Hello! Hello.
You watch tonight's episode of QI at your peril,
because that is what it's all about.
You have been warned. Let's meet our fearless foursome,
dicing with death. It's Lee Mack!
Hello.
Scoffing at danger, it's Aisling Bea.
Running with scissors, it's Jason Manford.
I don't care. I'm not bothered.
And dangling from a fourth floor balcony in his underwear,
because someone came home from work unexpectedly...
..Alan Davies!
Dare they press their buzzers? Lee, look out!
Aisling, mind yourself!
Careful, Jason!
Alan, duck!
Eh?
What's the most perilous job in the world?
Parachute tester.
It is a real and obviously perilous job.
Hang on, is this the actual answer?
No, it isn't the actual answer.
You stumbled upon something that I actually knew.
Which I was rather pleased about.
There's a worse job than a parachute tester.
Parachutist catcher.
Again...
Again, nearly right.
Really?! So nearly right.
It's a reverse parachute tester.
So, during the Cold War, both sides had spy bases in the Arctic.
Aircraft couldn't land anywhere, so staff had to be parachuted in.
They also had to be parachuted out again.
Ooh, that would hurt.
Yeah. So, they used a thing called a skyhook, or an aero retriever.
It's a device for parachuting upwards.
And what they did was, they got a helium balloon
and it carried a rope up into the air.
The aeroplane grabbed the rope and reeled it in,
with the spy on the end.
OK, let's have a quick look at this procedure in action.
There the guy on the ground.
Waving, cheerfully.
He's saying, "AAARRRGGHHHH!"
Wow! Shitty death!
That's how they board you on easyJet.
It's human fishing.
Yes, suppose it is. Fishing, I like that.
So, lots of perilous jobs, things with heavy machinery, working at sea.
Probably the most perilous specific job
is being President of the United States.
You have an 8 in 44 chance of dying in office.
It's roughly the fatality rate 27 times that of a lumberjack.
Wow. I mean, luckily, the present one's really likeable.
Yes.
Test piloting a fighter jet, that is another extremely perilous job.
Wow, yeah. There's an extraordinary story, in 1956,
just off the coast of New York State,
there was a fighter test pilot called Tom Attridge,
and he accidentally shot himself down.
So, what he did was, he did a burst of his cannons
and then he accelerated downwards.
And shortly afterwards, his windscreen shattered and the engine failed.
And he assumed that it had been bird strikes.
In fact, he'd flown into his own stream of 20 millimetre cannon rounds.
So although the bullets had had a head start,
the air resistance had slowed them down.
He'd accelerated and caught them up.
Oh, my God. I think that was on a Mr Bean.
I know.
The good news is, the plane crashed, but he survived.
Oh, good, yeah. Another dangerous job, in terms of sport?
Motorsport. Motorsports, yeah, absolutely.
Motorcycling. Formula 1.
No, no, no. I have to disagree with you there.
The most dangerous sport is fishing.
It causes more fatalities than any other sport.
To fish, certainly.
To the people that drown.
There's more people killed fishing than any other sport.
If you don't believe me, just trust me.
Trust you? The legendary liar from Would I Lie To You?
More people are killed fishing than any other sport.
But perhaps they mean percentage wise for how many people do it.
Back to you, Sandi. Thank you.
Formula 1, not so dangerous now.
But in the 1970s, you had a 0.35% chance of dying
each time you competed in the Grand Prix.
And a driver who competed in every race for five years had
a nearly 20% risk of dying on the job.
I've got some horror stories about fishermen, but carry on.
Billy Potts, milkman, Accrington - drowned. Back to you.
Is it that they're pulled in by a particularly large salmon?
Is that what happened?
It's a big fish, then it's like that clip of the man being parachuted up.
"This is a big ONE!"
I absolutely love reading the data of these things.
So in 2015, the Health and Safety Executive data shows the most
accident-prone occupation in the UK is hairdresser.
I know! Hairdresser...
I thought window cleaner or something.
..slash, beautician. No, no, most likely to cut or burn yourself.
That guy, yeah! The guy on the right is a Pakistani hairdresser who
apparently doesn't use scissors.
No! The guy on the left's who's waiting's not keen.
He burns it and then he puts it out with a hairdryer.
Just singes it off? Yeah.
I wouldn't like to see this fella fishing.
Now, then. This is more perilous than it sounds.
What's a duck worth?
Six bob a week. Oh, sorry, ask me again and say, "What's a Greek urn?"
Duckworth-Lewis, that's all I know.
Well, you're absolutely heading in the right direction.
That's how they work out, through a system that nobody understands,
even the people on the cricket coverage who have to explain it,
where if it's raining, they set you a new target to win the match,
based on the run rate, or the overs left, or something.
No-one knows how they do it.
Yes, it's now called the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method.
Basically, what they do is they look at the number of runs required
and they divide it by the number of balls left.
But it does also include certain variables like how many wickets you've got in hand.
Fascinating. The more you hear about cricket, the more interesting it gets.
Now, I like cricket.
So did I, until about a minute ago!
I don't understand a game where both sides wear the same colour.
And doesn't it never end, cricket?
It just takes as long as it takes.
Five days, and when it's finished you go, "Is that it?"
They go "No, it's best of five."
What?
It's 25 days long, this game.
"At least someone's going to win." "Not necessarily. It could be a draw."
I went once, and the only thing I learned is
that it is possible to have too much Pimm's. I did not know that.
You were at the tennis, that's how much Pimm's you had.
Perfectly possible.
So, there's also a thing called the Duckworth scale.
It uses known statistics to assign a risk of dying as a result of any
given activity. So at the low end, you've got zero,
that represents living on Earth unharmed for an entire year.
The top figure, eight, is certain doom.
Anybody think of something at eight?
Certain doom? Absolutely going to die.
Saturday night, Glasgow, Jongleurs.
That is a death for anyone. Russian roulette with six bullets.
The risk of dying if you play Russian roulette with six bullets
is absolutely an eight.
Being hit by an asteroid on the Duckworth scale is 1.6.
It's unlikely, but deadly if it does happen.
So you're not saying 1.6%.
Just a 1.6 on the scale.
On the scale. Like the Richter scale.
Apparently, doing the washing up - 5.5.
Why? Well, not very dangerous, it just happens a lot.
So that increases your chance.
People do a lot of washing up.
Doing the washing up wrong, 6.6.
What, so people tend to die while they're doing the washing up, like...
Yeah, and then...
Well, on that theory, we could say breathing, then.
Breathing should be an eight, because when you're doing something
when you're breathing, you die all the time.
Yes.
He's broke the Duckworth scale.
You need an activity, darling.
And breathing is an involuntary activity.
Oh, it has to be a choice? It has to be a voluntary activity.
Something that you're choosing to do.
Like rock climbing, for example. Or heavy breathing. Yeah.
That, you probably can die from, I would imagine.
So, now you know how to measure your peril.
What's the most perilous thing you've ever taught yourself to do?
Breathe.
When I was 16, you could get a motorbike and get on it and just go.
Yeah. I had a 50cc motorbike at university
and I had no lessons at all. Just get on. Exactly the same, yeah.
And have a go. So, it can only go at 30,
but if you knew the bloke with a garage full of parts,
you could get a big bore cylinder and a larger piston,
bigger sprockets and a racing exhaust, and you could do 40.
Well, there was a young boy in Ohio, who was eight years old,
it was in April 2017,
he was desperate for a burger, but his parents had gone to sleep,
so he put on YouTube and he saw a video about how to drive.
And then he got his four-year-old sister and he put her in the car
and he drove them to the nearest McDonald's.
And several concerned witnesses called the police.
But apparently his motoring was excellent. He checked the speed limit,
he obeyed all the traffic rules and no charges were filed.
Yes. Must have looked like me driving. Must have been like that.
That's unbelievable.
So, you can teach yourself all sorts of things.
There was a German physicist and string theory pioneer, Theodor Kaluza.
And he was fed up with people saying theoretical knowledge had no value.
So he taught himself to swim from a book.
And although he was in his 30s, he swam at the very first attempt.
Did it not get wet?
Pages sticking together.
I did a tandem skydive.
Why? That's the most frightening thing. Why did you do that?
You know why? Because I had a girlfriend who was
always on about how brave her ex-boyfriend was.
That'll do it.
To be fair to him, he was a battlefield medic in the Army.
So, he was terrifically brave, highly trained.
"I do comedy."
Then she really hurt my feelings when she said
he was also the funniest person she'd ever met.
That was in Cairns, in Queensland, I was nowhere near home.
So I thought, "I'm going to do a tandem parachute jump."
"I'll show her." And I absolutely shat myself.
It's so frightening.
Because, also, you are being like babied by another man behind you.
You're being strapped onto a total stranger.
It wasn't him, was it?
Let's make this interesting! It's me, Alan!
"The bravest man in the world!"
"Let me tell you a joke as we're going down, because I'm really funny."
Someone asked me once if I wanted to go bungee jumping.
And I don't like heights either. So I said, "I'll go up and watch you."
And this was in Australia as well. And he got to the edge, and the guy said,
"Right, when I say jump, you've got to jump.
He said, "OK." "Right, jump."
And just as he jumped, he went, "Not yet!"
And he fell!
That's not funny!
That is really not funny!
The look on his face!
"Did you see what I did?"
My mate said, afterwards, "Oh, yeah, I heard him, I thought I was going to die."
All the way down.
Awful, isn't it? Now then, my poppets, I have got these for you.
This is for Aisling.
Am I supposed to show you on the doll where he touched me?
Jason, and Alan.
And then we have me here.
Anybody know what they are?
I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say, are they dolls?
Yes, they are a particular kind of doll.
Ideally, you should have each other's is the thing. So we can swap round.
I've got Jason's.
Are they voodoo dolls? They are poppets.
Also known as pippies or moppets.
And they are traditionally used in European folk magic.
So, they are for casting spells on people.
So, if you wanted to get somebody out of your life,
you might fill a poppet...
What are you doing with my poppet down there?
My poppet does not want to be down there.
I don't know why, but I feel the need to rinse my mouth.
So, what you might do is you might fill a poppet with herbs,
and then you tie its hand behind its back,
and you toss it into a fast flowing river.
Or you might take one of these.
So I've got needles that you might use.
I don't want to stab Aisling.
You want to stab Jason? Oh, I'll stab Jason.
It's not working.
Pass me the Lee Mack doll.
You've got a very hard stomach, I'll give you that.
Try moving my arms and see if it works.
I'll move Aisling's right arm.
Oh, it's magic.
Now I appear to be touching my own breasts. Oh, no!
This joke has backfired.
Wait a minute. Who's this?
Oh, no! Lee fell in the river!
Quick, get your fishing rod!
Fishing accident!
Right, moving on, which is worse, mild peril or moderate torture?
Well, torture sounds worse. Doesn't sound good, does it?
I'm going to say that. Well, I imagined the other way,
because people are often more frightened of things
that haven't happened yet.
Yeah. So, the British board of Film Classification,
which used to be the British Board of Film Censors,
it not only awards films a certificate,
but since 1997 it's provided a brief line of consumer advice of what to expect from the picture.
My favourite one is when it says, "This film contains language."
They used to have certain stock phrases -
"mild peril" and "moderate torture".
I remember that. I used to work at Odeon Cinema -
well, before they were Odeon - UCI Cinemas, on the phones.
And when that came in, we had to read it out.
So you'd say, "OK, you've booked four tickets for Help, I'm A Fish",
"and please be aware that this film contains mild peril."
You would have to say, like, "You've booked five tickets for Harry Potter",
"please be aware this film contains fantasy spiders."
Yeah. I prefer the old system.
Remember it was U, A, double-A and X.
Yeah. Remember that? What was wrong with that? It worked.
That was fine, wasn't it? We all knew what it meant.
I mean, I miss the X, don't you?
Something to aim for.
X was very scary or very sexy.
So now if I get the letter X in the alphabet, just looking at an alphabet,
I get aroused.
The X Factor, I can't watch it, because I'm...
Wow! So, let's have a quick look at some advice.
You did tell us one already - "Contains mild language and horror, and fantasy spiders"
is indeed Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Let's see if you can guess what these other ones are.
Contains strong language, violence and sex, all involving puppets.
QI. QI. About five minutes ago.
Is it Team America?
It is Team America. You are absolutely right.
Love Team America. Contains irresponsible behaviour.
Mr Bean? Yes, Mr Bean's Holiday.
Absolutely right. Is it? You remember that? Are you serious?
I've been waiting for this moment on QI.
Thank God!
Finally!
How about this one?
Dangerous behaviour, mild threat, innuendo, infrequent mild bad language.
QI.
Austin Powers?
No. Is it something that is quite tame?
Yes, darling. Is it Pingu?
It's...
It's Paddington.
What? Where's the bad language in Paddington?
I have no idea.
Actually, there was one bit where he said, "Where's my marmalade sandwich, you BLEEP?"
My favourite word in the English language.
But now for some actual mild peril.
You know that scene in the silent movies where the damsel is tied to
the railway tracks by the villain, and then rescued by the hero?
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
I think you'll find I personally said mm-hmm, not yes.
So here's the extraordinary thing,
in the earliest versions of this rather famous cliche,
it was the other way round.
It was also in a play, and not in a film.
So there was a melodrama in 1867 called Under The Gaslight,
it was by Augustin Daly.
And the villain, who's called Byke, tied the hero, Snorky, to the track,
only to be freed in the nick of time by the heroine, Laura.
Laura! I love Laura.
So, as he ties him up, Byke, who is the villain, tells Snorky,
"I am going to put you to bed, you won't toss much."
And... And when Laura saves him, Snorky notes,
"Victory, saved, hoorah!"
"And these are the women who ain't to have a vote?"
And that was in 1867.
But here's the other thing, that image we all have in our heads of the damsel
being tied to the tracks and then rescued by a handsome chap
never, ever was part of silent movies.
It did not exist.
There are no known examples of this particular scenario in mainstream
silent drama, only in the comedy spoofs of it.
That's unbelievable.
Right, which of these is best for defending yourself against a kitten?
I'd say water pistol.
OK. Why would you say water pistol?
They don't like getting wet.
So, it might work,
but there are some kittens who will think of it as just more intense play.
So there are some who actually like the whole water pistol thing.
So, kittens attacking you is very important.
They are learning how to ambush and hunt.
It is in their nature. And what you need to do is, basically,
you need to distract them before they launch.
So you can whistle and clap your hands,
you can stomp your foot and so on. The best thing is an air horn.
Thank God for that, I thought that was mace!
Do you want to come and try?
It's just air. Aah! Yes.
See? I'm not even a cat, leave me alone.
There's all sorts of self-defence things you need to do with pets.
So, self-defence against hamsters and guinea pigs.
Sorry, Sandi, who, apart from you, would need that kind of defence?
They can bite quite hard.
I just had visions of you running out your house.
"Aaargh!"
"I just wanted to have a go on your wheel, that's all!"
Here is the most wonderful piece of advice you'll ever hear...
"Get off my wheel!" Never approach a hamster from behind.
Oh, now we know what you were doing, anyway.
True story, in July 2017 there was a woman who owned a hamster and she
took her pet to the vet.
She was really worried,
because it had sat motionless in the corner of the cage for three days,
and it turned out it had swallowed a fridge magnet.
It was stuck to the bars.
That's amazing.
Wow.
Very good.
If a hamster were to attack you, if you blow gently in their faces,
they don't like that at all.
Who does? If your pet rabbit bites you, shriek.
This is apparently a recognised rabbit signal of pain.
Or turn your back on him and stamp your feet,
it's a rabbit sign of disapproval.
Isn't the natural reaction to being bitten by a rabbit to shriek anyway?
Yes, I imagine.
Now it's time to teeter precariously close to the edge of the perilous
chasm that is General Ignorance.
Here's a hint, there will be pitfalls.
Danger - when you use tinfoil on your roast,
should it be shiny side up or dull side up?
Ohh...
Let's take a quick vote in the audience.
First of all, hands up for dull side up.
There's a number of people.
And shiny side up?
I think shiny side has it.
OK.
Yeah.
So, you put the shiny side close to the bird?
Here's the thing, it makes no bloody difference.
Does it make no difference really?
It makes no difference at all. The two different finishes are the result of the manufacturing process.
So lot of people believe if you put the dull side on the outside,
when it's cooking, it will absorb the heat and the shiny side will reflect
it back into the food. It is absolute nonsense.
There is no difference in heat transfer between the two surfaces.
The reason they look different,
so in order to roll it unbelievably thin without tearing it,
the manufacturers have to put two sheets through the rollers together.
And as a result, the outside surfaces get polished by the rollers
and the inside surfaces stay dull. It is exactly the same.
It makes no difference whatsoever.
OK, more importantly, which way up do chocolate biscuits go?
The chocolate is on top. The chocolate is the top.
Yes.
Whoa, what?
Obviously it is. Obviously that's going to be wrong.
No. The chocolate is on the bottom.
And I have to say, the manufacturers say so, so it is final.
Well...
No, you're just wrong. It's not expressing an opinion, it's just wrong.
The writing is on the top.
It is on the biscuit half.
If you look, it's got the slightly rounded shoulders on the top.
If you serve the chocolate on top, they look like stranded turtles.
That's the truth of it. Yeah, but you need to...
When you dip it, you need to... When you put it on the plate, you put the chocolate on the top.
Because otherwise it just looks like all other digestives.
You're simply wrong, I'm afraid. A spokesman for the manufacturers...
One series of Bake Off, and now she's an expert.
Unbelievable!
A spokesman for the manufacturers said that
during the manufacturing process,
the biscuits go through a reservoir of chocolate
which enrobes them, so the chocolate is actually on the bottom.
Enrobes them! OK, here's a question, then.
If that's the case, in a can of biscuits,
why are they stacking them upside down?
Because then you can turn the whole biscuit tin out like that onto a... I have no idea.
Why does he want that one, the bloke?
He's got loads nearer to him.
These biscuits are all upside down!
The fella behind is literally going,
"You are my favourite person in the world."
"I love you, Kenneth."
"I've never been able to tell you, but I love you, Kenneth."
"Ever since you start dressing exactly the same as me..."
He does look like he's just proposed and the other one's gone,
"If I reach for a far biscuit, I'll pretend I didn't hear him."
What spread the Black Death?
Go on, Jason? Rats.
That's got it out the way. Idiot.
For generations, we thought that rats brought the plague to Britain.
Fleas. Fleas bit the rats and the same fleas bit the humans,
is what we used to think. That idea is pretty much dead now.
It's humans. It's most likely that it will spread from one person to...
How come he didn't get a thing for fleas?
I got one for rats, he didn't get one for fleas.
Yeah. Just saying.
Because it was fleas, but not on rats, that's why.
I got you, right. Nothing to do with rats at all?
No, the rats were pretty much innocent in this.
They have had a bum rap.
So, the studies in the last decade of plague victims' bodies which have
been unearthed during the Crossrail product in London,
and studies of mortality data, which has been analysed in Oslo,
both conclude the plague simply couldn't have spread as fast and as far
if it was entirely dependent on Rattus rattus.
OK, so, David versus Goliath, who's the underdog?
Oh, this is a tricky one.
Well, it's David, right?
All right.
Famously, he was not the favourite in the fight.
Yes, but he had an unfair advantage.
What do you think it might have been?
He was from the North.
He had a slingshot. He had a slingshot is exactly right, Jason.
It wasn't a kid's toy, in ancient days.
It was in fact the deadliest thing that you could lay your hands on.
So, they've done experiments with stone ammunition, known as bullets,
which were used by the Roman Army in their slings.
And if it's launched by a trained slinger,
it would have the stopping power of a .44 Magnum handgun.
Whoa. So it could easily hit a human being 130 yards away.
So, David could simply stay at a distance and blow him away.
Who knew, all this time? I know, small but fierce.
Turning to another pair of legendary rivals,
how come coyotes never catch roadrunners?
Oh, because they don't live in the same place.
No, they do. They absolutely do.
No, that's not the reason. You're such an idiot, Jason.
There's an obvious scientific reason.
This is because the roadrunner is famously, in nature,
equipped with an ability to paint a road onto...
..onto a rock wall.
And then the coyote will think the road is continuing into the rock,
when in fact it's rock, and will solidly hit the wall and collapse.
He also keeps shopping at Acme.
Now, after the first couple of things went wrong,
I'd have found a new distributor.
You've got to get your anvil somewhere else.
Surely roadrunner is too fast for the coyote?
No, the coyote's top speed is about 43mph.
Whereas the bird can only get to 20mph.
But the bird does cheat.
It can fly? It can fly.
A coyote can go at 43mph?
43mph, yes.
That's fast.
Yes. Not for long, though?
It doesn't fly for very long, but long enough to escape the predator.
Where else would you use an anvil?
If you were a blacksmith.
Of course! Just trying to help.
If you were competing in the World's Strongest Man, they do an anvil carrying round.
Do they? Yes, they do.
Also, large beer barrels and logs.
Back to you in the studio, Sandi.
Coyotes are fast enough to catch roadrunners, but roadrunners cheat.
Meep-meep! And so, to the scores.
Risking everything, only to finish fourth with -21, it's Alan!
Precariously close to last place with -15, it's Lee.
In peril of almost doing quite well, with -12, it's Jason!
I'll take it.
And in serious danger of being labelled a swot,
the winner this week, with eight total points, it's Aisling!
So, it's thanks to Aisling Bea, Jason and Alan,
and I leave you with this, the ultra-bestselling suspense writer
Sidney Sheldon once explained how he developed his thrilling plots.
"What I do is put my characters into situations that are so precarious,"
"there is no way to get out."
"And then I figure how to get them out."
We'll see you next time, goodnight from QI.