- 20 hours ago
First broadcast 20th November 2003.
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Bill Bailey
Linda Smith
Richard E. Grant
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Bill Bailey
Linda Smith
Richard E. Grant
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:01Hello and welcome to QI, where we hope finally to prove Oscar Wilde's theory that there are only two kinds
00:07of interesting people, those who know absolutely everything and those who know absolutely nothing. On tonight's programme, we're lucky enough
00:14to have four kinds of people, only one of whom sadly fits into either category.
00:18Alan Davis, Bill Bailey, Linda Smith, Richard E. Grant. Well, now, the rules are straightforward. I am omnipotent, omniscient and
00:33have a low boredom threshold. You are quite interesting or there'll be trouble. If all else fails, each of you
00:39is able at least to make an interesting noise. Richard goes...
00:47Linda goes...
00:51Bill goes...
00:58Alan goes...
01:02And I go, let's go. So, fingers on buzzers, please, for our first round, which is on arts and entertainment.
01:09And this question, why don't pigeons like going to the movies?
01:14Yes, Bill?
01:15Well, I don't know. Pigeons don't go to the movies. There's nothing much is made with them in mind. Here
01:22it is. Pigeons are much more into sort of German expressionism.
01:29How long does a pigeon live? What's the lifespan of a pigeon?
01:34What month?
01:35Nine, ten years?
01:36No, they've never found out a film.
01:37I mean, they could only go and see a U film, anyway.
01:40That's true. That's very true.
01:47Now, birds don't fly at night, do they? I mean, they do in some cities, but generally...
01:51Owls do.
01:51Yeah.
01:51Owls do, but they don't go to the pictures, either.
01:54Yeah, they do.
01:54Yeah, they do. And if they do, they spend a whole time.
01:56Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:58So, they can only go in the day...
02:01Yeah.
02:01...to a U film.
02:03Ah!
02:03You're narrowing it down.
02:05Richard?
02:06Because they're allergic to popcorn.
02:09Quite literally.
02:10Open-air cinemas, like drive-ins where I grew up, pigeons exploded from eating popcorn.
02:16So, it's becoming increasingly hard to verify.
02:19It's so convincing.
02:19It is very hard to verify, because you grew up in Swaziland.
02:23Yeah.
02:23Pigeons, actually.
02:24Is it? Are there a lot of pigeons in Swaziland?
02:26A lot.
02:27Well, Darren, it's so convincing. It's not true, but I really like it.
02:31What would have happened if a pigeon looked at a film?
02:35The eyes on the side of the head?
02:36No.
02:37And the fact that...
02:40No.
02:41You'd have to perch on the back of a chair like that, and it couldn't see...
02:44They can't see anything straight ahead.
02:45So, you'd have to keep looking from side to side.
02:47Not that.
02:48Pigeons have extraordinarily good eyes.
02:51Do they?
02:52Yes.
02:53Homing pigeons.
02:54They can see their home from across the chair.
02:56No, but they can see landmarks from high up.
02:59So, look.
02:59There's my house.
03:00No.
03:02Landmarks, they see very well indeed from high up, like a lot of birds.
03:04Of course, like birds of prey.
03:05They reckon they have eyesight at least ten times better than ours, but not only that...
03:08So, does that mean they'd prefer to see it on DVD?
03:11With...
03:12With all the interviews...
03:13How does film work?
03:14You know.
03:14How does film work?
03:16Movie film.
03:16Lots and lots of pictures going really quickly.
03:18Going very, very quickly.
03:18Really quickly to us.
03:20But to them, they're thinking, very slow.
03:21Why is it going too fast?
03:22To them, it's a slideshow.
03:24It's a slow slideshow.
03:26They don't...
03:26We...
03:27We see 24, 25 frames a second as movement.
03:30Ah.
03:30They would need...
03:31It has been calculated, and maybe it has even been demonstrated.
03:34They would need 250 frames a second.
03:37Ten times faster.
03:38In order for it to be a coherent image that moved.
03:41So they...
03:41So they would be bored stiff by slideshows.
03:43So they're...
03:43They're watching The Matrix, and they're thinking, when is something going to happen?
03:48What is this?
03:48A merchant ivory film?
03:50What's going on?
03:50Who is funding research into what pigeons like?
03:54There's lots of films.
03:56The lines of pigeons in the pictures.
03:57Don't you do?
03:58Pigeons just die...
03:59Pigeons have saved many lives as carriers in wars, right up even to the Second World War.
04:05And we're rewarding them with a cinema.
04:07They are...
04:07We are rewarding ourselves by researching into all kinds of interesting pigeon-related data.
04:14When they sit in, and the Pathé News chicken comes up, and they all go,
04:17Baaah!
04:19For example, I could tell you...
04:21It cost...
04:23It cost £105,000 last year to clean up the pigeon crap from Trafalgar Square.
04:30Well, that's actually some Mark Square, I think you're probably right.
04:33But...
04:33From Trafalgar Square.
04:35But...
04:38When you're driving down the road, why does the pigeon not jump out of the way of your car to
04:42the last conceivable time?
04:44Well, that's a fun game, and that's proof of how it sees the world much slower than we do.
04:49It's fair to them, it's got acres of time.
04:52And what do they go, what noise do they make?
04:54Oh, please.
04:55How can they do it?
04:55I bet you can do it, you're good at noises.
04:57Yeah.
04:58Who did that?
04:59Baaah!
05:00Oh!
05:00Five points!
05:02Five points!
05:03Very good.
05:04There you are.
05:06You've got five points for doing a pigeon noise.
05:09How do pigeons...
05:10How do pigeons...
05:12Cuck, cuck, cuck!
05:14Cuck, cuck!
05:14Cuck, cuck!
05:15Cuck, cuck!
05:16Absolutely nothing like a pigeon at all.
05:19Pigeons go in other birds' nests.
05:22Like cuckoos.
05:24Pigeons doing an impression of a cat.
05:25I think you may be the cuckoo.
05:27As in the phrase, a cuckoo in the nest.
05:30But...
05:30I don't know what is interesting...
05:33What else is interesting about pigeons?
05:35They can suck.
05:37Yes.
05:38The only bird that can suck.
05:39Is that how they raise £105,000?
05:49No, because the pigeons can suck, yes.
05:51Because all other birds...
05:53Don't use straws?
05:54No, they...
05:56They scoop up with the lower part of the beak and tip back...
05:59Exactly right.
06:00Like that.
06:00Exactly right.
06:01I know, because I have parrots, you see.
06:03I know you do.
06:03But it's clearing up.
06:07Pigeons, as we've discovered, the only birds suck.
06:10But why would you invite one to a picnic?
06:12To suck stuff for you.
06:16Go ahead, Richard.
06:17Well, if you...
06:18You don't think of taking toothpicks on a picnic.
06:21So if you've got spinach or stuff stuck in your teeth...
06:25If you grab...
06:28A pigeon...
06:28And, you know, shove it to your face and...
06:31Like that.
06:32It's going to suck it out for you.
06:34So it provides gum disease and I think it's going to be very useful.
06:37I want to tell you that the answer...
06:39The real answer is even more disgusting than that.
06:41It really is repellent.
06:43You don't even use the front end of a pigeon.
06:46This is...
06:46I have to say...
06:47I think it's a practice that has died out.
06:49But it was common quite up until a couple of hundred years ago.
06:52What are the dangers on a picnic, for example?
06:55What are these?
06:56Bees.
06:56Bees, wasps, or even worse...
06:58Ants.
06:59Bad company.
07:02Snake.
07:04It was believed that a pigeon's arse would suck out the poison.
07:09So you get bitten and then you get a...
07:11You get bitten?
07:12Pigeon and stick its arse off and say starts...
07:14How do you tell it to start sucking?
07:17You wait for the pigeon to die, apparently.
07:20And then you use another pigeon and another...
07:22And when the final pigeon survives, you know that all the poison has been sucked.
07:26Oh, but come on.
07:27Can an adder's bite be that bad?
07:29No.
07:29That's the weird thing.
07:30The last person to die from an adder's...
07:32It'd have to be pretty bad, really, wouldn't it?
07:341977, a girl died from an adder's bite.
07:36It's the last one.
07:37More people die from peanuts every year than have died from adder's in every century.
07:43So who discovered that a pigeon's arse can suck poison?
07:48Well, it goes back to Piny the Elder.
07:50No, not even again.
07:52Everything he says is rubbish.
07:55No, the great Piny the Elder actually had his own version, which was simply to tear open a swallow, a
08:01live swallow, and apply it.
08:02Try this for size, gentlemen and lady.
08:05Which living creature has the largest brain in comparison to its body size?
08:11Bill.
08:14Wasp.
08:16No, not a what?
08:18But not a bad guess.
08:19No, not a wasp.
08:20A human.
08:21Oh, no!
08:25Oh, dear.
08:26Oh, dear.
08:26Oh, dear.
08:29No.
08:30Not a human.
08:31Not a human.
08:31No, I'm afraid you lose ten for that.
08:33Not a human.
08:34I haven't got ten, though.
08:35No, well...
08:36A flea?
08:37Not a flea.
08:38Ant.
08:39It's a sort of insect.
08:39Ant!
08:41Ant!
08:42Ant!
08:42Ant!
08:42Ant!
08:43Ant!
08:51Six percent of its body.
08:52The smallest brain is an ostrich, is it?
08:54Ostriches do have pretty tiny ones, don't they?
08:56You grew up with ostriches.
08:57I did, yes.
08:58You were adopted by a family of ostriches.
09:01Can you make an ostrich noise, though?
09:03Yes, but not for you.
09:06Make it for Linda.
09:07Make it for Linda.
09:08I'd love to make it for Linda.
09:11No, if we applied the same percentage to humans, our heads would have to be nearly three times larger than
09:18they are.
09:18We'd all look like William Haig.
09:22They've written about 40,000 ants, the size of an average colony, has probably the same amount of neurons and
09:27brain cells as one human being.
09:29So an ant colony is an intelligent object.
09:32No, that's right.
09:32I had an ant's nest in my flat once.
09:36Really?
09:36What did you do?
09:37Well, I was fairly stupid about it, because I saw an ant.
09:40Yeah.
09:41I thought, there's an ant in the flat.
09:42Oh.
09:42The next day I saw an ant.
09:43I thought, oh, there he is.
09:44So, what?
09:47Did you give him a name?
09:49So this went on for a couple of weeks, and then one day I moved the telephone table, and there
09:53were loads of them there.
09:54Loads of them.
09:54Oh, dear.
09:54They were.
09:55They were.
09:57Hoover them.
09:57Hoover the lot.
09:58No.
10:00No.
10:00They're probably surviving.
10:01Hang on.
10:02No!
10:06I'll tell you what, were you sucking them up with a pigeon's arse?
10:10I would have done if I'd thought of it.
10:12Quite interesting.
10:13Maybe worth a point.
10:14Yeah.
10:14If you can tell me to the nearest hundred, how many species of ants there have been calculated?
10:19One hundred.
10:24Two and a half thousand.
10:25Eight thousand is the answer.
10:26Eight thousand species of ant.
10:28How good are they at life-saving?
10:29Human life-saving.
10:30What uses can you put an ant to, to save a human life?
10:33Oh, gosh.
10:33A synaptic connection lost in your brain.
10:36You can stretch an ant across it.
10:39Well, now, this is getting very close, Bill.
10:41In ancient India, say you're performing an ancient Indian appendectomy or some such operation,
10:48what you do to sew the two sides of skin left that you've cut through, you take a soldier ant,
10:54and you apply, you pinch the two bits of skin together, get the soldier ant, and it bites all between,
10:58and then you cut its head off, and it stays in the bite position as a stitch.
11:03The ant is a stitch.
11:05So you have rows of soldier ants as stitches, and they use them to great effect in India.
11:11Yeah, and then you reach up to the top shelf.
11:12Yeah.
11:16There's some of the kinds of ants you use.
11:18And as you can see, they've got pretty...
11:19Watch those peanuts, they're lethal.
11:21Yeah.
11:22They could have an antaphylactic shock, couldn't they?
11:26But...
11:28Now...
11:29Now...
11:30In Thailand, they use red ants for something...
11:35Or, still today, what did you mention they might do?
11:37Chutney.
11:38Or...
11:38Or...
11:39Or...
11:40Or...
11:41Delicious.
11:42I'm thinking of...
11:42I'm thinking of interventionist medical processes here.
11:45Pour in some red ants, into an open wound.
11:48Yep.
11:48And they secrete an acid, which is both antiseptic and indeed painkilling as well.
11:52What about...
11:53On the other hand, Savlon.
11:54Savlon.
11:54Yeah.
11:56In parts of Thailand, I know it's horrible and we must do something about it urgently,
12:01where you can't get Savlon.
12:04Ants are cheaper and more readily available, I suspect.
12:07You could get them to carry the Savlon.
12:11Very good.
12:12What do a greasy butcher, a hog snout and Gene Pitney have in common?
12:19Yes.
12:20Oh!
12:21Richard.
12:21They can all hit top C naturally.
12:26Well...
12:26And because of all the grease that's...
12:29Only experienced butchers can have this.
12:31The grease that accrues down their larynx and oesophagus coats the vocal cords,
12:37so the butchers can, you know, if they need to, can hit a top C.
12:42And if you've ever tried to kill a pig,
12:45top C is what it hits naturally and a Gene has just always done it.
12:4924 hours later.
12:50Tell sir.
12:51Sadly not.
12:52None of this is true.
12:53Do you know with pigs you can have, this is amazing, this is a true fact,
12:56you can actually have pigs' organs, pigs' valves put into your heart.
13:01Yes, it did.
13:01You know, they've got a dodgy heart valve.
13:02Yeah.
13:02They can put the valve from a pig, which I just find amazing,
13:06because what are the chances of a reckless young pig getting killed in a motorbike?
13:11They must be stealing, and then carrying a donor card.
13:15It's got to be millions, really.
13:16Well, they carry a donor kebab card, which I suppose is no...
13:20Well, no, I want you to think, and there's no real way you can get this, I suppose,
13:26unless you know.
13:27They're all types of apple.
13:29Well, what is a greasy butcher then?
13:30It's an apple.
13:31Is it a cooker or an eater?
13:32A greasy butcher is a sweet red eating apple.
13:35Ah.
13:36Apples are seriously strange, though.
13:37That's why you have so many variations of them.
13:39If an apple drops to the ground and seeds and fruits itself,
13:42the apples that grow from the tree that grow from it are nothing like the parent
13:45in the way that humans are, and even more so.
13:47So, in order to have types of apple, you have to graft from the same tree.
13:53The actual seeds will always... you won't keep the same species at all.
13:57In the jungle, if you run out of batteries for your torch,
13:59you can use an apple peel and two heads of soldier ants as electrodes.
14:06And there's a significant amount of electricity contained within the apple
14:09to run a battery for several hours.
14:11Yes.
14:11And you'd just be hard put to find an apple tree in the jungle.
14:14That's the only problem.
14:15Yeah, that's true.
14:16Now, what's the common factor between apples and a game played with headless goats?
14:22And there is one.
14:24Bobbing.
14:24Like bobbing for apples?
14:26Bobbing for...
14:28Bobbing for headless goats.
14:29Bobbing for headless goats.
14:30It would help if you knew where apples came from.
14:32Trees.
14:34Which country?
14:35Kent.
14:36Which country?
14:37Kent.
14:39Kent.
14:39Kent.
14:40There is one part of the world where apples originated,
14:43where the first original apple trees still exist.
14:46There's this one country...
14:48Is it the Garden of Eden?
14:49Well, there are many, yes, many partakers with it.
14:52No evidence it was an apple in the Garden of Eden, is there?
14:54It's always sort of taken to be one.
14:55It never says apple in Genesis, does it?
14:56It just says the fruit of the tree whereof I said I should not eat.
14:59I haven't read...
15:00I haven't actually...
15:00You've not read it?
15:02It's hilarious.
15:04Very funny.
15:06Amusing stuff in there.
15:07The first recorded game, as far as we know, that take place on horseback, like polo, involves
15:13a headless goat.
15:14Oh, it's...
15:15Instead of a ball.
15:17But there were goals and it was a marked pitch, and it's a country.
15:20China.
15:20China.
15:20No, it's one of those countries that you vaguely have heard of and couldn't draw on a map.
15:26Tajikistan.
15:27Tajikistan.
15:27Uzbekistan.
15:28Oh, it's so like that.
15:29Kazakhstan.
15:30Kazakhstan!
15:32Well done.
15:33Well done.
15:36I'm going to give you...
15:37I'm going to give you eight of getting that, because it takes you out of the minus zone.
15:41I now have zero.
15:42Stephen, what's the point?
15:43What...
15:44They use the headless goats to...
15:45They have a game, though.
15:46Hit apples.
15:47No, nothing to do with apples.
15:48It's what apples have in common with a game involving headless goats.
15:52Oh, I see.
15:52They both originated in Kazakhstan.
15:54Now, from apples to something as American as apple pie, dodgy presidents.
15:59Richard E. Grant, this is for you, what ghastly blot on his reputation did your namesake,
16:06Ulysses S. Grant, share with John Prescott?
16:12Er...
16:12They both had a condition called Erectus Permanentus.
16:17Which is...
16:18No, it's serious.
16:19It is...
16:19It is absolutely true.
16:20From, you know, the age of five, it's been at full woody mast the whole way through.
16:26Which is why John had to get into that Jaguar and travel that one mile distance, because
16:32Ulysses did the same thing in a carriage trip from a very small 18th century mile to Washington.
16:38You've mentioned John Prescott's Jaguar.
16:40Right.
16:40And you've mentioned Ulysses S. Grant in a wooden cart.
16:43Right.
16:43Stick with that thought.
16:45Try and expunge woody masts from your mind.
16:49For the moment.
16:50And...
16:51And Ron with the idea of vehicles.
16:54Erm...
16:54Parking, offence, speeding.
16:55Runwaying.
16:56Speeding.
16:57Speeding.
16:57Speeding.
16:58Too Jagged Prescott...
17:00Right.
17:00...was banned from driving for 21 days in 2001 after he admitted going more than 100 miles an hour on
17:07the M1 and was fined 200 pounds.
17:08In the three previous years, he earned nine points on his license for speeding.
17:12The best reason he could come up with was that he didn't want his constituents to catch cold waiting for
17:18him.
17:19Now, three buggy Grant received a speeding ticket while driving his horse and buggy in Washington DC in 1869.
17:26He had to persuade the officer in charge that he was guilty.
17:29And he was fined 20 pounds.
17:31God, was that a speed camera?
17:32Like a bloke, you know, with a big black hood over him.
17:35No.
17:36Now hold it.
17:37Now wait a minute.
17:3840 minutes on that bit.
17:39No, it was a sketch artist.
17:44There's something very odd also that they both had in common.
17:46They both won rather extraordinary prizes.
17:48Ulysses S Grant as a boy won a prize for taming a pony in a circus.
17:52Erm, but the prize that Prescott won, very odd, 1951 in Brighton.
17:59The Prescott family won second prize.
18:02Nobody needs?
18:02The most typical family in Britain.
18:06Absolutely true.
18:07But second.
18:08Yeah, but second.
18:09Second.
18:09But it should have been first because the winning family was found out to be distantly related to the organiser
18:14of the competition.
18:16So there was corruption, but not on the part of John Prescott.
18:19But there you are.
18:20It's time to grapple with the unknown, the unknowable, and the never known.
18:25What?
18:25Yes.
18:27I've never known.
18:28Stuff that no-one's ever known?
18:29Yes.
18:29We're going to be arsed about that?
18:31Yep.
18:32First, it's the brand we call General Ignorance.
18:34What, or which, is the largest living thing on Earth?
18:39Oh, yes.
18:40It is the blue whale.
18:42Oh, dear!
18:44Oh, dear!
18:44Oh, dear!
18:45Oh, dear!
18:46Oh, dear!
19:03Oh, no!
19:04We have to..
19:07Garland's, you have to have read it, you have to.
19:09Not the Sequoia Sequoia.
19:12Any other thoughts?
19:13Largest living thing on Earth?
19:17France!
19:23Oh, dear me lord, no dear.
19:26Is it my friend Martins, Uncle Roy?
19:29Is it in the sea?
19:30Mammoth?
19:31No.
19:31I'll tell you what it is. It's the honey mushroom, of which the largest recorded specimen is...
19:36Bigger than a redwood tree.
19:37Yes.
19:37Yes, the largest specimen is in the Mallow National Forest in Oregon.
19:40It covers 2,200 acres, ladies and gentlemen.
19:45One mushroom?
19:45And it's between 2,000 and 8,000 years old.
19:48It was initially thought to grow in separate clusters throughout the forest,
19:50but researchers have now confirmed and discovered that it is one single huge organism connected under the soil.
19:56Who was the first man to claim that the earth goes round the sun?
20:02Erm, Copernicus?
20:03Oh, no!
20:05Yes, it is!
20:06Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.
20:08Not, not, not Copernicus.
20:10Galileo.
20:11Nor Galileo.
20:13Galileo.
20:14Galileo.
20:15No, he will not do the panache.
20:18No, he wants to play it right.
20:20Euripides' trousers.
20:21No, he was an athlete.
20:22Socrates.
20:23Archimedes.
20:24No.
20:25No, not Archimedes.
20:26Og the Clever.
20:30His name is Aristarchus.
20:33Yes.
20:33Aristarchus of Samos.
20:34He runs a restaurant on the...
20:37He was born in 310 BC.
20:40Are they still alive?
20:42A whole 1800 years before Nicolaus Copernicus.
20:47Not only did Aristarchus suggest that the earth and the planets travelled around the sun, he also calculated the relative
20:54sizes and distances of the earth, moon and sun and worked out that the heavens were not some celestial sphere
21:01but a universe of almost infinite size.
21:03Now, which African animal kills more human beings than any other?
21:09Hippopotamus.
21:10Is the right answer.
21:11Well done, very good.
21:12Yeah.
21:17Of course, the sad truth is man kills more than any other but we were, of course, discarding man.
21:22And there he is, the hippo.
21:23Extraordinary animal, Hippopotamus.
21:24Did you encounter many in Swazin?
21:25I did, yeah.
21:26And they're vegetarian, too.
21:27They are vegetarian.
21:28So they might chomp you in half and then they'll just leave you.
21:32Yeah.
21:32And they're very fast in the water.
21:34And on land.
21:35And on land.
21:35And on land they're fast, yeah.
21:37Does the taxi fly kill more people?
21:39Or the mosquito?
21:41Mosquito, actually, I think you're absolutely right.
21:43Mosquitoes have killed more than anything else, more than wars, more than anything.
21:46I love this caption here.
21:48One of them's going, and then I bit him in half and I said, the funny thing is, I'm a
21:51vegetarian.
21:51No!
21:54No!
21:56No!
21:58No!
22:00No!
22:01No!
22:02No!
22:03If you were to skin a hippopotamus?
22:05It would be livid.
22:07It would be.
22:08Serious?
22:09If you were to put that skin on some scales, how heavy would that skin weigh?
22:14Fourteen stones.
22:15No, a tonne.
22:17A tonne of skin?
22:18Plus, skin weighs a tonne.
22:19It's an inch and a half thick, bulletproof as far as most guns are concerned.
22:23Oh, please.
22:23Accounts for 25% of the animal's weight.
22:26In other words, it weighs four tons.
22:28It weighs four tons, like a bus.
22:30Like a bus, or like any other four-tonne wing thing.
22:35Yes.
22:35More of that.
22:36So if you were to say to me, like, oh, you put on a bit of weight, well, yes, just
22:40really
22:40thick skin.
22:41No, really, yeah.
22:41Very thick skin.
22:42Very good.
22:43Very good.
22:44Have you ever smelled a hippopotamus's breath?
22:47It's diabolical.
22:48Yeah, terrible.
22:48And it's actually, it's part of its weaponry.
22:49It's halitosis.
22:50It's so bad.
22:51Second to a lion's breath.
22:52It's used, yeah, it's used as a warning, as a way of keeping other animals away.
22:55Its breath is so disgusting.
22:57Oddly enough, there was a controller at BBC Two who did the same thing.
23:02The tusks, like an elephant and a walrus, are made of ivory.
23:05Are they?
23:06And George Washington had hippopotamus tusk teeth.
23:09He must have had quite an overbite.
23:15Oh, don't you?
23:16And in the ocean...
23:19Hippos like to hang out near slow-moving fresh water bordered by grass, which is pretty
23:23much the same habitat favoured by most humans.
23:25Most accidents occur either, as Richard said.
23:27Because a submerged hippo has inadvertently whacked its head on a paddle or something and
23:33is very cross and decided to overturn a boat.
23:35Or because people are out walking at night just when most hippos leave the water to graze
23:39on grass.
23:40Being trampled on by a startled hippo is not a dignified way to die.
23:45Who invented, ladies and gentlemen, the telephone?
23:48I'm not going to say it.
23:50No.
23:50I'm not going to say it.
23:53No.
23:53No words.
23:54No words.
23:54No words.
23:57Aristarchus.
23:59You're quite right.
24:00You're quite right to suspicious because the answer is certainly not Alexander Graham Wright.
24:03Who's the first person to do two baked bean cans and a bit of string?
24:07Not recorded, as far as I know.
24:09Valerie Singleton invented the phone.
24:11Valerie Singleton.
24:15I know that Louis Daguerre, who invented the photography, he, typical bloke, see, invented
24:24photography and a couple of days later persuaded a local barmaid to take a top off.
24:31They can take a picture.
24:32That's blokes for you, isn't it, really?
24:34I've invented photography.
24:35This wonderful...
24:36This...
24:36All right.
24:39Well, it was the evidence I said.
24:41Who invented the telephone now?
24:42Do you want to know?
24:43All right.
24:43I'll tell you.
24:43Antonio Meucci.
24:45Talon-born scientist.
24:46He invented the telephone.
24:48He'd perfected it by 1871.
24:50Couldn't afford the patent.
24:51But do you know what happened?
24:53It was being assessed for a patent in the offices of Western Union.
24:56It fell into the hands of a young Scottish engineer called Alexander Graham Bell.
25:00I am looking at that.
25:01Boo.
25:02He grabbed a chance and patented it in his own name.
25:06He took him to court, but died before the judgment was given, leaving Bell to claim his place in history.
25:12What do we say to Alexander Graham Bell?
25:13You f***ing boo!
25:17Absolutely right.
25:21Isn't that wicked?
25:25Isn't that wicked?
25:27Isn't that...
25:28It's wicked.
25:28That's what we'd have said in...
25:30In essence.
25:31Look at him!
25:32I don't even like the look at him.
25:33Look at him!
25:34He doesn't even know how to use it!
25:35He doesn't even know how to use it!
25:37He doesn't even know how to use it!
25:37He doesn't even know how to use it!
25:38All right.
25:38You thinking how to sleep this?
25:40It's no idea what we want!
25:45Back in the orphanage!
25:46Let's have respect this.
25:47I am ready to tell you what!
25:52This poor man...
26:02This poor man deserves respect.
26:04A quite interesting thing that Alexander Graham Bell said.
26:07He said, when he was asked what the future of the telephone was, he said, I truly believe
26:12that one day there will be a telephone in every town in America.
26:17What a waker!
26:20My dad, he was shown around a computer once when he was a young man.
26:25And the guy showed him around very proudly said, it was in the West Country.
26:30And he said, yes, right, this is a computer.
26:32And we predict that in the future there will probably be about eight of these.
26:39We could go on like this forever.
26:43A big round of applause for our winner this evening.
26:46Those gentlemen, it's Richard E. Grant with 12 points!
26:48Oh, thank you!
26:54In second place, ladies and gentlemen, with a whole plus five points, it's Linda Smith.
27:04In third place, with minus two points, Bill Bailey, ladies and gentlemen.
27:15But our runaway loser, with minus 18, is Alan Davis.
27:28Well, that's it, ladies and gentlemen, for another edition of QI this week.
27:32Thank you to Richard, Vinder, Bill and Alan.
27:34And finally, just to show off that the spirit of Aristarchus is still alive today,
27:39here is the crisp and unimprovable description of an eclipse of the sun
27:43as related by an unnamed Australian Aboriginal astronomer in 2002.
27:47Kerosene lamp, belong Jesus, gone bugger up.
27:51LAUGHTER
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