- 2 days ago
First broadcast 1st October 2010.
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Danny Baker
Sean Lock
David Mitchell
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Danny Baker
Sean Lock
David Mitchell
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:01Hello there, hello there, hello there, hello!
00:04And welcome to QI, where tonight we'll be looking at all manner of hoaxes, hokum, hucksters and hogwash.
00:11And to help, or more likely hinder us, a veritable horde of hornswogglers.
00:16With ten top tips to increase your manhood, it's Sean Locke!
00:23And joining him, the esteemed president of the Bank of Nigeria, Danny Baker!
00:34By his side, Professor of Hoaxology at the University of the Internet, David Mitchell!
00:43And, believe it or not, Alan Davis!
00:52Now, in keeping with our theme tonight, one of our buzzers is a hoax.
00:57So, see if you can tell me which one of these buzzing calls is not the mating call of a
01:03deer.
01:04Sean goes...
01:08Danny goes...
01:10David goes...
01:16Hello!
01:17Hello!
01:19And Alan goes...
01:20Hello, dear!
01:25And now, starting as we need to go on, we've actually hidden...
01:30Is it Alan's?
01:31Yes!
01:31I thought it was Danny's, I was going to say Danny's right up to the...
01:35Right at that last moment.
01:36Now, listen, you've got hoax cards here, little jokers to play.
01:39Because, in keeping with the theme, there will be one question which is a hoax.
01:44And, you play your hoax card and you get extra points.
01:47If you play it and it isn't a hoax, you lose points.
01:51But, don't have your hoax cards unspent at the end of the game.
01:56What happens?
01:57Well, I'm not going to tell you.
01:59Can you play it more than once?
02:01Erm, you could possibly know.
02:06I don't think this format point's been worked out in enough detail.
02:09No.
02:10You should have decided whether you can play them more than once.
02:13No, you can't.
02:13No, you can't.
02:13I think you're being generous and then I realised it was foolish.
02:16For the pilot of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, did somebody go,
02:18and if we get one wrong, that's okay?
02:20No, that's okay.
02:22Oh, hang on!
02:25How many lives do we get?
02:27Can you just do that or do you have to say something?
02:29You can say, I think that's a hoax, yeah.
02:31Let's say something.
02:32You can't just go, I did that, you didn't see it.
02:35No.
02:35You have to make it manifest.
02:38Oh God, I had no idea this whole thing would be so complicated.
02:41I don't know about you, but I'm going to do it on the first question,
02:45then none of us can lose out.
02:46If we all do it on the first question.
02:47We all do it on that.
02:48We all lose points.
02:49And then it's just done.
02:50Yeah.
02:53We don't have to worry about it.
02:54Spend the rest of the show going, erm, die.
02:57Use my hoax card.
02:59What do you reckon, guys?
03:00You in for that?
03:00We're all going to say yes, but we're all going to not really do it.
03:03Yeah, yes.
03:05It's game theory writ large.
03:06I might use it, but when I'm using it, it might be a hoax.
03:09Yeah.
03:10Oh, no.
03:13You can see I've made a terrible rod for my own back here.
03:16Well, erm, anyway, let's see what happens.
03:18Erm, there's some characters behind me, shifty looking characters.
03:21What were they up to last night?
03:25This isn't a hoax.
03:27No.
03:28They were all definitely up to something last night.
03:30Thank God we didn't do that.
03:32Yeah.
03:34Were they cottaging?
03:34They were cottaging.
03:37Shut them lock.
03:38They were all out cottaging.
03:39It was a really tough night's cottaging.
03:41I think I'd win it a pint after that.
03:44They were brewing.
03:46They were up all night making a picnic table.
03:50Before you get too insulting, they're in the studio tonight.
03:53I just thought that was rewarding.
03:55They were winning the Mr. Handsome competition.
03:58That's more unlikely.
03:59Were they, erm, harming horses?
04:02You know, when they picked harm horses, like slash horses.
04:04No.
04:05But it was a night-time covert activity, like slashing horses.
04:09Right, goats.
04:10So slashing goats.
04:10No, let's...
04:11Let's assume we wouldn't invite into the studio people who made animals.
04:16Were they pretending to be gas men and thereby stealing the property of aged people?
04:24No.
04:24Let me...
04:25If I told you that this was in Wiltshire, would that help?
04:28Cathedral stealing.
04:31Grave robbing?
04:32Grave robbing's always a...
04:33What?
04:34They drew something rude.
04:35In the summer.
04:36On Stonehenge.
04:36They drew something rude on Stonehenge.
04:38Crop circles.
04:39Oh, Alan, well done.
04:40Crop circles.
04:41Absolutely right.
04:45There they are.
04:47The equipment needed for crop circling, a plank with rope, but what was the crop circle?
04:52We commissioned them.
04:53Oh.
04:53A QI symbol.
04:54A QI crop circle.
04:56And they did it for us.
04:57And it's rather impressive.
04:58Because QI is not my aliens.
05:00Would you like to see...
05:01Would you like to see it?
05:02I certainly would.
05:03Well, let's have it.
05:03We actually went to the expense of having a travelling aerial shot.
05:07Oh.
05:07Oh.
05:10What do you think of that?
05:12Yeah.
05:12Folks.
05:15We did.
05:16We did.
05:17That's real.
05:17That's like the Led Zeppelin cover.
05:19Oh, you failed.
05:20I'm afraid it was me.
05:21The extraordinary thing is almost within half an hour of it being completed and the dawn rising,
05:27we were contacted by people.
05:28Someone wanted to know, he said, is it real or is it man-made?
05:36I asked that about sandwiches all the time.
05:41But it's a rather marvellous example of a breed of phenomenon that has been going since when?
05:47It's the farmer.
05:48It's the 80s.
05:49It's the farmer here tonight.
05:50We have recompensed the farmer.
05:51It doesn't actually do much damage.
05:53Oh, but how many mice were frightened in the making?
05:55We can't tell how many mice were frightened.
05:57I'll bet this is older than we suspect.
05:59It's actually very recent.
06:00Is it?
06:00It is really, yeah.
06:0280s?
06:03Well, 70s it began and it got more and more refined.
06:07There was a man called...
06:07So like Pizza Express.
06:08There were a couple called...
06:09Yeah.
06:10There was a fellow called Doug Bower and Dave Chorley and they admitted that they'd been responsible
06:16for almost all the crop circles.
06:17They used to be on the news every summer.
06:19There'd be aerial shots and there were people who called themselves seriologists who genuinely
06:23believed that these were the work of people from outer space.
06:27Or from magnetic forces from ley lines or all kinds of nonsense.
06:30They'd do things like they'd do a crop circle and then they'd leave a couple of scorch marks
06:34or something.
06:34Yes.
06:35The engine blasts it off.
06:38We've got...
06:39Where are our three here?
06:40Put your hand.
06:41Is that John?
06:42John Lundberg.
06:43There you are.
06:43There's John.
06:44Can you tell me how you did yours without giving away too many trade secrets?
06:47What's the most technological item you need?
06:50We need something called a stalk stomper which is a plank of wood and a loop of rope that
06:54you put under your foot to flatten the crop.
06:56And to actually mark out the design you use a surveyor's tape.
06:59So it's very, very kind of simple techniques and very simple tools.
07:03What about your spaceship?
07:04What spaceship do you use?
07:06I'm saving up for one but the fee I've got for this, it's going to take a while.
07:09It's going to take a while.
07:12So, how many do you do a year in the season?
07:15We don't say how many we make but we've made hundreds over the years that we've been doing it.
07:19And do people, are there still those who believe or refuse to believe that it's all hoaxes like you?
07:24Absolutely, well they've been ringing your production office, haven't they?
07:26Yeah, that's right.
07:27Are there people who've ever thought that graffiti on like train lines was done by aliens?
07:32That's logical, yeah.
07:33Well, the lines in the Nazga desert which are...
07:37Very good, very good point, the Nazga lines.
07:39The Nazga lines which they say can only be seen from space which is not true.
07:42There they go.
07:42No, I...
07:44Yeah, we can save them here.
07:45The great...
07:47The great fraud von Daniken who wrote Chariots of the Gods and all those books in the early 70s.
07:52He said there were runways for ancient spacecraft is what they said.
07:55And as Carl Sagan said, hang on, these people come millions of light years across the universe and they need
08:01runways?
08:02What are they in B-52s?
08:03What are they in runways for?
08:05I've been there.
08:06What's extraordinary about their place is one of the driest places on the planet in southern Peru, just above the
08:12Atacama desert.
08:13And because of this man Daniken, people came from far and wide on motorbikes and they churned the place up.
08:19Some of these are only about 10 centimetres deep, the lines, and they've stayed like that simply because it hasn't
08:23rained.
08:24Right.
08:25For decades and centuries in some parts of that part of South America.
08:28And so every line that you can see around there is some hippie who's sort of gone around.
08:33It's now, you know, banned from going there.
08:34They're rather splendid.
08:36Maybe if it's just they've stayed, they're not very deep, but they've stayed just because it doesn't rain.
08:40Maybe the people who did them didn't really want them to stay that long.
08:43They were just pissing around and would be rather embarrassed.
08:46Yes.
08:46The same way as, you know, if you're on the beach at night, a bit pissed, you write the word
08:50dick.
08:51You went back 2,000 years later.
08:55You've been mortified.
08:56You were.
08:56People were sort of worshipping it.
09:02That's absolutely right.
09:04John Lundberg, thank you very much indeed.
09:08There you are.
09:10I think the states are quite popular too, not as popular as here, but the second biggest
09:15crop in the states is marijuana after corn.
09:17Really?
09:18Yeah, in America.
09:18In certain states in America, there are huge areas of it.
09:22It's very difficult to know what to do with it.
09:23How to get rid of it.
09:24Sorry?
09:24The cauliflower is in decline.
09:26It is.
09:27I love cauliflower.
09:28I love cauliflower.
09:29If you wanted to please me, Adam, one day, make me a cauliflower cheese and I'd be a happy
09:32person.
09:33Very well.
09:35It's gone down from 33,000 acres to 28,000 acres in Britain.
09:40Britain is very good.
09:42Has there been a decline in demand for cauliflower?
09:45Yeah.
09:46People are stupid, aren't they?
09:47They are stupid.
09:48It's a lovely vegetable.
09:49I don't know how to cook it, you see.
09:51They just think it doesn't taste anything because they boil it and then it doesn't taste
09:54Also, if you break off a little bit of cauliflower and look at it.
09:57A florid.
09:57It looks a florid.
09:58It looks like a tiny albino tree.
10:00It does.
10:01I so agree.
10:03And if you're on a low-carb diet, you can mash it and it's a very good substitute for mash.
10:08I like to do it.
10:09I cook.
10:09I like to do it.
10:10I like to do it in a bin with loads of other rubbish.
10:14And it all piles up round there and then you put an e-bet out and the magical men take
10:19it away in a van.
10:20Because I've never opened the fridge and gone, oh, brilliant, there's a cauliflower in there.
10:24I've always gone, oh, Christ, there's a cauliflower in there.
10:28We're going to have to cook it.
10:30There's always the bin.
10:31That's how I react to a rat.
10:33Yeah.
10:33Oh, Christ.
10:34We're going to have to cook it.
10:36I don't like it, but it's a pain.
10:38Right.
10:39It's a pain in the neck, isn't it?
10:39I've never seen how it froze.
10:41It is.
10:42Is it the centre of a plant or something?
10:43You want to cook it?
10:45You are an urban boy.
10:46Can we have one conversation rather than three?
10:50You have to cook it twice.
10:52You have to cook it twice, though.
10:53You have to cook it twice.
10:55You have to cook it, boil it, and then you put it in another dish and cook it again with
10:59the sauce.
11:00It's a nightmare.
11:02It's such a demanding vegetable.
11:05I just want so much.
11:07It's all about time.
11:08I want to spend time with you before you eat it.
11:11Well, thank you, Nigella.
11:15Anyway, yes, far from being proof of a more intelligent life form, crop circles can be
11:19made using a plank of wood, some rope, a hat sometimes, a couple of coat hangers, that
11:23kind of thing, but conversely, would you believe that they put a man on the moon?
11:28Who?
11:29Who'd these guys?
11:30Oh, NASA.
11:31Yes, yeah, I think they put a man on the moon.
11:33You believe that?
11:33Yeah, I believe it.
11:34Yes, you believe it.
11:35Good, that's all.
11:36That's sort of all at the end of the question, really, but you probably know that quite a lot
11:39of people don't believe it.
11:40Ah, no.
11:41Yeah, but, well, I sort of believe one thing, which is I kind of believe that they might
11:48have done some mocked-up fake photographs.
11:51Really?
11:52Why?
11:52Because I was, someone convinced me of it.
11:55Yeah.
11:57By talking about the angle of light and the shadows on the moon and all that, but then
12:01I did an advert with Patrick Moore, and I said, so Patrick, did they land on the moon?
12:04And he looked so annoyed with me.
12:06Yeah.
12:07He actually explained to me how he had helped map the moon for NASA, and he'd spent years
12:11on the project, and the landing site was partly his idea, and if I ever spoke to him
12:15again, he was going to be sick in my eyes.
12:21They are rather, if you'd spoke to Buzz Aldrin, he might have punched you.
12:25Buzz Aldrin punched someone.
12:27Did he?
12:27Because he just got so tired of these conspiracy arses.
12:30I think, actually, I think it was a television documentary about...
12:34Well, there have been several, of course.
12:36You know, look at this photo.
12:37This couldn't possibly have been taken on the moon.
12:39This is obviously taken in a studio.
12:41They're getting me started now, because one gets very sort of strange about this, but there
12:44are a lot of conspiracies.
12:456% of Americans believe that man didn't land on the moon, but 25% of Britons believe
12:51that they didn't.
12:52So it's a quarter of our nation are not convinced, apparently.
12:55That's so depressing.
12:56Isn't it the flag?
12:57It's one of its...
12:58One of the things I read...
12:59The flag is another thing, yes.
13:01The flag, and you think...
13:02Yeah, but there it is.
13:02Well, obviously, they've starched the flag, because they wanted to get a good photograph
13:05of it.
13:05They've stiffened the flag.
13:06No, they haven't stiffened it.
13:07That's the point.
13:08The fact, it's like it's rumpled.
13:09There's no breath of wind out there, obviously, because you're in space, which is, as it
13:13were a vacuum.
13:14But what there is, is movement.
13:15If you impart movement to something, it doesn't stop moving for a long time, because there's
13:18nothing to...
13:19There's no resistance against it.
13:20Yeah.
13:21So they unpacked it, unfurled it, put it down, and it moved back and forth.
13:24People said, ah, breeze.
13:25Haha.
13:26As if, A, there would be stupid enough to fake it, and allow the tape that had the breeze
13:31in it to go out.
13:33But also, if you went to the moon, the least you'd expect is a flag moved a bit strangely.
13:37I mean, you expect him to meet the soup dragon, and you think, okay, he's not there.
13:42The flag moves a bit strangely.
13:44I can go with that.
13:45Yeah.
13:46Why isn't one of them holding up a camera?
13:48Because you can see him reflected, the one taking the pictures reflected in the visor
13:52of the one, and he's not holding up a camera like that, you see.
13:55But that's because they didn't, in the visors, put a camera up in front of their visor.
14:00They were mounted.
14:01You couldn't really actually imagine them getting a camera out, you know, clip.
14:06Like that, whining it up.
14:08I want to say, though, in defense of the people who suspect that there may be something
14:12of foot, the track record of the American government in terms of deceiving its population
14:17Yes.
14:18Isn't great.
14:19But if you were a little bit dubious, I wouldn't blame you.
14:22Alan, 400,000 people were employed on this thing, plus the 12 astronauts.
14:27And it may be that the Americans have a bad record on doing covert things, but they have
14:30an even worse record on getting found out.
14:32The president can't keep a secret of where his penis is.
14:35Do you seriously think that they would somehow, you know, look at Clinton there?
14:39Yeah.
14:39You know, if they can't even keep a secret of banging an intern in the White House...
14:45Well, no.
14:45Of course, in the old days, she would have just disappeared.
14:48Yeah.
14:50But she didn't.
14:51You know, and we know what Kennedy got up to.
14:52The fact is...
14:53I do, I'll tell you one thing.
14:54I think Nasser killed Michael Jackson.
14:56That's a fact.
14:57Right.
14:58I do.
14:59I believe they killed him, because he died last summer, yeah?
15:02He died in about July last year.
15:04He died the same week that was the anniversary of the initial moon landing of the first
15:10moonwalk.
15:11Oh.
15:12Right?
15:12They resent the fact that any time anyone puts moonwalk into Google or anything, it
15:17comes up with him sliding backwards with a hat on.
15:20And not the billions they spent going up to do a moonwalk.
15:24They hated that, and they killed him.
15:28And I believe that's a fact.
15:30I don't think Nasser...
15:30They will have gone around the world now.
15:31I don't think Nasser would have get organized to kill him, but I think it might have been Buzz.
15:35Yeah.
15:36Because he's clearly a very angry man.
15:39He's gone to the moon.
15:41It was pointless.
15:42People don't believe he went there.
15:44It was pointless.
15:46So of course he's going to kill someone.
15:50I'd like to go to the moon.
15:51You would like?
15:52Oh, yeah.
15:52I'd like to do that.
15:54I mean, two of the other things, just in case people are saying, ah, but you haven't mentioned
15:57the clincher.
15:58One was the idea that below the lunar module that landed, there was no crater or sense of disturbed dust.
16:06The fact is that the engine's cut off and it hovered down and it very, very quickly landed.
16:11And unlike in science fiction films, it doesn't send out spears of flame as it descends.
16:16That just didn't happen.
16:18Because it was designed by, you know, human brains and geniuses and not a lot of people
16:22were sitting tapping away at the internet who got to go up and work in the morning.
16:25Who do you trust here?
16:26Yes.
16:26We are in trouble as a species if people would refuse to believe in things that they couldn't
16:30actually do themselves.
16:33That's so true.
16:34That's so true.
16:35And the other one was the footprints.
16:36They said, oh, look, there's too much moisture because look how clear they are.
16:40Only a sort of caked mud could do that.
16:41But actually, you could do that with flour.
16:43The fact is it's just very fine ground and it makes, and there's, of course, it's a vacuum
16:46again.
16:47It coheres.
16:48And the other thing with the mirrors that Apollo 12 astronauts put on the moon, which are now
16:53used for bouncing lasers off for detecting, for example, how far the moon is getting away
16:58from us and you can make incredibly accurate measurements because of mirrors on the surface
17:04of the moon.
17:05And perhaps to me the clinching one is that America's enemy at the time in the space race
17:10was the Soviet Union.
17:11And not once did they make a suggestion that they thought America hadn't done it.
17:14They never said, no, we know this was hoax.
17:16Yeah.
17:17The fact is for every ill-conceived argument that the moon landings were a hoax, there's
17:21a perfectly logical explanation to put our minds at rest.
17:24Now, for something a little closer to home, how would you make your house the most famous
17:28house in Britain?
17:30Ah.
17:30Ah.
17:31That's easy.
17:32Yep.
17:32You murder lots and lots of people, dismember them, and bury them in the garden.
17:39You marry the queen.
17:43You marry the queen.
17:45And you say, you're not living there, you know, it's no love, you're not living those
17:49palaces anymore.
17:50You're living in three Ironside Crescent Carlisle.
17:52Yes.
17:52Yeah.
17:53Okay.
17:54Those would work.
17:55Yep.
17:55Those would work.
17:56Some sort of spectacular suicide?
18:00I suppose, actually, the murdering people would work better.
18:03Murdering is probably the best.
18:04Which I think is sad.
18:05But this is a bet.
18:06Is it like in the film Up?
18:07You just tie loads of balloons and your house goes...
18:09Oh, that would be sweet.
18:10Yeah.
18:10This was a bet that took place in 1810 between Samuel Beasley and Theodore Hook, that Hook
18:17couldn't make any house.
18:18He chose the most famous residence in London in one week.
18:22He had a week in which to do it.
18:24But in fact, he sort of, I mean, he prepared over the week, but it all happened in one day.
18:29I've heard of this.
18:29Yeah?
18:30He started ordering goods, all kinds of different goods from all kinds of...
18:344,000 different tradesmen and services in all the commercial directories all over London.
18:39He started ordering chimney sweeps.
18:41Yeah.
18:42First thing in the morning, there were 12 chimney sweeps, all arriving like that.
18:45And then more and more and more and more and more arrived.
18:48I mean, it became absolutely gigantic.
18:5012 cold carts.
18:51There were cake makers, doctors, apothecaries, surgeons, lawyers, priests for dead bodies.
18:55We've all done this, haven't we?
18:56Undergraduates, hat makers, haberdashers, bootmakers, fishmongers, butchers, boys.
19:00A dozen pianos arrived.
19:02And before long, the government of the Bank of England had turned up to see what the fuss was about.
19:06It was in Bernard Street, just north of Oxford Street.
19:10And there it is.
19:11Ah.
19:11That sign doesn't fit that bit of wall at all.
19:13It doesn't really.
19:15It doesn't.
19:16I suppose if they put it the way it would, you'd have to read it in portrait rather than landscape.
19:20You just needed to go back to the drawing board with that one.
19:22I think you're right.
19:24Or just chill out about the whole thing.
19:27A bit of folded it round, mate.
19:31Is it a bit like, so the equivalent is like going on the internet and ordering the lot?
19:35Yes, exactly.
19:36All of everything.
19:36Exactly, basically.
19:37And the poor woman, whose name was Mrs. Tottenham, was just besieged.
19:41I mean, it wasn't his house.
19:42He didn't live there.
19:43No.
19:44He chose it.
19:45No, no.
19:46He just chose this house.
19:47That was the point of the bet.
19:48I could make that house, 54 Berners Street, the most famous house in London.
19:52They used to have great bets, didn't they, in the 19th century.
19:55People don't make bets like that anymore.
19:56I mean, in the Regency period when this happened, in the early 19th century, and particularly
20:00in the clubs, Brooks' and White's Club in St. James', it was a staggering bet.
20:04Three thousand pound bet between Lord Alvaney and a friend of his, on which raindrop would
20:09get to the bottom of the year.
20:10Yeah.
20:11Three thousand pounds in those days was, I mean, it's almost impossible to imagine.
20:13You could have a servant for ten pounds a year.
20:16Yeah.
20:16You know, so, I mean, three thousand pounds is an estate.
20:19This is how...
20:20A country house with thousands of acres.
20:21It's just...
20:22This is how bored people were before television.
20:24Basically.
20:26Theodore Hook betted a man called Beasley, that he could make 54 Berners Street the most
20:30famous house in London.
20:32What conclusion did the great biologist, Stephen Jay Gould, draw from a lifetime study
20:38of fish?
20:38Oh.
20:40Yeah.
20:40They haven't got any legs.
20:45Is that...
20:46Is that his lifetime study?
20:48No.
20:49It wasn't his favorite study of a fish.
20:51After a while, they smell.
20:54He's a bit thick and he just stared at me, they haven't got any legs.
20:58Starfish, starfish don't have brains.
21:00It's the kind of Louis Walsh of the aquatic world.
21:04They really don't have brains, a starfish.
21:06And they're not really fish, are they, starfish, to be honest.
21:09Well, there weren't fishes in there, which kind of qualifies them, I think.
21:12I know.
21:12But is a starfish a fish?
21:13Is a jellyfish a fish?
21:15Well, yeah, but...
21:15Is a cattlefish a fish?
21:16Is a horse a horse?
21:17A crayfish is a lobster.
21:19There's a division, isn't there, in the world, whether it should be down to, sort of, experts
21:24in biology, whether things are fish or whether it should be down to menus.
21:27Yes.
21:29Certainly, for example, a crayfish comes under fish in a menu.
21:32He looks like he's reading the sell-by date on that.
21:34He does, doesn't he?
21:36Well, Stephen J. Gould was very...
21:37Was it very great?
21:38He's dead now.
21:38He's dead now.
21:39He won a Nobel Prize.
21:40He was a paleontologist and an extraordinary biologist.
21:42And he came to a conclusion, which is...
21:44They can feel no love.
21:46No, that they...
21:47There is no such thing as a fish.
21:50A fish has no biological meaning.
21:53There is just...
21:54Oh, that's so exciting.
21:55I'm absolutely right.
21:56Go with menus.
21:57On a menu, it does.
21:58In a menu, a fish is not the same as shellfish or seafood, is it?
22:01It often comes in the same bit and separate from pudding.
22:04Things that live in the sea.
22:06You know that a fish and a pudding are different.
22:08How can something not be something?
22:10Something can't be not be not something, can it?
22:14If you've created a something, then something has to be that something,
22:18otherwise you haven't created a something.
22:19So, it has to be a fish, if there is the idea of a fish in the first place.
22:24I swear there's a philosophy.
22:25No.
22:26Slow down.
22:26There's some sort of ontological argument going there.
22:29Well, of course, to us, we use the word fish.
22:31But, biologically speaking, a salmon is more related to, say, a camel, than it is to a hagfish.
22:39There are lots of things that fly, like a bumblebee flies, a vulture flies, and there are flying lizards.
22:46They're not all birds.
22:47No.
22:48But we call things that swim in the sea fish, and actually, biologically, evolutionarily, they have absolutely nothing to do
22:55with each other at all.
22:56So his life's work.
22:57They're more closely related to us than to each other.
22:59A friend of mine claims to be allergic to all seafood and fish.
23:04Right.
23:05Is that possible?
23:06Fresh water as well as seawater.
23:07Yes, so everything from a prawn via plankton to a trout is a no-go area, he says, and I
23:14think he's just fussy.
23:15Yeah.
23:16Yeah.
23:18Some people say, oh no, I'm terribly allergic to shellfish, and then they order scallops, because they don't know it's
23:23shellfish.
23:24And they eat it, and they're fine.
23:26Yeah.
23:27Nobody ever says they're allergic to starters, do they?
23:33What do elasma branches taste like?
23:36It's basically sharks and things like that are elasma branches, and rays.
23:39Manta rays and things like that are elasma branches.
23:41Rays can be very tasty.
23:43Oh, yeah.
23:43Skates.
23:44Skates, lovely.
23:45All skate wing with black butter and capers.
23:47Yeah.
23:48Stop it at once.
23:51After a lifetime study of fish, biologist Stephen Jay Gould concluded that there's no such thing as a fish.
23:56And while we're at it, and under the sea, how many fish are there in this photograph?
24:01Oh.
24:02Well, it's going to be a trick question, by the way.
24:04You sit that up.
24:05Yeah.
24:08Well, given that there's no such thing as fish.
24:10Yeah.
24:12Oh.
24:15Oh.
24:17Oh.
24:18Oh.
24:19Oh.
24:20That's so unfair.
24:21Stephen Gould, where are you when I'm meeting you?
24:25Deeply unfair.
24:26Well, you see that shell on the right?
24:28Yes.
24:29Along the top of it is a long, fish-like thing with an eye.
24:32That's actually part of the shell.
24:35This muscle actually makes a thing that looks like a fish, so that another fish comes along,
24:41and its own parasitic larvae sort of explode into the fish and live in its gills,
24:46and are sent away and dispersed and grow.
24:48So we've got some film of it.
24:49This is it.
24:50The two eyes of this thing.
24:51That looks like a fish.
24:52Whoop.
24:53Oh.
24:53And this puff of larvae go off.
24:55To a fish, that looks like it might be a tasty morsel, but it's just bits of flesh
24:59that have grown up on the top of the-
25:01It's very clever, isn't it?
25:02That was just one fish.
25:03The other example was of animal mimicry deployed by the broken raised muscle.
25:08And so from one skilled hoaxer to another, what did Nostradamus get right?
25:13The hat.
25:14The hat.
25:14You got the hat right.
25:15The hat looks cool.
25:18Big mistake.
25:19The green coat with the brown hat.
25:21It's crazy.
25:22The hat looks cool.
25:23Who is he?
25:24You've not heard of Nostradamus?
25:25I've heard of him, but I've just heard of him.
25:27I've no idea where he lived.
25:28His name was Michel de Nostredame.
25:31He lived from 1503 to 1566.
25:33He was a Provencal apothecary.
25:36And he did many things, but including writing these hundreds of quatrains, these four-line verses.
25:42Were these deliberately obtusers?
25:44Yes.
25:44I'm aware of the headlines on it, but why were they so obscure?
25:48Well, he was a mystic, and I suppose he, I mean, maybe he, who knows, he got drugged up
25:51and he just wrote down a four-line verse of some, whatever he saw.
25:54He was a chemist, wasn't he?
25:55He was a chemist.
25:55Well, he was an apothecary, a chemist, exactly.
25:56So he could have had access to all kinds of crazy hoochs.
25:59Pharmacists, exactly.
25:59Yeah, so he published a book of essentially gibberish.
26:02Yes.
26:03A lot of idiots.
26:04Because even the people now who've sort of said,
26:07oh, that predicts Hitler or that predicts 9-11, even people would think,
26:12well, actually, if you bought that in 1530, that's not good value for money
26:16because all the things it's predicting have happened for ages.
26:19Well, hundreds of years.
26:20And so what it is then is nonsense.
26:22In fact, it's only ever use, any use to predict something just after the thing's happened.
26:27Yes, because then people go, wow, yeah.
26:29But one thing he did do that is genuinely, and this was the question,
26:32is he did a fantastic recipe for cherry jam.
26:36Because he read other books, and one of the books he read about was about jams.
26:40And his cherry jam recipe, we are assured today, is still as good as it ever was.
26:45Really?
26:45So that is a thing Nostradamus did that is provably, demonstrably, and repeatably true.
26:50He also made aphrodisiac jams, made of sparrows, brains, and all that sort of thing.
26:54But generally speaking, his cherry jam is something he got right.
26:59I might make some jam.
27:00Yeah.
27:01Why not?
27:02What you need?
27:03Fruit.
27:04Fruit, sugar.
27:04And sugar.
27:05Pectin.
27:06No, I'm not going to make nice jam.
27:07Oh, I see. Fair enough.
27:09What sort of jam are you going to make?
27:10Horrible jam.
27:11Oh.
27:12There could be a market in that.
27:13Cinnamon sticks.
27:13Sean's horrible jam.
27:14Sean's horrible jam.
27:15You don't know what I put in this stuff.
27:18It's up to you.
27:19It's lottery jam, I call it.
27:21Bingo.
27:22Sean's bingo jam.
27:25One jar in every hundred is amazing.
27:29The rest of the time, it's instant vomit as soon as you open it.
27:33Anyway, yes, when Nostradamus wasn't predicting stuff, he was very busy combining a rather excellent collection of jam recipes.
27:40Who's the most famous person to have been beaten at chess by a machine?
27:44What?
27:45What now?
27:45Do you think that's a massive hoax?
27:48Yeah.
27:48Hoax.
27:49Oh!
27:51You're wrong.
27:51Oh.
27:53Oh.
27:54Oh.
27:55It was entirely true.
27:58David's got yours left.
27:59You've...
27:59No, I did mine now.
28:01Yeah.
28:01Oh, well.
28:02Anyway.
28:03It was too late.
28:04The question had finished.
28:05No.
28:06It was not too late.
28:07You stopped me.
28:08No.
28:09So, who is the most famous person who's been beaten by a machine at chess?
28:13You get double points if you can mention the name of the machine.
28:16Me.
28:16Me.
28:17Are you the most famous person?
28:18Yeah, I got beaten by a hoover.
28:21Is that right?
28:22Yes.
28:23I just left it on and it moved the pieces around and it still beat me.
28:27That's how bad I am at chess.
28:31The key thing is the question is not most famous chess grandmaster.
28:34So, it could be Marilyn Monroe.
28:37Is that a famous chess player then?
28:39No.
28:39That's very well worked out.
28:41I mean, there is...
28:42The Queen...
28:42Garry Kasparov, the great grandmaster.
28:45Deep Blue.
28:46Deep Blue.
28:46Yeah, but that wasn't...
28:48The Queen is the most famous person in the world probably.
28:50Did she lose to a ZX-80?
28:52This was someone who was more famous than the Queen in his day and was bigger than a Queen, as
28:56it were.
28:57More...
28:58Had a bit higher rank than Queen.
28:59Jesus.
29:00No.
29:03Jesus isn't really a rank.
29:05It is.
29:06I would say Jesus.
29:07It's a rank.
29:08I am Jesus.
29:09I rank you.
29:10It's more famous than the Queen, though.
29:11Yes.
29:12I think...
29:13You can't handle the truth.
29:16Jesus plays chess sounds like an indie band already.
29:19It will be.
29:20It will be.
29:21Napoleon.
29:21Napoleon is the right answer.
29:23Do you know what the machine might have been?
29:25It was a famous machine in its day.
29:26Would it be some sort of kind of clever wind-up automaton?
29:30It was an automaton, but it was unbelievably clever.
29:33It was called the Mechanical Turk.
29:36And the Turk itself was made of machinery.
29:39And you would open the doors rather like a magician showing a trick to show that it was empty.
29:43Though, in fact, there would be a man inside who was a chess master.
29:46He would manipulate the machinery such as to make the Turk actually pick up and move the pieces.
29:51So it was a genuinely astonishing piece of machinery that unfortunately burned in a fire in 1854.
29:58But Napoleon, who rather fancied himself at chess.
30:00And, of course, being emperor, I dare say nobody ever rather dared beat him.
30:04So he was extremely annoyed to be beaten in 19 moves by this machine.
30:08Right.
30:09So, yeah.
30:10And many others were beaten, you might like to know.
30:12Benjamin Franklin, who was in Paris at the time as ambassador to the newly formed United States.
30:18You know, he lost as well.
30:19What was the deal with it?
30:20They were unaware that there was a grandmaster inside.
30:22Yeah.
30:22Oh, okay.
30:23They generally thought it was a machine.
30:24Charles Babbage also played it and he was beaten by it.
30:27And he's the father of computing to many people that invented the difference engine.
30:31Maybe.
30:31If he'd known there was a man inside, he would never have invented the difference engine.
30:35Exactly.
30:36But it was the sensation of the age.
30:38It was a really remarkable thing.
30:39And in about 1989, a magician rebuilt it and sort of redid it.
30:44It cost him $120,000 to build a version of it that worked as well.
30:49The name of the man who invented it was Wolfgang von Kempelen, who lived from 1734 to 1804.
30:55And he did it to impress the Empress Maria Theresa.
30:58And it sure did.
30:59It impressed everybody.
31:00It was rather wonderful.
31:02The mechanical Turk.
31:03A manned automaton that beat Napoleon at chess, amongst other people.
31:06Now, what's the best way to give a squad of American soldiers the screaming heebie-jeebies in a plane?
31:12Snakes.
31:13Snakes might do it.
31:15It's a pretty good way.
31:17The point is, suppose you want to research people panicking.
31:20Is this a cash prize?
31:23Is that it?
31:24It could be.
31:27When they were trying to test, you know, how can we test the evacuation procedure,
31:31so they'd get people in a plane and turn the lights off and do some fake smoke,
31:34but it's obviously not crashing.
31:35And so now everyone evacuates and it happens in a very orderly way.
31:38When this actually happens under, you know, situation of real jeopardy,
31:42it's a massive fight and loads of people die.
31:44And so in order to properly, you know, fake the conditions of jeopardy,
31:50Right.
31:50They offered, they say, okay, the first one that gets out gets $20,000,
31:53and then suddenly everyone's panicking and screaming and it is like there's a real...
31:57They don't work very well.
31:58Because they're soldiers, you don't have to do that.
31:59Because they're soldiers, they do...
32:01Basically, you can just do what you like with them.
32:03So what you do is you host them.
32:05You put them up in a plane and you get the pilot to shut off one of the engines and
32:10act very well,
32:12going into a hell of a panic, so that the soldiers genuinely think they're going to die.
32:17And then you give them forms to fill in because what you're interested in is how human beings respond under
32:23extreme stress.
32:24And the forms are basically, who do you want to leave your money to fill in these forms?
32:28You've got, you know, you've got like sort of 20 seconds.
32:30And you won't be surprised to learn that people are crap under this condition.
32:35And they just write drivel and they're no use at all.
32:38You know what, what was the point of doing this?
32:39I don't see anyone's learned anything from that experiment.
32:42It just seems to be unnecessarily cruel.
32:44Yeah, you learn how people respond under genuine stress.
32:47I know you may say...
32:48You know, they panic and they shit themselves.
32:49Yeah, but you, but, yeah...
32:50I think I'm going to play my joker about that.
32:54About that.
32:55Oh!
32:56No!
32:57I'm so sorry.
32:58Not James' Jam is about that.
33:00I don't know why experiments remind me of, you know, elbow licking, humans licking their elbow.
33:05Can a human lick their elbow?
33:06No, can't be done.
33:07Can't be done.
33:08Oh, hello.
33:10That's interesting.
33:11Okay.
33:12Why?
33:12Because you got some points a few times ago when you were here saying...
33:17On the very first show.
33:18It was actually the very first show.
33:19Did you know that it's impossible for a human being to lick their elbow?
33:23We have someone in the audience, would you like to put your hand up, who can lick their elbow?
33:28Oh.
33:28Put your hand up if you can lick your elbow.
33:31There you are.
33:32Yeah.
33:33Now, what's your name?
33:34Selena.
33:35Selena.
33:36Selena is now going to, I'm afraid, have some points deducted from you, Danny Baker, by licking her elbow.
33:42That's how the human being, not some kind of freak.
33:45As you can see, she's a charming human being.
33:47Can't do it.
33:47Let's have a look.
33:50That is a woman licking an elbow.
33:52There you go.
33:52You can see that, ladies and gentlemen.
33:56Brilliant.
33:56Thank you, everyone.
33:57Absolutely.
33:59Is there a, is there a reason for this for you?
34:02Can you do both together?
34:04Is there a reason for you?
34:05You've always been able to do it?
34:06Or just, you've dropped as a child or something?
34:09I think so.
34:09You can just do it.
34:10Yeah.
34:11I'd have it looked into.
34:13It's not right.
34:14It does mean that we will have to deduct some points from you.
34:17Oh, well, on the repeats, I look forward to that on day.
34:20Before it starts, the following program has an erroneous score.
34:25Don't you like to get these things right?
34:27In 1962, the U.S. Army devised a series of experiments that put the fear of God into soldiers to
34:32test their form-filling skills under stress.
34:34But enough hoaxes.
34:35It's time for some real general ignorance.
34:38So, fingers on buzzers, if you please.
34:40Are there hoaxes in the general ignorance?
34:43How can you tell?
34:43No.
34:43There's no, the joke is gone.
34:45No.
34:45We've missed the hoax, haven't we?
34:46We've missed the hoax.
34:47We've missed it.
34:47You will find out.
34:49How can you tell if someone is lying?
34:52Hello dear!
34:52Oh dear!
34:54Er, they get sweaty palms, the pulse starts racing, the heartbeat goes faster, the sphincter, if you clench up your
35:02sphincter, it works.
35:04Let's just suppose that you haven't got a finger on their sphincter and that you aren't holding their hand.
35:09Yeah.
35:10What they've said turns out not to be true.
35:12Yeah.
35:15Yay!
35:19Is that a good word?
35:20That's how you can tell they have lied.
35:22That doesn't work either.
35:23It might be that they thought it was true and then they were just idiots.
35:28Yeah.
35:28And it only tells you they have lied, it doesn't tell you they are lying.
35:31How about if they begin the sentence with, the Liberal Democrats have a lot in common with us.
35:37Very good.
35:38Oh dear!
35:40They work for the state, eh?
35:46Oh, is there a bitterness behind that?
35:49No, it's just an observation.
35:51Is it something physical?
35:53Yeah, it is, but tactile.
35:55Is it the thing, and I fear klaxons, but is it something about whether they, when they're just about to
36:02think about it, they look up left instead of up right, or up right instead of up left, or something
36:07like that.
36:07Something with their eyes.
36:08Yes!
36:09That you will like to fear klaxons.
36:11I was, yeah.
36:12Is it, I think I know what it is.
36:13Embrace the klaxons.
36:14It's just before they deliver the crucial detail, they go, yeah, well, it's about, ooooooooooooooo!
36:24Im
36:28About ten about ten, I reckon I mean Sean you are more right
36:33Than Davey by a long way, but what the point is it's very hard to see if someone's like there's
36:37nothing in the body language
36:38nothing in the face
36:39Nothing in the eyes. Nothing in the nose touch
36:42She's none all those things that people think to do with it. It's all to do with what they're saying,
36:46and how they're speaking
36:47Appears to be this wise easy and perder is easier to tell him
36:50Lying on the phone and yes exactly so they tested over 20,000 subjects showing them videos of people telling
36:56the truth and lying
36:57They found that they the people perform no better than chance not only that so-called experts polygraph operators
37:04Police investigators judges and psychiatrists returned the same result
37:08But if you do it just on sound alone people are much more accurate about 73 percent accuracy
37:15Listening to lies so the thing there is shut your eyes is that man gonna shoot him?
37:20It's a very early polygraph. It doesn't it does look rather bizarre doesn't it right? I guess it's a murder
37:25suspect
37:28Presumably that means it's easier to dupe the deaf than the blind
37:33Which which isn't what you'd think no it isn't that's true having said all that there is a dr. Ekman
37:38who's a leading researcher who claims that
37:4150 out of 20,000 people do have a natural ability to detect lies by actually looking at expressions
37:47These are very very few people he named them the truth wizards
37:51They're apparently able to read microexpressions that last milliseconds in ways that others aren't
37:55So there you are the truth is most people can't tell if you're lying
37:59But they'll have a better chance of they focus on your speech rather than your body language
38:02What's the one thing you know for sure about oranges the orange the orange?
38:08Oh
38:12The red ones and most of them aren't orange in fact, I know they are the most the ones in
38:17the supermarket are but they have to make them orange a lot of the time in
38:20the southeast in warm countries oranges are actually green and
38:25They they can see very green. They are the interior part is orange and juicy and lovely
38:29But the supermarkets tend to use a lethal gas to de-green as they call it
38:34Oh
38:34To take the chlorophyll out because we we shoppers prefer to see an orange skin. I'm a sucker for when
38:41they have
38:42Variations. No, I mean too. I like it but most most punters it seems like they're oranges. I've worked in
38:47orange groves
38:48I've worked in orange groves and they were orange. Where was it?
38:51Yeah, it was in Israel in Israel in the kibbutz and I worked in the orange groves got a sack
38:56Yeah, I fell asleep when I was meant to be mending irrigation pipes. That's not the story
39:02And they were orange. Yes, and they were the little blight as were orange all of them. There's one little
39:08green bagger a month
39:10They do grow orange, but in the really hot
39:13Humid countries they're green and yeah in desert and in places made up like the kibbutz tell you something about
39:20oranges
39:21What's it not the only fruit?
39:23They're not
39:25Good literary remark that and would you know where the word comes from what what the original word was?
39:30It's naranja naranja
39:32Which is a Spanish Spanish and the original naranja is Sanskrit and it what happened is it does as words
39:37do it loses the n
39:38So you get an orange and orange and we think oh, that's an orange must be an orange
39:45But in fact it was a an orange an orange like a nada was a was a was a snake
39:49They are orange don't they it should be called a nan orange
39:54Just an orange would do nori nori nori nori nori nori's juice. Yeah, oh dude. Yeah, well done
40:00So is it apple should be called an apple? No, it doesn't work with that
40:04It works with something napron for example and then pair it was a napron. No, that's silly, but
40:11It works with a nada
40:13A nada was is now become an adder, but it was originally a nadra matter writer and an eek name
40:21Your eek name and nick name became a nickname, but it was originally an eek name. Yeah, what's in it?
40:26What's an eek what like it became a nickname right? Well nick name is a name you give someone that
40:31isn't there real name?
40:33Like someone might what was it called before each name?
40:37What does that mean the eek name? Where does that come from?
40:41That's not fruit no
40:47Oh
40:49Help us all
40:51Oranges are not necessarily orange and there's a good case for saying that they started out as greens. What does
40:57swimming pools smell of?
40:59children
41:03Well the answer I suspect you're a little more dear it's chlorine
41:13You don't smell the chlorine in fact if there is that smell that we don't like the way to get
41:17rid of it is to add chlorine
41:19Chlorine reacting with the child's urine
41:21Yeah, but the fact is that chloramines are formed by sweat and urine and fecal matter and all kinds of
41:27other horrible things in swimming pools
41:29Added to chlorine and the way to get rid of them is to add chlorine so before I get to
41:33the business of making up your scores
41:34I should tell you that not one of you managed correctly to identify the hoax because the idea of the
41:40hoax was itself a hoax
41:41There was no hoax
41:54It's endearing how much it matters to them. So everything you heard was as chose trousers
42:00So the winner tonight Wow, the winner tonight with an impressive minus one is Sean Locke
42:11And uh
42:13This discredited flow
42:14Second with an improbable minus 13 is David Mitchell
42:23Third with a pretty good minus 14 Danny Baker
42:34And last with a surprisingly convincing minus 38 Alan Davis
42:39And last with a surprisingly convincing minus 38 Alan Davis
42:47And last with a surprisingly convincing minus 38 Alan Davis
42:48So my thanks to David, Danny, Sean and Alan and I leave you with this observation from Will Rogers
42:52The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected. Thank you and good night.
42:57Thank you
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