QI 2x3

1. A very, very, very good evening to you, ladies and gentlemen,

2. and welcome to QI, the BBC's answer to Pop Idol, otherwise known as Bone Idle.

3. To educate, inform and entertain - these are my intentions

4. and paving the road to hell with them tonight are Rich Hall, Clive Anderson, Phill Jupitus, Alan Davies.

5. The four panellists of the apocalypse - may the Lord Reith have mercy on your souls.

6. Let's have a round on buzzers and bells. Rich! How do you sound?

7. And Clive goes...

8. Phill goes...

9. And Alan goes...

10. Excellent. Right, gentlemen. Bombs away.

11. Alan, have you heard about the Mexican kamikaze squadron?

12. Kamikaze? Like that?

13. That's right, only Mexican. I care not for myself, only my country.

14. Very good indeed. For the emperor...

15. Andale, andale...

16. I just imagine a bloke in a big hat, riding a donkey into the Alamo.

17. They eat so many refried beans, they'd fart themselves to death.

18. Then they explode in front of the enemy.

19. Oddly interesting thought, because kamikaze is Japanese for divine wind. Divine wind? Is it?

20. God's guffs?

21. These little Mexican critters...

22. They're not people? Exactly.

23. Not people. .. were deployed by the US Army in the Second World War against the Japanese.

24. Not like the dolphins they deployed in the war against Iraq? They let them out, and then they pissed off.

25. What they call the Mark 8 MMS - Marine Mammal System.

26. What are the odds that the Iraqi navy will be leaning out from a boat with a flaming hoop, like that?

27. The critter will be some sort of a desert fox.

28. Pretty close, actually.

29. It has got to be an insect, hasn't it? Between an insect and a fox.

30. In size or in...? It's kind of... It is more foxlike than...

31. Scorpion? But it flies. It is quite foxlike. A bat!

32. A bat, is the answer. A Mexican bat.

33. You're not going to like this... How do you know it's Mexican without a sombrero? It's the BREED of the bat.

34. It's a Mexican free-tail bat... I actually know the answer.

35. Do you? Give it to us, Phill. The American navy, in their wisdom,

36. saw that these bats would fly up under the eaves and nest and they thought, if they see out at sea

37. a Japanese aircraft carrier or the hangars of the airplanes, they will nest.

38. And they filled them with explosives. Right? Yeah?

39. What happened, where they were sewn up, the bats would go, "What's that?"

40. And they would start nibbling at themselves and explode in an untoward fashion.

41. You're very close, Phill. It's not actually the navy and it's not boats. It's worse than that...

42. I'm very close, in that I'm nowhere near it. No, in aeroplanes,

43. hundreds of these bats, with these little waistcoats, with napalm in them and a detonator.

44. The idea was to drop them over Japanese towns, round about dawn, so that, when the light came,

45. to escape the light, they'd go into the eaves and rafters of houses

46. and then would detonate causing these whole towns to burn because most Japanese towns were made of wood.

47. You have to set the napalm off so they'd have to follow them out.

48. There was some sort of ignition device incorporated... A little book of matches?

49. There is a poetic justice, however.

50. As a friend of our furry creatures, you will be pleased to know that poetic justice prevailed.

51. Before they ever used these bats against the Japanese, they were testing and the wind changed

52. and the bats that had been dropped on the target were blown back to the HQ of the American army and blew it up.

53. I don't find it poetic! Do you not find it poetic? I'm American!

54. As I understand it, the kamikaze pilots, they only gave them enough fuel to go one way, right? Yes.

55. They do that with all planes, though.

56. Technically...

57. Technically, all aeroplanes are kamikaze planes.

58. Unless you buy a return ticket.

59. This is why I think that planes should run on AA batteries.

60. You want to go to London from New York, you have to buy 200 AA batteries.

61. You only bring enough batteries to get you there. And you can always get them at the airport. Yeah.

62. Then if you run out over the ocean, someone has got a Walkman you can get batteries from.

63. What if, under the plane, the bit of ribbon that you pull the batteries out with...? Where's that gone?

64. You have to get the end of a Biro...

65. You're hanging underneath a 747, 35,035 feet... trying to dig out 32 AA batteries with a Biro.

66. None of this is as mad as a bat with a napalm waistcoat.

67. One minute they're trying to get little bats with little napalm,

68. and then, OK, that didn't work, an atomic bomb, then, blow up two cities...

69. That brings me to my next question. Rich, which comedian went and dropped an atomic bomb on Japan?

70. That would mean, basically, which comedian bombed in Japan?

71. That would have been me! Did you bomb in Japan?

72. I bombed so horribly in Japan... In front of an English-speaking audience? No, Japanese speaking.

73. I tried to put my finger on what went wrong. That had a lot to do with it.

74. A comedian member of what you might call a troupe of comedians. One of the Stooges?

75. No... Why, you knucklehead! You dropped that atomic bomb on Japan!

76. What d'you wanna do that for? Why, I oughtta...! They'd never have won the war if those blokes had a plane!

77. He contributed materially to the technology behind,

78. very specifically, the dropping of the bomb.

79. Everyone else was working on the nuclear explosion.

80. He invented little doors that went... There is a particular clamp

81. that held the bomb to the aeroplane. The Crazy Gang! The best known of them all, the Marx Brothers.

82. Harpo. That one there? The one with the ring round him.

83. What is his name? Karl. No.

84. You've got Harpo and Groucho, and on the right-hand side there's Chico.

85. Zeppo. Zeppo is the right answer.

86. He joined after Gummo - also known as Who-o? -

87. left the stage act. He was in five of the films, the last one being Duck Soup.

88. He set up a company that specialised in engineering and design. Called Blammo!

89. It should have been! He came up with the clamp that held the bomb. As well as a wristwatch

90. that detected your pulse and gave an alarm when you had a heart attack.

91. Groucho said he was a lousy actor and couldn't wait to get out of the Marx Brothers. But he also added

92. that he was, off-screen, the funniest and wittiest of the Marx Brothers.

93. Harpo could actually talk in real life. No! You've shattered all my... I read his autobiography.

94. He spent the first 15 years of his life nicking stuff. He was really proud of it. They all did.

95. They were gangsters in New York. The Three Stooges were flying planes and they're the gangs of New York?

96. We're gonna kill you if you don't give me the money.

97. Harpo had a long career as an after-dinner speaker

98. because he just stood up and said, "Unaccustomed as I am..."

99. A lot of the early gangs in New York were Jewish - Dutch Schultz, Mayer Lansky...

100. I think the Scorsese oeuvre would be a lot nicer if people had horns - beep-beep - and a funny hat.

101. "Hey, Jonny, what you gonna-ga do?

102. "You think I'm funny, how? I'm gonna play this BLEEP harp over here!

103. "I amuse you?" Beep-beep!

104. Fantastic. Now, Phill, one for you, I think. What goes woof, woof, boom?

105. A suicide corgi.

106. The next Norwegian entry for the Eurovision Song Contest?

107. Terrier-ist!

108. Excellent. Joy upon joy. Very, very good.

109. He must have some points for that. Excellent.

110. We know how grotesque the Americans can be - sending bats into combat.

111. And now the Russian flag, you see, is waving behind you. A dog with a bomb on it?

112. Dogs with bombs tied to them... Aw! I know. What Man is capable of.

113. Too grotesque. The story is horrible.

114. They trained them by making them very, very hungry... Throw a stick at a tank and it just goes... Woof!

115. Why not just throw a bomb at the tank, instead of making a dog go...?

116. Because they are armour-plated. They would keep the dogs very hungry and then put food under a tank...

117. Why don't they just put a bomb there? They're putting the food there, he could put a bomb there.

118. No, they're training them.

119. So they become used to looking under tanks for food.

120. Whose job was it to change gear on that dog?

121. That is the trigger for the bomb. When he gets under the tank.

122. I bet you all eat sheep, don't you, on a Sunday?

123. Don't worry. That one didn't blow up. He lives on a farm now. He lives on a farm now.

124. His back's broken.

125. I have to tell you that there was, again, poetic justice.

126. The dogs just turned round in the battle and saw the Russian tanks,

127. which they recognised as having food under them, so they went and blew up their own tanks!

128. So the Russians started to shoot all the dogs. They didn't shoot that one! He lives on a farm,

129. they really love him and stroke him a lot!

130. On to our next picture question. Why is this picture a double first?

131. They're going to use the penguin to blow up the Scotsman?

132. It's a brilliant plan!

133. First time the pipes were played in Antarctica. Yes.

134. Probably the first time a penguin was subjected to any kind of music. The penguin went like that!

135. Is this the first-ever Edinburgh Festival? Would that it were.

136. Would that it were, Stephen, would that it were. Would that it were!

137. Oh, shush.

138. Here's one for mother.

139. Did you know that 50% of pipers...

140. I don't mean news-pipers, I mean bagpipers.

141. .. suffer from repetitive strain injury and are hard of hearing?

142. That is poetic justice! Exactly! Very good. Excellent.

143. It is the first postcard ever to be sent from Antarctica.

144. Obviously, you don't bring a lot of stuff to Antarctica.

145. This guy had to drag his bag... What if they had hit a crevasse? Too much weight, because of them.

146. You never know, it might have saved his life. It might have just caught in the crack and he'd swing from it.

147. That did come out oddly, but you know what I mean.

148. Now, what is the common name of the species Ursus arctos?

149. It's the polar bear. Polar bear, did you say?

150. A polar bear trap. It was indeed a bear pit, a bear trap. No, no.

151. There are two common names. One if you are American...

152. What's "ursus" mean? "Ursus" is the Latin for bear. And "arctos" is the Greek for bear.

153. So it's a bear-bear? It's a bear-bear.

154. What's a hair-bear in Latin?

155. We shall have to find out. They were great, the Hair Bear Bunch.

156. You can join in at some level, I find.

157. There's a grizzly! There is a grizzly bear, yes.

158. Ursus arctos. Or the brown bear.

159. The Arctic, and therefore the Antarctic, is named after the bear, not the other way around.

160. It was the region of the bear. Ursa Major, the Great Bear, the constellation is over the north.

161. So, if the Arctic is named after the bear, the Antarctic is named after the ant and the bear. Yes.

162. The Adventures Of Ant And Bear. Like Ant and Dec. Only easier to tell apart, obviously.

163. And easier to tolerate.

164. They won't come on the show now you've said that. Bother.

165. Bother, bother, bother. How am I going to live with myself?

166. They're good, write them a letter... They could be walking up and down under here as we speak.

167. Ant is always on the left, always on the left.

168. Reading from left to right. Ant and Dec. Ant and Dec.

169. It's weird. Even when you go around them and go from behind, they still... Not sure how it works.

170. They always follow you around the room. It's like the moon going with you up the M1. Ant and Dec always.

171. No, the polar bear is actually Ursus maritimus, as if you cared.

172. How do polar bears disguise themselves? Like that.

173. They stand in front of anything white. That's probably the right answer. Do they dress up?

174. No, there is apparently a misconception that they cover their nose with their left paw,

175. thinking that it disguises itself, like our model, our demonstrator is showing us now.

176. Where's Alan? Where's Alan gone?

177. Are you sure they're not just checking if they've got bad breath?

178. I don't understand, if you're a 12ft, 800lb bear, why you have to disguise yourself at all.

179. Bear tax.

180. Bear tax.

181. No bears here. Haven't seen any.

182. Or they stand like that... and put three bits of coal there and a carrot in their mouth.

183. This brings us neatly to our general ignorance round in which we ask Alan, is this a rhetorical question?

184. No.

185. Quite right.

186. So...

187. I've got a headache! What's the point of rhetorical questions?

188. So fingers on buzzers. How many states are there in the United States of America? Alan?

189. 50.

190. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. It's 46, technically, because four of them are not states.

191. There they are. That's Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Massachusetts. They're commonwealths.

192. They're commonwealths, exactly.

193. What that constitutionally means... Is their governance any different?

194. They have governors and the same way of conducting their business. It's all in straight lines. Isn't God odd?

195. What are the odds against that...? There's only one state that hasn't got a straight line.

196. I should imagine that would be Hawaii. It is. Well done. I knew...

197. No, just a guess. Gosh, how interesting.

198. Now, staying with America, in the whole of the Second World War,

199. only six Americans were killed by enemy action on US soil.

200. All of them at a church picnic.

201. The cause of death was a Japanese fugo.

202. My question is, what is a fugo? He's the seventh Marx brother.

203. We were hoping you might say it's a poisonous fish, because there is one called the fugu. But it's not that.

204. Fugo is a paper balloon. There were atomic bombs in one direction and,

205. "Let loose the paper balloons!"

206. They sent thousands of them over the Pacific...

207. With a bomb hanging off it? With bombs on them, yeah.

208. But the odds against them landing on a city in the mainland United States were drastically against...

209. Most of it's kind of wasteland...

210. It's not wasteland.

211. All right, but the chances are that, if you send a random balloon into mainland United States,

212. it will hit... Wasteland. It's a clever weapon though, isn't it?

213. Presumably, radar wouldn't detect it. The paper wouldn't show up on radar.

214. No, absolutely. It was made from a paper called washi... Wah-I! Or wahi if you prefer. Balloon!

215. Ba-oon! Can't do Japanese. They did rather cleverly know about the jet stream

216. which no-one else in the world knew about, which allowed it to travel at hundreds of miles an hour.

217. But they were made by schoolgirls who didn't know what they were making...

218. Birmingham is a wasteland.

219. That's, uh, Alabama, I think, isn't it?

220. And Birmingham, Alabama. That's a wasteland. They should team up with each other. They should.

221. Anyway that's a fugo. But fugu, which you neatly avoided the trap of...

222. It's a blowfish. That puffer fish that has a bit in the middle that...

223. Is it about six people a year die in Japan?

224. Between 30 and 100 suffer from the poisoning, and half of those die. So it's anything between...

225. 800 Americans die in a McDonald's every year.

226. Really? Which one? It's best to avoid that one.

227. The blowfish McMuffin.

228. This is a fish which has inner parts which are deadly poison. They just love the daring of it.

229. Well, that's what I thought but, actually, there are traces of the poison always left

230. and if... Get you high? Quite right.

231. It's tetrodotoxin - very poisonous. You have to be specially trained in the art of filleting this fish.

232. Restaurants in Japan where you can eat this fish have little lanterns hanging outside made of the skin

233. to show it's a trained... Part of the training is you have to eat the fish that you've just... Have you had it?

234. I've never been to Japan. You're so tall, you'd be like Godzilla! They'd be like, "Aiiee! Stephen Fryo!"

235. Mistah Flye! You'd be rampaging through downtown Tokyo, "Mahhh..."

236. The museum! Why is it with the Jap...? It's always a 50/50 ball

237. whether it's an R or an L, and they always get it wrong.

238. I refuse to generalise about a race of people.

239. I heard Mike Myers do an American name - Rory Templeton - and he called him Ruaridy Tempreton.

240. If you want the Japanese to virtually commit suicide, just ask them to say orange tip fritillary.

241. Aiieewa oieewah!

242. For you, Mr Flye, interview is over!

243. You build bridge now!

244. So much for the Geneva Convention.

245. Oh, yes, absolutely correct, whatever the question was.

246. Fugus, that's right. Fugus.

247. So, when are penguins found near the magnetic North Pole?

248. When they're wearing a suit of armour!

249. They are going to be, soon, because the magnetic north and south is going to switch any minute.

250. Oh, give the man five points. Absolutely spot on.

251. The trap was to say that penguins only live near the South Pole

252. but the fact is, the north and south flip in magnetic terms.

253. I think penguins might be my favourite animal. I like the one on the bottom left.

254. Looks like security!

255. Yes, the actual root of the question - though penguins are, in so many ways, more interesting -

256. was that the North Pole becomes the South Pole and vice versa every million or so years. Really? Yeah.

257. So any minute now, everyone's fridge magnets are just going to fall onto the floor? No...

258. People will start believing in bloody God again!

259. Compasses will point to the south, rather than the north. It will be great for orienteering, won't it?

260. People will get used to it. No, they won't. North, not south?

261. I don't live in South London, I don't care what you say. Oh, dear...

262. Do we know why it happens? What's going on? No.

263. It's a very mysterious process.

264. If the Earth were not magnetic, there would be no life on it, or at least no life like us... What a loss.

265. Yes. Because the magnetism deflects the solar rays...

266. I want you to imagine the penguin is a malicious and dangerous conqueror of peoples. And now look at that...

267. They don't have many predators... Polar bears eat them. They don't live in the same continent.

268. Don't they? They've never met? Polar bears in the north.

269. They've never seen one another? Except in zoos. In my mind, it's like lions and tigers.

270. In my head, they're all hanging out together. And they've never met! Lions - Africa. Tigers - Asia.

271. Imagine if it was like that with men and women. Here's a thought.

272. Do you think it would be better if it was harder to conceive, but easier to give birth?

273. If I was a woman, I would certainly think that. Who cooked that up?

274. It's all backwards, isn't it? Yes.

275. Mind you, you wouldn't want to gasp in agony for 36 hours to conceive.

276. It's usually what it sounds like! Let's move on, then.

277. What is wrong with this picture?

278. No Starship Enterprise.

279. It should be the other way up. Absolutely right. Have some points.

280. It's upside down, according to our usual convention of putting north at the top and south at the bottom...

281. So in 200,000 years' time, this is going to be completely wrong.

282. At the moment, that's its North Pole at the top, and its South Pole... I meant it should be vertical.

283. How very honest you are, Davies. You can take those points off yourself.

284. Lastly on poles - how are Boy Scouts connected to poles?

285. Don't look at me like...

286. Part of their uniform. They had a hat, a neckerchief and a pole that was used for erecting their tents...

287. Something to do with Poland? It IS to do with Poland.

288. Name things that are particular about Boy Scouts. Dib-dib-dib, dob-dob-dob. Yes. The salute. You got there.

289. Let's have a look at a Polish salute and a Boy Scout salute together, shall we?

290. There you are, on your screen now. Which one is the Pole?

291. Oh, let me think. Let me think.

292. What a weedy, nerdy scout. It's the Milky Bar Kid.

293. We need hard scouts. I loved the Boy Scouts. We went to 'Nam.

294. It's said to be an American invention, the Boy Scout movement, more than a British.

295. A man called Seaton founded a movement called the Woodcraft Indians.

296. Did you go in a helicopter gunship?

297. He had a little waistcoat with napalm strapped to it.

298. With The Doors playing really loudly. Now, boys...

299. if you see anybody wearing black pyjamas, you run towards them

300. and you press that button there. That's them dead.

301. Ka-boom! You got your Woodcraft, you got your Killin' Gooks...

302. You got your napalm waistcoat.

303. The Poles were the only army with that salute, with two fingers, supposedly after a Polish war hero

304. who had three fingers blown off. Do I look Polish? You look very Polish.

305. Ooh! Do a Polish polar bear.

306. Fantastic, thank you. Well...

307. on that bombshell, that's it for another week, I'm sorry to say.

308. And the final scores are poles apart.

309. Phill scored a piping hot 4.

310. Rich barely scraped in ahead of Clive with 2 and 1 respectively.

311. But Alan bombed with -4.

312. Two fingers to Alan, and to you all.

313. It's do widzenia. Goodnight.