CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Goooood...evening!
Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
and welcome to QI,
where tonight, we'll be looking at the three L's.
That's Location, Location and Location.
And on the road to L
are the fiendish Aisling Bea...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..the diabolical Jason Manford...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..the Mephistophelian Johnny Vegas...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..and that infernal Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
They all have satanic horns.
Aisling goes...
- BIKE HORN TOOTS - Oh!
- Excuse me. - Jason goes...
- SCAR HORN HONKS - Classic.
Johnny goes...
TRUCK HORN BLASTS
And Alan has a tail.
CHILD: "Are we nearly there yet?"
Ah!
Now, for your convenience, we have a lavatory on site.
GAMESHOW-STYLE JINGLE PLAYS
TOILET FLUSHES
This being the L series, there is a very good chance
that there will be one question
to which the answer will be lavatorial.
- Are you all right, darling? - That's harder than I thought it was.
Did you hit yourself with a penny?
And if that is the case,
you can play your Spend A Penny card.
And if you are right, you will get extra points,
such is the nature of that particular joker.
Now, here's a question about a very special location.
What would you find at the exact centre
of the observable universe?
You?
LAUGHTER
Well, oddly enough...possibly.
- Norfolk. - Norfolk! Yes.
There isn't a centre of the universe, really,
so isn't the centre of the universe just the person who's looking...out?
Because it must be the same...
You are so absolutely right, it hurts.
- ..in any direction? Yeah. - That's brilliant.
APPLAUSE
Never ends, never ends.
I know a thing, I know a thing because our esteemed creator,
John Lloyd, in his rather good Edinburgh Festival show,
told us that, of all the billions of galaxies that there are,
there are only a certain number observable from Earth.
Do you know what it is? Do you know what it is?
Do you know? Four.
- Four what, observable from Earth? - Other galaxies.
- Other than our own. - And, well...
I remember, at school, them doing something with a balloon.
- Yes. - The teacher, and he put loads of dots on a balloon
and...he sort of said it was, like,
the closest to explaining the universe as he could do.
That's absolutely right.
Although there has been an absolute statement
of where the centre of the universe is,
which is that it's at the meeting of Bank Street and Sixth Street
in the town of Wallace, Idaho.
There it is - the centre of the universe.
- Is that the Mayor of Idaho, though? Has he said that? - Yeah. - Well...
They're not doing well for tourism and gone,
- "Why don't we say the centre of the universe is here?" - You're right.
He said it because there was no particular scientific evidence
to say it wasn't the centre of the universe.
- So they decided... - "We'll have it!" - We could say that of anywhere.
Americans like to stake a claim, they're land-grabbers.
- It's in their... - Yeah.
..in their DNA, so to be,
not that we weren't, in our colonial era, of course.
Isn't the sun the centre of the universe?
STEPHEN LAUGHS
Well... Sorry, I don't know why I laughed like that.
What a way to build my confidence for the rest of the show(!)
- That was the most... - I thought that was a serious question, too,
we both look to you and you looked at us
like the peasants of the land,
going, "Will we ever be free of this tyranny?
"Ha-ha-ha! Never, never, never."
"I'd like to go in the toilet,
"but doesn't the Wickey Hole witch live there?
"Oh, ha-ha-ha!"
Well, I'm sorry that it sounded quite so patronising.
The centre of the universe
is apparently Bank Street and Sixth Street in Wallace, Idaho.
- Or... - The sun.
THEY CHUCKLE HAUGHTILY
APPLAUSE
You beasts, you beasts. You unutterable beasts.
At the exact centre of the observable universe,
you'll find the unbearable likeness of Johnny Vegas,
or whoever happens to be observing it.
We all know what the Big Bang Theory is but what's the Big Splat Theory?
SCATTERED LAUGHTER
Does the Big Bang come out the Big Splat?
No, no... It doesn't.
Is it the last thing you hear before an anvil hits your head?
Oh! Horrible.
Ah!
Is it something to do with, I don't know, the Earth...
Was the Earth and the moon and all the other planets one thing
- and then it... - You're on fire today, Jason. - Am I?
Thank you, Mr Stilliano,
- Physics teacher. - It is a theory. It's the sort of predominant theory
cos nobody knows where the moon came from.
There was a theory that there was a planet called Theia.
In Greek mythology Theia was the mother of Selene,
who's the goddess of the moon.
And that there was a collision with the Earth and...
That's it, I remember that.
Looks like a sun hat.
- The world is going on a nice... - Has the world gone to the races?
The idea is that Theia banged into the Earth,
or banged a piece of matter into the Earth - if that were true
then the moon should contain bits of alien rock as well as Earth rock.
As it is, it only contains bits of rock that are similar to
those on Earth, almost identical.
Didn't something land and kill all the dinosaurs...?
There were several extinction events, one of which was,
supposedly, yeah, a big, big, big meteor.
The other one was a huge volcano
which caused a huge greenhouse effect.
I remember years ago, when Mount St Helens went off in the States,
that was at an age where I obviously thought it was in my home town.
I thought my parents were being incredibly casual...
about the impending doom when I was packing a bag and saying,
"We should really go to Blackpool.
"Or at least to a safe zone."
I thought St Helens was only a Rugby League team,
- I didn't know it was a town as well. - Yeah. Big enough to be a city.
They could build a cathedral but that would attract outsiders,
and they would only question our ways.
And who wants that, Stephen?
I think we might be coming to your ways later.
- Oh. - Yeah, so be on the qui vive, as they say in France. The fact is,
the Big Splat is one of the theories about the creation of the moon.
There are a few others - one was Charles Darwin's son, George,
who said that a huge lump of material was flung off the Earth
by the extreme speed of its rotation at the beginning of its existence.
Nonsense.
The hole it left is the Pacific Ocean.
- No, he's guessing there. - Well...
He's got a clever dad and thought, "People will believe me."
And there's a final theory, which we rather like, which is that
Venus had the moon and we appropriated it
as it passed by at one point. It's particularly good
cos the people who devised this theory don't really believe it,
they just want to keep the argument alive and come up with fresh ideas.
Which is rather pleasing.
They've just invented a theory to keep the argument alive?
- Basically, yeah. - I had an ex-girlfriend like that.
LAUGHTER
Very good, I can imagine it.
Yes, nobody knows where the moon came from.
Now, if Johnny and Jason got naked, covered their legs...
LAUGHTER
- Wow! - It's pretty good, isn't it?
APPLAUSE
- Wow. - I know. - I mean, I can't unsee that now...
I can't wait after the show to open wedding gifts together.
Be still, the beating hearts of the nation.
If they got naked, covered their legs in lard
and put their hands on each other's shoulders,
what could we expect to happen next?
I would guess...
OFCOM would get involved.
- Something COM. Yeah. - Yeah.
I'd obviously be the...
- The bitch? - ..female in the relationship.
- You know, I'm the one who needs rescuing. - The bottom. Yeah.
ALAN: Why are their legs in lard? Are they going to slither about?
Legs are important in this particular pursuit.
You were talking about "We don't want people to come to St Helens
"because they might not approve of our ways."
It's a red wine that we are about to trample the grapes for
that you can also fry with.
I like the idea of that - Lancashire wine...
- Yeah, it's the first kind of sipping lard. - Yes, that's right.
So you can have a glass and do your chips in it also.
- Available in every Yates' Wine Lodge. Ooh. - Yeah.
There'd be a rush, like at Christmas,
when Jamie Oliver said to use goose fat,
but this time, they'd be using comedians'...dripping.
You'd go, "Do you know what? These potatoes taste a bit funny."
Twice-fried Johnny dripping.
- NORTHERN ACCENT: - Now, we're in t'north and, um...
Forgive me for my accent, I do my best.
We're in t'north and...
Sound like you've swallowed your tongue.
It's a pursuit in the north west.
JOHNNY: It's not shin-kicking?
- Yes, it is shin-kicking. - Ah! - You knew about shin-kicking.
- I did, my uncle was one. - Wahey!
APPLAUSE
Very good. There you are. I don't know if he left -
- did he bequeath you his pair of clogs? - He was... You know what,
by the time I knew him, he was blind and spoke, like,
pretty much nonsense in the corner.
But he was a phenomenal shin-kicker.
He was a very tough man and that was his pastime, shin-kicking.
- Is that a blade? - Yes, it is. - Wow.
You take it in turns
to kick each other in the shins as hard as you can.
And it's the first person to, to burst into...
Do you know what they cry if they give up? It's rather wonderful.
- You'd think it'd be, "I give in." Or, "Oh, stop it, no." - "Stop it."
"Go on with your bother!" No...
- It's... - "Stop kicking me shin, you..." - It's not that.
They shout, "Sufficient!"
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
That's the cry.
Oddly enough, that's my climax call.
"Sufficient!"
Very good.
It's... Now, I'd like to stress,
there's no domestic violence involved.
- No, no. - It's just that, we're not greedy in our nature up north.
I have to confess, I've never heard the phrase "climax call" before.
So it took a bit of time for me to understand what you were saying.
- Forgive me for that. - I think it's actually from bird watching. - Is it?
Did they rip the skin off each other's legs and stuff?
- Oh, yeah. - Oh, God! - One of the reasons for larding the shins
was in order to encourage a glancing blow,
rather than a really vicious one.
But the skill was obviously to move your legs
so that it was a glancing blow.
Is it if you put your hands on the shoulders, you know
the way you can't hit someone if you put them at arm's length
- and do they try to not get kicked? - I think it means you're in
a stable position, so you're not escaping completely.
But you can move your legs.
I don't know how short the legs are of people you know but standing there
you've still got a fair bit of range, haven't you?
You've been doing it with Ewoks.
The more I get to know you, the more I think men are mad.
- I'm afraid you're right. - They're always up to something ridiculous.
Kicking each other on the lardy shins - you're like...
Shin-kicking is probably what it was called on an everyday basis.
In the 19th century there was a special word for it,
which was "purring" or "purrin".
"Purrin" or "porrin" or "parrin". They seem to be all used.
Parrin, purrin - "parring", maybe, because you were parrying away.
Nobody quite knows, but anyway.
It was a popular pastime. A lot of betting on it.
Yeah. And there are shin-kickers to this day
in the oldest Olympics Games since the Greek ones,
which we've covered before, which are in the Cotswolds.
You can see...
Do they have a Channel 4 programme called Shin-Kickers' Wives?
Where they're like, "Oh, my God,
"he's making so much money kicking shins. I love him.
"I don't like his personality, but it's just the money."
- Is he called the stickler? - He's the stickler,
he's the umpire or referee.
- "A stickler for detail", is that where that comes from? - Exactly.
- I like that. - You can probably see that he's got straw coming out
of the bottom of his trousers and that's what they used.
They pad their shins.
They're not like tough northerners, they pad their shins.
Cos this is in the Cotswolds.
- "Get a bit of lard on that, you soft lad." - That's it.
Next thing you know, they'll be bringing in Crocs.
It'll be going on for nine days, your shin-kicking.
- That castle looks really old. - I'm not sure it's a real castle.
Don't spoil it!
You have to spoil everything.
Get a wind up and that's going over, isn't it?
People are bouncing around going,
"Are you sure this is a real castle?" "Yes."
My gran used to say "sufficient" when she'd eaten enough.
- Oh, "ample sufficiency"? - Yeah. - That's the phrase.
You can say ample... or I've had sufficient.
JOHNNY: Or your grandad was kicking her under the table.
And she didn't want to let on.
She'd just put her knife down, "Sufficient."
Sitting there weeping once you'd gone home.
We should have done it when we had the Olympics.
You know you're allowed to include a couple of games
and people are going, "Put darts in."
Like, stuff we were good at. "Put snooker in."
Should have gone, "Put shin-kicking in."
- Just some poor Brazilian going, "What?" - "Take that, Germany!"
I just can't bear the thought of all the other countries beating us at it.
"We invented this!" Yeah, exactly.
"Oh, that's enough of Johnny Foreigner doing this.
"Should've kept this quiet!"
The Shin-Kicker's Association of Britain are known as SKAB,
- you'll be pleased to know. - Are they? - Perhaps appropriately.
And Johnny's uncle was one, which is jolly, we never knew that.
- Really impressive. - Genuinely.
Shin-kicking was a popular sport in Lancashire pubs for 150 years.
Now, here's a pub in Lancashire.
My question is how did Spanking Roger woo the ladies?
- I know that pub. - Do you know it?
- Yeah, I do. - Where is it?
It's in like, I think it's in Kersal or Salford area.
- It's Manchester area, quite right. - When I went to university -
I know, I did -
I lived in a place called Castle Irwell,
which was a dog track before we...
- Destroyed it. - It became a student village. Yes. - Right.
But every year, there was a race down the hill naked.
- And they would run down. - Yes.
All the blokes would. I didn't, obviously, I didn't...
I'm a grower, not a shower.
And this pub was part...
I think the guy, Spanking Roger...
That's how he got his wife - there was something to do with his wife,
where he was naked and she had a little look,
he was quite well-endowed and thought, "I'll have him."
You're right. This naked running was on Kersal Moor.
Kersal Moor, which has now become Castle Irwell,
which is now a student village.
Exactly. We've got a picture as it used to be, which is beautiful.
It was much more of a shit-hole when I was there.
Now it's just vomit and empty Pringles tubes.
But he...that guy, Spanking Roger,
even though it sounds like he was a bit of an idiot,
he ended up being a big guy in the army.
Like...I think he defended Gibraltar or something like that.
Absolutely right. He was the great hero of Gibraltar.
- This is brilliant. He's on fire! - APPLAUSE
It's like watching Slumdog Millionaire
or something like that, going, "How did you know that one?"
We have rather... It is your manor, isn't it?
That's where I grew up, round the corner from there.
And he was a fascinating character, Spanking Roger, as he was known.
He was from Scotland, actually, in the Scots Dragoons.
And he came down, 6'4" high and of ample endowment, it seems,
because he did do the naked run.
That's it, precisely.
That's why he was called Spanking Roger.
He could only do it in the summer
when the slapping didn't hurt him quite so much.
- But he did catch the eye... - Or the lard.
..catch the eye of a 65-year-old widow, whom he married.
- With his... - Literally?
Yeah - caught her in the eye.
"My eye! My eye!"
Her name was Minshull, Barbara Minshull.
That's right - Minshull Courts in Manchester
and Minshull Street is where... where her family are from.
- She was a rich family, yeah. - Yeah. I think she died...
This is back in the 1760s when they married.
The next day, he was immediately betraying her,
spending all her money. He spent it on, essentially,
he would have bare-knuckle fights.
If anybody beat him, they were, sort of, free,
but if he beat them, he dragooned them, as it were.
Is that why he's called Spanking Roger?
Yeah. I mean, he's called Spanking Roger...
He spanked 'em, then you had to be in his army.
That's exactly the reason.
He's got a hell of camel foot for someone who's well-endowed.
He has a bit. I think the artist was modest.
- Yeah. - Eating his shorts.
And life was extraordinary, because he, as you rightly say,
was the hero of Gibraltar, with this dragooned army there.
It was the longest siege in British military history,
held out for four years and kept the Rock,
as we still have at time of going to press, unless the Spanish
have had something to do with it. His wife died, he got into
terrible debt, came back impoverished.
Found another woman whom he married, she was Scottish.
And he died a very rich man indeed. So he had a pretty splendid life.
A spanking life, in fact.
Why do they say "spanking" for "good", in England?
- "Spanking good time" and... - It's a very good point, isn't it?
The great, much lamented Christopher Hitchens once said,
"There is no surname in English that cannot be improved
"by having the word Spanker put in front of it."
Spanker Manford.
Spanker Vegas.
- Spanker Bea. Spanker Bea is terrific, isn't it? - Yeah.
- It would be hard to spank a bee. - There's the queen bee. - Yeah.
There's worker bees and then there's the spanker bees.
Spanker bee.
"I bumped into old Spanker Davies at the club the other day."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Well, Spanking Roger didn't spank ladies -
he spanked the French and the Spanish.
Roger was a strapping 6'4" with a Scottish accent,
but what's short, talks gibberish
and is much sought after in Merseyside?
- Kevin Keegan. - Johnny's uncle.
- Is it a Diddy Man? - It's not the Diddy Men, though, oddly enough,
you could barely be closer. In Liverpool, there was this -
there it is in case you wanted to know what Merseyside looked like -
ferry across the Mersey.
What's the largest, best-known ethnic minority in Liverpool,
- would you say? - Irish, I'd say. - The Irish, of course. - Yes.
Because the Liverpool accent is very like the Dublin accent.
- They're quite close to each other. - DUBLIN ACCENT: - People talk like that.
- LIVERPOOL ACCENT: - All of a sudden, they're from Liverpool.
- So if you go backwards you'll end up... - Ken Doherty. That's right.
- Exactly. - Irish, yes. - So you've got Diddy Men
and you've got Ireland.
Are you saying short, talking gibberish are Irish people?
No. But you've got Diddy Men, who are little people,
little people created by Ken Dodd.
- And you've got the Irish. So it's not Diddy Men. - Leprechauns.
Leprechauns! Thank you very much, Johnny Vaughan...
- Johnny Vaughan?! - Johnny Vaughan?
APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH
Well, it was a particular event in 1964.
It was thousands of Liverpudlian children
streamed into the parks to look for leprechauns,
because there was a rumour some had been seen,
or one had been seen, or something,
and they tore up plants and they ravaged the entire park system,
for 11 or 12 days in July '64.
And then it just stopped, as suddenly as it had begun.
It sounds like the Americans coming to Ireland.
That's what they did, looking for leprechauns. Then it just stopped,
they took their IT companies with them, they just never came back.
Can I just say, just to be a little bit of a nit-picker here?
- Those are garden gnomes. - Yeah, I know.
I feel very racially offended.
- Yes. - You're a stickler.
I'll give you points if you tell me how a leprechaun should look?
- How a leprechaun should look? - Yeah.
- He should look...charming in the eye. - Right.
He should have a sort of a jaunty gait about him.
- Right. - And then a green hat and green outfit
and you can only find one at the end of a rainbow.
- Should he be bearded? - Should he be bearded?
If he's not bearded, it is just a child wearing an outfit,
welcoming you to Ireland.
- It's got a big red bushy beard... - A red beard.
- Because I've got one. - Have you? Hmm.
- A big red bushy beard? - You've got a leprechaun?
You can get them at Dublin Airport.
- A leprechaun? - If you press them on the tummy, they go,
# When Irish eyes are smiling... #
It's one of the spookiest, scariest things.
My kids love it, but me and the wife are terrified.
Like a Chippy Doll? If anyone presses it...
# When Irish eyes are smiling... #
- Oh, horrible! - Yes. - You keep throwing it out the window
and then it keeps on coming back in.
- I think it's supposed to be cute, but it's actually like a horror film. - Oh.
"Look at my lucky charms, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha..."
- Oh, don't, oh! - And it's got sort of an old man's voice in the distance.
I'll bring it in.
My kids have got a bear and it's got a red heart on it,
and you press it and it glows.
And every so often you'll just hear it sort of, it'll go, "I love you."
- And all, you know. - Oh! - "I can see you," or whatever.
The worst one is, "I see you." And I remember one night...
Oh, do you...? No!
I went to the toilet and in the middle of the night,
half asleep, and the batteries were going on it.
I was sort of...all of a sudden, I just heard...
- DISTORTED VOICE: - "I see you..."
- That's very disturbing. - Absolutely terrifying.
I wouldn't recover from that.
- Well, interesting. - "I can see you..."
Who am I to tell you that you've got it slightly wrong
- in what leprechauns look like, because... - All right, Stephen.
No, I'm, I'm going by...
Look down upon me and tell me what we did wrong this time.
I'm going on early information, rather than late, you know,
20th century information.
There are inventions which come from the 20th century,
which include the fact that they wear green clothes and tall hats.
And they have ginger beards.
According to fairy legends and traditions
of the south of Ireland from 1825, proper leprechauns -
if there is such a thing - are all...
They have a trade - shoemakers. They're all shoemakers.
And they are exclusively what?
- ALAN: White. - Yes. They are.
They're exclusively white.
- And? - Old. - Male?
- Male. - Male, oh. - Is the right idea. And there's the shamrock, of course.
There's a rule that an Irish person told me -
"Never go into an Irish pub in America or London
"that has a neon shamrock, because it'll be crap."
- Is that right? - Yeah. I mean, it would be a bit dodgy. - Yeah.
- Any American sort of Irish pub. - Yeah.
- AMERICAN ACCENT: - "Come on in to be sure
"and you'll have a right old great craic of a time."
That must be very annoying.
Yeah. But this particular chase happened, as I say, in '64,
but in 1982, a man called Brian, which is a good Irish name,
told the Liverpool Echo that he had been working in the park
when some children saw him and mocked him for his height,
or rather lack of it.
And so, joining in the sport, he spoke in sort of...
"Ah-de-da-de-da-de-da!" Sort of Irish gibberish.
I know, I'm sorry, I'm doing what he did.
Threw sods of earth at them, and they ran away frightened,
thinking he was a leprechaun.
Because they'd called him a leprechaun.
They said, "Oi, you! You're a leprechaun!"
And he went, "I am that, da-de-da-de-da-de-da..."
And so they all said, "We saw a leprechaun, we saw..."
You know. "Saw a real one, saw a real leprechaun, in the park."
And so all these kids, were like, you know, they all invaded it.
It's like a lost episode of Brookside, this.
It is, isn't it? Where does it begin?
But these particular things happen from time to time,
these mass delusions, or whatever you might call them.
They're called the children's hunt, when they involve children.
So in 1964, as Beatlemania swept the world,
leprechaun mania swept Liverpool.
Which London attraction cost two arms and two legs to enter?
Oh, look at that, isn't that gorgeous?
- Ladybird Book, don't you think? - Yes, it's got the look of a Ladybird Book.
It looks like there's been a pigeon accident
and they're all gathered round the scene to see what happened.
- Is this picture a clue? - No, it's not at all.
It's not to do with art, is it?
- No, it's not. - Tower of London.
The Tower of London is where we need to be.
Cue picture of Tower of London.
- Traitors' Gate's all I know. - There's the Tower of London.
And we're talking about an attraction within
the Tower of London that lasted for 600 years.
Henry I, who was a very early king, had a particular,
rather exciting luxury that he was very fond of
that he kept in Woodstock in Oxfordshire.
And King John, who was late 13th century,
moved it to the Tower of London where it stayed for 600 years.
And you had to pay to get in to see it but you could -
I say two arms and two legs, it's really four legs, to be honest.
Oh, an animal.
You could bring in an animal and that would...
- Four chicken drumsticks. Bucket of KFC. - No...
That would get you in free because they would use the animal
- to satisfy what you were going to see. - A dragon!
- A mincer. - Sort of like a dragon to them. - A mincer!
- Lion or a... - Bears?
Lion and bear, yes, all those things. A big menagerie...
- Oh, wow. - ..as zoos were called.
There's an 18th century, by the look of it, cartoon.
- That's the last dodo. - Oh, it does look a bit like it, doesn't it?
I think it's some hugely complicated satire that we don't really get.
Anyway, that's a cartoon of the menagerie.
It lasted all the way till 1830 when it was transported to,
- or transferred to...? - London Zoo? - Regent's Park.
To Regent's Park, to London Zoo, yes. So, there was the menagerie.
It was immensely popular all through those years.
If you were a sheriff in the city of London and around you had to pay
fourpence a day to help with the feeding of the polar bear.
They were presumably quite good animal keepers if they managed to
keep these animals cos they couldn't afford to let them die very quickly.
I mean, how long it would take in the 15/16th century to get a lion
to England, it was just inconceivable
- how long it would take. - What sort of animals did they have?
LAUGHTER
Oh, a cat. Cool(!)
A cat... If you brought a cat or a dog to feed to the lions,
or the tigers, they had tigers as well.
- And they had bears... - Oh, my! - ..as I say, a polar bear.
So they had what were considered immensely exotic animals.
You would feed them and free admission.
I bet that was used as a punishment for kids.
"I'll tell you what, you do that again, I'm taking you there
"and you're getting fed to the bloody lions."
And you'd walk them right to the door if they were being really bad.
But what if you had a pet lion?
And you turned up and you wanted entry?
And they went, "It's a bit rich for my blood." You know what I mean?
"Yeah, take the lion. See how far you get."
There was a rather unfortunate incident in 1830.
A keeper accidentally allowed two tigers and one lion to be in
the same enclosure and there was a horrible fight
that they only managed to end by introducing a sort of red hot prongs
to the noses of the tigers who eventually stalked off.
But who do you think won?
- Two against one... - Yeah, and it's tigers. - The lion king.
No, the lion king didn't win, I'm afraid.
Simba licked his wounds and died a few days later.
Very sad. Very sad.
But anyway, it was an amazing place.
Imagine an imaginary menagerie
managed by an imaginary menagerie manager.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
So, there we are.
Now, what would you do in 12th century London if you saw this man?
It is a ghost.
Oh, you're spending a penny, are you?
- I'm going to spend my penny, yes. - Jason's spending his penny.
TOILET FLUSHES
Must be.
You're absolutely right! Absolutely right.
Toilet, toilets.
APPLAUSE
You'd be like... You'd put that round you.
- That's right. Do you want to try it out? - Go on, then.
Is that man an old-fashioned Portaloo?
This is... This is Steve,
one of our most gifted intellectuals.
Intellectual elves.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Can you pass me the newspaper? Pass the newspaper!
And I believe there's an extra farthing for a happy ending,
but the...
- Have you had sufficient? - Sufficient.
Sufficient! In the 12th century, there were those who were a little
bit too, you know, a little bit pernickety
and didn't want to be seen taking a poo in the street, as many did.
And so these gentlemen would come around with their big capes
and allow you a little bit of privacy.
Did people used to just poo in the street?
- Otherwise they would poo in the street. - Would they? - Yeah.
- Times have changed, haven't they, Stephen? - They have, absolutely.
Though there's a lot of peeing in the street, late at night.
- Yeah. - A huge amount. - Yeah, and I'll admit to that. But, you know...
Quite. Needs must.
May I thank our senior elf,
who has done something well beneath his huge dignity?
Steve Colwen, ladies and gentlemen - thank you.
APPLAUSE
Marvellous service.
We do know the name of one of these - Thomas Butcher.
He's in the records. He was fined for overcharging.
- Oh, really? - Yeah. - What, afterwards? Like, he had a look in and went,
- "I think you can give me a fiver." - Possibly! Oh, dear.
Did he have anyone standing beside him,
selling deodorant and lollipops?
Toilet roll, really, that's what you want.
There's an animal that sort of also does that similar draping effect.
- Do you know what it is? - Yeah, it's a bird with its feathers.
- I can't... Is it a nights...? - It's a black heron.
- And why would it do that? - To protect its eggs.
There it is. There's it doing it, black heron.
Is it to trick its prey into thinking it's night-time
- so it comes out? - It actually creates a shadow
and fish are very drawn to cooler water in certain climates,
so the fish see what they think will be cooler water cos there may
be a tree overhanging or something like that, and it gobbles them up.
- So it's a lure. It's a wonderful, clever lure. - It's amazing to watch.
We did a show for BBC called Walk On The Wild Side, which you did...
Yes, I remember doing the voices for various animals.
And it does it in quite an odd motion, it's quite fast.
Cos we did a thing and it just went
"night-time, day time. Night-time, day time."
- That's so sweet! - That was our fun little sketch.
I do it with men in nightclubs. I go...
It's you!
It is me!
There you go. Horror. Medieval lavatory attendants provided
personal privacy and a bucket.
Now it's time to get our kit off
and frolic in the sub-zero temperatures of General Ignorance.
So fingers on buzzers if you would.
What's black and white and doesn't live in the Arctic?
- BIKE HORN TOOTS - Penguins.
Oh, what a shame!
KLAXON BLARES
Well, you know, the fact is they're not indigenous to the Arctic,
the North Pole. And you're right, they don't naturally occur there.
But man has taken them there, as pets on boats.
Because they're cute and they were left there and they sort of got on
and made a living pretty happily amongst the fish there...
Despite being eaten by a polar bear.
Well, that was a surprise, when they met the polar bear, presumably.
Ahhh!
"What is that?!"
"Why are you so dressed up and where are you off to?"
Despite what they say, there are some penguins in the Arctic.
Which part of the world does the idea
of eating frogs' legs come from?
- CAR HORN TOOTS - Go on, Jason.
- France. - Oh! Bless you. Very sweet of you.
- Yeah, it's all right. - Is it England?
Yes! Bless my soul!
So far as we can tell, this is absolutely right.
There is evidence of the early Neolithic British
eating frogs' legs in our most iconic memorial.
There it is. Stone - look at it - Henge.
- Henge. - Yeah, exactly.
What could be hengier or stonier? How many years ago?
- I'll give you a thousand either way, when we discovered... - 4,000. - 4,000.
It's about 9,000 years ago,
that's to say, between 7,000 and 6,000 BC.
There is evidence, not just of eating... Well, there's toads,
but also, we've got three-course meal evidence.
Frogs with hazelnuts, followed by a fish course,
- followed by blackberries. That's not bad, is it? - Sounds nice.
That would see you through nicely, very healthy. Very healthy.
To the nearest...thousand tonnes,
how many tonnes of frogs' legs do the French get through a year?
500,000 tonnes.
500,000 tonnes? Half a million tonnes.
It's between 3,000 and 4,000 tonnes. It's still a fair quantity.
- Yeah. - I thought they had massive frogs.
- It would be peculiar. - The size of a man.
Frogs' legs were first eaten in Wiltshire.
What's the name of the fortifications that mark
the northern boundary of Roman Britain?
CHILD: "Are we there yet?"
- Hadrian's Wall. - Oh, dear, dear, dear.
KLAXON BLARES
Anyone in the audience know?
What's further north? Where do they go that was further north than that?
- MAN: - Antonine. - Antonine?
Oh, dear, audience get a penalty.
KLAXON BLARES
You fell into our trap.
Some intelligent people do know that the Antonine Wall
is north of Hadrian's Wall, but a very obscure fact,
certainly I had no idea of,
it's the Gask Ridge system, which is the oldest
and indeed the northern most of the boundaries.
There's the Antonine Wall.
We can see Hadrian's Wall.
And there's the Gask Ridge.
- Doesn't look as good. - Doesn't go from coast to coast.
I would start thinking, "Maybe I'll go around it."
I think I use the same builders as that.
You could go round it a little bit but it was the northern most.
Well, it's a defence against fat people.
Lazy people. We don't... "Oh, do you have to walk?" I won't bother."
Hadrian's wall remains the longest continuous fortification in Europe.
Obviously it's nothing compared to the Great Wall of China
but it's still pretty impressive.
It was garrisoned by how many troops in its day, do you think?
I don't know but I do that they took 40,000 troops
- to try and suppress Scotland. - Mm.
And then when they got there they found there was nowhere to suppress,
cos everyone was hiding. Then at night they'd come out and attack them
and they just ended up giving up.
- So there were thousands of people. - Yeah, 9,000 garrisoned the Wall.
They came from all over the known Empire, including from the Tigris,
what we now call Iraq.
Iraqi Arabs were stationed and they must have found it very chilly
- and unpleasant. - What wall is that there? That's the Gask, is it?
- No, that's Hadrian's Wall. - Ah. - Yeah, which is in great shape.
I don't think the Gask Wall is in much shape.
I went for a walk along there with a friend of mine.
He's like a real cockney geezer.
And he's always, you know that sort of myth of people being
friendly in the north and not so friendly in the south?
We walked up along there. This sums up the north-south divide for
friendliness and not friendliness and talking to strangers.
Two blokes walk past. It was about 8.30 in the morning.
And a bloke went, "Morning." And I went, "Morning." And my mate went,
"Who's that?"
Just saying good morning to a stranger, that's not weird.
Now, what's this? What's this? What's this? Pass it down.
Just tell me what it is, have a taste.
It's, I promise you, not poison, despite being green.
- It's not wasabi, is it? - Not wasabi, is it?
Wasabi, there we go!
You would be served this if you were to go out around London
and go to most Japanese restaurants,
and we can have a taste and it's...woo!
- Pretty hot. - I can't. - Do you find it too hot? - Yeah, I can't even...
My mother thinks tomato and basil soup is too spicy.
"Oh, that's too spicy for me. What's in that?" Salt.
That is as close to wasabi as you could get without it being wasabi.
I nearly took a mouthful of that, you know, it's not a joke.
- I can't take chilli, but I can take as much mustard... - I put a load in
cos you said it wasn't... ALAN: You said it's not wasabi!
- It's not wasabi. - Well, it's...
I'll tell you what it is.
It's killed a man over there.
This is not Jackass, it's QI!
What you're eating there is horseradish.
- Horseradish. - Now you may say wasabi is Japanese horseradish,
but the wasabi you get sold in British restaurants
is almost always ordinary British horseradish dyed green.
- No! - Yes.
Because real wasabi, although it's related to horseradish,
takes two years to mature and it's very expensive to transport.
So it's much easier to use the British stuff,
which grows on railway sidings and is cheap as chips,
to use that instead.
You know what, Stephen? That would have been lovely
just if you'd explained it and used some bloody pictures!
- I'm sorry. - Rather than give us some and go, "Put that in your mouth!"
- I'm so sorry. - I swear to God -
I mean, I can hear things like a dog does!
It's done things in me head!
I've been waiting all my life to become a superhero
and all you had to do was give me a bloody spoonful of that!
- Yeah. It's opened... - I'm seeing through walls!
It's opened your Eustachian tube and your sinuses.
Oh, yeah, yeah, cancel my car, I'm flying home.
Oh, bless you. Now shove your little dishes away, if you can.
- You might want to keep them. - That's enough superpowers for one day.
I'm going to demonstrate something called the Leidenfrost effect,
named after a certain Dr Leidenfrost.
So, allow me to present a tray, which may seem rather mysterious.
There we go.
Now, essentially, what the principle is -
I'll explain it first and then you'll see it -
is that when you drop some water on a very hot surface,
it kind of beads into a little ball.
And goes around, it's often a way you test the heat of a frying pan
or so on, or if you drop water accidentally onto a hotplate.
And if you allow this beading to take place on certain surfaces,
the beading is sort of predictable and rather exciting.
And you can see a little bit of it on VT,
in which the bead is going uphill.
There it's being dropped from a pipette onto a very hot, ridged,
sort of, saw-toothed surface,
and you can see the ball itself, that's how it...
That's how my sperm reacts with a ridged condom.
You may be wearing it inside out.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Why have you got your sperm in a pipette?
- Sufficient, sufficient. - All right.
I have pipettes here, and this is room temperature.
I'm going to put it on here
and you can see, as I drop the water,
that it's just... Nothing much happens.
But the beads go off and that's starting to boil and frizz.
And as it gets hotter, you will see the Leidenfrost effect of it.
Listen - you'd swear the women were watching the Chippendales.
"Ooh! Aah."
Where it gets interesting is where these things have been
left on the heat and so are already incredibly hot.
And this is a little concave thing, and we drop a bit in
and it goes round and round and round and round.
Rather beautifully.
And now we've got another one with the saw-tooth
that we saw climbing up, but this is a circular saw tooth
and it should go round and round as well.
Whee! Incredible speed, look at that.
I don't know why young people have to go and, you know,
play Grand Theft Auto,
- when they've all this sort of craic to look forward to. - I know, exactly.
Isn't it fun?
And for the grand finale, you can see here,
next to the hotplate, is...
We've got ourselves a sort of maze.
And let's see what happens here.
Cool! That's just water?
It has a very predictable path and they go all the way round.
If they've got enough energy, they'll go round twice.
There you go. Big fellow.
That's like chasing me dad round a shopping precinct.
"Don't abandon me!"
- That's it, there you go. - "I will make you proud.
"Dad? Dad, come back!"
Hours of harmless fun.
Now, I asked the very nice scientist from the University of Bath,
who've lent us this equipment,
what technical solutions this may offer the world, and he said,
"Actually, most of the time, the Leidenfrost effect
"provides technical problems of plumbing and things like that.
"And it isn't always a desirable effect."
So if you can think, at home, some useful solution that could be
used for the Leidenfrost effect we'd be very grateful.
But thank you, Kei Takashina from the University of Bath
for the loan of this splendid equipment.
APPLAUSE
And that brings us to the sizzling scores.
Well, my word, we have a...
Well, I'm not surprised he's won, he's been on fire.
Despite one klaxon,
a clear lead from Jason Manford, at plus three.
Oh, amazing.
- That's really never happened before. - Three for all that? - I know!
And in second place, that intellectual war horse,
Johnny Vegas on two!
APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH
And a magnificent debut - only brought down by penguins -
for Aisling Bea, on minus seven.
Come on, Ireland! Come on, Ireland.
In a shock surprise - in nearly last place is the audience
with minus ten!
But just pipping them in the L for Loser position
is Alan Davies with minus 14.
Thank you very much.
That's all from Aisling, Johnny, Jason, Alan and me.
And I leave you with the rather poignant last words
from Stan Laurel, who, when asked how he felt
said, "I wish I was skiing."
"Oh, Mr Laurel, do you ski?" replied the nurse.
"No," he said, "but I'd rather be skiing than doing what I am doing."
Good night.