QI 2x8

1. Hello, hello, hello, hello, and welcome to QI,

2. for another handful of pickled herrings from the groaning smorgasbord of knowledge.

3. Joining me tonight in the bistro of bewilderment are Rich Hall...

4. Fred MacAulay...

5. Jo Brand...

6. and Alan Davies.

7. Well, let's tuck in, shall we? Rich?

8. Fred?

9. Jo?

10. And Alan?

11. B is for bottle, Burgundy, barbecue and as Alan has shown us - burp -

12. and the start of the day as well, which is biography,

13. so this question - who first discovered that the world was round?

14. It's flat, innit?

15. Is it going to be a trick question?

16. You're cagey from the first.

17. Right from the off. Right from the off, you're cagey.

18. Any thoughts? Copernicus.

19. Not Copernicus. Galileo.

20. Nor Galileo. Someone with a telescope worked it out.

21. It would be useful for working out the moon was round, but not that useful for looking at the Earth.

22. Was it Len Murray?

23. Are you talking about the General Secretary of the TUC? Yeah, I am.

24. Not him? No, it wasn't.

25. He discovered the potato was round.

26. Was it somebody with a boat? It wasn't, no.

27. We're talking about something, perhaps, or something that isn't human. Birds.

28. Not a bird even.

29. They fly all over the... Fish! Nor a fish.

30. Good, though. Whales.

31. Dolphins, sharks. Not sea animals at all. On land? Land.

32. Bees. A panda. Bees is the right answer.

33. Bees can reckon on the position of the sun even at night.

34. Even whilst eating pollen, they can keep an eye on it.

35. Termite mounds go round in a spiral like that

36. because as the termite spilled them in the day, they stay out of the sun,

37. so as the sun goes round, they go round like that.

38. Quite interesting.

39. It is quite interesting. It is, but it's not about bees, though, is it?

40. Bees have the most developed magnetic sense of any animal,

41. and if you put a strong magnet next to a honeycomb,

42. it completely changes the shape into something that's never seen in nature -

43. a cylindrical-shaped honeycomb.

44. Yeah, but you would be stung to death if you did that. That's true.

45. You could wear one of those amusing costumes.

46. Can I ask Alan, on a cloudy day, do the termites really just...?

47. They really motor upwards!

48. They probably do.

49. You see the termite mound go swirly and then whoop!

50. Bees are very interesting animals, or at least QUITE interesting.

51. Most bees - what happens when they sting you?

52. They die. No, they don't.

53. Yes, they do. Only the honeybee.

54. They've got one sting. Wasps have more than one sting.

55. Only one species of bee... You're not allowed to kill bees. You can kill wasps.

56. Only one type of bee, which is the honeybee, leaves its sting behind and dies.

57. All the other species of bee, and there are many, can sting you repeatedly.

58. Several species of wasp die when they sting.

59. If you get stung by an animal that dies, it's likely to be a wasp.

60. If a bee has stung me inside my house, it's likely to die.

61. Exactly!

62. I'm not surprised.

63. Honey - Eddie Izzard once observed it was very odd that bees make honey.

64. Earwigs, he said, don't make chutney.

65. It takes 12 bees an entire lifetime to make enough honey to fill a teaspoon,

66. so the lifetime of 12 bees.

67. Go into a supermarket, see all those jars, think how many bees have been working away.

68. If it's 125ml jar, it'll take 300 bees.

69. Fantastic! What a loss to the accountancy profession!

70. Those are hexagons.

71. They ARE hexagons - little, six-sided bee cells.

72. Brilliant! But why...!

73. But why do they make hexagonal shapes?

74. The hexagonal form uses the minimum amount of wax for the maximum amount of storage.

75. Honeybees have evolved a complex language to tell each other where the best nectar is,

76. using the sun as a reference point.

77. Amazingly, they can also do this on overcast days and at night,

78. by calculating the position of the sun on the other side of the world.

79. They can store information... Has it occurred to you that they may not be using the sun?

80. What do you mean? Whoever has worked that out is wrong.

81. Even when you can't see it or it's on the other side of the world, they still use it.

82. The bees are thinking, "No, we don't. We just remember where we live."

83. Why is it so remarkable that they know where they live?

84. Because they have only 950,000 neurons as opposed to our 10 billion neurons in our brains.

85. They only have one thing to remember - where they live.

86. They've got a lot more to remember!

87. How come I've got 10 billion and sometimes I forget where I live?

88. Exactly. Which brings us to our next question,

89. which is - why do bees buzz?

90. Because they can.

91. They buzz so that when they're trapped in the living room, you know to open the window.

92. It's a thought.

93. Is it to, um... to sound industrious?

94. It could be.

95. You have to look at bees as aerospace workers.

96. Right.

97. And, er... stay with me. Yeah.

98. I will. It's all right. I'm still there.

99. When you're flying, you want to make a lot of noise,

100. because a quiet aircraft is... .. crashing.

101. I think it's their knees knocking that makes the buzzing.

102. They hate flying. Terrified of flying.

103. What is it that makes the noise? The wings.

104. No, no, it isn't, I'm afraid.

105. Not the wings, then? No, it won't be the wings.

106. Er, testicles?

107. Their little tiny mouths.

108. Buzz-zz-zz-zz! Well, it is sort of little mouths.

109. It's through what they breathe - they're called spiracles and they have them down their sides.

110. All buzzing insects, bluebottles, it's not the wings.

111. Less that 1% of the buzz comes from their wings.

112. Bees breathe through 14 holes along the sides of their bodies. They're called spiracles.

113. Each one has a valve to limit the flow of air.

114. They can tune it, rather like a trumpeter,

115. sort of using his lips, what's that called - embouchure?

116. And in the same way that one human lung on a trumpet can fill a vast hall with a great sound,

117. more than it can with its own vocal chords,

118. so a bee can make this extraordinary noise just by controlling its breathing.

119. Isn't science marvellous?

120. Are humans the only species that make unnecessary noise?

121. That's an interesting idea. No, dogs. Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof!

122. Do you think any animals just sit around and hum or just...? Whistle!

123. Thwwrrp!

124. Or talk inanely.

125. Alan?

126. That's why there are no panel shows in the animal kingdom.

127. As to other animals, also beginning with B,

128. "Can barnacles grow wings?" is the question.

129. I do know one thing about barnacles. I'm afraid it's rude, but... Go on.

130. Relatively speaking, they have the biggest penis of any existing creature,

131. which is five times the length of their shell. Seven times is the length I've got down here.

132. You're exaggerating, like men always do.

133. Typical barnacle!

134. Up until recently, it was thought that barnacles were the embryos of the barnacle goose.

135. What fool thought that?

136. It is a bit silly sounding.

137. There's a barnacle goose - named "hibernacula" in Latin,

138. and that got shortened to "bernicla", which became barnacle.

139. These geese breed in the Arctic and so no-one had ever seen them mate or lay eggs.

140. When they arrived in the summer, there'd be driftwood coming in from the sea covered in barnacles,

141. and people made the weird assumption

142. that the barnacles must be the baby barnacle geese.

143. Barnacles growing on ships increase the inefficiency by huge amounts...

144. Barnacles growing on chips? Ships, dear, ships!

145. That really worried you. It would.

146. How long does a chip need for a barnacle to form? Won't happen in my house!

147. The way they glue themselves to things is very, very tough

148. and scientists are looking at it as a kind of dental cement -

149. better than Polygrip or these things that they advertise round about Countdown for some reason.

150. They advertise these strange things that keep teeth together and ways of lowering yourself into a bath.

151. You know when WH Auden got older, the poet...? Oh, yeah, yeah.

152. All right, yes.

153. When he was old, he had an incredibly lined face...

154. Jowly. Really craggy lines, like Chief Joseph, one of those really kind of...

155. And David Hockney... Painter. Yes, well done.

156. One of his first commissions as a young artist was to do a series of drawings of WH Auden,

157. and Hockney just took one look at Auden and said,

158. "Blimey, if that's his face, what can his scrotum look like?"

159. How did Nelson keep his men's spirits up after he died?

160. Did he allow Hardy to use him as a ventriloquist dummy?

161. No, it wasn't that.

162. I think the men would be inspired by the way he sort of slowly dismantled

163. instead of dying all at once.

164. I mean, there was an arm, then there was an eye, then there was, like, a testicle, right?

165. Goodness! Dropping parts like a Volkswagen.

166. The thing is, most sailors when they died were thrown overboard,

167. burial at sea, and he asked not to be buried at sea,

168. and he was going to be taken back from Trafalgar, which is off the Spanish coast,

169. to Britain, so what were they going to do with his body to make sure it didn't rot?

170. Put it in beer. Well, not beer, but brandy.

171. He was pickled in a barrel of brandy.

172. And they were allowed to drink it. Supposedly, using tubes of macaroni,

173. they would have a go.

174. By the time it got to Portsmouth, there was no brandy left,

175. only an unfortunate-looking Nelson,

176. and to this day in the navy they use this phrase "tapping the Admiral"

177. for having a surreptitious slug of anything alcoholic.

178. You can just picture them with the macaroni straw going, "Gulp! Oh, God!"

179. I think that's the other one out.

180. Have we got another patch?

181. In fact, like all these good stories, supposedly it isn't true.

182. Why are male anglers so pathetic?

183. Jo Brand.

184. Because they like fishing.

185. Well, yes. ..Rich?

186. Because they spend £2,000 on equipment

187. when you can go to the market and buy the same thing for £1.89.

188. There's a good book in this country, Fly-Fishing by JR Hartley.

189. Absolutely. The classic.

190. Why are they pathetic, though?

191. What we don't mean is human male anglers.

192. There's another type of angler that isn't human. Oh. Angler fish.

193. Male angler fish truly are pathetic.

194. You can eat them, can't you, angler fish? I'm sure I've had one.

195. There are shallow angler fish and there are very, very deep ones.

196. I wouldn't go calling that "pathetic". That's the female. Oh, right. The female is impressive.

197. The male has a sad life. It must be the feeblest man in nature.

198. Six times smaller than the female. Ah-h!

199. When they find a mate, they latch on with their teeth and start to disappear.

200. Scales, bones, blood vessels all merge into those of the female.

201. After a week, all that's left are two tiny little testes, which leak sperm.

202. That sounds very much like my marriage.

203. Your husband has entirely been subsumed into you. He's six times smaller than I am.

204. There's some of these female angler fish going around with eight testicles hanging off them.

205. It's like an Essex disco.

206. That was Wayne!

207. That thing coming from its head like that

208. is why it's called an angler fish. It's its little rod, as it were.

209. It's bioluminescent. It lights up.

210. Attracting other innocent edible fish.

211. That's what they thought,

212. but now they think it's a way of attracting the male towards it, which gets absorbed.

213. That brings us on - bioluminescence - to what comes from Glasgow and glows in the dark?

214. Is it Sir Alex Ferguson's nose?

215. Is it the River Clyde?

216. It's not the River Clyde neither.

217. We're talking about food.

218. Luminous food? Yes, luminous food.

219. It's an idea that comes from creatures like the angler fish.

220. Is it a deep-fried Mars bar with a torch attached to it?

221. A deep-fried torch? Well, you're in the right area with "deep-fried".

222. What I believe you call "carry-oots" are the food to go.

223. What is the most popular food in Britain these days?

224. Chicken tikka masala. Chicken tikka masala, which was invented in Glasgow. There is one.

225. That's a particularly fine example of one!

226. That might be a used one.

227. One that's been through the system, I've a horrible feeling.

228. Morag, get me a bed of rice!

229. The children shall eat.

230. There is a company called "Biolume",

231. which is planning to have food, including curry, that glows in the dark,

232. using extracts of marine creatures that glow.

233. They want to make beer, in particular, that glows in the dark,

234. children's fizzy drinks that glow in the dark... Why?

235. Chicken tikka masala does not exist in India.

236. The story of it goes that there was a restaurant called the Gay Lord in 1966.

237. It was the first place to serve a proper chicken tandoori... In Glasgow or London? In London.

238. Mortimer Street in London.

239. The story goes somebody came into a restaurant in Glasgow

240. where they were serving this new tandoori chicken and asked for gravy to go on it

241. and the chef improvised with tomato soup and cream and spices,

242. and up grew this strange creature that is chicken tikka masala.

243. It has no definition. It can be hot, it can be mild. It can be brown, it can be orange, it can be grey,

244. but, according to Robin Cook, is the British national dish.

245. I had curry once on the Isle of Man where I was doing a gig.

246. It was served with a cup of tea and some bread and butter.

247. I think that was fantastic, don't you?

248. Can I just mention that since we've been disparaging about the Scottish diet,

249. that we don't eat chips every night.

250. Sometimes we have some chips and leave them aside till the morning,

251. and we have them cold the next day and that's a "salad".

252. Deep-fried pizza and Mars bars. It's a myth. It's a myth. It's not a myth.

253. The Mars bars happened once.

254. He dropped his Mars bar.

255. "Oh, I'm not wasting that!"

256. He scorched his hand getting the wrapper off.

257. Fantastic.

258. You do have the worst teeth and the worst hearts in Europe, you Scots.

259. Your teeth are fine. They're all right, yeah.

260. I've started a company in Scotland... Using barnacle cement.

261. Well, they're OK, but the cement comes off when the penis comes out.

262. Blueugh!

263. We run bus trips to Eastern Europe to show Scottish people worse teeth.

264. Well, while we're in the balti belt,

265. where is it possible to live on a diet of smut without the neighbours complaining?

266. In the green room at Channel 5.

267. A diet of smut is the clue.

268. It is Norwegian food or something? Not Norwegian.

269. It's called smut because it's a sooty black thing in its most primitive form.

270. Caviar. No, really sooty and smutty. A piece of coal.

271. No, but a living thing.

272. Fungi. Fungus, exactly. It's a fungus. Why did the mushroom go to the party?

273. No, no! I've no idea. Why did the mushroom go to the party, Alan?

274. Because he was a fun guy!

275. Lovely. Lovely.

276. What's wrong with that joke? That's a joke for, like, an imbecile.

277. Someone not quite seven years old.

278. What's brown and sticky? Oh, God.

279. I don't know. Yeah, I...

280. A stick. Oh, yeah.

281. I'm worried by the audience reaction.

282. What do you call a boomerang that won't come back?

283. A stick. A stick.

284. More jokes where the punch line's a stick? Loads.

285. What's orange and sounds like a parrot?

286. A carrot.

287. What's red and silly?

288. A blood clot.

289. Oh, don't look at me like that, you BLEEP! pig-eyed sack of shit.

290. Don't you do that.

291. You spoiled it.

292. What's red and sits in the corner?

293. A naughty strawberry.

294. Very good.

295. What's green and sings?

296. Elvis Parsley.

297. Now the smuts.

298. The smut fungus - ustilago maydis - or something similar,

299. is found in Mexico, in particular, where it is prized as a food.

300. Why did the mushroom go to the party?

301. He was a fun guy!

302. How do you think the word "smut" was used to allude to pornography? Because it's dirty.

303. Where does "slut" come from?

304. Essex!

305. There is a particular smut which is edible, the corn smut,

306. and it's been known to the Aztecs for centuries as "huitlacoche".

307. There it is. A picture of an engaging young corn smut,

308. which has grown a sort of berry, which is the bit you eat.

309. Try the Magisterial Illustrated Genera Of Smut Fungi by Calman Wanke - it's a helluva book.

310. So with that rather obscure piece of information,

311. let's plunge yet deeper into general ignorance.

312. Fingers on buzzers, please.

313. What contains the most caffeine - a cup of tea or a cup of coffee?

314. Alan. Tea.

315. Oh-h!

316. Oh-h!

317. In fact about three times more caffeine in a cup of coffee than tea.

318. Why did someone tell me it was tea, then?

319. Well, because, weight for weight,

320. a pound of tea leaves contains more caffeine than a pound of coffee beans,

321. but in a cup of same, we get much more, as we know from drinking it.

322. Yeah. People always say, "There's more caffeine in tea." There's no buzz.

323. But there is actually more caffeine in tea. Weight for weight, but not in a cup of tea.

324. Not in a cup of tea.

325. There is more caffeine in tea, though. Not in a cup of tea, which is the question.

326. Not in a cup of tea. Not in a cup of tea, which is what you drink.

327. You don't tend to just eat tea, just like that, huge quantities.

328. You have a cup of tea... I wouldn't even dream of it. Exactly. Quite right.

329. What's the only ball game invented entirely in the USA?

330. Ball game? Yeah.

331. They haven't invented any ball games.

332. We invented all ball games here in England.

333. Baseball?

334. No, as Alan rightly knows, that was an English invention.

335. No, the English invented that.

336. It's mentioned by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey.

337. Rounders. Rounders neither, I'm afraid.

338. Netball. Netball? Yes, I'll give you netball. Basketball.

339. You're right, Rich. Fantastic. Well done.

340. Basketball and netball were invented by the same person. Dr James Naismith, University of Kansas.

341. He was teaching at Springfield, Massachusetts. You get lots of points.

342. He was in fact a Canadian. Yeah. But he invented it IN the USA.

343. Lacrosse is also a ball game, but it wasn't invented in the United States of America.

344. Basketball, invented in... Weird thing about it, he used an old peach basket.

345. For 21 years, they played the game without putting a hole in the bottom of the peach basket,

346. so someone had to get a stepladder every time there was a basket and take it out.

347. You can't play basketball with a peach.

348. A peach basket they used. A basket for peaches. A peach wouldn't bounce.

349. No, that's right.

350. As a short-arse, I think there should be different divisions for basketball,

351. different height divisions, cos obviously if you're 7'4", you've got an advantage over someone like me.

352. You don't put little boxers like Prince Naseem Hamad in against Mike Tyson.

353. I'd like to see that!

354. I think there should be several baskets you can aim for.

355. A really high basket for 10 points, a lower basket, and then one on the floor.

356. Did they invent netball as well?

357. I woman from Louisiana wrote to Naismith and said... "We've got quite a girlie version."

358. One of the stories is she actually misinterpreted the rules.

359. He laid out the dimensions of a basketball court,

360. giving the various areas, and she thought the players had to stay within those given areas.

361. You can't travel, you can't dribble, in netball.

362. Once you've got the ball, you've got to stand still.

363. We would nail the basket to the side of a truck.

364. Game went on for miles.

365. Can I just say that the kid with the purple shirt is really beginning to annoy me? Will you please sit down?

366. This is very old footage because there are... There are white people.

367. Oddly enough, volleyball was invented in exactly the same college

368. in Springfield, Massachusetts, as netball and basketball.

369. This guy is number 0. There's no confidence in him at all, is there?

370. I think we've seen enough of that. It's going to drive us all nuts.

371. What were Nelson's last words?

372. The last words of someone who sucked at Nelson's body.

373. That's my answer. That's your answer.

374. "Kismet, Hardy," but did he say "Kiss me, Hardy"?

375. It's not "kismet" and it's not "kiss me".

376. "I'll race you to the barrel of brandy."

377. "Last one in's a kipper."

378. Hardy kissed the Admiral twice apparently. Once on the cheek and once on the forehead.

379. Nelson was struggling to remain conscious. He said, "Thank God I've done my duty," then he said -

380. it is rather peculiar - "Drink, drink, fan, fan, rub, rub."

381. Those were his last words.

382. He was thirsty, hot... That's navy lingo for, "Give us a quick hand-job."

383. Those were, according to the reliable witnesses at the scene, they were all agreed...

384. Why do we never hear that at school, then?

385. The most famous lines are "Thank God I've done my duty" and "Kiss me, Hardy",

386. but "Drink, drink, fan, fan, rub, rub..." Their final words are not to do with how interesting they are,

387. they're to do with what people actually said, surely?

388. Myths build up, I'm afraid.

389. Did he say "kiss me" or "kismet"? Kiss me. It's universally agreed.

390. The kismet idea is rubbish. Rubbish. Yeah.

391. he was hot and thirsty, so he had his steward there to fan him

392. and feed him lemonade and water and wine.

393. The ship's captain, Dr Scott, massaged his chest to ease the pain.

394. If you could go in a time machine, would you go there?

395. People always say they'd go here, there and everywhere. I'd go back and see myself.

396. That would be fascinating. So would I.

397. I had a rolled-up ball of socks, and a hamper all the way across the room.

398. I just went like that.

399. Hits the wall, bounces off the ceiling, off this wall, back across that wall, right into the hamper,

400. from, like, 40 feet away.

401. I would go back and watch that again.

402. Fantastic.

403. I hope that when you die, they play back something from your life.

404. And no-one saw it.

405. Stonehenge - the erection of.

406. I'd go back there. Yes. Well done.

407. If you'd just waited a few thousand years.

408. Go back with a power drill and a JCB!

409. Become worshipped as a god.

410. We've come to the end of the round, the end of the competition.

411. My last words are not, "Drink, drink, fan, fan, rub, rub,"

412. they're, "Now, the scores."

413. Rather meagre rations they are too, I'm sorry to say.

414. Rich scored a lightly-batted five points,

415. which is very good.

416. Fred is next with a gently-poached four points.

417. Jo managed a reheated minus eight points.

418. Alan, once again, it's the kebab van for you, I'm afraid, with minus nineteen points.

419. That's all for this week.

420. I leave you with the thought that while most of us drink at the fountain of wisdom, others gargle.

421. From Rich, Fred, Jo, Alan and me, it's good night. Good night.