QI 13x15

1. Goooooood evening,

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

3. and welcome to QI,

4. where, tonight, we're mixing and matching

5. a medley of things beginning with M.

6. Now, let's meet our makers.

7. The matchless James Acaster.

8. The match-fit Jo Brand.

9. The match made in heaven, Bill Bailey.

10. And match abandoned, Alan Davies.

11. So, let's hear you mix.

12. James goes...

13. EGG BEING BEATEN

14. - That's mixing. - Is it?

15. Yeah, you're beating an egg, I think.

16. - Beating something.

17. Now.

18. You're on your first warning. LAUGHTER

19. Jo goes...

20. ELECTRIC WHISK MIXING

21. Yes, that's masturbation as I know it.

22. I'd love to know what the machine is, wouldn't you?

23. Bill goes...

24. TURNTABLE SCRATCHING

25. Ah, yeah. I like it, yes.

26. That's masturbation as I know it.

27. So, three mixes and Alan goes...

28. MATCH OF THE DAY THEME PLAYS

29. - Ah, you see. - A match. - Yeah.

30. So, on with the game.

31. Now our first "M" tonight is "M" for metals.

32. Can you see anything on this board, here, that does not contain metal?

33. - Oh. - You've got a mushroom,

34. the balloon, a stack of coins,

35. a monkey, a star, an Alan Davies...

36. - of some kind. - An Alan Davies.

37. Well, bodies do contain metal, so it can't be...

38. - They do. - It can't be you...

39. - Alan, you contain metal. - Yes. - You do. - I do.

40. - Enough iron to make a nail. - Alan specifically?

41. - Yeah, just Alan. - Just Alan. He can make a nail.

42. But no, that's right, isn't it?

43. The body contains enough iron to make a nail -

44. phosphorus, carbon, water...

45. - Magnesium. - Lime.

46. - Gold, actually. - A person...

47. You could boil it down to a half-decent kids' party.

48. You could get a paddling pool, some fireworks and a tequila slammer.

49. - All inside us, churning away. - All inside. So, it can't be Alan.

50. No, it's not me. And I don't... I'm...

51. - Now, look... - Now.

52. - Things that grow probably have got metal in them... - Yes.

53. - .. that's my thinking. - Yeah.

54. The fact is, you've brilliantly avoided everything

55. cos all those things contain metals.

56. When the universe was created...

57. 4,000 years ago...

58. - 4,000 years ago, as it says in the Bible. - ..by our Lord.

59. .. only two elements were created at that time.

60. Gold and silver.

61. - Yes.

62. - It was... - Frankincense and myrrh.

63. Cheese and pickle.

64. - They are still the most abundant elements in the universe. - Helium!

65. 99% of the universe is composed of?

66. Helium and sarcasm.

67. Helium and...

68. Hydrogen?

69. - Hydrogen is correct. - Yes.

70. And then the first two elements to be created,

71. after hydrogen and helium,

72. which are both gases,

73. were both metals.

74. Imagine God was rather depressed by having created the universe.

75. - A knife. - I should think he bloody well was. I would be. - Yeah.

76. So, if you're depressed, what's the metal you'd go for?

77. - Lithium. - Lithium.

78. Lithium was one of them and the other was beryllium.

79. - Oh, beryllium. - Beryllium, I love that one. - Beryllium.

80. And how were they created? What was the process?

81. It was in the stars.

82. - Fusion? - Fusion.

83. - You're on fire. - Crikey!

84. Like the stars, very good.

85. Yeah.

86. And in that fusion, EVERYTHING was made.

87. And we are, as Carl Sagan famously said, we are made of star stuff.

88. We are made of the stuff that was created in those fusion moments.

89. Yes, we are.

90. And astronomers call anything

91. that isn't the first two,

92. hydrogen and helium, a metal -

93. even if it's oxygen.

94. Are some people made of heavy metal?

95. - Yeah. - Lemmy. - Lemmy.

96. Lemmy from Motorhead.

97. Death metal. That's a good one.

98. Yeah. Thrash metal.

99. Nu metal, when I was a teenager.

100. What's nu metal?

101. It was rap and metal together.

102. It went very badly.

103. - Yeah, there was quite a lot of... - TURNTABLE BUZZER

104. Quite a lot of that in it, yeah.

105. There was one I was told about that was a mixture of techno and disco...

106. and it was called Tesco.

107. Then there was Valium metal

108. and Tesco's own brand metal.

109. Yeah, the human body contains a lot of metal, even gold.

110. How many human beings

111. would you need to extract the gold from

112. before you could make, of them, a gold coin?

113. Just Mr T.

114. Yes, just that, yeah.

115. Very good, that's true.

116. Normal humans.

117. - One million humans. - No.

118. - One billion humans. - No, it's...

119. 47.

120. - Six.

121. This could take a long time. 40,000.

122. And how many different metals have we got inside us?

123. 72.

124. 47.

125. Very close, it's 48!

126. - Whoa! - On fire!

127. - Amazing. - On fire!

128. In your face!

129. Did you just point at Alan and say, "Eat it"?

130. No.

131. No, I pointed at him and went, "On fire!"

132. - Oh, "On fire." - "On fire!"

133. It's most impressive.

134. And you're all right, in many ways.

135. To astronomers, anything that isn't hydrogen or helium is a metal.

136. Even apparently normal metals can be quite deceptive,

137. as this trick shows.

138. I'm going to get a glass of water

139. and I'll get a teaspoon.

140. - Right. - Oh, I'll just... To prove that it is water, I'll drink it.

141. That just proves it might be vodka.

142. - It proves at least that it's not sulphuric acid or something... - Yeah.

143. .. because what I'm going to do

144. is try and make this teaspoon disappear.

145. It may not work.

146. I'm not a good magician,

147. I'm a great magician.

148. And so we stir it here and I...

149. Oh, don't, Oh, no...

150. Oh, it might not work, it might work, I don't know.

151. I'm, oh...

152. - Yeah, it seems to have worked. - Ooh.

153. Wow!

154. There you are. Thank you.

155. That's rather good, isn't it?

156. - Rather good. - That's good. - That is.

157. In fact, on this occasion, it wasn't a magic trick

158. and it's something you can do.

159. I'll give you your water and you'll notice the water is rather warm.

160. - Oh, it's warm. - It's warm water. - Warm water.

161. And I'll give you a couple of spoons.

162. They are metal, they're metal spoons, but the metal...

163. Are they made out of Alka-Seltzer?

164. They might as well be, they're made out of gallium.

165. And gallium is a metal...

166. A very useful metal.

167. - Let's have a look. - .. but it has the quality that it melts,

168. - as Alan is showing, in water. - Good lord.

169. Oh, you wouldn't want that of your teaspoon, would you?

170. No, it wouldn't make a practical teaspoon.

171. - That's lasting less time than a biscuit. - Yeah.

172. - That's it. - Look at that.

173. Now, if you stir it,

174. it'll happen more quickly.

175. - Oh, good lord, look at that. - Ah, jeez. - That is...

176. That would be the most annoying teaspoon in the world.

177. It really would, wouldn't it?

178. Now, oh.

179. But it's, like, Terminator's teaspoon.

180. Yeah, exactly. Terminator 2, it should be said.

181. Yes. Terminator two-spoon.

182. Hey!

183. - Well, I hope you're impressed with that. - Wow. - I'm very impressed. - Yeah.

184. - It's not poisonous, gallium, so you can drink it again. - I shan't.

185. LAUGHTER OK. You can put your glasses away.

186. There you are, top man.

187. "Mmm, delicious."

188. OK, pop away.

189. Now, why would you spread mustard on your lawn?

190. So you can... Like, if you stick roast beef on yourself

191. - and you slide across the lawn...

192. Somebody's made a graphic of a man mowing some custard.

193. Imagine you wanted to conduct

194. a worm census of your lawn,

195. you wanted to find out how many worms there wah... "There wah"?

196. - ..in your lawn. - Make them come up out of the earth

197. with washing-up liquid.

198. - Is that what you'd use? - Yeah.

199. That really works a treat, actually.

200. What, do you put the washing up liquid...?

201. You just spray washing up liquid on the lawn and they all come up,

202. "Oh", like that, to help you with the washing up.

203. And it doesn't harm them?

204. Oh, it kills them.

205. This...

206. This is where your system and mine differ

207. because my system is just about counting them and not harming them.

208. - Right. - Because it does...

209. But you can still count them when they're dead.

210. - Easier, really. - It is easier. - It's true, you're right.

211. - Dry them out. - But they're good for aerating the lawn, aren't they?

212. - So is a pitchfork. - Yeah.

213. Well, anyway, it irritates them slightly,

214. but it doesn't kill them.

215. And, in fact, they did this in America

216. and discovered that 100% of North American worms are non-native.

217. All the worms of North America

218. were wiped out a long time ago.

219. - Washing up liquid. - Must have been.

220. 10,000 years ago,

221. - before washing up liquid. - Ice age?

222. Ice age is the right answer.

223. Yeah, they were wiped out.

224. He's on fire, you're both on fire.

225. Yeah, the European worms arrived

226. in the root balls of plants

227. that were exported to the Americas.

228. But what else do we...?

229. Help me with mustard.

230. You can spread it on your hands if you're trying to give up smoking.

231. Yes, apparently a friend of mine did that, to try and, you know,

232. - give up smoking. - Did it work?

233. Um... No.

234. Gas, lethal gas.

235. Yes, mustard gas.

236. What was mustard gas? Did it have mustard in it?

237. It stank, poisonous.

238. It didn't actually contain mustard.

239. Nothing to do with mustard, called it only because of the colour of it.

240. - Well, the colour and the smell. - And the smell of it.

241. Sulphur mustard, it was called.

242. And rather like too much mustard, it could cause blistering.

243. And there were mustard baths.

244. A bath of mustard?

245. Is that a Comic Relief thing?

246. No, you'd think it was.

247. But, funnily enough,

248. we British have mustard baths all the time, didn't you know that?

249. - No? - No.

250. According to the National Museum of Mustard,

251. which is in Middleton, Wisconsin.

252. I was going to say, it's got to be in America.

253. - Yeah. - Yeah.

254. They have a National Museum of Mustard and I...

255. Just be careful,

256. - because Norwich has a very famous mustard museum as well. - Uh-oh.

257. - Mr Coleman? - Coleman's, exactly.

258. This museum in Middleton, Wisconsin,

259. it asserts that "bathing in mustard is an English custom

260. "to this very day."

261. There you are, that's what they think.

262. - That's right, over in England, at night they...

263. Everyone in England asks their butler to draw them a mustard bath.

264. And you spoke of Coleman's of Norwich...

265. - Norwich. - .. the great mustard company of Norwich.

266. They provided quite a lot of mustard for Robert Falcon Scott

267. - and his Discovery Expedition. - To the South Pole.

268. As you can see there, he has pots of Coleman's Mustard.

269. - That's a genuine real photograph... - Yes, of course.

270. .. not in the least bit touched-up. LAUGHTER

271. How much did Coleman's, of Norwich, give...

272. to Captain Scott's team in the 1901/02...?

273. Two enormous barrels of mustard.

274. - Actually, they gave them one and a half tonnes... - Tiny jar?

275. - One and a half tonnes? - .. of mustard.

276. "TONNES" of mustard.

277. Excellent.

278. That's enough for a lot of baths, as well as a lot of food.

279. Now, from counting worms

280. to monkeys that count.

281. What job can even a monkey do?

282. ELECTRICAL WHISK BUZZER

283. Yes, Jo?

284. Is it quantity surveying?

285. - They might be able to. - Apologies to all quantity surveyors watching.

286. - That includes my brother. - Is your brother...? - Oh, is he?

287. - He is a quantity surveyor, yes. - Does he survey quantities all day?

288. - Yeah, sadly for him. - Do you get tired of surveying quantities?

289. I mean, how many quantities can you survey in one day?

290. - He can survey 47 quantities in a day. - 47 quantities?

291. That's a lot of quantities.

292. Wow. Well, no, I don't think monkeys can survey quantities.

293. - They can count. - Yes.

294. The person who counts how many people are on the plane

295. before you take off, that could be a monkey.

296. That would instil us all with confidence, wouldn't it?

297. Just before take off,

298. a small primate comes down the aisle with a clicker.

299. And he also does the duty frees because no-one ever buys anything.

300. Yes.

301. In Thailand, there is a school.

302. - A monkey school? - Yep.

303. They have between three and six months of training -

304. the pig-tailed macaques -

305. and they end up working on a plantation,

306. where they can pick between 800 and 1,000 whats a day?

307. - Bananas. - Not bananas cos they'd eat those, wouldn't they? - They would.

308. - Coconuts. - Coconuts!

309. Between 800 and 1,000 coconuts a day, they can pick.

310. There they are.

311. But it's very useful.

312. So, a lot more than a human could, probably.

313. But they do they count them as well?

314. Well, I don't... Those don't, no.

315. Clicker in one hand.

316. In the US, they use capuchin monkeys

317. for a charity called Helping Hands,

318. which assists people with disabilities,

319. and they help with feeding,

320. retrieving dropped items,

321. changing compact discs,

322. - turning lights on and off. - Wow.

323. And in Tokyo, there's a tavern where...

324. A traditional sake house,

325. where macaques are employed

326. to bring customers hot towels.

327. I don't want a hot towel off that fella, I'll tell you that.

328. That is horrible.

329. Imagine that at the end of your bed at night.

330. Oh, God!

331. "Hot towel, sir?" Oh, fuck off!

332. Now, from smart monkeys to smart aleck kids.

333. Which of these would an ancient Mexican use

334. to teach children manners?

335. You've got chocolate, chilli...

336. A monkey with a baseball bat seems pretty effective.

337. You definitely would.

338. You've got to say "please" or you get the monkey with the bat.

339. I, personally, would use a cactus.

340. - Yeah. - What would you do with it?

341. Throw the child at it.

342. Then you are pretty much on a par with those ancient Mexicans.

343. Oh, am I?

344. Yeah. The Aztec or the... SHE MOUTHS

345. .. Mexica.

346. - The Mexica, as they were called... - Yes.

347. From which, we get our word Mexico.

348. .. did have a firm, but fair, way of treating their children.

349. That means "very cruel".

350. Yeah, I know.

351. And the Codex Mendoza was written by someone

352. observing the practices of the Aztecs,

353. and this is what he found.

354. Basically, they were taught to be humble, hard-working and polite,

355. just like British...

356. Oh, no, what am I talking about? LAUGHTER

357. So this is how it went.

358. It begins with an eight-year-old boy

359. - being threatened with the spines of a cactus. - Wow.

360. The following year, he's stripped, bound and pierced

361. in his neck, side and thigh.

362. Next year, he's bound and beaten with a pine stick.

363. The year after that, aged 11, his father holds his son,

364. bound and weeping over a fire of burning chillies -

365. as you can see, top right, there.

366. - All practices carried on in English boarding schools. - Yes.

367. Finally, a stroppy 12-year-old is bound and dumped

368. in a damp vegetable patch for a day

369. to reflect on his conduct.

370. By the time he's 13, he's dutifully gathering reeds, as you can see.

371. Yeah, bearing a terrible grudge.

372. - Which he will take out on his child. - Yes.

373. Unfortunately, that's the way it works.

374. - So, it's a sort of a meme of cruelty. - It is, yeah.

375. But the Huichol Mexicans - and you'll like this, I think, Jo -

376. they had an interesting practice,

377. which was, when a woman was pregnant,

378. she would lie and,

379. in the room above,

380. her husband would lie

381. and he would have strings

382. attached to his testicles,

383. which would drop down into the room below -

384. where his wife was, pregnant.

385. I'm loving this so far.

386. She would have...

387. She would hold the strings and, when she had a contraction,

388. she would pull... AUDIENCE GASPS

389. ..so that he was forced to share her pain...

390. He, cunningly, slipped the string off, tied it onto the...

391. boards of the bed and went to the pub.

392. Tied it to the dog.

393. "Tied it to the dog"!

394. BILL BARKS

395. Or his 12-year-old son.

396. - "Argh!"

397. It's possible.

398. - Oh, we're... Sorry, go on. - No, carry on.

399. No, I was going to say a terrible

400. and a very embarrassing story about testicles, but you carry on.

401. - Oh, I want your testicle story. - All right, then.

402. Well, we had this dog and it got into the bed

403. and it started to lick...

404. the wrong set of testicles.

405. - That's all I'm saying.

406. Surely everybody wins?

407. - Everyone's a winner.

408. Not everyone, Stephen.

409. I haven't been back.

410. Yeah, the Mexica people of Mexico

411. used a very hands-on variety of tough love.

412. And speaking of hands, what's this man doing with his other hand?

413. - Oh, Lord! - It's M, it's M...

414. - It begins with M. - It begins with M.

415. He could be doing anything, Stephen.

416. Is it something beginning with M?

417. If that was me, it would be me trying to work out how the...

418. - Scratching? - .. bloody thing works with a printer.

419. - Well, it does begin with M. - Massaging something?

420. - If I tell you that he's a professor. - He's got a massive mouse on his leg.

421. - Milking, mousing. - "Massive mouse."

422. You're right to think of an animal cos he's a scientist -

423. a professor at the University of Kentucky.

424. Has he got his finger stuck in a moose?

425. He's a Mexican, he's a Mexican man,

426. and he's pressing a child against a cactus under the desk.

427. He's a cruel man.

428. He is Professor Grayson Brown

429. and he's an entomologist of a particular kind.

430. A culicidologist, if that makes any sense to you.

431. - Molluscs? - Not molluscs.

432. - Oh. - An entomologist. - Mosquitoes.

433. Mosquitoes is the right answer.

434. - Wow! - On fire.

435. Sorry.

436. That's brilliant.

437. He's very serious in his study of mosquitoes

438. and he was allowing 1,000 mosquitoes -

439. as he does every morning,

440. while he carries on doing his e-mails -

441. to feast on his arm.

442. His body is so used to it they no longer leave a mark, apparently.

443. It's most bizarre.

444. Asian mosquitoes are very picky,

445. they only, ONLY, feast on humans...

446. They won't eat the blood of any other animal.

447. .. and, in order to keep them happy,

448. obviously they need a big supply of blood.

449. So, he and his fellow workers...

450. And some animals, it has to be said, in his lab,

451. also supply the blood for other breeds of mosquito -

452. but, for the Asian ones, it's just humans.

453. And, of course, they have to keep them breeding.

454. Now, they're odd, these Asian mosquitoes,

455. cos they're really a bit lazy.

456. I suppose they produce so many thousands...

457. What's he trying to find out?

458. I mean, what is there left to know about these creatures?

459. Well, given how many millions of people they kill every year,

460. it's kind of... You can't know enough.

461. Cos they kill more, as you know, than wars.

462. But in order to get them to mate, to force-mate them.

463. Play some Barry White, give them some wine.

464. Well, that's what I thought but, in this case,

465. - they decapitate the male... - Oh, that's different.

466. - No, no, that wouldn't work. - Good so far.

467. LAUGHTER .. they anaesthetise the female.

468. They then insert the male's genitals

469. into his unconscious partner.

470. Despite the lack of the male's head,

471. and the lack of the female's consciousness,

472. the insects lock together,

473. sperm is transferred

474. and the female becomes pregnant.

475. Does that happen with humans? SHE MOUTHS

476. - Yes? - Well, if you have enough Jagermeister,

477. - I suppose it will, yeah.

478. And a skilled entomologist can do this without a microscope.

479. That's nothing to brag about though, is it?

480. No, it probably isn't.

481. "Oh, I can make mosquitoes bang without a microscope."

482. We had a pair of preying mantis once in the kitchen,

483. In a... You know, in the tank, obviously.

484. And I came home one night and the male praying mantis

485. was on the kitchen floor

486. walking across, like, towards the door.

487. And I went, "Oh, no, he's got out of the t... Oh, what a shame."

488. And I carefully scooped him up

489. and I placed him back in the tank, very gently,

490. and the female pounced and bit his head off and...

491. .. he was clearly making a break for it.

492. - Oh, because they do. - The whole time, "No, don't put me back there. Oh."

493. - The females do eat the males, don't they? - Yes, they do.

494. - So, they must have just mated. - They must have just...

495. - And he was off. - Yeah. Oh, dear, oh, dear.

496. But now it's time to move on

497. to the low-hanging fruit

498. of General Ignorance.

499. What do magpies like to steal?

500. Shiny things.

501. KLAXON BLARES

502. Of course, everyone knows that! Come on!

503. Oh, Alany, Alany, Alany-walany, Alany-walany-woo.

504. - No. We think they do, but they don't. - Oh.

505. - We've done tests. Well, we haven't, people have. - Have you?

506. Out of 64 of them, magpies picked up a shiny object only twice

507. and then immediately dropped it.

508. They're not interested in shiny things.

509. Like all animals, they're interested in things that look like food or...

510. that they can shag. LAUGHTER

511. The... It's folklore surrounding them seems to be just that -

512. folklore, anecdotes.

513. But the Italian for magpie...

514. leads to an interesting thing.

515. - Magpie-o.

516. That's an awfully nice thought.

517. Do you know the Rossini opera, The Thieving Magpie?

518. Called "La Gazza Ladra".

519. "Gazza" is a magpie

520. and a little magpie, "gazzetta".

521. - Oh, it's the newspaper. - Called the "gazzetta".

522. A newspaper - gazette.

523. And that's it, the gossipy chatter,

524. - like a magpie. - Ah!

525. That's where we get that word, "gazette".

526. - I like... I quite like that one. - Yeah, me too. - Yeah. - Yeah, certainly.

527. Also, if I were to say that the magpie's real name is a pie,

528. it's a pie.

529. Then where does the "mag" come from?

530. - Margaret. - Yeah.

531. - Margaret. - Was it?

532. - Yeah. - "Margaret pie?"

533. Where did that come from?

534. "Margaret pie"?

535. In medieval England, it was common

536. to give birds a Christian name, sometimes,

537. and the ones that have survived have included magpie.

538. - Which other ones can you...? - Robin. - Robin.

539. - Robin redbreast. - Robin redbreast.

540. Robin's the only one where the first name is the one that's kept...

541. - Dave Starling. - Sorry? LAUGHTER

542. - Joseph Starling? - No, big Dave Starling.

543. Joseph would have been funny.

544. Joseph Starling is good, yeah. I like that. I prefer that.

545. - Not as funny as Dave, but it's better. - Yeah.

546. - Tomtit. Jenny Wren. - Tomtit, yeah.

547. Charlie Crow.

548. - Jackdaw. - Jackdaw. - Oh, jackdaw. - Yeah, yeah.

549. So there are a few of them.

550. Christopher Chaf-finch.

551. - We had an injured bird in the garden yesterday... - Oh.

552. .. and it looked like a magpie, and it couldn't take off,

553. and I was watching it for ages. I didn't know what to do with it,

554. so I opened the back gate and shooed it out.

555. - Oh, dear. - What do you think it was, then? What make? - "The back gate."

556. - I think it was a young crow... - Yeah.

557. .. that was having a bit of trouble with flight

558. - because it flew into a bush... - Oh, dear.

559. .. and I presume it's dead by now.

560. - That's it, you...? - And that's the end of tonight's Springwatch. - Yes.

561. What could you have done with it?

562. - I don't know, what are you going to do with a bird? - Shoot it, shoot it.

563. - Take it out. - Shoot the...

564. - Sniper's rifle, through the brain. - I could have gone after it

565. because it was in the garden and couldn't get out.

566. - I could have easily got it with a tennis racket. - Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

567. Just scoop it up with a tennis racket

568. - and hit it with a frying pan...

569. .. and chuck it over the wall. That's what I would do.

570. And then its parents would have come and ate it, wouldn't they?

571. - Yeah, that's right. - Let's face it, it is the wild. - Yeah. - Exactly, yes.

572. Even if it is Hampstead.

573. It's wild for them, though.

574. They've have had it in a coulis.

575. A crow couscous.

576. With some quinoa.

577. I wonder what its name was.

578. Clive, I expect.

579. No, I think it was Vel.

580. - Vel? - Vel-crow. - "Velcro."

581. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

582. So, magpies aren't particularly interested in shiny objects.

583. How many paintings did Vincent Van Gogh -

584. or "Goch," or "Gough," or "Go"...

585. How many did he sell while he was alive?

586. Don't say none.

587. TURNTABLE BUZZER

588. None! I'm going to say none.

589. KLAXON BLARES

590. - D'oh! - D'oh!

591. Really, I'm afraid...

592. - One. - A few, maybe?

593. KLAXON BLARES

594. "A few".

595. It was lots. He sold hundreds of paintings.

596. - Hundreds? - Yeah, when he was 15,

597. he used to work in an art gallery.

598. - Oh, shut up!

599. It's true.

600. I just asked you how many paintings...

601. This is the closest I've come to walking out of this show!

602. I'd like a recount on those two.

603. It was a horribly mean question,

604. but the fact is he did sell hundreds -

605. they just weren't his own.

606. He was very good at selling them too,

607. he did extremely well and

608. it was a big French company

609. and his brother, Theo,

610. ran the Montmartre branch,

611. and Vincent relocated, after a while, to the London branch.

612. And he spent two years in London, living in Brixton,

613. and he called it the happiest time of his life.

614. Yeah, he did really well and he loved it.

615. - Good fun in Brixton. - It's great. - It was good fun, it's a good place.

616. - Brixton Village. - Brixton Village.

617. He would have gone and got some chicken from CHICKENliquor,

618. that's real nice.

619. - Yeah. - Is that your manor?

620. I used to live in Brixton and...

621. do you know what I nearly did then?

622. - I nearly called you "man" and then I stopped myself. - Thank you.

623. - I just want you to appreciate that. - I really do. Thank you.

624. - Anyway, perhaps the most surprising thing we'll all learn today... - Yes.

625. ..is that, after Brixton,

626. he came back to the UK in 1876,

627. and Vincent Van Gogh...

628. worked...

629. as a supply teacher in Ramsgate.

630. - Oh! - Isn't that wonderful?

631. Wow.

632. - That's a big surprise, isn't it? - It is. It is, yeah.

633. I wonder if the children remembered him for years afterwards...

634. - Mr Van Gogh? - ..as a flame-haired figure. - Moody sod.

635. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Then he became a painter, supported financially

636. and, indeed, emotionally by his brother, Theo.

637. He suffered from tinnitus, vertigo and, of course, depression

638. and he killed himself aged 37.

639. Only one of his 900 paintings

640. was sold in his lifetime.

641. Sold to a remarkable woman called Anna Boch,

642. who was, herself, a painter.

643. - One. You said one! - I said one. - You said one.

644. I asked how many paintings, not how many of his own paintings.

645. I know, I'm sorry, but, look, I did say...

646. Chairman of the Pedantic Association.

647. "It's actually the Society of Pedantics, but I'll let that go."

648. Yes, exactly, in fact. LAUGHTER

649. Anna Boch paid 400 francs

650. for a painting of his called The Red Vineyard,

651. which is rather beautiful.

652. And with that, the final whistle has blown and...

653. .. the match has come to an end.

654. It's actually a very extraordinary series of scores.

655. In first place, with plus eight...

656. Yes, she was on fire, Jo Brand.

657. In second place...

658. with minus seven, it's James.

659. In third place...

660. with minus 32, is Bill Bailey.

661. - Minus, how...?

662. In fourth place...

663. with minus 41, Alan Davies.

664. Thank you very much, thank you.

665. So, all that remains for me

666. is to pull up the corner flags,

667. thank James, Bill, Jo and Alan,

668. and to leave you with this classic piece of Ron Atkinson.

669. When asked about what made the perfect match,

670. "Well, Clive, it's all about the two M's -

671. "movement and positioning."

672. Goodnight.