- 10 hours ago
First broadcast 29th October 2010.
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Sean Lock
Dara Ó Briain
Chris Addison
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Sean Lock
Dara Ó Briain
Chris Addison
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:03Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, and welcome to QI, which tonight is a
00:10wholesale homage to all that is horrible, queasily hunched over the handrail with me tonight are the disgusted Dara O
00:19'Brien, the appalled Chris Anderson.
00:30The shuddering Sean Locke, and the slightly disturbed Alan Davis.
00:44The buzzers are a hideous foretaste of the loathsomeness to come. Chris goes,
00:53Dara goes,
00:54That is disgusting!
00:58Sean goes,
01:02And Alan goes,
01:05Hello, I'm Piers Morgan.
01:10So, there you go.
01:14Fast to sit back, Alice, let's plunge in. Where do you think this little chap lives?
01:20Oh, I bet it's about your person, is it?
01:23Mmm, it's certainly, let's just say it is parasitical.
01:27It looks like it fits on the top of a pencil.
01:31It's a good luck charm for your exams.
01:33You know, like kids have stuff on the end of their pencils, yeah?
01:36One of those?
01:36Or if someone's head been removed.
01:38Is it the massive thing?
01:40Ah!
01:40No, it's not that.
01:42I reckon it looks like it lives around something that's long.
01:45Yes.
01:47Long and that's got a lot of blood in it.
01:50It's...
01:50Yeah.
01:51I'll play maybe a couple of veins.
01:52It might have a couple of veins in it.
01:54Just to give it a bit of purchase, because it was just long and smooth.
01:57It would slide down it.
01:58Where are you going?
01:58Something that has got a certain texture to it.
02:02Sean, Sean.
02:03I've got a bit of give in it.
02:04I'm going to rein you in, Sean.
02:06I'm just...
02:07Yeah.
02:08You're kind of right.
02:09It's a slidey organ, a wet organ that it's...
02:12You're looking at me for?
02:13Yes.
02:16I think it...
02:17Looking at it, I think it lives in the dark.
02:22It's black all around it.
02:26Yeah, that's it.
02:27It's natural environment.
02:28Yes.
02:28No, it's got that translucent, I'm not worried about how I look thing.
02:32Yes.
02:33Actually, it's a mouth piece.
02:36It's a mouth part that it latches onto.
02:38The tongue?
02:39The tongue, yes.
02:40There's a tongue of a particular fish.
02:42It is indeed.
02:43It's called the tongue-eating louse.
02:46Is it the tongue of the...
02:47Eh, eh, eh.
02:49It is.
02:50Eh, eh, eh.
02:52It's developed fins to eh, eh.
02:54When do fish have tongues?
02:57I have never heard of them.
02:58What?
02:59Really?
02:59What?
02:59Yes.
03:00Why?
03:01Why?
03:03How else are they going to whistle?
03:06This is the African blacktail.
03:08That's not its actual size, is it?
03:09Yes.
03:10It's a big fish.
03:11It's the African blacktail.
03:12The really gruesome thing about this louse is that it latches onto the tongue.
03:17You can see how big it is.
03:19And it sucks the blood out of the tongue such that the tongue disappears and it replaces the tongue.
03:25The animal thinks its tongue is actually this louse.
03:29And it lives in there quite happily and breeds and its children live in the gills.
03:34And it just colonises the head.
03:37So when it sees, when the fish sees that photo it's going to be really embarrassing.
03:40Yes.
03:42I wonder if everyone was looking at me oddly at that party.
03:45So, the fish goes without a tongue, the louse gets free food.
03:50On the plus side, it just looks like it's on a massive space hopper.
03:55Does it die, the fish?
03:57No.
03:57No.
03:58It carries on with a tongue.
04:00Well, parasites like to keep their host alive, don't they?
04:02Well, that's it.
04:02It's to their advantage because the point is the food that passes into the mouth.
04:06It's probably not that bad.
04:08No.
04:08It's the worst thing that happens with fish, like being caught, as it has been there.
04:12Yes.
04:12That's true.
04:13By a human.
04:14Yeah.
04:15It probably finds the human more disgusting than the louse.
04:17Yeah.
04:17There's a flatworm that sort of inserts itself into crabs and then grows through all the parts
04:24of the crab until it pops out the top and then drives the crab around.
04:28Yes.
04:29That's nice.
04:30Get out of the way!
04:32Come after some sea wave!
04:35You're absolutely right.
04:36Well, there are other animals that you might like to know about.
04:39What's covered in snot and eats whales?
04:42I don't know.
04:43Some sort of nose parasite.
04:45Well, it's a parasite that eats whales.
04:48A whole?
04:49No.
04:50It feeds on the bones of whales.
04:52Is there a creature I don't know about?
04:54A massive creature that eats whales?
04:57Ooh!
04:58The snot monster.
05:01It's this gigantic green thing that I've never seen.
05:03It would be big, wouldn't it?
05:05Yeah.
05:05Eat some like peanuts.
05:09I mean, everyone has a bit of a whale when it dies, doesn't it?
05:12Yeah.
05:13It takes months for it to get, and it gradually gets, all of it gets consumed.
05:16Absolutely.
05:17And the bits that fall right down to the bottom are the bones, and there's this extraordinary
05:23little...
05:23Snotty little bugger.
05:24Yeah.
05:25It latches into the bones, and it brings out little feather-like plumes, and it feeds off the nutrients,
05:31and it's covered in mucus, so it's called a snot flower, or mucaflora.
05:35I've coughed something like that one.
05:38That looks a bit like KFC.
05:42Ooh!
05:43Tempura.
05:44Yeah.
05:45Tempura, that's so middle class.
05:46Yeah.
05:47Yeah.
05:48We've got them, quite a few from Japan.
05:51Hey.
05:52No, that's what it looks like.
05:52Doesn't look like KFC.
05:53Tempura.
05:55So, other parasites worthy of mention.
05:58Tapeworms?
05:58How would you know if you had a tapeworm?
06:01You'd eat more than usual?
06:03No.
06:04Oddly enough.
06:04Do you know a fact?
06:05I know a fact about tapeworms, that 8% of people in this country have got tapeworms,
06:09which makes them more popular than dogs.
06:14There you are, the most popular pet.
06:16I heard a very interesting programme on the radio the other day about a man who was told
06:20that one of the benefits of having a tapeworm is he gets rid of asthma and eczema, and eventually
06:24he caught a tapeworm, and it's got rid of his crippling asthma and eczema conditions.
06:29Completely got rid of it.
06:30Good gracious.
06:30And he swears by it.
06:32He doesn't want to get rid of this tapeworm, you know.
06:34He just said he eats more.
06:35Well, no, you don't eat more, actually.
06:37That's not true.
06:38I added that bit on.
06:39You're right.
06:39Quite.
06:40Put that in on purpose.
06:42It's a misapprehension.
06:44People think that, oh, it eats all your food, therefore you're bound to be really hungry.
06:47In fact, it makes you nauseous.
06:48It eats a small amount of your food, but the irritation to the bowel and various other problems
06:52mean you actually lose appetite.
06:53Somebody told me once, to get rid of the worm, you have to starve yourself and then
06:57wave a steak in front of your mouth.
07:00Then when I was 16, I was chatting up this girl.
07:02Not in your mouth.
07:04You know.
07:04Yeah, she was all about it.
07:06And then it would come up and then bob out and, you know.
07:09Sweet idea.
07:09When I was 16, she was saying this, I was trying to chat her up.
07:12You tried to chat her up?
07:13The tapeworm story.
07:15It was her tapeworm story, right?
07:17I see, right.
07:17So what sort of length would you expect a tapeworm to be inside you?
07:21Eight metres.
07:23Eight metres.
07:23Fourteen miles.
07:24Fourteen miles.
07:25Fourteen miles is perhaps a little long.
07:27A good half.
07:28Thank you for joining in.
07:29No.
07:30But they, no.
07:31Fifty feet is not, it's not.
07:34Eight metres isn't bad, is it?
07:35Eight metres isn't bad at all, no.
07:37But they can stay in you for 20 years.
07:40You have them for a long, long time.
07:43They're not pleasant.
07:44We don't want them.
07:45And they are segmented, aren't they?
07:46They're not flat, but in little segments that make them even creepier.
07:50There's one that comes out of your leg.
07:51Oh.
07:52And they, they, it takes three or four weeks to come out of your leg.
07:55Because the only way of getting it out is to wind it round a pencil.
07:58You have to go to the doctor every day and he'll, he'll do about an inch of it a day.
08:02It's incredibly painful.
08:03But there's a theory that that's where the medical sign of the serpent wrapped round the staff comes from.
08:08Oh, the kid who says.
08:09That's a nice thought.
08:10I, I don't know if it's true, but I like this kind of atmosphere of scout camp where everyone keeps
08:15each other awake.
08:15And apparently there's this thing, and this person, and they had, and these spiders came out.
08:21Excellent.
08:22Hopefully that's prepared you all for the horrors ahead.
08:24So, er, you might need a stiff drink after all those disgusting animals.
08:28What's the key ingredient, then, in the world's nastiest cocktail?
08:33Malibu.
08:34Clemson.
08:35Oh!
08:39Hey.
08:41Yeah.
08:41I reckon, I reckon you've got someone, a really good, quick type, and just goes.
08:48Why is a child catcher now working as a barista?
08:51Why as a?
08:52I suppose it's to suggest nastiness.
08:54It is indeed Sir Robert Heltman.
08:56I think he's there to suggest nastiness.
08:58We're after a nasty cocktail.
09:00Is it a genuine drink?
09:01It's a genuine cocktail that is served in a genuine bar, in a genuine place, in a genuine country.
09:06There's one, one place.
09:08There's one place, and it's probably, it's a part of the body.
09:11We're in a country that is sort of known for its cleanliness, probably, more than anything else, and for its...
09:15Can.
09:16Switzerland?
09:17Canada, Canada.
09:18Ah.
09:18Which they say, Toronto, it's New York run by the Swiss, so it's that kind of a place.
09:23But this is in the Yukon, in a mining bar, the downtown hotel of Dawson City.
09:29It's a part of a human being.
09:31An eye?
09:32Toenails.
09:33Well, toenails is good enough.
09:35It's a toe.
09:35A toe?
09:36Toe.
09:37Yeah.
09:38The sour toe cocktail is the speciality de la maison in the downtown hotel.
09:43Where do they get the toe?
09:44Yeah.
09:44Well, there's a whole story there.
09:47Oh!
09:48Yeah.
09:49It started in the 1960s, when a figure called Captain Dick Stevenson, he'd been all kinds
09:56of things, from a male stripper, to a miner, to a lumberjack, all the, you know, the way
10:00that manly men are.
10:02All the usual ones.
10:14They'd offer us a challenge to put it in alcohol, and the idea was, you drank it.
10:19And it became a very popular drink.
10:21You kept the toe, though.
10:22Of course.
10:22It moved from glass to glass, but the important thing was, there's a little rhyme, which is
10:25the, the key, is you can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but the lips have got
10:30to touch the toe.
10:31So, the toe has to touch.
10:33But unfortunately, there was a series of accidents.
10:35In 1980, Gary Younger, a local miner, accidentally swallowed the toe.
10:40So, so they found another one, this very nice lady called Mrs. Lawrence of Alberta.
10:45whose middle toe was amputated, due to an inoperable corn, donated it.
10:50So you were then drinking a toe, that not only was amputated, but had a hideous corn on
10:56it.
10:57And people, that lasted well.
10:59It didn't have to be alcohol.
11:00I've drunk, I've drunk worse than that.
11:03I remember being at a party once, no glasses, drinking tea and Maria out of a dog bowl.
11:08Wow.
11:09Saying again, no glasses.
11:13That, that's just, that's chicken.
11:14It's fine.
11:17So yeah, they've, they've gone through a lot of toes.
11:18Now they, in fact, they have a collection.
11:20People know about this bar, so they donate their toes if they're going to be amputated.
11:23So they have some packed in rock salt in the back who can choose your toe to have with it.
11:28He looks like he finds it hilarious.
11:30I can imagine going, he he, you're going to have to drink the toe.
11:34He he he!
11:36That's brilliant, you're going to drink the toe!
11:40I love that!
11:41It's only $5 a shot.
11:43They reckon 35,000 people have, have done it.
11:47Yeah.
11:47It's quite popular.
11:48I mean, you're likely to pass on germs though, aren't you?
11:50All those people touching the same toe seems very unsavoury.
11:54Is, is a toe supposed to retain any flavour as it, er, has been pickled in a way that makes
11:59the drink more interesting or is it just for the...
12:02I, it's just so you can say you've done it these days, isn't it?
12:05It's pretty, but it's leather now, I would imagine, isn't it?
12:07Well, I...
12:07Leather and a hint of nail varnish.
12:10Anyway, there we are.
12:11Yeah, that's the Downtown Hotel in Dawson City in the Yukon,
12:14and it offers its patrons the Sour Toe Cocktail,
12:17the liquor of your choice garnished with a severed human toe.
12:20Could be worse though.
12:21Erm, give me one good reason to put a frog's bottom in your mouth.
12:30Do you remember posing for that?
12:31I remember that, what a night that was.
12:34See what I've got in my hands.
12:36Oh!
12:36Hey!
12:38Is it breathing under water?
12:39Cos if you were swimming along, you grabbed a frog and
12:42sucks all the air out of it, keep going.
12:45You've just got to swap, swap round, swap round your, your elements,
12:48your Aristotelian elements.
12:50You said you're in water sucking air out of a frog.
12:52Imagine you're in air...
12:53Sucking water.
12:54Sucking water.
12:55You're in the desert, you're in the Australian desert.
12:57Right.
12:57And there's a number of species of frog who, in order to kind of prepare themselves
13:01for the dry season ahead, store a huge amount of liquid in the form of
13:05actually urine, but very weak urine.
13:08As you can see, they swell up quite a lot.
13:10And as Aboriginals have discovered, if you find one of these and you're very, very dry,
13:14you literally put it like that and suck its bottom and you get a lovely drink.
13:20Essentially, it's a Capri Sun.
13:22Yes!
13:24That's what it is!
13:25That's what it is!
13:27It's washy than a fruit.
13:28And you just get a straw and you can make a hole wherever you want.
13:35It's Cyclorana platycephalus, the little round frog with the flat head, essentially.
13:40Also known as the water-holding frog.
13:42Presumably, though.
13:42The photo of it, I see, is the one after all of the water we'd carefully stored inside.
13:47And he's there all loose and going, oh, oh, oh, oh.
13:50And they have to go find more water again.
13:52It is a bit mean, isn't it?
13:53Yeah.
13:53It buries itself under the ground in that condition in the summer and kind of sleeps,
13:57which is the opposite of hibernating.
13:59And there are points at stake, for those of you who can tell me what the summer version
14:02of hibernating is.
14:03Hibernating is from...
14:05Hibert.
14:06Lobernating.
14:07Oh, that's a good...
14:08It's logical, again.
14:10Lobernate.
14:11Hibernating?
14:12Lobernating.
14:13Etination...
14:13Oh, so close, yes.
14:14It's...
14:15The audience knows, I expect...
14:16Esquation in a minute.
14:18Eastivation, they're saying that.
14:19Yeah, very good, yeah.
14:21Eastivation.
14:21And if that's made you feel ill, answer me this.
14:24And what's the best way to get rid of a leech?
14:28Stand near someone fatter.
14:32Just go...
14:33Go on.
14:34Off you go.
14:34Look at that.
14:35Check that out.
14:36Because you think they like going through fat, burrowing through fat to get to the blood.
14:40Well, I figured there'd be something a bit more tasty than my wizened.
14:44And your etiolated blood.
14:46Yeah.
14:46Well, you don't want to rip them off, do you?
14:48Why not?
14:49Doesn't that do more damage and leave bits of them in you or something?
14:52Oh.
14:52It's going to turn out to be ripping them off.
14:56Yes.
14:57All right.
14:58Burn it off.
14:59You want to...
14:59You want to burn it off, do you?
15:03Now sit in a...
15:04In a...
15:04In a...
15:05Some sort of vodka whiskey spirit.
15:07That...
15:08You're safe with that one.
15:09You could try...
15:10Well, actually, the answer is simply just leave it.
15:12Ignore it?
15:13Yeah.
15:13Yeah.
15:13It fills up and goes.
15:14Yeah.
15:15Yeah.
15:15If you pull it off, you won't leave a bit of it behind.
15:17But nor will it help.
15:19It's kind of difficult to ignore when it's right there on your nose.
15:22Yeah, that...
15:22I agree.
15:23That having to...
15:24Sorry.
15:25They're usually going to be on the legs, though.
15:27Because there are all kinds of misapprehensions about leeches.
15:29One is that they drop.
15:30They sort of evolve to drop down onto your neck.
15:33Nearly always going to be on your legs, because they're going to be in the water.
15:35If you pull them off, they don't leave bits of themselves behind, but their anticoagulant
15:40means you will bleed for quite a long time.
15:42Whereas if you let them finish it off, they actually seal off the wound nicely.
15:47And you've only lost about a teaspoonful of blood.
15:49Aren't they trying to experiment with the anticoagulant to find ways of stopping haemophilia and so on?
15:55That's right.
15:55Wales was the capital of British leech farming.
15:59You'd be pleased to know.
16:00No, but there were...
16:01There's still one left.
16:02They're called leeches.
16:03Leeches.
16:04Yeah, there you go.
16:05There's two hours.
16:06Does it hurt?
16:07Not really, no.
16:08I've had a leech.
16:09I mean, you don't actually notice.
16:09Someone usually points it out.
16:11It hurts if you pull it off.
16:12So that's the point.
16:13Just leave it.
16:13How did you get yours off?
16:14I was told just to leave it.
16:16Exactly.
16:16They just said, you've got a leech down.
16:18And I looked at it.
16:18It's still there now.
16:19It's not still there.
16:20Five years later.
16:22Huge great leech.
16:24Giving it a name.
16:25Read a story.
16:27Nurturing it.
16:28How long will it fall off?
16:29How long will it fall off?
16:30How long will it fall off?
16:30How long will it fall off?
16:30Not very long.
16:32I mean, you know, it'll be there for ten minutes or so.
16:34And it doesn't leave your sting like a mosquito.
16:37No.
16:37No.
16:38But if you burn one, it will come off, won't it?
16:40It will, but it's bad for it.
16:41It will make it vomit, which is a bad thing, because other blood it's gotten, it may go into you
16:46from someone else.
16:46It's just completely unnecessary.
16:48Just leave it be.
16:49It's nothing like as annoying as a tsetse fly, for example.
16:52Or a human.
16:53Or as painful.
16:53Or a human.
16:54That bit you, for example.
16:55People used to farm them.
16:57People used to stand around in sort of pools of water.
17:00Exactly.
17:00And get them all over their legs.
17:02And then, presumably, they used to take them off, so they must...
17:04Well, they'd wait for them, yeah.
17:05That's right.
17:06They'd just sort of peel them off when they'd finish.
17:08Pop them into buckets, sell them.
17:09The National Health Service, well, to doctors.
17:13All right.
17:13I mean, another name for a physician was a leech.
17:15It's what you call the doctor, because one of the most popular cures, so-called, for anything, was a bloodletting.
17:21And leeches were actually the least harmful.
17:24Those are the worst kind.
17:25What a doctor would call the phlebotomy, a cutting of the vein.
17:29And there, huge bowls of blood, I mean, really, were constantly.
17:33It was terribly bad for people.
17:34But that was considered to be the basic cure for almost any fever.
17:38Whereas a leech, mind you, they'd use about 50 of them, but they'd cover you in leeches.
17:43But they're used today in surgery.
17:45The NHS buys thousands of leeches a year.
17:47There are some.
17:48What surgery do they use it in?
17:50Well, in microsurgery, it kind of repairs the blood vessels quite well.
17:55Seals them up properly.
17:56It's really very helpful, it seems.
17:58I hope the leech guy in the surgery dresses differently to the rest of the operation staff.
18:03I hope the leech guy arrives in like the child catcher.
18:06Yeah, okay.
18:06In a fancy hat with leeches hanging off.
18:10And then he arrives in, hello!
18:13The leech man!
18:15So, leeches won't do much harm if you just let them finish their meal.
18:19Now, what was a really horrible way of transporting smallpox vaccine?
18:24Was it by Marty Feldman?
18:27God bless him, I remember that scene so well.
18:30Do you mean now?
18:31Are they transporting smallpox?
18:33No, now you would transport smallpox.
18:35You infect an animal and then you transport the animal and then you take...
18:38Sheep.
18:38You've got the right principle.
18:39It's actually not an animal though.
18:41People?
18:41A human.
18:42A rock.
18:42You infect a rock.
18:44No.
18:44A human.
18:45A volunteer prisoner.
18:46A human child.
18:47An orphan.
18:48An orphan.
18:49Yeah.
18:49He's got no one to tell.
18:51Yeah.
18:51You go back to the early 19th century, vaccination has been discovered.
18:56We know about vaccination.
18:57Cowpox.
18:58Cowpox, exactly.
18:59Edward Jenner discovered that if you injected people with cowpox, they would be immune to
19:04smallpox.
19:05A smallpox which killed about 60 million people in the 18th century.
19:08It was a really terrible disease.
19:10Now, in about 1803, the king of Spain, whose son had died of smallpox, thought we want
19:16to vaccinate everybody in South America.
19:19But how do you get the vaccine in a ship for months?
19:25You haven't got ice packs.
19:27You know, it's 1803.
19:28So you round up a few orphans and you inject one orphan with the vaccine and he develops
19:34the immunity and his blood is full of the antibodies and it's all great.
19:37So you take his blood and you put it in the next one and the next one until you've got
19:40a whole colony of orphans who are not harmed because they are immune to smallpox.
19:45But it means you can use them as a kind of serum, if you like.
19:49It's kind of creepy.
19:50They're not harmed, but they're quite a long way away from the heart.
19:52Yeah, that's the one.
19:53They find themselves in the middle of a jungle.
19:56The British, I'm afraid, we did it too.
19:58We did it with low-caste Indian boys.
20:00It's a pretty squalid thing to do, but it did work.
20:03It saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
20:05But as you say, at the expense of some rather bewildered Spanish orphans.
20:09Yeah, but they weren't brought there and then summarily killed.
20:12No, not killed, but they were just left there, presumably.
20:14I mean, there were orphans anyway, so you may say,
20:16maybe they wouldn't have had that good a future in Spain in 1803.
20:20Yeah.
20:21So maybe their lives went well for them in South America.
20:24Who knows?
20:24It's too late now anyway.
20:25Nothing we can do about it.
20:26No, there isn't.
20:27You're right.
20:27Yeah.
20:28But we can...
20:30We can think about them.
20:32We can give this little pause and honour them.
20:34Nah, don't worry about it.
20:34It's gone.
20:35Don't forget about it.
20:37Let's move on.
20:38So what about smallpox today?
20:40Is it a worry?
20:41Yes.
20:42How so?
20:43Because it's really the orphans...
20:46You care so much about.
20:48The orphans are great dynasties that are coming back to attack us.
20:51No.
20:51It came that close to being the very first disease that humankind completely got rid of,
20:58in the sense that there was not one file or test tube left of it in the world.
21:04And then they thought again in about 2002 and said,
21:08well, maybe we don't really have the right actually to extinguish it from the face of evolution.
21:12So there is somewhere a tiny amount of it left.
21:14Is there not a fear?
21:15I would have thought that they might keep it to develop a vaccine in the event that,
21:21I don't know, North Korea had kept hold of some smallpox.
21:24Well, that's also possibly it.
21:26You're absolutely right.
21:26It may just be that they can't risk the possibility that somebody else has it,
21:30and that's human nature.
21:31But it's...
21:31I'm sorry.
21:32This feels like we're in the opening scene of an apocalypse movie.
21:36Yeah.
21:36Doesn't life often feel like that?
21:38But don't worry.
21:39It's in this test tube.
21:41Nothing can...
21:42Whoa!
21:44And, of course, it was so virulent in the 18th century,
21:46and people knew that it was contagious,
21:48that actually you were much more likely to get a job if you were pockmarked.
21:53Because you actually had the disease.
21:54Because it showed you'd had it.
21:55So servants and things who were unblemished were unlikely to get a job
22:00because it's possible they would catch it and pass it on in the family.
22:03Anyway, smallpox vaccine was transported to the new world
22:06by successively infecting a series of small boys
22:09and then dumping them in South America when they weren't needed anymore.
22:13Now to some other handy hints for travellers.
22:15Fill in the blanks from these 19th century travel guides.
22:20All right?
22:21Firstly, never rub your eyes except with your...
22:25Frog.
22:26Frog.
22:27Other eye.
22:28Other eye.
22:29That...
22:29Oh!
22:30It's a handbook for travellers in Spain by Richard Ford in 1847.
22:34Paella.
22:35Elbows.
22:36Elbows is the right answer.
22:38Yeah.
22:39That's brilliant.
22:39You can't.
22:41Oh, thank you.
22:42Elbows.
22:43Definitely.
22:44Elbows.
22:44Yeah.
22:46I suppose because you're not supposed to use your hands in case of something...
22:49That's it.
22:50But it's quite hard to get your...
22:51You have to be quite limber.
22:52Well, reasonably.
22:54Yeah.
22:54Yeah.
22:54Elbows.
22:55That was a piece of trouble.
22:56Okay.
22:56The next one.
22:57Keep a spare jewel for emergencies in your...
23:00Dog.
23:02Dog.
23:03Would work.
23:04This is from a book called The Art of Travel or Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries
23:10by Sir Francis Galton in 1872.
23:12This would be like, so you had some spare cash?
23:15Yeah.
23:15It's...
23:16Or a jewel, in fact, literally.
23:17To keep a spare jewel.
23:18Imagine you've been robbed.
23:19A highwayman or...
23:20No, it's in the 19th century.
23:21Some sort of foot pad.
23:22In your shoe?
23:23A shoe.
23:24Hat.
23:24Yeah.
23:24Probably look in a shoe and a hat.
23:26Stare in your cheek?
23:27In your cheek, no.
23:28In your stomach.
23:29Up your nose?
23:30Not in your stomach.
23:31The weird thing is it isn't an orifice.
23:34Double chin?
23:35No.
23:36Under your eyelids?
23:37No.
23:38Under your hair?
23:39No.
23:40Between your toes?
23:41No.
23:42In your arm.
23:43Literally.
23:43In your arm.
23:44He recommends you make a cut prior to travelling.
23:49You push a jewel in and you sew it up and let it heal.
23:53And then, when you are...
23:55And a little bit of hash.
23:56Maybe.
23:58Yeah.
23:59Beware the dirty habits of native cooks who will often be seen buttering toast with...
24:05Earwax.
24:06Ooh.
24:07That'll be something that isn't butter.
24:09Yeah.
24:09The wings of birds, the wings of fowls, apparently.
24:12This is something you're warned against.
24:14Oh, you're using them to do the buttering?
24:15Yeah.
24:16I think it's quite reasonable.
24:17Do you mean actually, what, for the sub...
24:19Secreting a substance or just to butter?
24:21The greasy wing.
24:22I guess they would have roast a fowl and the greasy...
24:24Or they'd use a live chicken and use it to butter bread with.
24:29A live chicken?
24:30It's...
24:31It's...
24:32In the kitchen they have a chicken whose only job.
24:36I don't think...
24:37Butter in the toast.
24:38I don't think you...
24:39The chicken also...
24:41He also did the washing up.
24:42That's how he got the greasy...
24:43The greasy one from doing the washing up.
24:45When it's finished the washing up, it does the toast.
24:48It's a...
24:49Would he only have one arm?
24:50Would he have one particularly good arm for it?
24:52Yeah, that's what they do.
24:53It's a job.
24:53It's a job.
24:54Yeah.
24:54I suppose it's a gig, you know.
24:56Is it made if you want an egg on it?
25:00Anyway, that's advice against eating butter when in the tropics from a book called
25:03Hardships in Travel Made Easy.
25:04That's a brilliant book that must be.
25:08Another thing to warn you against is the Germans are the worst offenders having a grossness
25:11in their way of eating and a gloating zeal in...
25:15A gloating zeal enclosure?
25:18This is my gloating zeal.
25:21The biggest rock.
25:26It could be that.
25:31It's actually dirty postcards.
25:33Ah.
25:34They were warned against travelling with Germans because they have a gloating zeal in collecting
25:39salacious postcards is the exact...
25:40I love this reason of the warnings that were given pre-two world wars.
25:45Yes.
25:46Well, it's previously known for collecting salacious postcards.
25:49It turns out they're...
25:50Later for exterminating millions.
25:52Yeah.
25:53Good.
25:54I think we should move on.
25:55How can you tell if you've got Bonnie and Clyde syndrome?
25:59Is it those people who've got like one half they're dressed as a man and the other half
26:04they're dressed as a woman?
26:06And they sort of go to variety shows in probably somewhere like Albania these days and probably
26:11any place to have them.
26:12It's not...
26:13Has that woman on the left got it?
26:16No, I don't think so.
26:17Peculiarly enough, Bonnie might have had it, but Clyde certainly didn't.
26:22It's a paraphilia.
26:23Do you know what a paraphilia is?
26:25It's an erotic attachment to something wrong.
26:28Yeah, it's like a fetish or a taboo or something like that.
26:32It can be for a physical...
26:34Bank robbery.
26:35Not necessarily bank robbery.
26:37It's one of the few paraphilias that more women have than men.
26:40This particular one.
26:42It's called hubristophilia.
26:44Women who fall for very dangerous, violent criminals.
26:48Right.
26:49In Britain alone there are estimated to be at least a hundred women who are engaged to
26:54Americans on death row.
26:56People of correspondence to death row.
26:57Just British women who've never even been there who are engaged to, yeah.
27:01Not just corresponding but engaged to.
27:03Not to mention the wives of Tory MPs.
27:05Yeah, right.
27:06Right.
27:07It's an erotic, sort of fetishistic, strange love that people have for violent criminals.
27:15I mean real wrong-ins.
27:16Not just like, oh he's a naughty boy, but I mean murderers of the worst possible kind.
27:21She appears to be going, lose weight!
27:25That's the real Bonnie and Clyde.
27:27Yeah, the casting was quite favourite to them.
27:29It was, wasn't it?
27:30I've never seen a picture of them.
27:32Did you choose to wear a hat?
27:33There are no Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty in real life, that's to be said.
27:36No, the real Clyde Barry was an absolute institutional criminal.
27:39I mean a really violent unpleasant man who murdered a lot and killed many people.
27:43But Bonnie might have had this.
27:45A lot of the gang members said she never raised a gun or killed anybody.
27:48And that she, she, she was fond of poetry, she was privately educated, she was intelligent.
27:53Erm, and maybe she actually had hybristophilia for Clyde.
27:57So why do men, why do we think men don't get, why would men not find that as appealing?
28:00I don't know, maybe it's something to do with, I'm at the risk of being sort of clichéic about these
28:04things.
28:04There's some women's belief that they can improve people in, in the way that men don't seem to have that
28:09desire to believe.
28:11I imagine, seriously, violent criminals aren't quite good at sex.
28:15Are they?
28:15I don't know, I'm just guessing here.
28:17You've got to say they are or otherwise I'll blow your phrases.
28:20I imagine they're quite horny.
28:23I imagine they're quite horny.
28:25Maybe they're just...
28:28On a moped.
28:32There are various theories given.
28:34Glamour for notoriety, vicariously gratified propensity for violence themselves.
28:39Religious fervour, sometimes evangelical Christians who think that they can convert.
28:43There's a very sad case of two Christian sisters from Australia called Avril and Rose who left marriages they were
28:49already in, so-called boring marriages, for two criminals in Australia.
28:54Avril was battered to death with a hammer by her husband as soon as he was let out of prison,
28:59having married him when he was in jail.
29:01And the other one, Rose, her husband was put back in prison after he tried to cut her ear off
29:05and pull her teeth out with pliers.
29:06So these are not nice people they're falling for.
29:09Wow.
29:09They're bad choices.
29:10They're bad choices.
29:11Yeah, they are bad choices.
29:12There's another paraphilia called hapaxophilia.
29:15That's someone who gets off on being robbed.
29:18Oh, yeah.
29:19Did you see the documentary with a guy who fell in love with a car?
29:22There's a guy who fell in love with a car.
29:23Oh, yes.
29:23Yeah.
29:23That's how you would have sexual relations with cars.
29:26You genuinely would, yeah.
29:26Yeah.
29:27And they brought two of them together, two of these guys, in a weird kind of, well, we're bringing
29:30together, they'll have something to talk about.
29:32The two of them.
29:33But one of them shagged the other guy's car.
29:38People get really angry about this.
29:40Well, there you are, that's the Bonnie and Clyde syndrome.
29:43Hybristophilia.
29:44And it's, it's an attraction to people who've committed terrible crimes or atrocities.
29:48Name a pizza topping that eats insects.
29:57I get to be Mario in this situation.
30:01Anchovies.
30:02Is it?
30:03Oh, dear me.
30:04No, not anchovies.
30:05Olive.
30:06Sorry?
30:06Olive.
30:07Not olive.
30:07Spiders.
30:08No, is that a pizza topping?
30:10Well, yeah.
30:11Pineapple.
30:11Yeah, you can play it on a pizza.
30:12Pineapple.
30:13No.
30:16It's no more ridiculous than pineapple on a pizza than spiders.
30:19Cheese.
30:20If someone said to me, do you want spiders on that, I'd go, yeah, all right.
30:24Would you?
30:24If you can have a chicken tikka pizza, I think spiders is a very small leap further than that.
30:29Do you?
30:29Peppers.
30:30Not peppers.
30:31I've forgotten what the question is now.
30:33Tomatoes.
30:34Tomatoes is the right answer.
30:36Fifty point.
30:37Yeah.
30:38Maybe.
30:39Maybe.
30:40Some point.
30:41Some point.
30:42Yeah.
30:42Each insect.
30:44You know?
30:44Tomatoes eat insects.
30:46It's not their only diet.
30:47As we know, tomatoes grow like a lot of fruits and vegetables.
30:51They draw their nutrients out of the soil and can be grown hydroponically, but also they
30:56have another way of ingesting nutrients and that is trapping insects in the furry, the
31:01hairy stems and they die and they absorb their nutrients.
31:07So they are insectivorous.
31:09So they are insectivorous.
31:09Not while they're on a pizza though.
31:11Not while they're on a pizza though.
31:12It's very bad use for the spider, wouldn't it?
31:14If you're watching your spider pizza and they'll get eaten by the tomato.
31:18Fortunately.
31:19That's how you get the flavour.
31:20That's how you get the flavour.
31:20That's how you get that lovely spidery tomato flavour.
31:23They trap them and so they fall down into the ground and then are absorbed up through
31:27the soil, but it's a way of collecting richer soil by filling it with dead insects.
31:32You see?
31:32Okay.
31:33Very good.
31:34Tomatoes trap insects in a deadly embrace on their hairy stems and use their decaying
31:38bodies as fertiliser, but what is it that this flower behind me eats that Louis XIV ordered
31:45to be removed from the corridors of Versailles once a week?
31:48Peasants.
31:49Not peasants.
31:50You want to get a sense of the scale of the flower.
31:55That central bowl shape is about the size of a palm of a human hand.
31:59A mouth.
32:00Yes.
32:01Well, a mouse-like animal, that plant is a really extraordinary plant.
32:06It's a lavatory plant.
32:08It's a toilet seat.
32:09It looks like a toilet seat, I mean toilet with a seat, a bowl, and that's what it is.
32:14It is an amazing achievement of evolution.
32:17It attracts a little shrew by giving out a sweet buttery smell and the shrew sits on it
32:23like that.
32:24And it has to face that way because that's where the smell is and it can lick its nectar
32:29from there.
32:30And this shrew poos when it eats.
32:33So the poo goes into the plant and gives the plant about 70 to 100% of its nitrogen.
32:39So it's a fabulous system.
32:41That shrew's going, do you have to take a photo now while I'm on the job?
32:47But it's not a pleasing way for a plant to develop.
32:49So hang on, the thing that Louis had removed was poo, basically.
32:52Yes, poo.
32:53Once a week from...
32:53That's why you got the name Louis.
32:55Once a week from Versailles, in the corridors, because he was a hygienic fellow.
32:59Once a week, yeah.
33:00Into these plants?
33:00No, it is.
33:02No, it is.
33:03No, you won't.
33:04No, never mind.
33:05Is that just a coincidence?
33:06Yes.
33:07It's a link.
33:08What you've done is you've joined two ideas, two things together.
33:11A way of talking about a plant that's a lavatory and a way of saying that Versailles, which
33:15is one of the most elegant palaces in the world, in its day, was full of people who'd
33:19never bathed and whose idea of hygiene was clearing poo from corridors once a week.
33:24So it's a human poo.
33:24So they're human poo?
33:25Yes, human poo.
33:25They just have a crap in the corner?
33:27Basically.
33:27I agree.
33:27Right.
33:28Just chatting away to a lady.
33:31Oh!
33:32Mademoiselle de la Beauvoir de Ville.
33:34Excuse me a minute.
33:38Oh!
33:41No, that was German.
33:44Qu'est-ce que vous allez au Versailles?
33:48Non, c'est plus tard.
33:51They're not fanning themselves.
33:54Please.
33:54When we broadcast this bit, can we get proper subtitles for what Sean just said?
34:00It will be hard.
34:02Yeah, I speak French.
34:03Yeah, pretty good.
34:04Pretty good.
34:04You so do.
34:06Well, yeah, I'm not quite sure necessarily in front of ladies like that, but the point
34:11is it's a very robust, non-bathe-y sort of place in which the poo piled up in corners.
34:15They've got gardens.
34:16It's famous for the gardens, Versailles.
34:18Yes.
34:18There's bloody gardens everywhere.
34:20You can't poo in the garden.
34:22Someone spent ages making the gardens.
34:23Yeah.
34:24The point is the toilet bowl-shaped Nepenthes ayahuwi lives primarily on shrew faeces.
34:31The French in Louis XIV's time weren't keen on washing, but drew the line at leaving piles
34:37of excrement around the house for more than a week or so.
34:39One horrible thing all of our panel, I suspect, has experienced is heckling.
34:46So where did the first hecklers come from?
34:49What did they do for a living?
34:51The House of Parliament?
34:53No, it wasn't the House of Parliament.
34:54A heckle is actually a word meaning a comb for dividing two types of fabric, of flax,
35:01for making yarn, and people who did that were called hecklers.
35:05And it was a particular place.
35:05Where was the capital of the jute industry in the 1970s?
35:09Scotland, Dundee.
35:10In Dundee, you're absolutely right.
35:11And the Dundonian heckler was known to be a troublemaker, a rabble-rouser.
35:18Violent harangue and ferocious debates they were known for.
35:20And so to publicly question, to shout to harangue, was like being a heckler.
35:25It was a back formation.
35:26You were a heckler, and so what you did was to heckle.
35:28And that's where the word comes from.
35:30I thought you'd like to know that.
35:31That's interesting, yeah.
35:33Have you been heckled much?
35:34No.
35:35You've had an easy life.
35:36I didn't used to get heckled.
35:37If people didn't like me, they'd just start talking amongst themselves.
35:41There's two girls at the front of the Comedy Store, one turned to the eye and went,
35:45he's lost it.
35:50That's very disturbing.
35:51Really gets under your skin, man.
35:54I kind of had to go to them to get them to talk.
35:56I was in Liverpool on this trip, and I was talking about dreams,
35:58and I have a occasion having a dream about a famous person,
36:02and some bloke in the crowd showed that he had a dream about Kate Winslet.
36:05And I said, oh, and I said, was it a sexy dream?
36:08And he goes, no, she turned me down.
36:14In his own head.
36:18I had a dream about Kate Winslet.
36:20I said, were you disappointed?
36:22And he goes, nah, I didn't hit her with me best stuff.
36:27That's very strange, yeah.
36:29I had a dream about Kate Winslet, and in my dream with Kate Winslet,
36:33it didn't quite work out either.
36:35Wow, she's like, she's like a Freddy Krueger of teasers.
36:39Well, thank you very much.
36:40Yes, hecklers were originally people who split the fibres of flax and hemp to spin into yarn.
36:45And so, with a cough and a wretch, we bring up the boolus that is general ignorance.
36:51Ah, so fingers on buzzers.
36:52Where does a snake's tail begin?
36:59After its bottom.
37:01Is the right answer?
37:05Is the right answer.
37:06After its bottom.
37:07Absolutely right.
37:10That's simple.
37:11And as you know, as you know, Stephen, I studied snakes for many, many, many years.
37:18I'm one of the world's leading snake-cotologists.
37:22Harpetologists?
37:23Or a phidian expert.
37:25We don't call ourselves that.
37:27Don't you?
37:28This is the rebranding.
37:30Yeah.
37:30It's called a cloaca, and after that is where the snake,
37:33because the rest of it is all these ribs.
37:36Ribs.
37:36We call it the body.
37:37Ribs.
37:39Ribs and spine.
37:40It's got vertebrae.
37:41Yeah.
37:42It's got a lot of vertebrae.
37:44And, yeah.
37:45That other bit's the head.
37:46The other end, yeah.
37:48You want to write that down, Steve?
37:50Put the head.
37:50You weren't kidding, were you?
37:51You really are an expert.
37:53And thank you.
37:53And you get your points.
37:54Snakes.
37:55Two legs.
37:55Yes.
37:55Not a snake, Steve.
37:57Not finely legs on a snake.
37:59Not a one.
37:59Not a one.
38:01Snakes might look like they're all back-end, but they actually have surprisingly short tails.
38:05What are the dimensions of a piece of two by four?
38:09Yes.
38:11Oh, thanks.
38:13Four by two.
38:14No!
38:15What a pity.
38:19No.
38:19Two by four.
38:20Two by four.
38:21No!
38:23All the points you've made on your expertise on snakes.
38:26Yeah.
38:27That's just, you've leeched them.
38:29Ah, with them back.
38:30No.
38:31It is called, what is two by four?
38:33It's plank of wood.
38:34Yeah, but it's not two by four.
38:37It's about one and a half by three and a half inches.
38:39It's based on what's called a dimension block, which was originally itself two by four, but
38:43it's then shaved and planed, so it's a lot smaller.
38:46But even now, the original dimension block is smaller or larger.
38:50It doesn't actually matter.
38:51It's just a block of wood, and it's still called a two by four, even though it no longer is.
38:55Now, we saved the most disgusting, the most horrible thing of all for last.
38:59Er, what am I describing?
39:01Allegedly, it can cause birds to fall dead from the sky, and it's banned by airlines, but
39:08it's quite good on toast.
39:12Were you all...
39:13Oh, no!
39:14No wonder you've not been getting points, Chris.
39:17Oh, that's typical.
39:18Yes, that's unfair.
39:20Chris, you can answer.
39:21Er, what was the question?
39:25Is it gentleman's relish?
39:27No.
39:28I have some here.
39:29I have a can of it.
39:30But, er, and this is a genuine can of it.
39:34Um...
39:34It's a caviar.
39:36No.
39:36Oh, this is something rotten, isn't it?
39:38Yeah.
39:38Rotten fish.
39:39Scandinavian rotten food.
39:40It's Scandinavian rotten fish.
39:42Oh, yeah, they're having it on, er, on, er, Midsummer's Night, don't they?
39:44I've always wanted to try this.
39:45Sir Strumming.
39:46I've actually been told, and you may say, oh, go on, Stephen, that I cannot open this,
39:50that if I did, the audience, probably the audience at home would go away.
39:54It's, it is apparently so disgusting that it would never leave the studio, and I, I think,
39:59would be sued by the, by the studio for opening it.
40:03By the great Norton show.
40:05It's called Sir Strumming, it's herring.
40:07What happens is, you put the herring in a barrel, first of all, in a wooden barrel,
40:11with about half the amount of salt you need to cure it, so it's not cured.
40:14Instead of being cured, it ferments, in other words, it putrefies.
40:18And then after it's been like that for a month or so, um, you then put it in a can,
40:22but the can is designed, as you can tell, to swell up slightly, so it's continuing to ferment.
40:27It's still...
40:28They buckle, don't they?
40:29Yeah, buckle, and it is absolutely, unbelievably disgusting, the smell.
40:34There is nothing, apparently, is revolting, really, on the face of that.
40:38A friend of mine lives in Sweden, he said that, you know,
40:40that is something you have to be Swedish to eat.
40:42Yeah, indeed.
40:43It's, I mean, they consider it a delicious.
40:44Often what they do is they open the can under water,
40:47because the, the way to eat it anyway is to rinse it,
40:49and then cover it in, sort of, onions, which helps with the smell a bit,
40:52and then drink it down.
40:53It's got a best before date.
40:56It is a bit late.
40:57It is a bit late.
40:58I'm going to move this away, because...
41:00Best before we canned it.
41:01Yeah.
41:02Well, apparently, in the 16th century, there were, um,
41:05you can have a look at the can, please don't open it.
41:07Um, there were Swedish sailors...
41:10No.
41:11...who ran out of salt, and they, they had this rotting fish,
41:15and they found some Finnish islanders that they sold it to,
41:18thinking that, you know, they're idiot foresters and who know no better.
41:22And then a year later, they came back, and they met these same people,
41:25and they said, can we have some more of this rotten fish, please?
41:28So they thought, oh, maybe it's good.
41:29So they tried it themselves.
41:30And apparently, it is tasty.
41:32Even though it smells...
41:33It's a can.
41:33Beyond anything.
41:34Yeah.
41:35I'm glad to say, the can is holding up.
41:37So, there you are.
41:39It's a stroming Baltic herring fermented in cans with foul-smelling and explosive,
41:44but allegedly delicious results.
41:46And so, we head now staggering towards the bucket,
41:49and there only remains the horrible embarrassment of the scores.
41:53And, er, well, I have to say, totally repulsive as they all are,
41:58it's pretty impressive.
41:59In first place, repulsing all comers, with a positive two points,
42:04Dara O'Brien!
42:08Oh.
42:10In, er...
42:11In second place, with a reasonably bad taste in the mouse,
42:15with 13.8 points, it's Chris Addison!
42:25Gagging slightly from time to time, Sean Locke with minus 33!
42:34What?!
42:35And just behind him, taking an early bath,
42:39um, on minus 35, Alan Davis!
42:47Well, that's all, that's all from this stomach-churning edition of QI,
42:51so it's goodnight from Chris, Sean, Dara, Alan and me,
42:54and one final word of advice,
42:56if you can't be a good example, try to be a horrible warning.
43:00Goodnight.
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