QI (2003) s02e04 Episode Script
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Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, and welcome to QI, the show that refreshes the parts other shows don't even have names for.
Tonight, I'm glad to say we've got names for four parts already.
They are Barry Cryer Jeremy Hardy Jeremy Clarkson and Alan Davies.
The rules are sensible, the questions are indispensable, the panel is incomprehensible, and the scoring is completely indefensible.
Let's get started.
Jeremy goes: And Barry goes: And Jeremy C.
goes: He's got mine.
Oh, now.
You see? And Alan goes: There we are.
Good.
So, first some questions They're all car-related, weren't they? They seem to be.
There's a theme there, well picked up.
So, first some questions about Britain.
Which British profession is down to its last fifteen people? - Fifteen? - Fifteen practitioners.
Erm, bear-baiting referees.
Not bear No, well, let's hope there are none of those.
- Are there any bears in Britain now? - In zoos only, I believe.
Do you remember Hercules, the bear? Do you remember? He was a TV star.
He mauled a television presenter.
And he's here tonight! Thanks.
I remember Jeremy, there was a Jeremy being two Jeremies here Jeremy, who was the, Sugar Puff bear.
You don't meet many American Jeremies, do you? Have you ever met an American Jeremy? No, it's too complicated; there's three syllables.
Is it people who make windmills? No, it's It's a It's a peculiar job There are fifteen adult practitioners? Fifteen registered professionals.
I suspect there are many more amateurs.
Teachers.
Town criers.
Town criers? No, though the voice does come into this.
The voice comes into it? I was going to say commode servicers, but, er No! The voice.
Did there used to be lots more of them? They use their voice professionally.
There used to be about four hundred or so, about, in the 1950s.
In the Fifties? Their name means "stomach talker".
Ventriloquists.
"Ventriloquist" is the right answer, well done.
There are now only fifteen ventrilo and Keith Harris, so I suppose that's sixteen.
No, no, there are only fifteen professional ventriloquists left in Britain today.
- Good gracious.
- Did you know any? - I saw, a topless vent.
Recently.
- Really? - Never saw her lips move! - Hang on, the puppet or the act? Who was the one The Was it The radio one who Who was hopeless? Peter Brough.
- He was wonderful.
- But his lips moved all the time.
Yes! - He was on the radio, Stephen! - I know, but he did do stage performances.
He did it right at the back of the stage.
No, he became so popular he He It all went to his head.
And he went on stage and just Spoke like this, you know, and you could see his lips move.
Beryl Reid was in "Educating Archie", this show, and, Peter, who was a nice man, he got very self-conscious about his lack of skill and he said, "Beryl, do you ever see my lips moving?" and she said, "Only when the doll's talking.
" - Ken Campbell does a show about it, doesn't he? - Yes.
A whole show about ventriloquism.
Which he reckons is one of the oldest arts ever.
How do they know it's one of the oldest jobs in the world? Supposedly prostitution, of course, is the oldest profession How do they know that? Well, quite, that's its sobriquet, isn't it.
"The oldest profession.
" - I know.
Yeah.
- Yeah.
You never know how they know.
There was a time when only prostitutes and ventriloquists kicking around.
Everyone else was self-sufficient, like Tom and Barbara.
And they were divided into two, those whose lips moved and those whose lips didn't move! I think that's funny, but I'm not sure why There are, however, 280,000 heroin and crack addicts in Britain.
- Are there really?! - Yeah, yeah.
Oh, I've just spent the week in Amsterdam, where I combined the two.
Oh, well done! Drugs and prostitution.
The rulebook for Dutch prostitutes is that thick.
It's an inch thick of what you can and can't do.
I bet they can do something with that, though! I went into a brothel on Saturday You heard it here first, folks! - It's exactly like the motorway service station lavatory.
- Bet that was a Welcome Break! The smell You don't deserve that kind of luck! You don't deserve it So how many crack and heroin addicts? - 280,000, yeah.
- Good gracious.
But this is worse: There are 50,000 practitioners of alternative medicine.
There are 75,000 people in prison.
Oh, yes, it was announced today actually, wasn't it? Yes, thank you.
Very good.
Have a point.
There are ten thousand practicing Druids in Britain.
They're not all Welsh, are they? - No, no - They live in Somerset.
That's the kind of area; it's the Archbishop of Glastonbury and Stonehenge, whose name is Rollo Maughfling.
Rollo Maughfling?! It's spelled M-A-U-G-H-F-L-I-N-G.
I don't know - It sounds like a practice, doesn't it? - It does, it seems "You are charged with Rollo Maughfling!" "I only maughfled one, sir!" So, what is a "Birmingham screwdriver"? Yes.
A drink.
Oh, Barry, oh, Barry, oh, Barry, oh, Barry, oh Barry, oh, Barry, oh, Barry! Can we go on to say what we think might be in the drink? Yes! If it were a drink.
- Whine.
W-H-I.
- W .
.
.
Ooh! Do Brummies whine, then? Oh! If Einstein had been from Birmingham, no-one would've taken the "theorai of relativitai" seriously.
I mean, Nigel Mansell was from Birmingham Near Birmingham It says it all, really, doesn't it? Huge ferret "I crossed the track a hundred miles and never saw" You don't.
.
You've won! You've got a billion pounds and a yacht! "Oh Not a very big one, though" I'm sorry to all our viewers who are from Birmingham.
I'm not.
No.
Brummagem was Is Is an old word for And hence Hence "Brum", "Brummagem Ware" is a type of, sort of Counterfeit, tacky stuff was known as "Brummagem Ware", and, Birmingham workers were considered a bit oafish, shall we say, so a Birmingham screwdriver might well be? A hammer, or a spanner Exactly.
Well done indeed; a hammer.
They see a See a screw and think, "Oh, sod it, I'll just hammer it in.
" Y'know, they can't be bothered to In the 1970s, if you look at all the Birmingham housing estates, when they all used to work for British Leyland? Yeah.
Everyone's bathroom was maxi-green.
And the front, marina-beige.
Yes! All the paint shop paint was just taken home and everything was painted in car colour, - and it was the period when orange was popular.
- It was indeed, those Burnt orange - Allegros were orange, weren't they? - Yeah.
The Allegro, I'll tell you something good about that.
It was more aerodynamic going backwards than it was Gorgeous! That was a Birmingham product! They have some colourful sayings.
I have one here.
"He'd skin a turd for a farthing.
" There's the, folklore about Enoch and Excuse my voice; I Had Ruby Wax on the phone today.
Fell off twice! But what Enoch and Ely Yes.
Two legendary folklore characters in Birmingham, and Enoch's fishing by the canal and his mate Ely comes up and says, "Have you caught anything?" He says, "I caught a whale.
" He said, "Where is it?" He said, "I threw it back.
" He said, "You caught a whale and you threw it back, why?" "Hadn't got any spokes in it" It's like the Nobby Holder joke; you must know that one, don't you? Nobby Holder Noddy Holder of, of Slade, is There's this sort of reunion, and, as As the Seventies and glam rock's becoming fashionable, and he goes to a costumier and says, "I can't.
.
" you know, "I've thrown out all me old gear, my hat and everything; I can't remember what I wore," and the fellow says, "Oh, well, we'll give you some loons.
You have" "Oh, yeah, I wore loons.
That's right.
" So he puts the loons on and says, "And one of them tank tops, do you want?" "Oh, yeah, I'll have a tank top.
" And the fellow says, "What about a kipper tie?" And Noddy says, "Oh! Thanks, yeah! Milk, no sugar!" - Ozzy Osbourne.
- Yes, Ozzy Osbourne's from that neck of the woods.
"I've fallen off me quad bike" - That was Jimmy Saville - Jimmy Saville! Jimmy Saville doing Ozzy Osbourne.
I think Jimmy Saville invented hip-hop, 'cause the track suits, the jewellery - The bling-bling! - The bling-bling.
"Now then, with my ho, in the 'hood, there" Very good! So, there you go.
Now, let's have a question which is not about Britain.
Who has the least use for Jeremy Clarkson? What two What two things come to mind when we think of Jeremy? Top Gear and Brunel.
Cars and television is the key.
So it's a place that's got no A place that has almost no cars and no television would have very little use Yes.
Sark.
Sark? You're quite right about traffic there, but it does have a lot of television; I mean it has as much television as any other place.
Is it the Channel Island area? It's not the Channel Islands.
It's a lot further away.
Bhutan.
Bhutan is the right answer, well done! It is the Kingdom You've certainly got a point there Except Except, they have got television.
In 1999.
Yeah.
It's where they're doing all the television surveys to find out has television actually had an effect.
It's completely wrecked the place! It's absolutely ruined it.
It's gone from people going "ommm" all day to just sitting round, stabbing one another, wearing perfume and drinking Coca-Cola and wanting to be American.
And parking fees have now been introduced as well.
- For the first time.
- In Bhutan? It has no, traffic lights in the whole of the kingdom.
Where is it? It's sort of between China and and, and India, in the Himalayas.
- India has no speed limits.
- India has no speed limits? And every car in India, within five years of it being bought, will be involved in a fatal road accident.
The UK, on the other hand, has the highest number of car thefts in the world.
- My motorbike was stolen two weeks ago.
- Bummer.
It's a black Suzuki DR65 N441 YKP.
You should do the whole police press conference bit and say, "Now this bike thief knows who he is" I have an American cousin who's a Who's a doctor and, he was visiting me in in London at the time when I used to ride a motorbike and, he didn't know this and we were meeting in a restaurant, and he saw me Checking in my "skid lid", as we as we Did you? - biker boys call them.
- Helmet And, he said, "Oh, I didn't know you rode a bike," and I said, "Yeah," and he said, "Do you know what we call bike riders in the Roosevelt The trauma department of the Roosevelt hospital?" and I said, "No," - and he said, "Donors.
" - Oh! That was one thing, then, literally, two days later, a friend of mine was talking about her aunt who was at Moorfields eye hospital, and she was going to have a cataract operation, or a corneal graft or one of those sort of things.
And, the chap came in, the consultant, he said, "Now, Mrs Alton," he said, "I'm sure you've heard about how I'm going to cut out that nasty old lens, that cloudy old lens, and we're going to sew in a nice, bright, fresh, new one.
It's a very simple operation, it only takes a few hours and you'll be out and, you'll be seeing wonderfully," he said.
"The only trouble is I'm afraid we don't have, any donor eyes in at the moment, but," and he looked at the window and said, "it's raining, so it shouldn't be too long" He meant it! Most people in Bhutan live more than a day's walk from a road.
It's a very rural country indeed.
Only 0.
01% of the country are on the Internet, for heaven's sake! No, but if you got that from the Internet it could be wrong.
- Yeah.
- Yes.
Every single one of the two hundred and forty-seven billion facts on the Internet is wrong Funnily enough, although the country's domain initials are ".
bt", it only has, supposedly about six thousand telephones in the whole country, and only went on the telephone in 1980.
Do you know the one about the only two democracies who have ever declared war on each other? Oh, that's good.
No, I don't.
In the whole of human history.
Well, Britain's one of them.
Yeah, of course it is.
We've been in every single war.
- We're always starting - It's obviously us.
Go on, then.
- Finland.
- Oh! Second World War.
When they declared war on Russia we declared war on them, and they were a democracy.
But it's the only two times that two democracies have declared No shots were fired.
- We declared war on Finland? - Yeah, because they were fighting Russia.
How did they get How did we get on? Did we beat them? No, we never went We never even went.
Never even went "We're at war with you!" - That's a rubbish war! - It was the worst war in the world.
Yeah.
Which is the odd one out from these four: Cuckoo, ferret, grasshopper, camel? Jeremy? Camel's the only one you can't get down your trousers Is it anything to do with their attributes, - Well, a polecat, yeah.
- or is it gonna be something that - Eyes.
- you do to them or with them or something? No, yeah, it's something you do to an animal, certainly.
Very basic things.
- Eating them? - Eat.
Yeah.
- You can eat all of them but - You can eat all of them You wouldn't eat a ferret, though, would you? but, there are certain classes of people who lay down laws about eating.
The queen has been invited to eat them and has declined.
"My husband will try that one!" If you've had a little snip here What are you? You're impotent.
You're Jewish! - Leviticus! - Leviticus is exactly the right answer.
Leviticus, written by Moses, in which the laws are laid down The dietary laws that are known as kosher laws, exactly, yeah.
And you can't eat shellfish.
You can't Well, yes, not There isn't a shellfish up there.
- You can't, I'm just saying.
- Or pork, as well.
"That without fins nor scales in the water shall be an abomination unto you.
" Indeed, indeed.
- Also, that's where it says you mustn't be gay.
- That's right.
And it's odd, isn't it, how fundamentalist Christians carry on eating pork - I know.
- while going on about God hating gay people.
- And seafood you can't eat.
- That's right.
Especially winkles That's two for the price of one! No, it's actually grasshoppers.
All those other three are specifically mentioned in Leviticus - Grasshoppers aren't kosher? - No, grasshoppers you can eat.
Oh.
They're not mentioned, they're They're exempt.
You can eat a grasshopper, but the other three I'll give you a list, if you like? It actually says in Leviticus that you cannot eat lobster, crabs, frogs, chameleons, eels, hares, snails, lizards, moles, ravens, ospreys, vultures, swans, owls, storks, herons, bats, pelicans, lapwings, prawns, and eagles.
- So taramasalata's ok? - Yes, absolutely.
Thank God for that! And eagle pie, yeah.
- Oh! Thought I was in trouble for a minute.
- And cheddar.
Can you have cheddar? Yes, it doesn't specifically mention regions of countries it didn't know about.
- Well, it's being pretty precise about some stuff! - You can't have anything with grasshopper.
- You said eagles? - Eagles.
Yes.
- You know about the guy who shot a golden eagle? - No.
- Preserved species.
- Yeah.
And he was in court, in front of a magistrate.
And the magistrate said, "This is a dreadful thing.
" He said, "I never intended to.
I was shooting pheasant and it flew into my line of fire.
Complete accident.
" The magistrate said, "Okay," and he said, "as a matter of interest, what did you do with it?" He said, "I ate it.
" The magistrate said, "Good God, what did it taste like?" He said, "Rather like swan" 'Course they're all gonna be killed by those wind turbines, aren't they? You may as well eat them then.
Yeah.
I don't think they use a turbine, it all has to be done humanely.
I don't think they do it on purpose.
They have to get it They have to stun it first, and then they throw it up into the turbine.
What's Leviticus, what does that mean? It's a Latinisation of the "levi", which is a type of priest in the In the In the - It's also the name of our fourth puppy.
- Oh! - You have a puppy called Leviticus? - Yeah.
Oh, what a good name.
Well, it was the third actually, because it was "Genesis", "Exodus", and "Leviticus", and then we ended up with "Numbers".
You always called your pets Didn't you, "Gilbert" and "Sullivan" and "Bubble" and "Squeak" and you always ended up after a road accident with Gilbert and Squeak I mean, you always You always ended up with - Whisky and Pepper! - Yeah, Whisky and Pepper! That's so true, that's so true.
I did have two guinea pigs, Gilbert and Squeak, that is true.
And Numbers.
How would two guinea pigs get involved in a road accident? No You know the Roadkill Cafe, in, I think it's in Wyoming, somewhere around the badlands of America? It's called the Roadkill Cafe and the idea is if If you knock anything over in your car, you take it in and they'll cook it.
And I just I love the, you know, whether it's an elk or a tiny little possum, or something An old lady.
But their posters Absolutely! Their poster, which is all over Wyoming, all over the main The main road there is, "Roadkill Cafe: From Your Grille To Ours.
" Anyway, so they'd love What're those birds called in Australia where they They're huge things, I mean they can't fly, it's not, like - Michelle.
- Or emus You know, they They sort of Or rheas.
Rheas? They're great, big, kind of No, they're flying things.
Anyway, they fly down in the night and they gorge on these animals that've been run over, the roadkill, in the night.
- Kangaroos.
- Koalas.
Road train sort of animals, yeah.
And then when the road train comes in the morning, the next one that comes along, these things have eaten so much they can only take off into the wind.
And if the lorry's coming towards them, as they're taking off, they're usually at windscreen height.
Really, really unpleasant, because they are full of maggots.
And they just come through the windscreen and burst all over.
"Oh, Jesus, I can't believe it!" and they have to drive the next, and in Australia, hundred million miles, covered in maggots.
Our team wants you to know, Jeremy, that it is the wedge-tailed eagle.
Anyway, why does this man like being bald? Because it makes him look like a comical, Cold War Bond villain Rather than the butcher of Grozny, for example.
He is the butcher of Grozny, if you want to call him that.
In other words, it's Vladimir Putin, who was extremely annoyed and apparently hit someone when When his resemblance to Dobby the house elf in the Harry Potter films was pointed out.
He got very cross indeed.
- Lenin was bald.
Is he trying to - Ah.
Something Now, you're on the right lines, but take it further.
- Gorbachev.
- Gorbachev was also bald, but what about the ones in between? - Andropov dropped dead while he was President.
- Andropov died on the toilet.
- That was Elvis! - Oh, yeah.
Bramwell Brontë, the brother of the Brontë sisters Died standing up.
- Did he? - Leaning on the mantlepiece after lunch.
Just thought you ought to know! If they came down in the morning and saw he was still there, they thought, "Hang on" No, there is a long For a hundred and twenty years, there has been a succession of leaders of the Russian state, or Soviets, who have alternated between being hairy and bald.
From Alexander in 1881 to Nicholas, Lenin was bald, Stalin had a full head of hair - Krushchov.
- Krushchov was bald.
- Krushchov was bald, Brejnev was hairy.
- Yep.
Andropov was bald and Chernenko was hairy and Gorbachev was bald and Yeltsin was hairy and now we have a bald one, and the Russians take this very seriously and, it is considered a contributory factor to his winning the elections, is that he's bald, because it's time for a bald leader.
- So next time it's Brian May out of Queen - Yes, that's right! - Is that me? - It's General Ignorance.
I don't remember that being taken, I must admit.
What a swell party that must've been! Now, fingers on the buzzers.
Which war killed the highest proportion of British soldiers? American War of Independence.
- Good guess! - Yeah.
- English Civil War.
- The English Civil War is the correct answer.
Because everybody killed in the English Civil War was British.
- Well, that's absolutely right.
- So they must be.
- Plus, it was an exceptionally bloody conflict, anyway.
- Very, very violent and And the population of the country was quite small.
And all anybody knows about it is the hairstyles.
All anybody says, "Oh, it's Roundheads and Cavaliers," and you think, "Yeah, that's it, really, one lot looks like the Grumbleweeds, the other looked like Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen, so it all kicks off" That man's got a wooden leg and riding side-saddle.
Apparently, ninety percent of Britons cannot name a single battle of the English Civil War, eighty percent do not know which English king was executed by Parliament And sixty-seven percent of schoolchildren have never heard of Oliver Cromwell.
- Good! - As a royalist, you think his name should be buried? No, he's a dreadful man, he was He was a truly, truly, horrible One of the most horrible people ever to have walked the land.
But you wouldn't know that if you didn't know about him.
He did terrible damage, being a puritan, he wrecked all our Our beautiful churches, 'cause he ripped away all the iconography and graven images and replaced them with the giant thermometers that you can still see to this day - So how many British people died in the Civil War, then? - Eight-five thousand on the battlefield.
Another hundred thousand dying of their wounds afterwards.
The people who really suffered were the Irish, of whom it's estimated half the population were decimated by the great Cromwell.
And it's an example a friend told me, who works at the Foreign Office, that, dear Robin Cook, when he When the Labour Party came to power, and they were going, "We're going to be all ethical and we're going to be all good" They took down some picture in the Foreign Office of a Nepalese prince, 'cause they thought it was all Imperialist, which deeply offended the Nepalese government, and they put up this big portrait of Cromwell, you know, Republican, you know, sort of Lefty figure and the first meeting they had was with the Irish government, to one look! And it was It was like showing Eichmann to the to the Israeli ambassador! In the seven years between 1642 and 1649, in the period known as the English Civil War, a staggering one in ten of the adult male population died, more than three times the proportion that died in the First World War and more than five times the proportion that died in World War Two.
Now, how much of the Earth is water? Two-thirds.
Oh, Alany-Walany, Walany-Alany-Walany! Is not the right answer.
I'm counting the whole planet as it is Ah! Well, no.
Nothing, virtually.
Quite right.
The answer is "less than a fiftieth of one percent.
" Seven-tenths of the Earth's surface is covered in water About two-thirds.
which is about two-thirds, which is exactly right.
But But the Earth is big.
It's very, very, very, very, very big.
It has - It's not that big, compared to Jupiter.
- No - Or Saturn.
- I raise you Jupiter! The Earth can go into the spot on Jupiter.
Do you know what I think's a bad idea? Humans spreading onto other planets and then to other galaxies.
That'd be a very bad idea.
We should stop ourselves.
- Why? - 'Cause we're just bad.
No, we are.
As a species, we're bad; don't start giving me Shakespeare's sonnets.
- Well, you're giving me - We're wicked! Carl Sagan said a rather wonderful thing when they When they sent out one of those early Mariner probes or whatever, the one with the gold slab on it with digital information, the binary information - Voyager.
- With Voyager, that's the one.
And it had information about where the Earth was in relation to the, to the Solar System and so on, and, someone suggested having some digitised music on the very early semi-conductor, sort of microchip, and, and someone said, "We could have some Bach," and Carl Sagan said, "I think that would just be showing off.
" - That left in when, in the late Seventies? - Yes.
- That's only just got to the edge of our Solar System.
- It had to get a special connecting bus service from Crewe.
Yeah! Broke down.
Well, the Earth may be too small for Alan, but it's big enough for most of our purposes; it has a total mass of about six million, billion billion kilograms; even on the apparently watery crust, the mass of the land is forty times greater than that of the oceans.
Anyway, changing the subject to something perhaps, a little different.
Describe Andy Warhol's underpants.
- Padded.
- Padded? - Padded.
- Padded pants.
Fifteen minutes of foam Very good! It's like the The Essex girl who sees an Irishman with his - with his wellingtons that have "L" and "R" written on them.
- Yes.
And she says, "What's that about?" and he says, he says, "It reminds me to put the left boot on on the left and the right on the right.
" She says, "Oh, that's why my pants say 'C&A' then!" What an interesting audience! No wonder you were so bored about the Earth stuff.
You just want some knob gags! If you were attacked by Andy Warhol and you were describing him to the police and they were doing an artist's The guy just wouldn't believe you, would he? Well, Warhol, he never went to funerals except Except recently, of course.
His own.
But he never attended funerals.
He never danced, ever, and he always wore underpants of a particular colour.
Brown! We'd have to go through the colours, wouldn't we? It's actually Blue, green, black, yellow! You said it! You said green and green they always were.
- He always wears green pants? - Or wore green pants, exactly.
And one last British question: What colour was Robert Burns's kilt? - Red? I don't know.
- No, it wasn't red.
He didn't wear a kilt.
You're absolutely right, Barry gets the points.
There's a particular reason why Burns would not have worn a kilt.
- He was embarrassed about the size of his penis.
- No, not - Really bad eczema.
- Dandruff on the shoes! He wasn't a member of a clan It's nothing like that.
It's He wasn't a member of a specific clan? No, he was a member of a clan, but he would be deported from Scotland for wearing a kilt.
It was outlawed.
- Ah.
- Yes.
When was that, then? When was Burns alive? He was alive in the eighteenth century.
And you weren't allowed to wear a kilt in the eighteenth century? No.
'Cause it was a symbol of Scottish defiance.
Well, there were two famous, weren't there, rebellions.
The 1715 and the 1745 rebellions.
Of course.
The Jacobite rebellion.
In which the The The old pretender, the young pretender Attempted and of course in the case of 1745 they got as far south as Grimsby! Cleethorps! - Derby.
- Derby? What happened in Derby? The buffet car ran out of beer or something? "Ah, fuck that, we're gonnae go back to Scotland! Can't take any more of this shite, I'll tell ye that!" Interestingly, he was never known as "Robbie" or "Rabbie" Burns.
He never referred to himself as Sometimes "Rab" - Just Burns? Burnsy? - Robert.
Burnsy occasionally! - "Robert.
" - "The Burnster.
" "Burnsmeister"! Yeah.
It's time for the final scores.
Oh, very interesting indeed.
Well, in equal last place, it's Barry and Alan with minus six, 'cause you both fell into our traps, unfortunately.
With three, it's Jeremy Hardy.
Way out in front, Jeremy Clarkson with plus five That is all from QI this week.
From Alan, Barry, the two Jeremies, and me, a braw bricht moonlicht nicht to ye all.
Good night.
Thank you very much indeed.
Tonight, I'm glad to say we've got names for four parts already.
They are Barry Cryer Jeremy Hardy Jeremy Clarkson and Alan Davies.
The rules are sensible, the questions are indispensable, the panel is incomprehensible, and the scoring is completely indefensible.
Let's get started.
Jeremy goes: And Barry goes: And Jeremy C.
goes: He's got mine.
Oh, now.
You see? And Alan goes: There we are.
Good.
So, first some questions They're all car-related, weren't they? They seem to be.
There's a theme there, well picked up.
So, first some questions about Britain.
Which British profession is down to its last fifteen people? - Fifteen? - Fifteen practitioners.
Erm, bear-baiting referees.
Not bear No, well, let's hope there are none of those.
- Are there any bears in Britain now? - In zoos only, I believe.
Do you remember Hercules, the bear? Do you remember? He was a TV star.
He mauled a television presenter.
And he's here tonight! Thanks.
I remember Jeremy, there was a Jeremy being two Jeremies here Jeremy, who was the, Sugar Puff bear.
You don't meet many American Jeremies, do you? Have you ever met an American Jeremy? No, it's too complicated; there's three syllables.
Is it people who make windmills? No, it's It's a It's a peculiar job There are fifteen adult practitioners? Fifteen registered professionals.
I suspect there are many more amateurs.
Teachers.
Town criers.
Town criers? No, though the voice does come into this.
The voice comes into it? I was going to say commode servicers, but, er No! The voice.
Did there used to be lots more of them? They use their voice professionally.
There used to be about four hundred or so, about, in the 1950s.
In the Fifties? Their name means "stomach talker".
Ventriloquists.
"Ventriloquist" is the right answer, well done.
There are now only fifteen ventrilo and Keith Harris, so I suppose that's sixteen.
No, no, there are only fifteen professional ventriloquists left in Britain today.
- Good gracious.
- Did you know any? - I saw, a topless vent.
Recently.
- Really? - Never saw her lips move! - Hang on, the puppet or the act? Who was the one The Was it The radio one who Who was hopeless? Peter Brough.
- He was wonderful.
- But his lips moved all the time.
Yes! - He was on the radio, Stephen! - I know, but he did do stage performances.
He did it right at the back of the stage.
No, he became so popular he He It all went to his head.
And he went on stage and just Spoke like this, you know, and you could see his lips move.
Beryl Reid was in "Educating Archie", this show, and, Peter, who was a nice man, he got very self-conscious about his lack of skill and he said, "Beryl, do you ever see my lips moving?" and she said, "Only when the doll's talking.
" - Ken Campbell does a show about it, doesn't he? - Yes.
A whole show about ventriloquism.
Which he reckons is one of the oldest arts ever.
How do they know it's one of the oldest jobs in the world? Supposedly prostitution, of course, is the oldest profession How do they know that? Well, quite, that's its sobriquet, isn't it.
"The oldest profession.
" - I know.
Yeah.
- Yeah.
You never know how they know.
There was a time when only prostitutes and ventriloquists kicking around.
Everyone else was self-sufficient, like Tom and Barbara.
And they were divided into two, those whose lips moved and those whose lips didn't move! I think that's funny, but I'm not sure why There are, however, 280,000 heroin and crack addicts in Britain.
- Are there really?! - Yeah, yeah.
Oh, I've just spent the week in Amsterdam, where I combined the two.
Oh, well done! Drugs and prostitution.
The rulebook for Dutch prostitutes is that thick.
It's an inch thick of what you can and can't do.
I bet they can do something with that, though! I went into a brothel on Saturday You heard it here first, folks! - It's exactly like the motorway service station lavatory.
- Bet that was a Welcome Break! The smell You don't deserve that kind of luck! You don't deserve it So how many crack and heroin addicts? - 280,000, yeah.
- Good gracious.
But this is worse: There are 50,000 practitioners of alternative medicine.
There are 75,000 people in prison.
Oh, yes, it was announced today actually, wasn't it? Yes, thank you.
Very good.
Have a point.
There are ten thousand practicing Druids in Britain.
They're not all Welsh, are they? - No, no - They live in Somerset.
That's the kind of area; it's the Archbishop of Glastonbury and Stonehenge, whose name is Rollo Maughfling.
Rollo Maughfling?! It's spelled M-A-U-G-H-F-L-I-N-G.
I don't know - It sounds like a practice, doesn't it? - It does, it seems "You are charged with Rollo Maughfling!" "I only maughfled one, sir!" So, what is a "Birmingham screwdriver"? Yes.
A drink.
Oh, Barry, oh, Barry, oh, Barry, oh, Barry, oh Barry, oh, Barry, oh, Barry! Can we go on to say what we think might be in the drink? Yes! If it were a drink.
- Whine.
W-H-I.
- W .
.
.
Ooh! Do Brummies whine, then? Oh! If Einstein had been from Birmingham, no-one would've taken the "theorai of relativitai" seriously.
I mean, Nigel Mansell was from Birmingham Near Birmingham It says it all, really, doesn't it? Huge ferret "I crossed the track a hundred miles and never saw" You don't.
.
You've won! You've got a billion pounds and a yacht! "Oh Not a very big one, though" I'm sorry to all our viewers who are from Birmingham.
I'm not.
No.
Brummagem was Is Is an old word for And hence Hence "Brum", "Brummagem Ware" is a type of, sort of Counterfeit, tacky stuff was known as "Brummagem Ware", and, Birmingham workers were considered a bit oafish, shall we say, so a Birmingham screwdriver might well be? A hammer, or a spanner Exactly.
Well done indeed; a hammer.
They see a See a screw and think, "Oh, sod it, I'll just hammer it in.
" Y'know, they can't be bothered to In the 1970s, if you look at all the Birmingham housing estates, when they all used to work for British Leyland? Yeah.
Everyone's bathroom was maxi-green.
And the front, marina-beige.
Yes! All the paint shop paint was just taken home and everything was painted in car colour, - and it was the period when orange was popular.
- It was indeed, those Burnt orange - Allegros were orange, weren't they? - Yeah.
The Allegro, I'll tell you something good about that.
It was more aerodynamic going backwards than it was Gorgeous! That was a Birmingham product! They have some colourful sayings.
I have one here.
"He'd skin a turd for a farthing.
" There's the, folklore about Enoch and Excuse my voice; I Had Ruby Wax on the phone today.
Fell off twice! But what Enoch and Ely Yes.
Two legendary folklore characters in Birmingham, and Enoch's fishing by the canal and his mate Ely comes up and says, "Have you caught anything?" He says, "I caught a whale.
" He said, "Where is it?" He said, "I threw it back.
" He said, "You caught a whale and you threw it back, why?" "Hadn't got any spokes in it" It's like the Nobby Holder joke; you must know that one, don't you? Nobby Holder Noddy Holder of, of Slade, is There's this sort of reunion, and, as As the Seventies and glam rock's becoming fashionable, and he goes to a costumier and says, "I can't.
.
" you know, "I've thrown out all me old gear, my hat and everything; I can't remember what I wore," and the fellow says, "Oh, well, we'll give you some loons.
You have" "Oh, yeah, I wore loons.
That's right.
" So he puts the loons on and says, "And one of them tank tops, do you want?" "Oh, yeah, I'll have a tank top.
" And the fellow says, "What about a kipper tie?" And Noddy says, "Oh! Thanks, yeah! Milk, no sugar!" - Ozzy Osbourne.
- Yes, Ozzy Osbourne's from that neck of the woods.
"I've fallen off me quad bike" - That was Jimmy Saville - Jimmy Saville! Jimmy Saville doing Ozzy Osbourne.
I think Jimmy Saville invented hip-hop, 'cause the track suits, the jewellery - The bling-bling! - The bling-bling.
"Now then, with my ho, in the 'hood, there" Very good! So, there you go.
Now, let's have a question which is not about Britain.
Who has the least use for Jeremy Clarkson? What two What two things come to mind when we think of Jeremy? Top Gear and Brunel.
Cars and television is the key.
So it's a place that's got no A place that has almost no cars and no television would have very little use Yes.
Sark.
Sark? You're quite right about traffic there, but it does have a lot of television; I mean it has as much television as any other place.
Is it the Channel Island area? It's not the Channel Islands.
It's a lot further away.
Bhutan.
Bhutan is the right answer, well done! It is the Kingdom You've certainly got a point there Except Except, they have got television.
In 1999.
Yeah.
It's where they're doing all the television surveys to find out has television actually had an effect.
It's completely wrecked the place! It's absolutely ruined it.
It's gone from people going "ommm" all day to just sitting round, stabbing one another, wearing perfume and drinking Coca-Cola and wanting to be American.
And parking fees have now been introduced as well.
- For the first time.
- In Bhutan? It has no, traffic lights in the whole of the kingdom.
Where is it? It's sort of between China and and, and India, in the Himalayas.
- India has no speed limits.
- India has no speed limits? And every car in India, within five years of it being bought, will be involved in a fatal road accident.
The UK, on the other hand, has the highest number of car thefts in the world.
- My motorbike was stolen two weeks ago.
- Bummer.
It's a black Suzuki DR65 N441 YKP.
You should do the whole police press conference bit and say, "Now this bike thief knows who he is" I have an American cousin who's a Who's a doctor and, he was visiting me in in London at the time when I used to ride a motorbike and, he didn't know this and we were meeting in a restaurant, and he saw me Checking in my "skid lid", as we as we Did you? - biker boys call them.
- Helmet And, he said, "Oh, I didn't know you rode a bike," and I said, "Yeah," and he said, "Do you know what we call bike riders in the Roosevelt The trauma department of the Roosevelt hospital?" and I said, "No," - and he said, "Donors.
" - Oh! That was one thing, then, literally, two days later, a friend of mine was talking about her aunt who was at Moorfields eye hospital, and she was going to have a cataract operation, or a corneal graft or one of those sort of things.
And, the chap came in, the consultant, he said, "Now, Mrs Alton," he said, "I'm sure you've heard about how I'm going to cut out that nasty old lens, that cloudy old lens, and we're going to sew in a nice, bright, fresh, new one.
It's a very simple operation, it only takes a few hours and you'll be out and, you'll be seeing wonderfully," he said.
"The only trouble is I'm afraid we don't have, any donor eyes in at the moment, but," and he looked at the window and said, "it's raining, so it shouldn't be too long" He meant it! Most people in Bhutan live more than a day's walk from a road.
It's a very rural country indeed.
Only 0.
01% of the country are on the Internet, for heaven's sake! No, but if you got that from the Internet it could be wrong.
- Yeah.
- Yes.
Every single one of the two hundred and forty-seven billion facts on the Internet is wrong Funnily enough, although the country's domain initials are ".
bt", it only has, supposedly about six thousand telephones in the whole country, and only went on the telephone in 1980.
Do you know the one about the only two democracies who have ever declared war on each other? Oh, that's good.
No, I don't.
In the whole of human history.
Well, Britain's one of them.
Yeah, of course it is.
We've been in every single war.
- We're always starting - It's obviously us.
Go on, then.
- Finland.
- Oh! Second World War.
When they declared war on Russia we declared war on them, and they were a democracy.
But it's the only two times that two democracies have declared No shots were fired.
- We declared war on Finland? - Yeah, because they were fighting Russia.
How did they get How did we get on? Did we beat them? No, we never went We never even went.
Never even went "We're at war with you!" - That's a rubbish war! - It was the worst war in the world.
Yeah.
Which is the odd one out from these four: Cuckoo, ferret, grasshopper, camel? Jeremy? Camel's the only one you can't get down your trousers Is it anything to do with their attributes, - Well, a polecat, yeah.
- or is it gonna be something that - Eyes.
- you do to them or with them or something? No, yeah, it's something you do to an animal, certainly.
Very basic things.
- Eating them? - Eat.
Yeah.
- You can eat all of them but - You can eat all of them You wouldn't eat a ferret, though, would you? but, there are certain classes of people who lay down laws about eating.
The queen has been invited to eat them and has declined.
"My husband will try that one!" If you've had a little snip here What are you? You're impotent.
You're Jewish! - Leviticus! - Leviticus is exactly the right answer.
Leviticus, written by Moses, in which the laws are laid down The dietary laws that are known as kosher laws, exactly, yeah.
And you can't eat shellfish.
You can't Well, yes, not There isn't a shellfish up there.
- You can't, I'm just saying.
- Or pork, as well.
"That without fins nor scales in the water shall be an abomination unto you.
" Indeed, indeed.
- Also, that's where it says you mustn't be gay.
- That's right.
And it's odd, isn't it, how fundamentalist Christians carry on eating pork - I know.
- while going on about God hating gay people.
- And seafood you can't eat.
- That's right.
Especially winkles That's two for the price of one! No, it's actually grasshoppers.
All those other three are specifically mentioned in Leviticus - Grasshoppers aren't kosher? - No, grasshoppers you can eat.
Oh.
They're not mentioned, they're They're exempt.
You can eat a grasshopper, but the other three I'll give you a list, if you like? It actually says in Leviticus that you cannot eat lobster, crabs, frogs, chameleons, eels, hares, snails, lizards, moles, ravens, ospreys, vultures, swans, owls, storks, herons, bats, pelicans, lapwings, prawns, and eagles.
- So taramasalata's ok? - Yes, absolutely.
Thank God for that! And eagle pie, yeah.
- Oh! Thought I was in trouble for a minute.
- And cheddar.
Can you have cheddar? Yes, it doesn't specifically mention regions of countries it didn't know about.
- Well, it's being pretty precise about some stuff! - You can't have anything with grasshopper.
- You said eagles? - Eagles.
Yes.
- You know about the guy who shot a golden eagle? - No.
- Preserved species.
- Yeah.
And he was in court, in front of a magistrate.
And the magistrate said, "This is a dreadful thing.
" He said, "I never intended to.
I was shooting pheasant and it flew into my line of fire.
Complete accident.
" The magistrate said, "Okay," and he said, "as a matter of interest, what did you do with it?" He said, "I ate it.
" The magistrate said, "Good God, what did it taste like?" He said, "Rather like swan" 'Course they're all gonna be killed by those wind turbines, aren't they? You may as well eat them then.
Yeah.
I don't think they use a turbine, it all has to be done humanely.
I don't think they do it on purpose.
They have to get it They have to stun it first, and then they throw it up into the turbine.
What's Leviticus, what does that mean? It's a Latinisation of the "levi", which is a type of priest in the In the In the - It's also the name of our fourth puppy.
- Oh! - You have a puppy called Leviticus? - Yeah.
Oh, what a good name.
Well, it was the third actually, because it was "Genesis", "Exodus", and "Leviticus", and then we ended up with "Numbers".
You always called your pets Didn't you, "Gilbert" and "Sullivan" and "Bubble" and "Squeak" and you always ended up after a road accident with Gilbert and Squeak I mean, you always You always ended up with - Whisky and Pepper! - Yeah, Whisky and Pepper! That's so true, that's so true.
I did have two guinea pigs, Gilbert and Squeak, that is true.
And Numbers.
How would two guinea pigs get involved in a road accident? No You know the Roadkill Cafe, in, I think it's in Wyoming, somewhere around the badlands of America? It's called the Roadkill Cafe and the idea is if If you knock anything over in your car, you take it in and they'll cook it.
And I just I love the, you know, whether it's an elk or a tiny little possum, or something An old lady.
But their posters Absolutely! Their poster, which is all over Wyoming, all over the main The main road there is, "Roadkill Cafe: From Your Grille To Ours.
" Anyway, so they'd love What're those birds called in Australia where they They're huge things, I mean they can't fly, it's not, like - Michelle.
- Or emus You know, they They sort of Or rheas.
Rheas? They're great, big, kind of No, they're flying things.
Anyway, they fly down in the night and they gorge on these animals that've been run over, the roadkill, in the night.
- Kangaroos.
- Koalas.
Road train sort of animals, yeah.
And then when the road train comes in the morning, the next one that comes along, these things have eaten so much they can only take off into the wind.
And if the lorry's coming towards them, as they're taking off, they're usually at windscreen height.
Really, really unpleasant, because they are full of maggots.
And they just come through the windscreen and burst all over.
"Oh, Jesus, I can't believe it!" and they have to drive the next, and in Australia, hundred million miles, covered in maggots.
Our team wants you to know, Jeremy, that it is the wedge-tailed eagle.
Anyway, why does this man like being bald? Because it makes him look like a comical, Cold War Bond villain Rather than the butcher of Grozny, for example.
He is the butcher of Grozny, if you want to call him that.
In other words, it's Vladimir Putin, who was extremely annoyed and apparently hit someone when When his resemblance to Dobby the house elf in the Harry Potter films was pointed out.
He got very cross indeed.
- Lenin was bald.
Is he trying to - Ah.
Something Now, you're on the right lines, but take it further.
- Gorbachev.
- Gorbachev was also bald, but what about the ones in between? - Andropov dropped dead while he was President.
- Andropov died on the toilet.
- That was Elvis! - Oh, yeah.
Bramwell Brontë, the brother of the Brontë sisters Died standing up.
- Did he? - Leaning on the mantlepiece after lunch.
Just thought you ought to know! If they came down in the morning and saw he was still there, they thought, "Hang on" No, there is a long For a hundred and twenty years, there has been a succession of leaders of the Russian state, or Soviets, who have alternated between being hairy and bald.
From Alexander in 1881 to Nicholas, Lenin was bald, Stalin had a full head of hair - Krushchov.
- Krushchov was bald.
- Krushchov was bald, Brejnev was hairy.
- Yep.
Andropov was bald and Chernenko was hairy and Gorbachev was bald and Yeltsin was hairy and now we have a bald one, and the Russians take this very seriously and, it is considered a contributory factor to his winning the elections, is that he's bald, because it's time for a bald leader.
- So next time it's Brian May out of Queen - Yes, that's right! - Is that me? - It's General Ignorance.
I don't remember that being taken, I must admit.
What a swell party that must've been! Now, fingers on the buzzers.
Which war killed the highest proportion of British soldiers? American War of Independence.
- Good guess! - Yeah.
- English Civil War.
- The English Civil War is the correct answer.
Because everybody killed in the English Civil War was British.
- Well, that's absolutely right.
- So they must be.
- Plus, it was an exceptionally bloody conflict, anyway.
- Very, very violent and And the population of the country was quite small.
And all anybody knows about it is the hairstyles.
All anybody says, "Oh, it's Roundheads and Cavaliers," and you think, "Yeah, that's it, really, one lot looks like the Grumbleweeds, the other looked like Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen, so it all kicks off" That man's got a wooden leg and riding side-saddle.
Apparently, ninety percent of Britons cannot name a single battle of the English Civil War, eighty percent do not know which English king was executed by Parliament And sixty-seven percent of schoolchildren have never heard of Oliver Cromwell.
- Good! - As a royalist, you think his name should be buried? No, he's a dreadful man, he was He was a truly, truly, horrible One of the most horrible people ever to have walked the land.
But you wouldn't know that if you didn't know about him.
He did terrible damage, being a puritan, he wrecked all our Our beautiful churches, 'cause he ripped away all the iconography and graven images and replaced them with the giant thermometers that you can still see to this day - So how many British people died in the Civil War, then? - Eight-five thousand on the battlefield.
Another hundred thousand dying of their wounds afterwards.
The people who really suffered were the Irish, of whom it's estimated half the population were decimated by the great Cromwell.
And it's an example a friend told me, who works at the Foreign Office, that, dear Robin Cook, when he When the Labour Party came to power, and they were going, "We're going to be all ethical and we're going to be all good" They took down some picture in the Foreign Office of a Nepalese prince, 'cause they thought it was all Imperialist, which deeply offended the Nepalese government, and they put up this big portrait of Cromwell, you know, Republican, you know, sort of Lefty figure and the first meeting they had was with the Irish government, to one look! And it was It was like showing Eichmann to the to the Israeli ambassador! In the seven years between 1642 and 1649, in the period known as the English Civil War, a staggering one in ten of the adult male population died, more than three times the proportion that died in the First World War and more than five times the proportion that died in World War Two.
Now, how much of the Earth is water? Two-thirds.
Oh, Alany-Walany, Walany-Alany-Walany! Is not the right answer.
I'm counting the whole planet as it is Ah! Well, no.
Nothing, virtually.
Quite right.
The answer is "less than a fiftieth of one percent.
" Seven-tenths of the Earth's surface is covered in water About two-thirds.
which is about two-thirds, which is exactly right.
But But the Earth is big.
It's very, very, very, very, very big.
It has - It's not that big, compared to Jupiter.
- No - Or Saturn.
- I raise you Jupiter! The Earth can go into the spot on Jupiter.
Do you know what I think's a bad idea? Humans spreading onto other planets and then to other galaxies.
That'd be a very bad idea.
We should stop ourselves.
- Why? - 'Cause we're just bad.
No, we are.
As a species, we're bad; don't start giving me Shakespeare's sonnets.
- Well, you're giving me - We're wicked! Carl Sagan said a rather wonderful thing when they When they sent out one of those early Mariner probes or whatever, the one with the gold slab on it with digital information, the binary information - Voyager.
- With Voyager, that's the one.
And it had information about where the Earth was in relation to the, to the Solar System and so on, and, someone suggested having some digitised music on the very early semi-conductor, sort of microchip, and, and someone said, "We could have some Bach," and Carl Sagan said, "I think that would just be showing off.
" - That left in when, in the late Seventies? - Yes.
- That's only just got to the edge of our Solar System.
- It had to get a special connecting bus service from Crewe.
Yeah! Broke down.
Well, the Earth may be too small for Alan, but it's big enough for most of our purposes; it has a total mass of about six million, billion billion kilograms; even on the apparently watery crust, the mass of the land is forty times greater than that of the oceans.
Anyway, changing the subject to something perhaps, a little different.
Describe Andy Warhol's underpants.
- Padded.
- Padded? - Padded.
- Padded pants.
Fifteen minutes of foam Very good! It's like the The Essex girl who sees an Irishman with his - with his wellingtons that have "L" and "R" written on them.
- Yes.
And she says, "What's that about?" and he says, he says, "It reminds me to put the left boot on on the left and the right on the right.
" She says, "Oh, that's why my pants say 'C&A' then!" What an interesting audience! No wonder you were so bored about the Earth stuff.
You just want some knob gags! If you were attacked by Andy Warhol and you were describing him to the police and they were doing an artist's The guy just wouldn't believe you, would he? Well, Warhol, he never went to funerals except Except recently, of course.
His own.
But he never attended funerals.
He never danced, ever, and he always wore underpants of a particular colour.
Brown! We'd have to go through the colours, wouldn't we? It's actually Blue, green, black, yellow! You said it! You said green and green they always were.
- He always wears green pants? - Or wore green pants, exactly.
And one last British question: What colour was Robert Burns's kilt? - Red? I don't know.
- No, it wasn't red.
He didn't wear a kilt.
You're absolutely right, Barry gets the points.
There's a particular reason why Burns would not have worn a kilt.
- He was embarrassed about the size of his penis.
- No, not - Really bad eczema.
- Dandruff on the shoes! He wasn't a member of a clan It's nothing like that.
It's He wasn't a member of a specific clan? No, he was a member of a clan, but he would be deported from Scotland for wearing a kilt.
It was outlawed.
- Ah.
- Yes.
When was that, then? When was Burns alive? He was alive in the eighteenth century.
And you weren't allowed to wear a kilt in the eighteenth century? No.
'Cause it was a symbol of Scottish defiance.
Well, there were two famous, weren't there, rebellions.
The 1715 and the 1745 rebellions.
Of course.
The Jacobite rebellion.
In which the The The old pretender, the young pretender Attempted and of course in the case of 1745 they got as far south as Grimsby! Cleethorps! - Derby.
- Derby? What happened in Derby? The buffet car ran out of beer or something? "Ah, fuck that, we're gonnae go back to Scotland! Can't take any more of this shite, I'll tell ye that!" Interestingly, he was never known as "Robbie" or "Rabbie" Burns.
He never referred to himself as Sometimes "Rab" - Just Burns? Burnsy? - Robert.
Burnsy occasionally! - "Robert.
" - "The Burnster.
" "Burnsmeister"! Yeah.
It's time for the final scores.
Oh, very interesting indeed.
Well, in equal last place, it's Barry and Alan with minus six, 'cause you both fell into our traps, unfortunately.
With three, it's Jeremy Hardy.
Way out in front, Jeremy Clarkson with plus five That is all from QI this week.
From Alan, Barry, the two Jeremies, and me, a braw bricht moonlicht nicht to ye all.
Good night.
Thank you very much indeed.