QI (2003) s07e15 Episode Script
Green
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING Gooooood evening! Good evening, good evening.
Welcome to QI.
This week, we'll be recycling some old rubbish as we're going green! Joining me tonight on our "solar" panel, we have the sustainable Bill Bailey! The recyclable Danny Baker! The impossible Jeremy Clarkson! And the 'ickle vegetable, Alan Davies.
And in the interests of reducing our carbon footprint, we've switched off the electric buzzers and given our panel ALAN CLAPS Yes! .
.
a selection of fully renewable wind and calorie-powered woodland whistles to attract my attention.
Bill goes MELODIC TUNE Excellent.
Thank you.
Very good.
Very good.
Danny goes CUCKOO CALL Thank you very much.
Jeremy? SHRILL MONOTONE BLAST It's abandon ship! You'll get a constable in no time! And Alan goes DUCK QUACK APPLAUSE Of course! So Stand by to offset your emissions as we venture into Question One.
Tonight's easy starter.
What colour was Frankenstein? CUCKOO! Green.
Oh! Frankenstein was a baron in a novel, who was a scientist who made a monster.
Yes, and the monster's name? The monster's name.
The monster has a name in the book.
Tell us! Adam.
Adam.
Of course he's called Adam.
He's like the first man.
What colour, obviously, was Frankenstein's monster? Green.
No - purple! No, he wasn't.
I assumed a grey colour, but I only saw him in black and white! I don't know what colour he was.
She didn't write a black-and-white book.
Except the print was black and the paper white! She used coloured words and she did describe, Mary Shelley, who wrote the novel Puce.
.
.
in 1818 Jaundiced yellow.
Yellow is the answer.
"His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath.
"His hair was of a lustrous black, his teeth of a pearly whiteness.
" "Scarcely covered.
" There were gaps? Yes, a dead body brought to life.
It was hanging.
Like the mummy.
When the mummy in the movie gets Bits come off.
Imhotep! Imhotep! Imhotep! Imhotep! Imhotep! Imhotep! Frankenstein's monster was yellow, in the book, anyway.
Where is the best place to mine gold in the UK? Who got there first? Underground.
Underground! LAUGHTER You'd think, wouldn't you? Can't be anywhere else! You'd think underground.
But that's not the answer.
Probably the dentist.
An interesting thought.
Jimmy Savile's toilet.
That's where he keeps it, stuffed up under the rim! You get from a tonne of From a tonne of "Eh, up, now then.
Where's my rings?" All his furniture's got drawers in it.
"Now, where did I put that thing?" That's only jealousy.
Sorry I said it.
For a tonne of mineable ore, you get five grams of gold.
Whereas a tonne of what I'm thinking of will yield 150 grams.
Dead bodies? No.
No.
Mobile phones.
Mobile phones, of which we throw away 1.
5 million a year.
So much gold can be got from them that in Japan in particular where there's not much natural resources of any kind, they have cornered the market in eco-recycling.
Mobile phones is a big one.
They get it from sewage plants as well.
Tiny specks of it from industrial effluent.
Used in so many processes and little bits of it can be recovered.
Isn't that amazing? It is.
From a tonne of mobile phones you may get 150 grams of gold, but how much copper? of copper! I raise you! That's pretty good, isn't it? Yeah.
And three kilograms of silver! Is there anything in a mobile phone that isn't a precious metal? Mine's mostly plastic! It seems that way, but inside, look, there's a lot going on.
Is there a bit of fondant, right in the middle? There is.
Fondant.
Just in the middle.
Isn't it that if you got all the gold in the world, it would be the size of that screen? A bit bigger than that.
I believe it's 55 feet, side to side.
All the gold ever mined.
Yes.
A cube of 55 by 55 by 55.
And the coffee.
Gold Blend.
Not counting Gold Blend there.
We'll break the bad news to you later.
Now, cars.
Something you know about.
Catalytic converters.
All new cars have them.
What do they give the atmosphere? Carbon dioxide in huge quantities.
Yes, they're not green in that sense.
But also they give off so much of this element that quite soon we may be able to harvest it from the roads.
It's dust that comes out of the exhaust.
Platinum.
Platinum is right.
UK roads are now than they were before the catalytic converter.
People think it would be worth harvesting the platinum.
How would they do that? It's weird.
Hoover? No, they use Mice! It is biological.
Yes.
Not mice.
Much, much smaller.
Insects.
Even smaller.
Bacteria.
Bacteria is the right answer, yes.
E.
coli.
E.
coli?! On the roadside? It's not the dangerous E.
coli.
It refines the dust.
Anyway, a tonne of mobile phones contains more gold than a tonne of ore from a gold mine.
Talking of valuable commodities, this particular lady was in the same business as her mother and grandfather before her.
You have to stop me when you know what it is they sold as a business.
I'll give you some clues.
We all want more of it.
Some of us keep it better than others.
It's invisible.
CUCKOO! Time.
Yes, it's the right answer.
They invented time?! They sold it! I remember what William Hartnell looked like.
No, they sold it.
They sold it? How would you sell time? Make a living? What period? They started in the 19th century and went up to 1940.
Four generations.
Time shares.
You get a flat in Malta for two weeks.
No.
Is it something to do with Bristol being 11 minutes behind London? It's not exactly, but it's to do with the fact that in the 19th century it became more important to keep time.
There was only one clock, the Greenwich clock that keeps the official GMT, Greenwich Mean Time, and this woman would go with her very fine pocket watch and go, once a week, and put the time right.
Then wander round London and people would pay to look at her watch! She made money giving people the time.
Businessmen had a subscription to her business.
It sounds very much like a scam! Some sort of euphemism! "What is going on here?" "He's just looking at my watch, Officer.
" "In this dark alley?" You'd think, wouldn't you? People would stop her to look at her watch? Ruth Belville.
"Her watch.
" A John Arnold pocket chronometer.
Number 485786.
They cornered the market from 1836 to 1940.
Only three of them did it? One person at a time.
You'd be lucky to find them! That's the thing.
You could buy an annual subscription.
They'd go and visit them just as a sandwich company goes round to a firm.
Like an alarm clock? They'd go round with the clock and say it's now exactly this.
The firm would set all their watches by it.
Why did they decide on an hour? What was that? Why an hour? Why not just half an hour and make that an hour? Because 24 is divisible in so many different ways.
It's very factorisable.
Divisible by two, three, four, six, eight.
So is ten.
No, ten is only divisible by one, two, five and itself.
Only on one dimension! If you go into another dimension, you can have anything you want! Unfortunately we weren't in another dimension.
Oh! Sorry! Oh! Sorry, but why was it important to divide 24 by eight? Yeah.
No, to have as divisible a system as possible.
Why wasn't it 100? Have 100.
Make it all up to ten.
If you want, you can have a plan to decimalise time.
I'm going to make my own.
I'm going to cross two of these off! Let's do it.
I'm with you on that one.
Let's have a vote.
I'm going to get rid of three Three and eight.
ALL TALK AT ONCE You can't do one to ten, cos then we'll never have elevenses ever again! We'll leave that in.
We can do nineses.
Nineses?! What is your system? How many hours are in your day? 20.
20 hours.
To make it nice and simple, we'll call it a "horare" or something.
Or a "hoor".
A whore? SCOTTISH ACCENT: A whore! A whore! Splendid.
Time is a whore, I think.
Aye! Originally it was 12 hours because the Babylonians What do they know? They had a base-12 counting system.
We have ten fingers and ten toes.
You could count off the bits, the sections of time, using one of your digits.
What a way to tell the time.
"What time is it?" One, two Three-and-a-half.
Two minutes past four.
What would that be, then? About six? About six, yeah.
Good luck.
There could be a good line in merchandisable metric clocks.
Yes.
The Bill Bailey QI metric clock.
Metric clock.
Fine, that'll do me.
Anyway, we've just done an hour on that topic! By whose system? It's an hour and a bit.
There's only one thing.
Time to move on! The Belvilles gave people a good time by selling them a look at their watch.
The Belvilles never went to this place, but what time is it at the South Pole? - It's no time at all, isn't it? - It's every time.
It's every time? It's no time? It's the penguin Public Enemy tribute band! Yes, because all the time zones, obviously, which are like that way, meet at the South Pole, don't they? Yes, they do.
And it's not true about the compass.
If you're at the magnetic North Pole - nobody knows quite where it is - but I wanted the compass to do that thing where it can't find South or anywhere, but it doesn't.
How boring! It is boring, yeah.
Is there a red-and-white striped barber's pole there? There's nothing.
Nor a shaft of light.
Nothing.
Maybe it works at the South Pole.
It's a lot chillier.
It's always noon or always midnight.
Why do we have to have north, south, east, west? Oh, hello! Hello! He's drunk with power! EVIL CACKLE All the time zones converge at the poles, but the default time in Antarctica is GMT.
That's what they use.
But now, time to eat up your greens now.
According to the Vegetarian Society, why are people who don't eat meat called vegetarians? So we can identify them as fools and mad men! I don't know.
Where does the word come from? Presumably the word "vegetable".
That's not why they're called vegetarians.
What, when people who only eat vegetables That's not why they're called it.
Is it a star sign? Very good! No, it's Saggyhairyass! Say that again.
Saggyhairyass.
Thank you.
It's my favourite star sign.
Are they named after dinosaurs? No, they're not.
No.
Herbivores.
An "-arian" is an enthusiast or a practiser of "vege-".
I know why.
Yes? Because if you said you had a herbivore coming to dinner, the children would be frightened.
So they've called themselves vegetarians to make themselves seem normal and not pallid.
I know what you mean.
But the surprising point to most people is that the original word from which "vegetarian" comes according to the Vegetarian Society, is not the word "vegetable.
" It's nothing to do with vegetable.
We're talking about the root word.
Oddly enough! It's really bizarre, I grant you.
It's the word vegetus, which is nothing to do with vegetation.
It's a Latin word meaning "whole, sound, fresh or lively".
I don't call them vegetables.
I have a different system of naming them.
Yes! The official UK Vegetarian Society, VSUK, the oldest vegetarian society in the world, they say that's the origin of it, vegetus, not vegetable.
Name some famous vegetarians for me.
JEREMY: Hitler.
Oh, dear! He wasn't a vegetarian? I don't think so.
He is in my mind! Napoleon.
But not the army.
I don't think so.
My tortoise died the other day Oh! .
.
and I honestly considered having its leg on some toast.
I thought, "I wonder what it tastes like?" Some people don't think like that.
I know.
We had a tortoise once, and it had bad arthritis in its leg.
They said, "We can operate and replace it with a wheel.
" Wonderful.
They do that.
They do that, don't they? Castors.
They can go in all directions.
Did you do that? We thought about taking all its legs off and putting wheels on all of them.
No! And a little engine on the shell.
You could send it down the shops! JEREMY: With an aerial on a spring! What a great idea! But you couldn't.
I bet someone would object if you motorised a tortoise.
Really?! The RSPCA! You could have lorries, like trailers Political correctness gone mad(!) You can't even mutilate a tortoise any more! I'm not suggesting you mutilate it.
You had a tortoise? Vegetarian! It could keep its legs.
It could keep its legs.
I'm thinking of like a bigfoot truck in America.
Big wheels that could be detached so it could be a tortoise and eat weeds and then The legs go up.
.
.
when you wanted, you could send it to the shops.
A transformer tortoise.
Yes! Nothing wrong with that.
The big ones in the Galapagos Islands.
They're terrific.
They could bring substantial pieces of furniture back.
You could put wings on them.
They could take off.
Yeah.
The tortoise's tum.
Brum! Brum! Brum! Anyway, that's good.
Good talk.
Mad, but good.
The Vegetarian Society claims "vegetarian" comes from the word vegetus.
Everyone else thinks it's because they eat vegetables.
Now, all four of you are obviously "babe magnets".
But what's a cow magnet? Born with a big horn? Sorry! Very good.
A hedge.
A hedge? A hedge.
Cows gravitate towards hedges.
Do they? I've got a mate who's afraid of cows.
A lot of people are, quite rightly.
He's really afraid of them.
He says they can rear up.
I said, "They can't rear up!" I said, "You're being ridiculous!" He goes rambling.
I said there's no attacks of cows on people.
I've seen a bull rear up on a cow.
One day I saw him, he said, "I've got something to show you!" He'd got a clipping out of the Metro, a free paper, and a man had been knocked over and assaulted by cows.
They do! He was an off-duty policeman and he'd phoned the police helicopter to rescue him! They sent it straight out.
It landed in the field and scared them off.
He was lying there with broken bones and he was in terrible pain.
They gang up on you.
This happened to me in a field in Norfolk.
Were you being herded by cows? They tried to mount my Land Rover.
I've got a black Land Rover and there were 50 or 60 around, all over it.
I thought the top might come in.
Terrifying! You're thinking of lions! No, no.
I'm thinking of cows.
I'm thinking cows, Bill.
These cows surrounded the car.
I tried everything.
When I say everything, I put on show tunes and opened the sun roof! Show tunes? A Londoner tries to clear some cows.
The farmer's chewing straw going, "He'll put some music on in a minute!" I'll tell you what it was.
It was Defying Gravity by Wicked.
"Let's try some heavy metal.
" It was Defying Gravity by Wicked.
No, they respond to Galvanize by The Chemical Brothers.
Yeah? That's what you should have played.
Whatever, I couldn't do it.
My wife said, "Get out of the car.
" I said, "The cows won't let me!" I know the answer.
Danny Baker is the cow magnet.
Very good! I can't deny it.
Rather lame proof.
But here is the real cow magnet.
Pass it on to Jeremy.
Everyone can have a look.
How would that work? It is a cow magnet.
Made in Denmark.
It's just a magnet, Stephen.
It basically is a magnet but this is a cow magnet.
Is it cows with bells round their necks? Is it to do with the fact it's made in Denmark? Not particularly, no.
Is it a cow as we know it or No, no, it's a real cow.
Bill That was weird! We'll have to call you Buffalo Bill! Bovine Buffalo Bill.
HE MOOS No, this goes inside the cow.
Ah! That goes in the cow? Not the way you're thinking.
Only one way, surely! Is it when you want the cow to come to the milking shed, if you turn on the magnet in the milking shed and that's in it, the cows would come.
What about the abattoir? Not the abattoir.
It is simply that a cow in the course of its daily grazings will often pick up metal in fields.
Bits of wire in tyres that are used to weigh down tarpaulins on silage pits.
Barbed wire and things.
Gold.
They can cause inflammation in the stomach.
Gold, yes! So a magnet is put into their stomach and it attracts all the metal they eat and eventually the gastric juices cause the metal to dissolve.
Let's press on.
We should.
Cow magnets sit inside cows' stomachs to attract bits of metal.
Why was Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act so good for the Scottish tourist industry? Something to do with kilts? Something to do with Gretna Green.
Green is our word.
Gretna Green.
Yes.
Where's Gretna Green? Just inside Scotland.
It's where you elope to to get married.
It's just over the border.
Up until 1753, in Britain, you didn't need your parents' permission to marry.
There were only three conditions to be satisfied.
You couldn't already be married.
The girl had to be 12 or over.
The boy had to be 14 or over.
They mustn't be brother and sister.
And that was it.
You didn't even need witnesses.
No? You'd just get married.
But after and various legal wrangles, because it was so hard to prove people were married, the Hardwicke Act came in.
But it didn't apply in Scotland.
So couples would elope.
The nearest place on the main road to Edinburgh was Gretna Green.
In Gretna Green, as in England before this, you didn't have to be a priest or a mayor.
And these blacksmiths, they were called anvil weddings, blacksmiths would perform thousands.
in Gretna Green still.
People think it romantic to go.
Knock up a couple of rings while they're doing it.
So, continuing our green theme now Why are you wasting electricity? Sorry? Why do you have two screens on? Why not turn that one off? Then Bill can come and sit next to me on my knee.
Which is what I've been hoping for all along.
You on for that? Go on! Move! APPLAUSE AND CHEERING Come on, Bill.
I'd better come by you, then.
Oh, it's you now! There you go.
I'm still far away from him! Like when you go to a restaurant and you want to sit next to someone and end up at the other end of the table! You can gaze at him across I love you - pass it on.
I love you.
Pass it on.
You do kung fu.
Pass it on.
Paid three and fourpence for going to a dance.
Very good.
Excellent work.
This is rather good.
We're saving Saving power.
That whole screen now is off.
Good thought.
People say you're an enemy of environmentalism.
Rubbish! You have no idea! We could take this further.
You at home - turn off your sets! Steady on here! OK.
Let's have a musical clue for this next question.
MUSIC: Colonel Bogey's March Colonel Bogey's March.
Yes.
Colonel Bogey's March.
Why, the question is, did Colonel Bogey go one over par in 1925? A bogey is one over par, in golf.
The extraordinary thing was, in Britain, the way you set your par was to imagine the perfect player you were playing against who got an exactly perfect score without dropping any shots.
And he was called Mr Bogey.
So that meant par, not one over par.
It meant par, bizarrely.
In the United Services Golf Club, they didn't want a Mr Bogey, so they called him Colonel Bogey.
So you imagined you were playing Colonel Bogey.
So Colonel Bogey gets four on this hole.
And I got five.
So you're one over.
But if you got four too, that was Bogey - par.
But America, who had newer courses because they'd only taken to the game more lately, they used the word par and when they played on British ones they found ours were easier, so if they made a British one, one over was Bogey.
Easier here? Complicated.
I literally have no idea what you're talking about.
I know it sounds complicated.
In America they played on large courses, 18 holes.
Here, you had to get it past the windmill APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH But essentially bogey meant par until we joined in with the Americans in 1925 and we agreed to use Bogey to mean one over.
All of which brings us rolling off the green and into the bunker of general ignorance.
Have you got your instruments still? Yes.
You're on a tropical beach.
You've got a screwdriver in one hand, a rusty nail in the other.
A crowd of huge male mosquitoes descends on you.
What are they after? Yes, Bill? Drinks, I was going to say.
Ah, sugar.
Ah.
Sugar.
They're not after anything.
Only females bite you.
That is true.
That is a fact.
That's correct.
They're not after your blood.
They're after the Orange juice.
Orange juice.
In the screwdriver.
Yes.
Points! JEREMY: Why is there Orange juice.
The males sip juice.
They don't use blood at all.
The blood is for the female when they're in egg.
It helps the eggs develop.
Female mosquitoes are attracted by moisture, lactic acid, carbon dioxide, body heat and movement.
For the cocktails.
What's a Manhattan? Red Bull and egg nog.
Oh, dear! JEREMY: I want that.
No, it's whiskey, vermouth and bitters.
Cuba libre? Cuba libre.
Cuba Libre.
Oh, that's rum and Coke.
That will make you pregnant.
Daiquiri? Daiquiri.
It's the bar where it was invented.
Where? What? Floridita in Havana.
Very good.
I can't remember what's in it but I can tell you it's fantastic.
I could play the piano, I thought, afterwards! Very good.
Rum, lime juice and sugar.
< It wasn't even a piano, it was a table! Margarita.
Margarita.
Salt.
Salt round the edge.
Gin.
It's very unfair to taunt us with these drinks when we're here without so much as water! Do any of us drink cocktails? Does anyone outside of ALAN: Only at half past ten, or half two in your time! A banana Daiquiri for breakfast is one of the greatest luxuries a man can have.
Sex on the Beach? A banana Daiquiri? Anyone know what's in Sex on the Beach? Vodka, peach schnapps, orange and cranberry juice.
I like peach schnapps.
And a little bit of crab sweat.
Anyway Get things going.
It's the lady mosquitoes who bite.
The men sip fruit juice and nectar.
What harm can a wind turbine do? Kill birds.
Yeah.
Kill birds? The Royal Society for the Prevention of Birds recently announced that they can't kill birds.
Oh, you spotted that? Good.
But they do harm another flying creature.
Bats? Superman? Superman? No.
Bats.
JEREMY: And goats.
The goats that hang on to them? A man in Taiwan reported recently that he lost 400 goats cos they could no longer sleep.
Have you ever heard one? They make an unbelievable racket.
Is that why they attract bats? No.
They don't get hit by the blades.
It's the drop in pressure that is caused.
They have, as mammals, like humans, soft lungs unlike birds who have harder lungs.
The capillaries burst in their lungs and they die, just by the pressure change near the turbines.
Nasty.
Which brings us to the scores.
Oh, my heavens! Really? Yes, now look at this.
Oh, dear me, Lord! In first place, with minus five, is Bill Bailey! So close.
So close.
Doing really well with minus seven is Alan Davies! The man who usually soars into the lead on our show and gets enormous numbers of points, is in third place with minus 13, Danny Baker! I'm sorry to say, way off the pace with minus 27, Jeremy Clarkson! That's all from this edition of eco QI, our special one-screen edition for your pleasure and entertainment.
Good night from Danny, Jeremy, Bill, Alan and me.
This thought from American comedian A.
Whitney Brown: "I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals.
"I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants.
" Good night!
Welcome to QI.
This week, we'll be recycling some old rubbish as we're going green! Joining me tonight on our "solar" panel, we have the sustainable Bill Bailey! The recyclable Danny Baker! The impossible Jeremy Clarkson! And the 'ickle vegetable, Alan Davies.
And in the interests of reducing our carbon footprint, we've switched off the electric buzzers and given our panel ALAN CLAPS Yes! .
.
a selection of fully renewable wind and calorie-powered woodland whistles to attract my attention.
Bill goes MELODIC TUNE Excellent.
Thank you.
Very good.
Very good.
Danny goes CUCKOO CALL Thank you very much.
Jeremy? SHRILL MONOTONE BLAST It's abandon ship! You'll get a constable in no time! And Alan goes DUCK QUACK APPLAUSE Of course! So Stand by to offset your emissions as we venture into Question One.
Tonight's easy starter.
What colour was Frankenstein? CUCKOO! Green.
Oh! Frankenstein was a baron in a novel, who was a scientist who made a monster.
Yes, and the monster's name? The monster's name.
The monster has a name in the book.
Tell us! Adam.
Adam.
Of course he's called Adam.
He's like the first man.
What colour, obviously, was Frankenstein's monster? Green.
No - purple! No, he wasn't.
I assumed a grey colour, but I only saw him in black and white! I don't know what colour he was.
She didn't write a black-and-white book.
Except the print was black and the paper white! She used coloured words and she did describe, Mary Shelley, who wrote the novel Puce.
.
.
in 1818 Jaundiced yellow.
Yellow is the answer.
"His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath.
"His hair was of a lustrous black, his teeth of a pearly whiteness.
" "Scarcely covered.
" There were gaps? Yes, a dead body brought to life.
It was hanging.
Like the mummy.
When the mummy in the movie gets Bits come off.
Imhotep! Imhotep! Imhotep! Imhotep! Imhotep! Imhotep! Frankenstein's monster was yellow, in the book, anyway.
Where is the best place to mine gold in the UK? Who got there first? Underground.
Underground! LAUGHTER You'd think, wouldn't you? Can't be anywhere else! You'd think underground.
But that's not the answer.
Probably the dentist.
An interesting thought.
Jimmy Savile's toilet.
That's where he keeps it, stuffed up under the rim! You get from a tonne of From a tonne of "Eh, up, now then.
Where's my rings?" All his furniture's got drawers in it.
"Now, where did I put that thing?" That's only jealousy.
Sorry I said it.
For a tonne of mineable ore, you get five grams of gold.
Whereas a tonne of what I'm thinking of will yield 150 grams.
Dead bodies? No.
No.
Mobile phones.
Mobile phones, of which we throw away 1.
5 million a year.
So much gold can be got from them that in Japan in particular where there's not much natural resources of any kind, they have cornered the market in eco-recycling.
Mobile phones is a big one.
They get it from sewage plants as well.
Tiny specks of it from industrial effluent.
Used in so many processes and little bits of it can be recovered.
Isn't that amazing? It is.
From a tonne of mobile phones you may get 150 grams of gold, but how much copper? of copper! I raise you! That's pretty good, isn't it? Yeah.
And three kilograms of silver! Is there anything in a mobile phone that isn't a precious metal? Mine's mostly plastic! It seems that way, but inside, look, there's a lot going on.
Is there a bit of fondant, right in the middle? There is.
Fondant.
Just in the middle.
Isn't it that if you got all the gold in the world, it would be the size of that screen? A bit bigger than that.
I believe it's 55 feet, side to side.
All the gold ever mined.
Yes.
A cube of 55 by 55 by 55.
And the coffee.
Gold Blend.
Not counting Gold Blend there.
We'll break the bad news to you later.
Now, cars.
Something you know about.
Catalytic converters.
All new cars have them.
What do they give the atmosphere? Carbon dioxide in huge quantities.
Yes, they're not green in that sense.
But also they give off so much of this element that quite soon we may be able to harvest it from the roads.
It's dust that comes out of the exhaust.
Platinum.
Platinum is right.
UK roads are now than they were before the catalytic converter.
People think it would be worth harvesting the platinum.
How would they do that? It's weird.
Hoover? No, they use Mice! It is biological.
Yes.
Not mice.
Much, much smaller.
Insects.
Even smaller.
Bacteria.
Bacteria is the right answer, yes.
E.
coli.
E.
coli?! On the roadside? It's not the dangerous E.
coli.
It refines the dust.
Anyway, a tonne of mobile phones contains more gold than a tonne of ore from a gold mine.
Talking of valuable commodities, this particular lady was in the same business as her mother and grandfather before her.
You have to stop me when you know what it is they sold as a business.
I'll give you some clues.
We all want more of it.
Some of us keep it better than others.
It's invisible.
CUCKOO! Time.
Yes, it's the right answer.
They invented time?! They sold it! I remember what William Hartnell looked like.
No, they sold it.
They sold it? How would you sell time? Make a living? What period? They started in the 19th century and went up to 1940.
Four generations.
Time shares.
You get a flat in Malta for two weeks.
No.
Is it something to do with Bristol being 11 minutes behind London? It's not exactly, but it's to do with the fact that in the 19th century it became more important to keep time.
There was only one clock, the Greenwich clock that keeps the official GMT, Greenwich Mean Time, and this woman would go with her very fine pocket watch and go, once a week, and put the time right.
Then wander round London and people would pay to look at her watch! She made money giving people the time.
Businessmen had a subscription to her business.
It sounds very much like a scam! Some sort of euphemism! "What is going on here?" "He's just looking at my watch, Officer.
" "In this dark alley?" You'd think, wouldn't you? People would stop her to look at her watch? Ruth Belville.
"Her watch.
" A John Arnold pocket chronometer.
Number 485786.
They cornered the market from 1836 to 1940.
Only three of them did it? One person at a time.
You'd be lucky to find them! That's the thing.
You could buy an annual subscription.
They'd go and visit them just as a sandwich company goes round to a firm.
Like an alarm clock? They'd go round with the clock and say it's now exactly this.
The firm would set all their watches by it.
Why did they decide on an hour? What was that? Why an hour? Why not just half an hour and make that an hour? Because 24 is divisible in so many different ways.
It's very factorisable.
Divisible by two, three, four, six, eight.
So is ten.
No, ten is only divisible by one, two, five and itself.
Only on one dimension! If you go into another dimension, you can have anything you want! Unfortunately we weren't in another dimension.
Oh! Sorry! Oh! Sorry, but why was it important to divide 24 by eight? Yeah.
No, to have as divisible a system as possible.
Why wasn't it 100? Have 100.
Make it all up to ten.
If you want, you can have a plan to decimalise time.
I'm going to make my own.
I'm going to cross two of these off! Let's do it.
I'm with you on that one.
Let's have a vote.
I'm going to get rid of three Three and eight.
ALL TALK AT ONCE You can't do one to ten, cos then we'll never have elevenses ever again! We'll leave that in.
We can do nineses.
Nineses?! What is your system? How many hours are in your day? 20.
20 hours.
To make it nice and simple, we'll call it a "horare" or something.
Or a "hoor".
A whore? SCOTTISH ACCENT: A whore! A whore! Splendid.
Time is a whore, I think.
Aye! Originally it was 12 hours because the Babylonians What do they know? They had a base-12 counting system.
We have ten fingers and ten toes.
You could count off the bits, the sections of time, using one of your digits.
What a way to tell the time.
"What time is it?" One, two Three-and-a-half.
Two minutes past four.
What would that be, then? About six? About six, yeah.
Good luck.
There could be a good line in merchandisable metric clocks.
Yes.
The Bill Bailey QI metric clock.
Metric clock.
Fine, that'll do me.
Anyway, we've just done an hour on that topic! By whose system? It's an hour and a bit.
There's only one thing.
Time to move on! The Belvilles gave people a good time by selling them a look at their watch.
The Belvilles never went to this place, but what time is it at the South Pole? - It's no time at all, isn't it? - It's every time.
It's every time? It's no time? It's the penguin Public Enemy tribute band! Yes, because all the time zones, obviously, which are like that way, meet at the South Pole, don't they? Yes, they do.
And it's not true about the compass.
If you're at the magnetic North Pole - nobody knows quite where it is - but I wanted the compass to do that thing where it can't find South or anywhere, but it doesn't.
How boring! It is boring, yeah.
Is there a red-and-white striped barber's pole there? There's nothing.
Nor a shaft of light.
Nothing.
Maybe it works at the South Pole.
It's a lot chillier.
It's always noon or always midnight.
Why do we have to have north, south, east, west? Oh, hello! Hello! He's drunk with power! EVIL CACKLE All the time zones converge at the poles, but the default time in Antarctica is GMT.
That's what they use.
But now, time to eat up your greens now.
According to the Vegetarian Society, why are people who don't eat meat called vegetarians? So we can identify them as fools and mad men! I don't know.
Where does the word come from? Presumably the word "vegetable".
That's not why they're called vegetarians.
What, when people who only eat vegetables That's not why they're called it.
Is it a star sign? Very good! No, it's Saggyhairyass! Say that again.
Saggyhairyass.
Thank you.
It's my favourite star sign.
Are they named after dinosaurs? No, they're not.
No.
Herbivores.
An "-arian" is an enthusiast or a practiser of "vege-".
I know why.
Yes? Because if you said you had a herbivore coming to dinner, the children would be frightened.
So they've called themselves vegetarians to make themselves seem normal and not pallid.
I know what you mean.
But the surprising point to most people is that the original word from which "vegetarian" comes according to the Vegetarian Society, is not the word "vegetable.
" It's nothing to do with vegetable.
We're talking about the root word.
Oddly enough! It's really bizarre, I grant you.
It's the word vegetus, which is nothing to do with vegetation.
It's a Latin word meaning "whole, sound, fresh or lively".
I don't call them vegetables.
I have a different system of naming them.
Yes! The official UK Vegetarian Society, VSUK, the oldest vegetarian society in the world, they say that's the origin of it, vegetus, not vegetable.
Name some famous vegetarians for me.
JEREMY: Hitler.
Oh, dear! He wasn't a vegetarian? I don't think so.
He is in my mind! Napoleon.
But not the army.
I don't think so.
My tortoise died the other day Oh! .
.
and I honestly considered having its leg on some toast.
I thought, "I wonder what it tastes like?" Some people don't think like that.
I know.
We had a tortoise once, and it had bad arthritis in its leg.
They said, "We can operate and replace it with a wheel.
" Wonderful.
They do that.
They do that, don't they? Castors.
They can go in all directions.
Did you do that? We thought about taking all its legs off and putting wheels on all of them.
No! And a little engine on the shell.
You could send it down the shops! JEREMY: With an aerial on a spring! What a great idea! But you couldn't.
I bet someone would object if you motorised a tortoise.
Really?! The RSPCA! You could have lorries, like trailers Political correctness gone mad(!) You can't even mutilate a tortoise any more! I'm not suggesting you mutilate it.
You had a tortoise? Vegetarian! It could keep its legs.
It could keep its legs.
I'm thinking of like a bigfoot truck in America.
Big wheels that could be detached so it could be a tortoise and eat weeds and then The legs go up.
.
.
when you wanted, you could send it to the shops.
A transformer tortoise.
Yes! Nothing wrong with that.
The big ones in the Galapagos Islands.
They're terrific.
They could bring substantial pieces of furniture back.
You could put wings on them.
They could take off.
Yeah.
The tortoise's tum.
Brum! Brum! Brum! Anyway, that's good.
Good talk.
Mad, but good.
The Vegetarian Society claims "vegetarian" comes from the word vegetus.
Everyone else thinks it's because they eat vegetables.
Now, all four of you are obviously "babe magnets".
But what's a cow magnet? Born with a big horn? Sorry! Very good.
A hedge.
A hedge? A hedge.
Cows gravitate towards hedges.
Do they? I've got a mate who's afraid of cows.
A lot of people are, quite rightly.
He's really afraid of them.
He says they can rear up.
I said, "They can't rear up!" I said, "You're being ridiculous!" He goes rambling.
I said there's no attacks of cows on people.
I've seen a bull rear up on a cow.
One day I saw him, he said, "I've got something to show you!" He'd got a clipping out of the Metro, a free paper, and a man had been knocked over and assaulted by cows.
They do! He was an off-duty policeman and he'd phoned the police helicopter to rescue him! They sent it straight out.
It landed in the field and scared them off.
He was lying there with broken bones and he was in terrible pain.
They gang up on you.
This happened to me in a field in Norfolk.
Were you being herded by cows? They tried to mount my Land Rover.
I've got a black Land Rover and there were 50 or 60 around, all over it.
I thought the top might come in.
Terrifying! You're thinking of lions! No, no.
I'm thinking of cows.
I'm thinking cows, Bill.
These cows surrounded the car.
I tried everything.
When I say everything, I put on show tunes and opened the sun roof! Show tunes? A Londoner tries to clear some cows.
The farmer's chewing straw going, "He'll put some music on in a minute!" I'll tell you what it was.
It was Defying Gravity by Wicked.
"Let's try some heavy metal.
" It was Defying Gravity by Wicked.
No, they respond to Galvanize by The Chemical Brothers.
Yeah? That's what you should have played.
Whatever, I couldn't do it.
My wife said, "Get out of the car.
" I said, "The cows won't let me!" I know the answer.
Danny Baker is the cow magnet.
Very good! I can't deny it.
Rather lame proof.
But here is the real cow magnet.
Pass it on to Jeremy.
Everyone can have a look.
How would that work? It is a cow magnet.
Made in Denmark.
It's just a magnet, Stephen.
It basically is a magnet but this is a cow magnet.
Is it cows with bells round their necks? Is it to do with the fact it's made in Denmark? Not particularly, no.
Is it a cow as we know it or No, no, it's a real cow.
Bill That was weird! We'll have to call you Buffalo Bill! Bovine Buffalo Bill.
HE MOOS No, this goes inside the cow.
Ah! That goes in the cow? Not the way you're thinking.
Only one way, surely! Is it when you want the cow to come to the milking shed, if you turn on the magnet in the milking shed and that's in it, the cows would come.
What about the abattoir? Not the abattoir.
It is simply that a cow in the course of its daily grazings will often pick up metal in fields.
Bits of wire in tyres that are used to weigh down tarpaulins on silage pits.
Barbed wire and things.
Gold.
They can cause inflammation in the stomach.
Gold, yes! So a magnet is put into their stomach and it attracts all the metal they eat and eventually the gastric juices cause the metal to dissolve.
Let's press on.
We should.
Cow magnets sit inside cows' stomachs to attract bits of metal.
Why was Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act so good for the Scottish tourist industry? Something to do with kilts? Something to do with Gretna Green.
Green is our word.
Gretna Green.
Yes.
Where's Gretna Green? Just inside Scotland.
It's where you elope to to get married.
It's just over the border.
Up until 1753, in Britain, you didn't need your parents' permission to marry.
There were only three conditions to be satisfied.
You couldn't already be married.
The girl had to be 12 or over.
The boy had to be 14 or over.
They mustn't be brother and sister.
And that was it.
You didn't even need witnesses.
No? You'd just get married.
But after and various legal wrangles, because it was so hard to prove people were married, the Hardwicke Act came in.
But it didn't apply in Scotland.
So couples would elope.
The nearest place on the main road to Edinburgh was Gretna Green.
In Gretna Green, as in England before this, you didn't have to be a priest or a mayor.
And these blacksmiths, they were called anvil weddings, blacksmiths would perform thousands.
in Gretna Green still.
People think it romantic to go.
Knock up a couple of rings while they're doing it.
So, continuing our green theme now Why are you wasting electricity? Sorry? Why do you have two screens on? Why not turn that one off? Then Bill can come and sit next to me on my knee.
Which is what I've been hoping for all along.
You on for that? Go on! Move! APPLAUSE AND CHEERING Come on, Bill.
I'd better come by you, then.
Oh, it's you now! There you go.
I'm still far away from him! Like when you go to a restaurant and you want to sit next to someone and end up at the other end of the table! You can gaze at him across I love you - pass it on.
I love you.
Pass it on.
You do kung fu.
Pass it on.
Paid three and fourpence for going to a dance.
Very good.
Excellent work.
This is rather good.
We're saving Saving power.
That whole screen now is off.
Good thought.
People say you're an enemy of environmentalism.
Rubbish! You have no idea! We could take this further.
You at home - turn off your sets! Steady on here! OK.
Let's have a musical clue for this next question.
MUSIC: Colonel Bogey's March Colonel Bogey's March.
Yes.
Colonel Bogey's March.
Why, the question is, did Colonel Bogey go one over par in 1925? A bogey is one over par, in golf.
The extraordinary thing was, in Britain, the way you set your par was to imagine the perfect player you were playing against who got an exactly perfect score without dropping any shots.
And he was called Mr Bogey.
So that meant par, not one over par.
It meant par, bizarrely.
In the United Services Golf Club, they didn't want a Mr Bogey, so they called him Colonel Bogey.
So you imagined you were playing Colonel Bogey.
So Colonel Bogey gets four on this hole.
And I got five.
So you're one over.
But if you got four too, that was Bogey - par.
But America, who had newer courses because they'd only taken to the game more lately, they used the word par and when they played on British ones they found ours were easier, so if they made a British one, one over was Bogey.
Easier here? Complicated.
I literally have no idea what you're talking about.
I know it sounds complicated.
In America they played on large courses, 18 holes.
Here, you had to get it past the windmill APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH But essentially bogey meant par until we joined in with the Americans in 1925 and we agreed to use Bogey to mean one over.
All of which brings us rolling off the green and into the bunker of general ignorance.
Have you got your instruments still? Yes.
You're on a tropical beach.
You've got a screwdriver in one hand, a rusty nail in the other.
A crowd of huge male mosquitoes descends on you.
What are they after? Yes, Bill? Drinks, I was going to say.
Ah, sugar.
Ah.
Sugar.
They're not after anything.
Only females bite you.
That is true.
That is a fact.
That's correct.
They're not after your blood.
They're after the Orange juice.
Orange juice.
In the screwdriver.
Yes.
Points! JEREMY: Why is there Orange juice.
The males sip juice.
They don't use blood at all.
The blood is for the female when they're in egg.
It helps the eggs develop.
Female mosquitoes are attracted by moisture, lactic acid, carbon dioxide, body heat and movement.
For the cocktails.
What's a Manhattan? Red Bull and egg nog.
Oh, dear! JEREMY: I want that.
No, it's whiskey, vermouth and bitters.
Cuba libre? Cuba libre.
Cuba Libre.
Oh, that's rum and Coke.
That will make you pregnant.
Daiquiri? Daiquiri.
It's the bar where it was invented.
Where? What? Floridita in Havana.
Very good.
I can't remember what's in it but I can tell you it's fantastic.
I could play the piano, I thought, afterwards! Very good.
Rum, lime juice and sugar.
< It wasn't even a piano, it was a table! Margarita.
Margarita.
Salt.
Salt round the edge.
Gin.
It's very unfair to taunt us with these drinks when we're here without so much as water! Do any of us drink cocktails? Does anyone outside of ALAN: Only at half past ten, or half two in your time! A banana Daiquiri for breakfast is one of the greatest luxuries a man can have.
Sex on the Beach? A banana Daiquiri? Anyone know what's in Sex on the Beach? Vodka, peach schnapps, orange and cranberry juice.
I like peach schnapps.
And a little bit of crab sweat.
Anyway Get things going.
It's the lady mosquitoes who bite.
The men sip fruit juice and nectar.
What harm can a wind turbine do? Kill birds.
Yeah.
Kill birds? The Royal Society for the Prevention of Birds recently announced that they can't kill birds.
Oh, you spotted that? Good.
But they do harm another flying creature.
Bats? Superman? Superman? No.
Bats.
JEREMY: And goats.
The goats that hang on to them? A man in Taiwan reported recently that he lost 400 goats cos they could no longer sleep.
Have you ever heard one? They make an unbelievable racket.
Is that why they attract bats? No.
They don't get hit by the blades.
It's the drop in pressure that is caused.
They have, as mammals, like humans, soft lungs unlike birds who have harder lungs.
The capillaries burst in their lungs and they die, just by the pressure change near the turbines.
Nasty.
Which brings us to the scores.
Oh, my heavens! Really? Yes, now look at this.
Oh, dear me, Lord! In first place, with minus five, is Bill Bailey! So close.
So close.
Doing really well with minus seven is Alan Davies! The man who usually soars into the lead on our show and gets enormous numbers of points, is in third place with minus 13, Danny Baker! I'm sorry to say, way off the pace with minus 27, Jeremy Clarkson! That's all from this edition of eco QI, our special one-screen edition for your pleasure and entertainment.
Good night from Danny, Jeremy, Bill, Alan and me.
This thought from American comedian A.
Whitney Brown: "I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals.
"I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants.
" Good night!