QI 13x12

1. This programme contains strong language

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

3. good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,

4. good evening, good evening and welcome to QI,

5. where tonight we are musing on the medieval and the macabre.

6. Joining me in the Dark Ages are king of the castle, David Mitchell.

7. Queen of the May, Julia Zemiro.

8. Lord of the Manor, Matt Lucas.

9. And a "knight" on the tiles, Alan Davies.

10. And their buzzers are all very much connected with middle age.

11. David goes...

12. MEDIEVAL MONKS CHANT

13. Julia goes...

14. MEDIEVAL MONKS CHANT

15. It's the Middle Ages, all right. Matt goes...

16. MEDIEVAL MONKS CHANT

17. And Alan goes...

18. 'Dear sir, why, oh, why, oh, why

19. 'must we always have endless monks chanting on the BBC?'

20. Which of these did they not have in the Middle Ages?

21. Shush!

22. They didn't have Iron...

23. Well, no, I'm not... Yeah, I'm aware there is a group.

24. The most medieval thing seems that thing with the spikes that you

25. put someone in, that'll be the thing they didn't actually have then.

26. You are absolutely right.

27. The iron maiden, as you say, that sort of sarcophagus with spikes,

28. they weren't even thought of or imagined until 1793.

29. I was going to say, I thought they were invented by Paul Daniels

30. or somebody.

31. Spanish Inquisition, must be the Spanish Inquisition.

32. Well, they weren't used in the Spanish Inquisition,

33. because they weren't invented till 1793, which was...

34. After. My favourite one from the Spanish Inquisition was

35. they put a pole up your anus and they'd do it in such a way that

36. it avoids all of your vital organs and comes out by your shoulder

37. and then just leave you there for people to look at.

38. I like the first part of that.

39. It's an actual pole, it's not a Polish gentleman,

40. it's an actual pole.

41. Oh. Less keen then, less keen.

42. No.

43. I'd like it to be though. Yes.

44. So they didn't ever exist?

45. Well, in 1793, an archaeologist by the name of Johann Siebenkees,

46. gave an account of one which was a hoax.

47. And then 100 years or so later, a guy called Matthaus Pfau,

48. had one installed in Kyburg, his Swiss castle,

49. as a visitor attraction.

50. It became the prototype for all the other iron maidens

51. that were used in museums, and indeed in movies.

52. So they hadn't really been used as a method of torture?

53. No, that's what I mean, exactly. They were just a hoax, essentially.

54. "Here's one for you. Here's one for you!"

55. It is, isn't it?

56. But if we go back to my little manuscript word cloud,

57. maybe other ones didn't exist in medieval times.

58. Well, there wasn't much cardboard about.

59. So if there were greeting cards, they wouldn't have been...

60. Not big readers either, not many people could read.

61. Exactly, but in fact there were single sheet wood cuts

62. found from the mid-15th century, with pictures on them,

63. wishing the recipient a very good year, even.

64. It seems a rather modern idea.

65. But those banderols, those little kind of bubbles, were very popular

66. and they'd say things, probably not "sorry you've been unwell,"

67. but things like "a very good year," so they did exist.

68. What else might have existed or did exist in that era?

69. Yeah.

70. What they called sour sweet, in fact, Egurdouce,

71. and they used vinegar and sugar, cinnamon, orange, onions,

72. whatever they could get their hands on, currants.

73. Didn't they use onions to sweeten things?

74. Yeah, well, onions do contain more sugar than sugar beets,

75. as long as you cook them, hence the caramelised, you know, thing.

76. They're a bit onion-y, though, as well.

77. They can be sweet,

78. but you wouldn't want too many puddings being that onion-y.

79. No, do you know, it's true, they're not that sweet, because

80. if you ever go to the freezer and you go for a Mini Milk

81. and you've left a bag of onion rings next to the Mini Milks

82. in the freezer, the Mini Milks don't taste right.

83. What an insight!

84. The Mini Milks taste a bit onion-y. Yeah.

85. What is a Mini Milk?

86. Do you mean one of those sweets that looks like a tiny bottle of milk?

87. No, it's ice cream on a stick, basically.

88. It's basically what, when you want a Magnum

89. and your mum won't buy you a Magnum, you get a Mini Milk.

90. And you keep those with onion rings in the freezer?

91. Well, no, I didn't, I have separate shelves.

92. You've got to keep sweet and... Put me on camera!

93. You've got to keep sweet and savouries separate in freezers,

94. guys, come on!

95. No, Mini Milks are nice.

96. They're like, I don't know,

97. if you can't get a Sparkle, get a Mini Milk, I don't know.

98. What's a Sparkle?

99. I used to like Mivvies when I was a boy.

100. That's the point!

101. OK. Right.

102. I eat olives and I eat cheese.

103. This has all gone very weird!

104. Right.

105. I want to live in the Middle Ages now,

106. because they seem to have grown-up food, at least.

107. Yeah?

108. What is a prefab?

109. Oh, don't you have those in Australia?

110. It means a sort of modular building that is made outside the site...

111. .. and then brought to it and assembled.

112. It's associated with low-cost housing.

113. Did she?

114. No.

115. She grew up on an estate.

116. I just like the fact that people think she was common as muck!

117. Did he?

118. Didn't they bring prefab castles over, with the Norman...

119. Not the Normandy landings, the other way round.

120. The Hastings landing. They brought loads of...

121. Yeah, cos all the plug sockets are different here

122. and they wanted their own wiring.

123. There's certainly the example of prefab housing that we have

124. is the Vikings, in fact, who, when they invaded Orkney,

125. found there was virtually nowhere to live and so they came back with

126. supplies on longboats of prefab little houses.

127. And that's presumably where Vikings got the idea of flat-pack furniture.

128. That leaves us, I think, with official commemorative merchandise.

129. Would that be if you went to sort of...

130. They used to be very keen on seeing a rotting old bit of a saint.

131. Very much so.

132. If you were medieval, there was one saint who was more or less

133. contemporary, who was a martyr.

134. They would stop off at this cathedral where he was murdered, famously.

135. Who would that be?

136. Thomas Becket, exactly.

137. Points, solid points.

138. In the 12th century Thomas Becket was killed by Henry II

139. and they immediately tried to sell his blood

140. and that ran out rather quickly, so they diluted it.

141. But also they sold little swords,

142. little simulacra of the swords that had stabbed him

143. and you could buy one of those.

144. And it was official, you know.

145. It was, as it were, stamped with Canterbury.

146. Well, exactly. Yeah.

147. The Middle Ages, in fact, featured lots of very useful inventions,

148. but tell me, what has been called, "The wickedest, silliest,

149. "most insane and most disastrous book in world literature"?

150. The Liar, by Stephen Fry.

151. Ah! It probably is.

152. That would be a very sensible guess.

153. And, in the interests of balance, The Da Vinci Code also.

154. ALARM SOUNDS

155. These self-help books, the books that say

156. if you just change the way you think, you'll be fine.

157. I mean, you know, everyone's got a mood board for something.

158. A mood board.

159. Maybe there was a medieval mood board of some kind, but, yeah.

160. You're right to mention the medieval era

161. because it was a book of the 15th century.

162. Foxe's Book Of Martyrs?

163. No, that was a little later, but let me give you its title.

164. Malleus Maleficorum.

165. Maleficarum, I beg your pardon, because that's the point.

166. If you know your Latin, that means malleus.

167. If you take the "US" off and put a "T" from malleus.

168. A hammer. So malleus is hammer.

169. Timmy Mallet's autobiography?

170. No, you're not.

171. Is it the, mallific...

172. Is that like the bad doing hammer thing, you know?

173. Well, no, it's the "of the", that's genitive.

174. Come on, boy! That's genitive.

175. So it's the hammer OF the bad-doing people,

176. but the arum, not orum, tells you it's bad...

177. Yes!

178. No, the hammer of.

179. Yeah, yeah, no, exactly.

180. I want to beat them down.

181. Witches!

182. You said it!

183. Hammer of the witches, that means.

184. No!

185. We own the hammer... .. and we hammer away at them?

186. I am more confused than when I talked about Mini Milk.

187. We had a Latin parsing essay in which the malleus maleficarum

188. turned out to mean "the hammer of witches."

189. The way to beat witches.

190. And this was a text book about how to destroy and find witches.

191. Now, it was strange cos it was mid-15th century

192. and in the mid-15th century the Church banned belief in witches.

193. So this wasn't a time of witch burnings or anything of the nature.

194. But the very nature of the success of the book meant that

195. a slow movement grew in which witches should be found and burned

196. and tortured and so on.

197. This book was therefore called

198. the silliest, most wicked book ever written

199. because it made appalling claims about women that,

200. for example, that they dispossessed men of their penises.

201. As if!

202. They would take their penises, put them on a tray

203. and the penises would wander around of their own volition, eating...

204. .. eating oats and corn.

205. No, not corn, not maize corn.

206. Or like with a suction? How would they do it?

207. Do you know the theory about the witch's broomstick,

208. about how it might have developed?

209. Yeah, they put it up your anus and it reaches your shoulder...

210. It's funny you should say that, Matt Lucas,

211. because, yes, they put them up their anus.

212. Now, you may say, why would a woman stick a broomstick up her botty?

213. I'm so glad we're having this conversation.

214. But anyway, the point is, there is a substance that has been accused,

215. if you like, throughout history of being behind a lot of episodes

216. of mass hysteria and hallucination and so on,

217. and the substance is called ergot.

218. Have you heard of ergot?

219. You can get it if you live near a field of rye.

220. Where rye grows, it is a fungus that grows on rye

221. and its spores can be breathed in and it is not unlike lysergic acid,

222. which is the "L" of LSD and it causes weird trips.

223. Now, with any drug, there are different ways of ingesting it.

224. Intra-nasally, orally...

225. Or on a broomstick up your arse?

226. .. intravenously or in a suppository form.

227. So one way would be to take it and to grease up your...

228. I am not making this up!

229. Grease up your pole and scatter it with bits of ergot and then whoo!

230. And then you FEEL like you're flying...

231. That's basically it.

232. How much ergot are those kids at Hogwarts getting through?

233. It's not appropriate to encourage that kind of drug-taking

234. It isn't.

235. And there is another theory that it was actually intra-vaginal,

236. rather than intra-anal... ..so that it was covered on the broom

237. and then it went sort of smoothly up.

238. I can't see anything smooth about this at all.

239. I don't know.

240. Does another witch apply it to you? You do that yourself?

241. You'd be a great gynaecologist though, Stephen,

242. cos you're very calm, the way you're explaining everything.

243. Let's get more decent here.

244. How do you get a whole row of seats to yourself

245. on a Virgin Airways flight?

246. Oh, if you're REALLY fat.

247. That would, yeah, I think they might be able to get rid of an arm,

248. but I don't think they'd let you on if you were any fatter.

249. No, but like REALLY fat. Oh, I see what you mean.

250. Is the right answer. You'd have to die. Yeah.

251. You can't make people sit next to the dead.

252. That's the truth, isn't it?

253. Basically, I think that would be what it was.

254. And if you're flying, say, London to New York,

255. if you're near enough and someone dies,

256. you'd turn around and all the other passengers would go, "Oh, really!

257. "Could have had some consideration!"

258. But once you've passed that point of no return, as they call it,

259. then there's nothing you can do about it, except go on to New York.

260. But what if the plane's full?

261. Do they keep a row for the dead just in case?

262. In which case, if they keep a row for the dead,

263. Exactly.

264. There's always a row at the back and the crew use it for having a kip.

265. Yes.

266. .. because of the dead bloke.

267. Oh, now, this is what's interesting.

268. British Airways have about ten deaths a year in flight.

269. Well, that food is just...

270. That's for 36 million passengers.

271. So if you extrapolate out to the rather amazing 3.5 BILLION passengers

272. that fly every year, that means there must be around 1,000 deaths a year.

273. And different airlines have different ways of doing it.

274. Singapore Airlines have a corpse cupboard.

275. I don't know why it's funny, but it is,

276. so no-one need even know there's a dead person.

277. Oh, I'm sorry.

278. It's all so Fawlty Towers, isn't it?

279. If I ever die on a plane,

280. I should like to be stored in the overhead lockers.

281. Yes.

282. British Airways, however, you get a good deal if you die,

283. because you go to First Class.

284. Yeah.

285. One long-established steward said,

286. "Many years ago we used to give them a vodka and tonic, a Daily Mail

287. "and eye shades and tell passengers they were fine.

288. "We don't do that any more."

289. It's bad enough being dead, but having to hold a Daily Mail!

290. Holy crap!

291. The Daily Mail and other newspapers, not just the Daily Mail,

292. when they talk about their circulation, they are also

293. including the newspapers that they give away for free.

294. So I don't think the airlines, or any of those kind of institutions

295. actually PAY for the newspapers. Yeah.

296. Yes.

297. But the dead are very, very right wing.

298. It's true.

299. All right, now, Matt, what's dense, slimy, lives at the bottom of the sea

300. and is called...?

301. David Walliams!

302. He's a very strong swimmer, isn't he? He's a very strong swimmer.

303. Oh, dear.

304. Matt, what's dense, slimy, lives at the bottom of the sea

305. and is called Matt?

306. Yeah!

307. And called Matt? Is it just a mat?

308. Well, yes. It's a mat.

309. Yeah, so I am clever.

310. Is it some kind of sea vegetable?

311. It's sea life, sea matter, that's cohered.

312. How big would it be, a mat?

313. Yeah.

314. Certainly the biggest we know of is about the size of Greece.

315. It's not in Greece or near Greece.

316. It's off the coast of Peru and Chile.

317. Ugh, look at David Walliams(!)

318. Stop it!

319. No, don't stop, carry on.

320. It's microbial, it's a whole load of microbes,

321. so many of them that they can create this matter that's thick and...

322. Mat matter, exactly.

323. Don't say anything bad about them, because we owe the photosynthesis

324. and the oxygen-rich nature of our own atmosphere to these.

325. We couldn't live without them. They're very important.

326. I've been served that in a motorway service station.

327. They eat hydrogen and they breathe nitrates

328. and they live in streams and lakes, as well as the ocean.

329. They're very, very, very exciting.

330. Here, I know you like wonderful information, the total weight of

331. microbes in the ocean is equivalent to 240 BILLION African elephants.

332. The good thing about that is that really helps me visualise that.

333. Let me help you more then.

334. 35 elephants made of microbes for everyone on the planet.

335. So each of us have got 35 elephants made of microbes surrounding us now.

336. 35, that's a lot of elephants.

337. The time has come to rule out lifting all that in one go.

338. You're right.

339. I never knew that the ocean was made up of 35,000 billion elephants.

340. I've really been educated.

341. No wonder elephants are endangered,

342. when you think of the number who've been drowned

343. to create a mat for the bottom of the sea.

344. That's probably why the trunks... They were trying to evolve snorkels.

345. Oh, dear.

346. I can see that I've not really explained myself very well.

347. And now for something slightly mucky.

348. Alan, have you ever had your dirt-hole burgled

349. without your knowledge?

350. Do you know what, I'm not going to answer that.

351. Fair enough.

352. I'm actually writing to Points Of View now, at this point.

353. It's a question to do with the macabre side of human life - muck.

354. Oh, is this something like, in some contexts,

355. excrement has a value? Like people want it for...

356. Where there's muck...

357. and so, people would sell their... You know, their shit, and so,

358. obviously, other people would steal it.

359. Which gave it a value. And if something has a value,

360. there will always be some who wish to steal it.

361. Is this in medieval times, or now?

362. No, it's not medieval, it's 18th and 19th centuries.

363. How so?

364. Because if I'd have had my dirt-hole burgled without my knowledge,

365. I wouldn't know about it, would I?

366. Touche! You're absolutely right.

367. Is the right answer.

368. Possibly, yeah.

369. So, people kept their rubbish in holes that could be collected.

370. It was a bin collection.

371. The dustmen and the dustcart were often collecting dust, as well,

372. because it was simply dirt that people had swept up

373. and poured into a little hole or into a bucket in a hole -

374. the dirt hole. Because everything was recycled, even family pets,

375. when they died, had a value. You know, a white cat - sixpence,

376. a multicoloured cat - fourpence.

377. In those days, the "flying dustmen", as they were called,

378. the people who came to collect it, they would pay to get it,

379. rather than you paying rates to have it removed.

380. There was hardware and software.

381. The software would be things like a dead cat.

382. And the hardware is broken crockery, oyster shells

383. and things like that, which road-builders could use.

384. Anyway, one last medieval question.

385. How many uses can you think of for a monk's earwax?

386. Oh, it's endless. Candles.

387. They might have done. But um...

388. Not much else to do in a monastery, is there?

389. Well, I know. I know. Polishing their own wood.

390. What have monks handed down to us?

391. Mostly? Bibles and manuscripts, illustrated...

392. Spend their lifetime writing them out, copying them out.

393. Inscriptorial. Yes.

394. There's a picture of a happy monk doing his illuminations.

395. And that side of it, the paint-y side of it is,

396. they used a substance called glair,

397. G-L-A-I-R,

398. and it tended to get bubbled.

399. But they found, if they added earwax into it,

400. they could get a really smooth, beautiful lustre and sheen

401. to the illustrations that they were doing,

402. which have lasted us down the centuries.

403. How do you think of that though, to go, "Hmm, I'll paint with that"?

404. A thing you might try at home

405. is that you could take a pint of foaming beer

406. and then pop a little earwax

407. into the head of your foaming tankard,

408. and the bubbles should collapse.

409. That's...

410. I think you're right.

411. It would be better if it was the other way round,

412. that you had a sort of flat liquid

413. and then you put a bit of earwax in, and it went fizzy.

414. Chuck some sodium in your beer, that should work.

415. Well, there is that!

416. They left other little things for us, little minusculae,

417. little hands that pointed to certain sections of the text in the Bible.

418. I don't know if you can see one on the left?

419. If you've read the Name Of The Rose,

420. they left clues everywhere about all sorts.

421. Yeah, and octopuses, you can see an octopus at the top.

422. They liked octopuses.

423. Is that a person with a huge sort of trumpet up his bottom?

424. It's something odd, isn't it?

425. I don't know what they're doing there. They're praising the Lord.

426. And above, they'd often have knights fighting snails.

427. HE TOOTS

428. Exactly.

429. That the old fart trumpet was the favourite.

430. I was going to say on a Sunday, but perhaps not.

431. Well, they used to leave...

432. HE PARPS

433. Dinner!

434. They used to leave little remarks like, "Oh, God, it's cold in here"

435. or, "I'm so bored"... .. just like anybody would.

436. Exactly like that.

437. No-one's quite sure.

438. But it's a common feature, knights versus snails.

439. They seem to like it.

440. Some people may think it was a symbol of the struggle of the poor

441. against the aristocracy.

442. I think people shouldn't watch this show any more.

443. Do you think they had loads of snails

444. in these cold, damp monasteries?

445. There were snails everywhere and they were hoping...

446. That could be it!

447. and help them deal with the snail infestation problem.

448. Possibly, possibly...

449. Which means it's time now...

450. ..to place various intimate parts of you

451. into the thumbscrew of General Ignorance.

452. Fingers on buzzers, please.

453. Where are most missionaries positioned?

454. GREGORIAN CHANTING

455. Matt?

456. I'm going to guess that most of them are in Utah,

457. where the Mormons tend to kind of congregate,

458. because they haven't yet been assigned their places to go to.

459. Interesting. Interesting answer.

460. But I'm talking about which is the country

461. that receives the most incoming? GREGORIAN CHANTING

462. No.

463. I'm talking about them before they've gone there.

464. So, I'm not asking you where the most missionaries come FROM,

465. I'm asking where do they...?

466. I know, but I am still getting to that point.

467. This doesn't work by you answering the question

468. that I haven't asked.

469. My guess is China.

470. Oh, it's a possibility.

471. Well, it is a possibility, but it's not a fact.

472. It's not Africa, no. No.

473. KLAXON BLARES

474. England is much closer...

475. Not South America, not SOUTH America.

476. Not Central, North America.

477. America. Utah.

478. Well, I think you'll find Utah is in America!

479. But I specifically said, "Where are the most missionaries

480. "who've come from outside one country?"

481. I know, but I didn't choose to answer that.

482. All right, I'm going to give you points,

483. you deserve them for sheer tenacity.

484. So, the fact is, we don't quite know why missionaries...

485. Some think they just want to go to a very rich country.

486. Others think these missionaries believe America has lapsed into sin.

487. But anyway, more missionaries go to the United States

488. than anywhere else.

489. Do an impression of someone in the stocks.

490. Fuck off, fuck off!

491. KLAXON BLARES

492. It's like that, isn't it? Yeah.

493. Points to Mitchell, yes, absolutely right.

494. That's a pillory or "thews", as they're also known.

495. But, yeah, putting them... That's stocks.

496. I'm into public shaming, though.

497. If you've done something bad, people can go, "Oh, don't do it again."

498. And you go, "Oh, that was awful,

499. "I won't have friends if I do this again."

500. And then you go back into society, I don't think it's so bad.

501. You're very right. They could be quite forgiving.

502. Sometimes, people had flowers thrown at them if they'd...

503. Daniel Defoe, when he was in the stocks,

504. because he'd offended the Church, people threw flowers at him.

505. Those, no, those are...

506. He wasn't in the stocks, sorry. He was, he was pilloried,

507. I think is the safest way.

508. If people threw horrible things at you - big heavy things -

509. Yeah, no, absolutely.

510. And some people took great lengths to protect themselves as a result.

511. There was a gentleman here, Charles Hitchen,

512. who was convicted of attempted sodomy,

513. and he went into the stocks wearing a suit of armour.

514. What happened to successful ones?

515. Ones that actually managed to bring it off, as it were?

516. Presumably, you have to pay a lot for that

517. when you were in the stocks.

518. The stocks weren't for your head and arms, just for your legs.

519. And with that, our mosey through the medieval macabre

520. must come to an end.

521. We have scores.

522. Mercy, mercy me.

523. Well, in joint first position,

524. with minus 6, Matt and Julia!

525. In third place, with minus 10,

526. David Mitchell!

527. But the witch we shall be burning this evening

528. is Alan Davies with minus 25!

529. Ah...

530. Well, it only remains for me to thank Matt, David, Julia and Alan.

531. And the last word on the Middle Ages comes from Bennett Cerf,

532. "Middle age is when your contemporaries are so grey

533. "and wrinkled and bald, they don't recognise you."

534. Goodnight.