QI 5x8

1. Well, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,

2. good evening, good evening, and welcome to QI,

3. where tonight we're all ears and eyes, and so I say unto you,

4. hark, behold, Phill Jupitus!

5. David Mitchell!

6. Jimmy Carr!

7. And Alan Davies!

8. So, gentlemen,

9. let's hear your eyes. Phill goes...

10. 'Aye, aye, sir'.

11. Aw! Cabin boy.

12. David goes... 'Eyes to the right.'

13. Jimmy goes...

14. 'And... left!'

15. Alan goes...

16. I like you ve-e-ry much

17. I think you're grand... #'

18. Ah... lots of "I's!

19. Good. And don't forget to keep your ears peeled for an elephant...

20. Hmm, if you see one coming,

21. you're looking at a bonus. Those are your elephants. Well done.

22. Very obedient. Put them away now.

23. Or... maybe that was a clue to our next question. Who knows? Here it comes.

24. What would you use one of these for?

25. What would I use it for, or what is it meant for?

26. Oh, isn't this for fish? Getting things out of fish?

27. An interesting thought.

28. On the Swiss army knife there's one for scooping out a fish eye. They're not difficult to get out, are they?

29. They're pretty squidgy. Unless the fish is still alive.

30. Fish don't blink... which is the main eye defence.

31. If you're ever trying to get the eye out of a fish and it blinks,

32. it may be a lion.

33. Is this the Albanian army knife?

34. "I do two things.

35. "I poke and scoop."

36. I like the word "scoop".

37. Scoop? It's for scooping fish eyes out.

38. Not for scooping out fish eyes but for scooping something.

39. Some people get loads of sleep in their eye, great clogs.

40. More than a finger end can manage.

41. Earwax. In the morning when you... Oi! What did you say?

42. '# I like you ve-e-ry much. #'

43. Earwax. Is the right answer!

44. No. Thanks a bunch! That as well?

45. You've all got a red one, in fact.

46. This one too, this is a modern version. Know what they're called?

47. Earwax scoopers.

48. They're called ear spoons, or ear curettes.

49. Can I just...? How much do these things cost? Well, not very much,

50. I wouldn't have thought. Can I just say, anyone buying a Bic Biro...

51. We have to be very careful about what we put into our ears, though.

52. They do say, if you put a bit of earwax... If you've got glasses and you do that, which some people do,

53. you would just prop it on top of a frothing pint of beer or stout,

54. and it makes the head disappear completely.

55. It's oil-based, and oil breaks down the surface tension of the bubbles

56. and causes them to collapse. You use that little hole? You put that in your ear? Well, yes.

57. Again, a doctor wouldn't recommend it. .. Oh, he's gonna do it.

58. Silly not to, I can't hear anything.

59. The problem isn't the scraping out of the ear matter but the disposal. Where does one put it?

60. Unlike snot, it doesn't taste nice!

61. What have I said?

62. It is so very bitter. Yes, it is bitter.

63. Very much, it's the greens of the meal...

64. Eat up your earwax!

65. That's what magicians do, isn't it?

66. Yeah, very good! That was convincing from my angle, not the audience's.

67. It's actually gone in.

68. If you squirt Fairy Liquid - thinking of the surface tension thing -

69. where there are lots of water boatmen hanging around, they'll all sink, won't they?

70. They will. You want to look at the expressions on their faces. To them, it's like the ground

71. has turned to liquid.

72. They don't realise it's liquid to start with, the morons!

73. Right, what can you tell me about Q-tips?

74. Don't put them in your ear. They're better than these things.

75. Do you know who invented them? Mr Q and Mr Tip.

76. It was actually a man called Leo Gerstenzang...

77. So it wasn't Quincy Tippington?

78. .. when he saw his wife using toothpicks with cotton wads for their baby's ear.

79. Do you know what the original name was for them?

80. Baby... Baby spears. Baby something.

81. Baby Gays.

82. Baby Gays? Baby Gays.

83. G-A-Y-S. Are they still called Baby Gays in other places?

84. Because I imagine if a foreigner comes here on holiday

85. and thinks, "I'd better clean my ears", and they walk into Boots and go,

86. "Have you got any Baby Gays?" they'd be put on some sort of register. They would!

87. You're right.

88. Do you know how many of these Baby Gays, or cotton buds, Unilever produces a year?

89. 42 trillion. 2 billion. 3 billion. 4 billion.

90. 25½ billion.

91. Billion? A year. That's a lot.

92. Now, how can we tell who is whose child just by looking at their ears?

93. That was horrifying... Beautiful weekend! Presumably, the parents of the child

94. would be going, "Step away from my child. Stop looking at his ears."

95. There is that. On that day, I had to have a child's head on my body all day.

96. Was it exhausting?

97. I've got a cracking pair of tits!

98. So the Atkins is working, then.

99. I feel really left out. I'm sorry.

100. Couldn't I be, like, the dog or something?

101. Actually, though, David, you could also be the parent of that child.

102. And Alan and Phill could be YOUR parents, in terms of ears. How would we know that, though?

103. What is it about your ears that is particular?

104. It's very odd that all four of you have very unusual ears. Well, not VERY unusual, but less than average.

105. Is it a lobe thing? It's a lobe thing.

106. Your lobes are all attached. They don't hang.

107. What, you mean they're not sort of over there somewhere?

108. They're attached lobes. They go straight down. You don't have an actual lobe.

109. You have a lobe? Yeah. A little flappy lobe that I can do that to.

110. Ugh! Stop it, stop it!

111. It's more common to have a lobe than not to.

112. Audience, put your hands up if you've got a little flappy lobe.

113. Freaks! Lower your hands, please.

114. And could you put your hands up if you haven't. .. Yes, you see. It's a bit like eye colour,

115. it's a dominant and recessive gene thing,

116. so that if you both have attached lobes, as their mother and father,

117. your child MUST have attached lobes. So if a family are watching,

118. and they think, "Hang on, ours hasn't..." Yeah, afraid it's a dead giveaway.

119. Well, this is turning into Kilroy. Well done.

120. I think the best way to tell whose kid it is by the ear lobes,

121. is if they're pierced, and the kid is less than two years old,

122. the parents are the ones in the shell suits having a fight in the car park.

123. Ohhh!

124. If a child has hanging lobes and both his parents have lobes attached, something is amiss.

125. Don't wake the children up to find out now, though.

126. Why wake them up? They're not yours.

127. Exactly.

128. Now, what's the best way to date a cod?

129. Where... did you find... a slutty fishmonger?

130. There are plenty. "All these whores of the sea can be yours!"

131. Do 'em up like that, they fly out the shop.

132. Given the choice of two cod, come on.

133. I thought of Lady Penelope there.

134. Something to do with... something to do with eyes or ears.

135. That's our theme. Yeah, smart. They haven't got ears, so...

136. Well... Ears is right, they have an ear bone. They have an ear bone?

137. They have an ear bone. But what's interesting is that you can age a cod to within a day

138. using this method, so it's even better than trees, which is a year.

139. The otilith is a bone that we all have, and it helps give us a sense of which way our head is up.

140. All of us cod? No, all of us living things. In fish, including cod,

141. it gets this calcium carbonate build-up.

142. You have to kill the cod first, then you bake its otilith,

143. and then under a microscope, you can tell its age to within a day.

144. Then you go, "It's his birthday, I'll get him a present." Cods used to be so plentiful,

145. Alexander Dumas, who wrote an encyclopaedia of gastronomy,

146. said you could walk from France to America on cod. You could see them when you sailed, they were just...

147. That ended in disaster. The deaths of many young people.

148. Essentially, the cod wouldn't cooperate.

149. It was theoretically possible but the organisational challenge was too great.

150. They're slippy, even if they will lie nicely on the surface. It's true.

151. It's not gonna happen. Back to boats, you know.

152. That would be brilliant, though. You could run, then slide on them for a bit...

153. The best journey to America ever. A bit like wheelie trainers.

154. Anyway, that's how you age them, by counting the rings in its ears.

155. Now, who has the biggest ears in the world, and what are they for?

156. 'And... left!'

157. Hey!

158. I would go, Grandma, and I would say, "All the better to hear you with."

159. '# I like you v-e-e-ry much. #'

160. Oh, two elephants are being played. And you are right!

161. Elephants have the biggest ears,

162. but what's interesting about the size of those flaps is that they're nothing to do with hearing.

163. Do you know what their ears are for? 'Aye, aye, sir.'

164. Cooling. Yes, they cool them.

165. They're huge big blood vessels, do you see how veiny they are?

166. They flap them, and they can reduce the temperature of their blood by up to ten degrees Fahrenheit

167. and send it round the rest of their body. Wonderful air conditioning system.

168. Also for aggressive displays. Not that aggressive, waggling your ears.

169. I mean, it's not right up there. They've got tusks if they wanna get properly aggressive.

170. That's true. It's a first warning shot across the bows. I think it's a bit flirty.

171. Do you think? There is a theory that they waft some of their scent,

172. which they manufacture behind their ears, with their flaps, so maybe it is flirty.

173. It's important, if you're going on a safari, for you to get it right

174. about whether an elephant is being aggressive or flirty.

175. Also, you wanna think, even if it is being flirty, is that the kind of relationship you wanna get into?

176. Surely that is a lose-lose. Aggressive or randy?

177. Also, if it starts flapping its scent around,

178. you don't wanna get covered in that. You don't wanna be appealing to a randy elephant coming up behind you.

179. So the more it's flapping, the colder it's getting, presumably more aggressive... Dynamite in the sack.

180. Elephants do have big ears, though they don't use the flaps for hearing, really.

181. Now, would a bit of rough music stop you beating your wife?

182. Is this the kind of light-hearted image we have of beating your wife?

183. Yeah. Sounds like a leading question in a police interview.

184. "Would some music stop you beating your wife?"

185. "Oh, it might actually."Gotcha!"

186. It is the classic question, isn't it, "Have you stopped beating your wife?",

187. to which any answer, naturally, condemns you.

188. But wife-beating is a bad thing. We don't approve, naturally.

189. It's just so stupid, isn't it,

190. beating your wife? It's YOUR wife.

191. It's like keying your own car.

192. Society just got a tiny bit worse.

193. I like to think I can help.

194. Have you heard of "rough music?" No. In the countryside, if a man was accused of beating his wife,

195. he would be condemned by the village to rough music,

196. in which they would come round to his house at midnight and they would bang on buckets and kettles

197. and metal things, and make a terrible row.

198. Or they'd parade down the street making this noise,

199. humiliating them in such a way that they would presumably often be run out of town.

200. 100 years ago, this was still being done in the countryside. They called it, "Riding the Stang",

201. in Scotland. A number of things... philandering, wife-beating,

202. or allowing yourself to be henpecked was considered a punishable offence for men.

203. But that looks brilliant. He sat on a chair, got carried around. It's like a carnival.

204. No... I thought that was the fellow that beat his wife. He's one of the people that's beating a saucepan,

205. we don't know where... That's the disabled person in the village. He wants to join in.

206. They were very PC in the past.

207. Unusual disability in that he can't get his leg down. That picture is called

208. A Serenade Of Rough Music,

209. it's from Robert Chambers' Book of Days, 1865.

210. The one there, he's the leader of the rough music, the one on the chair.

211. He looks in charge. He is, after all, being carried.

212. He can play two instruments.

213. The pan and the stick.

214. Well, anyway...

215. Rough music was a traditional form of community justice meted out in the English countryside,

216. until 100 years ago. Now, what happens if an earwig

217. gets into your ear? 'Eyes to the right.'

218. It gets into your brain,

219. and it stays there, and you form a sort of symbiotic relationship with it.

220. It happened to me 20 years ago, and we've never been happier.

221. Oh, what a shame you got forfeited for that.

222. If an earwig went into my ear, I would threaten it with a gun, like that.

223. And then if it didn't come out, I would shoot. I don't mess about. Do they go in ears, though?

224. Is that why they're called that?

225. Well...

226. It's an interesting thing. It may be because the back of their body

227. looks like the kind of pincers people use to pierce ears with.

228. In French it's called a "perce-oreille", a "pierce-ear".

229. Lots of words for earwig in other languages are the same as the word for scissors.

230. It just looks useless having that at the back end.

231. It does rather, doesn't it?

232. You want it at the front. That's true.

233. If a spider lays its eggs underneath your skin,

234. think about how much worse it would be if it was a goose.

235. Geese... And they all come out in this hour... geese everywhere! They're gorgeous when they come out.

236. Fluffy and little.

237. Yes! I'm a goose mother!

238. The idea that earwigs crawl into people's ears and lay eggs or bore into their brain

239. is a complete myth, but a very widespread one.

240. Now pin back your lugholes for another dose of the half-baked hearsay

241. we call general ignorance. Fingers on buzzers, please.

242. Why was it hard for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle?

243. 'Eyes to the right.'

244. This is... isn't this... this is because it was a gate?

245. Wasn't it?

246. No.

247. No. Christ, if you remember, says it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle

248. than it is for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. Of course,

249. these were the days before liquidisers.

250. So there was no chance of pureeing up the thing and getting a straw...

251. It would be a mess but it would be do-able.

252. This is a rich man we're talking about. He would have people to do this for him.

253. Obviously, what happened is a lot of rich men read the Bible and thought,

254. "Well... that can't be right.

255. "Surely?" So there are two get-out clauses.

256. One was this idea that there was an Eye of the Needle gate in the Jerusalem city walls

257. but there is no contemporary, historical or archaeological evidence. In biblical times,

258. women's hands were significantly bigger than they are today,

259. so a needle's eye could be 40 or 50 foot across.

260. You still want that rich man to get through, don't you? What someone told me,

261. I might say, at my bloody school, which is still going and it turns out is talking bullshit...

262. I bet it was a private school, where they don't like you to get on the wrong side of rich people.

263. They said, "There were two sorts of gates to get into cities in those days, one quite wide and one narrow,

264. and a fully laden camel couldn't squeeze through a narrow gate, and those were called Eyes of Needles,

265. and what Jesus wasn't doing was being sort of sarcy, and going,

266. "Yeah, it's about as easy for a rich man to get into heaven as to get a planet into a shoe."

267. He was actually saying

268. that if the camel was no longer fully laden,

269. hence the wealth had been, you know, dumped somewhere,

270. then the camel went in easy as you like.

271. How rich are you if all your stuff is on the back of one camel? Depends, if it's diamonds...

272. really rich. They hadn't found the South African diamond mines then, so diamonds were worth more. Good point.

273. The coronation of George IV, the diamonds in the crown jewels were hired.

274. The king of England wasn't rich enough to own enough diamonds for one poxy coronation.

275. That's how expensive diamonds were. Can you hire diamonds? Of course.

276. At the Oscars, all the actors hire diamonds.

277. That would be the Everest of unsure engagements, wouldn't it?

278. I've just rented this for a week. Let's see how things go.

279. Let's wait till after you've put out. You're absolutely right, David, that is precisely what...

280. Jesus was being sarcastic.

281. He meant exactly what he said. He should have just said, "You can't. If you're rich, you're going to hell."

282. It was an existing phrase,

283. "Putting an elephant through the eye of a needle" existed as a phrase,

284. which is in the Torah, the Jewish book. It appears in the Koran too,

285. "Putting a camel through the eye of a needle." So there was an alternative idea,

286. that "kamelos" was a misreading of the Greek for rope, that it was easier to put a rope through...

287. Passing rope through a needle, it's rather good. It started with elephant,

288. very difficult. Technically, easier to get a camel through.

289. If they downgrade it to a kitten... A kitten would be heartbreaking, though, wouldn't it?

290. Heartbreaking, Phill.

291. You start with his little claw, and you go, "I don't think this is going to happen." Miaow!

292. If you cut their whiskers off, they can get their head stuck in a milk bottle, I know that.

293. From experience?

294. They will try, if you put something at the bottom like a bit of tuna.

295. And then they do actually manage it, and you end up with a lovely bottled cat.

296. To take to your party.

297. "Couldn't decide, red or white, so I brought a cat."

298. What about a cat in a balloon?

299. A cat in a balloon? Yeah, if you just opened it up...

300. What about the claws?

301. Elastoplast.

302. The bottle was a workable idea. Balloon, that's just silly.

303. So, most likely, the text means exactly what it says.

304. There's no evidence for a gateway called the Eye of the Needle.

305. Now, how many eyes does a four-eyed fish have? Two. One. Four.

306. Eight. How many points have I lost?

307. The trouble is, you did say one,

308. but you said first two, which is right.

309. So I get the points back! Definitely.

310. It's two eyes. They're called four-eyed fish in many places. Cos they wear glasses.

311. It's called the Anableps anableps,

312. there it is. That's not hot.

313. Named by a scientist with a stutter.

314. Yeah. Anableps anableps means, "Looking up", in Greek, and that's the clue,

315. it has two eyes but they're divided into two, each of them.

316. They stay precisely at the water's surface,

317. so the top halves of their eyes are looking up, while the bottom halves are looking down.

318. So they're in the water, with the top half, going, "It's so dry. I can't blink, it's a bit of a bastard."

319. You find them in Mexico and northern Spain.

320. Do their predators come up from behind and go, "He wasn't expecting that, was he?

321. "He was not expecting that when he's looking up and looking down."

322. What are your chances of survival in a plane crash?

323. I'm guessing it'll be one of these where there are loads and loads of plane crashes,

324. but usually no-one dies. Yeah, it's more or less true.

325. Statistically... It swings on the whistle on the life jacket. That's probably what saves the lives.

326. If it's that kind of plane crash that's never happened,

327. where the plane lightly bobs onto the water,

328. everyone gets out nicely, takes their heels off,

329. inflates the thing, tops it up, and then, "Oh, help doesn't seem to have come. I know..."

330. Oh, that's all right. Here come the American army now. It does rely on someone having selective hearing.

331. "I didn't hear that plane go down, but..." Can you imagine anything more...

332. I can't imagine anything more pathetic, than a load of air travellers,

333. bobbing along in the water going, "Peep, peep, peep."

334. What they should give... everyone gets a different note.

335. If you get a little songbook...

336. Wouldn't it be tragic if you were playing a song and one of the notes didn't go off,

337. and you went, ".. Didn't make it."

338. I see Dave's been eaten by sharks,

339. we're gonna have to play Chopsticks. We ought to do South Pacific, we can do this show right here!

340. I heard an urban legend about the brace position.

341. They want you to put your head between your legs to preserve the dental record.

342. I don't think it's true.

343. I heard that as well. Why don't they just tell people that?

344. "In the unlikely event of your death, I'm sure you all agree, you'd like to be identified."

345. "Bite down hard on your own armrest."

346. In fact, between '83 and 2000, in the US, there were 568 plane crashes...

347. 53,487 people aboard. 51,207 survived.

348. The main problem experienced, oddly enough, is getting seat belts off.

349. We all get bored by the hostess reminding us how this incredibly simple buckle works,

350. but apparently, under stress, people revert to trying to undo them

351. the way that's familiar to them in the car. So it is very unlikely.

352. The reason you're made to open the blinds when you land,

353. and that they turn off the cabin lights when landing, is that if there's an accident,

354. the emergency services can see in through the windows.

355. And also, so that passengers' eyes are accustomed to low light,

356. in case they need to evacuate in the dark. Now,

357. can any of you name

358. just one of the actors, who in over 30 adaptations of Treasure Island

359. played Captain Flint? Isn't Captain Flint not in Treasure Island?

360. There is a Captain Flint. In fact, there are two. Oh...

361. Yes, there are two... 'Eyes to the right'. It's the parrot.

362. The parrot is Captain Flint.

363. So Geoff the parrot, Laurence Olivier the parrot.

364. Yes, Captain Flint is actually the parrot, who says... "Pieces of eight." Why, "Pieces of eight"?

365. Yes, because you needed to circle the parrot, there

366. "Parrot is here."

367. Oh, that's where it is!

368. Because many people have parrot blindness. It's a terrible affliction.

369. Why, "Pieces of eight"? Something to do with pirates and silver. Yes...

370. they often divided the silver Spanish dollar into eight pieces.

371. Two of those eights made a quarter of a dollar,

372. which is why, in America, a quarter, 25 cents, is called...?

373. A quarter.

374. Two bits. Two bits. In America, they call it "two bits". So two pieces of eight.

375. I like After Eights. Do you?

376. I wish I'd known that, I'd bring you one.

377. I'm just saying that cos I went on a TV show once and said I liked Quorn, and I got sent a box of it.

378. I was pleased with that, but then I thought, "I wish I'd said After Eights."

379. Apparently the actor that originally played Long John Silver in the first film adaptation,

380. invented that pirate voice. You know the pirate voice that everyone does?

381. Well... Robert Newton, but that wasn't the first adaptation. There were silent ones... there are 30.

382. Perhaps the best voice.

383. You said the first adaptation, that's all! The first adaptation with the voice.

384. Not the first talkie, either. Stop it, you.

385. I thought it was interesting that he... Everyone knows it's Robert Newton's voice...

386. Does everyone know that? Of course they do.

387. There's an international Talk Like A Pirate Day, which is dedicated to Robert Newton.

388. If you ask people to do a pirate, they'll go, "Arrr..." Yeah, seems totally natural.

389. Tony Hancock made his name when he first became well-known by being a Robert Newton impersonator,

390. doing his, "Arrr."

391. He was a very well-known actor, Robert Newton,

392. but nowadays, people don't remember him. Anyway,

393. most of the actors who played Captain Flint were probably called Polly,

394. because Captain Flint is Long John Silver's parrot. Finally,

395. that brings us, of course, to the scores. Whoa...

396. Just listen to this.

397. Last...

398. with minus 11, is David Mitchell!

399. You did well.

400. But you did fall for a couple of them.

401. And only just ahead with minus 10 is Jimmy Carr.

402. We are now moving into the plus scores,

403. with a very creditable plus three,

404. Phill Jupitus!

405. Ears and eyes, do my eyes deceive me, do your ears deceive you?

406. With plus 13, Alan Davies!

407. That's it from Jimmy, David, Phill, Alan and me.

408. And from columnist Jerry Dennis, who had this to say, that is neither ear nor there...

409. "I met a guy this morning with a glass eye.

410. "He didn't tell me, it just came out the in conversation."

411. Good night.