Good evening and welcome to QI,
where tonight we are queuing up to explore all things quirky.
Joining me are the quick-witted Jason Manford...
Hello.
..the quotable Sarah Millican...
..the quizzical Loyiso Gola...
..and the total quirk-a-holic Alan Davies.
Let's hear their buzzers. Jason goes...
Quite quirky, I like that. Sarah goes...
Ooh, jazz.
Wow. It's a migraine, that is.
Yeah.
It's jazz musicians in search of a tune.
Loyiso goes...
Does anybody else feel like they're on the wrong medication today?
And Alan goes...
This first question is on the QT.
What's the furthest anyone's ever gone for a brew?
Was it before or after refrigerators?
Oh, definitely before.
Does that really help? Does that narrow it down?
No. No. I mean...
..in terms of history, darling.
I think there's a lot more before fridge.
The BF, before fridge. Before fridge.
Changed the world. Never mind about fridges.
Furthest for a cup of tea? Did they have one on the moon?
Did they have one in the Apollo lander? Not the moon.
Not quite as far as the moon, but high.
Tea is so important, isn't it?
It's in all different parts of life, you know,
somebody's having a baby, "I'll put the kettle on."
Your grandad's dying, "I'll make a brew."
You know what I mean? Like, it's just everything.
Yeah, but it isn't just important to the British,
it's important in other parts of the world.
Where does it...? The Chinese? Is it on a plane?
Is there like a... OK, you can get tea on a plane,
but it wasn't...
Is there like a Boil High Club?
Jason said China.
China. Someone went to China...
Yes... to get some tea.
OK, so, as far as we know, this is one of the highest tea shops
in the world.
There is a Buddhist and Daoist temple at the very top of Mount Hua,
in the Qinling mountains, and the climb is treacherous
to get up there. Well, you'd need a brew.
The one on the right is optional, but it involves crossing a section
where you have to balance on these wooden planks.
Is that how you get down? A slide.
It's a 7,000-foot drop, darling, on the other side. Oh, wow.
Yeah. You can hire a safety harness if you want for $5,
but its use is not enforced. Right.
The tea is made from rainwater and mountain springs and snow melt
that they gather. It's said to be absolutely delicious.
Surprised there's not a Costa up there.
"Let's open up across the road!"
It's one of China's five great mountains.
It's got five peaks that form the shape of a lotus flower,
and each peak has a temple on it.
It's beautiful, isn't it? Wow. It's amazing.
Yeah, it's astonishing. But is it better than rooibos?
Oh, the South African tea, isn't it, rooibos? Mm-hm.
I'm so glad that you said that.
I didn't know how to pronounce that. Rooibos?
I've been calling it roobiboos for years.
It's true!
I was 33, still ordering "shit-ache" mushrooms.
The magic of tea - so, in the Second World War, the UK bought up
the surplus tea from every country, apart from Japan.
Apparently, they were terrified it would be bad for morale
if we ran out of tea.
So, their top purchases, in terms of weight were bullets, then tea,
then artillery shells, bombs and explosives.
Who drank the very first cup of tea, what do you reckon?
Oh, a very long time ago. Probably in China.
Do you think before fridges?
Many, many years BF.
Yes! 4,000 BF! Yes.
You're absolutely right, it's China.
Well, it's a Chinese legend, who knows?
There was a Chinese emperor in 2737 BC, called Shennong,
and he was sitting under a tree,
and his servant was boiling some water
and some leaves, apparently, from the tree, blew into the water
and he thought, "I'll have that."
"I'm not reboiling the kettle now!" No, cos it's boiled now.
It took ages to boil that up.
And now the leaf's got in... "And I was watching it."
"Shall I fish it out or leave it...?
"I'll leave it in." I'll leave it in. Bit stronger. Ooh!
So, actually, if you go right back there, it is tea first.
Milk... Milk second. Milk never.
Tea first. Milk?! Yeah.
"Are you putting milk in that? It's already got leaves in it!" Ugh!
So how did they find out that you could have milk in a tea?
Was he drinking tea and a cow just went past him like that?
Squirted a bit in...
Eureka!
It's a milkmaid having a cup of tea...
Ooh!
Don't want to get the teat in, though, do you?
Oh, listen to them all, the empathy with the udder, there.
Oh! Can you imagine your own udders going in?
I think it's fair to say you probably can't.
He had tea, then he had a pedicure.
Yes. He certainly looks like he could use one. Very bad hammertoes.
Is that his arm?
No, that's the scenery.
Now I can see that. Yeah.
He's got two mountains on his head, Sandi.
Who is this weirdo?
As long as he's got a little tea shop on one of them, though.
The story that I don't understand
is the Buddhist tradition of how tea was first discovered.
So, apparently, according to Buddhists,
it grew from Buddha's eyelids.
Buddha wanted to meditate for nine years and he kept falling asleep.
Right, it was nine years, long time. Yeah. That's good meditation.
That's really good. And so in frustration,
he ripped off his eyelids and he threw them to the ground,
and that's how the first tea plant grew.
Ripped off his eyelids? Yeah. That's extreme.
Just open your eyes! Yeah.
And now there's just people whispering on YouTube
so you don't have to rip anything off.
That's the new relaxation technique, isn't it?
They whisper? Oh, that's... What is that called?
It's got a fancy name. Someone in here will know.
ASMR! There you go.
They sort of whisper... they... Some of them fold towels and...
Yeah, or pretend they're cutting your hair, or something.
- Have you seen this? - No. No.
And that's because you've got better things to do, frankly.
You know, the mad thing is, it doesn't matter how many shows
you've done, they'll have more views than all of us put together.
It's unbelievable.
I'll start whispering meself. I can fold a towel!
Your next DVD should be whispered.
Hold on, hold on.
Am I the only person who noticed that you said DVD?
I did say DVD, yeah.
Who uses DVDs?
Whoa! What?
Me!
Unbelievable!
Everybody just glanced over that
like that wasn't a crazy thing to say.
I still use... I still use... DVDs?!
I'm still on VHS.
I played a cassette only yesterday, and do you know what happened?
It got stuck.
Do you remember when cassettes used to stretch
if you played them for too long? You'd get a little pen,
little pencil inside.
Oh, good times!
Or they'd get stuck... If you're driving and you pop one out
while you're driving, then the whole, the tape...
"It's my best tape!
"Don't pull it, don't pull it, don't pull it...!
"Pull over, it's the M4! Get out! Get out!"
"Get it out with a pencil. Get it out!
"Now wind it on. Wind it on.
"Come on, you're four years old, you can do this!"
So, not DVDs? Would you just watch it on the...
I'm just saying, in the last two years,
I don't remember inserting a DVD anywhere.
So it's like...
It's a crazy... It's a crazy thing to say!
I'm just hoping there were a limited range of options of where...
Yeah, some DVDs I can't get out!
One of Sarah's.
There's no sexual innuendo here, just to stop.
Don't know why you're bothering, then.
Mount Hua gives a whole new meaning to high tea.
What's even quainter than a model village?
A giant boy.
I used to go and see these things as a family.
It's still a thing. My father would get his cine camera out
and then he would just film the model village.
He wouldn't film his children.
He filmed the model village,
in which nothing happens, nothing moves.
Was it on Super 8 as well, so it sort of went like that? Oh, yeah!
Don't mention Super 8 in front of him!
Then he'd set up a projector and screen in the living room,
put all the lights out, pull the curtains,
put it on and we'd all sit there. "Here's the holiday."
"He's only... He's just filmed the village,
"he's just filmed the model village.
"We were in Lyme Regis for a fortnight and this is it."
Do you know about model villages, darling? Is that a thing?
I've never been to one, but, full disclosure... Yeah.
..English is one of the languages I speak.
So, it's not the first... I speak it well. Yes.
No, you and me, both coming along.
What's your first language? Xhosa's my first language.
OK. So, like, when you say words like quaint,
I might have my own definition of the word quaint
which doesn't necessarily match yours. OK. So...
Are you saying that quaint is kind of old but cute? Yes, like me.
Like...
I've had five DVDs out, so my career, to you,
might be old and cute.
So, our suggestion for the world's quaintest thing is the model village
within a model village within a model village,
which is within the actual village of Bourton-on-the-Water. Wow.
So, if you look at those things in the background,
those are part of the model village,
then you can see there's another model village and then,
right there in the corner, is an even smaller model village.
It's like a village wormhole.
It just kind of keeps going and going.
It's like a man just doesn't want to go home,
that's what it feels like. He's developed a hobby
that is ridiculous because he hates his life.
It was built in the 1930s, it took forever.
It's actually Grade II listed, the entire model village.
And you could buy the whole thing, with a life-size pub,
in 2018 for under £600,000, if you wanted.
I know, you're suddenly thinking, "Ooh, model village and a pub."
But this is not the oldest model village example in the world.
It's beaten by Bekonscot Model Village,
which is 90 years old this year, 2019.
Wow. It still has 15,000 visitors a month and it's got
the cutest miniature shops.
So, look at this. The greengrocer's is called Chris P Lettis.
I know! Sweet shop, Ivor Cavity's.
My current favourite, the chemist, Hakes & Paynes.
These are things you do when you have met all your basic needs
as a human being. Yes, this is...
I don't think people in Uganda are worried about this stuff.
Yeah.
Fair comment. Fair comment. Fair enough.
There's another model village called Babbacombe Model Village.
Have a look at this. This is a part of the model village
that they've just put in last year.
Oh, brilliant! Aw!
So, this is... That's meant to be me, darling, on the right there.
Tall, isn't it? Well...
They very sweetly lent me me.
Oh, wow!
Out of interest, many of you who've known me a long time,
what's wrong with the model of me? I've never seen you in a skirt.
There's certainly a set of cankles on there.
Never seen me in a skirt, ever! No! I don't own a skirt.
I appear to have ballet pumps on. I just...
That's just not what a lesbian on television looks like!
That's like Britain squared.
Like, unbelievably British! Extraordinary, isn't it?
Anyway, my tits came out well. So...
Now, who has type Q blood?
The Queen. No? Er...
Is it a trick? It is a trick. Is it an animal?
It is an animal, yes.
Can you undo that bloody ringer, then? That... No. No.
That's going to haunt...
It's an animal.
It is an animal, darling. Er, dog, rhino, er... giraffe.
Dog, rhino?! Dog. Rhino.
So, it's horses. Oh!
Close there. Not really. No, we weren't.
Dog, rhino, giraffe - no. No.
If you put all them together, that's an horse.
So, humans have two types of antigens,
so that's the protein that can cause an allergic reaction.
You can either have one or both or neither,
so you could have A blood, B blood,
AB or type O. I don't know anything about blood.
Horses have seven different antigens,
so they have seven different blood groups.
Type A and type Q are the most common.
I don't know why they haven't done them alphabetically.
Why not A to G? I don't know.
Then there's C, D, J, P and U. I've no idea what that's about.
Well, maybe that's the horse alphabet.
Maybe that's how they do...
So, where do we get horse blood from?
The inside of a horse.
No alarm for that?!
I was going to say that, then I thought, "That's a bloody alarm.
"I'm not going to say it." And he said it, no alarm.
No alarm, because he was right.
Shit!
So, you can't store it in a blood bank.
So the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London, they keep
four horses on site and their entire job is just to donate blood.
Do they get a cup of tea and a biscuit? They do.
They're currently called Miller, Darcy, Freddy and Sonny.
I remember when my daughter was born and we donated to...
You donated her? We donated her.
I've got five kids, I was like, "Someone else have this one."
"You can have that one, for blood."
But you can donate the umbilical cord.
Yes. Anthony Nolan, I think the charity's called.
And they're like vampires. They're literally at the door, waiting.
"Have they had it yet? Have they had it yet? Have they had it yet?"
We're like, "We're busy having a baby, mate."
I mean, I wasn't busy, obviously.
I was playing Football Manager, but...
It was worth doing.
The weirdest thing, in terms of donating blood,
is the horseshoe crab, which is an extraordinary thing.
It's massively important in the medical industry. There they are.
The fourth oldest creature on Earth, the horseshoe crab.
It has something really specific,
a compound in the blood that's unbelievably important,
called Limulus amebocyte lysate,
and it's used by the medical and pharmaceutical industries
to ensure that their products are free of bacterial contamination.
Look at them, they're extracting blood there
from the horseshoe crabs.
And it costs upwards of $25,000 per quart, because it is so important.
So, horseshoe crabs have no immune system,
so because they cannot develop antibodies to fight infection,
they contain a number of compounds that will activate bacteria
and fungi and viruses and so on...
They look like they're at Yo Sushi.
Which is ironic, being a crab.
Are they alive? They are alive, and then they are returned to...
Oh, are they? OK. That's good.
Or are you saying, like my mum always said,
"The dog went to a farm"?
"Oh, then they're returned to the sea? " "Yeah, oh, good, good."
They just float away...
Just a little plaster, just here.
What about dog and cat blood?
I mean, it's really important that we have it.
The Royal Veterinary College runs donation sessions,
and you can go along. And people do it, apparently,
because maybe they didn't give blood themselves
or they feel good about it.
What about if you wanted to operate on a bird?
If I wanted to operate on a bird?
Well, I don't think you should do it.
If one wanted to operate on a bird, where would you get bird blood?
Just, like, the windows of skyscrapers?
All round the bottom a wind farm.
That's the same noise as when the cow got its udder in the tea!
Er, all bird blood is entirely interchangeable.
They could do it in flight.
Just a tube. Yeah, re-fuelling.
So, a robin could donate to an ostrich.
What's the problem with that, though?
It would take 45 robins.
It would take 6,000. Oh, right, there you go!
Is robin a bird?
OK! Um...
No, he's a sidekick, he's kind of a ward...
..to a crime-fighting billionaire.
This all got started on tits.
Hey, hey, hey, I don't like this,
you guys are having too much fun without me.
So, a robin is a bird? Yeah.
I'm not into birds, but when you say robin, my brain just goes,
"There's a human being who donates blood..."
To ostriches. To ostriches, yeah.
As long as we've cleared up the confusion.
I'm here for you, it's OK. It's all good. Thank you.
There was an Australian gentleman called James Harrison,
he used to be known as the Man With the Golden Arm, and he saved
2.4 million babies by giving blood nearly every week for 60 years.
It's your shirt. He's got your shirt. Oh, yes!
That's you in about ten years.
Ten?!
Did you always go to the same place to give blood or did you travel...
You know the biscuits are different where you go. You know that?
In Scotland, you get a Tunnock's tea cake. Shut up! Do you?! Yeah.
It's just an amazing biscuit, just to let you know.
If you want to know anything about British biscuits,
that's the woman for you. OK.
So, yeah, I was always surprised,
the adverts were always, "Would you like to save a life?"
And I'm always like, "Nnyyah."
I think they should just say, "Do you like biscuits?
"Do you fancy a sit-down? Do you like tea?" I'm in.
I agree.
He was an amazing guy. So, his blood contained disease-fighting
antibodies which fight Rhesus disease.
That's when the blood of pregnant women attacks their unborn babies.
He was awarded the Order of Australia,
which is the country's highest honour, in 1999,
and he made over a thousand separate blood donations
and saved 2.4 million babies. Wow. I know! Legend.
That's amazing.
Makes the rest of us look, you know, like we've done nothing.
I did it once and I was like, "Not again!" Why?
Because it's needles. I'm just scared of needles.
I just wait for one of me piles to pop and then I give that.
I just like the noises. I like the noises!
Horses have type Q blood but there's neigh chance
they can share it with you.
Come on. Oh, yes!
It's like a panto.
I like it.
Oh, yes, it is!
Oh, no, it isn't!
I'll just explain what's happening.
He doesn't know what the hell's going on.
It's behind you!
Have you been to a pantomime?
Oh, yeah, those things are horrendous. Yeah.
I don't want to see '70s British people do weird things.
Well, that's pretty much it in a nutshell, so...
Speaking of queues, what's the worst thing about being held in a queue?
Can I put something out that happened to me
that's related to queues that I think I...
I feel like I was a bad person for doing this,
but I shouldn't feel that.
What I love is that you ask my permission. Alan never bloody asks!
I'm in a new country, you guys are kicking people out.
I don't know anything...
So, I was in Australia last year
and a friend of mine suggested we go have some dim sum.
So we get to the dim sum place and there's a queue
and then someone who's pregnant comes
and then they all let her go to the front of the line.
I'm like, "No, you don't go in front. It's for dim sum!"
I mean, am I a bad person for not letting a pregnant woman
to the front of the line for dim sum? Yes. Yeah.
For dim sum?!
OK, everybody vote. Let's vote.
Is that a bad thing? Yes, yes? Hands up! Yes.
And if you think it's not a bad thing?
Who says it's not a bad thing?
Oh... It's about 52-48!
I mean, even in this queue here,
that guy at the end clearly needs a poo. He's bought the...
He's bought the roll.
He's bent double, and he's still queuing!
"Come on! Please can I go to the front?
"Please can I go to the front?!"
Are you equating a woman who's pregnant
with a man who needs a shit?
It's the closest we've got!
Let's talk about a different kind of queue,
so when you are on the phone. Oh, yeah.
What's the worst thing about that, do you reckon?
It's when the computer doesn't get your accent. I get that a lot.
I used to ring the Odeon film line.
Oh, yeah. I used to work for them. Be careful.
The Odeon film line, to find out...
This is going back, innit? That's the job I had.
..to find out the times of the films.
This is even before DVDs!
Yes, before DVDs.
So, "Which Odeon cinema are you interested in?" Yeah.
And I would say. "Holloway." Yeah.
And it would say, "Did you say Manchester?" Every time!
No similarity between the two words!
There's almost no letters that are the same.
Actually, that was just one of us.
"Bolton!" "Did you say Baghdad?"
I can't stand the music.
I can't stand when they play music to you when you're on the phone.
When I was a kid, they used to play Kenny G all the time.
I literally thought Kenny G was on the other side, helping me just...
So the thing I like about playing music on the telephone is
the idea of it was discovered entirely by accident.
So, we're talking about the early 1960s
and there's a guy called Alfred Levy,
and he discovered the whole thing by accident.
His factory's phone lines developed a fault
and there was a loose wire touching a metal girder on the building
and it had turned it into a giant receiver
and audio being broadcast from a radio station next door
was transmitted through the wire
and could be heard on the calls which had been put on hold.
And he took a patent out for the Telephone Hold Programme System
and it solved the problem of dead air.
That's the bit people don't really like.
It's the bit where they don't really hear anything.
Apparently, the worst hold music ever - there was a company in 2001
called Avaya and they did a study in the UK.
They found a clothing firm specialising in larger sizes
was playing Fat Bottomed Girls by Queen.
There was a mail order company
playing Hanging On The Telephone by Blondie.
And a hospital played Chopin's Funeral March.
Oh-h! I know.
Do they have the thing in Britain where they call you
and they try to sell you stuff? Yeah.
Oh, really? Oh, yeah.
They call you and they say,
"We're ringing you about the accident that wasn't your fault."
And I say to them, "How did you hear about that?"
Just stood in his own piss.
"It lit... It literally just happened now.
"This is so weird.
"Are you watching me? Are you watching me?"
The other thing to do is... When they say,
"The accident that wasn't your fault,"
is to start weeping and say, "It was me and I knew you'd find out!
"I feel terrible!"
I find the weirdest ones, even from you own bank, when they ring you
and they go, "I just need to identify you."
And you go, "You rang me!
"Who are you, Barbara?"
I had an agreement with my bank to only contact me by e-mail
because it was easier when I was on the road and stuff
and they rang me once to see
if I still didn't want to be contacted on the phone.
What is this not?
A quipu.
Yes, I think they've slightly spoiled my display by naming it.
For people who turn out the props - a tiny little detail.
If I'd been filled in...
On your way out,
just be careful if you see a little elf with all its stuff.
P45 in his hand...
I thought I was being helpful.
Quipu - anybody know where quipu comes from?
African? It is not. Asian?
Are you going to go all the way round the world?
I'll just wait.
Is it European?
I'm going to say Machu Picchu to you. Oh, Peru.
It is from the Inca people. This is one we've made ourselves.
You put it around your neck?
Well, here's the thing. We don't really know what it's for,
but it is currently being deciphered and it is possible
that we're about make like a Rosetta Stone kind of breakthrough.
So the Incas, they had biggest empires
in the Americas in the 15th century, astonishing,
and they had a really wide communication system,
but it was long thought that they never learned to write,
which seems astonishing cos when you're having something that
complicated to organise, you'd think you would need to write things down.
Is that one of them?
Cos I've got a theory about the writing.
So there was a poet, a Spanish poet,
Garcilaso de la Vega in 1609,
and he wrote about the Incas having an admirable method
of counting everything in the Incas' kingdom,
including all taxes and tributes, both paid and due,
which they did with knots in strings of different colours.
So, initially thought to be just numerical information,
but the new research suggests it may actually be a form of writing
and it may contain stories and songs and records.
Cos they all have different lengths,
they all have different knots in them,
they have different colours and we just don't really know.
Now, the Spanish recognised the importance of these quipus,
because they declared them Satanic messages
and unfortunately they destroyed every example that they could find.
But there is a professor of anthropology
at St Andrews University, Sabine Hyland,
and she's been studying them.
She says they come in 14 colours, allow for 95 unique patterns,
which is within the range of a writing system,
and some quipus have as many as 1,500 strings.
Be great if you could learn it - you could pull out your earphones and
be like, "It says banana!"
There's a Harvard University anthropologist and he discovered
a Spanish census document from the '60s and '70s,
and it coincided with six quipus that he had in his database.
And he found that the Spanish document referred to 132 people
and there are 132 cords in the quipu.
So it is possible if we can make the two things work together.
Now, what is this woman queen of?
She's called Frances Lockett of Hyde. Hyde, in Manchester?
What, does that upset you?
No, I just didn't know there was any royalty from Manchester.
Textiles, textile mills.
I've been to Manchester. There's loads of queens, darling.
APPLAUSE
And it's all the better for it. I know. Absolutely.
Quite right. What do we reckon?
She's rather a fine-looking woman, Frances Lockett.
Doesn't look like a very authentic crown.
Well, it's a really sweet thing.
And I don't know if we shouldn't bring it back.
So, from the 1920s to the 1980s,
there was a tradition of crowning queens of industry.
So, women chosen to represent British industries.
And some of them had crown jewels.
So, Frances was Cotton Queen
and she was an actual weaver, so she had to know all about it.
And the idea grew out of the May Queen traditions.
Promoting British industry, obviously,
but it was also hoping that the practice
would give the workers something to celebrate.
So, this is an industry day.
Out to Paris for the day. Out to Paris, yes.
Great, isn't it?
So, the first railway queens were crowned in the 1920s
and then the idea, it spread to other ones.
And they weren't really beauty contests. So, Frances Lockett,
when she became Cotton Queen, she had to answer technical questions.
She was a weaver and she did really know about it.
And then they had to go and open events and spread the word
about the industry and so on.
And American companies got involved as well.
The Zion Meat Company named Geene Courtney their Sausage Queen
during National Hot Dog Week in 1955.
Things have picked up!
So, we've made crowns for you
because I think you all deserve them.
If you want to pop them on? Now, Sarah... Yes.
You're from South Shields. Yes. Is that right?
So glassware would seem entirely appropriate. OK.
Well, people have been glassed there, so that's true enough.
Jason, cotton, obviously. Cotton from Manchester.
Yeah, cos we're just massive on growing cress in a dark room.
Alan's got veggie sausages, which we thought was appropriate.
And, Loyiso, do you know why you've got a centrifuge on your head?
This is what we wear at a football game in South Africa. Oh!
It's a centrifuge, which is a scientific thing and,
this is terribly pleasing,
1.6% of all exports from South Africa are centrifuges.
So we just thought we'd make a hat for you.
I don't even know what a centrifuge is!
It's that! It's that.
This is mine. Are you going to help me?
Yeah, I need to come and help you.
So I... You may or may not know this,
but I'm slightly passionate about model railways.
In fact, I'm currently building one in my office at home.
Are you going to build a little mini one inside it? Yes.
So, darling, I think you have to hold it very flat.
See if it will work, but I was very pleased with the hat.
Hold on. Hang on, train, calm down.
We'll just see if it... So hold the hat flat.
Whoa!
Well, thank you very much.
In South Africa, we wear this to a football game.
It's like a helmet and we paint it and we call it a makarapa.
A makarapa. A makarapa. ♪ Hey, makarapa! ♪
Yeah, I thought that's what it was.
These are real. Can I have one?
They're all veggie, darling, so, yes, you can help yourself.
Eat your hat.
Are you a veggie, darling? No? No, but you're allowed to have 'em.
There was a Railway Queen called Janet Taylor.
She once gave eight speeches over a single weekend.
The most extraordinary one, a woman called Audrey Mossom.
She was a Railway Queen.
She was sent to Russia in 1936 on a controversial peace trip
to meet Joseph Stalin.
Anyway, she was the second celebrity
to switch on the Blackpool illuminations. Aw!
I know! Crikey. I would love to do that.
When I went, it was whatshisname who sang I Am The One And Only,
Chesney Hawkes! He turned on the Blackpool lights
and then he did One And Only and then he finished it
and he went, "Thank you, Blackpool!"
And we said, "Thank you! " because we're polite,
and he said "Merry Christmas!"
We said, "Merry Christmas, Chesney!"
He said, "Do you want another song?"
And 5,000 people went, "Have you got another one?"
Right, hats away, please.
Thank you very much.
Here's a question about quids.
Why are goods more likely to be priced at 99p
rather than rounded up to a quid?
Cos it looks less? It is one of the reasons. It's not the main reason.
When I had a job, er...
- ..with, um... - How many jobs did you have, man?
I'm still getting away with this one!
Says who? Yeah, well...
I used to work for a lovely...
dear old man, who's no longer with us, Mr Patel...
This is like Graham Norton with the red chair, isn't it?
Yes. Sorry, sorry.
I used to work for a lovely old man called Mr Patel,
back when I was 16, and he had a corner shop
and everything was priced £4.23, £5.67, £8.54,
and I always thought it was odd.
And one day, I said, "Why is it priced like this?"
And he said, "Because it means that you have to go into the till
"to get change." So, basically, he didn't trust me.
It basically meant, if it's a round number,
someone can just give you a tenner and you could pocket that.
That is exactly the reason, darling. Good on Mr Patel! Yes!
Even now, with credit cards and...? Well, I mean it used to be...
Not so much now, with all that contactless and so on,
but in the 1870s, there was an American man called James Ritty
and he ran a saloon in Dayton, Ohio.
And he noticed that some of the staff were actually pocketing money
rather than putting it in the till.
And then, in 1878, he was travelling to Europe
and he noticed that the ship had a mechanism
which counted the number of rotations made by the propellers.
And he came home, his brother was a mechanic,
and they built a counting machine
that could track the number of transactions
and so be aware if there were any inconsistencies.
And they called this new machine Ritty's Incorruptible Cashier
and they sold it to what eventually became
the National Cash Register Company.
And they added a cash drawer and a bell
and every transaction had to be rung through.
And if you were charging 0.99,
it meant you had to go and get a penny change.
I can't believe I got that right. Yeah.
I feel like I'm the lad on Slumdog Millionaire and I'm like...
Also, that picture, is that me in ten years?
But you were right as well, Sarah,
because the fact is 9.99 does look less than £10
and that does play a part in it.
Because you read from the left.
You read from the left, and 99p seems like a bargain.
There was a wonderful story in the Evening Standard in 2014.
They reported on a 99p shop in Barking in Essex,
where everything was sold at 99p.
They were trying to undercut the local pound shops.
Genius! I know.
It gets better, though. Sam's 99p was then itself undercut
when 97p Knockout opened next door.
And worse, promoted themselves with a sale
where everything was 95p or less.
Which brings us to the stranded bag of Quavers
on the end of a metal spiral that we call General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please!
It's a lightning round after all.
What does the scar on Harry Potter's head look like?
Jason? Lightning.
Lightning isn't a zigzag.
Yeah, it doesn't look like a classical lightning bolt at all.
It happens so quickly, in fact,
lightning, that our brains can't actually take it in.
Even great artists have struggled to depict it accurately.
There was a 19th-century photographer from Philadelphia
called William Nicholson Jennings
and he realised that lightning didn't look
the way we have depicted it in paintings
and he took the world's first-ever photograph of lightning
on 2nd September 1882
and it did look nothing like the lightning in paintings.
And photographs of real lightning shows as many as 51 forks.
On average, paintings only show just over two forks
and Harry's scar has just got one.
All we can say is that his scar looks like
the International Organisation for Standardisation, ISO,
the symbol for risk of electric shock.
Anybody know what ISO stands for?
You just said it, didn't you? Yes.
International Standards Organisation.
17 years I've been playing this game.
It's not an acronym. It's a reference to the Greek word "isos",
equal, chosen because the acronym would be different in every language
so it would be IOS in English, but it would be OIN in French
and the whole point of the organisation
is to keep things standardised.
I feel like we've glazed over a bit
when you've said that you speak how many languages?
I speak about five.
Five is about as many as we speak collectively, I think.
No, it's four more than me.
Five more than me.
What did you grow up speaking?
I grew up speaking Xhosa.
Does it have clicking in it?
Yeah, like if you greet me in Xhosa,
like, one of my responses could be...
How beautiful is that?!
No, you should find out what he said.
It's a bit weird, like, cos it's my language so when you clap,
it's like... I know, it's odd, isn't it?
Very good, very good!
What would happen if you drank your pint through a straw?
You get punched in the face by the rest of the people in the pub.
Sarah?
You get drunk quicker.
I like the way they've shown us how to say it properly.
Yes!
"You'd get drunk more quickly."
Yes!
But people do think that, Sarah. It is a thing, isn't it?
Probably, it's just that anybody drinking alcohol through a straw
is already in the mood to drink quite a lot of alcohol.
People used to think you create a vacuum inside the straw
that causes the alcohol to evaporate. Another explanation,
it could be that because you're too busy sucking the drink
the lack of oxygen can make you feel giddy.
Could it also be because you're getting it all in your mouth?
Yeah, all of it.
But neither of those explanations really works.
How drunk you feel is entirely down
to how much alcohol is in your system.
It doesn't actually matter how it gets there.
Now, what are the best pants to wear if you want to have a baby?
I'm looking at you, Jason.
Two people went, "None!"
Both women.
I'm talking about boys.
Oh, well, I guess he'll want like baggier, sort of boxers...
Sperm-growing pants. ..rather than tight...
Now say, "Tight ones." Say, "Tight ones." Tight ones?
I think it would just be Jason's pants
because he keeps having babies. That's true.
It's long been thought that tight underpants
might be bad for fertility.
So the idea was that if you warm up a man's testicles,
the sperm might be of lower quality.
But the difference in temperature, about one degree centigrade,
not enough to damage sperm.
Can I ask how you do damage sperm?
Have you got...?
Did you have any...? A really small hammer.
What are you asking me for?!
Lots of myths about conception,
so a man's sperm has always been thought of as being in some kind
of Olympic race to the egg,
you know, where the strongest swimmer wins.
Actually, as long as the sperm is not damaged or deformed,
which of the 250 million sperm reaches the egg is a total lottery.
It's not to do with which one is the strongest swimmer. Oh, right.
And it's not necessarily better for conception
that men have a high sperm count.
Men with very high sperm counts can struggle to conceive
as more than one sperm can fertilise the egg.
Oh, so you get a bit of a bottleneck?
Whereas if you...
..if you just fire out one good sperm...
..Go on, John!
Is that your love talk? "Go on, John!"
And that's the end of our walk on the quirky side.
This week's winner, with minus 8, it's Loyiso!
In second place, with minus 18, it's Sarah!
In third place... You threw me under the bus, you did!
I had that Mr Patel thing, I was pissing it!
In third place, with minus 20, it's Alan!
Unbelievable.
Which means...
..in last place...
..with minus 26, it's Jason!
So, it's thanks to Loyiso, Sarah, Jason and Alan.
Finally, I leave you with this quirky quote
from American comedian Mitch Hedberg.
"I want to hang a map of the world in my house.
"Then I'm going to put pins
"into all the locations that I've travelled to.
"But first, I'm going to have to travel to
"the top two corners of the map so it won't fall down."