QI 5x6

1. God aften, bon soir, kalispera,

2. buenas noches, god kveld, goede avond, dobry den,

3. buenas tardes, guten Abend, good evening,

4. willkommen, welcome et bienvenu a QI.

5. Tonight, I'm happy to say EC regulations have permitted us

6. to register as a Euro quiz - accordingly, tonight's panel is 95.62% European.

7. From England, David Mitchell.

8. From Ireland, Dara O'Briain.

9. And all the way from Lithuania,

10. Phill Jupitus.

11. And from a little bit of Wales that is always North London,

12. Alan Davies.

13. Thank you.

14. I myself have a little Hungarian in me, but never mind about that now.

15. So, Englander schweinehunden

16. David goes...

17. "La Marseillaise"

18. Phill goes... "Ode To Joy"

19. Dara goes...

20. ♪ It's a long way to Tipperary

21. That was the Red Army choir singing that. And Alan goes...

22. Here we go, here we go, here we go, here we go!

23. England!

24. Stylish

25. Let's not forget our elephant dans la chambre bonus.

26. Spot the elephant

27. for an "extra-zalung gratificaccia", or as they say in French,

28. "un bonus."

29. So that is ten points in anyone's language.

30. We have a flag issue. What's the problem?

31. David claims not to be English. I'm far from it. Furthermore,

32. I'm not Welsh. WHAT?

33. Well, give him your... your...

34. We'll come to a proper arrangement.

35. When I did a programme about my family tree,

36. it turned out we're nothing to do with the Welsh.

37. Good!

38. Allora, driving our Eurostar and off to question one.

39. We've raised the bar for this one in recognition of the presence amongst us

40. of the noted historian David Mitchell of Peterhouse, Cambridge.

41. So David, we'd like you to name 5,732 provisions

42. affecting the enclave of Baarle Hertog in the treaty of Maastricht.

43. Uh... Your time starts now.

44. Well, this is an easy one.

45. Um...

46. The enclave actually only exists theoretically,

47. because it's a sort of sand bank which was once farmed but was flooded in the 14th century

48. and it exists between Denmark and Germany and the Heligoland Bight.

49. But it's been an anomaly in diplomatic law ever since then

50. because there were arguments about who owned it theoretically even though no-one could go there.

51. So the 5,732 provisions are a provision for each of the former states of the Roman empire

52. before it was dissolved by Napoleon.

53. That is absolutely wrong.

54. Ah.

55. Not one thing that you said was true. It convinced the audience.

56. They were ready to applaud you.

57. Number 706 is "no fat chicks."

58. Well, firstly do we know what the treaty of Maastricht was?

59. It's to do with the European Union, I think. I cheated a bit.

60. You were talking about the second... Uh-h-h-h... .. treaty of Maastricht.

61. There was a first treaty of Maastricht. Was it about sand banks?

62. Not exactly. It was about settling which parts were Dutch-Belgian

63. and which parts were Frenchy-Belgian Belgium.

64. And it's so complicated in this particular place, Baarle Hertog,

65. that there are 5,732 parcels of land.

66. You walk into a house and one room is Dutch, one room's Belgian

67. and there are front doors split in two - one side is Belgium,

68. one side is Dutch. And because the laws are different...

69. .. closing time in the Netherlands

70. is earlier than Belgium, so in the same restaurant, they close half the tables because it's Dutch

71. and you have to move to the Belgium bit.

72. The Dutch have taken the piss a little. They have a sex shop right next to the Belgian town council,

73. just in the Dutch part. Those crazy Dutch guys!

74. Belgian guys - look at our cock rings and inflatable ladies!

75. It is true that Belgium as we know it is an entirely artificial country.

76. Yeah. They were named after the Belgae which was a tribe. A lot of those were in Winchester.

77. Belgae.

78. I dare say someone just threw his pipe at the television.

79. "Fran, he just called me Belgian!"

80. "Where's my gun?"

81. But as for enclaves in this way, that is a sort of country within a country.

82. One of the most remarkable ones was Suite 212 at Claridges.

83. Was that Norway during the Second World War?

84. It was Yugoslavia for a few days.

85. So there were rows in that room!

86. Ethnic cleansing in the bathroom.

87. Yeah, the queen was pregnant,

88. and she wanted to give birth to the heir to the throne of Yugoslavia on Yugoslavian soil,

89. so the British government said, "We will allow for a few days Suite 212 to be Yugoslav soil."

90. Actually, people got some Yugoslav soil, which they had handy, and put it under the bed.

91. Apparently.

92. Now, when is it cool for a "brother" to bring a "chick" into a monastery?

93. Do they sort of have...?

94. It's like on Christmas Day, in the days of servants,

95. the masters used to serve the servants.

96. On Christmas Day in a monastery, all the rules are off,

97. and it's, you know, time to shag everyone.

98. Any idea where that might be, that monastery?

99. Do you know in the audience?

100. Greece. Greece. They know.

101. Good audience. It's Mount Athos.

102. Mount Athos, which is described by many as the holiest place on earth.

103. It contains 24 large monasteries and hundreds of small ones.

104. It's only about 350 square kilometres.

105. It's like Travelodge have opened one in Narnia, isn't it?

106. "Comfortable living, fantasy prices."

107. It does look a little forbidding, I grant you.

108. No females, of any species, are allowed in Mount Athos.

109. Obviously they can't stop wild birds and stray cats,

110. but no female animals, no female humans are allowed.

111. Apparently the Virgin Mary discovered the place and said,

112. "No woman should set foot here after me."

113. Prince Philip visited it with the Queen. She had to stay in a boat 500 yards from the shore!

114. I dare say she was gutted to be with the jug-eared idiot again!

115. "Oh God, he's gonna call 'em... What's he gonna do now?"

116. "Oh, no!"

117. Ah-ha!

118. Well, for a thousand years, it's been like that.

119. I mean, it's pretty astonishing.

120. But... they do let in hens. Why would they let in hens?

121. Eggs.

122. They prefer eggs to the jizz of the male hen!

123. You don't know monks very well, do you?

124. They much prefer cock, I think

125. No, it's not actually to eat the eggs.

126. To... mock them!

127. To draw faces on them.

128. No, it's to use the yolk for mixing paint for icon painting.

129. So all their icons smell of egg?

130. Well, a lot... It's a good thing for binding paint together.

131. It's been used for a long time.

132. So, that's why they make an exception to their rule...

133. So if you get trapped in a monastery and you can't find the fridge,

134. yummy, yummy icons!

135. Yes. Absolutely.

136. Yeah, is it like that wallpaper in Willy Wonka where the different colours taste of different things?

137. "Oh, the snozberries taste of snozberries!"

138. "All the Jesuses taste of breakfast!"

139. The monastic police enforce the rules -

140. of not allowing women in, for example.

141. Have they ever had a meeting about it?

142. You know, about how it's a mental rule?

143. I don't think they have, because some of them are very...

144. extreme. Some of them starve themselves.

145. In fact, people who make that equipment

146. for detecting dying people in the rubble after an earthquake or something,

147. they actually went to Mount Athos

148. and took samples of the breath of fasting monks

149. so they could get a sort of idea for their machines

150. of the particular smell of a starving human.

151. Very important for the purposes of this rubble thing, so they have their uses, these mad monks!

152. So, no women, no food... eggy paintings?

153. Yeah! Sounds like a hoot

154. Well anyway, which would you rather have, the German disease, the French disease, the Polish disease,

155. the Portuguese disease or the English disease?

156. Yes?

157. I'm guessing they're kind of the same thing -

158. it's like sado-masochism or a love of being tied up and spanked.

159. It's just fetishes.

160. The English VICE is flagellation, to the French, isn't it?

161. The English disease? I think it's all clap, isn't it?

162. Pox. Certainly, syphilis, yes. Absolutely right.

163. Syphilis, according to which nation you are, it's your enemy's disease.

164. The French call it the English disease, the English call it the French disease...

165. The Dutch call it the Portuguese disease.

166. The DUTCH? Yes.

167. What have they got against...? Where do they meet?

168. Navigational wars in the 17th century.

169. They were at war for years - over spices.

170. Oh, spices!

171. Explains it all. Nutmeg. They fought battles over nutmeg.

172. There's the Dutch king in front of his cupboard -

173. "Where's my cardamom?"

174. "Those syphilis-riddled bastards have pinched our cardamom!"

175. The very idea that a pox-ridden Portuguese bloke was thinking, "I need some cumin!"

176. They valued the spices so much that they swapped Manhattan for the Spice Islands in Indonesia.

177. Yeah. That's how we got Manhattan.

178. True. It was New Amsterdam.

179. They used nutmeg to preserve meat. That's why it was so valuable.

180. You could sail halfway round the world, so long as you had nutmeg.

181. I think Alan should have points. Points!

182. Top work.

183. One of the odd things about syphilis

184. is it appears to have arrived in Europe

185. around the time America was discovered,

186. so many people thought it came FROM America.

187. But it was first among German troops when they were besieging Naples,

188. so it was called the German disease,

189. the Neapolitan disease, because that was a kingdom then.

190. What did they use to cure it until the turn of the 19th / 20th century?

191. Petrol.

192. It's almost as weird. A poison - they used mercury.

193. Mercury.

194. At Oscar Wilde's trial, it actually came up against him

195. that when he laughed, he put his hand up in front of his mouth -

196. it was considered effeminate.

197. But it's probably because he had syphilis and he'd taken mercury,

198. which makes the teeth green and transparent, so he was covering his bad teeth,

199. but it was counted against him.

200. They used to say, "From Venus to Mercury..."

201. Didn't Edward VII take a lot of mercury? I think he might have done.

202. I thought that was for constipation.

203. Yeah, all kinds of things. A very sort of literal way of treating it.

204. "Drink an incredibly heavy liquid.

205. "Force the poo down."

206. The alternative would be, stand on your hands and have a load of helium.

207. That is a much better image.

208. Just need some foot-men with nets - "Catch the turds!"

209. "Don't let it get on the tapestries!"

210. What a sick mind you have, David Mitchell.

211. Then someone comes in and says, "What's the matter?"

212. "Constipation!"

213. "Look!"

214. Do you know the later cure?

215. It actually won its deviser a Nobel Prize in 1927, for medicine.

216. It was a weird cure - it was to give them another disease.

217. Yeah, the other disease was malaria.

218. Bizarre - you give people malaria and it cures them of syphilis.

219. The bacteria can't survive, literally, the heat of the body when it's got a malarial fever.

220. Strange. Anyway, there you are.

221. At this point in our Euro-quiz,

222. regulations require us to have a "Call My Euro-Bluff" round.

223. So, let's play Call My Euro-Bluff.

224. Theme from "Call My Bluff"

225. Ah! Good evening and welcome. No, hush, tish and pibble.

226. Um, so...

227. Um, it's... Who should start... We'll start with David.

228. David, give us some Euro-regulation.

229. OK, "It's illegal to sell bananas if they're too curvy."

230. What do we think? Anyone got a theory?

231. I think that's true. It's quite a well-known Euro-regulation.

232. It's utter arse of the highest order.

233. You're saying a bluff, are you? What do you feel?

234. I seem to recall this is something the Daily Mail would go,

235. "How dare they say our bananas can't be bendy? Bendy bananas made this country what it is."

236. Balls.

237. You think it's balls. Would you like to reveal?

238. Balls. It's a "bleuf"!

239. It's just you just have to say how big they are, which is fair enough.

240. Otherwise, people would sell tiny, pea-size bananas.

241. The clincher is the current EU standards are identical to the pre-existing British ones

242. and the United Nations ones and the OECD ones.

243. Nothing has changed, except the ability of the press

244. to make things up and scare us that our bananas will be straightened.

245. So! It's become rather political and exciting!

246. Um... Er, Dara!

247. What is yours?

248. This is true.

249. "Trawlermen will soon be required to wear hair-nets while fishing."

250. Is this cos they're handling food? Exactly. The point is to keep it clean right from the very start.

251. Convincing stuff. What do we feel?

252. It makes practical sense as well,

253. because the hair-net could catch small fish,

254. like whitebait or scampi, that might get in the hair of the fisherman,

255. and at the end of the day, that's dinner.

256. They're used to handling nets. What are your thoughts?

257. They wear hard-hats at Smithfield Market and they never had to.

258. They're always making people put things on their heads.

259. Good point!

260. I like that. Good.

261. Good. What do you feel, Phill? Yes.

262. You think it's true as well. Most people think it's true.

263. Come, demonstrate, tell us, put us out of our misery.

264. It's a "Bleuf" as well!

265. It's not true, and I quote Richard Littlejohn,

266. "Oh, what a circus. The safety Nazis have forced fishermen to wear hair nets. You couldn't make it up."

267. Well actually...

268. oddly enough, Richard, you could and you did!

269. It wasn't even as if... Littlejohn didn't make that up. No, he didn't.

270. It was made up by British journalists in a bar in Brussels

271. who tried to see, "Will people fall for this?"

272. And the British press fell for it, completely.

273. They know that people love their little five minutes of snorting anger over the breakfast.

274. "Bloody... Why...? So...!"

275. "It's ridiculous. You don't take an active interest

276. "in how your country's run for just 45 years and look what happens!"

277. Very good indeed.

278. Absolutely right. So we've had two bluffs. Phill.

279. I should do that, shouldn't I? Aha!

280. Would that it were, Stephen, would that it were.

281. Ah... "From January 1st 2008, circus tightrope walkers will be required to wear hard hats.

282. "Because of EEC regulations about safety in the workplace,

283. "anybody, if their feet are more than four feet off the ground,

284. "has to wear a hard hat."

285. I would believe that during a performance, not, but during training, yes, bizarrely.

286. That sounds convincing. What do you think, Alan?

287. I don't think... If you fell off a tightrope, wouldn't it fall off? It'd be hopeless!

288. Without a chin strap, it's an added hazard, isn't it?

289. Probably, it could fall on top of someone.

290. That might hurt! So what are you saying? Bluff, true?

291. Bleuf!

292. Bleuf. Er, I'm saying it's a bluff.

293. Reveal yourself, would you?

294. Oh! It's also a bluff!

295. It is only true in the building and construction industry that

296. you have to wear a hard hat at work. It's where things come down on you

297. rather than you going down on something else. Exactly.

298. As it were.

299. "While we're there, put a hat on when you're going down there!"

300. It was reported in The Times, The Daily Telegraph

301. and, surprisingly, The Daily Mail, which is usually much more wise and thoughtful,

302. er, that circus tightrope walkers will have to wear hard hats

303. during their act. Mr Archer, the circus general manager added,

304. "This is just another loony law from Brussels

305. "and we are the only country stupid enough to pay any attention."

306. No, Mr Archer, the only country stupid enough to believe it.

307. It's bizarre. Alan, have you got one? Yes, I have.

308. I have got one.

309. He's even got a prop. These you may think are sausages. I do. Bangers.

310. But they're not to be sausages soon,

311. they'll be called emulsified, high-fat, offal tubes.

312. That's what you must have on labels. Cos that's what they contain.

313. And there is a sausage firm in Wales called Dragon Sausages,

314. and they actually have to put on the label,

315. "No dragon included."

316. What do we feel, team? If you want a high-fat tube,

317. I recommend the District Line between Bromley-by-Bow and Upminster.

318. But, I, er... No.

319. No. No.

320. Of course, they'll be different names and even different brands of sausages

321. will have different names. No, course not.

322. Yeah, I think this story has been around for a long time

323. and yet sausages are still called sausages. Exactly.

324. But is it true or is it false? It is a bluff!

325. It is also a bluff, very good.

326. It is also actually a line from Yes, Minister. There you are.

327. Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn wrote it.

328. Well, that's it, ladies and gentlemen from Euro Bluff.

329. Oh, 'tis not to say, of course, that everything that comes out of Brussels makes sense.

330. This Manneken Pis is the symbol of Brussels,

331. sometimes they dress her up, or him up, as Elvis

332. and sometimes IT pees beer. What's it all about?

333. I've seen it, it's the most unimpressive thing,

334. apart from that mermaid in Copenhagen, which is also shite.

335. It's just a tiny... it's like yay big.

336. I've got a model of it. It's actually not that scaled down!

337. In theory this is a working one, I believe.

338. That's pretty good, isn't it?

339. How about that?

340. We like.

341. Very nice indeed.

342. Urgh! You're drinking piss!

343. If it's good enough for Sarah Miles, it's good enough for me.

344. There is a theory... Is it anything to do with elephants? Oh!

345. Interesting. No.

346. But it's good that you're thinking.

347. One of the theories is that Brussels was under siege

348. and the enemy were laying explosives around the city walls

349. and a little boy saw this and peed on the fuses.

350. Thus saving the city, so he's memorialised.

351. I did that once and blew the electricity in the house.

352. There's another theory that it was the two-year-old Duke Godfried

353. and his troops put him up in a tree when they were having a battle,

354. and from there he urinated on the enemies and they lost the battle.

355. That was in 1142.

356. They stuck the crown prince in a tree? Like the enemies were just underneath the tree?

357. Throw a rock at the tree!

358. How long has that statue been there? Do you know?

359. 200 years.

360. 120 years.

361. 90 years.

362. It's a lot older than you might think, it's 14th century.

363. Since 1388 there's been a pissing boy.

364. That's pretty good, isn't it? Still works.

365. They get up there with a pipe cleaner every Sunday.

366. It's been stolen seven times.

367. Seven times?

368. Seven times. In 1817, one of the thieves got 20 years hard labour.

369. 1n 1978, they got let off with a warning.

370. No-one ever get 20 years easy work, do they?

371. All the labour's hard labour. Don't say hard labour, it's just rubbing it in.

372. We know, it's labour. We're not saying it's 20 years temping.

373. Working in a call centre. Yeah.

374. So nobody knows for sure why Brussels chooses to identify

375. with an incontinent five-year-old.

376. Bonne chance to them, however.

377. Now, this brings us to the worst Euro nightmare of all,

378. the single devalued currency that we call General Ignorance.

379. So fingers sur les buzzers, s'il vous plait.

380. What is the highest mountain in Europe?

381. Yay?

382. Er, Mont Blanc.

383. Sorry you said that.

384. No, it isn't. It isn't. Yes, it is.

385. It does begin with an "E" if that's any help.

386. Enormo Blanc.

387. Eiger? Not the Eiger, no.

388. Etna? Ooh, hello?

389. Did you say Etna? Yeah. Etna, hey?

390. It's some island, it's from the bottom of the sea.

391. No? That's Etna, isn't it, or Stromboli.

392. No, it's not. It's right on the borders of Europe,

393. but it's definitely Europe. Is it somewhere in the Caucasus?

394. It is in the Caucasus.

395. Oh, which of the mountain names of the Caucasus?

396. Mount Elbrus is the answer.

397. It's where Prometheus was supposedly chained for daring to steal

398. fire from heaven and he had his liver pecked out every day

399. by vultures as a punishment.

400. Ooh! Yes, that's, that's gotta hurt.

401. You'd wanna get it over with at the beginning of the day.

402. 100 people attempt to climb the summit every day

403. in the summer season when it's not too cold.

404. And about 30 odd die every year.

405. Do you know that one in eight people who try to climb Everest die?

406. Really. That's a high attrition rate.

407. Not good, is it? Not good at all.

408. You get acute mountain sickness cos you can't breathe.

409. So your stomach won't accept food so you start throwing up.

410. Apparently there are signs all the way up saying,

411. "If you are throwing up and you have a headache, go back."

412. But people don't. So when you're putting your party together

413. to go up Everest, if there's seven of you, just get one ready, someone you don't like.

414. Preferably with asthma.

415. "Here you come, wheezy."

416. In 1997, there was a Land Rover Defender that drove to the very top

417. of Mount Everest, which is a high mountain,

418. it's 18,510 feet. It's also a very busy mountain for people climbing it.

419. All of whom must have been thrilled to see someone drive past.

420. But it's nearly 3,000 feet higher than Mont Blanc.

421. Now, audience, audience, audience,

422. what are the first words of the German national anthem?

423. No, ladies and gentlemen, you are wrong. You idiots!

424. Minus 100, I fear.

425. Welcome to our pain.

426. They thought it was "Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles."

427. I didn't. No! You know what it is, don't you?

428. Nope.

429. I thought it was that. It hasn't been for a very long time.

430. "Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles" was the first verse,

431. that was used as the national anthem under the Nazis.

432. After the Nazis they decided to choose only the third verse,

433. which is the least controversial verse.

434. Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit Fur das deutsche Vaterland!

435. Danach lasst uns alle streben Bruderlich mit Herz und Hand!

436. I have an erection.

437. It is hard not to be moved by that, isn't it? So there we are.

438. "Unity and justice and freedom For the German fatherland".

439. Not "Deustchland, Deutschland uber alles".

440. So there we are, that's almost it. There is one last question.

441. What is right under your noses and sounds like a bell?

442. A smell! No.

443. It's been under your noses all evening. The elephant, the flags?

444. The joke is, "Dunnng!"

445. Your notebooks are made of elephant dung. Ohh.

446. You see? Ohh.

447. Recycled elephant dung.

448. God, it's like the end of The Usual Suspects, it's been here all along.

449. Which brings us to the scores!

450. Soaring like a German eagle in the lead,

451. with minus 5, is... Phill Jupitus!

452. On his heels like a pair of Russian wolves with minus 7,

453. it's David Mitchell.

454. Well, now, this is... this is very, very tight.

455. With minus 26, in third place, Alan Davies!

456. Ha-ha-ha!

457. Tottering along in last place like an Albanian nanny goat,

458. with only one fewer than Alan, on minus 27, Dara O'Briain!

459. But...

460. ..you'll be pleased to know, in very last place,

461. with minus 100, it's the audience!

462. Well done.

463. We've come to the end of our European adventure, so from Alan it's...

464. Good night. And from David it's...

465. Nos da. And from Dara it's...

466. Oiche. And from Phill it's...

467. Labanaktis.

468. And finally from me, it's jo ejszakat.

469. And I leave you with this thought from Jackie Mason.

470. 80% of married men cheat in America.

471. The rest cheat in Europe.

472. Do svidaniya.