QI 2x10

1. Oh, hello, hello, hello, hello!

2. Welcome to QI,

3. the show where four people are held in a queue until one of them becomes interesting. Clive Anderson.

4. Phil Kay, Johnny Sessions,

5. and Alan Davies.

6. Ah. Now.

7. First, a special project, members of the team - to draw a wig-wam.

8. This is series B, do it in the style of artists beginning with B.

9. Clive, in the style of Botticelli, Phil in the style of William Blake,

10. John, in the style of Brach. OK.

11. Alan, I don't need to tell you, you'll be Bosch.

12. So that's your task.

13. Hieronymus Bosch. Painted scenes of hell.

14. Any old wig-wam'll do.

15. Really? Yeah. Thank God!

16. I didn't know what I was gonna do!

17. If you need to be excused, attract my attention. Clive does it like this.

18. Phil does it like this.

19. Johnny does it like this.

20. "Oh, I know, sir! Please, please, sir, I know!"

21. Alan does it like this.

22. Oh, I'm glad that you went before you came.

23. Now, you know me. I'm one of those jolly-jump-up-meet-me-in-the- corner-and-tickle-my-fancy types.

24. So what am I?

25. "Sir, sir, I know, sir!"

26. You're the sacked lyricist for Lindisfarne. Those were the original lyrics for Meet Me On The Corner.

27. The hit of 1972. Does sound like it.

28. You're a hoarder of many hyphens. I am a hoarder of many hyphens.

29. You've almost got them all. I'm also a love idol.

30. Right. Are these fishing flies?

31. They're not. I'm also a meet-me-in-the-buttery.

32. Or kiss-me-in-the-buttery. Are they types of flowers?

33. They are all one type of flower, also known as pink-of-my-john!

34. I'm not making it up! Carnations. Tulips. No. Johnny might get it - there's a Shakespearean reference.

35. "The flower that men do call love in idleness." Yes.

36. It's in Romeo And Juliet - no?

37. No, The Dream. Come back, you've floated up in a balloon above us!

38. All right. So, it's a flower called kiss-me-in-the-buttery,

39. jump-up-jack, tickle-my-fancy, love-in-idleness, pink-my-john.

40. And Dale Winton. So what am I? I am a... Forget-me-not.

41. Pansy. Pansy! Pansy! I am a wild pansy.

42. There are more folk names for the wild pansy than for any other flower.

43. The word pansy comes from the French pensee, a thought, or idea.

44. They're supposed to be good for the memory. Eating them? Yes, indeed.

45. A refreshing tea which is good for the skin and clearing phlegm.

46. Yet Pascal's book Pansees didn't sell well, did it? No, it didn't.

47. One person in the audience knows Pascal! "Sir, sir, I know, sir!"

48. Yes, there were 200 names at the last count for the wild pansy. That was a question about botany.

49. Your next question is what is bottomry?

50. It's the opposite of topiary. Topiary is that thing...

51. where you take... Very good! ..you take a...

52. You'll know, Stephen, you take a tree or a bush or whatever,

53. and you shape it into a beautiful shape, an animal or something.

54. Bottomry's where you see a tree, think it looks like a horse, then cut it back to like a wild tree.

55. It's not fun. "Sir, I know, sir!"

56. There's another argument for it,

57. it's a website in Tokyo

58. for Japanese men crazy about Virginia Bottomley.

59. Bottomry!

60. Would it help if I say it's the same thing as bottomage?

61. Yes, I know what it is. Was it France or somewhere?

62. The droit du seigneur where the local lord could have his evil way

63. with any girl or milkmaid in the village.

64. If you were a minor lord of some sort, you had the right of bottomry,

65. where you could just slap them on the bottom.

66. No more than that,

67. and in a nice way, if that exists, which I deplore, it's forbodden these days.

68. Forbodden? Forbottom!

69. It's to do with bottom being a ship, in this case. A ship? It's like a mortgage.

70. You raise money to go on a trade voyage. They call ship's bottoms.

71. Yes, ships are called bottoms in the marine world.

72. There's a line in Henry V from the chorus,

73. before they go to France, where Shakespeare describes them drawing their bottoms through water,

74. referring to the ships, not the soldiers.

75. Excellent. Next question then.

76. So, what did Buffalo Bill do to buffalos?

77. "Sir, sir! I know sir!"

78. I don't know the answer, but what I do know...

79. ..is that my grandmother was born in 1875.

80. And she saw Buffalo Bill... Down the shops? Well, no...

81. She might have, without knowing it. She saw his Wild West Show? She did.

82. At the Calvin Hall in 1892.

83. The sound of an arrow! Hope this is right, cos I can see a trap.

84. Yes. Because the American buffalo isn't strictly a buffalo, it's a bison.

85. Absolutely! So he did nothing to buffalo. Spot on! He should've been called Bison Bill.

86. They're not even related to the two kinds of buffalo that exist.

87. But at a philosophical level, which you like...

88. Yes. .. if they are called buffalo,

89. it's like the Bayeux Tapestry isn't really a tapestry.

90. But it's the only tapestry, or embroidery, we've ever heard of,

91. and they say it isn't one. And these are the only buffalo we come across...

92. Apart from water buffalo in Asia. Or in Africa. Yes, in Africa.

93. My wigwam is BEEP huge.

94. I was in the city of Buffalo when I heard of Elvis's death.

95. It should've been the city of Bison.

96. There's a buffalo and a bison. That's a buffalo on the right.

97. Look how low its ears are! They're well below the eyes.

98. Right by the nose. It likes to keep its ears close to the ground.

99. Its ears are there.

100. Why's the one on the right wearing an advocate's wig?

101. But he killed loads of them. He killed an astonishing number.

102. In 18 months, he killed 4,280 bison.

103. Why? He used to work for the Pony Express as a boy.

104. And there's a rather good advert they used to put out. Arcal wrote for that.

105. Hey! This is the ad -

106. "Wanted - young skinny, wiry fellows, not over 18.

107. "Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily." You wrote that.

108. It goes on - "orphans preferred!

109. "Wages $25 a week."

110. But it only lasted 19 months, the Pony Express,

111. because of the railways.

112. And the Kansas-Pacific needed food for its workers. Mmmm.

113. So they employed Buffalo Bill to kill bison, or buffalo,

114. to feed the construction workers. In Dances With Wolves, they just kill buffalo for fun.

115. Native Americans, the Indians, used to lure them over cliffs to kill them.

116. They used the hide and meat so it wasn't just for fun.

117. Did they lure exactly the right number they needed for the tribe? No.

118. You have a sentimental view of them as if we're all nasty humans,

119. but Native Americans are all peace-loving philosophers.

120. We were drunk and badly behaved.

121. They'd never lure a pregnant one over.

122. The way they lured them was to cause them to stampede,

123. and once they're stampeding, they all go.

124. No, when they had enough, they'd go up and go, "Stop!"

125. It's that moment of, "When's the stampede over?" You're stampeding, and then you're not.

126. When you hit the ground at the end of the cliff, then you know.

127. Stampede over. If you're at the front, you've got to keep stampeding,

128. because everyone behind's stampeding.

129. If you stop, BOOM! Straight over.

130. Let me help out the hippy party, because these buffalo, or bison,

131. live quite happily with the American Indians killing a few of them.

132. Then they replaced them with cows.

133. And cows have caused a dust-bowl in that part of America.

134. Yes. And now they decided the only thing that can really live there are bison.

135. So they're reintroducing them. And crossing them with cattle, in fact.

136. What they get up to in their private lives...

137. From 60 million bison in the 17th century,

138. there were just a few hundred in the 19th century. There are now about 50,000.

139. I'll read out the next question.

140. Buffalo Bill's famous Wild West show included

141. a famous Native American chief,

142. Sitting Bull, Sitting Buffalo Bull,

143. who, of course, defeated Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

144. What was his real name?

145. Bison. No? It worked for the last question.

146. Well they're always named after the first thing the squaw sees...

147. Two dogs BEEP-ing. That's the joke.

148. I was going to let the audience think that for themselves.

149. Buffalo Bill had to kill thousands of buffalo or bison

150. to get the nickname Buffalo to go with the rather dull Bill.

151. But Sitting Bull just had to sit around a lot.

152. And talk rubbish. Hang on, bulls don't sit. Do they?

153. Ferdinand did. Ferdinand? Ferdinand the bull. Oh yes.

154. He'd sit under a cork tree smelling the flowers. And there was a bee.

155. He got stung by a bee. What?

156. It's a book. One you happen not to have read. Doesn't make us mad!

157. Because the bee stung him, he ran round like crazy,

158. so they thought he was a flying bull. It's a children's classic.

159. Very beautiful. What's it called? Ferdinand the bull. Oh.

160. Ferdinand forgets to take his drugs test and is disqualified from the bullfight.

161. Don't bulls sit down when it's going to rain. Yes, supposedly.

162. So do cows. Why, so they have a dry patch?

163. If you like. Well...

164. Standing Cow, he was called. Actually, it was Jumping Badger.

165. That was his given name. He got his father's name as a teenager.

166. And because he'd done great exploits and killed buffalo/bison

167. at the age of ten, and took part in a raiding party on a Crow Indian settlement

168. and was a great hero, his father gave him his name.

169. His mother was called Her Holy Door.

170. Interestingly. They were rubbish at names in that family!

171. I mean, Sitting Bull's scarcely OK, but Jumping Badger!

172. "Why, Dad?"It was a film character popular with your mother."

173. Now who made pots and pots from Bill and Ben?

174. "Sir! Sir! I know, sir!"

175. Um... I think it was someone like... Weeeeeeeeeed!

176. Flobadob-a-dob-a-dob. You do Bill and Ben now! Flobadob. Yeah!

177. Isn't it someone like Greg Dyke or Michael Grade?

178. Well, in fact, do you know? I don't,

179. but Greg did the rat thing. Roland Rat. He did indeed.

180. So that's a good guess.

181. The BBC have made £2 million

182. from the video sales of Bill And Ben, and they paid the creator,

183. Hilda Wright, the magnificent sum of three guineas.

184. No! For the whole thing, which is three original radio stories.

185. She named Bill and Ben after her own brothers.

186. I thought you were going to say breasts then!

187. The poor woman's suffered enough! Breasts do go flobadob, I suppose.

188. And when they were naughty, their mother would say,

189. "Was it Bill or was it Ben?", the catch phrase of the programme.

190. Was it? And their little sister, Phyllis, was Weed.

191. The voice of Bill and Ben, in a language called Flobadob,

192. was by a man called Peter Hawkins who went on to great fame

193. as both a dalek and a cyberman. In 1999,

194. he was a producer on a programme called The Lifestyle - Group Sex In The Suburbs.

195. That's where I remember him from then!

196. Where did this language come from?

197. It was their nickname for the sound a fart made in the bath. It was a flobadob.

198. Now, what does Billy the Kid have in common with Ben Hur?

199. Capital B.

200. They have ME. I've been to where Billy the Kid was shot and I've seen Ben Hur.

201. Ben Hur's in the Scottish Highlands, isn't it?

202. The Hollywood Range. Ben Affleck's nearby. Glen Close too.

203. Glenn Close! Do you know who wrote Ben Hur?

204. Gore Vidal claims to. He wrote the screenplay.

205. Who wrote the novel? When was it written?

206. It was written in 1880, or published then. In America? Yes.

207. Someone thought, "I'm going to write a book about Roman chariot racing."

208. Well, what should he have written about? Oh! He's written about something not very close to you!

209. You wanker! BEEP-ing Shakespeare writing about Romans.

210. It's not only about chariot racing, there's other stuff in it.

211. Yes! It's about Christianity, loyalty,

212. betrayal, friendship, lots of things. Anyway...

213. The phrase, "What are you really angry about?" springs to mind.

214. It was actually Lew Wallace who wrote the novel.

215. And he was Governor of New Mexico.

216. The connection with Billy the Kid is he also wrote his death warrant.

217. So while he was Governor, he was able to write a bestselling...

218. "It was a warm morning in Rome..."

219. What's all that? "Sir, sir! I know, sir!"

220. One more interesting thing, to me, involves a hideous name-drop.

221. I was at the Sundance Film Festival and was fortunate to have supper with Robert Redford. And...

222. Yes?

223. The luvvie alarm is a special forfeit for Johnny. But carry on.

224. So I told my close and personal friend... Do you call him Bob? He prefers Bobbity.

225. Bobbity Bedford.

226. As I towelled him down after our game of shuttlecocks,

227. I mentioned to him that the Sundance Kid, don't know if you know this,

228. was Welsh. Or his family was.

229. Boyo, this town ain't big enough for the both of us.

230. He's right stuck up, that Billy. He'll come to no good.

231. From Bills, to buildings.

232. What happens to your thoughts when you go upstairs?

233. Gravitationally, the pressure changes so your blood varies in its circulatory aspect

234. so your brain becomes less fuelled by the blood so you become less clever.

235. Hence air hostesses - "Tea? Coffee? Coffee? Tea?"

236. Very good answer indeed! Deep physics.

237. Deep? Deep, really sort of theoretical physics.

238. Your thoughts float upwards, they get sucked downwards, they go up.

239. You start thinking about physics, you get clever.

240. The answer is they run faster, your metabolism's faster,

241. because time is slower, the weaker the gravity.

242. And what is the best floor of a building out of which to throw

243. a cat?

244. Blimey, that's impressive! A lovely mahogany.

245. A mahogany floor!

246. The best storey of a building?

247. It's only a guess,

248. but I reckon it must be about the fifth floor,

249. because, assuming you want to harm the cat, which I object to,

250. if you want to kill it, it would survive falling from the first floor as they're springy animals.

251. And if you go too far, I'm guessing they form a parachute and float down.

252. So the fifth floor would be about right. They'd still hurtle, but without the parachute effect.

253. Absolutely right, except we don't want to harm them.

254. Oh, very high then. The seventh. Anything higher than the seventh.

255. They experimented by studying, not by throwing cats out windows.

256. They studied 132 cases of cats falling out windows

257. in New York in a veterinary centre.

258. - They studied 132 cases of cats falling or being pushed from windows.. - Pushed

259. .. and the injury rate went up, the average was... Tick!

260. .. from about the fifth floor. The higher up towards the fifth floor, the more injuries,

261. but at seven and beyond, there were fewer.

262. Because they can reach terminal velocity, 60 miles per hour, from any floor,

263. from an aeroplane, cats have survived. And like a squirrel,

264. they spread themselves out and parachute down.

265. From the sixth floor, they haven't got time to reach terminal speed,

266. and to get the position right.

267. Exactly. Have they done this with other animals?

268. Have they tried hamsters, dogs, pythons?

269. Cows! I'd like to see that!

270. I fear somehow that cows... Mooooo!

271. There's a man in Shropshire who catapults cows. Splat!

272. He flies them through the air.

273. Hundreds of yards. Doesn't it harm them? Dead cows.

274. Meat, you mean. I would urge people at home not to try it with your cat.

275. Not because it isn't scientific, but because of the mad letters I get from BEEP-ing cat people.

276. Do not throw your cat off of anything, a wall or whatever.

277. Just let them be.

278. Or at least not from lower than the seventh floor.

279. That's the idea. So, general ignorance.

280. What is the commonest material in the world?

281. Jim Davidson's.

282. Very good indeed!

283. I don't know the real answer. You can't better that one!

284. I mean substance. Oxygen.

285. What did I say? Damn!

286. Substance, material, matter or stuff. Water?

287. It's perovskite. Oh, yeah

288. Darn it! That was on the tip of my tongue!

289. Named after Count Lev Perovski, a mineralogist.

290. It's a compound of magnesium, silicone and oxygen, it's what the earth's mantle is made from.

291. He thought he'd be famous by giving his name to the most common stuff, but no-one's heard of him!

292. No! He's got such a good name for a scientist,

293. and probably had a wonderful accent.

294. Like the man who used to go... "Tyrannosaurus rex!"

295. Like Heinz Wolf? Yes, exactly like him!

296. There is always an elegant solution

297. with eggheads and a little bow tie.

298. Now, what happened to Pompeii in 63 AD?

299. His eyes narrow.

300. I've been to Vesuvius. Have you? What happened to Pompeii?

301. I'm trying to remember, is there a time-limit?

302. I can't remember if that's when it got covered in lava.

303. It was an earthquake they had before. Quite right.

304. It was destroyed by an earthquake,

305. they'd just started to rebuild it when... I bet the air was blue when that happened!

306. I just-a finished! I cannot believe it!

307. Is all finished now!

308. The air was black! All the tiles, I just put them up!

309. One of the things preserved was almost every household had pots of plaster, to re-plaster.

310. Artexing the insides. Indeed.

311. There's a bit you can walk across which has a sulphur crust

312. about that thick, and there are places where it's fallen through.

313. Is this a type of pizza?

314. And it goes blup! Blup! And there are fences round it.

315. And you go across in your school party, and they say,

316. "Go in pairs not in big clusters or you might fall through."

317. And they say to school parties from Essex, "Don't jump up and down!"

318. What a mistake! Oh dear, oh dear!

319. Have they never heard of reverse psychology? What did you say that for?

320. So there's the kids at the back.

321. To certain death. Oh, Lord!

322. And it's going to go again, isn't it? It's really, massively overdue.

323. Imagine being an estate agent trying to sell a house as lava comes towards you.

324. Imagine how good you'd have to be.

325. Here's the keys, thanks! It's not central heating, it's exterior heating.

326. Didn't the Phoenician civilisation end the same way?

327. It's a volcano, we're phoeni-shed!

328. How did Roman emperors order the death of a gladiator?

329. It was a trap, not thumbs down.

330. They put their thumbs up.

331. Take him out and kill him!

332. Hey, gladiator!

333. It is over for you! We joke is it up or down, but that's life or death to a gladiator!

334. Exactly. Films like...

335. Why do they do that in the films then?

336. Because we have this up and down idea... So if we do that, it means, "Death to you!"

337. So what was the saving symbol? Did they have one?

338. It was called pollux compressus, where you put the thumb,

339. the pollux, in that way.

340. As opposed to pollux infestus, that one.

341. You can draw a mouth and eyes on too.

342. That's still the rudest thing you can do in Sicily. Is it?

343. Which is why hitchhikers are killed.

344. Seriously! They do that by the road, people just go...

345. Russell Crowe's going for the knob there, isn't he!

346. He's going to bite it off.

347. What he's holding is his gladius,

348. which is why they're called gladiators, because of the sword.

349. Was it only the Romans who had that -

350. men killing each other for sport?

351. Interesting, I've never heard of it in Chinese culture. The Greeks didn't.

352. No, they had naked wrestling instead which was much more popular.

353. What was the organisation the Americans fought in Vietnam called?

354. The Vietcong. The gooks.

355. I want the proper name.

356. Alan, even I know when you know the answer, don't give it.

357. It's what they hope we'll say.

358. Gooks and Charlie and Vietcong are all names made up by Americans.

359. Vietcong was made up by the CIA.

360. The Vietnamese Popular Army? People's Front? Known as...

361. PLO? PLF? Tooting Popular Front?

362. The name of their great hero. Ho Chi Min? The Viet Min.

363. Viet Min! Ah!

364. Wonder if you know this. The Americans gave huge sums of money

365. to the Viet Min, because at one point, they were on the same side.

366. That's just ridiculous!

367. Then, having armed them to the teeth,

368. and then, huge historical surprise, the French surrender.

369. To Ho Chi Min in 1954.

370. The end of their rule in Indochina.

371. And then the Americans fought them with the weapons they gave them ten years before.

372. Is Vietcong supposed to be a term of abuse, like King Kong?

373. Yes, the CIA thought it sounded more menacing and ugly,

374. and associated with communism,

375. as it was Vietcong. Viet Min's not so great.

376. Hello, you want slippy-slippy?

377. I'm sorry, I'm a missionary.

378. Is there a nationality we haven't cruelly abused today?

379. Lampooned! It seems not.

380. Was King Kong his real name, or was it King Min?

381. Oddly enough, the Danish for King is Kong, so the film's called Kong King.

382. OK, it's time to hold up your work, please.

383. Look at my buffalo! It's a good buffalo. And wig-wam.

384. That's the tongue.

385. There's Johnny's cubist wig-wam.

386. Woooooh!

387. I think I misunderstood,

388. I've got Wham! wigs, this is George Michael and Andrew Ridgely,

389. and they're wearing wigs. What's wrong with that?

390. Very good indeed!

391. This is William Blake's God as a white man with a holster on,

392. and a tiny wigwam, here's a red Indian, here's a blue one,

393. there's a beige one. And there's thunder and stuff.

394. Very apocalyptic. I'm sorry no-one did a wig-wam.

395. There's my wig-wam. I did! That's not a wig-wam. A tepee.

396. A tepee, you've done tepees.

397. What's the difference? I can show you in a picture.

398. That's a wig-wam. Very different. It's a haystack!

399. That's not very polite to the eastern Native Americans

400. as that's where they live. The plains Indians lived in the old buffalo hide.

401. The tepees? Exactly. So what are the scores?

402. Goodness, we have a clear winner. We'll go from first to last.

403. Clive, runaway winner with 1 point! Fantastic!

404. One? Phil's second

405. with zero.

406. Johnny's third with minus 10.

407. And at the back, with minus 26, is Alan Davies.

408. That's it from QI this week.

409. So from Clobalob, Philalob, Jobalob and Alan Daviesalobalob,

410. and from little meeeeee, good night.