- 2 days ago
First broadcast 12th November 2004.
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Rich Hall
Arthur Smith
Dara O Briain
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Rich Hall
Arthur Smith
Dara O Briain
Category
đŸ“º
TVTranscript
00:02Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello and welcome to QI, the show that knows what's what like I know the back
00:09of my onions.
00:10So, let's meet tonight's men amongst men.
00:13We have Rich Hall, Arthur Smith, Darrow Green and Alan Davis.
00:23Welcome one, welcome all. Let's hear your manly sounds, please, gentlemen.
00:28Rich goes...
00:31And, Arthur.
00:35Arthur and Darrow.
00:37I'm in her name!
00:44And, Alan.
00:49So, let's begin with question one, and that's for Rich.
00:53What would you say if I said to you that the British Empire was built on diarrhoea?
01:01I'd say you were full of shit.
01:05The only word that ends in Rhea is just bad news, isn't it?
01:10Diarrhoea, pyarrhoea, gonorrhoea, North Korea.
01:15Well, Chris Rhea.
01:20To be fair enough, speaking of someone, obviously, whose ante-seasons were members of the British Empire themselves, happily, of
01:26course.
01:28Diarrhoea was very much the least of our problems while the English were in the country.
01:33Really, really would have been glad with a bit of diarrhoea.
01:37I mean, there's very few recorded conversations between Irish peasants in the 1840s that went, Paddy, you're looking very thin.
01:42Then, I know the food is just running through me at the moment.
01:48This spicy British food doesn't appeal to me at all.
01:52Well, yeah, absolutely.
01:53Well, of course, the question is oddly framed, because actually the British Empire came about because the British was the
01:58first imperial power to overcome the problem of diarrhoea.
02:02Up until the 18th century, almost every invading army anywhere in the world was laid low by diarrhoea, particularly the
02:08French.
02:09They kept having excrement so close to their food, if not on it.
02:14And it was not understood that this was a bad idea.
02:17It's not a bad idea, Steve.
02:19Isn't it?
02:20No, no, no, no.
02:21Someone's been leading me up.
02:22More faeces with your food actually improves your health.
02:30I've overstated it a touch.
02:31I think you might have done it.
02:34But I think it's generally agreed that children don't eat enough, you know, bad things, in a way.
02:41Everything's sanitised and their bodies aren't used to it when they have to fight off infections.
02:46I think it's absolutely right.
02:48If everyone lives in a plastic bubble, the moment the bubble is removed, they die of something or other very
02:52fast.
02:53Particularly if the bubble is underwater, for example.
02:58Exactly.
02:58There's a very sudden pressure change that you just can't deal with.
03:02So the notion of an army marching on a stomach is more that the army tends to march on the
03:06contents of a preceding soldier's stomach as they're walking along.
03:11There were two eminent British figures, one called Pringle, who did it for the army, another one called Lind, who
03:16did it for the navy.
03:17Presumably Pringle has a small moustache.
03:21Latrines.
03:22Latrines, we invented latrines.
03:23Well, that's right.
03:24We base French work.
03:25I know.
03:26Latrine must have been French for kitchen.
03:29Well, you're almost right.
03:31I mean, the French did extraordinary things.
03:32I mean, they buried their bodies.
03:33Instead of burying them at sea, they buried them actually in the ship.
03:37In the ship.
03:37In the bilge part, the bottom of the ballast part.
03:40Brilliant idea.
03:40Yeah.
03:41So much of the stench.
03:42I remember reading that on the approach to Moscow, that the French soldiers used to sleep inside the dead bodies
03:51of horses.
03:52Wow.
03:53At night, because obviously it's warm at the dead bodies.
03:56So, I mean, that's not a comfortable night, is it?
03:59Even travel lodges better than that.
04:03Yes, for the wrong reasons, Lind and Pringle thought the right thing.
04:07In other words, they believed that disease was all about smell, and if something smelt bad, you would be ill.
04:12We had a maths teacher at school who smelled as good.
04:16Pringle laid down rules for the army about how far faeces and everything to do with faeces should be from
04:21food.
04:21And as a result, we had far less diarrhoea, far less enteric fever than any other army around the world.
04:26It also said for the Navy that they should eat lemons because of scurvy.
04:31Vitamins weren't known about until 1912, but because almost every country that grew lemons hated Britain,
04:37the only countries we could get anything close to it was the Caribbean, where there were limes, which are actually
04:41half as effective.
04:43And hence, British, of course, were called limies, which should really have been called lemonies.
04:46Yeah.
04:47Because the Navy did realise that lemons were twice as effective.
04:50Vitamin C tablets, I presume.
04:52Yeah, are they?
04:54Multi-bionter, multi-bits.
04:56I mean, if you've just gone to Boots, really, at the start of the trip.
05:00You know, they'd say that the wheel is the greatest invention ever, but I think it's probably the second wheel,
05:05because...
05:09LAUGHTER
05:09LAUGHTER
05:13Have you ever seen a guy on a unicycle?
05:16What an asshole.
05:19In the Battle of El Alamein, there's a strong historical argument that it was won, because more than 50%
05:25of the German army in North Africa at the time had diarrhoea,
05:28and Rommel himself was in hospital on the first day of the Battle of El Alamein with the squids.
05:32My father actually was genuinely at El Alamein, and he was the only soldier, according to him, who didn't have
05:41the runs, and he was actually constipated.
05:44That's what he said.
05:46That's what he minded, isn't he?
05:47This was one of his great lines, I had to dig it out with a stick.
05:51LAUGHTER
05:55And it is to such great men that we owe our freedom, and we thank you.
06:00There you are.
06:01It really put me off going to war.
06:03LAUGHTER
06:03I was all right with the killing and the mayhem, but the shits were...
06:08You don't see it in war films, and yet it is something that absolutely drives humans everywhere.
06:12I mean, it is our...
06:13Do you know, I feel, though, in many ways, we've pretty well done diarrhoea.
06:17I think we have. We're ready to move on, in fact.
06:20We'll move on to a question for Dara.
06:22Now, what begins with B...
06:24I thought we were done with diarrhoea.
06:27LAUGHTER
06:29LAUGHTER
06:31You...all right.
06:31This is nearly an anagram, your name, isn't it?
06:33Well, it's quite possibly an anagram, but what an anagram...
06:36For diarrhoea.
06:37It's an anagram with a great...
06:38No, it's not. There's only four letters in my name.
06:40LAUGHTER
06:41It's an anagram with a great drama school, Radha.
06:44That's what an anagram is.
06:45With all the rest of it, there's an O, isn't there?
06:48There's an O, yeah, there's a B, there's an N.
06:50Yeah.
06:51As if my name is roughly NB Diarrhoea.
06:53Eh, so...
06:54Dara.
06:55Ta-da!
06:56Ta-da!
06:57LAUGHTER
06:58So, Dara, what begins with a B and is illegal in Turkmenistan?
07:04Begins with a B and is illegal in Turkmenistan.
07:07Begins with a B, yes.
07:09Well, presumably a plague of Bs, eh...
07:11Would be, eh...
07:12Would begin with one B.
07:13There's a town called Mary.
07:16Mary's an odd name for a town.
07:17Is there a Mary, though?
07:18There is a Mary.
07:18Oh, my God, you're absolutely right.
07:20Seeming, there's also a large region called Mary, as well.
07:23It's Mary, Mary.
07:24And there's a little town called Quiet Contrary.
07:27LAUGHTER
07:29Buggery? Is it buggery?
07:30It's not...
07:31Well, actually, as far as I know, it may be illegal buggery.
07:33Bestiality?
07:34No, it's something weird.
07:35I mean, it's...
07:36Airbaiting.
07:37Ballet.
07:37Ballet is the right answer.
07:39Ballet is illegal.
07:40Illegal?
07:40Actually, it used to be part of the Soviet Union.
07:42Arrest that man.
07:43No, it's...
07:44Is that a man?
07:45It could be a man.
07:47There is a very, very odd man indeed called Sapomorad Niyazov, who is the head of this
07:52country, Turkmenistan, and there he is.
07:54Is he from Mary?
07:55He doesn't look like it.
07:56No, he's not.
07:57He's actually from Ashgabat, which is the capital.
07:59Ashgabat!
07:59And he is one of the oddest world leaders.
08:02You, ballerina!
08:03Yeah, exactly.
08:05In 2001, he said that one.
08:07Not only that, he's named January after himself.
08:12So, his face appears on millions of yoghurt pots.
08:15If you buy a yoghurt pot in Turkmenistan, his face will be on it.
08:18What's the point of that?
08:19Well, exactly.
08:20I mean, power has gone to his head.
08:24It looks like a face that would curdle milk.
08:29It's on the inside of the yoghurt pot.
08:32At the bottom.
08:35What happens if you are caught performing ballet, you're arrested?
08:40I presume you would be arrested.
08:42Even for a small plie?
08:45I've got other signs, like with tutus and big Xs through them.
08:49There's no ballet here.
08:51There must be some kind of underground ballet dancing club.
08:56Yeah, ballet club with Brad Pitt.
09:01Well, he also fired 15,000 nurses in Turkmenistan, Nerazov,
09:06and replaced them with army conscripts.
09:08Something odd about it.
09:09This sounds like a place where Bush needs to go in and kick some more.
09:15Now, it's time for a question for Arthur.
09:18What's quite interesting about digestive biscuits?
09:20Well, it's a hard-working biscuit, the digestive.
09:24You know, you put cheese on it.
09:25It's got chocolate on it.
09:27It's a base for cheesecake.
09:30It really is a sort of renaissance biscuit.
09:33It is.
09:35It's a great dunker.
09:36It's a very, very hard-working biscuit.
09:39But have you ever noticed that there is a slightly fishy taste about a digestive?
09:46What have you been dunking them in?
09:50Oh, who have you been dunking them in?
09:54Oh, Lord.
09:57We're in the world of misnomers, but things that are wrongly called.
10:00Do they give you wind?
10:03They were called digestive because there was supposed to be an anti-flatulent biscuit
10:06when they were designed in the 19th century.
10:09No, that's right.
10:11In America, it's...
10:11You better have one of these.
10:12Sorry.
10:16Maybe you stuffed it up.
10:17I don't know.
10:18I'd like to see an advert for this flatulence biscuit.
10:25Hey, try to digest it.
10:28We're heading right back down the diarrhea highway.
10:32Welcome to the United Kingdom, Mr. Hallmark.
10:36The fact is, they are not aids to digestion.
10:40In America, it is illegal to call them digestives.
10:43Of course, in America, do you know what we're talking about?
10:45Cookies.
10:46Yeah.
10:46Yes.
10:48Right, which is from the Dutch.
10:50Cookies, meaning a cake.
10:52Right.
10:52Which is why you call them cookies.
10:53What you call a biscuit, it's more like what we would call, I don't know, a kind of scony thing.
10:56You have biscuits and gravy.
10:57Explain to the ladies and gentlemen what that is.
11:01Oh, traveller from an arcane land.
11:07What do your people eat?
11:16Everything.
11:19Well, biscuits are made from self-rising flour and then they just slop gravy over and it just takes up
11:25room on the plate.
11:26Right.
11:26And it's a breakfasty thing or a lunchy thing?
11:29It depends on what trailer park you live in.
11:31Sometimes it's three meals a day.
11:33Fair enough.
11:34Well, 450 digestive biscuits are baked every second in the United Kingdom.
11:40Yeah.
11:40They are truly the mule of biscuits.
11:42Yes, they certainly are.
11:43And Alan, it brings me onto a question for you.
11:45What is the difference between a cake and a biscuit?
11:48Oh, that's easy.
11:49Tell.
11:50Well, a cake is soft and a biscuit's hard.
11:54LAUGHTER
11:54Cakes are soft and squidgy and spongy.
11:57And biscuits, you can snap them.
12:00What's a jaffa cake, then?
12:02Very interesting, you should say that.
12:04Well, quite interesting.
12:06Well, quite interesting.
12:07Exactly.
12:08Exactly.
12:08Let's stick to our brief.
12:10It's...
12:11Jaffa cake is the exception that proves the rule.
12:14Well, no, it isn't an exception.
12:16See, what happens on this show, Dara, is that he thinks I'm an idiot.
12:19LAUGHTER
12:20Yeah, but you think my name is an anagram of diarrhoea, so...
12:24LAUGHTER
12:24Yes, exactly.
12:27I'm really on their side at the moment, yeah.
12:30Well, actually, I mean, you used the right words.
12:33Technically, the difference is that when they go stale,
12:35a cake goes hard...
12:37And a biscuit goes soft.
12:39In 1991, the British government, customs and excise,
12:43decided they wanted to reclassify the jaffa cake as a biscuit.
12:48The weird thing is, there is zero VAT on cake and biscuit,
12:53but there is VAT on chocolate biscuits as a luxury item.
12:57So McVitie's went out of their way to try and prove
12:59that jaffa cakes are not chocolate biscuits, they are cakes.
13:02And they did so by demonstrating in front of the VAT review board
13:05that they went hard when they were stale.
13:08And they also cooked a great big 12-inch one
13:10to show that it really was a cake that they'd baked.
13:13I always think King Alfred, you know, he was a great man...
13:17Is that a cock ring?
13:18No, that's a really early cock ring, isn't it?
13:22It's made of stew.
13:25Oh, they had big knobs there.
13:29King Alfred, who I believe was invented...
13:35I'm determined to carry on...
13:37Yes, don't you do.
13:37Yes, don't you do.
13:38Absolutely.
13:38I don't have a big...
13:39Stay in cock ring, I mean.
13:40He invented the Navy.
13:41He made all sorts of differences.
13:43He was an important political figure.
13:46But all we remember him for is some business involving cakes.
13:50Yeah.
13:50You, for example, may yet, Stephen, be remembered for something pathetically insignificant.
13:56Absolutely.
13:57I once dropped a pack of Abbey Crunch.
13:59You're so tosh.
14:02They're not tosh.
14:03They are hosh biscuits.
14:05Hosh biscuits.
14:05Hosh biscuits are the ones that are cooked for you by your pastry chef.
14:08A big...
14:14Actually, there's a true story about the Duke of...
14:17I think it was the Duke of Devontree, but it may not have been.
14:19I can't believe you.
14:19In the Second World War, they would have people from the Ministry of Labour going around checking
14:23on everybody, and particularly on the big estates, to see if all these people, someone
14:27could be released for essential war work.
14:29And they went to Chatsworth, when the Duke of Devontree was established.
14:32And they, you know, stopwatch and clipboard, and they checked everybody, and eventually
14:35they had an interview with the Duke.
14:37And they said, well, Your Grace, we can understand that you need 47 gardeners and 13 under-gardeners,
14:42and you need grooms, and you need chauffeurs, and you need upstairs maids and downstairs maids,
14:47and in-between maids, and laundry room maids, and still room maids, and kitchen maids,
14:50and nurse maids, and house maids, and parlour maids.
14:52And we can understand that you need the boy to scrape the knives and boots, and you need
14:56the butler and the four-footman and the under-butler.
14:58But we wonder if a man economy might be made.
15:00Does Your Grace necessarily need two pastry cooks?
15:03To which he apparently replied, oh, damn it, can't a man have a biscuit?
15:09Which is, I mean, you know, we're all prepared to make sacrifices and beat the Hun, but I
15:15mean, really?
15:17It's not going a bit far, isn't it?
15:20Anyway.
15:21So, Peter Ustinov had rather a good story about it.
15:23He said he was at a school that was so posh that on school sports day, they had a chauffeur's
15:28race.
15:31Of course, we call posh cake, gateau, don't we?
15:36And the French call posh cake, le cake.
15:38Yes.
15:40Do you know what biscuit means, and what its derivation is?
15:44Bis-meaning?
15:46Tune, eat, bite.
15:47Twice.
15:48Sweet, hard, coffee cup.
15:49Twice.
15:51Sweet, hard, coffee cup.
15:53Sweet, hard, coffee cup.
15:54Sweet, hard, coffee cup or compliment.
15:56No, it means twice cooked.
15:58Biscotti in Italian.
15:59Oh, biscotti in Italian.
16:00Oh, biscotti is a biscuit.
16:01Biscuit.
16:01They're horrible, though.
16:02They're like bits of shrapnel.
16:03Yes.
16:05But it's fun to do that game with the wrapper, that it flies up in the air.
16:08Here's a quite interesting fact.
16:12As we know, at the end of a marvellous performance, when we see a live show, and you think it's
16:17fabulous
16:17and you want more, you shout encore.
16:19Yes.
16:19But do you know what the French shout?
16:20Bis.
16:21Oh, yeah.
16:22You do know.
16:22Yes.
16:24Sorry.
16:27Bis.
16:27It means twice.
16:28Yeah.
16:29So they're asking to see the whole damn thing again.
16:32LAUGHTER
16:34Well, on from Biscuits.
16:35Fingers on buzzers now for our next question.
16:37Who invented straight roads?
16:42Alan.
16:43The Romans.
16:44Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear,
16:48oh, dear.
16:48You haven't caught me or anything, because I knew that was going to happen.
16:51Did you?
16:51Did you?
16:52Yes.
16:52And I'll have you know that they did.
16:54LAUGHTER
16:56No, they didn't.
16:57They rebuilt.
16:58They rebuilt a lot of straight roads that were already there.
17:01The Romans would make a road that would go 50, 100 miles.
17:06Yes.
17:06Stain Street that goes from Chichester to London is 60 or 70 miles long.
17:11No-one thought to go that far in a straight line until they did.
17:14I think in terms of distance, you may well be right that they probably built the longest straight roads, but
17:18there were...
17:18People would come across a Roman road and go, blimey, this must be a Roman road.
17:21No, they invented going really, really far in a straight line.
17:24Yes.
17:25Which wasn't the question, sadly.
17:28Well, good that it had been.
17:30But the Romans, presumably, never in the end really got anywhere, because all roads lead to Rome.
17:36Huh?
17:37Indeed.
17:38Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
17:41There was a dense network of roads in the pre-Roman Iron Age of very straight roads, but you're quite
17:45right, they weren't as vast.
17:47Do you know that in America, some of the roads in the Midwest are so straight, and go on straight
17:52for so long, then they have to make a right turn, and then go...
17:56Really?
17:57Because people go loopy?
17:58Is it?
17:58No, no, to account for the curvature of the Earth, so that it conforms to the map.
18:04Good God.
18:06That's what I'm testing.
18:08Well, there you are.
18:09And do you know that in Montana, a policeman will pull you over because he's lonely?
18:16Happened to me all the time.
18:18Why do the Americans drive on the right?
18:21Well, I guess because we invented the f***ing car.
18:26I'm hopefully, I'm hopefully sorry for putting the right on that, but you didn't even come close to him there.
18:33We invented the f***ing...
18:35At least two Germans who got there way before you.
18:39Another proof, of course, is that in Ireland, there were many, many, many straight roads, and the Irish were never
18:45invaded by the Romans, were you?
18:46No, they never got as far as us, absolutely not.
18:49No, absolutely not.
18:49Which we actually do regret to this day, because we have no great architecture that dates back to then.
18:53We have...
18:54We've got crumlicks.
18:56Well, we have our own little, you know, mounds and stuff that we're quite happy with.
19:00Did I have to drag my sorry ass around in school trips?
19:04Boys, we're off to see a mound.
19:06Yeah.
19:07And our imagination ran riot, but it was never what we expected.
19:11Do you know why the grass is greener in Ireland than over here?
19:15Is it because of limestone in the grass?
19:17No, it's because you're all over here walking on ours.
19:26Which brings us neatly to the point where fools rush in and Alan's fear to tread, which is our dose
19:31of general ignorance round.
19:32Now, so fingers on buzzers again if you would please, what is the collective noun for a group of baboons?
19:41Yay.
19:42The Pentagon.
19:45Fantastic.
19:52Probably enough, American politics has a lot to do with it.
19:54And not only is the Pentagon an organ of American power, but so is the House.
19:58Capitol Hill, the White House.
20:00The House is known as...
20:01The House of Representatives.
20:02It's the Congress.
20:03The Congress.
20:04It's the Congress.
20:05It's the Congress of Baboons.
20:06Yeah.
20:06But the reason we ask the question is...
20:07Congress of Baboons.
20:10Very good.
20:11But there is a quite interesting fact about a new word that is beginning to replace Congress.
20:16And it has a very odd history, this word.
20:18It comes from a comedy sketch on BBC television in a series called Not the Nine O'clock News.
20:23There was a sketch called Gerald the Gorilla, in which Rowan Atkinson played it.
20:28Wild.
20:28He makes mention.
20:29That's right.
20:30Wilder was furious.
20:31Exactly.
20:31The production on that album.
20:35There's a point where he talks about a group, or flange, as we call them, of gorillas.
20:39And this was just made up by Richard Curtis, whoever wrote the sketch, that particular sketch.
20:44But it's now on the net.
20:45And there is, I can quote you here, from a book called Sex and Friendship in Baboons by Barbara B.
20:50Smuts.
20:50This is a review...
20:53He's read every book in the world.
20:55This is a review at Amazon.com, and it's a serious academic study.
20:59And it says, in this marvellous book, Smuts draws from years of painstaking field research,
21:04in which he followed around a flange of chacma baboons in the mutatory game reserve in Zimbabwe.
21:09And that, a word has migrated from a comedy sketch into the internet.
21:13It is now being used by academics as the official word.
21:16And while on the subject of animals, who can tell me which mammals have the most bones in their noses?
21:22Yes.
21:22Yes.
21:23Alan.
21:25Crocodiles.
21:26It isn't crocodiles, as it happens.
21:28I was going to say elephants, but I think it's really stupid.
21:35Oh, bless you for that.
21:36I did it to please the researcher.
21:38Did you say anteaters?
21:39Well, the answer is an anteater.
21:41So you shouldn't have some points.
21:42A particular kind, probably the most famous kind of anteater in some ways.
21:46Aardvark.
21:47Aardvark is the right answer.
21:49It has nine or ten.
21:50Do you know?
21:51I can say, in Danish, I have spilt coffee on the anteater.
21:57I would like you to do that for us now.
21:59I have spilt coffee for my sphere.
22:10Elephants, of course, have no bones in their noses whatsoever.
22:13So our next question is, according to the inventor of Centigrade, what's the boiling point of water?
22:21Oh dear, now I'm going to say something stupid, aren't I?
22:24100 degrees.
22:25Oh dear!
22:26No, no, it's so obvious.
22:29It's obviously, you'd think it's a reasonable thing to say.
22:31The inventor of Centigrade was a man called Anders...
22:33Celsius.
22:34Celsius is quite right.
22:35From 1701 to 1744 he lived a short but fruitful life.
22:39I spent all that time going, oh, that's hot.
22:43That's hot, that's cold and that's hot.
22:45Well, that's quite chilly.
22:46I should call that one.
22:53He decided that water should boil at zero degrees and ice would melt at 100.
22:58Because nought is actually now, of course it's the other way round,
23:01nought is not the point in which water freezes in Centigrade,
23:04it's the point at which ice melts.
23:06Melts, yeah.
23:07Zero is actually more than that, and I'm giving you a scientific fact
23:10because I don't wish to be associated with diarrhoea for the rest of the show.
23:13Zero is actually the triple point of water.
23:15It's the first temperature of which water can live in all three states
23:19because you can actually get water vapour, which is at zero as well.
23:21Oh, very good. You must have some points for that.
23:23And this round of applause.
23:25Thank you very much.
23:27Thank you very much.
23:31Thank you very much.
23:32Thank you very much for the point, and in particular,
23:33because for the private moment I had there where I remembered
23:35when I was told that in school at 16,
23:38and went, when the f*** am I ever going to use that?
23:40Oh, hooray!
23:42It happened.
23:43You see?
23:44But here's one, which is called the minus 40 Centigrade
23:46or minus 40 Fahrenheit?
23:48Minus 40 Centigrade.
23:50No, they're both actually...
23:51They're both the same.
23:51They're the one point where it's the two things.
23:53It's where they meet.
23:53So which came first, Celsius or Fahrenheit?
23:56Fahrenheit came first.
23:57The interesting thing about the British is what we do
23:59is we use Centigrade when it's cold
24:01and we use Fahrenheit when it's hot.
24:03So we go, ooh, when it's hot,
24:04hot summer, we go, it's in the 90s, it's 92.
24:06But when it's really cold, we go,
24:08it's minus three, it's minus five.
24:10You don't say it's 28, which is what it would mean.
24:14We do.
24:14We're very consistent, aren't we?
24:16Well, from that to...
24:18What did Mussolini do?
24:21Made the trains run on time.
24:24Oh.
24:28No, he didn't.
24:30You could argue he made one particular train run on time.
24:33In 1922, there was a general strike in Italy,
24:36much to the anoint of many Italian people
24:38and certainly to the anoint of the king, Umberto.
24:40And the fascists, led by Mussolini,
24:43were gathered in Naples,
24:45and Mussolini made his ferocious speech saying,
24:47we shall march on Rome and we shall sort this out.
24:50We shall seize power if we're not offered it
24:52and we shall end this strike.
24:53And it became...
24:54And Roma, Roma, Roma, we shouted,
24:55and the famous march on Rome began.
24:58Mussolini himself went to Milan,
25:00didn't go on the march because he was rather scared.
25:02He was quaking in his jackboots.
25:04But it turned out to be a great success.
25:06And the king offered him power and said,
25:08you must get on the train from Milan, where he was, to Rome,
25:12and I will offer you the prime ministership.
25:13So he racked up the stationmaster at Milan and said,
25:16this train has to run on time.
25:18And it was the one train he definitely made run on time.
25:21But all the other improvements in the Italian transport system
25:23were actually made before he came to power.
25:25Gary Baldy, that's a type of biscuit.
25:27That's a type of biscuit.
25:28Certainly it's a type of biscuit.
25:29And it cracks.
25:30That's the difference.
25:33You can't crack a cake.
25:35No.
25:37Good.
25:37Well, that's all very exciting.
25:38That's Mussolini for you.
25:39No evidence he made Italian trains run on time at all.
25:42Let's have another question.
25:43Which eye did Nelson wear his eye patch on?
25:50Anybody ever thought?
25:51Yes.
25:52The right eye.
25:56It was a little unfair.
25:57He didn't wear one.
25:59He didn't wear one.
25:59Ever.
26:00He never wore an eye patch.
26:01He never wore an eye patch.
26:02He just went like that.
26:04Only in Lady Bird books did he wear an eye patch.
26:06That's a very strange man, Nelson.
26:08He bought, for about 25 shillings, these silver stars.
26:13He was given all kinds of titles by the King of Naples.
26:16And he bought them all and put them on a sash.
26:18And stood on the quarter-deck of the victory like this.
26:23Covered and shining in stars.
26:24And from 50 feet away, the French shot him.
26:27Perhaps not surprisingly.
26:30He never actually lost an eye.
26:32He just lost the sight of his eye, in fact.
26:34Did you know that Lady Hamilton was vastly overweight
26:37and had a Lancashire accent?
26:38I thought you were going to say overrated then.
26:41I'd give her a six, you know.
26:44It seems a bit unfair on anyone watching from Lancashire
26:47that you seem to go together fat with and a Lancashire accent.
26:52It's only...
26:53I only tried to make the point that it's surprising.
26:55It's not what you think.
26:56If you watch Vivian Leigh play her opposite Laurence Olivier in the film...
27:00She doesn't talk like William Gallagher.
27:02No, she doesn't.
27:03Ooh, I wouldn't have him if he came.
27:04We're in nested tables.
27:06You know, it's not...
27:08It's not that kind of thing.
27:11So, that's all from us.
27:12Let's look at the scores.
27:13In last place, we have Alan with minus 20, I'm sorry to say.
27:22Just ahead is Arthur Smith with minus 18.
27:28On plus two points, it's Rich Hall on two.
27:33And our runaway winner on four points is Dara O'Brien.
27:41Well, there you are.
27:43So, that's all from Rich, Arthur, Dara, Alan and me.
27:46As they say in Ireland, may you get to heaven a half hour before the devil knows you're dead.
27:51Good night.
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