This programme contains some strong language
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello!
Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
good evening and welcome to QI, which tonight is a tissue of lies.
Let's meet our perfidious panel - the duke of deception, Adam Hills.
The duchess of dissembling, Sara Pascoe.
The marquis of mendacity, Jack Whitehall.
And with his pants on fire, Alan Davies.
Our buzzers this evening are charged with enigmatic mystery.
Adam goes...
MUSIC: THE X-FILES THEME
Sara goes...
MUSIC: TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED THEME
Jack goes...
MUSIC: THE TWILIGHT ZONE THEME
Alan goes...
'I don't believe it!'
So, before we start, remember that I have hidden
a lavatory inside one of the questions, all right?
CASH REGISTER RINGS
TOILET FLUSHES
Because it's the L series, one of the questions involves a lavatory.
And if you think you've spotted which it is,
you wave your penny and spend it.
- Ah. - You spend your penny. All right. Let's start with a lark.
We like to do larks on the L series.
I'm going to show you how your senses can deceive.
So, Alan and Jack, you should each have a rubber hand
and a little grey wooden partition.
And Alan will explain and Jack will explain it.
I'm not quite au fait with prosthetics,
but I'll give it a crack(!)
Hold my hand here.
That's it.
You can stand up, Jack, if you like.
I've forgotten what I'm doing here. This goes here.
Yeah, like that.
OK. What you've got here is a perfectly obvious real hand,
your right hands, and a perfectly obvious fake hand.
And you've each got a brush.
So, all I want you to do is brush each hand sort of simultaneously,
and what you should feel, Adam and Sara...
Excruciating pain!
Jab hard into the hand until they roar!
Sara, scream!
- We'll come to that. For the moment, just a gentle rubbing. - SARA: OK.
- Eventually... - This hand will fall off.
Eventually, you will feel in the rubber hand
the same sensation you feel in your real hand.
- Which seems extraordinary... - Yeah? - ..but you will.
- And let me know when you do. - SARA: OK.
It may not have happened yet.
- Then you will urinate. - You have to keep going. - I'm sorry.
- You have to keep going. - I'm keeping going, I'm keeping going!
I am now starting to feel that this is my hand.
That's it, that's what happens.
I'm having trouble distinguishing.
- Are you not, Sara? - No. - Keep going, Alan.
- ADAM: Oh, that's nice. - You like? - Yeah.
- So you can feel that in the rubber hand? - Lower. Definitely. Lower.
You play your cards right, might get a happy ending with this.
- You're not feeling anything, Sara? - It feels very much like my hand...
- Oh, it now does feel like your hand? - No, my hand feels like my hand.
- Well, that would do, yes. - Yeah.
My hand has never felt more like it belongs to me.
- I'm going faster. - I think that will help.
OK.
OK, I've got it, I've got it!
- You've got it. - I've got it. I've got it.
Faster is better, keep up the speed.
Right.
It's happening now! It's my hand! It's my hand!
- It really does feel like it. - It's my hand now.
It's bizarre, isn't it? It's genuinely bizarre.
- And now you can get out the other brush. - What? - What?
They've got...
SHE SHRIEKS
MUSIC: THE TWILIGHT ZONE THEME
That's amazing, isn't it?
It is amazing, because I didn't believe it was going to happen.
That's what's so good - you really didn't believe.
It doesn't matter how much you know your hand is fake,
it doesn't matter how much you know it's rubber, the effect works.
You see it, you see that it's a clear fake,
but, extraordinary, the brain overrides
what it knows with what it feels. That is to say, the cognitive side.
That's not that he's just next to a slightly mal-coordinated
man-child with a rubber hammer.
We can show you a replay of Adam's reaction here,
because we've actually got it here. If you watch this, here.
Oh, that shirt is awful.
That is...that is genuine.
It's made all the more extraordinary by the fact, of course
you, as is well known, have a prosthetic foot.
I do, I do indeed.
And so you are used to all the cliches there are
about prosthesis and about phantom limbs and all the rest of it.
- Indeed. I have a strict, can I take this... - Yeah, you can put that away, do. - No, I meant can I take it home?
I have a strange thing with my prosthetic that I've found that I do,
if I'm, if I stub my toe, I will still stop and go, "Ow!"
I will actually loudly say ouch. And then realise, oh, it's the prosthetic, it didn't actually hurt.
I'm conditioned that when you stub your toe, you yell out.
And as you well know, and from war time,
the screams of pain people had, once they'd been amputated,
in the limbs that no longer existed,
they swore that their shins...
And having itches in them you can't scratch.
I can't imagine anything more agonising than having
an itch in something you can't scratch.
I met this guy who...in America, and he was a Vietnam veteran,
- and he knew someone who'd lost both legs. - Yeah.
And he went to see him in hospital and he said,
"I still haven't had sex with my wife."
He said, "Why? Why not?"
He said, "Oh, I haven't got any legs now, I feel awkward.
"I don't really, you know..."
He said, "Well, you should just do it."
So he really encouraged him to do it.
And then he went back to see him, and he had a big smile on his face.
And he said, "So, did you do the thing?" And he said, "Yeah.
"And with no legs, you can get right on up there."
Well...
It's one of the unexpected advantages.
- Talk about every cloud. - There you go.
I am cutting off my legs this evening.
Oh! Oh, goodness me.
But the point is, the brain has a mental map of the body from birth
and even if that map is distorted by an amputation,
it takes a lot for the brain to lose its sense of where everything is.
It can be fooled, as the rubber hand showed you.
I remember once being in bed with my girlfriend
and doing that thing where I fell asleep on my arm.
And of course your arm goes numb.
And I rolled then over onto my back and my arm fell across my stomach.
But because it was numb, I actually thought it was her arm on my stomach.
And I actually started stroking it.
Aww! How sweet.
And it was, but I then kind of realised that it wasn't her arm,
it didn't feel like her arm. It was...
"Who the hell's in the bed with me?"
I'm putting the light on!
Well that extraordinary rubber hand illusion proves that even our own senses can tell us porkies.
And speaking of porkies, what's the point of pink?
Oh, you mean in terms of like a gender colour?
This isn't to do with gender, it's purely to do with the colour itself.
In printing, pink, or at least a reddy pink, has a particular name.
If I was to say CYMK.
Magenta?
- Magenta is the right answer! - Get in!
APPLAUSE
C is for Cyan, which is probably the blue nearest us, as it were,
the six o'clock blue.
M for Magenta, Y for Yellow and K is the Black, CMYK.
But magenta is between blue and red, and that's to say between the lowest wavelength of visible light
and the highest wavelength of visible light, which is sort of not possible.
- So it's a kind of can't-really-exist colour, and yet it does. - Yes, it does!
It's what you might call I suppose, a pigment of the imagination!
- GROANS - Which is nice. Which is nice.
- So, in terms of the senses lying... - Yeah.
- Our eyes and colour is a bit like that, because the world doesn't look like this. - No. Not in the least.
- We have cones and rods in our eyes. - Mm-hm. - And rods deal with darkness and light, black to white,
and the cones deal with colour. So dogs have two cones,
so they can, they're not colour blind,
- but they see a lot less colour than we do in the world, because we have three. But birds have four! - Yes.
They can see ultraviolet rays.
Was it the Six Million...? Yeah, the Six Million Dollar Man, when
Steve Austin, it would obviously cost a lot more now than six million...
Oh, I'd say.
Steve Austin got a bionic eye...
Lee Majors, yes.
And all they gave him, really, was a zoom facility.
"Dun-dun-dun," exactly.
So he could see things further away.
That is pretty feeble.
If they'd given him about eight extra cones...
That's true!
- He could have seen so much... - How could they have shown that to us? - X-rays.
Now we have the Instagram eye and he could make it all sepia and old-fashioned.
LAUGHTER
Our eyes still only have three cones to watch him seeing something so
it would still look to our eyes...
Extremely good point.
He'd have needed a sidekick to say "But what can you see?"
"Like a bird! I can see ultraviolet light, which is where the villain is revealed by this!"
"Let me run over there, fast."
And also, while we're on the subject of the Bionic Man,
he had one leg that was really good and yet they showed him
running at 70 when the reality was he would have been
hopping at 70, because the other leg would have just been destroyed by
the speed at which, biomechanically, it would have been unable to cope.
It would have ruined my childhood.
- They would have been better off if they'd taken off both legs... - Yeah!
- Given him two bionic legs. - Given him wheels, Adam, wheels!
And the sex would have been amazing.
LAUGHTER
Bionic sex.
There was the Bionic Woman, Lindsay Wagner, and she had ears, didn't she?
She could hear anything.
- Lee Majors, Lindsay Wagner. Well before anybody in this audience was born. - Fictional people.
- Yes, they were totally madey-uppy. - Yes, good.
Before your time as well, oh, God, we feel so old, don't we?
- Yeah, but it was great being in the '70s. - It was, yeah. We could go to university for free.
MOCKING LAUGH
APPLAUSE
But anyway, the fact is, yeah, magenta doesn't really exist and yet it does, for our eyes.
There's also a special kind of pink which is known as Baker-Miller Pink, which is
you take a gallon of white paint and a pint of red paint and you
come up with what's in the middle, a sort of bubble-gum coloured pink.
It's pretty, isn't it?
What's interesting about that is that it was generally thought by psychologists and others
to create a feeling of passivity, and so was used in prisons and mental asylums
and was known as "drunk tank pink".
That looks like a fun prison, to be honest.
LAUGHTER
- I would definitely go there. - Gay prison!
So, the other thing they did, some American sporting teams thought
that, well, this is true about this pink, they changed their visitors'
changing rooms to pink, in order to make the visiting teams more passive.
Which is kind of cheating, really, isn't it?
- It is kind of cheating. - It's not very sporting.
So university sporting rules in America now mean you can change
any changing room's colour as long as your own is the same colour,
to stop that advantage. If it is an advantage.
It would be interesting to see how much difference it makes,
because surely this is an incremental thing.
You are completely right.
The fact is that apparently, even after half an hour,
people get used to it, and if they've been in a prison or a drunk tank before
- it reminds them of the drunk tank and they get angry and more aggressive. - It's associative, OK.
So it is really of no use whatsoever.
That's it, if you see pink elephants they might not really be there,
it seems to be an imaginary colour.
Which room in the house would you keep these in?
MUSIC: TWILIGHT ZONE THEME
Oh, just push it. In the library.
ALARM BLARES
Adam is about to score points, yes!
- Really? - Yeah.
Yeah!
Very good.
That's the penny well spent.
And can I just point out, in Australia, that's 2.50.
- What is that game with the pennies, odd and even... - Two up. - Two up.
Two up, that's right.
- It's a... - It's a betting game. - It's a betting game but it's only played one day a year. - That's right.
It's only played on ANZAC Day
- and it's played with pennies, I think. - That's right. Real, old-fashioned pennies.
You flip them up in the air and you bet on whether you get two heads, two tails or a head and a tail.
If you win a lot of money you're allowed to leave the room
and you have half an hour's grace before someone would chase you,
club you over the head and steal your winnings.
- It being Australia. - Yeah.
- In the nicest possible way. - Yeah, and the only day that it's allowed to be played now,
it's illegal any time of the year, except on ANZAC Day.
Well, if we have a look at the picture again,
those are actually English literature books, and this,
I'm afraid, is a French chamber pot, or commode if you prefer.
And they liked to shit on us and our literature in one go.
Oh, just when you think they can't do anything else.
When you open the lid, does it go, "Ugh"?
"I shit on you." Exactly.
"Because I can't beat you in a war, I will poo on your books."
You open the lid and it goes, # Boy, boy for sale. #
But perhaps the most impressive invention in recent times,
- for your lavatorial wants... - The helicopter.
Um, well... The Gotta Go Briefcase. It's Japanese, of course.
How much better do you get than that?
It's just simply superb. It's got everything you could possibly want,
including a newspaper to leaf through
if your easement is taking time.
I've always felt really sad when I leave a toilet, like,
"Oh, we've become such good friends." I wish I could just pack it up and carry it away(!)
- Now I can. - It's got a generously equipped sealing lid.
You can quietly and discreetly go about your personal business
anywhere you please, with a fold-out leather privacy panel,
- which tucks away neatly to the side. - Yeah, it looks like it hides you completely, that panel.
- A small tray with... - "What's that suitcase just sitting there?"
It's got a small tray with a cup-holder.
- Oh, great, so I don't even have to throw away my drink? - A cup-holder.
That's like Homer Simpson,
isn't it? Do you remember that episode where he bought a huge RV?
And Marge said, "Oh, Homer!" and he said,
"But, Marge, it's got six cup-holders! SIX!"
Men like cup-holders.
There's just something so great about them.
- It's got a vanity mirror. - I like the leather finish.
Yeah, refillable hand-sanitising dispenser.
Maximum weight capacity is 80 kilos.
"Exceeding the recommended weight will void all warranties..."
80 kilos?! What are you going to get, an elephant to shit in it?!
- I know. - How are you going to get 80 kilos?!
- I weigh less than 80 kilos. - It does seem extraordinary.
"I really need to get the...
"I'm going to exceed the limit!"
"It may result in rupture of waste tank,
"possible bacteria contamination of briefcase contents
"and massive stench." So you don't want to do that.
I'm assuming you haven't emptied it for a year.
Also, you would have two suitcases in meetings.
Everyone would be like, "Derek, why have you got two suitcases?"
If you got it wrong...
"No reason." And then he just hides behind the leather panel.
If you accidentally went, "I've been through the figures and... Oops!"
Massive stench! Massive stench!
- Oh, dear. - "How did the meeting go?"
"Oh, it was going fine until I got the bog out."
Alternatively, you go the other way.
"Thanks for letting me use your toilet briefcase."
"Oh, I don't have a toilet briefcase."
I ought to say that the 80 kilos includes the person sitting on it.
Oh, right.
I would break it, I've a horrible feeling.
That changes everything.
Maybe the sell it to banker-wankers in the City,
with the boast of it has an amazing surface to do cocaine off as well.
- When you open it up. - It would be perfect.
Absolutely, with the little dimples, you could snort out of the little leather dimples.
Anyway, that's the Gotta Go Briefcase.
And it's yours, I'm sure, for a very reasonable price.
If that question left a bad smell, why is the noseless lemur so badly named?
MUSIC: X-FILES THEME TUNE
I am going to take a punt and say it's not a lemur.
Oh! You're brilliant. We were hoping you'd say it has, actually, got a nose,
- in which case it's badly named, but you're right. - What, ever? - Never was, never will be. In fact it is a fish.
- It's pretty... - What?
Pretty difficult, you'd think to confuse a lemur and a fish.
You'd think that was a map of Madagascar, where lemurs come from,
but in fact that is the fossil, and for a very long time it was considered to be a lemur
and it was known as Scalabrini's noseless lemur.
Pedro Scalabrini was an Italian born Argentinian naturalist.
In 1898, he gave a fossil fragment to a palaeontologist called Florentino Ameghino,
who was so patriotic in his Argentinian-ness, that he hated the fact that particularly
Charles Darwin had said that all primates originated in Africa.
Which we now know to be true.
And a lemur is a primate,
lemurs only come from Madagascar, which was shaved
off from the mainland of Africa many, many millions of years ago.
There's an aye-aye. Wonderful lemur.
That's an English footballer just before a penalty shoot-out.
LAUGHTER
Desperately afraid.
"Who wants to take one?"
So he tried to prove, Ameghino, that lemurs existed in South America
in pre-Columbian times, which they didn't.
It turned out in 2012 that it was, in fact, an extinct fish.
Do you know, that picture of the lemur, the lemur's face there,
I'm assuming that's what I would look like if I was using the toilet briefcase.
Those perfectly round eyes are so beautiful.
That's after the massive stench.
Yeah. They are marvellous creatures. Well, talking of paleontological things,
the first platypus that was ever seen by Western man, nobody believed. They thought it...
No. But we did have a habit of explorers making up monsters
- and drawing pictures in the 16th and 17th century. - We certainly did. - Yes.
And that was considered an example of an obvious and ridiculous hoax.
How could that be?
And George Shaw, who was the naturalist,
examined it minutely for stitch marks around the beak,
because he could not believe that such, no-one could believe...
But even when you see them in real life,
- I went to see them in Melbourne, and you just can't believe... - They're hilarious.
You watch them for ages going "You don't make any sense!"
- All the bits of you! - Their mouths look like they belong in a Japanese briefcase.
- They do. They're so charming. - They're sweet. - And they're smaller than I expected.
Egg-laying mammals.
It took 30 years from the first specimen to arrive in Europe
for people to believe that it was real. They were absolutely convinced.
Oh, "We're not going to fall for this, But there it is. The platypus.
And do you know the first, I'm pretty sure the first kangaroo that was sent
back to one of the British museums, they sent it back but they didn't
give an example of how it stood, so it was mounted on all fours.
Oh, that's very believable.
With its tiny little paws, because its front paws were like this, and its massive bum sticking up.
Looks as if it's ready for action!
LAUGHTER
Now, what's this guy on about?
MAN SINGS GIBBERISH OVER RAP MUSIC
That was a 1972, rather before its time,
piece of rap,
by an incredibly famous Italian called Adriano Celentano,
who is not known here.
He had a huge hit with this,
which is called Prisencolinensinainciusol.
- You can see it written up and that will help you. - Oh, wow.
Prisencolinensinainciusol
in de col men seivuan
prisencolinensinainciusol ol rait.
Which is Italian for "Gangnam Style".
Yeah, kind of. What it is, it's just babble.
- Gibberish. - It's babble that is supposed to sound like English.
To an Italian, it sounds more or less like English sounds.
There's that famous clip of the person on Malaysia's Got Talent,
where they're singing Mariah Carey, Can't Live Without You,
which is possibly the greatest song ever recorded,
but she's heard it, clearly, through a second party
and doesn't know what the lyrics are,
so she burst into the chorus and she just goes...
# Ken Lee, Ken Lee Boo, dee, boo, doutchu. #
And she thinks it's about a guy called Ken Lee.
Aw...
Anyway, that was a huge hit in 1972.
Number one in Italy and it was in the top ten in France
and in Belgium and the Netherlands.
It's babble that is supposed to sound like English,
but in 2011, London-based film-makers Brian and Karl
produced a wonderful film called Skwerl,
which used a similar technique -
the dialogue is actually gibberish but sounds like English.
It's had over seven million viewers
and we can show you a bit of it here. Run VT.
HE TALKS GIBBERISH
CUTLERY RATTLES
PLATES CRASH
SHE GASPS AND SOBS
FIZZING
You fucking asshole!
That wasn't gibberish, but we've got them here tonight,
Brian and Karl, thank you very much.
One of the hardest things to do in the world
is to talk gibberish without it becoming...
- Did you actually learn your gibberish? - We did, yeah. - Yeah.
Did you imagine that there was sense behind it?
He thinks she's forgotten his birthday, is that what this...?
That's one interpretation.
I'm not an actor, but Fiona, who's in the film, is an actress,
and so she needed to know what this was about,
she needed the intentions.
But I think it was important to kind of have a sort of a sense
- behind what we were saying. - It was a lot like what you were talking about
with Mariah Carey, Ken Lee and stuff.
We sort of had the sentences and then kind of garbled them
and kind of wrote down the garble as it came out.
I understood more words in that clip,
though, than I did in five series of The Wire.
- ADAM: Are you Australian? - Yeah, I'm Australian. - Yeah, I thought so.
Because we have a similar thing that we do where we don't use words...
- AUSTRALIAN ACCENT: - Do you think I haven't noticed? - Yeah, exactly.
- GASPING: - You have another thing you do,
which is sound as if you've got heartburn.
For some bizarre reason. I don't know why that is.
That's how they get the actors on Home And Away
to do an emotional scene - they just give them heartburn.
"Steven, the cafe's burnt...down again."
Australians will make enough noises that could be a sentence,
but there are no actual words in it. I'll try it.
RUNNING WORDS TOGETHER: So, OK, are you having a good night?
Yeah, right, it's all right, man.
Are you enjoying your time at QI?
HE TALKS GIBBERISH
There's also...
I have a similar thing that I can do with posh people.
This gentleman in the front row here...
with the blue trousers.
HE MUMBLES IN POSH VOICE
Anyway, sorry, that's wonderful, Brian and Karl,
thank you very much indeed. Thanks for joining us.
Magnificent.
So, time for some refreshment. Here we go.
Let's have... You pass that there to Sara, if you would, Alan.
There you go.
- There's one for you, Jack. Pass one to Adam. - Is this carrot?
And I'll have one myself. And there's one for you, Alan.
Thank you so much.
There you go.
Hmm. Hmm!
- You look as if you... - Who grew this? - You've done this before.
- So... - You've got to make it upright first.
Oh, right.
Come on. Will you talk to it?
Come here, you. Oh, you look lovely. You're so huge(!)
I don't think I'm going to be able to manage it.
Oh, there you are, yes...
Hey-hey! What do you think these were once used for?
What were carrots used for, or particularly these ones on sticks?
Ones on sticks.
Waving in tiny airplanes?
Is it like what Gwyneth Paltrow gives her kids?
She probably does, yeah, they probably are.
To see in the dark?
ALARM BLARES
Seeing in the dark, well, you're in the right era.
When was it said that carrots could help you see in the dark?
At night.
In which period of history was it made known to people,
this idea, which is not really true?
The Dark Ages. Not the Dark Ages.
- When did people discover vitamins? - SARA: Yeah.
That wasn't until the beginning of the 20th century.
Because vitamin A is the key, it helps your eyes, doesn't it?
Vitamin A does help your eyes.
So it must have been around about then.
Well, it was really... It...
It must be so hard being a rabbit. It really...
They would never get any talking done.
No, they wouldn't, would they?
They'd be, "Sorry, what are you saying?"
- "I've got a mouthful of bloody carrot." - Good God!
The problem was, in the Second World War, there was...
We would run out of...
Put it away.
Concentrate, Stephen.
Stop flapping... Oh, yes, that's what I need to do.
You look like the world's worst burlesque dancer.
SARA: I've seen worse.
So, in the Second World War,
there was a very great shortage of sugar,
and there was a big surplus of carrots,
and so they put it about that carrots helped you see in the dark.
I bloody love carrots, me.
So they made sort of ice creams, as it were,
- out of carrots, to try and make them attractive to children. - OK.
There is a certain amount of sugar in them.
- They tasted a little sweet, didn't they? - Yeah, it was lovely.
And there was a Group Captain, John Cunningham,
who was responsible for very daring night raids over Germany,
and they gave it out that what allowed him to do it
was the fact that he ate carrots.
In fact, what they were really doing was disguising the fact
- that they had on-board aircraft... - Rabbits. - ..radar.
They had radar on board.
They didn't want the Germans to know.
The Germans knew we had ground radar,
not that we had radar on board airplanes.
So they sold the carrot story to the Germans as well?
That was the idea, both to get children to eat their carrots
and maybe to get the Germans to believe that it was carrots
that allowed our bombers to see over those...
Wouldn't it have been more beneficial
if they'd said the reason our pilots are so good at seeing at night
is because they eat slightly undercooked chicken?
You should have been working in British Intelligence.
- POSH VOICE: - "You're just the kind of chap we need, Whitehall."
Now, how does the "what the hell" effect work?
MUSIC: TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED THEME
- Yes? - This is relevant to people who are dieting
or sometimes people who have substance abuse problems
and things like that.
So it's when you are being quite strict with yourself.
Stop talking about me for a second, yes.
It's when you're being very strict with yourself
and you think you've slipped up in a slight way, so you're really hungry
and you have a biscuit when you're on a diet
and then you go, "I've ruined the diet now,
"I'm going to finish that packet of biscuits and do some crack..."
Oh, tell me about it.
And they properly leap in and start again tomorrow.
You're so right - you've fallen off the wagon...
- I've done everything wrong now, I'll get a tattoo... - Yeah.
Those people who say, "I was very good yesterday,
"I've been good today, so tomorrow - Black Forest gateau for breakfast."
Yeah, oh.
I mean, that is certainly a "what the hell" effect,
there's no question about that.
There is another "what the hell" effect,
but yours, I think, counts, unquestionably.
This is used by Dan Ariely
and his partners at Duke University in North Carolina.
And what it describes is how, when someone has
overcome their initial reluctance to cheat,
subsequent dishonest behaviour gets easier.
And he tested this with college students who were solving
maths problems for money, and when his back was turned,
they could cheat, and the more they saw they got away with it,
the more they cheated. But what was interesting is,
the scores were not inflated by a few students,
who were cheating a lot, but many students cheating a little.
Cheating, in that sense, is infectious.
You go, "What the hell, I can do it," so you do it.
Is that like that thing when you're telling a lie,
and you're telling a story about what happened on the weekend and...
Oooh, and it gets further and further...
And then you embellish it a little bit. And then you think, "I got away with that.
"I might just add a little bit more to it."
And then suddenly it's this big, fanciful story because
of that tiny, little...
The awful thing is, because it is a lie it is stored in a different
part of your memory so when, so when a week later someone says,
"Tell that marvellous story about that time you," and you're going, "Shit, what did I say?"
But animals, interestingly, animals can cheat.
Koko, who is a wonderful gorilla in California,
once tore a steel sink off a wall
and then used sign language
- to tell her handlers that the cat had done it. - Yes.
A real child-like fib. "It wasn't me, it was the cat."
The closer you get to human beings, the more of a liar you become.
And perhaps an even more famous chimp, Nim Chimpsky,
about whom a film was made, who has a really developed sign language,
she used to duck out of sign language lessons
by saying she needed to go to the loo when she didn't.
She'd say, "I have to go for a pee," like that,
she'd go off and you'd see her not going for a pee. Or him, rather.
So animals are capable of deception.
So maybe we should only eat animals that can lie.
Well, lying seems to be a sign of intelligence,
I'm glad to say, as an inveterate liar myself.
Ariely, this man who did the work on the "what the hell" effect,
he found people who score higher on psychological tests
for creativity are more likely to engage in dishonesty.
Anyway, there we are.
We are who we are because we cheat.
The "what the hell" effect describes how, after the first lie,
the others just keep coming.
Be truthful, how do you rate your own driving, generosity and ability to conduct an adult relationship?
I was reading about how we all over-estimate our input into things, so they were asking couples
what percentage of the housework do you do?
- And it would add up to about 130%. - Yeah.
Because everyone, even if they know they only do a little bit,
they still think that's more or its worth more.
Everyone thinks they do more than their partner.
- Everyone thinks they're a good driver. - Everyone.
Everyone thinks they're better than average.
- I'll be a great driver, I'll be a great dad. - I don't.
- You don't think any of those things? - No, I can't drive. I don't think of myself as a good driver.
- You haven't passed your test? - No. - Then that's fair enough. You probably are a crap driver then.
- Yeah. - Do you think you're good in bed?
I haven't passed that test either.
Failed on three minors and a major.
- With emergency stop. - Yeah.
Ah, that's the worst. That is the worst.
I kept changing lanes when I shouldn't.
LAUGHTER AND GROANS
Yeah. We all do have a high view of ourselves...
Dear God almighty.
We tend to think we're better at things like donating to charity,
voting, maintaining a successful relationship,
volunteering for unpleasant lab experiments.
But, I'm glad to tell you that Institute for Child Study at Toronto University
claims that toddlers who tell lies
early on are more likely to do well in later life.
The complex brain processes involved in formulating
a lie are an indicator of a child's intelligence.
So it doesn't necessarily mean if you lie your way through life you'll do better.
- No. - It just means if you can lie early, then you're quite creative and you can get through life.
- Yes. - I'm saying this in case my daughter is watching.
- Good point. - Don't want to get the wrong idea, absolutely.
So, now I want you to be thoroughly dishonest by pretending
you don't know you're going to get a klaxon,
because it's General Ignorance time. Fingers on buzzers, please.
What are deserts mostly from?
- MUSIC: TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED THEME - Yes, Sara? - Sand.
- ALARM BLARES - Oh, thank you.
What? What?
- You'd think, wouldn't you? - Yeah. - Not the case. No.
Only one-third of the world's land surface is desert
and only a small proportion of that is sand.
North American deserts are around 2% sand.
No more than that. There's Monument Valley.
Globally, on average, only 20% of all deserts are sand, a fifth.
The remainder is made of rock, shingle, salt or even snow.
- And camels. - And camels.
- Yes, camel poo. - There's lots of cigarettes all over the desert.
The driest desert in the world is...?
- The Gobi Desert. - No.
- Any thoughts? - AUDIENCE MEMBER: - Antarctica.
There is an argument for saying the Antarctic is a dry desert.
- It doesn't rain there. - Yeah, it doesn't,
but the Atacama is considered the driest land desert.
Some weather stations there have recorded no rain whatsoever,
- not one. - What a boring job, being in that weather station.
The largest desert on Earth is Antarctica,
even though much of it is under snow.
But the one area that is the driest, man who shouts a lot,
are the McMurdo Dry Valleys.
Is that his Red Indian name?
Yeah. And they consist mostly of...
They consist...
Man Who Shout A Lot.
The McMurdo Dry Valleys are so dry
that dead animals mummify rather than decay.
- What is that? What animal is it? - A seal.
If it's dehydrated it might come back to life if you get it wet.
Yeah, if you get it wet and it rains...
- Like Knorr chicken soup. - Ball on the tail. I'm doing ball on the tail. - I can see.
It seems that if you want to identify a desert,
the best way to do so involves looking for the rain, not for sand.
How did the Vikings bury their dead?
On a boat. On fire.
- Oh, on a boat on fire. - ALARM BLARES
Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack. No.
In the ground...?
Yeah. More or less.
I feel a bit sad about how tentative I was about that.
The myth of the burning longboat is very, very recent - 19th century.
In fact, there is one story of Baldur, a god,
who was apparently burned like that,
the rest of it is pretty much Ladyboy...Ladybird book stuff.
- I love the Ladyboy books. - Did I say "Ladyboy books"?
Ladybird books.
- They didn't have horns either, did they? - No, they didn't have horns.
The late 19th century was a period of enormous European rediscovery
of their ancient myths and so on, or at least
not just rediscovery but making up. In the case of Britain it was Arthurian legend
and druidic legend, a lot of which was totally nonsense.
And there was a Swedish illustrator called Gustav Malmstrom, and he
did these horned helmets and dragons' wings on the heroes' headgear.
And his Saga became an international hit and made the Vikings' name.
And a Vikingr was a pirate or raider. A viking was a raiding expedition.
A vikingr would go on a viking.
And Vik or Vike is old Norse for a bay of a fjord.
And Reykjavik means a 'smoky bay', for example.
Reyki, Auld Reekie is the old smoky town, Edinburgh, in Scottish.
I've also heard once that kind of socialist atmosphere that
pervades Sweden kind of also came from the Vikings,
because there was just enough alcohol to keep everyone happy,
so you were just, there's a Swedish word called Largon,
which means not too much and not too little.
And if you, when you gave out the vodka to all of the people rowing on the ships...
- The aquavit. - The aquavit, yes. Not to much that someone down the back wouldn't get enough,
and not too little that they'd be unhappy that they didn't get enough.
So it was just evenly shared out over everyone
that was rowing and that's pervaded Swedish culture and that's why they are now...
- Sharey people. - Pissed.
Lightly pissed, sharey people.
Yes, Vikings sometimes buried their dead in a boat, but always on land.
Which bit of whale did they use to make a whalebone corset?
- I'm going to take a punt and say the jaw. - Not the jaw.
Penis?
Not the penis.
- Is it not part of a whale? - The wishbone.
It is part of the whale.
Not the wish... Did you say the wishbone?
- That's a huge tug of war. - So for a corset... Is it the ribs?
MAN SHOUTS OUT
ALARM BLARES
Who said the ribs?
I did, I said it first.
- Oh, sorry about that, no, not the ribs. - No worries.
I think Shouty Man had it again.
MAN SHOUTS OUT
SARA: That isn't how you get on the show.
This is not that thing with James Corden on Sky 1,
thank you very much indeed.
My show.
Oh, yes!
Whoops.
- More's the pity. - The show now four series on.
More's the pity.
I wish it were, The Shouty Show.
- With the drunk cricketer. - Yeah, that one, exactly.
No, as I think they were shouting, "The baleen."
- Does that mean anything? - The thing in the mouth.
- Yeah, the sieve in the mouth. - That sieves the... - Oh, I see.
There are two types of whale - baleen whale and toothed whale -
and the blue whale is an example of a baleen whale there.
The baleen is in fact keratin,
the same thing that our hair is made of, our fingernails,
or rhinoceros horn is.
So it's wonderfully pliable.
It was the plastic of the 19th century, essentially.
- Right. - There was a Mr JA Sevey trading out of Boston
who offered 54 different whalebone products.
Whips, parasols, umbrellas, fishing rods, canes, hat, divining rods,
riding crops, ferrules, brushes, mattress stuffing,
back-supporters, suspenders, billiard cushion springs,
pen-holders, shoehorns, tongue scrapers and policemen's clubs.
- All possible. - That is a good Saturday night.
Empty your pockets out.
But real whalebone was used for something else.
It was a cheap substitute for ivory.
And you probably know of the carving that was done on it
that sailors used to do, which had a particular name?
I do not know of the name of that.
Oh, we'll have to ask Shouty Man again.
- AUDIENCE MEMBER: - Scrimshaw! - Scrimshaw is the right answer, yes.
- He's very clever, Shouty Man. - He is.
- He's a very smart shouty man. - He's a smart shouty man.
It may be a whole series of organised shouty men,
I don't know, but we're very impressed by them.
They may have to get a score at the end,
that's what's worrying me.
Yes, scrimshaw is...you know that very carved whalebone effect?
It's sometimes done on horns. I mean, amazing, some of it.
Even a whole desk was once done out of whalebone,
because whales are big animals.
I'd love to think that there were cases of people wearing
a whalebone corset.
And just being out at a party and going... "I'm really hungry.
"Oh, there's a spare prawn in here."
Yes, it would be lovely, wouldn't it?
Of course the baleen is used, it's this huge sieved area, it sucks
in this huge amount of water, filled with krill and plankton and so on.
Then the baleens sort of mesh together
and it pushes all the water out and all the food is left clinging
to this filter, which it then sucks into its mouth. And it's fantastically efficient.
So it would be the equivalent of going up in your whalebone corset
to the buffet and just going... SUCKING
Letting out the bits you don't want.
Yes, most whalebone was not bone but baleen,
the 19th-century equivalent of plastic.
Can you name a blue sea creature?
- MUSIC: THE TWILIGHT ZONE THEME - Alan? Oh.
Yes, Jack?
Shouty Man, drop it like it's hot.
Mine!
Is he going to fall for our trap?
- AUDIENCE MEMBER: - A blue whale!
Is the right answer!
Yes, I love this guy!
That's the fastest I've ever been on the draw as well.
- That was quick, and still wasn't... - I broke my buzzer. - You did.
'I don't believe it!'
You've broken your carrot now.
We thought you might be so afraid you'd say, "Not the blue whale."
- No, I was pretty sure about that one. - It is blue.
It's not very blue, but it's blue enough to call blue.
- It's bluer than most things, innit? - It is. - It's all relative.
The colour spectrum is different under water.
It's quite a common... a common qualor...
It's quite a common colour amongst...
The gibberish blokes can understand all of that.
- Absolutely. - SARA: A dory is blue.
There's the blue marlin, which is pretty blue.
- A dory is blue. - Yes. The blue starfish you can see is jolly blue.
Blue marlin there.
Blue Man Group.
And the beautiful blue angel there, the glaucus atlantica.
The blue angel, as well as being a Marlene Dietrich film,
is a very interesting fish, in as much as it's venomous,
but its venom is second hand.
It feeds on the Portuguese Man of War,
and ingests its poison so that it becomes venomous itself.
Isn't that clever?
- Cunning! - Very cunning, very cunning.
So the grey whale is pretty grey, the humpback is pretty grey.
The sperm whale is dark grey/black, but the blue whale,
as you can see, is jolly blue. There it is, bottom right.
I see it.
Yeh-hey. Your favourite whale.
Would we lie to you? Blue whales are blue, pretty much.
Well, that's our last tissue in our box of lies.
It's time for the unvarnished truth with the scores.
And it's pretty bally fascinating.
In last place, with minus...
Oh, dear. Minus 19,
but with a tremendous performance
and a wonderful last rally, Jack Whitehall.
With minus 11, an entirely creditable third place,
she knew so much, Sara, Sara Pascoe.
I get all the buzzers, I got two. I got two.
On minus 8, second place, Alan Davies.
Minus 8, pretty pleased.
And a staggeringly secure first place,
- on plus 14, Adam Hills. - Oh, my goodness.
And tonight, of course, a special award of minus 39
for the shouty man in the audience!
Yes, it only remains for me to thank Adam, Jack, Sara and Alan
and leave you with the last words of Spanish Prime Minister
General Ramon Maria Narvaez.
"I do not have to forgive my enemies,
"I have had them all shot."
Good night.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE