QI (2003) s02e05 Episode Script
Bears
THEME MUSIC APPLAUSE Hello, hello, hello, hello, and welcome to QI.
Once again, we trawl the trackless ocean of knowledge only to find that everything smells fishy.
I'm joined on the seafront of understanding tonight by three winklepickers and a cockle-warmer.
Bill Bailey, Jimmy Carr, Jo Brand and Alan Davies.
Now, this evening's QI brainteaser is on your little podia beside you, Year 5 QI module, and the theme is letters.
Letters.
Show the boys and girls.
- BILL: Oh, right.
- There.
Throughout the show, you have the time, we hope, to make up some interesting phrases from your letters.
- To keep you occupied.
- Just work on them as we go? - That's right.
- BILL: Oh, OK.
- Just something to do.
- When do we show them? Whenever we've got one good? If you'd like, or towards the end.
All right.
I've got one too, and I'll show you something I came up with earlier.
I'm trying to make "vagina" immediately.
There, you see? That came from my array of letters, you see.
It's a little play on the initials.
LAUGHTER - We've already got "quim".
- Jo's done "quim".
- Have you? - (ALL LAUGH) - Thank you.
- You put the "QI" in "quim".
- That's the first- (LAUGHS) - Very good.
That's the first time my quim's got a smattering.
Look at that! "Vagina doom".
Oh, Lord! It might get in the way of the game, but do ask a question.
I will do.
- "Fox!" - Very nice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think we get the idea.
You must be a blast by the fridge.
Erm, but first, we ought to do an equipment test.
Jo, how do you go? BUZZER HONKS ALARMINGLY Very good.
Jimmy goes SHIP's HORN Bill goes FOGHORN Alan goes WOMAN SAYS, "AHOY! HELLO, SAILOR" There you are.
To please you.
APPLAUSE Right.
- Well, we're gonna start with- - Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Who was that? - WOMAN SAYS, "AHOY! HELLO, SAILOR" - Hell's bells! Anyway, let's start firmly on dry land.
Question one - would anyone like some koala soup? SHIP'S HORN Jimmy.
- Presumably, a hungry koala.
- It'd be a hungry koala.
It would be a hungry baby koala.
'Cause koalas are the only animals to make what is called a soup, or pap.
What, in a bowl? Hmm, they make it in a bowl of their body, and it comes out of their - Mouth.
- Ears.
- - Arse.
Their bottom.
Yes, their arse.
Arse.
Do I get a point for that? - You get a point for knowing "arse".
- Thank you.
- Yes, very good indeed.
- They make soup with their arse? They make a soup for their young with their arse.
That's just I mean, that's careless parenting, isn't it? I'd just quite like to ask why haven't they had that on the bush-tucker trial in I'm A Celebrity? (LAUGHS) A very good question! APPLAUSE They'd bring a koala out and hold it over your bowl.
- It lends a horrible- - "Here's your koala soup, sir.
" Pfffff! It lends a horrible new meaning to "Waiter, there's a hair in my soup!" - There's a koala there, behind you! - Ah, there you are! - They're not koala bears.
They're not bears.
- Well done! - They're not bears, are they? - They're marsupials.
Yes, what are they most closely related to? - Kangaroos.
Other marsupials.
- The fish.
- A wombat, in fact.
- A wombat.
- Are they brothers and sisters? - Wombats don't have soup.
- They have cubical faeces.
- Do they? Rather oddly, yes.
Little dice.
- Cubicular? - Cubical.
He can't get that leaf down, there, he's been chewing it for ten minutes.
Well, no, isn't that because he's eating the leaves of the eucalyptus tree? He is eating them.
Which acts as a powerful hallucinogen on the koala.
So a lot of the time, they're just saying, "Eh-heh.
Whoaaaa.
" - (LAUGHS) - "What'd I come up here for?" Is that where they got the idea of making things out of their bums? Well, it's an analgesic, rather than a hallucinogen.
No, I've always got those two mixed up, you know.
It makes them sort of numb.
A painkiller.
- Yes.
- It's poisonous.
- Well - They have an incredibly long intestine, about a mile long, to digest all that poison that would kill a human.
Yes, what it is, it's really quite interesting - and that's what we're here for, to be quite interesting - they can tell, which scientists can't, the age of a eucalyptus leaf.
It has to be between a year and 18 months.
If it's any younger, if has no value whatsoever to them.
- They sleep for 20 to 22 hours a day.
- 22 hours a day.
I've gotta give you two points for that.
- You're absolutely right.
- I won a night out with a koala.
- Did you? - Yeah, we were out all night.
We went to a restaurant, then to a club.
Did you have the soup of the day? - And then - LAUGHTER What do they drink? What did your koala drink? Becks.
Hmm.
No, they don't drink that.
In the Dharuk language, koala means "no water".
But the main thing we have to remember about koala bears is that they are not bears.
So that leads us to - where do bears do their business in the winter? AHOY! - In the woods.
- "In the woods," did you say? KLAXONS I'm afraid it is.
That's minus 20 points, Alan Davies.
- 20?! For f(BLEEP)! - Well, yes, but- SHIP'S HORN - Yes, Jimmy? - Is it the Cayman Islands, for tax purposes? No.
No.
Erm, the fact is, for the seven months of the year that they're hibernating, bears do not either urinate or defecate.
- God, they must be busting to go when they get up! - You'd think.
They have a very clever little device.
Firstly, they recycle the urea as protein in the body, so they don't need to pee.
And then their body makes a little thing called a tappet, which is composed of faeces and hair and various other things, and it's a sort of butt plug that seals up their anus for the winter.
Are they available in the shops yet? She-bears give birth when they're hibernating.
When they're asleep? Well, they sort of wake up, rather briefly, to give birth.
They're like, "Oh, Jesus.
" And apparently forget about it afterwards.
They go straight back to sleep again.
And they can give birth to up to four cubs, from four different fathers.
- Sounds like the royal family, doesn't it? - Do they Do they live on an estate, by any chance? Did you just say, "Do they live on an estate?" - Well, yeah.
- The white trash of bears.
- Yeah.
They do sound a little bit white trash to me.
- Yeah! So now, bear in your bathroom - what shouldn't you squeeze? LAUGHTER - Toothpaste.
- Toothpaste.
Yes! It will make it crazy with desire.
Crazy with desire.
Lust! Well, a sort of lust for the toothpaste.
You'd be safer carrying a freshly-butchered elk leg, in terms of it would just- - There was a recent- - What, in the bathroom? Marks & Spencer.
Six butchered elk legs.
For some reason, bears go crazy for toothpaste.
They trashed a tourist camp in the Arctic, some polar bears, recently.
But toothpaste does something to dogs as well, gets them going.
You're absolutely right.
Even though they're close relations.
There are dog toothpastes to look after their teeth, but they're flavoured in all kinds of odd ways.
- Cat flavour.
- Peanut butter, beef, things like that.
- Trouser leg.
- So, there you are.
Don't go round the toothpaste near a bear.
What has huge teeth and only one facial expression? - FOGHORN - Janet Street-Porter.
- Janet Street-Porter! - KLAXONS Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear! Oh, dear, oh, dear.
APPLAUSE We've got that written up somewhere.
Oh, I knew that was- I took a fall, but it was worth it.
Oh, there you are.
- No, it's an animal.
- Oh.
- Huge teeth and one facial expression? - Yeah.
A sharkthat's just had quite a bad stroke.
LAUGHTER - On both sides of the brain.
- That'd be quite interesting.
Only on one side, so it just swims in a circle, like that.
Or, a Botoxed panther.
That would do it.
That would qualify.
What about a beaver? Beavers have big teeth, and they don't vary their face much.
This has the biggest teeth of any mammal, actually.
It's recently been discovered to be a bear.
It was thought for many years to be a member of the raccoon family, - but it's not; it's a member of the bear family.
- Oh.
It's a giant panda.
And the giant panda's teeth are so enormous, and it constricts its face, which is as stiff as a board.
You can see one there.
A giant panda.
Ah.
It was only in 1996 it was discovered to be a bear.
It was a cat! In a bear suit.
And this is where science goes very odd, because, erm, it was designated a carnivore, - although everybody knows that it doesn't- - Doesn't eat meat.
So most living pandas are actually vegetarian by choice.
- Yes.
- They should be eating meat.
They eat bamboo, as we know.
Bamboo shoots.
And they have to do that for 12 hours a day, because it's so lacking in any nutritive quality.
They said, therefore, that they're the only bears that don't hibernate.
Because they can't afford it, sort of, calorifically.
- Why are they so cute? - They are cute, aren't they? They're absolutely adorable.
You know, aesthetically, what's going on there that makes it so- Look at the eyes.
They're just pissholes in the snow, aren't they? They certainly are.
Have they ever been sort of successfully bred with other bears? - Why are they so un-libidinous? - Well, I don't know.
Do you want to know about their penises? - Are they those barbed ones that lock in - Bifurcated? - No.
- .
.
and don't come out again? - No.
They point backwards.
- Into themselves? They're ejaculating up into themselves? - It may be- - "Ohh! Sorry, love!" Hence the old joke about "eat, shoots, and leaves".
Yeah.
I don't know whether that is the reason for them- Ingrowing genitals.
That won't help breeding.
- Yeah.
It won't help with breeding.
- That's obviously it.
Surely, that must be such a turn-off.
"Do you fancy?" "No, not really, no.
" "I don't really fancy it at all.
In my species.
" What can you tell me about bamboo? MAN SAYS AHOY! - Hullo! - Hang on! You've attracted someone else from the dark side! Do you know, in Hong Kong, and probably elsewhere in Southeast Asia, they use bamboo as scaffolding.
- That's right.
- You're quite right.
It's incredibly lightweight, but it's extraordinary strong.
- And they use it over vast buildings.
- You're right.
It has a tensile strength greater than steel.
In fact, over 5,000 uses of bamboo have been recorded, including desalination uses, diesel fuel- Tarzan uses it for swimming away from people.
Exactly right.
Yes.
Breathing underwater.
As a cane, to give people a damn good thrashing! - Have you been bamboo-caned? - Certainly.
At prep school, I was caned almost daily.
Two uses of bamboo.
That was just by yourself! Never did me any harm! - Are we going through all 5,000 uses? - No, we're not.
It grows incredibly fast.
Some species grow up to four foot a day.
You can actually watch it grow.
Quite astonishing.
It was used as a torture by the Japanese.
- Four foot a day? - Yes.
A torture in the sense that they would make someone sit on it - while it was growing? - It would be a torture, yeah.
They'd tie you down over a bamboo cane and it would grow into you.
Imagine how horrible.
But what is bamboo? What sort of- - It's a plant.
- What sort of plant? Which is used for growing runner beans, feeding pandas What class of plant? - Tree.
- Tree, bark.
- No, it's a grass.
- Wood, grass.
A type of a grass.
It is a type of a grass.
Well done.
- They flower.
- Well done!- Some of them flower, only .
.
it takes them 120 years.
- Bill used to have a cactus.
- Yep.
- A huge cactus thing that was all knobbly.
- Yeah.
And it flowered, how often? Once every 25 years? Once every 25 years.
- And he only had it two weeks and it flowered! - Yep.
- Oh, you are a blessed man.
- Yeah.
- I know.
- I remember.
We took it, we didn't take it off an old couple, we bought it off an old couple.
You left them lying in the passage, didn't you? You swine! "Quick! Get away! They're coming around! Quick!" "You bastards! It's gonna flower any minute!" - "It's gonna flower!" - "We've waited 23 years!" LAUGHTER And speaking of bamboo, how many Edisons does it take to change a light bulb? HORN HONKS ALARMINGLY Yes, Jo? Thank you.
Very good.
Great joy.
Erm, well, the answer's very peculiar - he had a belief that in the human mind, there were little people.
- 15 to 20.
- Oh, for God's sake! - He really believed that.
- He did not.
And he believed when you died, they move into someone else.
When you were a psychiatric nurse, if someone came to you and said, "I believe there are little people living in me," what would you do? Punch them to the ground! Very good.
What a loss to the profession you are.
- Edison did use bamboo as a filament.
- Did he? In his light bulb.
Very good.
- Very good.
- Middle-earth tabloids.
So, Edison believed there were little people in the part of the brain called the "convolutions of Broca", where memory, amongst other things, was housed.
And he believed that this is where 15 tiny little people were.
I'm sorry - the 15, 20 little people, did they have 15 tiny little people in them? That's a good question.
I don't think Edison ever got that far.
And so on and so forth? Edison, you know, was reckoned to be one of the great inventors.
There are 1,093 patents filed to his name.
- Really? - What did he invent? I'm so ashamed - I don't know anything he invented.
- I thought the light bulb.
- No.
- That was- - It gives off more heat than light.
a long-forgotten German called Walter Globel.
- Does Alan not get a point for that? - For what? - 'Cause that was interesting.
- It gives off more heat than light? - That was a guess though, wasn't it? - It was not a guess! COCKNEY MALE VOICE: "HELLO, SAILOR" LAUGHTER - I learned that in physics.
- What, "Hello, sailor"? No, the point about Edison, which is quite interesting, - is that he was like- - Typewriter! - He developed the typewriter.
- Phonograph! - He developed the typewriter! - The phonograph is, again .
.
he is credited with inventing the phonograph.
- But one thing, one thing - Yes? .
.
Edison did invent, for 100% genuine Edison invention, that we use every day, probably, most of us.
- Is it nasal hair clippers? - No, it's not even an object.
- JO: It's not an object.
- No.
So it's a way of being - sarcasm.
Yeah, he invented sarcasm.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Like Suuure! Oh, yeah.
Erm, it's actually a word.
- A word? - Yeah.
- - Hmm.
- Is it "zugzwang"? - No.
The Germans had that, but very good.
Do people use that every day? You wouldn't use "zugzwang" every day unless you were a chess player.
- I've used it four times today.
- Yeah.
Well, you're fine till Thursday, then, aren't you? - "Crikey.
" - Er, "crikey"? - No, not "crikey".
No.
- It's Floccinaucinihilipilification.
He didn't invent that word, but well done for knowing it.
Which means? The act of assessing something as worthless.
Very correct.
Yeah.
- Ooooh! - Yeah.
The word is, er, a simple word of greeting.
- "Hello".
- "Hello"?- - That's the word.
- He invented "hello"? - I heard a different story about that.
He invented "hello".
H-E-L-L-O.
The word had existed before as "hullo", H-U-L-L-O, which never meant a greeting.
It just meant an expression of surprise.
"Hullo, what have we got here? Hullo, what's this?" - We still use it in that sense.
- Do we? "Hullo, what's that?" Don't we, Bill? - Yes! - ALAN: "Hullo!" When we live our life like a 1950s detective film, yes! (BABBLES) I often go to my fridge and say, "Hullo! We're out of milk!" "I say, mother, where's the milk?" You beast, you beast, you utter, utter beast! When they went to Jeffrey Dahmer's house, and they found a human head in the fridge, they went, "Hullo!" - It may be just a little camp, I think.
- Oh, is it camp? - "Oh, hello.
" - No! Not like that! That's I said that was a greeting! - When people say, "Hello, sailor.
" - Hello! Well, no, I think it's a bit of surprise as well.
- "Oh, hullo.
" - Yeah, that's more surprise than greeting in there.
It's been appropriated by the gays.
"Oh, hullo!" - "HI, SAILOR" SEXILY - There you are.
- Originally, it was the word "halloo".
- Hullo! - (LAUGHS) - Originally All right.
- Very good.
- There was a story about "hello", though.
There was a competition in The Evening Standard, and they said, "We wanna find out what's the thing that you're gonna say when you answer the phone.
" And they had a competition, people voted on it, and "hello" came out number one.
And what came second was "ahoy hoy".
- It's- - Which, if you watch The Simpsons, is how Mr Burns answers the phone.
Yes, absolutely.
Actually, that was Alexander Graham Bell's favoured method of answering the phone.
- "Ahoy hoy!" - Which I still use! - Do you? - Oh, yeah.
Good for you.
Whereas I get mocked for using "Hullo!" like that.
Not on the phone! No, that's perfectly acceptable.
It's for when people are surprised! - "Hullo, what's going on here?" - "Good Lord!" Stephen, what was the last thing that made you go, "Hullo!" - It was a genital wart.
- Was it a genital- I knew! I knew it would be something to do with genitals! - I knew it! - Yeah.
No, "hello" happened to be one of Edison's favourite words.
When he first recorded sound, he shouted "halloo!" which is actually a cry from the hunting fields.
"View halloo.
" So "halloo" was the first recorded word.
And he reckoned, Edison, that it sounded very clear.
He discovered this while testing Alexander Graham Bell's prototype.
So the first written use of "hello", spelt with an E, is in a letter from Edison in 1887, actually, and Alexander Graham Bell preferred "ahoy hoy".
In our house, if you ring my dad, he answers it like that, "What?" LAUGHTER Very good! "Yes?" Like that.
Actually, of course, a telephone is a fantastically rude thing.
I mean, it's like going, "Speak to me now, speak to me now, speak to me now!" if you went into someone's office and banged on their desk and said, "I will make a noise until you speak to me," it would be considered unbelievably rude.
Yes, and, that's what they had before the telephone, wasn't it? - The - Speak to me now! Talk to me now! Speak to me now! Yeah.
Exactly.
And then, it goes, "Call waiting! Call waiting!" Exactly.
Oh.
So, there we are.
Edison's really useful invention - the word "hello".
Now, how do you know- It's like, I dunno.
It's like occupational therapy in an old people's home.
Extraordinary.
Now.
Oh, hullo.
What have we got here? "Put Smarties tubes on cats legs make them walk like a robot".
Brilliant! APPLAUSE That is absolutely wonderful.
He's used all his letters! - That is unbe-f(BLEEP)-lievable.
- Yeah, that is.
It makes sense.
- You're saying- - It doesn't make a lot of sense.
- They would walk like a robot.
- Yeah.
It's an idea, it's like giving people an idea.
It's fantastic.
I don't know if you saw, I was on Countdown last week.
- It puts this completely to shame.
- What? "Gay elf romp"! APPLAUSE But I can't even imagine how you managed to do that! No, I'm sure you can't, Alan.
- I'd like to try that! - It does work, actually.
- It's a lovely way to spend an afternoon.
- Yes.
If you make them go down the stairs, it's especially good.
It would make a very good splint for a broken cat's leg, wouldn't it? - A tube of Smarties.
- Sometimes, it's how they break their legs.
You just leave it on.
"Hullo, the cat's broken its leg!" "I say! Mother, do we have any empty Smarties tubes?" What's with the biro in your mouth, though? (LAUGHS) He's given up smoking, the bloke.
He needs a substitute.
One of my proudest facts is that I am, possibly, the last ever Pipe Smoker of the Year.
That's right.
I saw, actually 'Cause new government rules have meant it unlikely that there ought to be another one.
I saw a very interesting article, I believe you were in it, in The Chap magazine.
And you were talking about pipe-smokers and the fact that, actually, the act of having a pipe does bestow a certain trustworthiness.
Out of two builders, - you would choose the builder who's smoking a pipe.
- Yeah, somehow.
- 'Cause they'd look more - There's a kind of classy, edgy- (MUMBLES) (MUMBLES) Absolutely right! Brilliant.
- You've brought it alive in a little tableau.
- Thank you.
- Wonderful.
- Pleasure.
Now, our weekly report from the frontiers of knowledge, the round that those who ought to know better call General Ignorance.
So, fingers on buzzers.
Name a dinosaur beginning with B.
SEXY WOMAN SAYS, "AHOY!" Alan.
- Brontosaurus! - Oh, Alany, Alany, Alany! KLAXONS - Brontosaurus.
- Is a dinosaur! - No, it isn't.
- Was a dinosaur! It never was.
It never was.
A misnomer.
There has never been a category of dinosaur called "brontosaurus".
Well, where does brontosaurus come from, then? Well, it's a complicated story, I'll try and take you through it.
There was a skeleton who was once labelled with the name brontosaurus, but it turns out to have been a misidentified apatosaurus.
The mistake arose in part because the apatosaurus body was mixed up with the skull of a camarasaurus.
Do you mean they just got a load of bones in a crate Yeah.
But it was the apatosaurus that had been named first.
"Tiberius can look mad".
Very good.
HORN HONKS ALARMINGLY Oh, hullo.
- A pterodactyl.
- That A "bpterodactyl"! - ALAN: A btyrannosaurus rex! - I've got one here.
- This is the property- - That's a brontosaurus! - No.
- That's a brachiosaurus! That's a brachiosaurus.
Five points for you, young master.
- Thank you.
- You brought your toys in to class.
It actually belongs to young Luke Fletcher, who is the son of one of our researchers and scriptwriters.
- Isn't, er- - Little Lukey Fletcher's.
We thank him very much for lending it.
- Thank you, Luke.
- Isn't Barney a dinosaur? Barney! Very good.
I'll give you two points for Barney.
Very good, indeed.
APPLAUSE Barney - the purple dinosaur on the play mat.
You could have had barosaurus, barapasaurus, bagaceratops, obviously.
We didn't want to go for the obvious ones, did we? Becklespinax! Becklespinax, byronosaurus, and my personal favourite, which is bambiraptor.
- Aww.
- Bambiraptor.
- A savage baby deer.
- Yes.
It's a sweet idea.
- All right, fingers, again, on your mushroomoids.
- All right.
How long can a chicken live without its head? SEVERAL BUZZERS BEEP Alan? Er, 15 to 30 seconds.
- (LAUGHS) - No.
- Does it have private medical cover? - HORN HONKS ALARMINGLY As long as it takes it to cross the road.
The answer is surprising.
I know how long it takes a live chicken to become A Pret A Manger sandwich.
- Do you know that? - No, tell.
- 55 minutes.
- Good Lord.
That's fresh.
Really.
- That is fresh.
That's a fresh sandwich.
- That is.
Don't you mean "Hullo!"? Not always.
They run around for up to half an hour afterwards.
- No, you'll be amazed.
- 48 hours.
- Is it about a week or two? - No.
Much longer.
- Seven years.
- Two years.
- Two years?! - Two years.
- JO: Two years?! - ALAN: Oh, please, Fry.
- No! - It's famous.
- I give you Mike the Headless Chicken, from the town- - Where is he? - Mike? - The town of Fruita.
The town of Fruita, in Colorado.
He was on Time Magazine, Life Magazine, he travelled America.
Was he a really big, like, six-foot chicken, that looked a bit like a bloke, you know? No.
His head was chopped off but enough jugular vein and brain stem remained for him to stay alive, and he trotted around.
There is still a website called - Oh, wait a second! - I promise you.
Check it out.
- I'm just gonna check that out.
- Have a look.
Do.
He was fed with an eye-dropper.
- Why didn't they just cook him? - Well .
.
he lived a happy and famous life! Where Colonel Sanders was after him all that time.
- You know what? - Yeah? In "Mike the Headless Chicken", the very first thing to come up in the search engine is miketheheadlesschicken.
org, and it's "Mike the Headless Chicken for President!" There you are! APPLAUSE He is a cult.
There's a song.
There's a Mike the Headless Chicken song.
- "Mike the Headless Chicken" - "Lived by the sea!" "A Legend of the West No farmer's axe could stop his heart A beating in his breast.
" Fingers on buzzers.
Who discovered penicillin? - ALL BUZZERS BEEP - Fleming.
- Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear! - Obviously.
- He did! - No, he didn't.
KLAXONS - He did! - No, he didn't! He did on mouldy bread, which you rub in your cuts in the outback.
No.
Alexander Fleming- HORN HONKS ALARMINGLY Yes? Was it Bob Fleming from The Fast Show? - It wasn't.
- Appropriate, isn't it? It wasn't Bob Fleming.
- Nor was it Ian Fleming.
- Alexander the Great.
Nor was it any other Alexander, no.
I want you to think of young Arab stableboys rubbing things into their inner thighs.
Mouldy bread! Lumberjacks, when they cut their fingers - mouldy bread.
Yeah.
Ernest Duchesne, who was a Frenchmen, who liked watching Arab stableboys rubbing things into their inner thighs - But how would we have known that? - He noticed that what they rubbed to get rid of saddle-sores was the mould on the side of the saddle.
The nomadic Bedouin of Arabia had been doing this for a thousand years, and then they were observed by Ernest Duchesne, who wrote a very lengthy paper about it, submitted it to the Institute Pasteur, in Paris, who didn't even acknowledge receipt of it, and he died completely uncelebrated.
But it was only in 1949, five years after Alexander Fleming, that he was posthumously awarded with rediscovering it.
So Alexander Fleming could only be said really - to have re-rediscovered it.
- What did he die of? Do you know? Ironically, he died of TB, which would have saved him had he had penicillin! - Ahh.
- So it's just one of those sad things.
There we are.
Now, here are some pictures for us, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen.
Er, four famous brain boxes - which is the odd one out? We have, reading left to right - Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, of course; Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize-winning physicist; Dmitri Shostakovich, Russian composer; and another Nobel Prize winner, Albert Camus, the novelist.
Who is the odd one out? Yes, Jo? There's only one with glasses on.
LAUGHTER Camus is the only one smoking? No, there's two smoking.
Is he the only one that played in goal for Algeria? Ah, now, you're in the right area.
Not the only one.
He was the only one who played for the University of Algiers.
Didn't Shostakovich play in goal for Algeria as well? No, he didn't.
Forget Algeria.
- They were all first-team - Sports.
.
.
goalkeepers, three of them were.
- Ohh.
- Conan Doyle was the only one who believed in fairies.
He also played in goal for Portsmouth.
- Did he? - JO: Did he? - Yes, he did! - BILL: Yes.
- He was a proper goalkeeper.
- And his stance was like that.
Niels Bohr played in the University of Copenhagen first team.
Presumably, when the goal went in, he did.
Albert Camus, as you rightly said, was goalkeeper as well, for the University of Algiers national.
Could that just be acknowledged that I got that? I will be giving you five points for raising- Shostakovich was a centre-forward.
- No, we wasn't.
- Banged in 40 a season with Spartak Moscow.
No, he didn't! He was an official official.
- A referee.
- He was a qualified referee.
- There he is.
- There he is.
Imposed upon the body of Pierluigi Collina, I think.
He's got tunes going round his head.
Who knows a Shostakovich tune? Bill, I bet you do.
I could give you one of his goalkeeping moves.
- Even though he was a referee.
- Oh, yeah, sorry.
Yes.
- I apologise.
- That's all right.
Just keep up.
And so, for the final whistle.
Inlast place Any reason for that intonation? With minus 35 - Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE Thank you.
In third place, with minus five, it's Bill Bailey.
In second place, with eight points, it's Jo Brand.
But thanks to his way with an anagram, in first place, with 15 points, Jimmy Carr! Well, there we are.
JINGLE MUSIC PLAYS And that's it from QI, this week, at least.
To Bill, Jimmy, Jo, and Alan, there's nothing left to say but the words of the immortal Swedes - "The winner takes it all, the loser standing small.
" Goodnight.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Closed Captions by CSI - Clemence Duprat
Once again, we trawl the trackless ocean of knowledge only to find that everything smells fishy.
I'm joined on the seafront of understanding tonight by three winklepickers and a cockle-warmer.
Bill Bailey, Jimmy Carr, Jo Brand and Alan Davies.
Now, this evening's QI brainteaser is on your little podia beside you, Year 5 QI module, and the theme is letters.
Letters.
Show the boys and girls.
- BILL: Oh, right.
- There.
Throughout the show, you have the time, we hope, to make up some interesting phrases from your letters.
- To keep you occupied.
- Just work on them as we go? - That's right.
- BILL: Oh, OK.
- Just something to do.
- When do we show them? Whenever we've got one good? If you'd like, or towards the end.
All right.
I've got one too, and I'll show you something I came up with earlier.
I'm trying to make "vagina" immediately.
There, you see? That came from my array of letters, you see.
It's a little play on the initials.
LAUGHTER - We've already got "quim".
- Jo's done "quim".
- Have you? - (ALL LAUGH) - Thank you.
- You put the "QI" in "quim".
- That's the first- (LAUGHS) - Very good.
That's the first time my quim's got a smattering.
Look at that! "Vagina doom".
Oh, Lord! It might get in the way of the game, but do ask a question.
I will do.
- "Fox!" - Very nice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think we get the idea.
You must be a blast by the fridge.
Erm, but first, we ought to do an equipment test.
Jo, how do you go? BUZZER HONKS ALARMINGLY Very good.
Jimmy goes SHIP's HORN Bill goes FOGHORN Alan goes WOMAN SAYS, "AHOY! HELLO, SAILOR" There you are.
To please you.
APPLAUSE Right.
- Well, we're gonna start with- - Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Who was that? - WOMAN SAYS, "AHOY! HELLO, SAILOR" - Hell's bells! Anyway, let's start firmly on dry land.
Question one - would anyone like some koala soup? SHIP'S HORN Jimmy.
- Presumably, a hungry koala.
- It'd be a hungry koala.
It would be a hungry baby koala.
'Cause koalas are the only animals to make what is called a soup, or pap.
What, in a bowl? Hmm, they make it in a bowl of their body, and it comes out of their - Mouth.
- Ears.
- - Arse.
Their bottom.
Yes, their arse.
Arse.
Do I get a point for that? - You get a point for knowing "arse".
- Thank you.
- Yes, very good indeed.
- They make soup with their arse? They make a soup for their young with their arse.
That's just I mean, that's careless parenting, isn't it? I'd just quite like to ask why haven't they had that on the bush-tucker trial in I'm A Celebrity? (LAUGHS) A very good question! APPLAUSE They'd bring a koala out and hold it over your bowl.
- It lends a horrible- - "Here's your koala soup, sir.
" Pfffff! It lends a horrible new meaning to "Waiter, there's a hair in my soup!" - There's a koala there, behind you! - Ah, there you are! - They're not koala bears.
They're not bears.
- Well done! - They're not bears, are they? - They're marsupials.
Yes, what are they most closely related to? - Kangaroos.
Other marsupials.
- The fish.
- A wombat, in fact.
- A wombat.
- Are they brothers and sisters? - Wombats don't have soup.
- They have cubical faeces.
- Do they? Rather oddly, yes.
Little dice.
- Cubicular? - Cubical.
He can't get that leaf down, there, he's been chewing it for ten minutes.
Well, no, isn't that because he's eating the leaves of the eucalyptus tree? He is eating them.
Which acts as a powerful hallucinogen on the koala.
So a lot of the time, they're just saying, "Eh-heh.
Whoaaaa.
" - (LAUGHS) - "What'd I come up here for?" Is that where they got the idea of making things out of their bums? Well, it's an analgesic, rather than a hallucinogen.
No, I've always got those two mixed up, you know.
It makes them sort of numb.
A painkiller.
- Yes.
- It's poisonous.
- Well - They have an incredibly long intestine, about a mile long, to digest all that poison that would kill a human.
Yes, what it is, it's really quite interesting - and that's what we're here for, to be quite interesting - they can tell, which scientists can't, the age of a eucalyptus leaf.
It has to be between a year and 18 months.
If it's any younger, if has no value whatsoever to them.
- They sleep for 20 to 22 hours a day.
- 22 hours a day.
I've gotta give you two points for that.
- You're absolutely right.
- I won a night out with a koala.
- Did you? - Yeah, we were out all night.
We went to a restaurant, then to a club.
Did you have the soup of the day? - And then - LAUGHTER What do they drink? What did your koala drink? Becks.
Hmm.
No, they don't drink that.
In the Dharuk language, koala means "no water".
But the main thing we have to remember about koala bears is that they are not bears.
So that leads us to - where do bears do their business in the winter? AHOY! - In the woods.
- "In the woods," did you say? KLAXONS I'm afraid it is.
That's minus 20 points, Alan Davies.
- 20?! For f(BLEEP)! - Well, yes, but- SHIP'S HORN - Yes, Jimmy? - Is it the Cayman Islands, for tax purposes? No.
No.
Erm, the fact is, for the seven months of the year that they're hibernating, bears do not either urinate or defecate.
- God, they must be busting to go when they get up! - You'd think.
They have a very clever little device.
Firstly, they recycle the urea as protein in the body, so they don't need to pee.
And then their body makes a little thing called a tappet, which is composed of faeces and hair and various other things, and it's a sort of butt plug that seals up their anus for the winter.
Are they available in the shops yet? She-bears give birth when they're hibernating.
When they're asleep? Well, they sort of wake up, rather briefly, to give birth.
They're like, "Oh, Jesus.
" And apparently forget about it afterwards.
They go straight back to sleep again.
And they can give birth to up to four cubs, from four different fathers.
- Sounds like the royal family, doesn't it? - Do they Do they live on an estate, by any chance? Did you just say, "Do they live on an estate?" - Well, yeah.
- The white trash of bears.
- Yeah.
They do sound a little bit white trash to me.
- Yeah! So now, bear in your bathroom - what shouldn't you squeeze? LAUGHTER - Toothpaste.
- Toothpaste.
Yes! It will make it crazy with desire.
Crazy with desire.
Lust! Well, a sort of lust for the toothpaste.
You'd be safer carrying a freshly-butchered elk leg, in terms of it would just- - There was a recent- - What, in the bathroom? Marks & Spencer.
Six butchered elk legs.
For some reason, bears go crazy for toothpaste.
They trashed a tourist camp in the Arctic, some polar bears, recently.
But toothpaste does something to dogs as well, gets them going.
You're absolutely right.
Even though they're close relations.
There are dog toothpastes to look after their teeth, but they're flavoured in all kinds of odd ways.
- Cat flavour.
- Peanut butter, beef, things like that.
- Trouser leg.
- So, there you are.
Don't go round the toothpaste near a bear.
What has huge teeth and only one facial expression? - FOGHORN - Janet Street-Porter.
- Janet Street-Porter! - KLAXONS Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear! Oh, dear, oh, dear.
APPLAUSE We've got that written up somewhere.
Oh, I knew that was- I took a fall, but it was worth it.
Oh, there you are.
- No, it's an animal.
- Oh.
- Huge teeth and one facial expression? - Yeah.
A sharkthat's just had quite a bad stroke.
LAUGHTER - On both sides of the brain.
- That'd be quite interesting.
Only on one side, so it just swims in a circle, like that.
Or, a Botoxed panther.
That would do it.
That would qualify.
What about a beaver? Beavers have big teeth, and they don't vary their face much.
This has the biggest teeth of any mammal, actually.
It's recently been discovered to be a bear.
It was thought for many years to be a member of the raccoon family, - but it's not; it's a member of the bear family.
- Oh.
It's a giant panda.
And the giant panda's teeth are so enormous, and it constricts its face, which is as stiff as a board.
You can see one there.
A giant panda.
Ah.
It was only in 1996 it was discovered to be a bear.
It was a cat! In a bear suit.
And this is where science goes very odd, because, erm, it was designated a carnivore, - although everybody knows that it doesn't- - Doesn't eat meat.
So most living pandas are actually vegetarian by choice.
- Yes.
- They should be eating meat.
They eat bamboo, as we know.
Bamboo shoots.
And they have to do that for 12 hours a day, because it's so lacking in any nutritive quality.
They said, therefore, that they're the only bears that don't hibernate.
Because they can't afford it, sort of, calorifically.
- Why are they so cute? - They are cute, aren't they? They're absolutely adorable.
You know, aesthetically, what's going on there that makes it so- Look at the eyes.
They're just pissholes in the snow, aren't they? They certainly are.
Have they ever been sort of successfully bred with other bears? - Why are they so un-libidinous? - Well, I don't know.
Do you want to know about their penises? - Are they those barbed ones that lock in - Bifurcated? - No.
- .
.
and don't come out again? - No.
They point backwards.
- Into themselves? They're ejaculating up into themselves? - It may be- - "Ohh! Sorry, love!" Hence the old joke about "eat, shoots, and leaves".
Yeah.
I don't know whether that is the reason for them- Ingrowing genitals.
That won't help breeding.
- Yeah.
It won't help with breeding.
- That's obviously it.
Surely, that must be such a turn-off.
"Do you fancy?" "No, not really, no.
" "I don't really fancy it at all.
In my species.
" What can you tell me about bamboo? MAN SAYS AHOY! - Hullo! - Hang on! You've attracted someone else from the dark side! Do you know, in Hong Kong, and probably elsewhere in Southeast Asia, they use bamboo as scaffolding.
- That's right.
- You're quite right.
It's incredibly lightweight, but it's extraordinary strong.
- And they use it over vast buildings.
- You're right.
It has a tensile strength greater than steel.
In fact, over 5,000 uses of bamboo have been recorded, including desalination uses, diesel fuel- Tarzan uses it for swimming away from people.
Exactly right.
Yes.
Breathing underwater.
As a cane, to give people a damn good thrashing! - Have you been bamboo-caned? - Certainly.
At prep school, I was caned almost daily.
Two uses of bamboo.
That was just by yourself! Never did me any harm! - Are we going through all 5,000 uses? - No, we're not.
It grows incredibly fast.
Some species grow up to four foot a day.
You can actually watch it grow.
Quite astonishing.
It was used as a torture by the Japanese.
- Four foot a day? - Yes.
A torture in the sense that they would make someone sit on it - while it was growing? - It would be a torture, yeah.
They'd tie you down over a bamboo cane and it would grow into you.
Imagine how horrible.
But what is bamboo? What sort of- - It's a plant.
- What sort of plant? Which is used for growing runner beans, feeding pandas What class of plant? - Tree.
- Tree, bark.
- No, it's a grass.
- Wood, grass.
A type of a grass.
It is a type of a grass.
Well done.
- They flower.
- Well done!- Some of them flower, only .
.
it takes them 120 years.
- Bill used to have a cactus.
- Yep.
- A huge cactus thing that was all knobbly.
- Yeah.
And it flowered, how often? Once every 25 years? Once every 25 years.
- And he only had it two weeks and it flowered! - Yep.
- Oh, you are a blessed man.
- Yeah.
- I know.
- I remember.
We took it, we didn't take it off an old couple, we bought it off an old couple.
You left them lying in the passage, didn't you? You swine! "Quick! Get away! They're coming around! Quick!" "You bastards! It's gonna flower any minute!" - "It's gonna flower!" - "We've waited 23 years!" LAUGHTER And speaking of bamboo, how many Edisons does it take to change a light bulb? HORN HONKS ALARMINGLY Yes, Jo? Thank you.
Very good.
Great joy.
Erm, well, the answer's very peculiar - he had a belief that in the human mind, there were little people.
- 15 to 20.
- Oh, for God's sake! - He really believed that.
- He did not.
And he believed when you died, they move into someone else.
When you were a psychiatric nurse, if someone came to you and said, "I believe there are little people living in me," what would you do? Punch them to the ground! Very good.
What a loss to the profession you are.
- Edison did use bamboo as a filament.
- Did he? In his light bulb.
Very good.
- Very good.
- Middle-earth tabloids.
So, Edison believed there were little people in the part of the brain called the "convolutions of Broca", where memory, amongst other things, was housed.
And he believed that this is where 15 tiny little people were.
I'm sorry - the 15, 20 little people, did they have 15 tiny little people in them? That's a good question.
I don't think Edison ever got that far.
And so on and so forth? Edison, you know, was reckoned to be one of the great inventors.
There are 1,093 patents filed to his name.
- Really? - What did he invent? I'm so ashamed - I don't know anything he invented.
- I thought the light bulb.
- No.
- That was- - It gives off more heat than light.
a long-forgotten German called Walter Globel.
- Does Alan not get a point for that? - For what? - 'Cause that was interesting.
- It gives off more heat than light? - That was a guess though, wasn't it? - It was not a guess! COCKNEY MALE VOICE: "HELLO, SAILOR" LAUGHTER - I learned that in physics.
- What, "Hello, sailor"? No, the point about Edison, which is quite interesting, - is that he was like- - Typewriter! - He developed the typewriter.
- Phonograph! - He developed the typewriter! - The phonograph is, again .
.
he is credited with inventing the phonograph.
- But one thing, one thing - Yes? .
.
Edison did invent, for 100% genuine Edison invention, that we use every day, probably, most of us.
- Is it nasal hair clippers? - No, it's not even an object.
- JO: It's not an object.
- No.
So it's a way of being - sarcasm.
Yeah, he invented sarcasm.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Like Suuure! Oh, yeah.
Erm, it's actually a word.
- A word? - Yeah.
- - Hmm.
- Is it "zugzwang"? - No.
The Germans had that, but very good.
Do people use that every day? You wouldn't use "zugzwang" every day unless you were a chess player.
- I've used it four times today.
- Yeah.
Well, you're fine till Thursday, then, aren't you? - "Crikey.
" - Er, "crikey"? - No, not "crikey".
No.
- It's Floccinaucinihilipilification.
He didn't invent that word, but well done for knowing it.
Which means? The act of assessing something as worthless.
Very correct.
Yeah.
- Ooooh! - Yeah.
The word is, er, a simple word of greeting.
- "Hello".
- "Hello"?- - That's the word.
- He invented "hello"? - I heard a different story about that.
He invented "hello".
H-E-L-L-O.
The word had existed before as "hullo", H-U-L-L-O, which never meant a greeting.
It just meant an expression of surprise.
"Hullo, what have we got here? Hullo, what's this?" - We still use it in that sense.
- Do we? "Hullo, what's that?" Don't we, Bill? - Yes! - ALAN: "Hullo!" When we live our life like a 1950s detective film, yes! (BABBLES) I often go to my fridge and say, "Hullo! We're out of milk!" "I say, mother, where's the milk?" You beast, you beast, you utter, utter beast! When they went to Jeffrey Dahmer's house, and they found a human head in the fridge, they went, "Hullo!" - It may be just a little camp, I think.
- Oh, is it camp? - "Oh, hello.
" - No! Not like that! That's I said that was a greeting! - When people say, "Hello, sailor.
" - Hello! Well, no, I think it's a bit of surprise as well.
- "Oh, hullo.
" - Yeah, that's more surprise than greeting in there.
It's been appropriated by the gays.
"Oh, hullo!" - "HI, SAILOR" SEXILY - There you are.
- Originally, it was the word "halloo".
- Hullo! - (LAUGHS) - Originally All right.
- Very good.
- There was a story about "hello", though.
There was a competition in The Evening Standard, and they said, "We wanna find out what's the thing that you're gonna say when you answer the phone.
" And they had a competition, people voted on it, and "hello" came out number one.
And what came second was "ahoy hoy".
- It's- - Which, if you watch The Simpsons, is how Mr Burns answers the phone.
Yes, absolutely.
Actually, that was Alexander Graham Bell's favoured method of answering the phone.
- "Ahoy hoy!" - Which I still use! - Do you? - Oh, yeah.
Good for you.
Whereas I get mocked for using "Hullo!" like that.
Not on the phone! No, that's perfectly acceptable.
It's for when people are surprised! - "Hullo, what's going on here?" - "Good Lord!" Stephen, what was the last thing that made you go, "Hullo!" - It was a genital wart.
- Was it a genital- I knew! I knew it would be something to do with genitals! - I knew it! - Yeah.
No, "hello" happened to be one of Edison's favourite words.
When he first recorded sound, he shouted "halloo!" which is actually a cry from the hunting fields.
"View halloo.
" So "halloo" was the first recorded word.
And he reckoned, Edison, that it sounded very clear.
He discovered this while testing Alexander Graham Bell's prototype.
So the first written use of "hello", spelt with an E, is in a letter from Edison in 1887, actually, and Alexander Graham Bell preferred "ahoy hoy".
In our house, if you ring my dad, he answers it like that, "What?" LAUGHTER Very good! "Yes?" Like that.
Actually, of course, a telephone is a fantastically rude thing.
I mean, it's like going, "Speak to me now, speak to me now, speak to me now!" if you went into someone's office and banged on their desk and said, "I will make a noise until you speak to me," it would be considered unbelievably rude.
Yes, and, that's what they had before the telephone, wasn't it? - The - Speak to me now! Talk to me now! Speak to me now! Yeah.
Exactly.
And then, it goes, "Call waiting! Call waiting!" Exactly.
Oh.
So, there we are.
Edison's really useful invention - the word "hello".
Now, how do you know- It's like, I dunno.
It's like occupational therapy in an old people's home.
Extraordinary.
Now.
Oh, hullo.
What have we got here? "Put Smarties tubes on cats legs make them walk like a robot".
Brilliant! APPLAUSE That is absolutely wonderful.
He's used all his letters! - That is unbe-f(BLEEP)-lievable.
- Yeah, that is.
It makes sense.
- You're saying- - It doesn't make a lot of sense.
- They would walk like a robot.
- Yeah.
It's an idea, it's like giving people an idea.
It's fantastic.
I don't know if you saw, I was on Countdown last week.
- It puts this completely to shame.
- What? "Gay elf romp"! APPLAUSE But I can't even imagine how you managed to do that! No, I'm sure you can't, Alan.
- I'd like to try that! - It does work, actually.
- It's a lovely way to spend an afternoon.
- Yes.
If you make them go down the stairs, it's especially good.
It would make a very good splint for a broken cat's leg, wouldn't it? - A tube of Smarties.
- Sometimes, it's how they break their legs.
You just leave it on.
"Hullo, the cat's broken its leg!" "I say! Mother, do we have any empty Smarties tubes?" What's with the biro in your mouth, though? (LAUGHS) He's given up smoking, the bloke.
He needs a substitute.
One of my proudest facts is that I am, possibly, the last ever Pipe Smoker of the Year.
That's right.
I saw, actually 'Cause new government rules have meant it unlikely that there ought to be another one.
I saw a very interesting article, I believe you were in it, in The Chap magazine.
And you were talking about pipe-smokers and the fact that, actually, the act of having a pipe does bestow a certain trustworthiness.
Out of two builders, - you would choose the builder who's smoking a pipe.
- Yeah, somehow.
- 'Cause they'd look more - There's a kind of classy, edgy- (MUMBLES) (MUMBLES) Absolutely right! Brilliant.
- You've brought it alive in a little tableau.
- Thank you.
- Wonderful.
- Pleasure.
Now, our weekly report from the frontiers of knowledge, the round that those who ought to know better call General Ignorance.
So, fingers on buzzers.
Name a dinosaur beginning with B.
SEXY WOMAN SAYS, "AHOY!" Alan.
- Brontosaurus! - Oh, Alany, Alany, Alany! KLAXONS - Brontosaurus.
- Is a dinosaur! - No, it isn't.
- Was a dinosaur! It never was.
It never was.
A misnomer.
There has never been a category of dinosaur called "brontosaurus".
Well, where does brontosaurus come from, then? Well, it's a complicated story, I'll try and take you through it.
There was a skeleton who was once labelled with the name brontosaurus, but it turns out to have been a misidentified apatosaurus.
The mistake arose in part because the apatosaurus body was mixed up with the skull of a camarasaurus.
Do you mean they just got a load of bones in a crate Yeah.
But it was the apatosaurus that had been named first.
"Tiberius can look mad".
Very good.
HORN HONKS ALARMINGLY Oh, hullo.
- A pterodactyl.
- That A "bpterodactyl"! - ALAN: A btyrannosaurus rex! - I've got one here.
- This is the property- - That's a brontosaurus! - No.
- That's a brachiosaurus! That's a brachiosaurus.
Five points for you, young master.
- Thank you.
- You brought your toys in to class.
It actually belongs to young Luke Fletcher, who is the son of one of our researchers and scriptwriters.
- Isn't, er- - Little Lukey Fletcher's.
We thank him very much for lending it.
- Thank you, Luke.
- Isn't Barney a dinosaur? Barney! Very good.
I'll give you two points for Barney.
Very good, indeed.
APPLAUSE Barney - the purple dinosaur on the play mat.
You could have had barosaurus, barapasaurus, bagaceratops, obviously.
We didn't want to go for the obvious ones, did we? Becklespinax! Becklespinax, byronosaurus, and my personal favourite, which is bambiraptor.
- Aww.
- Bambiraptor.
- A savage baby deer.
- Yes.
It's a sweet idea.
- All right, fingers, again, on your mushroomoids.
- All right.
How long can a chicken live without its head? SEVERAL BUZZERS BEEP Alan? Er, 15 to 30 seconds.
- (LAUGHS) - No.
- Does it have private medical cover? - HORN HONKS ALARMINGLY As long as it takes it to cross the road.
The answer is surprising.
I know how long it takes a live chicken to become A Pret A Manger sandwich.
- Do you know that? - No, tell.
- 55 minutes.
- Good Lord.
That's fresh.
Really.
- That is fresh.
That's a fresh sandwich.
- That is.
Don't you mean "Hullo!"? Not always.
They run around for up to half an hour afterwards.
- No, you'll be amazed.
- 48 hours.
- Is it about a week or two? - No.
Much longer.
- Seven years.
- Two years.
- Two years?! - Two years.
- JO: Two years?! - ALAN: Oh, please, Fry.
- No! - It's famous.
- I give you Mike the Headless Chicken, from the town- - Where is he? - Mike? - The town of Fruita.
The town of Fruita, in Colorado.
He was on Time Magazine, Life Magazine, he travelled America.
Was he a really big, like, six-foot chicken, that looked a bit like a bloke, you know? No.
His head was chopped off but enough jugular vein and brain stem remained for him to stay alive, and he trotted around.
There is still a website called - Oh, wait a second! - I promise you.
Check it out.
- I'm just gonna check that out.
- Have a look.
Do.
He was fed with an eye-dropper.
- Why didn't they just cook him? - Well .
.
he lived a happy and famous life! Where Colonel Sanders was after him all that time.
- You know what? - Yeah? In "Mike the Headless Chicken", the very first thing to come up in the search engine is miketheheadlesschicken.
org, and it's "Mike the Headless Chicken for President!" There you are! APPLAUSE He is a cult.
There's a song.
There's a Mike the Headless Chicken song.
- "Mike the Headless Chicken" - "Lived by the sea!" "A Legend of the West No farmer's axe could stop his heart A beating in his breast.
" Fingers on buzzers.
Who discovered penicillin? - ALL BUZZERS BEEP - Fleming.
- Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear! - Obviously.
- He did! - No, he didn't.
KLAXONS - He did! - No, he didn't! He did on mouldy bread, which you rub in your cuts in the outback.
No.
Alexander Fleming- HORN HONKS ALARMINGLY Yes? Was it Bob Fleming from The Fast Show? - It wasn't.
- Appropriate, isn't it? It wasn't Bob Fleming.
- Nor was it Ian Fleming.
- Alexander the Great.
Nor was it any other Alexander, no.
I want you to think of young Arab stableboys rubbing things into their inner thighs.
Mouldy bread! Lumberjacks, when they cut their fingers - mouldy bread.
Yeah.
Ernest Duchesne, who was a Frenchmen, who liked watching Arab stableboys rubbing things into their inner thighs - But how would we have known that? - He noticed that what they rubbed to get rid of saddle-sores was the mould on the side of the saddle.
The nomadic Bedouin of Arabia had been doing this for a thousand years, and then they were observed by Ernest Duchesne, who wrote a very lengthy paper about it, submitted it to the Institute Pasteur, in Paris, who didn't even acknowledge receipt of it, and he died completely uncelebrated.
But it was only in 1949, five years after Alexander Fleming, that he was posthumously awarded with rediscovering it.
So Alexander Fleming could only be said really - to have re-rediscovered it.
- What did he die of? Do you know? Ironically, he died of TB, which would have saved him had he had penicillin! - Ahh.
- So it's just one of those sad things.
There we are.
Now, here are some pictures for us, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen.
Er, four famous brain boxes - which is the odd one out? We have, reading left to right - Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, of course; Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize-winning physicist; Dmitri Shostakovich, Russian composer; and another Nobel Prize winner, Albert Camus, the novelist.
Who is the odd one out? Yes, Jo? There's only one with glasses on.
LAUGHTER Camus is the only one smoking? No, there's two smoking.
Is he the only one that played in goal for Algeria? Ah, now, you're in the right area.
Not the only one.
He was the only one who played for the University of Algiers.
Didn't Shostakovich play in goal for Algeria as well? No, he didn't.
Forget Algeria.
- They were all first-team - Sports.
.
.
goalkeepers, three of them were.
- Ohh.
- Conan Doyle was the only one who believed in fairies.
He also played in goal for Portsmouth.
- Did he? - JO: Did he? - Yes, he did! - BILL: Yes.
- He was a proper goalkeeper.
- And his stance was like that.
Niels Bohr played in the University of Copenhagen first team.
Presumably, when the goal went in, he did.
Albert Camus, as you rightly said, was goalkeeper as well, for the University of Algiers national.
Could that just be acknowledged that I got that? I will be giving you five points for raising- Shostakovich was a centre-forward.
- No, we wasn't.
- Banged in 40 a season with Spartak Moscow.
No, he didn't! He was an official official.
- A referee.
- He was a qualified referee.
- There he is.
- There he is.
Imposed upon the body of Pierluigi Collina, I think.
He's got tunes going round his head.
Who knows a Shostakovich tune? Bill, I bet you do.
I could give you one of his goalkeeping moves.
- Even though he was a referee.
- Oh, yeah, sorry.
Yes.
- I apologise.
- That's all right.
Just keep up.
And so, for the final whistle.
Inlast place Any reason for that intonation? With minus 35 - Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE Thank you.
In third place, with minus five, it's Bill Bailey.
In second place, with eight points, it's Jo Brand.
But thanks to his way with an anagram, in first place, with 15 points, Jimmy Carr! Well, there we are.
JINGLE MUSIC PLAYS And that's it from QI, this week, at least.
To Bill, Jimmy, Jo, and Alan, there's nothing left to say but the words of the immortal Swedes - "The winner takes it all, the loser standing small.
" Goodnight.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Closed Captions by CSI - Clemence Duprat