QI 10x3

1. Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,

2. good evening, good evening,

3. and welcome to "QI"

4. where tonight our topic is journeys,

5. and let's see who's in the arrivals hall today.

6. All the way up from down under, it's Cal Wilson.

7. Hello.

8. The only way here is from Essex, Phill Jupitus.

9. And from Port Talbot Parkway stopping at Pyle Bridgend,

10. Pencoed, Llanharan, Pontyclun, Ninian Park

11. and Cardiff Central, Rob Brydon.

12. And bearing the label not wanted on voyage, Alan Davies.

13. And they all have little buzzer noises, and Cal goes.

14. And Rob goes.

15. Phill goes.

16. Which you do in fact, don't you?

17. - I do. - Yeah, and Alan goes.

18. That's your chosen mode of transport.

19. Well, we've traveled a lot, Alan,

20. and one of the places we traveled to a few months ago

21. was Australia and that's where we found Cal.

22. Who is New Zealand's perhaps greatest stand up comedian

23. - and works mostly in Melbourne - Without a doubt.

24. now, don't you?

25. Yes, I do, I do.

26. I've got the antipodes covered.

27. Yeah.

28. But we liked you so much we smuggled you in our luggage

29. and we brought you back here, so welcome.

30. Thank you, and I make a better souvenir

31. than an interesting keyring, I suppose.

32. Exactly, exactly.

33. Well, I did want a koala, but—

34. A stuffed koala.

35. - It's not on apparently. - No.

36. The journey of a thousand miles begins

37. with a single question.

38. Where the hell did I leave my passport?

39. I lost mine in a plane once,

40. and it had gone down

41. - under the cushion of my seat. - Aw.

42. Yeah.

43. - The actual plane seat. - Yep.

44. And I was on the plane, I refused to get off the plane.

45. Yeah, you have to get your seat disassembled,

46. I've had that.

47. And eventually I found it.

48. That was the end of the story.

49. Oh, that's a beautiful story.

50. That is a lovely, lovely story.

51. Stephen, is that Alan Davies or is it, hang on,

52. is it Peter Ustinov.

53. That was a hell of an anecdote, don't you think?

54. If that is the level of the bar this evening

55. I may go home.

56. Is it you, specifically you,

57. where did you leave your passport?

58. No, it's this technique, the University of Wisconsin,

59. when you lose something, it actually helps to say

60. the name of the thing that you have lost

61. or you are looking for.

62. - Dignity. - Yes.

63. Very good.

64. Good, you see?

65. Congratulations.

66. For me, that would make me worse.

67. I would just draw attention to it.

68. Your wallet has a name?

69. Well, no, just—

70. Peregrine!

71. Peregrine!

72. Peregrine.

73. That's how.

74. - It might work. - It has now.

75. Yes, from now on it will be called Peregrine.

76. But anyway, that's not the point.

77. The point is, for example, you open a cutlery draw

78. and where the hell is the garlic peeler or whatever.

79. But if you just say garlic peeler—

80. - Yes, the garlic peeler. - It might be.

81. Andrew!

82. Andrew!

83. You're missing my point about names here.

84. I just mean the word we give the thing.

85. Its normal description as found in a dictionary,

86. not from a list of given names.

87. It isn't Julian the cheese grater.

88. It isn't Barbera the corkscrew.

89. So what did you do?

90. You have to say "wallet, wallet, wallet."

91. What, we say, "keys, keys, keys, keys, keys, keys."

92. Yeah, exactly, so you say bottle opener, bottle opener,

93. you've got more chance of seeing it.

94. - You're— - Money, money, money, money.

95. Gold, gold.

96. You know that phrase it was just staring me in the face

97. and you somehow couldn't see it,

98. the act of speaking does something in your brain

99. that actually allows your eyes to see it more clearly.

100. That seems to be demonstrated.

101. Reminds me of that phrase, Stephen,

102. couldn't see the wood for the trees.

103. Have you ever come across that phrase before?

104. I have, I have.

105. - One used to understand it. - What I basically means is,

106. you're looking at, wait,

107. - you're looking for wood. - Yes, yeah.

108. - Not in the way you might. - No, not in that sense.

109. Yeah.

110. You're looking for wood, and you're looking at trees.

111. Yes.

112. So you are in essence looking at wood.

113. They're wood aren't they?

114. I've got it, Alan.

115. But you're seeing trees so you can't see the wood

116. - for the trees. - The trees.

117. And I think in a funny old way it's a little bit

118. like what you're talking about, isn't it?

119. - Almost exactly not, yeah. - Yeah, yeah.

120. No, it's nice, it's nice you brought that up,

121. it's a good one.

122. Now the other thing, before I finish,

123. the other thing I'd like to bring up

124. is this whole business now with passports,

125. they don't like you to smile in the photographs.

126. Oh, no.

127. When I grew up,

128. - a smile was almost mandatory. - A happy grin, yup.

129. - Like if you're. - Yup.

130. But now you have to look like you're suspected

131. of having done something.

132. I look like a Russian prison guard in my passport photo.

133. I can see that, I can see that, absolutely.

134. A hatchet-faced Silesian fishwife.

135. Every single Photo-Me booth I get into

136. appears to be set on pedophile.

137. Try and recreate that look for us now, could you?

138. Right, for a kick off,

139. what you have to do in a Photo-Me booth

140. is they don't let you wear glasses either,

141. and also because the camera lens is behind a mirror

142. and you don't know

143. - where it really is. - Yeah. You're always looking

144. - slightly off, so. - Oh, that's true.

145. Is it down, so, okay, this is the look.

146. Stay away from my children.

147. It gets you out of a lot of babysitting duties though,

148. doesn't it, let's be honest.

149. Bet our passports would probably look quite good together

150. 'cause you're the pedophile and I'm the prison guard.

151. - Yeah, we should - Wow, what a pair.

152. travel together.

153. I'm with my Kiwi handler.

154. Do kiwi's have handlers?

155. They're not very good for anything.

156. Are they edible?

157. We're not allowed to eat them.

158. Like swans.

159. I mean the Queen's allowed them.

160. - Is the Queen allowed kiwis? - I don't think she is,

161. - as a matter of fact. - I mean, could she just eat

162. anything she wants 'cause she's the Queen?

163. I wouldn't be the one to tell her not to.

164. - But, no, no. - I imagine not.

165. Stop eating that kiwi, you dreadful old woman.

166. I imagine that you'd be a bit more polite.

167. You are Stephen Fry off the telly.

168. You don't have to do the dreadful old woman

169. - bit on the end. - No, but it would be

170. a dreadful thing to do.

171. You could say, "Stop eating that kiwi, ma'am,

172. - "have some jam." - Ma'am, exactly.

173. Exactly, exactly.

174. Your Majesty, put the puffin down.

175. Let's just have a load of situations

176. where we're telling the Queen

177. - to stop eating things. - That sounds like

178. a children's game.

179. We'll now have a round of Your Majesty, put the puffin down.

180. You're the Queen, so, a-one,

181. - two, three. - Trousers off.

182. Your Majesty, put the puffin down.

183. Yes, very good.

184. Anyway, I don't know why we, or how we got there,

185. but that's what journeys do to you.

186. Anyway, describe the travel arrangements

187. of the Japanese flying snail.

188. Where is it going?

189. It probably won't travel more than 11 miles,

190. but very fast.

191. Does it drop?

192. - Yes, but— - Is it a fall?

193. Yeah, but how would it get up?

194. They haven't got wings, have they, you see?

195. No, they haven't, but we haven't got wings and we fly.

196. How do we do it?

197. - Right, in an airplane. - We get in an airplane.

198. - We get in something. - Oh, I've got the answer

199. - to this. - We get in

200. a conveyance of flight.

201. They hop on a bird or a creature with wings,

202. - a bird. - Yes.

203. Could have been a bat.

204. Could have been a bat,

205. could have been a bat or a bird.

206. - Yep. - Or a strange hybrid

207. of bird-bat.

208. They hop on to a creature with the ability to fly.

209. But 11 miles, that's very, very high.

210. It's not the height, it's not the altitude, they travel.

211. - They're not going up. - I've got it in my head

212. that they're dropping 11 miles.

213. No, no, no.

214. It's not a voluntary act.

215. They get eaten by birds.

216. There are two types of birds

217. on the little island of Hahajima.

218. Hahajima, it's one of the Ogasawara Islands

219. south of Japan, as you can see.

220. And there is the Japanese white eye

221. and the brown eyed bulbul,

222. which are two types of bird.

223. There they are, and they eat this particular snail,

224. and about 15% of them survive the process

225. and are excreted out alive.

226. And so, they're kind of

227. - spreading their genes - Is this to scale?

228. further around, yeah.

229. Because that seems unlikely.

230. No, it's not.

231. That would be a seriously

232. - weighed down bulbul. - That snail could eat

233. that bird, I'd back the snail.

234. Is the bird on the left,

235. is that a white ring round its eye

236. or has it just excreted a full size snail?

237. Oh!

238. Whoa!

239. It could be up to between 30 minutes or two hours later

240. that it passes through the bird's system, as it were.

241. And the bird can fly about 11 miles per hour.

242. Does the snail go into its own shell?

243. By which, I don't mean, get a little self-conscious.

244. - Does he retreat into his shell - I should imagine he would.

245. to take shelter?

246. I should imagine he would.

247. But don't they pick them out of the shell anyway?

248. Don't they get in the.

249. Like you do in a restaurant with a little special fork.

250. - They've got a special fork. - Which is called Arnold,

251. by the way,

252. - in case you need to find it. - I'm writing it down.

253. Arnold, Arnold.

254. Ice cream scoop called Vanessa.

255. Yes, so anyway—

256. What would you call one of those pizza cutters?

257. The rolly pizza cutter.

258. Clement.

259. Clement, fair enough.

260. Can we call it Dave?

261. Well, there you are.

262. Yes, good, so the cry goes up, abandon ship now,

263. that's our next question, abandon ship.

264. Now, we are proud Britons and one proud Kiwi.

265. What do we say next?

266. What do we chaps say?

267. Women and children first.

268. As far as we know that's only ever been cried twice.

269. It's called the Birkenhead Drill,

270. and it happened on board a ship called the Birkenhead,

271. but that was 'cause the captain pointed a gun

272. at his crew and said, "Women and children first."

273. This has not been an idea that especially existed before

274. and in fact it's very un-British.

275. Women have a lesser chance of surviving

276. if a British ship sinks than a continental one.

277. - That's good to know. - Yup.

278. So we aren't the gallant creatures that we thought we were,

279. at all.

280. The Titanic was the other one in which the men were told

281. to stand back.

282. And there was, we've had this on "QI" before,

283. there was one crew member who survived,

284. went all the way home to Liverpool

285. and he had the door slammed in his face by his mother

286. who was ashamed of him for having survived.

287. - But in fact— - She sounds nice.

288. Yeah, charming.

289. Clearly extraordinary.

290. Well, I mean, unbelievable.

291. But, obviously you want a fair number of fit,

292. strong people who know their way around the waters,

293. as it were, once you're in the life boat.

294. 'Cause if it's all women and children

295. there's not really gonna be that much necessarily

296. - use in being in a lifeboat. - That's a little

297. bit sexist, Stephen.

298. You need at least one crew member who can navigate

299. by the stars or who can operate the oars efficiently.

300. Or isn't going, "Oh, look, there's a fish over there!

301. "Let's go over there."

302. I wasn't gonna be the one to say that, I'm glad you did.

303. Referring to the Birkenhead Drill, it's not common.

304. Anyway, how long would it take you to bicycle

305. from Land's End to the northern most part of Britain?

306. What, John o' Groats, you mean?

307. Oh!

308. Very mean of me, wasn't it?

309. No, no, ask clear, well defined questions.

310. We just like to make you say things.

311. You can't buzz buzz me on chitchat.

312. No, it's not the northern most part of Britain.

313. Is it not?

314. No, surprisingly.

315. It sort of advertises itself as such,

316. and it has a little hut.

317. There's the last house in Scotland in John o' Groats.

318. Oh, there's one of those boys in calipers

319. with a slot in his box, I haven't seen one of those

320. - for years! - A long time ago, I know.

321. There was always one of those on the high street

322. when I was a kid.

323. Well, it used to be called the Spastic Society,

324. it's now SCOPE, I think, isn't it.

325. You put a penny in and he was still there the next week.

326. Put the penny in to make him go away.

327. I thought it would get him better, the poor lad.

328. Oh, bless.

329. Look at him there, he's obviously on his holidays there,

330. isn't he?

331. I used to like those ones where you put the penny in

332. and it just rolled round and round and round and round

333. and round and round and round.

334. We had a guide dog, you put the penny in its head.

335. You had a lifeboat one where they put the penny in

336. - and the lifeboat came out. - That's right!

337. - You know, I like that. - Always putting pennies

338. in things.

339. There's a brilliant model of Queen Victoria's dog

340. in Sydney outside the Queen Victoria building,

341. and it's like a, you put a donation, but it talks.

342. So it's a little highland terrier and it says

343. in very beautiful newsreader tones,

344. "During my lifetime, because of my good deeds,

345. "after my death I was granted the power of speech."

346. Like this, and then it goes,

347. "If you put a coin in the box,

348. "I will say thank you."

349. And then it pauses and then it goes,

350. "Thank you.

351. "Woof."

352. That lad said nothing to me.

353. Not a word.

354. Every week I put something in his box.

355. Do you put it in the box or is it his head?

356. He's got a slot in his box,

357. he might have two slots.

358. Some of them would have two slots.

359. Two slots in their box.

360. Yeah, women have, no, stop.

361. I resign.

362. Yes, quite, absolutely shameful.

363. We've established this is not your area.

364. - Yeah, exactly. - He looks a little bit like—

365. It's like you're talking about Narnia or somewhere.

366. A fantastical land you've only heard about.

367. Exactly.

368. You make your way through the fur coats and suddenly—

369. Oh!

370. Oh, dear, oh dear.

371. Wielding a coin.

372. - A single coin. - And for a while

373. you have a magical time but then you meet an ice maiden.

374. Oh, dear god.

375. Anyway, yes—

376. You're telling me there's somewhere further

377. than John o' Groats?

378. There is indeed, Dunnet Head.

379. That's the actual northern most spot.

380. So if you've gone all the way to John o' Groats

381. and you haven't gone there.

382. You wouldn't cycle on there though, would you?

383. - It's a bit bumpy. - It's rather beautiful,

384. isn't it?

385. It's about 603 miles, as the crow flies,

386. but by road it's about 800 miles.

387. Cyclists could take 10 to 14 days doing it.

388. The record for running the route,

389. what would you say is?

390. Can we have a guess?

391. You couldn't do it in less than a week, could you?

392. No, no.

393. It's nine days and two hours,

394. which is pretty damn good going.

395. Pretty damn good going.

396. - I'll say. - Very good.

397. In 2005 a golfer named David Sullivan hit a golf ball

398. all the way.

399. Took him seven weeks.

400. I don't know what his score was.

401. It would be awful if he didn't fill in his card correctly

402. at the end.

403. Disqualified.

404. Was it a putter?

405. Did he mean to do it? Did he mean to do it?

406. Or was he just trying to get it in the hole?

407. He was just playing it where it lies.

408. "I've lost it again."

409. It would land in the back of a lorry

410. going the other direction.

411. "Christ!"

412. I feel sorry for the bloke that was standing

413. waiting for him, holding the flag.

414. Yes.

415. So people have done it, all kinds of different ways.

416. In 1911 there was a motorcycle record of 29 hours

417. and 12 minutes, which led to a ban on further attempts

418. because the time necessarily proved

419. that they'd been breaking the speed limit,

420. which was 20 miles per hour.

421. Now, here's a bird you might see near John o' Groats.

422. What is it?

423. - Well. - Gannet.

424. - Is it a fulmar? - Not a gannet.

425. It's not a fulmar.

426. Is it the one puffin the Queen hasn't eaten?

427. It is a puffin!

428. Well done.

429. - It's a puffin. - It's a puffin.

430. Yes, we usually think of puffin's

431. - as looking - Where's its beak?

432. more like this.

433. It's a bill.

434. - Exactly. - Photoshop, Photoshop.

435. Once they've had sex,

436. - and it's winter. - It's a ninja puffin.

437. Once they've had sex, and it's winter

438. they don't need to look all bright like that,

439. and so they go all dull.

440. But its beak,

441. its beak is,

442. well I suppose its beak

443. - is shrunk enough. - It falls off. It falls off.

444. Falls off?

445. - Yes. - What?

446. Yep, I know.

447. They just have to attract a mate and then once—

448. The dirty, dirty puffins.

449. Is it the equivalent of a woman losing her figure

450. after she's got married?

451. I suppose.

452. The minute the ring goes on they just go to pieces.

453. Oh, now behave.

454. To me it looks more like the equivalent

455. of a woman taking her padded bra off.

456. That's what it looks like.

457. - Yeah, yeah. - Yes.

458. She's just not making an effort anymore, is she?

459. The eye there, has that just been stuck on the other eye?

460. Yeah, again, it's the color there, it's all—

461. Just blind.

462. I look great.

463. Ought to look brighter and sexy.

464. "Oh! Hello."

465. They rather sweetly pair for life,

466. male and female puffins,

467. and they make together one egg a year.

468. So once they've mated, they don't need to attract

469. each other anymore.

470. So for the winter season, when they're busy feeding,

471. and then they put on

472. - their spring makeup. - "I remember when

473. "you cared about me."

474. Exactly, but then they—

475. "You used to have a pink beak.

476. "Used to put the eye makeup on."

477. - It comes back again. - It comes back?

478. Yeah, but they're lovely, lovely little creatures,

479. aren't they?

480. Do you know what a baby puffin is called?

481. A puff.

482. It's a puffling.

483. Isn't that lovely?

484. - Aw. - Aw.

485. So, exactly, aw.

486. That's like something out of "Harry Potter."

487. Aw, they love that.

488. Say it again, they loved it.

489. Puffling.

490. Aw.

491. How many people now have a new nickname

492. for their partner?

493. Exactly.

494. - Their partner did you say? - Yes.

495. For a moment I thought you were gonna say their penis.

496. For some people that is their partner.

497. My puffling.

498. Aren't there like those party hats

499. you can get with a bit of elastic.

500. The one on the left, he looks like, wooh.

501. Honestly, a toucan could do great on that puffin island.

502. - You imagine. - He'd score big time.

503. Aw, nelly.

504. Oh, yeah.

505. Hey, ladies, yeah.

506. Well they spend their time—

507. "From the tropics.

508. "This doesn't fall off after.

509. "I'm keeping this.

510. "Yeah, I've still got the Guinness money."

511. Yeah, he'd be freezing cold though, wouldn't he?

512. After a while.

513. "Aw, how do you do this up here?"

514. - It's true. - Oh, would his beak

515. get smaller in the weather?

516. Are these just arctic toucans?

517. No, they're not actually.

518. They're a kind of auk, in fact.

519. Most of those you'll find in the north Atlantic,

520. and these, indeed, John o' Groats would be

521. a very good place to seem them.

522. Not Auckland.

523. Not Auckland, oddly enough.

524. That's spelled with a C, a little redundant C.

525. Oh, course it is.

526. Yeah, but out to sea they're pelagic,

527. they have little backward barbed rows of things,

528. basically to store fish in their mouth.

529. But they're lovely, lovely creatures,

530. and of course the Catholic Church counted them as fish

531. so you could eat them on Fridays.

532. Good, so, anyway, for evolutionary reasons

533. puffins' beaks fall off after sex,

534. assuming you believe in evolution.

535. What was the name of the naturalist on board the Beagle?

536. Charles Darwin, you mean.

537. Oh.

538. Oh, Fry!

539. This is a whole new tactic he's doing.

540. He wasn't the naturalist on board the Beagle, oddly enough.

541. There was an official naturalist on board the Beagle

542. and it wasn't Charles Darwin.

543. He was the?

544. - I don't care anymore! - Oh, you're angry, I'm sorry.

545. Phillip, I wish

546. - it hadn't happened to you. - It was the cook.

547. It wasn't the cook, no.

548. He was the figurehead on the prow.

549. It wasn't that either.

550. He was in fact the geologist.

551. The geologist.

552. It was the doctor, his name was McCormick

553. who was the official naturalist

554. and he really resented Darwin being there.

555. It was rather snobbish British 19th century reasons,

556. he said FitzRoy, whose voyage it was,

557. wanted a gentleman companion and Charles Darwin

558. fitted the bill rather than the doctor.

559. On Christmas day in 1835,

560. there's the young Darwin before he grew that massive beard,

561. they went to Tierra del Fuego, the land of the fire,

562. right down below South America.

563. And there Darwin was very astonished to note

564. what happened when the local people had a famine.

565. What they turned to eat.

566. Can you imagine what it is that they ate

567. when times were difficult?

568. Guinea pigs.

569. Penguins.

570. No, Guinea pigs are eaten generally

571. - around South America - They're just a snack.

572. quite commonly.

573. One another.

574. One another is right,

575. but a particular type of person was chosen.

576. Elderly people.

577. And a particular type of—

578. - Elderly women? - Elderly ladies.

579. Elderly women is the answer.

580. The elderly women ran for the hills

581. when there was any kind of famine on

582. - because they were the ones. - "Mm-mmm.

583. "That's some good old lady.

584. "I've got the GILF cookbook."

585. That's just awful, Phillip Jupitus.

586. But the reason being that they're—

587. Their arms are so tender.

588. Well they explained to the crew of the Beagle

589. that the reason was, I'm afraid to say,

590. that the old women were the least useful members

591. of the tribe.

592. Because old men and children and others could otter hunt,

593. but the elderly women couldn't hunt for otters.

594. What about the knitting?

595. I'm sorry?

596. What about the knitting and the crochet?

597. Well, exactly, I know, exactly.

598. And who's gonna teach you rummy?

599. That's a very good point.

600. Yes.

601. They can make dumplings.

602. All these things only old ladies can do.

603. How does their society evolve with nobody to say,

604. "Oh, I know.

605. "Oh, I know."

606. Anyway, now to a place where they had jackal-headed gods,

607. where would I be?

608. Egypt.

609. Ah.

610. You didn't quite say that, did you?

611. Sorry, I didn't phrase that correct.

612. What, Egypt, you mean?

613. Oh, thank you.

614. That's very kind of you.

615. Not Egypt, in fact.

616. Those had been known as jackal-headed god,

617. that particular god, extra points if you know that.

618. Anubis.

619. Well done, Anubis is the right answer.

620. Anubis who was, do you know what duty of Anubis was?

621. Something to do with death,

622. didn't he guide you into the spirit world.

623. That's brilliant, another five points I think there.

624. There's a rather wonderful technical name for a god

625. that guides you into the underworld, like Mercury

626. who guided you as far as the River Styx,

627. and that's a psychopomp.

628. - That's a good word. - A psychopomp.

629. A psychopomp.

630. Sounds like something you'd find in a medical examination,

631. doesn't it?

632. "I'm sorry Mrs Wilson, you've got psychopomps."

633. It may be benign,

634. - it may be malignant. - Yes, gonna have to operate.

635. A malignant psychopomp you wouldn't want.

636. But in fact, what has been discovered,

637. you won't find this on Egyptological websites

638. where they will continue to call Anubis

639. and other Egyptian deities jackal-headed,

640. but the animals that existed at the time of ancient Egypt

641. were, we now know from DNA, wolves, not jackals.

642. So, it seems from a zoological point of view,

643. if not from an Egyptological point of view,

644. they are in fact wolf-headed, not jackal-headed.

645. You heard it here first.

646. Very recent discovery.

647. So, that's exciting, isn't it?

648. Well, there you are.

649. Which travel organization includes a mandatory fee

650. for the repatriation of your corpse?

651. The AA, Thomas Cook.

652. No, this is a very particular event that you can

653. subscribe to, and they sort out your travel

654. and your participation in this event,

655. but included in it is a fee for the repatriation

656. of your corpse.

657. It's not expected you'll die

658. but there's a chance that you might.

659. It's not running the bulls at Pamplona, is it?

660. No, it's not the bulls of Pamplona.

661. It's not one of these iron man races, is it?

662. It's that sort of a thing,

663. it's an incredibly difficult marathon.

664. It's called the Marathon des Sables,

665. which your French will tell you means?

666. Marathon of the Sable.

667. These little black, furry creatures in yes,

668. sand is sables in French.

669. Oh sables, sorry.

670. It's the Marathon of the Sands,

671. and it's an extraordinarily enduring and grueling event

672. in which you have to carry your own food,

673. although there are water stops,

674. and it's a six day, each day you run a whole marathon

675. in the Sahara Desert.

676. People are very weird, aren't they?

677. I have a friend who does it, she's done it twice.

678. She's absolutely extraordinary.

679. Did she have to back because she'd forgotten something?

680. Two separate years.

681. Oh, they better not tell Izzard about it.

682. "Really?

683. "Ah, okay.

684. "How many, how many, how many do they do?

685. "Okay."

686. That's uncanny, isn't it?

687. "I'm gonna do 120 desert marathons a week for a year.

688. "Yeah, true story."

689. Very good Eddie, I have to say.

690. I'm going to the pub every night for 27 years.

691. In a tribute to Nelson Mandela.

692. Consider the case of Mauro Prosperi

693. who is a very experienced runner,

694. an Italian policeman in fact,

695. who in 1994 was doing the Marathon des Sables

696. and there was a sandstorm.

697. And he disobeyed the official instructions

698. which are if you're in a sandstorm you hunker down

699. and wait till it passes.

700. I guess he wanted to win or something

701. so he carried on running and he got lost.

702. And this is a bad thing in the Sahara

703. as I'm sure you can imagine.

704. By the second day he was drinking his urine, naturally.

705. On the third he found an abandoned shrine,

706. managed to kill a couple of bats whose blood he drank.

707. He then decided to kill himself with a penknife

708. but he was so dehydrated that the blood wouldn't flow.

709. He was rather surprised to wake up the next morning

710. and so he ran for the next five days drinking urine and dew,

711. and eating the occasional lizard that he'd found

712. and managed to kill on the way.

713. After nine days he encountered some nomads

714. who got him back to safety.

715. He'd lost three stone

716. and was 130 miles off course in Algeria.

717. And then he did it again for six years.

718. He went back and did it again.

719. Amazing, I mean, bizarre, but there you go.

720. Sheesh.

721. No one gives the nomads much credit in that story.

722. No, I know.

723. Well he was out there for nine days.

724. Oh, my whole life.

725. Exactly.

726. He walked for six days, oh, get over yourself.

727. Doing that when I was three.

728. Drinking your own piss?

729. Luxury.

730. But his description of it is really a very good

731. ode to life, isn't it?

732. He said, "I didn't panic, I just despaired."

733. Anyway, what did Napoleon say to Josephine

734. on his way back from a journey?

735. Oh, I sense a trap.

736. The only thing I know about Napoleon to Josephine

737. - was he said. - Yeah?

738. What was it?

739. Rob, what was it?

740. Phill.

741. Cal.

742. I'm gonna do it.

743. "I'm coming back, don't wash."

744. Oh.

745. That is one of the two things that people know

746. that Napoleon said.

747. "I should be home soon, don't wash."

748. 'Cause he liked them dirty.

749. There is no evidence of that whatsoever.

750. The earliest place this quotation can be sourced is 1981.

751. I only know the other one.

752. The other one, which might be what?

753. It's the one, Rob, what's?

754. Phill, you know it.

755. Cal, what, it's, really.

756. I'm still stuck on the no washing.

757. "Pas ce soir, Josephine."

758. Ah, got away with it.

759. Josephine on the right there,

760. she's got the same black eyes that all the people

761. in my pictures have got on my computer

762. when I try and get rid of the red eye.

763. And they end up with massive black dots.

764. They look like some sort of zombie.

765. Anyway, sorry you fell into our trap,

766. but now you managed to avoid the trap

767. of "Not tonight, Josephine" which is the other thing

768. - he was suppose to have said. - That's the one.

769. That's the one I know.

770. That appears in a play WG Wills played

771. called "The Royal Divorce" which didn't come out

772. until 1891, some 70 years after the death of the emperor.

773. "An army marches on its stomach."

774. Yes, well, indeed, yes.

775. Did he say that?

776. Unlikely he said that to Josephine

777. but he might have done.

778. I think he made it more of a sort of point

779. about the logistics.

780. Maybe he discussed all sorts of battle stuff.

781. He might have done.

782. He said, "I'd prefer a lucky general to a skilled one"

783. he said, as well.

784. So we don't really know anything particular

785. that Josephine and Napoleon might have said to each other.

786. But we do know one thing,

787. "Journeys end in lovers' meeting."

788. That's Shakespeare.

789. In fourth place we have,

790. I'm sorry to say but he did fall

791. into some of our honey traps rather cumbrously,

792. Phill Jupitus with minus 16.

793. And,

794. our little kiwi fruit is third with minus eight.

795. Cal Wilson.

796. But hold the front page, second with minus three,

797. Rob Brydon.

798. With an astonishing plus four, Alan Davies is the winner!

799. Wow!

800. So, that's all from Rob, Phill, Cal and Alan and me.

801. The last word on journeys comes from Erma Bombeck, she said,

802. "Seize the moment, remember all those women on the Titanic

803. "who waved away the dessert cart."

804. Have a safe trip, goodnight.