Lucky Losers QI XL

This programme contains some strong language.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Good evening, good evening,

good evening, good evening and welcome to QI,

the panel show where fortune favours the brains.

Tonight's show is all about Luck and Loss,

so without further ado, let's meet our Lucky Losers.

The fortunate Sandi Toksvig.

APPLAUSE

The fortuitous Danny Baker.

Thank you. APPLAUSE

The jammy Jeremy Clarkson.

APPLAUSE

And Mr Jinx, the Jonah, Alan Davies.

APPLAUSE

Now, I'm afraid your buzzers are a bit of a lottery, so Sandi goes...

DRUM ROLL 'Release the balls.'

Danny goes...

'No more bets, please.'

-That sounded like you, didn't it?

-How nice.

-Yeah. Jeremy goes...

FRUIT MACHINE DISPENSES COINS

Literally no idea what that was.

-I think it was a jackpot.

-Ah.

Now, Alan goes...

BECK: # I'm a loser, baby So why don't you kill me? #

Now, seeing as being as this is the Lucky Losers show,

whoever gets the lowest score wins.

Well done, Alan!

LAUGHTER

Well done already, congratulations.

So, what you have to do, obviously,

is try and collect as many Klaxons as you can.

And that's going to be interesting, we hope. Quite Interesting.

Fingers on the buzzers, here's your first chance.

What is the oldest you can be on a Club 18-30 holiday?

-Danny?

-30.

Very well done.

You see, you've got the idea, there's the Klaxon.

But anyone like to have a go at the right answer?

What do you imagine is in fact the right answer?

We won't punish you for that.

Surely there's some leeway? Those ladies look a little over 30.

Is it sort of mid-20s?

Are they actually... Is it the other way?

No, it is a little bit older than 30.

35.

-173.

-173, that's a very good number.

Is it 31?

No, it's 36, rather bizarrely.

Well, the oldest you can leave the country with a Club 18-30 ticket

is 35, but you might have your birthday while on the holiday.

Is there not a degree of sadness in your life

if you decide to spend your 36th birthday on a 18-30 holiday?

Has that woman on the left just turned 36?

"I'm so sorry, I've got to go now."

Yeah, there you go.

In theory you could celebrate your 36th birthday on a Club 18-30 holiday.

So, what is the youngest you can be to go on an...

18.

Ooh, he gets those Klaxons, doesn't he?

I like to win.

Have another go.

-Well, clearly they are keen on that margin of error.

-Yeah.

There's clearly some margin of error,

so it can't surely be the same margin, it can't be six years.

No, it wouldn't be six, that would be awful.

12-36.

LAUGHTER

It's the perfect match.

I'm on the phone to Operation Yewtree as we speak.

-No.

-It can't be much more. 16 or 17.

17 is the right answer, yes.

I'm winning now, so therefore I'm losing.

DANNY: Yeah.

Do you remember they had rather dodgy slogans...?

Do you remember any of them?

-"You will get fucked."

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

"Would you like to catch chlamydia?"

"Both carnally and financially."

Well, no, it wasn't quite as on the nose as that.

-It was...

-"Herpes."

.."Beaver Espana".

-GROANING

-Oh, God...

-I know.

"It's not all sex, sex, sex - there's some sun and sea as well."

-Oh, dear.

-DANNY: I know.

-Really puts you off, doesn't it?

Chlamydia I think is a very good...

There's no symptoms, when you have chlamydia.

So if somebody says, "How are you?" and you say, "I'm very well,"

that means you almost certainly have it.

-It's the perfect disease.

-It is.

So I never know how anyone goes to the doctor's with it, it would be quite interesting...

-So there are no warts, there's no weeping...

-No green discharge.

-GROANING AND LAUGHTER

-One has to be frank about these things.

"Absolutely fine" - go to the doctor's, you'll have chlamydia.

It's baffling. And koalas all have it.

-Do they?

-Yeah, all got chlamydia.

-How do you know that?

Does that come up in general conversation? "Koalas have all got chlamydia."

Huge problem in Australia.

I thought maybe it was an add-on to an 18-30 Australian holiday.

"If you didn't get lucky, there's always the koalas."

LAUGHTER

Brilliant. Thank you so much. Fantastic.

Well, according to the official rules on their website,

a 17-year-old CAN go to a, as it turns out rather misnamed,

Club 18-30 holiday.

Now, a question especially for Alan to lose points with

in this Lucky Losers show.

Which mammal has the most cells in its body?

Blue whale.

FANFARE

I'm afraid...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..it does!

And you get a lot of points for that.

It's the blue whale bonus and you get points, and what do points mean?

Prizes.

-Bad surprises. Yeah.

-Bad what?

No, it does indeed have the most cells, cos it's the largest animal.

And the larger the animal, the more the cells.

But you can claw your way back if you could tell me

to the nearest trillion how many cells a human being has.

LAUGHTER

-It's a certain trillion.

-Two.

Ah, it's a bit more than that.

-It's 30 trillion.

-Is it?

-Yeah.

-What if you were a fat blue whale? Then you'd have more.

Well, no, that's a human I'm talking about.

-The blue whale would be 2,000 times more cells.

-Oh!

So you would think, because it has more cells,

that blue whales would have more cancers,

or at least have a greater number of them,

because it has so many more cells.

And in fact it has fewer than we do, and nobody knows why.

Well, it doesn't smoke.

That's an obvious reason.

There is that. But it's known as Peto's Paradox.

Do they die of cancer, whales?

All mammals can get it.

People who've had cats and dogs will know, it's a very sad thing,

-but all animals get cancers, yeah.

-Oh.

So, five minus points available

if you can tell me what species of whale that is there.

-Blue.

-It's not a blue, actually.

We should have offered you a blue,

-but in fact that is a...

-Is it a sperm?

-No, sperm are the ones with the big, big...

-Hump.

-It's a humpback.

Oh, sperm's got the big head that fills with stuff.

With spermaceti. With a milky substance in its head,

which to this day we don't know what it uses it for,

the general theory is it's something to do with the huge depths

it goes down to. And it was used by Nasa,

because it kept its viscosity in minus 400 degrees.

Incredibly cold temperatures, it was the same viscosity.

But it was basically the whole of the Industrial Revolution ran on whale oil,

and if it weren't for John D Rockefeller cracking crude oil

into petroleum and various other forms like paraffin and so on,

the whales would have unquestionably been extinct.

-So petrol saved the whale.

-It did!

As I've been saying for many years... LAUGHTER

It's very... Yes, it's one of the great ironies of history.

APPLAUSE

-Knew it!

-It's true.

I thought that would please you, somehow.

I'm enormously pleased.

You'd rather be a petrolhead than a spermhead.

-As it is...

-LAUGHTER

I'd take all the compliments you can get, Jeremy.

LAUGHTER

Now, before we continue, I should let you know that,

as this is the L series,

one of the questions coming up will have a lavatorial theme.

The answer will be wholly lavatorial.

CASH REGISTER RINGS, TOILET FLUSHES

And if it is, you can ask if you can spend your penny, right?

-So if there's a lavatory question, I bring that out?

-Yeah.

-Right.

And you get extra points. That's right. So, anyway, moving on.

Which good cause benefited from Britain's first lottery?

FRUIT MACHINE DISPENSES COINS Dale Winton.

Dale Winton's tanning salon.

-I'm sure it did very well.

-There you go.

But it wasn't Britain's first lottery.

-Is it the Bank of England?

-No - that's a very good point.

That was almost like a lottery, shares were issued to raise money.

-For the army, wasn't it?

-Yeah.

It was virtually like a lottery.

-But this one was similarly to raise money for...

-Building?

For a military venture, or at least for a military, perhaps for defence, originally.

-Was it Drake?

-Yes, it was indeed in 1567...

-It was Drake.

-Yeah, it was...

-The Armada.

What's that doing in my head? Why is that in my head?

I'm very impressed. It was Queen Elizabeth and her navy,

and indeed Drake was one of her leading figures.

-There she is.

-That was a random guess.

She realised that, should King Philip of Spain send a fleet,

-which in Spanish is...?

-Armada?

-Armada, yes.

I'm genuinely still reeling from the fact that's in my head.

It's really great when that happens, isn't it?

No, it's odd. Makes me feel weird.

And so she thought, to raise money, she'd try and get

those who could afford it to buy lottery tickets

and the prize would be enormous.

And the money raised would be enormous.

Now, what do you think the average wage was per year?

-It can't have been much, can it?

-No, it wasn't much.

-The average annual income in 1600 was about £9.

-Oh.

So tickets were 50 pence, we'd call it now - ten shillings each.

-That's a lot.

-Which is about three week's wages.

-Yeah.

So only the rich would be able to.

Only the rich would be able to. The prize on there was £5,000.

£5,000 then, which is millions today.

-You could buy America.

-You could buy a huge estate.

Plus, it was paid partly in cash, but also in gold and silver

and fine tapestry and fabrics, and something really extraordinary

to encourage sales. And this later cropped up in one of the most

popular games in our culture, as something that you could tuck away

under the board of the game, for future use.

Monopoly, a "get out of jail free" card.

You got a "get out of jail free" card.

For anything except murder, serious felonies, treason...

And parking.

-LAUGHTER

-Yeah. Parking your horse, obviously that was not allowed.

Or piracy, that was one thing. But everything else was.

Very good, wasn't it?

-That would sell tickets now, wouldn't it?

-Brilliant idea.

-I learnt about the Mary Rose. Do you want to know about the Mary Rose?

-Tell me.

The Mary Rose sank because they didn't close

-the cannon portholes.

-Oh, my goodness!

They let off a broadside, and it tipped back

-and the water all went in.

-Every...

-500 men on board.

And they drowned because they'd put the netting across the deck

to prevent people boarding the boat

-and they were unable to get off.

-They couldn't get out.

And I have to say, the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth is

one of the single best museums I've ever been, it's only just opened.

And there was some controversy about it

because they were able to resurrect skeletons

and using forensic artists show us pictures of what they actually

looked like - you can stand and look the cook in the face...

It is the most astonishing thing. And see all his things.

And what I love is that even though they were going to war

and they were fighting and so on, they had violins

and they had chessboards and dice and they wanted to play games.

I love the fact that they must have been having a laugh

and enjoying themselves, apart from it was such a tragic end.

But it's the most amazing time capsule of that period,

because the ship sank with everything there.

-It is an amazing thing.

-Well, I'm going to go.

Well worth a visit, I think.

Exactly, let's go to Portsmouth.

Very good, thank you so much. Brilliant.

APPLAUSE

So, the good cause in the first national lottery

was beating up the Spanish.

What do newsagents sell that makes people suddenly want to vote Tory?

Is it going to be the Daily Mail?

KLAXON

APPLAUSE

Makes me want to vote Communist, but there you go.

Will you get one for the Daily Telegraph as well?

-You probably might...

-KLAXON

He's clawing his way back to victory.

No, this is a very odd thing - well, newsagents sell them.

What about The Sun?

KLAXON

You're on fire!

This is not a newspaper, I will now say, but it's something newsagents sell.

They sell something that makes you want to vote Conservative?

Well, it does if things turn out well

after you've bought this particular item.

-OK.

-So we're really back to the last question.

-Is it a lottery ticket?

It's a lottery ticket. If you win the lottery,

many Labour voters who've won the lottery

said that they had changed their mind and were now Tory voters.

-So...

-What a depressing comment on humanity that is.

-It is a bit.

Perhaps even more depressing is that the American therapists

have a name for the syndrome, which is Sudden Wealth Syndrome,

which is presumably what they suffer from whenever they name a syndrome,

if they make money by deciding you have a syndrome.

But that's a really boring name for it, though.

You'd think so. But these are the same people who said

if you lose someone you love, they die, and you are still...

ALAN SNEEZES SPECTACULARLY

-DANNY: Whoa!

-Wow!

-Wow, that was huge!

-That was so impressive.

-JEREMY: Alan's exploded.

-That was enormous.

-The day had to happen.

-That was an explosion.

-That was extraordinary.

-Are you all right?

There are people in California now

looking at their seismographs, going, "Jesus Christ!"

- DANNY: What a thing! - JEREMY: "What was that?"

Is that because I said the word "die?" Will you do it again?

So sorry for interrupting you.

It's fine, it's just it was a revolting thing about psychologists

who have said if someone you love dies and you're still inconsolable with grief six months later,

that is a mental condition, it's not healthy.

And what's that called? Six Months Later Dead Person Syndrome?

It's called grieving. It is perfectly reasonable, in fact, yeah.

A syndrome I read of - you know when you come out of the pictures and you sneeze,

-when you go from a dark thing or look at the sun?

-Yes.

It's got a real fancy name now.

I've never sneezed when walking from the dark. Is that normal, am I...?

It's because you don't suffer from it. Don't mock people who do. LAUGHTER

Presumably you don't go to matinees.

-You go to evening performances.

-Yeah.

So he comes out and it's dark. But it's from the dark into the light.

Yeah, it's a syndrome. It's a real syndrome.

We've got the name in front of me,

my Elves have been busily hacking away. It's called

Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst.

There you go. Look at that.

-JEREMY: I want to have him round for dinner.

-So, there we are.

APPLAUSE

For short, it's called ACHOO Syndrome.

LAUGHTER

We're still with lotteries. This is more astonishing.

I mean, what a coincidence.

In 2001, guess who won the Zimbabwe Banking Corporation's jackpot?

No! Mugabe.

It was Robert Mugabe!

What are the odds against that? I mean...

-Wow, lucky man.

-Yeah. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Anyway, less fortunate was Clarence "Inaction" Jackson.

The name tells it all.

He won, in 1995, 5.8 million on the Connecticut lottery.

-Didn't get it?

-Failed to turn up.

-Didn't pick it up?

The collect-by date passed, and they wouldn't pay out. He tried to sue and he lost. Very sad.

A woman in 1980 called Maureen chose the correct winning numbers for both Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

-Unfortunately, she...

-She was burned as a witch.

No, she played the Massachusetts numbers in Rhode Island...

ALL GROAN

No! The odds against that are 30 trillion to one.

Well, quite. Anyway, yes,

lottery winners tend to turn right after collecting their winnings.

What's the most disgusting thing

a Liberal-Tory coalition has ever done?

I think you've got the photo right there!

LAUGHTER

-So much choice.

-Mmm.

I'm going to guess it's NOT this Liberal...

It's not, it's the Liberal Party rather than

the Liberal Democratic Party, which is the Lib Dems.

Is it Whiggery...?

It's later than that. 100 years later, roughly. 1890s, in fact.

Is it something to do with sewers?

It's in your favourite city, Birmingham. It's not sewers...

Is it something to do with Thomas Crapper?

No, it's not a spend a penny answer.

-It's eating something, in public.

-In Birmingham?

A liberal person ate something in Birmingham in the 1850s.

-A group of liberal people.

-It's getting closer and closer.

-Dog shit.

-It was a scandal that rocked the nation.

-It wasn't dog SHIT, it was...

-A dog.

-A dog.

-Oh!

-They ate a dog.

Not only that, they celebrated their victory...

LAUGHTER

-That was not a real headline.

-No...

LAUGHTER

We did mock that one up, I grant you.

But the top bit is correct - "Birmingham Gazette,

"largest sale with one exception of any provincial morning newspaper."

I love the "with one exception" -

"I'll grant you that, there is one exception."

Why don't they just put "second-largest"?!

So they ate this dog - not only that, they roasted it

and portions of the dog's limbs were used to create fun

by some of the men rubbing them over the faces of their companions.

But a few days later, the Birmingham Gazette

was scooped by the Birmingham Post - still going, I think -

which revealed that one of the men involved was a Tory,

so in fact it was a coalition disgrace.

-Why did they do this?

-To celebrate - they were obviously drunk, I suspect.

Yeah, but there's drunk, and there's...

There's really unpleasant.

I've been drunk many, many times,

-and I've never looked at my dogs...

-Or your neighbours' dogs.

You've had a kebab.

GROANING

Did you know that how disgusted you feel about something, like eating a dog,

will reflect on your political inclinations?

So conservative people are more likely

to feel repulsed by things than liberals.

And it's something to do with your physical reaction to something,

so it tells you something about what political persuasion you are.

That's how I know I'm so liberal.

Cos I'll eat anything.

-I've never eaten a dog, though, that's very odd.

-No.

Well, like most meat-eaters they're not very tasty.

Well, you shouldn't eat anything that's more than two from the sun,

-and a dog eats meat...

-Exactly. Meat-eaters are not good. I mean,

those who do eat meat, eat vegetarians -

we eat cows, and sheep...

You're a vegetarian, aren't you?

-I eat fish.

-Mmm... I could still eat you.

LAUGHTER

Technically I could eat you.

-I'd leave the hair.

-I think we'd have to have a vote.

This next question is even more incomprehensible than usual,

so I thought I'd spice things up by getting you all to wear hats.

Could you pass that to Jeremy?

And you can have that. And yours, you'll notice, says "Leader".

And you can have the fez.

I have the largest head in the world.

-And you can have a nice straw boater.

-LAUGHTER

-It's extraordinary. You do have a large head.

-Enormous head.

DANNY: Elmer Fudd!

I saw Bob Dylan in concert at the O2 Arena,

and he didn't have screens on, you can't... He's this size.

And he wore a ten-gallon hat for the whole thing, and he never spoke.

So it could have been anyone.

LAUGHTER

Right, OK, here we go with this question.

What do Amy Freeze and Larry Sprinkle

have in common with D Weedon and AJ Splatt?

Is this some dark part of the internet?

It's a real thing, it's not a dark part of the internet,

it's a joyous part of real life and...

They're real people?

Weedon and Splatt are both Australian urologists.

Ah.

In other words they cover splatting and being weed on.

Well, not necessarily being weed on - weeing, sorry.

And Amy Freeze and Larry Sprinkle are American...?

-Chefs.

-Antifreeze manufacturers.

-Ice cream.

-JEREMY: Garden sprinkler manufacturers.

-Weather forecasters.

So it freezes, you get a sprinkle of rain.

-I don't believe that's their real names.

-It really is.

Now, what is the name for people having jobs

that come after their names? So, if you were a baker, say...

Yes, exactly. I don't know the... I don't know the term.

JEREMY: My dad was a clerk.

-Exactly, that would do it.

-Yeah.

-It's called nominative determinism.

It's called nominative or onomastic determinism,

because you're determined by your name.

But I've always been interested by this,

because there was a family many years ago

and they were called the Gauntletts.

And they christened their son Victor.

I knew Victor, he ran Aston Martin.

Exactly. He was destined to run Aston Martin,

simply because his parents had christened him Victor.

If they'd called him Stan, he would have been a plumber.

You see it all the time,

where somebody called Fotherington Major Fortescue

has always got a sandwich shop in Fulham.

Whereas somebody called Ron Twatt is a builder from somewhere.

-Very simple names tend to...

-Yeah.

-I know Ron Twatt.

-Do you?

Bloody good builder.

Surely Ron Twatt should be a gynaecologist?

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

-Ron Twatt.

-Denis Norden and Frank Muir,

when they were writing their scripts, they used to get bored,

and come up with improbable TV shows.

And the best one was "By day, she dispensed justice

"on the streets of LA. By night, she was queen of the music halls.

"Join us at 8:00, for Tara Raboom, DA."

LAUGHTER

Ta-ra-ra boom-di-ay! Oh, that's brilliant.

-I love it.

-That was my favourite one of those.

Well, some examples you might know -

they're called aptronyms as well, because they are apt-onyms.

-Mark Avery, where would he work?

-In an aviary.

Well, no, that's a bit too specific.

-In a zoo.

-Birds, something to do with birds.

He's of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, yes. Very good.

The poet Wordsworth, when you think about it,

he went to Cambridge to read mathematics,

and he probably thought, "Well, I'm called Wordsworth, words, words."

Stephen, why am I wearing this hat?

You'll see. You're the leader,

you've got to have a way of indicating your leadership.

And you're the leader.

I did a programme years ago sailing around Britain with John McCarthy,

and we had to go and be fitted for life jackets

at Crew Saver Life Jackets, and they were fitted,

and I promise you, I've still got his card,

by a man called Will Drown.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

You see, it's just fantastic. It's just bliss when that happens.

Well, you've rather beaten mine, my rather sorry lot left.

I mean, Danone UK, the managing director is called Bruno Fromage.

You probably remember the former Lord Chief Justice was...

-Lord Judge.

-Lord Judge.

That really is pretty straightforward, isn't it?

-What is Fry, darling? What is it...?

-The Frys?

Bristol chaps, and chapesses, a very famous chapess.

She was on our £5 note until very recently - Elizabeth Fry.

And she was a Gurney and the Frys were Frys

and they were both Quaker families, as many of the chocolatiers were.

Were you plagued at school by people saying "Turkish Delight"?

Of course. "Fry's Turkish Delight, keeps you up in the night."

LAUGHTER

-No, it doesn't.

-Happy days.

-It's a pleasant comestible.

Try, "Dan, Dan, the lavatory man, washed his hair with

"a frying pan, combed his hair with the leg of a chair, Dan, Dan..."

And Danny Boy. There's certain songs that do curse you through your life

if you have a certain name.

I just got, "What sort of a fucking name is Jeremy?"

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Just a couple of nominative determinism facts.

One is this fellow called Robert Lane, who was a New Yorker, who,

for various reasons, decided to give his sixth child the name Winner

and his seventh and last child, rather unkindly, Loser.

Something of an extraordinary experiment,

but it at least reversed the effect you might expect

and Loser Lane, known as Lou,

went on to become a pillar of the NYPD and...

probably arresting his older brother, Winner,

who was arrested for burglary more than 30 times.

So it didn't work at all.

Now, if I told you that two of our biggest fans are called Joyce Baker

and Amanda Pastry, what do you think you might have handed out to you?

-Is it cake?

-Well, it's not cake, actually, it's biscuits.

So you can help yourself. You have to eat them all.

Well, it's nice, but mildly disappointing.

Yeah, you've got to eat them.

-This is all part of the experiment.

-Do we have to eat them?

-Yeah.

The third one has to go, and Alan's taken the third one,

-and that's the important thing.

-What?

Because it's got the word leader...

This happens in experiment after experiment with human beings,

if you tell someone they're the leader,

and you give them three of something, an odd number,

with an even number of people, the leader always takes.

Well, it's a bit like, my father once went out for tea with somebody

and two cakes were delivered - one was very small, one was very large.

And the chap just leant over and took the large one.

And my dad said, "If that had been me and I went first,

"I would have taken the smaller one." And he said,

"Well, you've got it anyway, so what are you complaining about?"

-That's so logical.

-It is.

-That's brilliant.

But I think boys and girls have a very different way of doing this.

I was once at a party and they were handing out things on this slate,

they seem to do nowadays, with canapes, don't they?

And there were two small canapes on this piece of slate,

and there were three of us.

And all three of us went, "No, that's very kind, thank you,"

and as we were saying it, a man walked past,

picked up one canape, put it on top of the other and ate them both.

Excellent.

So he ate the other one not just cos he's Alan Davies...

But because he's got "leader"

and he felt like somehow it was just put into his brain

that he was the leader and he would have that.

-It's not behavioural...

-Sorry, Jeremy.

Behavioural science is...

I was looking forward to that biscuit.

Hand in your plates.

It doesn't help that I forgot I'd got "leader" on my hat.

-Oh, you forgot you were the leader, that really doesn't help.

-Yes, no.

I'll eat those as well, if you like.

Right, so, skimming on.

What did lucky old Edward VII use this for?

Oh, I say!

-I say lucky, I mean, it's an extraordinary contrivance.

-Oh, God!

What do we know about it this?

-Ah, ah.

-No, quite wrong.

He didn't poo on yellow silk.

-You thought it lifted up into a commode.

-A commode, yes.

-Is it sexual, some kind of...?

-It was sexual, yeah.

It's sexual and I'm not going to say it on television, frankly,

-I'll just be in trouble.

-Well, no, you won't. I mean, it's...

-Well, I will a bit.

-Yeah.

For what I've got in mind, if I said that...

LAUGHTER

I'll accept that then.

I guess a young lady sits on the top bit and he's not...

He's elsewhere.

Well, this is what we find hard to work out.

The Chabanais was a maison de passe in Paris - a brothel,

as we would say - and he had this constructed for him,

it was called the siege d'amour, the seat of love.

And the idea was that he could service, pleasure,

-have his way with two prostitutes at the same time.

-Oh.

How this worked I'm not quite... I say at the same time, I mean that...

With his extra penis.

It does make you worry.

The King's penis.

-Behold.

-Two birthdays, two penises.

It's got stirrups at the top, so there's clearly...

It has got stirrups. Her legs could go, or his...

Is this why Queen Victoria didn't talk to him?

-I think it might well be.

-"What have you got there now, dear?"

"Ah, Your Majesty."

Dirty Bertie, as he was known, quite rightly. His name was Bertie.

Do you know that wonderful story,

-he had a long-standing affair with Lillie Langtry?

-Yes.

Probably it's not true at all,

but it is said that he was very cross with her one day

and he said, "I've spent enough on you to build a battleship."

And she said "You've spent enough in me to float one."

LAUGHTER AND GROANS

So, what did the Ancient Greeks use this for?

-Yes, go on.

-Is it that this?

Ah, no, it isn't.

You're not seeing all of it, which is rather unfair of us.

You just seeing the head. It then goes on quite a long way down.

-Is it sexual as well?

-Something protrudes.

-Is it sexual?

-It is, isn't it?

-Is it?

-There you are.

-There you go.

-Oh.

-Well, you can't...

-Well, it doesn't look like much fun.

He got his bollock shut in the lift.

LAUGHTER

There are very few left in good condition, I have to say.

Well, somebody's pulled that one's arms off.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

It's the only way he'll learn.

The only way he'll learn not to play with himself.

These were called herms, as in Hermes the god,

and these were little pillars - or large pillars in some cases -

with a phallus on them and they were rubbed in oil

and then, as you passed one, you'd give it a good fondle...

There you are, another one there. ..to give you good luck.

-And where is it from, darling?

-Greece.

The great period of Greece, if you like.

In fact, during the Peloponnesian War

in about 415 BC there was a terrible incident

known as The Mutilation of the Herms

when they were at war with Sparta, the Athenians,

and every single penis had been hacked off.

And they blamed this on the disastrous expedition to

-Sicily a little later.

-Well, it changes...

That period of history, the discovery that the penis

has anything to do with reproduction changes everything.

There's no natural reason to suppose that the predisposition to

pop it in a snug hole somewhere, which is what all humans

and animals...we can observe animals doing,

and humans have the same predisposition, the idea that,

nine months later, the thing that pops out of you is connected to it

is not a rational one at all.

Until the Greeks, nobody had worked that out?

Plenty of cultures hadn't worked it out at all until they were told.

In fact, you get mostly godless cultures prior to that

where the woman is revered

cos she's the one who is producing the new child

and the men suddenly go, "Oh, it's something to do with me!"

And that ruined the world, actually.

LAUGHTER

Very good.

Now, what's the worst thing you can do with a gympie-gympie?

Gympie-gympie?

Remove her leaf?

Well, that would... Yeah, she would be upset.

It's wipe your bottom.

You've missed your Spend A Penny chance.

Does it make it poisonous or do something dreadful to you?

I think poison is...

It's kind of poison, but it's sort of worse than that.

Is it full of bugs that crawl up your bum?

Imagine a stinging nettle turned up to the absolutely unbearable max.

Why would you wipe your bottom with it?

Well, because it looks a bit like a leaf that would be safe to.

-Oh, a dock leaf type thing.

-Yeah, a dock-leafy sort of thing.

It's from Queensland

and it has one of the most vicious stings in nature.

A brush against it feels apparently like being burnt with hot acid

and electrocuted at the same time.

According to one account, a soldier in the bush

in the Second World War was caught short and picked the wrong leaf

-and found himself in so much pain that he shot himself.

-No!

-AUDIENCE GASPS

-Exactly.

That is a serious... I mean, just the agony of it.

One of the first mentions is from 1866, a surveyor reported

that his pack horse was stung, got mad and died within two hours.

Les Moore, a scientific officer with the Queensland government, was stung

across the face, ended up looking like Mr Potato Head, apparently.

I still think it can't be as bad

as the toilet paper we had at boarding school.

I know what you mean. Izal and Bronco.

I used to write home to my mother on it, airmail letters,

that's how bad it was.

-Yes, it was crispy tissue.

-Is that that shiny stuff?

Nothing would stick to it, it was like grease paper.

You'd think, "I've definitely had a poo, but there's no evidence."

LAUGHTER

It wouldn't come off on it. It seemed to serve no purpose.

Shall we move along?

Yes. Let's do that.

So, it was the Spend A Penny round after all.

If you're caught short in the bush, don't use a gympie-gympie,

you might end up shooting yourself.

Now, which football team is the worst in the world

at losing major trophies?

The worst in the world,

so it's a team that presumably has never won a game.

-It's not that. They've won quite a lot of games.

-Oh.

They've even won trophies.

-Have they had the trophies stolen?

-But then they've lost them.

They've lost them.

-Aston Villa?

-Very good.

Well, there you go.

JEREMY: We're back in Birmingham again now

and you're being rude, aren't you? By knowing so much.

How do you know that?

He does a sports programme, he's a football lover.

-Yeah.

-Ah. I must listen.

But in the 1964 FA Cup Final,

which was won by...?

West Ham.

Yes, you can see Bobby Moore there. Who was their manager?

At that point? Er, 1964...

Would have been, not Ron....

-It was Ron.

-It was?

-Ron Greenwood, yeah.

He took it home by Tube, discreetly covering it...

LAUGHTER

..wrapped in a cloth.

That lady, she's got her eye on it.

I was talking to Jackie Charlton once.

The centre-half for England when they won the World Cup in 1966.

His brother, Bobby, of course.

And Jack Charlton said that after the World Cup final, he said,

"Myself and Alan Ball and a few of the lads,

"we headed to the Talk Of The Town,"

and he said, "I woke up in a couple's house in Dagenham who I've never seen

"before or since, and the first thing I did was get my jacket and go...

"Cos I still had the World Cup winners' medal in my pocket.

"We made a few excuses and went." So it's not unusual in that period.

I love the fact Bobby Charlton

used to have a cigarette at half-time in every match.

There's a wonderful ladies football team called the Dick Kerr Ladies

and the Dick Kerr Ladies existed for years and years.

During the Second World War, they were the most popular football team

and there was a woman who used to play for them

who smoked Woodbines while playing.

LAUGHTER

Well, Ron Greenwood had good reason to be worried,

and that's the point.

Football trophies do have a history of going missing,

and Aston Villa seem to have been more to blame than anyone else.

In 1895, their FA Cup was stolen from the window of a sports shop

in Birmingham and, 63 years later, a man called Harry Burge

confessed that he had been the man who had stolen it,

-and he had melted it down and made counterfeit half-crown coins.

-Wow!

The second major trophy to have been mislaid by Aston Villa

-was the European Cup in... What year did they...?

-1981.

Yes, they mislaid it in '82. Two members of the...

-1982.

-It would have been, yes.

Two members of the team decided

to take the cup to a darts match, where it disappeared.

And many years later a man called Adrian Reed

was identified as the culprit.

He took it to a local police station.

But it didn't end there,

cos the police decided to have a football match for it.

So they kept it, so that they could brag

about being the European Cup winners.

And the FA Cup gets damaged so much every year

that it has to get repaired every single year

because it gets bashed about in the bath.

-I love they've got a pot of tea by the bath.

-Yes.

A bottle of milk. A bottle of milk is very nice.

You always used to see them. Quite often you'd see them drinking milk.

It must have been this early sponsorship thing.

But always after the FA Cup... I just remembered this now.

In the post-match interviews, they'd be standing holding a pint of milk.

-The last thing you want.

-Probably sponsored by the Milk Board.

The Milk Marketing Board.

So Aston Villa may not have a great record of winning trophies,

but they have a rather impressive record of losing them.

Speaking of losers,

it's time for the lucky dip that is General Ignorance.

Fingers on buzzers, please.

And don't forget that tonight the lowest scorer will be the winner.

Which day is added to a leap year?

Yeah?

February 29th.

Yeah, well done, absolutely. No, it isn't.

Right, well, it is.

I'm standing my ground on this one.

They squeeze into the middle of February

and add an extra 24th, so the 24th becomes the 25th,

25th becomes 26th, 26th becomes 27th,

27th becomes 28th, 28th becomes 29th.

The reason for that is that

the Roman calendar was divided into three.

The Kalends, the Nones and the Ides.

And when it came to discovering, which they did,

that a year was actually not 365 days but 365 days and a quarter,

they added it into one of those calendar series.

Now you may say this is just ridiculous, they added 29,

but they didn't, and in fact the proof of this is that in Denmark,

the day on which a woman is allowed to propose to a man

is the 24th of February, not the 29th.

That's the reason. Yeah.

There's an extra day in the middle of February that, apart from Denmark,

nobody else has noticed it.

Well, the Catholic church did until the '70s,

it was St Matthias's Day.

-So vicars were going, "Ah, it's the secret day today."

-Yeah.

St Matthias's day was the 24th February,

but on leap years it was the 25th.

I was with you, Alan, really.

-But it's good, because he got his extra points.

-He did.

-Yeah, you see, don't forget that.

-Lucky bastard, as it turns out.

So the day you add for a leap year is actually February 24th.

In which year did World War II begin?

-Oh, yes?

-1939.

Well now, there, well done.

Coming up on the rails.

Yes, absolutely. Overuse of the whip.

I just wanted to make sure it's working.

Yes, you're still winning. Yeah?

-'39?

-He just said that.

-I know.

It doesn't work twice.

I was just waiting to hear why it wasn't 1939.

Well, that's a very Anglo-Franco point of view.

Certainly it's when the British and the French joined the war,

but before then the Germans had been at war with other countries

and the Chinese had been at war with the Japanese.

That was a very global sort of event, it spread out,

and of course there were alliances and other such things.

So you could argue it was '37, you could argue it was '35,

you could say the Spanish Civil War with all the International Brigades

that went in, that was the beginning of the world conflict.

But could it strictly speaking be the WORLD war at that point?

-I mean, how many countries does it take?

-I don't know.

It certainly is nothing like the entire globe.

-Austria-Hungary is probably not enough.

-No.

My father was an MEP along with Otto von Habsburg who,

had things been different, would've had much more power.

My father was watching the football in the common room at the Parliament

and Otto came in and said, "Who's playing?"

My father said, "Austria Hungary."

He said, "Oh, against whom?"

LAUGHTER

So Britain joined World War II in 1939, yes,

but it had been going on since at least 1937 and arguably since 1935.

Could you beat a T-Rex at arm-wrestling?

Yes, easily.

-KLAXON

-Yes, easily.

Well done. Even the word "easily" you got.

LAUGHTER

Either that's the fastest typist in the world or I was bang on.

-A couple of points for both words.

-Very good indeed.

No. It may be that, in relation to its body,

the T-Rex's arms look rather spindly and puny.

In fact, they are enormous

and powerful they are able to lift the equivalent to about 400 lbs,

whereas the average human being would be about 150 lbs.

-Plus I did once lose an arm-wrestle to Boris Johnson.

-Did you?

Lost, can you believe that? I thought he was all blubber.

He is a horse of a man.

-He is, he's Turkish, he's got Turkish blood in him.

-Hugely strong.

Low centre of gravity.

LAUGHTER

We were in a Turkish bath at the time.

-So, you were in a Turkish bath...

-I wasn't in a Turkish bath.

I was just arm-wrestling him over who had vomited most

in an F-15 fighter jet. How manly is that?

Yes, I went in a Jaguar, and Hugh Laurie went in one as well.

And Hugh is the butchest man you've ever met -

he's just extraordinarily athletic, natural athlete.

And we each got on this aeroplane.

He looked at me, the squadron leader, as he belted me up

and said, "Hmm, yeah, oh, OK." And I thought, "Of course,

"I'll be the one who throws up and Hugh would be flying beside

"and look at me and go, 'ha-ha'."

Hugh threw up for the entire journey and I was completely fine.

But the bad bit was when we landed

and I said to the squadron leader,

"When you were just belting me up and you looked at me and you went,

"Erm, yeah, OK," what was that about?

He said, "Oh, I didn't want to worry you.

"If we had had to use the ejection seat,

"your kneecaps would have stayed behind."

LAUGHTER

-My legs were just...

-Exactly the same.

-You would have the same.

Exactly the same in a Hawker Hunter. I would have shot out

and the lower half of my legs would have remained in the plane.

It's a bomb underneath you. It's just... Not a chance. Anyway.

God, I was sick.

I was supposed to be dropping a laser-guided bomb

and I had these three screens and you have to...

This was a dream.

I kept vomiting all over the screens and so I missed

not just the target but all of North Carolina with my bomb.

I have no idea where it landed, to this day.

I was sick a lot into their machinery.

Well, despite having mimsy arms,

Tyrannosaurs were very strong indeed.

What is the length of an Olympic swimming pool?

50 metres.

100 metres.

50 metres, no.

It is counted as 50 metres, but it isn't 50 metres.

It's 50 metres.

LAUGHTER

According to the Federation Internationale Natation -

-de Natation, "of swimming"...

-Oh. Those bastards.

Olympic swimming pools are over-sized

by a centimetre at each end. Why?

So you don't bash your ankles when you do that spin-turn thing.

No, it's not that. What do you need in order to have an Olympic race?

A winning tape.

Well, you need a lap counter and you need something that

makes sure that the guy has completed the lap, or the girl.

-A sensor.

-The sensor pad. In each lane you need one of those.

-Which is a centimetre at each end.

-They have to touch it.

What about peeing in the pool?

Is that considered a bad thing by Olympic swimmers?

Oh, it is bad. It's very bad, isn't it? Because...

Pooing is right out, but...

It does something with the chlorine, it mixes with the chlorine.

Well, Olympic swimmers are perfectly happy to do it

-and perfectly happy to admit that they do it.

-No!

-Ugh!

And Michael Phelps, the greatest Olympian of all time

in terms of his medal haul, old bucket-hands himself...

Old Pissy Phelps.

LAUGHTER

He says, "Everybody pees in the pool,

"it's kind of a normal thing to do for swimmers.

"When you're in the water for two hours,

"we don't really get out to pee. Chlorine kills it."

-Two hours?!

-What two-hour race has he been in?

They do actually practise.

Well, the fact is, an Olympic-sized swimming pool is actually

two centimetres longer than you think.

And full of piss.

And indeed, almost entirely full of urine.

How old do you have to be to go on a Club 18...

Oh, that must mean that we've come to the end of the show.

Let's look at the scores and see who's tonight's lucky loser.

Well, well, well, well, well.

The clear, outright and extraordinary winner,

with an amazing minus 23

is Danny Baker!

Hurray, thank you.

APPLAUSE

Thank you. Thank you. Couldn't be more proud.

In second place, with a very, very impressive minus five,

Jeremy Clarkson.

Is that good or bad? APPLAUSE

The wrong side of the ledger with plus three, Sandi Toksvig.

APPLAUSE

But the joker in a pack of 52 cards,

yes, plus 52 for Alan Davies.

APPLAUSE

-The blue whale.

-Blue whale.

-The blue whale was a very bad, bad call.

That's all from Sandi, Danny, Jeremy, Alan and me.

And I leave you with a last word from actor Edmund Gwenn.

When asked if dying was tough, he said,

"Yes, it's tough, but not as tough as doing comedy."

Good night.