QI 10x7

1. Well, goooooood...

2. evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening.

3. And to a greater or lesser extent, good evening, and welcome to QI,

4. where tonight we'll be delving into the seedy world of journalism.

5. Before we start sexing up the facts,

6. let's look at who's going to be on my press-gang.

7. Hold the front page, it's Shappi Khorsandi!

8. Drop the dead donkey, it's Ross Noble.

9. Another world exclusive - Johnny Vegas!

10. And, personally responsible for eating Freddie Starr's hamster,

11. Alan Davies.

12. Now, before we press on, let's hear their buzzers.

13. Shappi goes...

14. That's newsy. Ross goes...

15. Quite newsy, too. Johnny goes...

16. And Alan goes...

17. Very pleasing.

18. That's great! So you've actually given...?

19. It's A Knockout, yeah.

20. You've given us the It's A Knockout theme?

21. So at any point we can play that and just wrestle around in that.

22. I could go "HA-HA-HA-HA!"

23. Then every time I press mine, something terrible will happen.

24. Yes, well, yes...

25. I can't press my buzzer at all, in case there's a tsunami.

26. A volcano has killed the population of Sunderland.

27. Anyway, let's start.

28. What kind of person lived here?

29. Yes, already the tragic tones.

30. Initially, you think a very angry person that's quite small. Yes.

31. Small-minded, or just small?

32. It did genuinely exist, this Daily Mail model village.

33. This was after the First World War, when housing was in short supply

34. and we were trying to build a land fit for heroes...

35. And it was made entirely of Daily Mail papier mache, was it?

36. Well, the Daily Mail was never shy about trying to draw

37. attention to itself with publicity stunts of all kinds -

38. athletic stunts, firsts in aviation, and so on.

39. It was the Daily Mail that sponsored Amy Johnson to fly to Australia, for example.

40. And they decided that they would lead the world,

41. and they thought they would contribute to a model village.

42. I can see that, like if they go, "Let's have an air race,

43. "let's try and cross the Atlantic," they're all quite...

44. ..like that. But then, model village... But then...

45. You know, it's the sort of thing where, like, Richard Branson said,

46. "I'm going to send a rocket to the moon and I'm going to take people,"

47. and they go, "Wow, Branson's amazing!"

48. And when we get here, I'm going to build a model village!

49. Well, I suppose you have to go back to after 1919,

50. all those people wiped out by Spanish flu, before that

51. all the people wiped out by the First World War,

52. and the Daily Mail thought we needed a new, modern Britain

53. with new, modern cities, and so they devised this village

54. which they thought was going to be absolutely marvellous.

55. But the plans were a little overambitious,

56. and they were overtaken by the...

57. Guardian village.

58. The company who owned the land around

59. and who named this new town Welwyn Garden City.

60. Oooh. Ah.

61. There it was, the Daily Mail model village at Welwyn Garden City, 1922.

62. It's a good job it wasn't the Sunday Sport model village,

63. because it would be the "Well-In Garden City!"

64. Phwoarr!

65. Check out the fronts of those houses!

66. Total frontage!

67. And there is always the back alley, too!

68. That was a rubbish model village, it's clearly full-size.

69. Yeah, don't forget "model" has two meanings -

70. there's "model" in the sense of a paragon, a model of its kind.

71. That's what they meant by it. It's got three meanings, hasn't it?

72. Because "model village" everyone just walks around like that.

73. The high street is called "The Catwalk", yeah.

74. Everyone's just in their pants. That's true!

75. I have to say, I weep when I think of my childhood

76. and the amount of time we spent around a model village...

77. Oh, Bekonscot? .. and what kids have today.

78. Yeah. They've got so much, and my mum and dad were going,

79. "Look at that, it's Big Ben but this big,"

80. and we'd go, "Wow."

81. Your dad didn't drink.

82. My dad would go to a model village, drink and go, "I'm King Kong!"

83. And just start smashing stuff!

84. Oh, how we'd laugh!

85. You know why I can't go to model villages?

86. Cos when you walk around, because of the painted faces,

87. they all look like people who've been trapped by witchcraft.

88. They do, don't they? "Help, get me out of here!

89. "I'm not really queuing for a newspaper."

90. And I come home, shrouded in guilt, and drink.

91. I don't know enough about the dark arts to make them all fully-sized again.

92. Then you could save them.

93. Tell me about the Daily Mail, who founded the Daily Mail?

94. Lord Beaverbrook. Satan.

95. Not Lord Beaverbrook, that's The Express - Satan is closer.

96. Was it just a load of beavers in a brook?

97. No, it's a family that still exists and still controls the group.

98. Is it the Patak family?

99. No, it's not the Pataks.

100. That would be great!

101. That would be pleasing. If we find out the spice dynasty...

102. It was founded in 1896 by Alfred Harmsworth,

103. who later became Lord Northcliffe.

104. So, Alfred Harmsworth was a great showman

105. and he had a brilliant gift for making Daily Mail readers

106. think they kind of owned The Mail, so he was always having competitions

107. asking them how The Mail could be improved, for example.

108. There were people who wrote in and said,

109. "You should perforate your articles so we could tear them out, like stamps,"

110. which is an interesting idea.

111. Are you sure that wasn't for toilet paper?

112. Someone else suggested each page should be perfumed differently, so it smelt different.

113. What if you confused the chip paper with the toilet paper?

114. Madness would ensue.

115. But before he was a press baron,

116. he actually wrote a rather QI-style book,

117. which had the marvellous title of

118. "Answers To Correspondents On Every Subject Under The Sun."

119. The first edition contained articles with headlines,

120. "What The Queen Eats", "How To Cure Freckles",

121. and "Why Jews Don't Ride Bicycles."

122. And those three answers covered everything?

123. That wasn't the sum of the questions. Oh, right.

124. But part of the showman in him was that he guaranteed that,

125. if you died with a copy of that book on you, your estate would get £200.

126. He was a real showman.

127. Now, listen to this obituary,

128. and let me know what kind of person is being described.

129. "He was a tireless raconteur,

130. "who gave colourful accounts of his exploits,

131. "but did not suffer fools gladly.

132. "An uncompromisingly direct ladies' man,

133. "he was affable and hospitable at every hour,

134. "but he did not uphold the highest ethical standards of the City."

135. Sounds like a bit of a wrong 'un. Yes.

136. Because they're all things that you kind of...

137. I've got a problem with that expression,

138. "Didn't suffer fools gladly." You've put your finger on it.

139. Who does? Who does suffer fools gladly?

140. Who goes, "I want to spend the weekend with a fool?"

141. You have, you're on my team.

142. You've put your finger on it, Shappi.

143. The point is, all those phrases are what used to be obituary codes,

144. and basically you had to translate it.

145. "A tireless raconteur" means a crashing bore.

146. Is it Nick Clegg?

147. It's not one individual, it's just these different things.

148. "Affable and hospitable at every hour",

149. or simply convivial - a drunk.

150. Basically, a terrible drunk.

151. "Uncompromisingly direct ladies' man" -

152. a serial groper.

153. You'd also get, "Devoted much of his time to the Boys' Brigade and the Boy Scouts."

154. That also tells you a lot about such figures.

155. "Gave colourful accounts of his exploits." Liar.

156. Liar, exactly.

157. "Did not uphold the highest ethical standards of the City."

158. Thief. Yeah, fraudster, basically.

159. And "Did not suffer fools gladly." Intolerant!

160. A total shit, exactly.

161. A howling shit.

162. And these were the codes, and you read the obituaries

163. and you kind of understood what was being said about them.

164. But can you name anyone who's actually read his own, premature obituary?

165. Has anyone ever read their own obituary while being alive?

166. I wouldn't be surprised if there's someone who was presumed dead

167. during the war or something and then came back. Might have been found, yes.

168. There are two stories, one was that Alfred Nobel read his own obituary

169. and was described as being "a merchant of death"

170. because he invented... Dynamite.

171. Dynamite, yes, exactly.

172. And he was so horrified, and he wasn't dead,

173. that he instituted the Nobel Prizes

174. in order to try and reclaim his name.

175. That is not, in fact, a true story, it's a myth.

176. The other one is Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican black nationalist,

177. apparently died as a result of reading his obituary.

178. He had a stroke when he read the Chicago Defender newspaper,

179. which printed his obituary describing him as

180. "broke, alone and unpopular."

181. Awww.

182. Terribly sad. That's like Googling yourself.

183. Mine would just say, "It's safe to come out now."

184. "He's gone, honest."

185. "Friends who knew him said, 'Yes, he really was like that.'"

186. The other day, I was driving through Islington,

187. and there was a hearse slowing everything down,

188. and I did say to my wife, "If it's my funeral,

189. "tell the bloke driving the hearse to step on it, I would not..."

190. Vroom!

191. Instead of having a coffin, as well, just have the body

192. so that as you're going round the corners you're slamming against...

193. Get some chickens...

194. Get some chickens in a cage and some boxes to drive through,

195. just make it look like...

196. Like an A Team finale.

197. What music do you want your coffin to go...?

198. When your coffin disappears? The Sweeney theme.

199. That would be a good one.

200. The end music when it's really slow.

201. When the foot presses on the accelerator.

202. I'd quite like the music from 'Allo, 'Allo

203. with "You have been watching..." and my body like that.

204. When my dad died, he was a big fan of sailing,

205. so we gave him a Viking send off.

206. We put his ashes in a boat and tried to set fire to it.

207. But, cos it was in the North Sea, it wouldn't light...

208. ..so what we did was, we were trying to fill the boat full of his ashes,

209. and we were going, "Do you tip the ashes straight into the boat, or do you put them in bags?"

210. And my mum, who's ever practical, went,

211. "I've got some sandwich bags, I'll get some sandwich bags."

212. So we went out to sea, then off he went and shot off into the distance.

213. Was it a remote-controlled boat?

214. It was, yeah! Like a proper big yacht. You're joking!

215. No, seriously.

216. You sent your dad off with four double-As? We did!

217. Keep going till the batteries run out!

218. Going around in circles!

219. You're there with an air rifle, like that.

220. And the people from the miniature village were going, "Help that man!"

221. "Someone, help him!"

222. A little lifeboat comes out.

223. Did you not argue over who used the remote control?

224. That wouldn't work in our family.

225. "Give it here, you're doing it wrong!"

226. "He was my dad, too! Give us a go!"

227. The word "dignity" is not the first...

228. This is the thing, that's exactly what he would have wanted,

229. and I've said the same thing - like Hunter S Thompson, when he died,

230. he was put in a cannon and fired off across the valley he used to own,

231. and what I'd quite like to do is be put in pepper spray,

232. and then people that I don't like

233. I'm going to get my wife to go "Fffft!" like that.

234. Face full of Noble!

235. Oh, my God, how did we get here? I can't even remember.

236. The fact is, no matter how many character flaws you have,

237. you can be sure they'll be euphemistically dealt with

238. in your obituary.

239. Journalists are not above a bit of muck-raking, of course,

240. but can you describe the most expensive piece of shit

241. to come out of a British bank?

242. Is it some sort of fossilised, dinosodic poo in the...?

243. How extraordinary you are, Ross Noble.

244. For 20 minutes you've been gibbering like an idiot...

245. .. suddenly you've come up with a brilliant answer.

246. You're absolutely right.

247. The only way you could be righter is if you could give me

248. a technical name for fossilised shit.

249. Is there going to be faeces in the thing? Well, yes,

250. you can call it palaeontofaeces, or you can call it coprolite.

251. "Copra" is shit in Latin.

252. Coprolite sounds like a chocolate bar.

253. It does, rather, doesn't it? Not a very nice one.

254. But it was a Lloyds Bank in York, of all places,

255. and they found this period poo in 1972.

256. It was 23 centimetres long, five centimetres wide, a human poo.

257. It was a Viking poo.

258. Did they find this within the bank, or was it...?

259. I'm taking it was a staff day out.

260. To be honest, it just looks like an old Wotsit to me. It does,

261. but when you examine it more closely you will see it is a poo,

262. and you can actually even determine what was eaten,

263. and that is cereal bran, so they were quite healthy and regular,

264. and hence the...

265. I wouldn't say it's the most normal looking stool I've ever seen...

266. So you're telling me that every time I go to the loo

267. I am flushing away millions?

268. In future I'm going to go to my bank and have a shit there.

269. And I'm going to tag it so that my family in future...

270. You're going to walk in and say, "I'm just going to make a deposit."

271. Oh, dear, oh, dear.

272. The poo's discoverer, Andrew "Bones" Jones,

273. said, "this is the most..."

274. ".. the most exciting piece of excrement I've ever seen.

275. "In its own way, it's as valuable as the Crown Jewels."

276. There was another exciting coprolite that was discovered.

277. It was a T Rex turd that was found in Saskatchewan in 1998,

278. and that was 17 inches long and six inches thick.

279. And that was reckoned to be a bit of it knocked off,

280. that the actual turd would have been even bigger.

281. How did they know?

282. Was there a dead T Rex next to it that had pooed itself to death?

283. It was found reaching for the toilet roll with its tiny claws.

284. Coprolites are not everybody's cup of tea,

285. collecting fossilised turds...

286. People like poo, though. They do, don't they?

287. They do like poo, they like drawing with poo.

288. I went to someone's house and they had this elephant poo painting.

289. But when communication breaks down, it does make a bold statement.

290. When you write something on the wall, like, "Call me a taxi..."

291. they do do it, honestly.

292. You know like one of them parties when you've had enough?

293. You write on the wall with your own faeces,

294. people start listening to you!

295. You've just got to do one big enough to go,

296. "I was not fond of the cheesecake..."

297. ".. and considering you're out of vodka and I'm low on turd,

298. "I would like to go home now."

299. The odd thing is when the forensic scientists come in and find out

300. that it was Johnny Vegas's poo, but it was Lorraine Kelly's handwriting.

301. Yeah, the diction was perfect,

302. and even the sweetcorn was used for little commas.

303. Awww!

304. Oh, now! Now, there's the line!

305. We've found the line.

306. You've crossed a boundary.

307. Are you finding you're not selling as much Tupperware at these parties?

308. I don't mean to keep it in that area, but I will.

309. My wife once had, you know those bath bomb things? Yes.

310. Yeah, the fizzy ones. Yeah, "lass grenades" I call them.

311. You chuck them in the bath and they fizz up

312. and fill the bath with glitter, and I didn't realise,

313. went in the bath, and quite a lot of glitter had gone in my...

314. in my bum, and I didn't realise,

315. and I did a poo, and I looked into the toilet,

316. and it was sparkling, right...

317. I, honestly, for a minute I thought I had a magic arse.

318. I honestly did. Yeah.

319. That was lovely.

320. That's a beautiful story. Anyway, moving on.

321. Now, some people will do anything for fame.

322. But what did The Famous Five have lashings of?

323. Ginger beer.

324. No!

325. Someone had to say it. I read all of those books.

326. I'm gutted that I don't know.

327. It's funny, cos in the books there is only one foodstuff that is referred to

328. in all the Famous Five books, of which they had lashings. Yeah, they... They eat the dog.

329. Treacle. They don't eat the dog, no.

330. Asbestos.

331. They had lashings of asbestos.

332. Before they realised just how dangerous it was in powdered form.

333. The dog in The Famous Five was Asbestos? No, not the dog.

334. Sorry, I thought the dog was Asbestos. They just packed lots of asbestos

335. for its fire-retardant qualities.

336. Asbestos is a very good name for a dog. It's good, isn't it? Asbestos!

337. As-bes-tos!

338. The reason...

339. My uncle had a dog named after Charlie Mingus, the jazz musician. Yeah.

340. Mingus. Problem was, is that he's got the same accent as me.

341. He'd be in the Park, and he just be shouting, "Mingus! Mingus!"

342. And the... The local girls thought that he was... Yeah, talking to them.

343. "Mingus!"Piss off!"

344. "Mingus!" "Who are you calling mingers?"

345. And it led to all sorts of problems. I'm sure it did.

346. Why do we think of the lashings of ginger beer?

347. Because of The Comic Strip Presents...

348. Because The Comic Strip Presents..., their first film was The Comic Strip Presents Five Go Mad In Dorset...

349. It's very funny. .. and they kept going on about having lashings of ginger beer.

350. But in the actual books, there is no reference to lashings of ginger beer.

351. But in one of the books, Five Go Down To The Sea,

352. they did arrive at a Cornish farm and immediately settled down to

353. a high tea of lettuce, tomatoes, onions, radishes,

354. mustard and cress, carrot grated up and lashings of hard-boiled eggs.

355. Eggs! I was going to say eggs! You were going to say that!

356. They always go in to farmhouses and get free eggs.

357. The only lashings Enid Blyton gave The Famous Five were lashings of hard-boiled eggs.

358. They never had lashings of ginger beer. That's a terrible picnic.

359. Who has onions at a picnic?

360. It's very hard to lash an egg.

361. Unless you're in some sort of S&M thing with Humpty Dumpty.

362. That's why they couldn't put him back together again.

363. I'll give you 10 points if you can give me, within three,

364. the number of books that Enid Blyton wrote a year.

365. 42. You were damn close. You were just out of range, I'm afraid.

366. She actually wrote 37 books a year.

367. And, talking of busy women, let's move on to another question here.

368. Why have we never heard of Harriet Quimby?

369. You've heard of Fred Quimby who produced the... Tom and Jerry. Tom and Jerry.

370. And Mayor Quimby in The Simpsons,

371. but Harriet was the first American woman to become a licensed pilot,

372. and the first woman to fly the English Channel.

373. But unfortunately, it just so happened her record-breaking flight didn't make the news

374. because she completed it the day after the Titanic sank.

375. So, it just was a damp squib, to say the least.

376. She was famous in her day. She was one of the very first screenwriters at the very

377. beginning of Hollywood. She wrote seven scenarios for the father of cinema, DW Griffith.

378. She died aged 37 at an aviation meet, sadly crashing.

379. But it was an impressive and a short and brilliant life.

380. Who was the first man to fly the Channel, do you remember?

381. Oh, we all know him! We all know the MEN that fly the channel.

382. A mean, I don't... Well, he was the first person.

383. Louis Bleriot. It was one of the great achievements.

384. He flew from England to France, but the French authorities,

385. when he landed, didn't have a form,

386. and so they signed him in as having landed

387. on a yacht called Monoplane, because that's the best they could do.

388. It was a huge feat at the time, and it was a £1,000 prize offered by...?

389. The Daily Mail? Of course, the Daily Mail. Well done. Exactly.

390. But you know what, Harriet did that backwards and in heels.

391. Exactly. Very good. Good point. Thank you.

392. I'm sure it was harder for her.

393. But it can be...

394. It can be very difficult to die at the wrong time.

395. Can you think of people who died unfortunately on the same day

396. as somebody even better known than themselves?

397. Oh, I know!

398. Mother Teresa. Who died the same day as...? Diana. The Princess of Wales.

399. Precisely, so she was not only below the fold, she was over the page.

400. I only realised couple of months ago Mother Teresa was dead. Yes, yes.

401. 22nd of November 1963. Who died then? Kennedy. Right, so, JFK.

402. That was obviously huge news, the American president dying.

403. As it happens, two very distinguished authors died on the same day.

404. Both British, as it happens.

405. CS Lewis and Aldous Huxley both died on the same day as Kennedy,

406. so both got rather tiny-winy little obituaries.

407. So, moving on.

408. What kind of hat did they wear in the Wild West? 10 gallon hat.

409. Ten gallon hat?

410. Five gallon hat?

411. No, no. Of course, cos now it's litres, isn't it? 45 litre?

412. No litres or gallons. Was it a Stetson? Can I have Stetson?

413. It wasn't Stetson, no.

414. The most popular hat by far... A cap, a flat cap. No.

415. It was the, it was the... Say it. A bowler hat.

416. Yes, a bowler hat is the right answer.

417. Far and away. There we are.

418. We think of the bowler hat as the British businessman,

419. but in fact it was THE preferred hat in the West.

420. That's a pretty wild bunch, there. Butch Cassidy, seated front right.

421. Sundance Kid, Harry Longabaugh, of course, front left.

422. In fact, their pride in having their photographs taken with those hats was their undoing,

423. because the Pinkerton agency reproduced the photographs

424. and gave it to their agents, who tracked them down and killed them.

425. It was hat makers Thomas and William Bowler who created the hat,

426. but they weren't known as bowler hats in America, nor are they to this day. What do they call them?

427. Derbies. Derbies, yes. "Darbies" or "derbies", yeah.

428. Bowlers basically were much more common in the Wild West than Stetsons.

429. Who fancies a shoot-out with a real, live vortex canon?

430. I've given you one each. You've got a box. See that box there?

431. It's simply a box, all right?

432. Now, the hole is where the vortex emerges,

433. so if you lean it so that the hole is pointing at the target, all right?

434. And basically, what you've got to do is smack the side of the box.

435. All right? After three, two, one... Smack!

436. Very good. There you are! Wow!

437. But what we can...

438. Yes. What we can do, before you destroy the box...

439. Before you destroy the box, you can do something even more exciting,

440. and that is fill it with smoke,

441. and it will demonstrate what, in fact, was happening with the air.

442. You should all have smoke machines.

443. That's it, fill it with smoke. Fill it with smoke. And now...

444. Look! Look at that!

445. Just a gentle tap. That is a vortex, those beautiful smoke rings.

446. A lovely one there.

447. I've got... I've got an enormous cannon here.

448. I'm going to fill mine with...

449. I'll see if I can get mine across the... Across the room here.

450. You can even chase each other!

451. Here we go. I've got it the wrong way round.

452. We'll let the smoke drift a little.

453. Would anyone like a big dustbin?

454. It's simply pressure of air creating this wonderful vortex.

455. No, it's not, it's magic. Nice one, Alan!

456. Hey, with this kind of magic we could make the tiny people big again.

457. Basically, ladies and gentlemen, that's it.

458. Hours of fun can be had

459. playing with your own home-made vortex canon. Quick! More smoke!

460. And I suppose it must be time now for me to give the scores.

461. And how interesting they are.

462. In first place, with minus 5, is Ross Noble.

463. Second equal with minus 6, Alan Davies and Johnny Vegas.

464. And a slightly unhappy Shappi with minus 17.

465. Those lovely smoke rings. Lovely smoke rings.

466. So, that's all from Shappi, Johnny, Ross, Alan and me.

467. And I will leave you with this from Abraham Lincoln.

468. "The trouble with quotes taken from the Internet is that you can never know if they are genuine."

469. Thank you and goodnight.