- 17 minutes ago
First broadcast 26th November 2009.
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Rob Brydon
Dara Ó Briain
David Mitchell
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Rob Brydon
Dara Ó Briain
David Mitchell
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:04Good evening, good evening, good evening, and welcome to QI for a show that tonight is all about gardening and
00:11groceries, and it's bog-off night at QI.
00:14Four comedians for the price of two. Cutting the mustard, it's Rob Brydon.
00:23And taking the biscuits, it's Dara O'Brien.
00:31Spicing things up, it's David Mitchell.
00:39And playing catch-up, it's Alan Davis.
00:47But, um, before we head over to the garden to turn over the first sod, let's hear your buzzers, and
00:54Rob goes.
00:56Dara goes.
00:59David goes.
01:01And Alan goes.
01:03Pan-a-pan-it, pan-a-pan-it, let's go.
01:05Come on, love, got a couple of juicy ones here.
01:07Come on, pan-a-pan-it.
01:09Thank you, thank you.
01:11So, let's get off to an easy start.
01:13What tools do you need for do-nothing gardening?
01:16Er, no, no tools.
01:21It's also called natural gardening or natural farming.
01:24It's an eastern version of our organic farming that has actually spread around the world.
01:29You sort of have to dig with your hands, or persuade other animals to do the gardening for you.
01:34Yes, persuade other animals.
01:36So you sort of persuade that a fox, he doesn't want a sort of den, but a rockery.
01:42Well, in the case of pan-a-fishing, and they desperately try and dig a pond before they die.
01:50Well, fish is right.
01:51Well, in paddy fields, where, as I say, it's not in the east, they use ducks.
01:55Instead of herbicide, they eat the weeds, the throttily things that kill the rice.
01:59And they use carp as well, that helps purify and keep the water in the paddy fields good.
02:02Well, this is like having a goat, isn't it?
02:04It is like having a goat.
02:05In the nicest sense.
02:06Yes.
02:08It's like having a goat, but now the goat has been usurped, because the wallaby is being introduced in larger
02:14numbers now in Britain,
02:15because it makes a good family pet, and it eats the grass, and it's more fun than a goat.
02:20It's more intelligent.
02:21You mean, a better family pet than that traditional family pet, the goat?
02:27Well, surely not.
02:29Surely all those Christmas mornings where children go, it's a goat!
02:35It's true. I read about it in the paper.
02:37There's a guy who breeds them, and he says he's never been busier.
02:41Oh.
02:42Because they hop over the fence and run away.
02:45You do have to have a very high fence.
02:47That's true. That's the downside of it.
02:49You could electrify the top of the fence.
02:50It wouldn't have to be that high.
02:52You'd just get to a bit...
02:52Because they are just gripping animals, aren't they, wallabies?
02:55That's a koala, isn't it? Surely.
02:58They're not big climbers, famously. They're not big climbers.
03:02They're bouncers, aren't they, basically? I don't mean in the sense of nightclubs.
03:06Nightclub pances.
03:08They're of the bouncing animals.
03:10Yes.
03:10As opposed to of the gripping onto animals.
03:13Oh, yes.
03:14You blinded me with your biology job.
03:17Yes, sorry.
03:18Yeah, he's a man called Masanobu...
03:22Masanobu Fukuoka.
03:23Responsible for do-nothing gardening.
03:25It all works very well.
03:26I think he invented seed balls. Are you familiar with seed balls?
03:29You make a little ball out of clay, mud and various, you know, nutrients.
03:34You just chuck it around and it...seeds.
03:37Ah.
03:37You put a load of seeds and some mud and something in a ball and then just chuck it.
03:43And then leave it there to grow.
03:45More or less.
03:46And that's preferable to just putting some seeds wherever it...
03:50Yes.
03:50Well, you chuck it where you want it to be, obviously, yeah.
03:53But if you use far fewer seeds, it's much more economical.
03:56And is it, like, for planting things that were difficult otherwise to reach?
04:00Stuff on the other side of, like, lava or something?
04:04It's if you walk to the point at which you would land and just plant seeds there, shouldn't you?
04:08It's if you want, like, you know, hanging baskets but you haven't got a ladder.
04:12So all you do is you get a basketball player and a seed ball and that's...
04:18There you are.
04:18Yeah.
04:19Exactly.
04:19Game on.
04:20Plus there are seed guns.
04:22You familiar with a seed gun?
04:24I'm guessing you take a seed ball...
04:27Yeah.
04:27...and you put it into a large gun-like device and you just shoot that mother.
04:32LAUGHTER
04:35Thank you for giving us the pre-watershed version.
04:37But actually...
04:38Of the gang talk.
04:40It is...
04:40Yeah, of the gang talk.
04:41An acceptable face of gangster rap.
04:44There on the left is a seed gun.
04:47It is literally a seed ball-type mud thing but made in the shape of a gun.
04:52Why would you do that?
04:53Well, imagine that you are citizens of Richmond, Virginia
04:57and your murder rate has gone up so far
05:00you're casting about for some way of trying to suggest peaceful uses of guns.
05:06LAUGHTER
05:08So you make a mud gun with seeds in it to plant flowers of hope.
05:12But...
05:13The flowers arrive up in the shape of a gun.
05:16Sure, that's...
05:17Well, slightly, as you can see on the right.
05:19That's promoting a gun.
05:20You could have a kind of gangster rapper and he's thinking
05:22I'm trying to put the gangsters, the guns behind me.
05:24Then he sees the flower bed and he thinks a gun.
05:27What a great idea.
05:29And how convenient.
05:30A bullet tree.
05:32LAUGHTER
05:33Yes.
05:34LAUGHTER
06:04It's the equivalent of turning your swords into plowshares
06:05young people watching the show for three years have been thrilled by the words
06:08guerrilla warfare.
06:09LAUGHTER
06:10And they go, how did they train you?
06:11Yeah, I mean, that was it.
06:12As a child, watching the news, half the time they're telling you about the
06:15guerrillas that are going extinct and the other time it's about all the
06:17guerrilla fighters killing people.
06:19So they go, well, I'd be quite glad that the guerrillas are extinct, actually.
06:22It's sending the wrong message, isn't it?
06:24In America, there's a major problem for the drugs enforcement agencies,
06:27that people were growing cannabis on that kind of land.
06:31Land on the edge, on the ramp onto a motorway.
06:34Land you couldn't normally get to.
06:35People would use that land and grow cannabis on it.
06:37You would be disappointed to hear that one anonymous guerrilla gardener
06:41planted 3,400 marijuana seedlings in the grounds of the Californian estate
06:47owned by Rupert Murdoch.
06:49LAUGHTER
06:50Yes.
06:51That's very irresponsible, isn't it?
06:53There's a hell of a lot of guerrilla-ing about, though.
06:55It's 3,000 plant.
06:57Yeah, that is an extraordinary note.
06:58It started, supposedly, in 1973 in New York.
07:01Vancouver is one of the places where it's really taken off,
07:04because a load of compost was dumped in the street by construction workers
07:07and a local inadvertently emptied all his bird seed onto the same dump,
07:11and it flowered so extraordinarily that now almost any spare piece of land
07:15is used as a garden in Vancouver.
07:18It's a good thing, isn't it?
07:20But I've got some props for you, which is more connected with the principle
07:24of the gentleman gardener, which was a familiar 18th and 19th century pastime
07:31to be a gentleman gardener.
07:33You can have that or pass it on.
07:34There you are.
07:35And on your side, you've got props.
07:37Isn't it exciting to have props?
07:38Physical, actual props.
07:40There you are.
07:41I can see where we're going with this.
07:42Yes.
07:45So who's going to go first?
07:47Well, everybody's been given fascinating devices,
07:50and I've been given a bottle with the top cut off.
07:54That was designed by George Stevenson of the Rocket fame.
07:57Was it?
07:57The first locomotive.
07:59Yeah.
07:59And it's to do with the garden?
08:00It is to do with the garden.
08:01He was a very keen gardener.
08:02What did he make most money out of?
08:04That or the train?
08:07I think the train was a bigger hit.
08:08Right.
08:09But he was a very keen gentleman gardener.
08:11I bet he was really tedious and wouldn't talk about the train in interviews
08:14and would insist on talking about it.
08:17I feel you, right?
08:19In many ways, it's the work I'm proudest of.
08:20Yeah, it's crap.
08:22It's just a bit of glass with no top.
08:23Any thought at all?
08:25It would, it would, it would, it would, it would lure his smells.
08:27Sunlight, I think, is an important tactic.
08:29The sunlight, because you've got glass.
08:30And what does glass do?
08:31It can magnify Steven, can't it?
08:33Yes, it can.
08:35Refraction with it, can't we?
08:37Or refraction.
08:37Refraction.
08:38Whatever, you know.
08:39Whatever, it doesn't matter.
08:41Let's not get bombed down in that.
08:42Yeah, quite, yeah.
08:43We're here to talk about gardening.
08:44I'm silly, I'm silly.
08:45Oh, hello.
08:46No, no.
08:48You've found out.
08:49No.
08:49It's a saw.
08:50It is.
08:52It's a, for a gentleman gardener.
08:53It's got a concealed serrated blade.
08:55You won't get this through customs.
08:57I can play Jack a plane with one of these.
09:00I can't make it work though.
09:01Why won't it go forward?
09:02It'll only go that way.
09:03Well, that's how you start the stroke.
09:04That's how you start sawing.
09:05We won't go back again.
09:06Have you only used a saw?
09:08I don't think it's designed for exercise books.
09:11No, there's that too.
09:13David has a point.
09:14It's for the gentleman far...
09:16No!
09:18I want to saw something there.
09:20It's a lot.
09:21Come on.
09:21I want...
09:22I want...
09:22I just want to say...
09:26These have been linked to us by the Garden Museum.
09:29It works, yeah.
09:30Oh, it really does!
09:32Oh, my God!
09:34Oh, my God!
09:39I'll tell you what, I...
09:41You know?
09:44I really wish they hadn't made this set out of asbestos.
09:47Yeah.
09:50Brilliant.
09:52That is...
09:53That's a very good invention.
09:54It's for the gentleman who's walking along and he sees an overhanging limb of a tree...
09:58or a hanging limb of a person, but I've had a...
10:00and...
10:01and decides...
10:02Oh, no!
10:03What have I done?
10:05No!
10:08Don't...
10:08Oh!
10:09It's only plastic.
10:10Yeah, yeah.
10:11And see if you can tidy it away, class.
10:14See if you can do that.
10:15It's my clever psychology.
10:17It's clever, isn't it?
10:17Let's see if you're clever enough to hide that...
10:19that saw.
10:22Brilliant.
10:23Well, that was great fun.
10:24Have you got any more?
10:24No.
10:25Well, David, you've got yours.
10:26Well, yes, I...
10:27I don't know.
10:28I mean, it's like...
10:29Yours actually is missing a piece.
10:30The Garden Museum, to whom we're very grateful for lending us these incredibly valuable artifacts,
10:37this would have had a sort of hat in order to make it like a walking stick.
10:40A sort of leaven thing around there.
10:43Oh, so you can hold it like that.
10:44Yeah, you hold it as a walking stick, and then when you see some obtrusive weeds,
10:48you turn it around, almost like a golf club, you...
10:50Just a little hoe.
10:51Yeah, you just hoe.
10:52Yeah.
10:53A little hoe.
10:54Not in the street sense that's used in the United States of America.
10:57No.
10:58Which is the sense I usually use that syllable in.
11:00Yes.
11:01Absolutely.
11:01So, talking of hoes...
11:03Rob.
11:03It doesn't...
11:05Oh, hello.
11:07Sorry, there was a fly landed on my buzzer, and I tried to use my little hoe.
11:13Ho.
11:15My little hoe.
11:16Yeah.
11:16My little hoe.
11:16It's a new sort of toy for children, isn't it?
11:19My little hoe.
11:19What's your little hoe for?
11:20Well, I have absolutely no idea, other than I think it's something to do with light.
11:23Well, it's not bad.
11:24It actually forces a shape.
11:26What sort of shape would something in there have to be?
11:28A bottle.
11:28Oh, a vegetable.
11:29It would have to be a straight vegetable, though, wouldn't it?
11:31Oh.
11:32I think for cucumbers.
11:33For cucumbers.
11:34For growing straight cucumbers.
11:35And of Mendy by Walkenstein.
11:37Yes!
11:37Point all round for Alan Davies.
11:40There you are.
11:41Now, that thing up there, though, Stephen, it may well be for cucumbers, but that picture
11:46there is very similar to a spam email that I get sent.
11:52And I have to say, I'll tell you now, don't waste your money, it doesn't work.
11:59Dara, what have you...
12:00I am guessing that you put a mixture of seeds in of different sizes.
12:04Because there are little holes of different sizes, and then, if you're the kind of person
12:07who knows what size seeds you need, then you just sprinkle it.
12:11You're exactly...
12:12In the most defeat gardening way imaginable.
12:14There you go.
12:15And we're in the company of which actual gardens would be going, oh, well done, my lad.
12:20That's really top-quality gardening you're doing there.
12:24I'm not exhausted now.
12:26I think I may have to go in and have a cocktail.
12:28And a bit of vapours for my gardening.
12:30So, do-nothing gardening, where we started, is small-scale organic farming with minimal inputs.
12:35Guerilla gardening is prettying up the hood, and a jolly good thing, too.
12:39Now, before we move on, we'd like you to draw now...
12:43You should have a card if you haven't sawn it in half.
12:47We'd like you to draw the world's first novelty teapot.
12:54Alan?
12:55Sorry.
12:55It all went...
12:56It's quite a draft in here, it turns out.
12:59What did I ask you to draw?
13:00Draw the world's first novelty teapot.
13:02Oh, damn, you weren't listening.
13:03That's very good.
13:04It's gone out that side, but...
13:05When you asked me, it was still in the middle.
13:07All right, well, get drawing.
13:08The world's first.
13:09You mean, we're inventing one?
13:13Or there is one that we should know about?
13:17This is nice.
13:18I like it when the class get on with their pieces.
13:21No, busy and quiet.
13:23The teacher sits at the front just texting her friends.
13:27Do you know that rhyme?
13:29I'm a little teapot, short and stout.
13:31Here's my handle.
13:32Oh, bugger, I'm a sugar bowl.
13:42How are you doing?
13:43Is anyone ready to show yet?
13:45Yes, David, you look as if you're finished.
13:46Yeah, I have finished.
13:47I'm very pleased with it.
13:48Is it an Indian goddess or a crab?
13:52It's a novelty teapot.
13:54Oh, yes.
13:55Sort of instructed, but I thought they have a lot of tea in India
13:58and their vague goddess is a bit like that.
14:00And one thing, the best bit, the sort of business end of a teapot,
14:03is the spout.
14:04So someone might have invented one with lots of spouts.
14:07Multiple spouted teapot.
14:08You'd have to pretty much surround it.
14:12And that's that thing on the front that looks like an ear,
14:15which is not an ear, that's the sort of handle.
14:18Does it come with a cream to treat scalding and burns?
14:23No, but it came in a society in which the burning of various members of it
14:27was not considered important by those in charge.
14:29Good point.
14:30Good satirical point.
14:31What have you got then, Rob?
14:32What I've done is I've come up with a thing called handy tea.
14:36So it's a teapot.
14:38This actually, all jokes aside, this could be a goer.
14:40This, and the finger is cocking a snook to authority,
14:44so that will appeal to the youngsters.
14:46But the rest of it, and I've called it handy tea.
14:49Yes.
14:50Which finger exactly it's like?
14:51That's the thumb.
14:51That's weird.
14:53No.
14:53You're absolutely so very long.
14:55Yeah, it's weird.
14:55Unless it's the left hand.
14:57Which has got five fingers.
15:00You're absolutely right, yes.
15:02It's not anatomically correct.
15:04No, that's all right.
15:06It's only approachable.
15:08It's not anatomically correct.
15:09Not anatomically correct.
15:10Contents may differ upon delivering.
15:13Anyway.
15:14But I think you'd have to agree, there's something for everyone in there.
15:17I think it's very wise of you to have signed it.
15:19Yes, I have signed it.
15:20If you hadn't, I would have nicked that idea.
15:23I'd probably leave the recording at this point.
15:25It ought to canonise on it.
15:27Dara, what have you got?
15:29It's supposed to be an Egyptian character.
15:32Oh, yes.
15:32See, I thought you wanted the first one.
15:34I want some historical.
15:34And the Egyptian character's doing the traditional Egyptian hieroglyphic thing,
15:39but it pours out of the dark.
15:41That's very clever.
15:42Unfortunately, I don't know, I can't draw Egyptian clothes,
15:44so I've made him wear a small tuxedo.
15:48And a little dicky bow.
15:49So he's an addition on the way to some sort of black-tie event.
15:53Maybe the opening of a pyramid.
15:56And you've not only signed it, you've actually put a copyright notice on it.
15:59I've put a copyright notice on it.
15:59Just in case that isn't the correct answer, I think, actually.
16:03Superb.
16:03I'll just say to David, I've also now copyrighted.
16:06Oh, very good.
16:07Well done.
16:07You have to put the date if you copyright something.
16:09So, yep.
16:12Do you think...
16:13Do you think I should copyright mine?
16:15Or do you think...
16:16I wouldn't...
16:17I wouldn't bother.
16:18I wouldn't bother.
16:19I'd save the ink.
16:21Alan, what have you got?
16:22I don't know.
16:23What I've done is I've done a bloke with a beak.
16:26And he's...
16:27It's a long, tall pot.
16:29Oh, he is?
16:30You can feel the feet as well.
16:31It'll stand there.
16:32That's his arm.
16:33And then it'll all come out of his...
16:35That works.
16:36...feet.
16:36And then his little baseball cap.
16:38That's the lid.
16:40The only drawback here is you will need long, thin teabags.
16:46I think that's going to be a hell of a difficult thing to clean.
16:49But you shouldn't clean a teapot.
16:51Don't clean a teapot.
16:52You don't clean a teapot, David.
16:53You should never clean a teapot.
16:54No.
16:54Under no circumstance.
16:56It's not a hundred percent.
16:57It's not a hundred percent.
16:58You're trying to raise some tea in it.
16:59It's been used as a teapot.
17:02Well, no.
17:02I couldn't find the loo one night.
17:05I have only ever...
17:06Paul Hodge, but I sense a hypothetical situation.
17:10This is not a hypothetical situation.
17:12I've only ever used a teapot for tea.
17:15But occasionally, if you make sort of tea in a teapot,
17:17once in a blue moon when you can be bothered
17:18in a vague attempt to seem more civilised than you actually are,
17:21you then sort of leave.
17:22You've still got a bit of tea in it.
17:23Oh, no, you rinse it out.
17:25You leave it.
17:25No, you don't rinse that, because you forget,
17:27because immediately you're tired of being civilised
17:29and you want to go to the pub.
17:30You leave it there for weeks and weeks and months and months,
17:33and then when you have a look in it,
17:34it's gone disgustingly mouldy.
17:36And it's talking to you.
17:37Yeah.
17:38At that point, the flavour that you would get
17:41if you didn't wash it from your next cup of tea
17:43is, if anything, too characterful.
17:46What do you think the actual real-life first novelty teapots
17:50might have been in the shape of?
17:51You've probably seen them.
17:52They've since become very popular.
17:54Like a Toby jug or something?
17:57Not quite that so much as cauliflowers and pineapples
18:02and things like that.
18:03That's the classic sort.
18:05But that was very early.
18:06We're talking about Queen Anne's time.
18:07Early 1700s.
18:09Oh, mine's much better than that.
18:10Yes, it probably is.
18:12Anyway, we probably ought to move on.
18:15Where's the best place in the world to discover an entirely new species?
18:19The National Geographic Channel.
18:26Maybe.
18:27They're at the forefront.
18:28Do you think you might spot something on the edge of shot?
18:34See, they're going on about that monkey or whatever,
18:36but that's a totally new sort of caterpillar.
18:38What about the Amazon rainforest?
18:40Were they discovering new things all the time?
18:42No.
18:43No.
18:46Kent.
18:48Yes.
18:48That would do.
18:50Kent?
18:50Kent would do.
18:52Basically, your own garden.
18:54Oh.
18:54You may say, no, there won't be anything in my garden
18:56that hasn't been discovered.
18:57You would be amazed.
18:58In 1971, Jennifer Owen, a biologist, did a very long-term study
19:02of her ordinary garden in a suburban house in Leicester,
19:05she discovered 533 species of Ichnumon wasp,
19:11just that family of parasitic wasps.
19:13Fifteen of these had never been recorded in Britain.
19:15Four of them were completely new to science
19:17in a suburban garden.
19:19So in your garden, if you have a garden, there will be things.
19:23Gilbert White, the naturalist, said,
19:24the nature is so full and so varied
19:27that if you want to find the place with the most variety,
19:30it's the place you most study.
19:32It almost doesn't matter.
19:33Just take a piece of land and look at it hard enough,
19:37you will see things that...
19:37You're still going rainforest, I'm sorry.
19:40Yes, but you'd have to travel thousands of miles,
19:42you'd have to park there, you'd have to look, you'd have to,
19:44you know...
19:44Park?
19:47Well...
19:48Yes.
19:50Everyone knows it's a nightmare, parking.
19:54Why are you worried that my brain let me say that?
19:57The congestion charge alone would just make
19:59it drives up the cost of research or anything.
20:03Nonetheless.
20:03How did she catch these wasps?
20:04Would she put a jam jar with jam in it
20:06and a little hole that's big enough for them to get in
20:08but not get back out?
20:09Because that's what we do in our house.
20:10Do you?
20:11Every wasp likes a bit of jam because it's sweet.
20:14They love sugary things, as do I.
20:16You know when you find a bee and it's crawling on its last legs?
20:19I always rescue them.
20:20You give it honey.
20:21It's the only thing they eat.
20:23It makes sense when you think about it.
20:25Yeah!
20:27Yeah!
20:28No point in talking to it, give it honey.
20:31They're very much a one-recipe species.
20:35I'm intrigued because I generally give it the sole of my shoe,
20:38but, you know, not to be harsh but, you know.
20:43And you tread on a struggling, crawling bee.
20:45Yeah, really.
20:46Why?
20:46What?
20:47As opposed to rehabilitating.
20:50I like honey.
20:51I'm a porridge, you murderer.
20:54You depend on bees.
20:55We need the bees.
20:57Okay, so in the future I should lure the bee back.
20:59I'd say, do I get a syringe of honey, just a tiny amount of honey?
21:02How do I feed a spoon of honey, leave it with the honey,
21:05don't tread on it?
21:06It should be criminal offence.
21:07But you should be arrested.
21:08You should be locked up, you know where?
21:10In a hive.
21:13Isn't it true, though, that a bee in his entire lifetime
21:16makes an absolutely tiny amount of honey overall?
21:20I mean, just a tiny-nut amount of honey.
21:21But there's just lots of them, yeah.
21:22So you don't have to give much rehabilitating honey to this one bee
21:25before the nation, the world, is making a net loss.
21:30That's true.
21:31I mean, it's useless.
21:33If you only get one teaspoon of honey from a whole bee's lifetime
21:36and every time we have to get it back on its feet
21:38it takes a teaspoon and a half, suddenly there's no honey at all.
21:42This is more honey than this bee has seen in its life.
21:46You're insulting it.
21:48It's like showing a very tired mason a whole cathedral.
21:55Maybe.
22:01Well, let's...
22:02Let's say that you're in between Alan and Dara.
22:05So like Alan, you want to help the bee give it honey.
22:07But like Dara, you also want to kill, kill, kill.
22:11What you can do is you get what I would term too much honey.
22:15And you see the bee and you pour molten honey.
22:19Oh!
22:19Look, look, hear me out.
22:21Alright, okay.
22:21And then, you watch him die as slow as a...
22:25Yeah, yeah, I carry on with...
22:26Oh!
22:27Yes, I've now heard you out.
22:29Yes.
22:29And that's no better.
22:30Well, no, that's...
22:31That's worse!
22:32That's much worse than what I did.
22:33It's torturing a bee.
22:34You're being humane, aren't you?
22:35Yeah, I am being humane.
22:36You're getting a kick out of it.
22:37Let's forget that.
22:38You're drowning the bee ironically in honey.
22:42You can't drown bees.
22:43You want some honey?
22:44You can't drown bees.
22:44How much honey do you want?
22:45Is this too much honey?
22:47What?
22:48I'm so keen on that honey now, are you?
22:50You must be in my lifetime making honey.
22:53You may try and drown bees, Dara, but I will follow you.
22:57And I will rescue the drummer who wanted to drown the bee.
23:00Yes, it was.
23:01My scenario.
23:02He wanted to smash it in his shoe.
23:04He wanted to tread on it.
23:06It is a bee.
23:06It is a bee in a bath.
23:07I don't damn go, right, get the shoe.
23:09Spishy!
23:10Spishy!
23:11Spishy!
23:11Spishy!
23:13Your murder is based on circumstances.
23:15If there's a bee, it looks as if it's on its way out and it's going that...
23:20You are like the Swiss surgery of beekeeping, aren't you?
23:23Essentially, yes.
23:24You are trying to give them dignity, yeah.
23:26Dignitas for bees.
23:27Dignitas for bees.
23:28Dignitas.
23:30And then I do turn to people and go, it's what the bee would have wanted.
23:35Very good.
23:35Well, thank you for that interesting, fierce and I think productive debate.
23:43Very pleased with that.
23:44We are going to move on now, but the best place, as you didn't quite point out, to find
23:48a new species or plant or animal is in your back garden.
23:52Who finds garden gnomes attractive?
23:55I do, and it's lovely, it's lovely to get the opportunity to be able to admit it in public.
24:00Good.
24:01Yeah.
24:02Oh.
24:02Look at that.
24:09We knew you, we knew you too well, Rob.
24:13We knew that an Anne Whittacombe gnome would just immediately appeal to you.
24:17Her bikini's a little bit too small for her.
24:20There's actually a little bit of overhang there.
24:22Oh.
24:24But she's had a Brazilian, which is thoughtful.
24:27Oh, I hate for the gnomes when it goes out.
24:30Oh, no.
24:31The sprouting gnome is not a good thing, no.
24:33No, definitely.
24:35But when did gnomes first arrive in the British gardens, do you know?
24:391922.
24:39A bit earlier than that, actually.
24:421847.
24:42And there was a strange man called Charles Isham, who's a vegetarian spiritualist, who believed
24:48that putting ornamental garden gnomes into a garden would attract real gnomes.
24:54That was his sad part.
24:55Did he wish to try and kill real gnomes?
24:57No, he wanted to commune with them.
24:59He was trying to entrap real gnomes.
25:00He wanted to commune with them.
25:00He said, seeing and hearing gnomes is not mental delusion, but extension of faculty.
25:06It's a nice try.
25:07Isn't it?
25:07It's lovely being clever when you're mental.
25:09Yes.
25:10This man, Charles Isham, he introduced 21 porcelain gnomes, of which one still exists,
25:15and there it is.
25:16The original garden gnome in the first one ever.
25:19It's been insured for some one million pounds.
25:22The red cap, which is a feature of all gnomes, it seems, and you may think there is a family
25:27resemblance to that chap and Doc or one of the other dwarves in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,
25:33and they were based on this idea that German gnomes, or whatever you want to call them, dwarves,
25:38had these red caps because they were miners, and German miners wore red caps.
25:43They were in Wastwater or Wastwater in the Lake District.
25:47They were at 48 meters.
25:48There were a whole load of gnomes set deep down for divers to look at.
25:53Three people drowned, apparently, trying to go and look for them, so the police came and took them away.
25:58And the gnome garden was put back at 50 meters this time deep, just two meters deeper, and the police
26:05didn't take it away.
26:06Can you imagine why that would be?
26:08If they took it away when it was 48 meters and three people had drowned, why would they then leave
26:12it?
26:12Maybe it's a visibility thing.
26:14Good effort, but no.
26:15It's too far for the police divers.
26:17The police divers' health and safety people won't let the police dive that low,
26:21so the police couldn't recover them from that depth.
26:27That is funny.
26:29It is.
26:30It somehow is.
26:31Can you imagine, though, if you're able to, you know, and you don't mind the sort of risk,
26:35why would you choose to do it in a place where instead of seeing, you know, a coral reef or
26:40fantastic wonders of the deep,
26:42all you can see is some manky old nodes?
26:44I think the idea was that the lake was incredibly dull and that people who were practicing diving,
26:49it was just something to make it a little bit brighter and more interesting.
26:53It's a nice thing to see in diving trips, and I've dived here,
26:55that most of you are a long way away.
26:57That's the problem.
26:58In hot countries where you have to fly there and stay in hotels and stuff,
27:01so if you want to dive while you're here, it's a really very little to see.
27:04In the dive centre in Leicester, there's a big quarry,
27:06and they put an old aeroplane in it and a bus.
27:09Yeah.
27:10Of course, in Scarpa Flow, there's a scuttled German fleet for you to go and investigate,
27:14if you wanted to.
27:15That was the end of the war, end of the First World War, wasn't it?
27:18That's right.
27:19The Allies were all arguing about who were to get this fleet,
27:22and we wanted to have the fleet because we had the biggest fleet,
27:24and so it made sense to us that we should have.
27:26And Mummy said, if you're going to argue about it, then no one will get the fleet.
27:29And it was scuttled.
27:30I didn't know that we sunk the French fleet.
27:31We did, yes.
27:32That was much to the annoyance of Charles de Gaulle.
27:35Yeah.
27:35But otherwise, the Germans would have got hold of it.
27:37Also, you don't get many opportunities to sink the French fleet.
27:41You know, when the French fleet is just sitting there, and it's not going to return the fire.
27:44It was more of an old English instinct.
27:46It's just, you kind of go, look, we've got some French fleet, it's just there.
27:48I'm sorry.
27:49Never mind that we're at war with Germany, but still, it's the French fleet.
27:53We will kick ourselves.
27:55Once it's Germany.
27:55Once it's Germany.
27:56I am...
27:57Where was the French fleet when this happened?
27:59Off the coast of Morocco?
28:00Or someone...
28:01Why didn't you just sail it to England?
28:03We said sail it to England.
28:04It was full of French sailors who refused to sail it to England, as they always will.
28:09Well, option B was, well, let's just sink the boat in.
28:12How...
28:13It was not explained to them, but the only other option was...
28:16The third option was to drown them in honey, but we couldn't get...
28:20We couldn't get enough honey there in time, so...
28:23Yeah.
28:24A black chapter amongst many other black chapters in that sad, melancholy period of history.
28:29The war.
28:30But, er...
28:31On that...
28:33On that...
28:34Melancholy note, er...
28:37The man who brought garden gnomes to England did so in the hope of attracting some real gnomes to his
28:41garden.
28:42Why do American farmers, gentlemen, hate Shakespeare?
28:47There's a picture of American farmers hating Shakespeare.
28:51Something to do with Shakespeare caused immense trouble to American farming.
28:56It's a...
28:56It's not Shakespeare's fault at all.
28:58Not...
28:59Not some farming practice that's hidden away in the sonnets or something?
29:02It was an eccentric drug manufacturer called Eugene Schieffelin.
29:07And he decided that America should contain examples of every bird species named in the works of Shakespeare.
29:15And one particular species didn't exist in America.
29:19Ah.
29:19And he thought, oh, I'll introduce these.
29:21He introduced a hundred to Central Park, and there are now estimated something like 200 million of them.
29:28It's not the common pigeon, is it?
29:31Pigeons.
29:31They come in huge flocks.
29:34Starlings.
29:34Starlings.
29:35Starlings is the right answer.
29:36Starlings.
29:36And they don't like them because they eat the seeds?
29:38They eat seeds and they eat everything that's...
29:41Could they eat a seed ball or a seed gun, though?
29:44Maybe not.
29:45Maybe that's the future.
29:46Point the seed gun at them, I think they fly away.
29:48Unfortunately, what they do is they befoul everything in their droppings that they don't eat.
29:52They're such huge flocks.
29:54Vast flocks.
29:54I was on Brighton Pier one time.
29:56Yeah.
29:56And there are lots of starlings there, and at dusk they do that...
29:59They're beautiful.
30:00It's really amazing to watch if you stand on the pier.
30:03And someone said that starlings come from hundreds of miles away to join in this...
30:08To flock.
30:08...coastal flocking.
30:10Yeah.
30:10And they come from as far away as Germany and Poland.
30:13A lot of the Polish ones are coming over here now and taking away a lot of the...
30:17A lot of the British starlings' jobs.
30:19As you will see, a lot of British starlings just sat on the prom like this, come bloody typical.
30:22Yeah.
30:23Yeah, but they're the lazy British starlings who don't want to work.
30:26Why don't they just spin up and join in?
30:28You know what they want, will they?
30:29It's typical.
30:30Typical.
30:30No, you're right.
30:31The flocks are up to a million, some of them.
30:33I mean, enormous flocks.
30:35And are they just having fun?
30:36Or is it a good way of eating?
30:38No, in the case of fish, I know that what they're really doing is presenting, as it were, an enormous
30:43fish.
30:43Yeah.
30:44That sort of glistens and frightens some predators.
30:46And in other cases, it confuses and dazzles.
30:49And they're a lot safer than...
30:51Starlings are basically scared of sharks.
30:54I'm not so sure about the shark might leap out of the west pier.
30:57You may laugh, but when was a starling last killed by a shark?
31:01That's true.
31:02So it works.
31:02You're absolutely right.
31:03It's 100%, but it's 100% starkly proven that this shall keep us safe from sharks.
31:09Come on, boys.
31:09Fum!
31:10And they're like that.
31:12So, good.
31:13Excellent.
31:13Starlings were brought to America in an attempt to introduce all the birds in Shakespeare to the US.
31:18They're now made a pest.
31:19Which is correct of these grocers, grocers or grocers?
31:24It's grocers apostrophe.
31:25Why does this annoy people?
31:27They're all right.
31:28Well, of course, they're all conceivably right, aren't they?
31:30But it's just a way of asking whether you care about apostrophes.
31:34Well, the grocers apostrophe is supposed to be like...
31:36They put them in where they shouldn't be, supposedly.
31:38They put, like, potatoes and put an apostrophe there or something.
31:42This doesn't bother you, does it?
31:43It doesn't bother me, no.
31:44It bothers me.
31:44Does it? Yeah.
31:45Some people, yeah.
31:46Some people write books and get incredibly annoyed and they form societies for the protection of the apostrophe.
31:52There's one actually in Dublin.
31:54I don't know if it's a grocer, but something like that.
31:55And it's Giro, CER, and then there's a comma.
31:59And then the S.
32:01And you go, you knew something had to go in there.
32:03You knew something had to go in there, but you couldn't.
32:06And it's like, it looks like a dead apostrophe.
32:09It looks like...
32:12But this guy had printed the sign.
32:14He'd obviously written out the test.
32:16Yeah, I know.
32:16And then got your sign printing cup and he went,
32:19No, right, whatever.
32:21Sign printing companies, you'd think...
32:23One of the requirements of being a sign printing company is having a basic knowledge of where an apostrophe goes.
32:29They know, I'm convinced, all sign writing companies know, for example, how to spell accommodation.
32:35They must.
32:36I reckon, when they say, okay, we're doing a sign for your guest house, would you like our normal service?
32:41Or would you like our deluxe gold five times the price service?
32:44Well, we'll check your spelling for you.
32:45And everyone goes, no, it's all right.
32:46I'm not going to pay five times as much for you to check the spelling.
32:49They go, okay.
32:51Inevitably, okay, we're going to paint the word accommodation the way you've put it there, are we?
32:56In the knowledge that they'll have to get called back all the sooner when the people finally realise they've got
33:01it wrong.
33:02It's just every time you see accommodation properly painted and misspelt the sign writer new.
33:07It's bloody minding me putting it out there wrong, knowing you'd get a repeat gig all the sooner.
33:11You can see how long it's been looking for a flat pant.
33:17There are very few situations in which this is vital.
33:20There are very few times that you will run in and go, where are the grocers?
33:23And they go, well, there's only me.
33:24But your sign implied that there was more than one grocer.
33:27Exactly.
33:29Exactly.
33:30You're so right.
33:31You're looking for three grocers.
33:32Yes.
33:33That's the minimum I need in this situation, not just one.
33:36People have been ridiculing what's called the grocers apostrophe since the 18th century.
33:40The Oxford Companion in English language notes that there was never a golden age in which the rules for the
33:45use of the possessive apostrophe in English were clear-cut and known, understood and followed by most dedicated people.
33:51Never.
33:52So some people have actually, like Birmingham, have abolished the apostrophe.
33:56Oh, yes.
33:56I read about this.
33:57Now, are there any places in America where they have an apostrophe?
34:02Well, they have places that are called Something's Creek.
34:04Yeah.
34:05Dawson's Creek, for example.
34:07Only five places in the whole United States have an apostrophe.
34:10One you might have heard of is quite well known.
34:12It's a tourist resort on the East Coast, a very upmarket she-she place in New England.
34:17Martha's Vineyard.
34:18Martha's Vineyard is the right answer.
34:19That one has an apostrophe.
34:20And there are four others.
34:22Dave's Vineyard.
34:24Dave's Vineyard.
34:25Mike's Garden.
34:26Mike's Kitchen.
34:27There's Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.
34:30There's Ike's Point, New Jersey.
34:32The captions are nowhere near where the places aren't.
34:36John E's Pond, Rhode Island.
34:38Carlos Elmer's Joshua View, Arizona.
34:42Clark's Mountain, Oregon.
34:43And those are the only ones.
34:45So everywhere else they said, don't bother with the apostrophe.
34:47Yeah.
34:47It's just confusing.
34:49Makes it not look like a place name.
34:51Yeah.
34:51It would seem so.
34:52I wouldn't bother with Carlos Elmer's.
34:53Joshua View works fine, doesn't it?
34:55Yeah.
34:55Why the hell do you need to have Carlos Elmer's specific view of Joshua?
34:59Yeah.
34:59If you pick Joshua up, let's all have a look at him.
35:02We know.
35:03Carlos Elmer's view of this.
35:04Fine view of Joshua.
35:06Yeah.
35:06Anyway, there you are.
35:07That's enough apostrophes.
35:09I think many people are annoyed, apparently, by punctuation errors in science, but others
35:13claim that the gross is at the forefront of the evolution of language.
35:16How can you be sure that an apple isn't actually a pear without tasting it or opening it up?
35:22Well, some apples get deformed into a sort of pear-shaped way.
35:25There are round pears.
35:27I mean, that obviously is a very pear-like one on the right there.
35:30That's clearly a pear, I think.
35:31But there are round ones.
35:32Is it that you can't do that twisting thing with an apple?
35:35I think pear stems do tend to come off more quickly, don't they?
35:38But there's a really interesting way.
35:40And that is...
35:42Ah.
35:42Ah.
35:43One floats and one doesn't.
35:44Which one floats?
35:45Apples float.
35:46Apples float.
35:47Apples float.
35:47Is it bobbing for apples?
35:50It's better work.
35:51I'm going to be so embarrassed if it doesn't.
35:53Oh, it's like Brainiac.
35:54Whoa.
35:56Float!
35:56Wow, it's got really big.
35:58Why is that a pear?
36:01That's a weird-looking pear.
36:02Oh.
36:03That's a weird thing.
36:04That's a weird thing.
36:07That's wrong.
36:10OK.
36:14Oh, it's so...
36:16They are.
36:20It seems that the pear is denser.
36:22It's somehow odd.
36:23You think of them as sweeter and lighter and so on, but actually they're just structurally
36:27more dense.
36:28You may try this at home and get a floating pear or a...
36:31Don't go to a green girl.
36:32Or a sinking apple, but please don't write in.
36:35Write to the British Apostrophe Society.
36:39They'd love to know about it.
36:40Someone invites you to play a game of pear bobbing.
36:45They try to drown you.
36:47Walk away!
36:48Apparently, up at Owl's Water, they did pear bobbing at about 50 metres.
36:55The police decided not to do it.
36:58Invited a load of strangely dressed dwarves.
37:01Yes.
37:01Yes.
37:02But oddly enough, oh, I'm going to put this back down here now, oddly enough, the oldest
37:07variety of apple in England is called a...
37:11Granny Smith?
37:11Bramley?
37:12Cox?
37:12No, a pear main.
37:13And that's going to bring us on to our next question.
37:16Yesterday, I went to the supermarket and all I wanted was a loaf of bread and some milk.
37:20And I came back with a small jar of truffle oil, a pot of organic anchovy.
37:26I remember that day.
37:27Yes.
37:29And a flagon of fermented essence of Vietnamese sucking goat and a small curly-headed chap.
37:35When all I wanted was bread and milk, what was going on?
37:38Early onset dementia, Stephen, which I think is what it is.
37:42It seems so.
37:43They're very clever with the way they put things in the aisles and they cut you out.
37:46You end up with a Swiss roll you had no intention of buying.
37:48Precisely.
37:49There is a huge science to the placing of products.
37:52There's a thing called the Grün transfer.
37:54There was a man called Victor Grün who was generally considered the father of this whole business.
38:00Apparently, men buy things from higher up.
38:03They're also more likely to pay more.
38:05So, everyday things that women are more likely to buy are at three to four feet.
38:09And the more expensive premium goods are higher up.
38:12The men will pluck those.
38:13Yeah, that's good.
38:14That's the best.
38:14That's the most expensive one.
38:15That must be the best because we're stupid like that.
38:18And the women will say, oh, that's a good price.
38:19I'll get that one.
38:20It's called the Grün transfer.
38:21They play different music during it because you're more or less price sensitive at different times of the day.
38:27They play different music.
38:28It's more kind of sedate supermarket music during the afternoon but by half an hour before the supermarket closed.
38:32They speed up the music in order to make you shop faster.
38:36And also for the people who go, beep, beep, beep quicker because the music develops a beat.
38:41So they actually, yeah, which is good.
38:42They start playing the Crimson Tide music.
38:45People shot like their lives depend on it.
38:48It seems we're all victim to this.
38:50I mean, I have to confess, I like to think of myself as an independently minded person.
38:54But I've gone into these shops wanting four things and come out with 20 and which of us hasn't.
38:59But they make them look nice.
39:01But then you go home and enjoy them.
39:02Oh, that's true.
39:03You go home and go, this is just tar.
39:06Why the hell did they make me buy them?
39:08It is still a packet of biscuits.
39:09You go home and go, thank God I bought that nice packet of biscuits.
39:12I can have that now.
39:12Yes, there is an element of that.
39:14Yes, I mean, we give out them as if they're being foist upon us.
39:17And the guy in the mirror, ha, ha, ha, ha.
39:19They have bought our tar biscuits again.
39:21Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
39:23Take all good things off the shelves.
39:25Only tar from here on.
39:28Anyway, that's probably enough about that.
39:30Shops have a number of tricks up their sleeves in order to trick us into buying things we don't need.
39:34When you've fallen for them, you're the victim of a gruen transfer.
39:37And now it's time for five items or fewer of general ignorance.
39:42Fingers on buzzers.
39:43What are trees made of?
39:45Wood.
39:46Is the right answer.
39:47Yes, well done.
39:49Ah, well done.
39:52You see?
39:53Um, what is wood made of?
39:56Um, carbon.
39:59Yes.
40:00And where does the carbon come from?
40:01The earth.
40:03The earth?
40:04Yeah.
40:04Yay!
40:09No, you'd think most of what makes a tree a tree was drawn up from the soil.
40:12It's actually the vast majority of everything that makes a tree a tree comes from the air, yeah.
40:19Photosynthesis, which breaks down the air and leaves the carbon.
40:23And that's the carbon that makes a tree, so it is made of carbon.
40:26It's quite surprising, isn't it?
40:28Yeah.
40:28Good.
40:28What makes Australian spiders so dangerous?
40:32It's their cunning and their organisation, Stephen.
40:35LAUGHTER
40:35And the fact they're willing to put the man hours in.
40:38They will stalk you for weeks.
40:40They'll look for patterns in your behaviour.
40:42And they'll strike when you least expect it.
40:45Just as you're hovering over a poorly bee holding a shoe high, that's when they'll come and bite you in
40:51the bum.
40:52You mean the spider is working with the bee?
40:54Yes.
40:55The bee is saying, there's not much longer left for me, but you can have a bit of fun here.
40:59Come on.
40:59Come in and bite him.
41:00So is it that they sort of hide and lose?
41:04Well, not deliberately, but the only real danger they seem to threat these days, since 1981, when anti-venoms were
41:11introduced all around Australia,
41:13there are two very poisonous types.
41:14There's the red back and the funnel web.
41:17The red back is very, very common.
41:18People's reaction to it.
41:19The way that people...
41:20Yeah, that no one has died from a spider bite since 1981.
41:23Yeah.
41:23No one in Australia.
41:25But people have been in accidents, which have been fatal, some of them, and certainly have caused enormous damage,
41:31from spiders that have dropped out of sun visors in cars and fall on the people and they go,
41:36like that, and then crashed.
41:38So that's their danger now, oddly enough, not their venom.
41:41And so it's time for our guests to reach what they have sown.
41:44I'm going to have a look at the old scoreboard.
41:47Oh, my good night.
41:49It's a tie for first place, ladies and gentlemen.
41:51It hasn't happened for a very long time.
41:53Not since all round here was Greenfields.
41:57And in first place, it's the two Ds, with three points each, Dara and David!
42:04Congratulations.
42:07In a very, in a very cravable third place, smelling of roses still, at minus six is Rob Brydon.
42:18That's going down to the bottom of the garden to eat worms, with minus eight is Alan Davis.
42:25Oh, that's it from Rob, Dara, David, Alan and me.
42:34And I leave you with this quotation from Eric Morecambe.
42:36My neighbour asked if he could use my lawnmower.
42:39And I told him, of course he could, so long as he didn't take it out of my garden.
42:44Thank you and good night.
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