into the stomach to see if the patient was cool enough to be dead.
Attaching pincers to the nipples.
- Oh! - Yep.
Scalding the patient's arm with boiling water to see if a blister appeared.
Did they try all of these on one person?!
"Agh! Oh!"
They didn't know...
"He's alive! Burn him!"
They didn't know about comas, so they knew that people could
sometimes appear dead and not respond to pain,
so they knew that just pain wasn't enough.
So that was the blister-forming. Putting leeches on a corpse's bottom, apparently, one way.
This just sounds like a typical day of my mum getting me up for school.
Sticking a long needle into the heart with a flag on the end, and they knew that if the flag waved...
It's such a sweet method!
- That's lovely! - I'm talking about the 1830s.
- No, it's not so long ago, really. - Could you just put a mirror there?
The most-common method that had been used is to put a mirror in front of the...
And if it misted up...
You can't always hear the breath. But there was a device that had been invented
in the 1840s that caused this young fellow who won the prize...
He suggested the use of this device.
- Stethoscope? - A stethoscope. To listen to see if the heart beat.
It seems so obvious to us, but lots of brilliant people...
It never occurred to them that the sound of the heart might be the determining factor.
Hans Christian Andersen used to
sleep with a sign next to his bed that said, "I'm not dead - I'm asleep."
And there were coffins with bells inside that people could ring in case they woke up.
They were terrified of being buried alive.
- Rather than a bell, they should just give them a saw and a spade. - Yes!
You're a cruel man, but fair, Alan Davies.
While you're ringing away down there, you could be...
There were special hospitals.
Would you go out the top or the side? I'd do the side. It'd fall in otherwise.
That's how a coffin lid is attached, you think the logical thing is to push up.
Saw at the side and then kind of go up sort of gradually.
- Don't go straight up. - You've thought this through, Alan.
I might also say, "Oh, bugger - I chose cremation." That's the other one.
"How do I reassemble these ashes?"
That is why Vikings put them in a boat and set fire to it. Doubly sure. "Off you go."
There's an actual word for it, the fear of being buried alive.
Because the 18th-century clown Grimaldi had a pathological fear of being buried alive,
and he specified that when he died, they should cut off his head
to be sure that he wouldn't have to ring the bell in the coffin.
- He wasn't just weighing it? - You put it in the bucket...!
A very Edgar Allan Poe-type thing, isn't it? Though being walled up alive is the classic fear.
So in Germany, in particular, where they were most afraid of this,
late in the 18th and early in the 19th century,
they actually had warm mortuaries to encourage putrefaction.
So the smell said that, "He's definitely dead, cos, whoa! That is very smelly."
But it's not as obvious as we might think.
- So if you had really bad personal hygiene but you weren't actually dead? - Yes. You could be...
- That would be a problem. - "He stinks, he must be dead!" - Yeah!
"He's walking around, he's talking." "He's dead."
But the fear of death is thanatophobia, of course.
But fear of being buried alive is taphophobia. T-A-P-H-O-phobia.
Now it's time for a round of quickfire hypotheticals.
Quickfire hypotheticals!
Mmm! So, all you have to do is
tell me the first thing that comes into your head, basically.
It's a quickfire hypothetical question.
Let's say you've found a fallen tree in the forest, right?
- Obviously, it fell down before you arrived, but did it make a sound as it fell? - 'Ooh, erm!'
- No. - KLAXON BLARES
Well, no-one's going to say yes, are they?!
Do you know where this question comes from, as it were?
- It's a famous... - Bishop Berkeley. - Bishop Berkeley, yeah.
- Philosophical question, isn't it? - That if there's no-one to hear a sound,
is there a sound? It depends so much what you mean by sound, doesn't it?
Well, there isn't, because sound is the vibration of the ear drum.
There is no sound if no-one hears it.
It depends, because part of the definition of sound is that there has to be a recipient for it.
There's the thing that makes the noise, its transmission and its reception.
- Yeah. - But if there's no reception, maybe the noise doesn't exist.
Other things are still vibrating, and whether that vibration counts as a sound or not is a moot point.
Sound is what happens in the ear.
- There isn't sound if there's no-one to hear it. - A moot point.
If there's the speed of sound and it's what happens in the ear,
how do you get that speed between that and your ear?
No, I'm...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Maybe by the time that tree's fallen and you've got there, that sound's halfway round the world
and making someone else very nervous. "Agh!"
Stephen, are you sure about this?
Well, no-one is sure. That is the point.
That's why it's a hypothetical. No-one knows.
To a semanticist or neurologist, they may say that sound is that, but to a physicist,
they would say the propagation of sound waves is sound.
Whether or not there is an ear to vibrate, it is a sound wave...
- I disagree that they are sound waves... - You may disagree, but that's... You're welcome to.
They only become a sound wave when there's an ear to receive it.
Do you remember we talked...? The thing that really astonished me.
Do you know that light's invisible? It's the most extraordinary thing. If you're in a dark vacuum...
if you shoot a beam of light across the eyeballs, like that, you can't see it.
- Because you can only see what light hits. - Yeah, but what about sound?
But people said that's a stupid answer
because the definition of light is something that goes into your eye and is then received.
- Until it does that, it's not light. - Mmm.
But we have all kinds of things.
Are you saying that it's not sound if it registers on a recording device
that is left there without a human there?
That it's bending the needle?
Does the machine not hear? Is it not a sound wave that is actually causing the machine to register?
- Yeah, but in Bishop Berkeley's... - I talked about you, not about Bishop Berkeley!
The point is, it's not as simple as just to say yes or no.
- JOHNNY: - Go on, Stephen! Go on!
You've got him!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Good question. We would unfairly have forfeited someone who said yes, as much as somebody who said no.
You said there was no right answer.
That's why it's a good question. There is no right answer. So your yes, and your no are both...
- Whatever I said would have been...? - Afraid so.
What if the tree fell down and there was no-one there to see it fall? It should still be upright.
Very true.
That's my only conclusion!
You're right.
- Yeah, yeah. - Anyway, Alan, are you keeping well?
Yeah! But that tree fell over and there was a hell of a bang!
Yeah. It's a quickfire hypothetical, don't forget, so we move on.
- OK, all right. You're talking to an... - I can't do quickfire! - Yes, you can, darling.
If a quickfire hypothetical round takes a really long time, is it still a quickfire?
Good point! We'll find out!
APPLAUSE
Very good point. You're talking to an alien in a distant galaxy by radio.
How could you explain which is right and which is left?
Breaker, breaker.
That would do it, would it? Just by saying, "Breaker, breaker," he would know...?
Well, it would depend what height mast they had, but yeah, he should...
- There's got to be alien truckers! - It's a fair point.
I'd tell 'em what's left and right and if he's got a Smokey on his ass.
Right, right.
Wouldn't it be a very boring conversation,
because the nearest galaxy's, what, four light years away?
I think we'd have to use the word hypothetical.
- So it's a hypothetical conversation. - Hypothetically, are we looking at any common reference point?
That is the point. You can't...
"Can you see Mars? We're on the right of Mars."
"Can you see this spot on Jupiter?"
Yes, you'd have to have something to reference.
You can't... Semantically, there is no explanation for left or right
without reference to a physical world that someone can identify.
You can't explain it just by language.
That is the point of the question.
If they visited in a ship, you could give them a temporary tattoo.
Yes, you could do that, which is why we framed the question so specifically, saying that...
- Or talking on a radio. - ..temporary tattoos were out.
- Ah, sorry. I'm just a problem solver by nature! - No, it's good!
And anyway, they might not have... Cos we always draw them in that shape with two eyes.
What if they've got four eyes and eight arms?
- Exactly, they may not be symmetrical in any way. - They might have other dimensions and all sorts. - Yeah.
They might have 19 versions of left. Imagine that on a sat nav!
- "Left...ish!" - "Not that one!"
- "That one!" - "L...eft!"
- Why do we always draw them like that? - I've no idea. - Seems so strange.
- They might just have one eye. - Certainly, the ones that probed me looked nothing like that.
Do you have a mnemonic for when you forget which is left or right temporarily?
Do you do that?
I walk into traffic.
- Sorts it out straightaway! - Yeah!
- Why, do you have a problem? - No, I don't, but if I have to think...
I remember the thumb I used to suck when I was a very small child,
- that that's my right hand. - Like a therapy session, this.
There's a wonderful story about a famous ocean-liner captain.
He had a little box that he kept in his pocket, and every time they came into port,
he'd open up the box, look and put it away.
And after many, many years' service, he finally died.
His second in command said, "I must look inside."
And he opened up the box and it said, "Port, left. Starboard, right."
- That's brilliant. - You want to get that right, though, don't you?!
Yes, that's the point, though. You can't really find out. So, our next hypothetical.
Take someone who has been blind from birth, right,
and let him or her handle a sphere and a cube.
And then, there's a new operation that amazingly comes and restores their sight and you show them
the sphere and the cube. Will they be able to tell which is which just by looking?
- Do you think it's the first thing they'd want to do? - No, that's why it's hypothetical.
But it has been done. It is really interesting...
I think the answer is, no, they can't.
- The information that their eyes tell them is meaningless junk for quite a while. - Exactly right.
One's tactile and one's sensory, it would be different.
That's right. But to us, it seems so obvious that perhaps we overlook
how used we are to relating the feel of a corner to the look of it.
This is cutting-edge neuroscience, isn't it?
- Yes. - There was a case recently where somebody had been blind for, I don't know,
years and years and years, and they restored his sight,
and he was able to see his own children for the first time in years.
And he literally didn't recognise them. It was like fuzzy lines.
It took two weeks or something for him to realise, to assemble the information...
When they took the beards and the hats off.
Sorry, I couldn't resist it!
It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance!
Have you done the reverse thing, going to the restaurant where it's completely dark?
I went to one in Berlin called the Nocti, where it's absolutely blind.
- Have you been? - No, but I mean to go.
- It's blind people who serve you. - Yes, that's right.
They walk around with great ease. Does it make a difference to how you eat?
- Does it taste different? - Yes, it does. That's really the point.
They talk you through the food.
You feel it and you smell it and you use all these other things that you usually forget
to use cos you're looking at people and you just look down and see how well-arranged it is.
But instead, it's quite animal. The weird thing is going to the loo.
This waiter takes you by the hand and kind of threads you through the tables.
You go into a passageway, he closes a door into the restaurant, so that stays dark,
and he opens the other door towards where the loos are.
He doesn't actually take the old chap out or anything like that.
Unless you tip him very well.
Unless you tip him very well!
You can go to Little Chef and you're served by people with complete indifference.
It's an amazing sort of experience.
- Not since Heston Blumenthal took over! - Surely not!
So, that's quite right. Absolutely spot on.
Now, a lorry load of birds are being weighed on a weigh bridge.
At some moment, all the birds simultaneously rise off their perches and flap in the air.
- So they're all alive? - Oh, yeah. They're all alive.
- Does the lorry weigh less? - Yes. - When they rise up in the air? - Yes. - No.
Got a yes and a no.
- They're not in contact with the actual thing? - No. - So it would weigh less.
- Is it sealed, the lorry? - It's a closed...
It's got a tailgate, it's locked up, they're inside, you can't see them.
- But wouldn't there be pressure from the air? - Yeah.
It weighs the same, and it's got something to do...
It's something similar to if you weigh yourself and then you do a number two
and weigh yourself, you don't lose the weight of the number two.
Ah.
Now, there we're in a slightly different territory.
If you will crap on the scales...!
You're right. The answer is not to poo on the scales!
- No, no! - Leave the scales, do the number two, come back to the scales!
- Of course you do! - The money I've wasted on enemas. - No, I know!
No, it doesn't. It weighs the same, and I can't remember the reason why.
So they all lift off at exactly the same time?
The fact is, it's the bird/lorry system...
I know it's weird, but...
- Is it to do with it being sealed? - Yeah.
If you're carrying a bowling ball and you're on the scales
- and you throw the ball in the air... - Yeah.
- It will kill you, even though...! - Because it's sealed...
- And the air's moving, exactly. - ..you and the air have created that weight, so wherever the birds put
themselves within there, it still weighs the same.
You're absolutely right. I mean, you can sort of test it.
Don't pass it off that easily!
But interestingly, if it's a open-top lorry and they're all sitting on the perch
and they jump up, and they jump slightly higher and then they're actually out of the system,
they're no longer part of the lorry/bird system, then it would be lighter.
Well done, everybody.
Perhaps now it's time to move on from our hypotheticals.
That was very quick(!)
So, hypothetical problems are of course the curse of the practical man, but how do curses work?
Well, someone curses you and you think you've been cursed,
so you change your behaviour and bring about your downfall.
That's kind of more or less precisely right.
- It's a negative version of what effect? - The placebo effect. - Yes, it is indeed.
- I'm on the wrong show - I should be on Mastermind! - You should!
- Are you saying it only works if you believe it? - Yes.
It's like a placebo. It is actually called the nocebo effect.
N-O-C-E-B-O, as in noxious, as in harm.
I will harm, "nocebo" in Latin.
So if I made a voodoo doll of Johnny and I stuck pins in it, it wouldn't work unless I sent him
- a sort of picture on his phone to show I'd done it? - Yes, and he believed, of course, that...
- The point is, you have to believe it. - You have to get a good likeness.
Otherwise Peter Kay would be rolling round in pain somewhere.
That would never do. Now, other curses.
- Do you know what the 27 Club is? There's a curse, supposedly. - No.
- Is it something to do with nearing your 30th birthday? - Yes, it is.
It's a particular age, 27, that seems to resonate in popular cultural history.
- Oh... - Is it people who died at 27? - Yes. Can you name some who died at 27?
James Dean or someone like that?
Oh, is it older than that?
Jim Morrison.
- Yeah, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janice Joplin. - Woah!
- Yeah. More. - Sid Vicious. - Kurt Cobain. - Brian Jones.
And Brian Jones in fact, yes. Robert Johnson of Crossroads fame.
- All 27, really? - They're all aged 27.
Old enough to develop enough of an intolerance to something to keep doing too much of it.
And young enough to be stupid enough to keep doing too much of it.
- Probably right. - It's the late 20s. It's a very hazardous age. - Clearly.
Do you know about the curse of the ninth? What would that be?
They all died on the ninth?
- No. - This is getting ridiculous.
- Was that a Roman legion? - Not a Roman legion.
The Eagle of the Ninth, not that. No, it's symphonies.
Oh! Oh, yes. You're not supposed to write more than nine.
- Well, it's not that you're not supposed to, but it's a... - Beethoven wrote nine and then popped off.
You finish a ninth and you die while writing the tenth.
It happened to Dvorak, Beethoven and Bruckner and Schubert.
- What an unusual serial killer that was. - That's the curse of the ninth.
If only they'd had CSI Vienna.
The nocebo effect is the placebo effect's evil cousin.
Now, hypothetically, what would happen if Schrodinger put a Siamese cat in the fridge?
- In the fridge? - Yeah. - Well, he wouldn't know if it was alive or dead.
Oh, good! You're referring to Schrodinger's cat, which is...
- Yeah, I've learnt about this on Horizon. - Very good.
You don't know, until you open the door, whether the cat is alive...
That is the sort of quantum paradox of Schrodinger's cat, yes.
- You put a Siamese cat in the fridge? - Yeah. - What is the question?
What would happen to the cat?
It would get cold. What would happen to the fridge?
They'd be less milk left, probably.
It would eat all the tuna melt.
All the tuna melt would go, yes.
But something quite extraordinary would happen.
It would turn into an ordinary cat.
- Well, almost! Almost. - It would turn into a dog. - No, no.
- Nor is it that remarkable. - In seconds.
Meow! Woof!
Let's have a look at a Siamese cat and see what's particular about it.
White body, black face. Ah!
So it goes to a black body and a white face.
It's got a white body and a black tail and black ears and black mouth and black socks.
In other words, black extremities.
What is particular about the extremities of any mammal?
- They get cold... - So if you put the whole animal in a fridge?
- It goes black. - It goes black, Johnny.
That's death, though, isn't it?
- There. That's what happens. - Oh!
It's fur has this peculiar colourant
that keeps it pale in warm blood heat, but only a small difference
in temperature down and it will lose the white or gain the black,
- whichever way you prefer to look at it. - When you take it out, does it go pale again?
- Yes, back to its normal colour. - It would be worth trying just for the lark, wouldn't it?
I don't like cats very much.
- Oh! - Oh, I'm sorry. So many cats, so few recipes. I just think...
I just think it sounds like fun.
You can also try it on a Himalayan rabbit.
- They have the same issue. - But please don't try it at home. - Please don't. No, no.
Do you know about buttered cat?
- There's a recipe, straightaway! - Delicious. - Buttered cat syndrome.
Oh, you put butter on their paws to stop them going home when you've moved house.
There is that, but this is a kind of paradox, because there are two laws.
- One is that if you have a piece of buttered toast and you drop it, what happens? - It falls butter-side down.
- And if you drop a cat, what happens to the cat? - It falls butter-side up!
No, no.
- It lands on its feet. - So if you were to put a piece of toast with the butter up and attach it to a cat...
- Ah...! - Right? What would happen is the cat would drop and it would have to revolve forever.
Because the laws would compete and it would be in total balance.
Would it work with margarine?
I don't know. I think that law doesn't state that margarine falls downwards.
Well, what about I Can't Believe It's Not Butter?
What if it was margarine but the cat believed it was butter?
Ah! The placebo effect. Exactly.
Brilliant, brilliant! You've all got the point.
What if cats discovered this and started to migrate?
Where would they go?
I don't know!
It's just a cat with a piece of toast. I not going to dictate...
Let's just keep it from them. So, yeah, yeah,
the point is, if you put a Siamese cat in a fridge for long enough...
and actually it would have to be quite a long time, probably weeks...
it would go black. And you absolutely mustn't.
But after that voyage through a land where there are no wrong answers,
we come at last to one where there is rarely a right one, the realm of general ignorance.
So put your fingers on your buzzers and tell me...
You're on death row, all right?
What can you tell me about your last meal?
'Hmm.'
It's three courses.
- Three courses? - Yeah, and it's absolutely whatever you want.
Mm, no.
KLAXON AND BELL
Not necessarily the case at all, you can order whatever you want.
You can only have what they've got in the kitchen.
You know where there's a death row in England.
- Tell. - It's at the Lord's pavilion.
The seating in the pavilion is unreserved, so you have to get
there early in the morning for the Australian Tests, for example.
But nowadays, a lot of the MCC members are living to a very old age
and they can't get there at six. So the oldest...
I think there's about 18 seats or something in the row.
They have a seat, the oldest X number of members.
That's called death row
by the stewards.
You can't even choose what you're going to have for your last supper?
In different states it varies, but in some states there's a 20 budget.
In Florida, it's a 40 budget. Sometimes they're really mean.
There was a figure called Philip Workman who asked for a large
vegetarian pizza to be given to a homeless person as his last dinner,
and the prison officials refused.
And after this guy was executed,
all kinds of homeless shelters all over Tennessee, the state where it happened, were sent
these vegetarian pizzas for homeless people by just ordinary Americans
who wanted to honour his last wishes, which is rather touching.
- That's lovely. But wouldn't it be awful if you were about to die and you got a very limited menu? - I know.
And huge portions are pared down. There was one inmate who requested 24 tacos and he only got four.
- Oh, it's just..! - Isn't it mean? You're not allowed to smoke,
- even if you want to... - It's hardly worth being there! - It almost isn't!
It almost isn't. And some of them get very mournful about this.
A fellow called Thomas Grasso.
His last words in 1995 were, "Please tell the media I did not get my Spaghetti-Os. I got spaghetti.
"I want the press to know this."
It's very forlorn, isn't it?
Do they say to you, "Did you have anything from the mini-bar last night?"
- They probably do. - The last question. - I'd want a Kinder egg.
A Kinder egg, yes!
I'd want some chocolate, a toy and a surprise.
- What's not to like? - Just to distract you from death. - You so would.
Anyway, in the USA, most states place strict restrictions on inmates' special meals,
as they're called. In some states it isn't even their final meal.
They actually have it two weeks or so before they're executed.
So stop me when you know what I'm talking about now.
It's an insectivorous mammal.
It's found all round the world.
It's active at night. It's almost totally blind.
- A bat. - A bat?
KLAXON AND BELL
- No. You were so right until the last part. - It's not blind, then? - No.
- Anteater, would you say? - No, not an anteater, no.
- A mole. - It's insectivorous, so it could eat ants. - Is it a mole?
- A mole is the right answer. - I said mole!
- Oh, did you? I'm sorry. Did he say mole, ladies and gentlemen? - Yes!
No, because sound is just a thing and it didn't travel...
Yeah, if you didn't hear me say mole, then I didn't say mole.
You need the points I suspect, Alan, after the bat thing.
No, there are about 1,100 different species of bat and none of them is sightless. Not one is blind.
Is the mole completely sightless, then?
It can just about distinguish between light and dark, but essentially it's blind.
- It can tell if the telly's on or off. - Yes, if you like. It's a lot...
Yeah, it can't tell if it's on standby.
- How many moles do you think there are in Ireland? - None.
- You're right, there are none. They don't... - They were very pally with the snakes. - Well, they...
Glaciation and the separation of Ireland from the rest of the place,
- they never got back because it was then an island. - They could tunnel.
Like snakes... They could tunnel!
- If any animal could tunnel, it would be a mole. - Oh, sweet. Look.
You say sweet, but almost certainly all photographs of moles
that are taken are of dead moles because they fluff them up.
- That's terrible. - And you can't tell cos their eyes are always little black slits.
It's like all those greetings card pictures of a cat on a deck chair or a cat hitting a mouse with a spoon.
- They're all dead. - Yeah.
I fear so. Yes, moles are as blind as a proverbial bat. Bats, perversely, aren't.
And, finally, the ultimate hypothetical question.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
- Er, chicken. - No!
KLAXON AND BELL
- The egg. - The egg is the right answer, yes.
There's that old joke about the chicken and egg have just made love
and they're lying there having a post-coital cigarette.
The chicken says to the egg, "Well, that answers that old question."
As the great scientist JBS Haldane said, "Anyone who can ask
"that question obviously hasn't understood evolution."
Because a chicken evolved from reptiles that laid eggs themselves.
So those eggs were always coming well before there was a chicken, there were eggs.
So it did indeed come first, the egg.
Um, what's unique about chickens? Well, there are quite a few things
that are unique about them, but the most obvious thing, looking at that?
What does it have that no other bird has?
Combs. No other animal has those strange combs on the head.
Thought to be something to do with temperature regulation.
They cool themselves down with the regulation of blood flow.
What's the longest recorded flight by a chicken in time terms, not distance?
- 13 seconds, isn't it, something like that? - Is it? - Yes...
- Yes, it is 13 seconds. - Is it really?!
APPLAUSE AND CHEERS
I don't claim that's true, but that is one of the oldest internet pieces of trivia I know,
apart from a duck's quack does not echo and no-one knows why.
- Which we know isn't true. - No, we know that isn't true.
So, anyway, birds evolved from egg-laying reptiles,
so there were definitely eggs before there were chickens.
So we emerge older but not much wiser
at the end of the only quiz show to offer no answers, just more questions.
But had there been answers, let's see who would, hypothetically, have won.
And our theoretical winner tonight, with two points, is Sandi Toksvig!
APPLAUSE AND CHEERS
Notionally in second place
is elf-master general, John Lloyd, with minus one!
APPLAUSE AND CHEERS
On paper, in third place, with an extremely creditable minus seven, Johnny Vegas!
APPLAUSE AND CHEERS
Finally, proving that it's all academic and a dream, with minus 27, Alan Davies!
APPLAUSE AND CHEERS
So that's all from this hypothetical edition of QI.
Or is it? ..Yes, it is.
So it's good night from Sandi, Johnny, John, Alan and me.
Good night.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERS
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