QI 6x10

1. Well...

2. Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening

3. and welcome to QI,

4. where tonight we're having fun with flora and fauna.

5. It's like animal, vegetable and mineral only... without the mineral.

6. In the flowerbed tonight,

7. we have a perennial favourite,

8. Jimmy Carr.

9. Thank you very much.

10. A hardy annual, John Sergeant.

11. A heavily scented late-bloomer, Jo Brand.

12. And a cat having a crap in a flowerpot,

13. Alan Davies.

14. But before we plunge into my arboretum and bestiary,

15. let's go wild with our buzzers. John goes...

16. Jimmy goes...

17. Jo goes...

18. And Alan goes...

19. Oh, dear.

20. Well done.

21. So let's start on our sofa-bound safari.

22. What does my buttonhole

23. tell you about me?

24. That you're a closet heterosexual.

25. How dare you!

26. I'm sorry!

27. It tells us that you are what you are. Your own special creation.

28. It's not going to fire water at me, is it? No, it's a real flower

29. and it's a member of a family of flowers

30. and it has a name.

31. It's not a rhododendron.

32. Camellia. It is! Well done. And you are La Dame Aux Camelias.

33. Tell me about La Dame Aux Camelias.

34. It's a novel. It's a novel. Yeah.

35. About a lady.

36. Do you know what this meant? Who liked camellias.

37. Yeah.

38. Good. But there is a thing about the red camellia that is very extraordinary,

39. unbelievably shocking, to mid-19th-century France.

40. Periods.

41. You're so right.

42. Marguerite Gautier, the heroine of the novel La Dame Aux Camelias,

43. wore for 25 days of the month

44. a white camellia.

45. For five days, a red one, to tell her lovers that she was not available...

46. That Arsenal were playing away!

47. Playing at home!

48. At home!

49. The decorators were in the... etc.

50. Are you saying that you ARE available or you're not?

51. I've got a period on, John.

52. You can't have me, I'm sorry.

53. Was this in some play?

54. A novel by Alexandre Dumas fils, the bastard son of the creator of The Three Musketeers.

55. Can I just say, that was so sweet, cos no woman in her entire life

56. has ever said "I've got a period

57. Well...

58. I either say "I've got a period" or "I'm on".

59. Fair enough! OK!

60. You don't conflate them together.

61. "I've got a period on"!

62. And anyway, it became a play.

63. Sarah Bernhardt was in it thousands of times,

64. in 1854 Verdi saw the play and turned it into the opera... for five points...?

65. Is that what the opera's called?

66. No!

67. It's called Camellia something... the flower.

68. Audience will know.

69. La Traviata. Audience get ten points. That's very good.

70. It was La Traviata. They're not in the lead again!

71. So La Traviata, which I've heard of and is a proper grown-up thing,

72. is about a woman having a period? No, no.

73. It's the story of a famous courtesan who was in love - and the real one - there were seven men

74. who were so passionate about her but couldn't afford her prices, they clubbed together

75. and bought her a chest of drawers with seven separate drawers in so they could keep their own clothes.

76. It was turned into a film, which was...

77. Snow White. She's called.

78. The seven guys with the one girl is a bit...

79. Very good!

80. Very good.

81. And the film based on La Dame Aux Camelias is...?

82. Carry On Menstruating.

83. Camille. Camille?

84. Yes, in La Dame Aux Camelias and La Traviata, the heroine indicates her availability

85. by wearing different-coloured camellias.

86. The book caused an outrage and made the flower an overnight gardening sensation in Paris and beyond.

87. Something more wholesome now.

88. It's good news. Daddy is taking you to the flea circus.

89. Which bit are you most looking forward to? What do you know about flea circuses?

90. I had fleas in my flat once. Did you really?

91. Rentokil quoted 600 quid to get rid of it.

92. I found a bloke in the local paper did it for 40.

93. I don't know what he sprayed!

94. I was going like this for a few days.

95. Do you know what the biggest destroyer of human fleas has been -

96. much bigger than pesticides?

97. I know the answer. It's vacuum cleaners.

98. You're right. It's their woof-woof-woof.

99. And the fleas don't like it.

100. Do you think your vacuum cleaner may be broken?

101. If it's going woof-woof-woof?

102. You might want to take that back and get a new one.

103. They're not specialised, these vacuum cleaners.

104. They kill lots of fleas?

105. The other thing you've got to know about them is that the back legs of fleas are incredibly powerful.

106. And if a human being had as powerful legs,

107. they could jump over the Eiffel Tower.

108. You're right. Eighty times your own height is what you'd be able to jump.

109. These flea circuses, though,

110. we don't have them in our time,

111. but they were amazingly popular

112. in the 1920s and '30s,

113. because they had to find something interesting to do between the two world wars.

114. Exactly. They were filling in.

115. So fleas were very exciting...

116. a lot more of them about. In fact, they died out in the early '60s, probably.

117. But you will see, there's some film here showing you that -

118. you're right, these strong legs

119. allow them to pull - they were harnessed to wire...

120. Are they real? Yeah.

121. They... I thought it was... No, you're thinking Michael Bentine's

122. mechanical ones with little automatic machines that...

123. You thought you could see the fleas but... No, there were fleas.

124. Genuinely people-trained fleas?

125. No. Unfortunately, they were basically tortured.

126. You would glue them to musical instruments and other things

127. and then heat the underpart where they were

128. so their attempts to make themselves free would look as if they were playing instruments.

129. That's like Britain's Got Talent. That sounds horrible.

130. Almost as horrible as Britain's Got Talent.

131. But let's see some film,

132. if we can, Mr Man In The Gallery.

133. There we are.

134. Why are they performing on his arm?

135. They get fed with his blood. Ah!

136. That's to show how small they are.

137. He's going to burn them with the sun.

138. It's Ben-Hur.

139. Robot Wars.

140. Why have they got a serial killer operating the...

141. That reminds me of a very old joke.

142. Are you ready for a very old joke? I'd love to hear one.

143. How do you build a flea circus?

144. You have to start from scratch.

145. Hey-hey! Excellent.

146. Is that stuck into the flea or glued on?

147. It's glued or they make wire harnesses for them.

148. And people like Michael Bentine invented these mechanical ones.

149. He did one in a Royal Variety Performance in the '60s.

150. And that's when I first saw it.

151. I realised there were no fleas and, like you, I thought there was no such thing and it was just a joke.

152. It was part of an idea that you had freak shows. You'd have all sorts of daft things...

153. It's awful to raise this. You two aren't related, are you?

154. Are you suggesting we're some kind of freak show...

155. No, I just...

156. .. that should be next to the flea circus?

157. There's not a... There's a bit of a likeness, we're brother and sister.

158. That explains it!

159. Flea circuses covered a range of acts, including chariot races

160. and fencing matches as well as acrobatics and...

161. Techniques included glueing the fleas to musical instruments and then heating the floor

162. so they seemed to be playing as they struggled.

163. What is the really odd thing about the only fish in the world

164. that lives in a tree?

165. Is it going to be an underwater tree... thing?

166. Like fish that can live in anemones cos they're the only ones that aren't poisoned by them?

167. These are trees above the surface.

168. Stephen, is that meant to be a perfect picture of...? No.

169. I know that's a salmon for a start.

170. It does not like to live in a tree, I know that.

171. We can actually show you the real fish in a tree.

172. There we are in the mangrove swamps of Florida. Where is it?

173. You can't see it yet, but this is its habitat.

174. These pools shrink and it goes up these little grooves made my insects,

175. whole groups of them go up into the tree. We can see one poking its eye out.

176. And what's the unusual thing? Can it whistle one tune while it hums another?

177. Kind of almost an erotic version of that.

178. It is the only vertebrate that is a hermaphrodite that self-fertilises.

179. That's how it breeds.

180. It pleasures itself and... Why don't we all do that?

181. In terms of natural selection, why don't we all, because that'd be fun.

182. My teenage years... You're right. .. there would've been thousands.

183. It'd be fun to tell yourself you've got a headache.

184. "No, I can't tonight."

185. Isn't it asexual reproduction? No, it's hermaphroditic. Parthenogenesis you may be thinking.

186. Oh, right, I was.

187. He's new.

188. It's called a killifish and there are 1,270 different species of them.

189. That's not the same one we've seen.

190. That's his sister! It's not, but it's certainly a killifish.

191. Now, while we're at the water's edge,

192. why does a flamingo stand on one leg?

193. I think I have the answer. Because it wants to go to sleep.

194. Yes. Is it?

195. You're right! Ah, well.

196. I was going to say land mines!

197. No, you're right. They have, like other animals, the ability for half of themselves to go to sleep.

198. The half with the leg up is asleep.

199. That whole half of their body is in a torpid state and the blood flow's less.

200. When that has had enough sleep, they swap over and the other leg goes up.

201. There must be a in-between moment when they fall on their arse. You'd wonder.

202. How does that work? Does it go naturally down the middle of their neck

203. or does their arse go to sleep, and then their face wakes up?

204. One assumes... I don't know. The phrase "my leg's gone to sleep" has a whole new thing. Precisely.

205. And they are pink because...?

206. It's... not crayfish, prawns or something.

207. It's not prawns. It's a common fallacy that they're pink because the eat pink food like prawns...

208. Or Angel Delight. Or Angel Delight.

209. No, they eat a blue-green algae which is full of carotenoid that makes them pink.

210. In zoos they give them supplements to make them pink. The flamingo version of Where's Wally is hard.

211. Interestingly, they can drink boiling water.

212. How did they find that out?

213. A very cruel man found that out. "Here you go!"

214. They live near geysers where the water is that temperature.

215. They can eat a McDonald's apple pie.

216. The only species that can!

217. Which is the hottest substance known to man. Yeah.

218. Verified by NASA.

219. As night falls on our expedition, the evening chorus starts up from the waterhole.

220. It's spring and love is in the air. What are these toads saying to each other?

221. It's very repetitive. These are natterjacks.

222. Natterjacks like a lot of toads have explosive sexual engagements...

223. It's not just toads. .. when suddenly it's ready and the male toad will jump on anything.

224. Animal, vegetable or mineral.

225. Hopefully a female toad, but very often it will jump on a male toad. That's OK too.

226. Which is fine. Yeah.

227. But the male toad underneath often doesn't like it...

228. Well, you know, a reach around.

229. .. and it makes a noise, and that is the noise you hear during the mating season.

230. You're saying the sound we heard there was a lot of frogs going... "I'm a bloke!"

231. I can't understand the idea that this toad would have evolved and gone,

232. "When the mating season comes round, just go for your life,"

233. rather than trying to chat a girl up... in a froggy way.

234. Do you know the difference between a frog and a toad? Spelling.

235. Very good!

236. You might as well be right - there's no definitive difference.

237. Generally speaking, toads have dry skin and dry lives,

238. but there is no real difference.

239. I used to have an Alsatian and she came to wake me up one morning. Normally she'd wait for me.

240. She came and put her head under the duvet and pulled it off me.

241. I said, "What are you doing?"

242. She went to the bedroom door and looked at me like that.

243. I got up and she went to the kitchen door still looking at me and led me to her water bowl by the back door.

244. She was looking at it and looking at me.

245. I looked at it and there was a frog in it.

246. That's so sweet.

247. It must've come in the back door the night before, then found itself in the kitchen,

248. and then got in the water bowl and sat there all night like...

249. with this huge dog staring at it!

250. He said, "I'm going to get Alan, this isn't..."

251. I love the idea of the relationship between you and your dog.

252. You're on quite a level... "Have a look at this, Alan."

253. We shared a flat. Thing was, I had a walled garden, I don't know how the frogs got in,

254. but they did every year.

255. The odd thing you're saying... a huge quantity of toads are killed every year on the roads.

256. About 20 tons of toad lose their lives.

257. We're trying to make it less with toad tunnels. Do you know the reason there's so many?

258. It's mating season. They have ancient mating ponds they've had for hundreds of years.

259. Whether there's a road there or not, that's the way they've always gone.

260. You used to have them in a pond in Buckhurst Hill. People would go out with frying pans...

261. They'd hop into a frying pan, and then you'd flip 'em.

262. There's scores of them. It combines fun with doing good.

263. They land on another toad and it's all gone.

264. Did you hear an extraordinary story in Hamburg in 2005?

265. About the exploding toads? Vaguely, yes.

266. Toads started exploding during the mating season.

267. More than 1,000 toads swollen to three times their usual size crawled out of the water,

268. making screeching noises, and blew up, propelling their entrails up to a yard away.

269. People thought it might be a virus or pollution, but do you know what was the cause? Al-Qaeda.

270. No.

271. Suicide toads.

272. It wasn't... They were all fundamentalists and misguided...

273. They go to a busy market place and splatter everyone with toad entrail.

274. "That'll learn ya!"

275. "Toad rights!"

276. It was crows.

277. Crows had discovered how to fly in and, in one swift movement, remove the liver of the toads.

278. They'd go in and pull out the liver.

279. Are these ninja crows?

280. What are you talking about? They come in, scalpel ready...

281. No, they use their beak. And just...? Birds have worked out how to do that with a single strike.

282. The toads defence mechanism did the rest. They puffed themselves up to intimidate their foe,

283. forcing their intestines out of the hole that had been made and had a kind of fatal hernia.

284. What use is a frog after a one night stand?

285. I think I have the answer. It's about sex, isn't it?

286. It kind of is.

287. I knew it.

288. Some sort of natural morning after pill effect?

289. No, not that.

290. For 30 years, between 1930 and 1960, this was used by Western science

291. in a serious way to perform a very important function.

292. Do they turn a different colour if a woman's pregnant?

293. It's not exactly that, but that is the use they were put to. Pregnancy tests. Not really!

294. Pregnancy tests? Yes. A woman pees on that!

295. No, a woman's urine is injected into it. How?

296. With a needle? How else? Oh, OK.

297. No wonder he looks so pissed off.

298. That's an African bullfrog, I think,

299. but actually they use the clawed toad as much. So hang on,

300. that frog's just had another frog on his back trying to bum him, suddenly there's a woman's pee

301. being injected into him. He's having a horrible day.

302. Point is it's a female clawed frog. If the woman was pregnant, the female frog, within 8-12 hours,

303. would ovulate.

304. It's as simple as that. I wonder if they have a little blue line

305. on their back so you look at like this...

306. A plus or a minus! But it was a standard pregnancy test.

307. There was a terrible outcome having these African frogs around.

308. The National Health Service in Britain kept a lot of them,

309. and some of them escaped. Unfortunately, they had a disease...

310. They were full of piss.

311. .. called chytridiomycosis.

312. It's threatening a third of the world's amphibians now.

313. It's spread around the world. It's actually a deep tragedy,

314. and these frogs have caused part of it.

315. So our Western desire to know whether we're pregnant before nine months has caused

316. huge damage to lots of amphibians. There we are,

317. African clawed frogs ovulate if injected with the urine

318. from a pregnant woman. Until the 1950s,

319. this was the only available pregnancy test.

320. Now, how does a ferret build an airliner?

321. Yes.

322. Really weasily.

323. Oh! Oh, no.

324. I'm sorry, we've got there before you!

325. Oh dear!

326. If it's any consolation, I was seconds behind.

327. Boeing used them. What? Sorry? Boeing used ferrets.

328. To build a plane?

329. To help build a plane. Not the whole plane... They don't put that in the ads, do they?

330. They're not ashamed of it. They were used for the wedding of Charles

331. and Diana, for the Millenium Party In The Park...

332. Looking for things? Nope.

333. Their fur?

334. Nope. To get something down a very long tunnel, you tie it... Brilliant!

335. Absolutely. That's precisely what it is, Alan. You use it for wiring,

336. it happily goes through the narrowest spaces, and it comes out the other end

337. and you've got the wire through. It was used by Boeing

338. right up until the 1960s, and...

339. It's a brilliant idea! Isn't it? Very clever.

340. Anyway, they are now the third most popular pet in America, after cats and dogs.

341. They welcome you when you come back from a day's work like puppies.

342. They're very like puppies. Come in!

343. Yeah. They're thrilled to see you, very pleased.

344. Do they run up your trousers, though?

345. The trouser business is interesting.

346. There are people who claim this is a Yorkshire sport,

347. of having ferrets in your trousers, but no-one's sure if it is.

348. It's become one, but it kind of started as a hoax in a famous interview...

349. Always in '70s sitcoms, someone with a ferret up the trousers.

350. Ferret up your trousers, that's right! Ooh, aah!

351. You'd laugh at home.

352. They're used now for pet therapy, cos they are very friendly animals.

353. You mean they sit opposite you...

354. And talk you through your problems.

355. "How does that make you feel?"

356. Interacting with them reduces your stress hormones. Helpful for

357. the elderly, depressed, and children recovering from severe illnesses.

358. And they're used for that. So, get a ferret.

359. And so once more we plunge, ferret-like,

360. into the black hole of general ignorance, fingers on buzzers.

361. What's the fastest thing in the natural world?

362. Alan.

363. Blue whale.

364. Ho-ho-ho! Every time!

365. It's never gonna be a blue whale, is it? Never gonna be blue whale.

366. Any other thoughts?

367. Fastest thing.

368. Cheetah.

369. Oh! Alan Davies...

370. I don't know... It's got to be alive. OK.

371. Something like a cheetah but it's not? No.

372. It's not an animal. It's a flower.

373. So you're on a road, and suddenly it overtakes you?

374. No. We're talking ejaculation.

375. Ah! We're talking again, sex. It's the sex obsession! What do they do?

376. Sorry, the fastest thing on Earth? Is this a personal slight at me?

377. Because I'd had a very busy week. No, it's not! It's not that.

378. It's a flower called the white mulberry,

379. and it pushes out its pollen at half the speed of sound.

380. Mach 0.5. Pow. Over 350 miles per hour. Gosh.

381. It's the fastest thing in biology. Nothing moves faster.

382. But what about an aircraft? Oh. In biology.

383. What about a naturally reared organic aircraft?

384. Made out of ferrets.

385. It's the morus alba, and what do I have on me that owes itself to...

386. Your flower, surely?

387. No, something owes itself to the white mulberry I'm wearing. Silk tie?

388. Silk, of course. There are thousands in China in particular,

389. cos the silk worm lives on the white mulberry leaves.

390. But it pollinates, it pushes out its pollen at this astounding speed.

391. Stored elastic energy in its stamens.

392. So if you've got hay fever, you've got no chance of escape.

393. Coming out quite a pace. Have your eye out!

394. No wonder it's itchy. Wow.

395. There you have it. We move on, fingers on buttons.

396. What do you call a slug with a shell?

397. I'm not falling for that one!

398. Er, I'll take the bullet.

399. Snail?

400. Oh! Just for a moment, I thought you'd say, "yes, you do"

401. and then carry on. No.

402. So you asked what do I call?

403. A-ha! No, you can't get out of it that way.

404. No, a snail with a shell is a snail, a slug with a shell is a slug.

405. Some slugs have shells and they are slugs, not snails.

406. Vestigial snails, small snails, snails like the glass slug, and slugs we think of

407. as being sort of shell-less snails, but they can have little

408. things on. They eat each other's slime as an act of foreplay, then afterwards...

409. So do I.

410. Carry on with this.

411. They're obviously terrible garden pests, but they are,

412. after insects...

413. Used to live in our kitchen, when we were students.

414. There'd just be trails across the floor in the morning.

415. We didn't do anything about it.

416. Just had bits of cornflakes stuck... Eurgh! Carry on. Yeah!

417. There are 37,000 species of gastropod.

418. After insects, they're the most common class of animal on the Earth.

419. 37,000? Mmm. Write that down.

420. Yep!

421. And finally, before we stagger back to civilization,

422. is a mushroom an animal or a plant?

423. A plant.

424. Or an animal.

425. Or a...

426. It's not either, it's a fungus.

427. Which is it closer to? If that makes any sense.

428. Animal or plant, you mean? Yeah.

429. There, it's closer to a plant. Very good Next to that grass.

430. You'd think it was a plant, so I'll say animal.

431. You're correct. Absolutely right.

432. It recently was discovered it has more in common with animals than with plants. Now,

433. it's time to have our guests gassed, stuffed and mounted in glass cases,

434. as we come to the scores.

435. Taking the laurels of victory this week...

436. is the audience with plus ten!

437. How about that? Well done, audience.

438. You see? It pays to know about opera.

439. Just that Traviata, and there you are, they win.

440. But in a creditable second place with minus one, Jimmy Carr!

441. In third place, with an excellent score for a beginner... minus four,

442. John Sergeant!

443. Thank you.

444. And in his usual fourth place, but oddly not last...

445. With minus 18, Alan Davies!

446. And...

447. In this F series, finally and fifthly,

448. it's the filthily fabulous Jo Brand with minus 27!

449. So... that's all from this florid and faunal edition of QI.

450. It's good night from Jo, John, Jimmy, Alan and from me,

451. and I leave you with those floral tribute from Richard Brinsley Sheridan, a great pick-up line.

452. "Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you."

453. Good night.