CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
How very kind.
How lovely. Thank you very much...
and welcome to QI, where tonight,
we are turning positively negative,
in the "Not Nearly, Nearly Not, Neither and No" show.
So let's meet our naysayers -
the never-knowingly under-funny Gyles Brandreth.
APPLAUSE
And the nearly perfect Jimmy Carr. APPLAUSE
Thanks very much!
The not-half-bad Victoria Coren Mitchell.
APPLAUSE
And no, no, no, no, no...
yes.
It's Alan Davies!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And why not hear their buzzers? Jimmy goes...
# Na na na na, na na na na na
# Na na na na na, na na na na na. #
And Victoria goes...
# No no # No-no, no no
# No no There's no limit. #
And Gyles goes...
# Na na na na na na na na na
# Na na na na na na na na na. #
You look like the games teacher at a school's disco.
And Alan goes...
# No, no, a thousand times no
# I'd rather die than say yes. #
I like yours best, actually. I thought that was very nice.
And so to the first question,
and it's important you don't listen un-carefully to this one.
Alan, don't you not want some points or not?
ALAN GROANS Gyles is writing it down.
Well, that's very difficult to say yes or no to!
What do you reckon? There are three negatives. Ah, yes.
"Don't you not want some points or not?" "Do you not...?"
Do you not want some points... Or not? Do you not...? Do you not...?
We also don't know whether he does or not. Yes.
"Don't you not want some points, or not?"
Do NOT not want points... So, here's the thing...
It's true to say that I do not NOT want points. Yes. Or not?
So "or not" would mean that you...do.
"Do you want points or not?" Yes, but...
The answer is... Is...
LAUGHTER
Well, it's two questions! No, it's just one question with one answer.
But I'll just tell you now -
one answer has a klaxon, and one doesn't. There.
Do you think I'm giving too much away here? Can we help him?
The show's nearly over. I'm filibustering.
Gyles, Gyles. Sometimes with these really taxing questions,
the thing to do is to translate them into another language. OK.
Because that makes it simpler. Oh, right. Because, as we know,
you asked the question in English. I did, yes.
English - there are 500,000 words in the Oxford English Dictionary,
it is the largest language in the world.
Well, there's more than a million now, in fact. Ah, well, indeed,
including all the words you've introduced since the series began.
Perfectly true. In my edition - 500,000 words.
The German language only has about 150,000 words,
and the French have fewer than 100,000 words. Yes. OK?
Including "le weekend". Yes. ALAN BUZZES
Oh, yes? Have you thought about it? Yes.
Yes is the right answer!
APPLAUSE
Yes? Yes isn't the right answer. Oh!
It's not a yes/no question. No, that's what I thought.
But, fundamentally, yes is better than no.
In your life, maybe. Yes, I was enjoying Gyles'...
But, curiously, the answer would have been different...
I didn't mean I would come back to it.
I wasn't enjoying it that much. But interestingly, the answer in French
would have been yes.
Oh, no - no!
In French you could have said, "I don't know,"
which is "je ne sais pas", which is a double negative.
Ah. Or... But if you translate it... What did you originally say?
Is it too early to lose the will to live?
I'm extremely concerned, Sandi, that you,
a role model for women everywhere,
should, in fleshing out the double negative,
come out with the statement, "Broadly, yes is better than no"!
That's not what I'll be telling my daughter!
APPLAUSE AND LAUGHTER
There's a lot of these in pop, aren't there?
A lot of these in pop and rock lyrics.
Yes. There's lots of I Can't Get No Satisfaction.
Yes, there is. And if it's a positive double negative,
Iike Tom Jones' It's Not Unusual, that's fine. OK? Why is that fine?
Well, it never used to be a problem, the double negative,
and then, in the 18th century, they became obsessed with mathematics,
and it's to do with mathematics. Oh.
So they began to codify the language as being illogical
if it didn't fit with mathematical thinking. So, in mathematics,
minus a minus is a plus. Oh, do do this in Danish! OK.
Yes. SHE SPEAKS IN DANISH
No, I won't do it now. APPLAUSE
If you do that, I'd think I'd had a stroke.
I always think that there's a body been found,
as soon as I hear Danish.
You can almost feel the wind on the bridge.
I tell you what, it's a hell of a contortion
if you can feel wind on your bridge.
I'm trying to think what position you'd have to be in...
I don't know, but I'm going to try and sketch it.
Just pass it along when you've done.
Anybody know the difference between no and nay?
Is it like the French non and si,
where si is a yes if somebody is expecting the answer no?
Yeah, you're exactly right.
It's to do with the type of question that you get.
So there used to be, in early modern English -
so we're talking, sort of, late 15th to late 17th century -
two affirmatives, yes and yea,
and two negatives, which were no and nay,
and so subtle the rules that even the people at the time thought,
"I have no idea how this works."
But, basically, yes and no were responses to
questions posed in the negative.
So, "Will he not go?"
The answer is, "Yes, he will," or "No, he will not."
But if you positively frame a question, "Will he go?",
the answer is, "Yea, he will," or "Nay, he will not."
Are you allowed to say "nay" without saying "sirrah"? That's right.
GYLES: Or, indeed, prefacing it with "hey nonny, no nay"?
VICTORIA: Yes.
I'll be docking points from anybody who gets it wrong
from now on. Is that clear?
Yes, but not... No, not exactly.
Yes, but not entirely. Is that correct? Yes and no.
Yea. Yea.
KLAXON What?
It was positively phrased, so the answer, in fact -
Victoria is entirely right - is yea is the answer.
It's yea, is the answer? Yes.
And so, yea...
Yea is the equivalent...
Yea is the equivalent of yes,
but nay is not the equivalent of no - that's what we've learnt.
No. So... VICTORIA: No!
LAUGHTER
Yea is yes if the answer yes is expected.
Yea and nay are for positively-framed questions,
and yes and no... I'm losing... Honestly, I can't...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE What we've learned is nothing.
Ah! We weren't really paying attention.
That was the problem. I know, exactly.
But what I can tell you is that there's really
nothing wrong with double negatives.
Only arbitrary pedants believe there isn't...not.
Now it's time for my favourite subject in all the world - not.
It's sport. GYLES GROANS
Yea, sport! Yea, sport(!) OK. GYLES: Nay!
Why is the person on the right such a loser?
Oh, isn't this interesting?
I don't know yet. No, no, no, no... LAUGHTER
Just because he's not got any badges and ribbons on,
he's obviously been in a court martial -
he's had them stripped off him.
That's why he's the loser.
You are in the right area.
Is he standing in for someone?
Well... Oh, is it a centaur?
Is he half-man, half-horse?
Actually, the other guy's riding a horse and he's actually the horse,
and those are fake legs.
Oh, that's my favourite, but no.
So, he's a sort of nearly man.
An understudy? I don't think we can call them that any more.
APPLAUSE
The idea, Jimmy, that you would teach me
to be politically correct...
I'm so sorry. You're so fantastic.
I've started a new thing on the show which is my random Scandinavian,
and this is my "randy Scandi", this guy.
He took part in the 1948 Olympics.
His name is Sergeant Gehnall Persson.
He was in the Swedish Equestrian team,
and they easily won gold in the dressage
and then they were stripped of the medal,
because the French, who came second,
noticed that he was wearing a sergeant's cap.
So you were in the right area, absolutely, Gyles.
In those days, Olympic equestrianism was open
only to officers and gentlemen.
It was an amateur sport,
and other ranks were considered to be professionals.
So what had happened - he'd been given a bogus promotion
to being a lieutenant, just for the Games,
but he forgot to change his hat.
Oh! But it's a happy ending -
the gentleman rule was changed, and he went on to win gold
at the next two Olympics, just as a sergeant,
and he didn't have to be a lieutenant.
So, here's the thing that I think, OK?
I would like to see the amateur ethos brought back to sport.
What do you think about that? Oh, yes. Oh, 100%.
The amateur thing with sport is...
They've ruined it now, haven't they? They've ruined the Olympics.
Have they? Well, I think...
You can't have Eddie the Eagle or Eric the Eel or any of those,
kind of, the fun ones... No! Can I say?
Drugs are the making of the Olympics.
Don't you think? I mean, you know...
Isn't it an exciting idea - who can go faster and faster and faster?
Then, maybe you need two Games.
You need a clean one and you need a drug-addled... Yeah, exactly.
So, do you...? What do people watch most?
Lance Armstrong made a very interesting point
in that documentary they made about him.
He basically said, "Yes, I was on drugs - so was everyone else.
"I was the best on drugs." Yeah.
I also think that the drugs should be more interesting.
Does anybody know what the very first-ever substance-abuse case
in the Olympics dealt with?
Well, it was a very high-class affair. Oh...
The first person banned for substance abuse?
Sherry. You're very close.
Yes? Was it absinthe?
No. Oh, sorry, I wasn't answering.
I was just hoping someone could bring a sherry.
Was it an animal that was doped?
No. A human?
It's a fantastic American swimmer called Eleanor Holm.
She was suspended from the American Olympic swim team in 1936 for
drinking too much champagne.
No... Now, who...?
That's good.
How much champagne is too much champagne?
I think it's... That's all relative.
You wouldn't think it would particularly
improve her performance.
I mean, she was happy.
You've only got to go backwards and forwards with swimming -
you've got to keep yourself busy.
Bubbles could have helped keeping her up, and afloat.
The first time I went dog racing,
I went with a friend of mine and he was betting on the second favourite.
He said, "It's always good to back the second favourite
"cos often someone's slipped the favourite a pie."
And that's...
The dog... Is the dog like, "I can't run. I've... I'm, oh...
"Oh..."
That was delicious, though.
That's how you nobble a dog race -
you slip a meat pie to the dog, and then it eats it,
and, I mean, you can imagine it doesn't run so fast.
That would probably work on this show, do you not think?
Many's the time I've been slipped a pie, Sandi.
So from a nearly man, to the world's biggest nobody.
What did these guys do when they realised their cox was too big?
I presume they threw him overboard.
Kind of. It's a really sweet story, this.
So we all know what the cox does.
The cox tells them... He steers the boat.
Steers the boat, yes. Stops them from rowing into things.
From "coxswain", literally a boat servant.
Also shouts "row", which doesn't seem necessary in any other sport.
No-one in the 100 metres has got a guy on the side going,
"Left, right, left, right."
So this boy is the cox? He BECAME the cox.
He was the replacement. This is...
First of all, I love these outfits. Can I just say?
If every sport wore these...
Yes, is it unusual to do it in your underpants? I think they're sweet.
They look gorgeous. They're anatomically correct.
Not necessarily.
This is the Dutch cox pair from the 1900 Olympics.
So what happened was they got through to the final
and they had an overweight cox called Hermanus Brockmann,
and they thought it was going to cost them the gold.
So they had noticed that the French crews were using children as coxes,
and so they decided to get one of their own,
and they plucked one from a crowd - this boy.
He'd already been discarded, actually, by the French
as being too heavy.
He's between seven and ten years old,
nobody knows his name,
but with him coxing they won the gold,
and then he vanished back into the crowd.
He is an Olympic gold medallist,
and nobody knows his name.
Isn't it the sweetest story? Incredible.
Also, the idea that he was telling his friends,
"I went and I saw the rowing, it was amazing."
"Where did you sit?" "I had a great seat!
"Yeah, I was in the boat."
He's the only anonymous gold winner ever in the Olympics.
The medal was given to the overweight cox
who didn't actually row, Hermanus Brockmann, he got the gold medal.
And he was disappointed that it wasn't made of chocolate.
I think that's the main disappointment
of all gold medal-winners in the Olympics.
"Oh, seriously?"
Yes, indeed. They sacked their cox and got a lad in to do his job.
And now for something that's not quite the full shilling.
So, I have got three bottles of wine.
I've got a very nicely aged Chateau Brandreth.
Ooh! How lovely. I'll pass that to you down there.
I've got a - this is rather lovely - Jimicar Valley White.
Fruity and fresh. I'll just pass that.
Very excellent with cheese.
And this one...
What are you saying about Jimmy's material?
Cheesy and fruity? Oh, fair enough.
This one goes down very well, I hear.
It's a 1966 Alan Davies Piteous Whine.
There we go. So, Victoria, you know nothing about these wines.
Let us imagine that you care for all wines
in a rather similar manner. Mm-hmm.
I can make that leap of the imagination. Thank you very much.
Which one would you purchase, based on the price?
On those prices, I mean, all of them. I'd still get change...
People who have wine stoppers - what's the point of that?
What are they for? Indeed, what are they for?
APPLAUSE
If you mean genuinely, what would I do? Yes, genuinely.
I'm not a wine snob. If I didn't know anything about them,
I'd buy the cheapest one.
Would you buy the one that's £5.50?
Yeah, why not? I don't know what the extra 50p will get me.
I was told by somebody who knows about wine that you should
consider the duty on the wine.
Oh, right. So if a bottle...
If the duty says £4 on a bottle and the bottle is £5,
you're really paying for a £1 bottle of wine. Wow.
But if it's £6, you're paying for a £2 bottle of wine,
so it's therefore twice as good. Ooh.
So, even though it's only £1 more... Ah.
And I have followed that advice ever since. Was that man...?
So, this guy buying a £1 bottle of wine,
was he outside a shop at the time? Was he?
Was he in the park drinking, perchance?
He was... He was already drunk.
Anybody else? Anybody? What would you go for, Jimmy?
Second-cheapest, always.
Right, so you'd go for the 5.99?
Well, yeah. Well, you know...
In restaurants, people never choose the cheapest one,
and they don't feel they can afford the most expensive
because that's usually about £600,
so they go for the one above the cheapest,
which would be the 5.99. Except, except...
And then once you've had one bottle, just get the house.
But also, is there not...?
If there's only a penny difference, you see,
is there not a psychological advantage there?
It is, this is the thing. It's called psychological pricing,
and most... It's also known as charm pricing or magical pricing,
pretty pricing.
Most people would go for the 5.99...
They wouldn't be so cheap, Victoria.
They'd go for the 5.99, and there seems to be a subconscious thing
that we prefer precise prices to round ones.
That seems to be a thing.
And also, it's called a left-digit anchor effect,
so the 5.99, it's still in the £5 bracket,
it's not quite in the £6 bracket,
and therefore, we seem more likely...
Are we still falling for this, people? I know!
Isn't there a theory on this,
that it started because they wanted to make sure
that they weren't being ripped off by their vendors?
If you've got to give them a penny change,
it has to go through the till.
Yes, there was a theory about that,
but there are experiments that suggest
that you do better to price products at £5.99 than at £5.50,
because the 99 feels like a reduction.
It is odd that £6.01 sounds a lot more than £5.99.
It sounds about 40 quid more. Yes, it does, doesn't it?
Also, what a bore to have 99p in change.
That's the reason for not doing it.
Well, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party in this country
has proposed creation of a 99p coin to save change.
APPLAUSE
It's a very good idea.
Is this genuinely wine, or have they filled the bottle with water?
I haven't opened it to check. Why don't you unscrew it and see?
This is wine. This is wine.
It's Beaujolais. Have we got any glasses?
APPLAUSE
Do you think you've overpaid for that, or was that all right?
No, I think that's all right. That's not too shabby?
I think I've done well with the cheapest one.
I think in restaurants you should always order the house wine
because if they should...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Oh, do you know what? Not terrible!
No, and weirdly, the next subject that I've got coming up
is the bacteria in people's mouths.
You should always order the house wine... Why's that?
..cos a restaurant ought to stand by its house wine.
If the house wine is not good then the food is not going to be good.
And, also, they buy so much of it they can get it at a better price.
Yes, so that is...
So, buy the house wine at 99 rather than...
Well, it depends on how expensive it is.
So a prestige good, a luxury good like, say, for example,
do you like handbags? Do you like luxury handbags?
Of course, yes. No. No?
People are more likely to pay £900 for a luxury handbag
than £899.99... Oh, yes.
..cos you don't want it to be affordable, that's not the point.
I genuinely... I don't understand about handbags. OK.
And I'm...
I'm not really a proper girl, as I try to...
GYLES: Oh.
And Jimmy's fine with that.
A handbag is essential.
Do you carry a man-bag?
I don't carry a man-bag, but I discovered a handbag was essential
when I wrote a book about the Queen,
and the Queen always has a handbag, one over her arm. Mmm.
And when she moves her handbag from one wrist to the other wrist,
that is the cue for the equerry-in-waiting to move you on.
Oh.
So, when you are next, Sandi, chatting with Her Majesty... Yes.
..and thinking it's going rather well,
doing some of your amusing Danish stuff, erm...
LAUGHTER
Not tactful but...
She can't get enough of it. She can't.
She can't - her husband is a Dane. She loves all that.
She loves the Nordics.
She loves all that. Philip?
Yeah. I think he's Greek.
Oh, no, no. Oh, no, that's just a cover.
OK. LAUGHTER
He's quite mad, you know. No!
I had lunch with Her Majesty and she appeared to have nothing but
dog biscuits in the bag. Yeah, well...
But, anyway, that is the trick.
So, just watch out when she moves the bag from one wrist to
the other, you know it's your time to step away.
Move along. Move along.
Erm, in The Meaning Of Liff, which is a fabulous book,
a Kibblesworth, which is a village in Tyne and Wear,
is defined as "the footling amount of money
"by which a price is less than a sensible number",
which I like.
Shall we put the bottles away? Do you want to give me...?
Give me yours! I AM putting it away!
No, give me yours, sweetheart. APPLAUSE
I'll keep it safe.
So, I got 99 problems, but the pence ain't one.
Now. Just... That's for the younger people.
Here is a not-unknotty poser for you to consider.
What's a really unfortunate name to have on the internet?
I was thinking of that one of, like, there's a...
There's a Pen Island that has a website.
Oh! Yes!
Is that right? Which doesn't look great.
No. What? Pen Island.
Oh, Pen Island! OK.
There's actually a company that I've worked for
called Bound And Gagged Comedy,
and if you type in "bound and gagged" - ooh!
I found that once. I googled "big carthorse" - and, my word!
That could take your eye out.
Sorry - for what legitimate reason were you googling "big carthorse"?
I get lonely.
Anyway, there are all sorts of names that don't work.
There's a man called Christopher Null, who is from Texas,
and he finds that computers regularly reject anything,
because "null", in lots of programming languages,
basically means "this space is intentionally left blank".
Now, here is the good thing -
Mr Null is a prominent tech journalist,
as I think you can tell by his thrusting photograph,
and the easiest thing, apparently,
is to put a full stop after the name, is the best way.
There are all sorts of names like that -
computers go, "Well, I don't know."
Oh, I see. As in null and void?
Yes. So you type in "null" and nothing appears?
Yes... He's the Invisible Man! That's what he looks like.
Yes, that is indeed what he looks like.
But he's not on his own, there've been hundreds of people in China
who've had to change their names
because the computer codes don't exist
and they don't have the Chinese sign for it.
And therefore they don't exist so they've had to change their name,
otherwise they can't apply for a driving licence, or whatever.
And what are these people called? I don't know the names of all of them,
because there are several hundred of them.
There are a lot of Chinese people, that is a matter of fact. Yeah.
There was a British feminist called Margaret Sandra and, in 1979,
she dropped her surname because she got very irritated.
She went to buy a tumble dryer and she wasn't allowed to buy it
unless her husband signed the form.
Ah! So she became enraged, and she doesn't have a surname.
But the result is, if you don't...
Wet clothes. Yes.
If you don't have a surname on a computer,
you can't easily claim benefits
or you can't book online or you can't...
There's all sorts of things you can't do.
So what does...? Poor Bono and Cher, it must be all kinds of...
Must be hell. The poor things.
Just being them, actually. They've got no white goods at all.
Poor Sting can't get a driver's licence.
Down there at the water's edge, bashing their clothes on rocks.
"Why are you doing that?" "I can't get a washing machine!"
This makes me feel... The Edge is no help.
APPLAUSE
My favourite story about getting names wrong -
there was a British student called Adam Armstrong,
and he had his Ryanair seat accidentally booked
in the wrong name,
so the airline was going to charge him £220 administration fee
to correct this error, and he didn't want to pay the money,
so he changed his name by deed poll,
which is free, OK,
and he got a new passport for £103.
Way cheaper - instead of paying Ryanair for a clerical error,
change your name.
There's a lesson, though I have no idea what it is.
And now, for a total non-event -
who's the best person to invite to a "Don't Come" party?
Oh! Yes. A "Don't Come" party?
It's an actual thing that is used now by charities...
Oh, I think I know what it is then. Yes.
It is where, in order to raise money, they say,
"If you give us £1,000, we will not hold this occasion."
You don't therefore need to spend money on having your hair done,
buying a new frock, hiring a car... Yeah...taking part in the raffle,
buying a balloon, getting the drugs behind the fountain...
None of these things need to happen.
It's a cheap, cheap evening.
Behind the fountain?
And, what, did this come out of people going,
"I would pay not to go to that event"?
Yes. Yes. So people that want to stay at home.
I would pay not to hear Gyles' after-dinner speech.
I'm not saying that. I...
APPLAUSE
And you can make the thing sound
as extravagant and glamorous as you like,
and then don't have it.
You say it's at a fantastically expensive hotel
and there's going to be champagne, but don't come,
and then you get more money because people don't want to go anywhere.
So, a "Never Event" is different. Yes.
OK, and do we know what that is?
Is that an event that was never going to happen?
No. It's the official name used by hospital administrators
to describe errors that are wholly avoidable,
so should never occur.
Like, I should think using a meat cleaver on a patient would be...
Before we rush to judgment, we don't know what's the matter with him.
No. That might be necessary.
But, curiously, these Never Events do occur.
I was hosting the British Funeral Directors' awards recently...
We've got to get you a new agent, dude.
It was quite quiet, initially.
I hope you opened with that. It took place at the end of the day -
they'd had their trade show in the same venue,
and so around the edges of the room there were coffins, caskets,
people looking not unlike this fellow, sort of sitting up in them.
Were you picking a new home?
AUDI ENCE MURMURS DISAPPROVINGLY
No! It's all right. Can I say...? He's old and he'll be dead soon.
I'm sorry if I was...
Can I tell you something, Jimmy?
I don't think you realise how this is getting to me,
because this morning, this very morning,
I received a letter through the post
inviting me to be the new face of the Stannah stairlift.
Take it! APPLAUSE
The worst thing about this is...
..my wife said, "I think we should consider this."
Then - this is a true story -
I then phoned them up and I said,
"Have you thought of Nigel Havers?"
It turned out they had. I was about 17th on the list.
I'm afraid this is not the first invitation
of its kind I've received,
because I also - this is maybe how they got hold of my name -
I was considered for being the new figure stretched out on the floor
reaching for the alarm.
"Help, I've fallen, and I can't get up"?
That one. But June Whitfield has got that gig at the moment.
But I have had this brilliant idea,
which I've now begun to discuss with them,
because my problem is that I go upstairs
and can't remember why I've gone upstairs.
Yes. So my idea is this -
I attach to the arm of the stairlift
an old-fashioned tape recorder,
I sit in the chair, I press the two buttons,
I tell myself why I am going upstairs.
And I go up. APPLAUSE
It's like the worst Beckett play ever.
And the tape, years later it will be handed down the generations
with all the reasons why Uncle Gyles went up the stairs for ten years.
"For a shit."
Never Events you may not wish to attend
include Gyles Brandreth addressing funeral directors.
These are both improbable pictures of George I,
so what on earth happened here?
Oh, he had his wig made into a moustache.
I can give you a clue - they're separate "George I"s.
The one on the left is Matt Lucas.
I'm pretty sure that's Matt Lucas.
I do think they all look like Samuel Pepys - everyone in a wig like that.
Yes, those wigs, there, there's a thing. Yeah.
Well, I can tell you, George I of Britain on the left.
Yes, cos he's dressed up like... He was German, of course.
He was German.
In fact, he only spoke German when he first became king.
GYLES SPEAKS GERMAN
You don't have to do it in German. It's perfectly fine to...
How did he become king?
Well, that is the extraordinary thing,
because there were 51 candidates to become the next king.
Why did they choose George?
All of them were ahead of him - were closer in line to the throne.
Because we like a German.
Because the others were all Catholics.
Ah, of course.
He was the only Protestant,
and the Act was designed to ensure that Protestants came to the throne.
The Act of Settlement? Yeah.
It must have been like an upset on the X Factor,
when the outsider comes in. Yes, yes, it was exactly like that.
Start kicking Catholics off the X Factor,
that'll stir up the ratings.
Arbitrarily.
We've got it back to the old rules. Yes.
So, the other George I,
also another king who took office against the odds, he's my random...
Is he your...? Is he going to be Danish? He is, he's a randy Scandi.
He is a randy Scandi. Yes, yes!
He was Prince William of Denmark, and he became King of Greece in...
Yup. That's... Excuse me!
Yes?
He's alive! Almost...
You may recall that I mentioned earlier -
and there was, sort of, ribald laughter -
that the Duke of Edinburgh was Danish. Yes.
The Duke of Edinburgh is Danish
because he is a direct descendant of this man.
OK, fair enough. And...
So, surprisingly, at the end of the Greek War of Independence,
so 1829...
LAUGHTER
..Greece was in chaos. Who can imagine such a thing?
Greece in chaos?! I know. It was the most extraordinary thing.
What now with the who, how? I know.
They had this guy called King Otto, and he was hopeless,
and they didn't like him, so he was overthrown
and they had a referendum to decide his successor.
And there was Prince William of Denmark
and Prince Alfred, who was the second son of Queen Victoria.
There were 240,000 votes counted and Prince William got six, OK?
The Greeks voted 95% of them that they wanted
the British Prince, Prince Alfred.
How touching.
But there was a treaty that banned British royals from
taking the Greek throne, so Prince William got it.
He got it.
With six votes?! With six votes, yes.
Oh...
That's democracy and royalty working together.
They did try a lot of other royals as well,
before they came down to these final two to put in the mix.
They did, and what I like is there were 93 votes in the referendum
for a republic and one to bring back King Otto.
I mean, we have no idea who that was.
And they took it... I think it might have been Otto.
Otto's loyal butler.
So, anyway, your chances of ascending the throne may be
better than you thought,
and here's another coronation that was not without its controversies.
Have a careful look at this and tell me what's not all right.
First of all, do we know which coronation it is?
It's Queen Victoria. So, does anybody know what went wrong?
They crowned the wrong woman.
A lady called Karen was crowned. She ruled for 80 years.
In a way, it's almost what happened. It's five hours, it was.
First of all, the Archbishop of Canterbury
forced the coronation ring onto the wrong finger -
caused her severe pain,
and they couldn't get it off afterwards.
And three years later,
he did exactly the same thing at her wedding.
He was just not ring-savvy, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Then the Bishop of Bath and Wells
accidentally turned over two pages in the service book,
and he cut out the whole section where they made her Queen.
What do you mean, "the whole section"?
That's surely the whole coronation, isn't it?
But the coronation was invalid,
and in fact she had left the Abbey before they realised
and she had to come back and do it again.
I love that, they had to do a retake.
And then, as the Lords were being presented to her,
the elderly, rather aptly named Lord Rolle, became globally famous
for tripping over on the steps leading to the throne
and rolling all the way down.
Apparently she didn't endear herself to the public until that moment,
and when Lord Rolle fell down the stairs
she got up and tried to help him,
and after that they thought, "Oh, she's..."
Because she was very young, wasn't she? Yeah, she was a teenager.
I mean, it must have been an unbelievable thing.
Now, here's a substance you may be not unfamiliar with,
even if you don't think you're not.
What might you use Nobel's...
This whole episode's giving me a headache.
What might you use Nobel's Safety Powder for?
JIMMY BUZZES Yes?
Is that not the original name for dynamite?
It is. Absolutely right. It's the original name for dynamite.
You're absolutely right. That's the... That's the... Yeah.
He was the one that made it kind of safe.
Well, it was safer than the alternative explosives,
and in the end he called it dynamite,
which is from the ancient Greek for "power",
but dynamite is less likely to blow up while you're handling it.
Why did he want to blow up pretty Japanese girls?
Sorry?
We've just seen the photograph - I mean, the picture.
Let's go back. Let's go back and have a look. Yeah.
Is that not a geisha of some kind?
I'm going to guess that that's a mock-up for amusement purposes.
Oh, for today. Yes. Oh, it's not the original advertisement.
No, I don't think suggesting... LAUGHTER
Well, the idea that someone would be, you know,
flicking through What Quarry magazine, going,
"This stuff looks... This looks pretty good."
"I'll get some of that." Oh, that's a bit disappointing.
You'd have to have serious cellulite to want to
put dynamite to it, I'd think.
There was no Botox. Yes.
That'd be quite a thing. Some people will do anything.
They sell embalming fluid as a beauty cream. Do they?
GYLES: I know that, actually.
Well, yeah, from your friends in the funeral business.
I was wondering what was keeping you looking so fresh.
He's got a bucket of it. Yeah.
So he went on and called it dynamite,
and then he made the even safer "blasting gelatine",
which is an explosive jelly which is known as gelignite.
Well, isn't there the thing on him where he...
there was a false obituary or a premature obituary of his? Yeah.
That had basically said, this guy was, you know,
he'd profited from death and then he set up the Peace Prize.
So they say. Nobody can find such an obituary, so it may be
one of those things, those stories that we tell...
It'd be in an old paper. Who can be bothered to look?
But there's quite a lot of stories like that about him.
There's a story that there's no Nobel Maths Prize,
in order to punish all mathematicians,
because one of them had eloped with his wife.
It's not true because...
He wasn't married.
He never got married.
He had lots of long-term romantic relationships
but nobody left him for a mathematician. It isn't true.
There's no Nobel Prize for Maths
because there wasn't any reason why there should be one.
There's no Nobel Prize for PE, or...
Biology or Geography.
There isn't even, actually, a Nobel for Economics.
The Economics Nobel isn't a Nobel Prize.
It's the Swedish bank, the Riksbank,
they give it in memory of Alfred Nobel,
and it's given at the same ceremony.
Is that a double negative and it is a Nobel Prize?
It isn't, because it's in memory of him,
rather than it was one of the ones which he founded. Right.
Can I say? The way you share this information with us,
I love hearing you just giving us facts.
There's a kind of erotic charge in the room.
LAUGHTER
I knew one day I'd turn - I never thought it'd be you, Gyles.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE OK, who's...
I think it's just nice for you to
be in a room that isn't full of coffins, isn't it?
GYLES: Yeah, yeah!
Less funereal. Yes!
But soon, Gyles. Soon.
At which point, we turn our attention-deficit
to that slush fund of negative knowledge -
the General Ignorance round.
Fingers not unadjacent to buzzers, if you please.
Name some common Egyptian characters.
Yes? The Eye of Horus.
KLAXON
What are the chances?
I want to know why the Eye of Horus isn't a common Egyptian character.
Because it's a hieroglyph,
and hieroglyphs were only used for special occasions.
GYLES: Ah. So they were not common, in fact.
Well, I think you'll find
that there were many special occasions in Egyptian life.
Yes, obviously. The thing is,
the normal everyday form of writing in Egyptian was hieratic.
So it's a simplified version.
It's a much more cursive version - there it is.
That's a rarefied klaxon.
I think, frankly, Victoria, they've set you up there.
It can only be described as a trap.
You have them on Only Connect, do you not, hieroglyphs?
Yeah, we do. Yes. In our first series, it was Greek letters,
and people wrote in and said,
"We like the show, but we find that pretentious."
So we began series three with an apology, saying,
"We'd like to say sorry to anyone that's been enjoying the show,
"but found the Greek letters a bit pretentious. We've listened,
"it's your BBC, you've reached out, we've heard you.
"Please choose your Egyptian hieroglyph."
Well, they're for special occasions, you see.
The thing is, they can have multiple meanings.
So, sometimes they just represent the thing they're drawing,
so it could be a saw of some kind, it could be a tool,
it could be something else.
So the nose hieroglyph, for example, means smell or joy or contempt.
But no vowels. Again, they're like Only Connect, you have a round,
don't you, with no vowels? We do.
There are no vowels in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs,
so we have no idea how it would have sounded.
So, King Ramses could be King Rameesees. We don't know.
But that's impossible because, you know...
Well, maybe I suppose you can manage without vowels,
because when it comes to diction, vowels for volume... Right.
..consonants for clarity.
As in the exercise that is performed by actors,
you repeat the following:
"Hip bath, hip bath,
"lavatory, lavatory,
"bidet, bidet,
"douche!"
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Are these all things...?
Are these all things you're advertising?
APPLAUSE
Just tell us about your sponsorships, please.
Can I say? People of your generation probably don't know what a bidet is,
but they are all bathroom appliances of one kind or another.
That you're advertising. Hip bath, hip bath,
Iavatory, lavatory...
bidet, bidet, douche!
VICTORIA: Douche!
Douche! I didn't like the way you looked at me when you said "douche".
Now...
When this goes out in America, that means something else there. Yeah.
The average ancient Egyptian wrote not in hieroglyphics but hieratics.
Now, what would happen if you dropped a penny
from the Empire State Building?
Oh, no, this is about killing people, isn't it?
OK. Nothing. It wouldn't kill someone if it hit them.
It would not kill somebody.
It's too light. It's too light, absolutely.
It's like you could drop a duckling, and it would float. A duckling?
It's incredibly light, and also...
Wouldn't a duckling fly? Oh, because a duckling can't fly yet.
It can't fly, but they can fall out of nests and float to the ground,
and you know how I know this? Yes?
Because I had a roof terrace that had a pond on it,
and some ducks came and moved in... Oh!
..had ducklings, and they all threw themselves off the roof.
Oh! Three storeys up.
Quickly, say there's a happy ending! And I ran down the stairs,
and they were all wandering about in the car park.
Did they get hit by a car?
No, somebody rounded them up and put them in a box
and took them back up the stairs, whereupon they did it again.
Oh, no! What was it about living with you
that made them want to jump off a roof?
That's just what they do.
Because they're so light,
they won't plummet to the ground and die - they'll float.
It's the same with the coins - they're fantastically lightweight,
and they also have too much air-resistance.
But if you had a whole bag of them...?
If you really, really wanted to kill somebody...
that is perfectly possible.
A pen would make it. That would drill a hole in your head.
That is not a good thing. Bad news.
But, in fact, it's an academic question,
because the coins mostly don't hit the ground at all.
What happens is the design and height of the building
creates so much strong updraught,
that the tossed coins tend to be pushed back towards the building,
and they land on the ledges and roofs of the lower floors,
where the maintenance crew say, "Thank you",
and collect them all up.
Indeed. This is not connected with the pennies,
but can I just tell you
about one of my favourite creatures in the world?
It's called the hero ant.
It's a cliff-dwelling ant in Madagascar.
Not a looker. Not a looker, I'll be honest.
It's got the most fantastic way of removing predators from the nest.
It grabs them and holds them and then jumps off the cliff,
and then when it hits the bottom it lands softly,
and then it lets go and climbs back up to the cave.
Don't you think that's fantastic? That's rather fantastic.
I mean, you probably shouldn't try it with a home intruder.
No. That's worth mentioning. But, yeah, for safety.
A coin dropped from the Empire State Building
would never reach the ground, and if it did, it wouldn't do any damage.
Finally, a quick health check.
Put your hand up if you haven't got haemorrhoids at the moment.
Put my hand up where?
KLAXON
Really?
I don't mind getting the buzzer, but when you're so gleeful...
Yes! So...
I've always got... I've had haemorrhoids for about 25 years.
The thing is, everybody's got them. We are born with haemorrhoids.
There isn't anybody who doesn't have them.
They're cushions, they're sort of made of veins
which are a normal part of the anatomy, like your eyelids or lips,
possibly not quite so pretty.
And they're there to stop the stools leaking out of your bottom.
They explained all this to me when I went to the audition for the job.
It's only when they become enlarged or inflamed
that they cause problems, but we have them all the time -
we all have haemorrhoids all the time.
Well, you know what? I think... Shall we go Embarrassing Bodies?
Will I whip one out? So we've all got them at all times?
We do, but there's a myth that if you sit on a cold surface
or, conversely, on a radiator, it causes piles,
and that's simply not true.
And spicy food - not true. What causes...?
Well, there is another old wives' tale
about reading on the loo, can cause them.
That may be true. What do you have to read?
Is it like a spell? An incantation?
No, it's sitting or standing for too long - strains your rectum.
Yes, you mustn't push. No. No.
And also, never resist the call to stool.
Is that another way of warming up for an actor?
Harry Hill told me that with his medical hat on -
"Oh, you must never resist the call to stool."
I like that. That's very good.
They think Napoleon may have lost the battle of Waterloo
because he had a terrible attack of piles
which made him not sleep the night before.
Well, they captured the moment, didn't they?
That is a man with piles.
Most definitely!
That's the power of Instagram for you.
"Your horse is ready." SHE SHUDDERS
And David Livingstone,
thought to have died on the banks of the Zambezi from burst haemorrhoids.
Oh, no! If a haemorrhoid bursts in the forest...
It's lovely that we're at the haemorrhoids section
of the show, anyway.
Yes, absolutely. So, let's have a look at the scores.
And in first place, with -1 point, it's Gyles.
CHEERI NG AND APPLAUSE
In second place, with -5, Alan.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And in third place, with -8, Victoria.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
-21...
Jimmy!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So, it's thanks to Victoria, Jimmy, Gyles and Alan,
and I'll leave you with this - in the 1950s,
the American philosophy professor Sidney Morgenbesser
went to a lecture by the English linguistics expert JL Austin,
who claimed that, while some languages use double negatives
to make a positive,
no language uses a double positive to make a negative.
And from the back of the room
came Morgenbesser's distinctive New York drawl, "Yeah, yeah".
Goodnight.