Naked Truth QI

APPLAUSE

Hello, and welcome to a show dedicated to the naked truth.

Joining me, and full of naked ambition,

are tonight's skinny dippers.

In the buff, Richard Osman!

-APPLAUSE

-Hi.

In the altogether, Lee Mack!

-APPLAUSE

-Hello.

In her birthday suit, Lolly Adefope!

APPLAUSE

And indescribable Alan Davies!

APPLAUSE

Right, let's hear their buzzers.

Lolly goes...

MUSIC: The Stripper

Richard goes...

MUSIC: The Stripper

Lee goes...

MUSIC: The Stripper

And Alan goes...

MUSIC ENDS

TRICKLING

What the...

Well, I need to go now. Don't you?

-Yeah.

-So, Alan, we're going to start with you.

-Oh, OK.

-Are you normal or weird?

I think I'm normal, Sandi.

KLAXON

-All right, weird.

-Feel bad.

Yes, you are weird.

Anybody here normal?

I would say, uh, I'll go weird.

Yes. Normal, do you feel normal, Lolly?

I feel very much at home here.

OK. You must have a strange house, but there we are.

What about you, Richard? Normal?

I'm going to go out on a crazy limb.

-Yeah.

-And say maybe I'm a little bit weird.

Yes. The fact is, nobody is normal.

So, say you took an average of every single person here in this room,

and we took height and shoe size and collar size and all those things,

you won't find anybody who's average in all respects.

It just doesn't exist.

And it's called the jaggedness principle.

And it really matters. In the 1940s, the US Air Force, they thought,

"I know what we'll do. We'll design a cockpit that fits absolutely

-"everybody." OK?

-The cockpit has yet to be designed...

-Yes, that is...

-..that will fit my proportions.

In what way?

-Oh, in a plane?

-In a plane.

Oh, I'm sorry!

How embarrassing, I thought you were talking about...

Yes, I try so hard with you boys.

So they took the measurements of over 4,000 pilots and they designed

this cockpit seat based on these ten different body measurements.

And it didn't fit a single pilot.

Because there isn't any such thing as normal,

and in the end they had to develop the adjustable seat for aeroplanes,

because of the jaggedness principle.

So trying to find an average person's unbelievably difficult.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics used the national census to try and

find an average Australian.

So here's what they announced. She was a 37-year-old woman.

She had a son and daughter, he was six and she was nine.

The woman is five foot four and 11st.

She's got a three-bedroom house with about £200,000 left

on the mortgage. Her family came originally from the UK.

That is the average Australian.

And then they couldn't find a single person in the entire country who

-matched it.

-I think it's me.

-Are you five foot four?

-Yeah.

Are you Australian?

So close!

OK, try this one, all right?

So this is a 2014 dating site.

They surveyed 2,000 London men.

So the ideal London woman, here's what she looks like.

Five foot six.

-Five foot four.

-Five foot four, OK.

9st. 34C bust, drinks white wine,

has no tattoos and supports Tottenham.

Oh!

No wonder she's single.

Yeah, well... I've got more on her.

I've got more. Brown hair.

Brown hair. She drove an Audi TT, she was either a nurse or a teacher.

She liked roast dinners.

She had an exotic foreign accent.

She loved Dirty Dancing the movie,

and the top television show was Friends.

-Oh, she sounds like an idiot.

-She does!

That's what a man's really looking for in a woman,

somebody who likes Dirty Dancing.

They're so rare to find.

-I know.

-I don't think I have any of those...

-Don't have...

-..qualities.

-You've got brown hair.

-It's kind of black.

-OK.

So, if you're not normal, you could be weird.

In fact, we are all at the table weird.

It stands for Western educated from industrialised rich democratic

countries. So why might that be a problem?

-That be an issue?

-The problem is because they're missing the C off

the end of WEIRD. Yeah, countries.

-Oh, I see.

-So the acronym works pretty well.

-Doesn't really scan though, does it?

-No.

-WEIRDC.

The problem is that whenever we do sociological research or

psychological research, 96% of the people who participate

in these kind of studies, they're usually students, are weird.

Even though that only represents 12% of the world's population.

Surely NORMAL could be an acronym for something?

-Yes.

-Yes, what could it be?

It ends in "Arsenal loving," I know that.

I'm just trying...

Yeah, C's for something else there, isn't it?

LAUGHTER

Anyway, none of us is normal, but we might just be weird.

Now, let's look at some naked apes.

What did the Neanderthal take with him when he went clubbing?

Are you meaning a club to club things with?

KLAXON

Over the years I thought I'd get better at this.

We've all been hoping, Alan.

Given that Alan got a klaxon for saying clubs.

-Yes.

-I'm guessing he didn't use clubs.

-Very good.

-Or she.

-No, he or she did not use...

See, that's how to do it.

They lived above the tree line.

They lived in the desert. There weren't any trees.

Otherwise you'd use a branch!

Yeah, but they had spears and arrows

which had presumably got wooden shafts.

They couldn't get near enough to club anything.

-It was too dangerous.

-For all we know, they didn't have clubs.

I mean, the main thing about it is that we've never,

ever seen anything shaped remotely like a club.

No artefact anywhere.

I base all my knowledge of Neanderthal men

from the Wacky Races.

The Flintstones, obviously, which is incredibly accurate.

All those people living with dinosaurs.

-Running in the cars.

-Yeah, exactly!

To be fair, we've got Wacky Races,

we've got Flintstones and we've got Captain Caveman.

So that's three separate bits of evidence

that suggests they did have clubs.

-Yeah.

-Unless they're all making it up.

-Yeah.

So they didn't take clubs but they took cameras?

Yes.

That's one of the earliest photographs.

That's incredible. They couldn't say cheese, though,

-because they didn't have cheese.

-Cheese?

-For the photograph.

-Oh, I see.

I wonder what they said.

Bison's quite good. "Bison."

To be fair, you are just saying bison and then smiling.

-Bison.

-Yeah.

-You could say anything, couldn't you?

Stick of rock.

But we've never ever...

There's never been a painting, there's never been an artefact.

To be fair, most wooden artefacts will rot.

So you'd get paintings of spears and we get spearheads that you find,

but you don't actually get the wooden...

-You don't get the wooden pole, right?

-Yeah.

So they might have had clubs that rotted away.

I understand that you don't want to go too near an animal with a club.

But if you're fighting neighbouring tribes...

Probably you would just pick up a stick.

-But a stick is a club.

-Well, it's not shaped like a club,

-that's the point.

-When is a club a stick?

-Yeah.

-When you cover it in chocolate.

I'm sorry, Lolly.

-I apologise.

-No, I'm really learning a lot.

You're learning? That's good.

Because I feel like knowledge is draining from me as we speak.

Now a question about the bare necessities of life, such as shelter.

So who lived here?

-Massive bats.

-Massive...?

-No, I said massive.

OK. And what did you say?

And I said "not bats".

-Not bats, OK.

-So between us the answer is massive not bats.

It's a type of not bat, the massive not bat.

We could go through a long list of things that didn't live there.

I can tell you they're in Brazil...

Brazilians.

Is not correct.

They sometimes went as deep as 70 feet, they had multiple chambers.

Is it some sort of massive animal?

-Yes.

-Is it termites?

No, but that would be huge, wouldn't they?

That would be massive. An army of termites.

Yeah, like a load of termites going, "Go!"

And then making a massive tunnel.

I love that. Little tiny hard hats, running.

They'd build like a little cart, and then they all ride down it together.

Whee!

Suddenly my answer not anywhere near as interesting, if I'm honest.

Is it a burrowing mammal?

It is. It's a giant ground sloth.

They lived from about 2.8 million years ago to about 10,000 years ago,

and some of them were as big as an adult elephant.

The largest species, the megatherium,

weighed up to four tonnes.

And it was 20-foot long from nose to tail.

So they still have some living relatives today, which is the tree sloths.

The difference in scale, I mean...

Say imagine me and Richard.

To be comparably larger, Richard would need to be about 50 foot tall.

So I'd need to be three foot taller than I currently am?

Yes.

What's the largest burrowing animal today?

Oh, that would be the giant "not bat".

Badgers are quite big.

Wombats, do they go under?

-Giant badger?

-I like the question, "Do wombats go under?"

-Is it wombat?

-No, it's not a wombat.

-Two bats.

-Two bats!

I'm going to go with Lolly. It's not bats, OK?

It's not bats.

Is it humans?

-No, it's the polar bear.

-The polar bear burrows?

-Yeah, they dig...

-Hang on, Alan, I don't think humans burrow either.

-You said humans!

-We made the Channel Tunnel.

Well, they made the Tunnel, yes.

Actually I think you should win that.

That's very good. But it's not the largest animal, is it?

The polar bear, they dig a maternity den.

Either in the snow, or in the earth.

So they are the largest burrowing animal.

Speaking of caves, anybody been to Nottingham?

I've been to Nottingham, yeah.

Hey. Whoa, so have I, mate. Come on.

-LOLLY:

-I actually went to university really near Nottingham.

-Did you?

-So let's all chill out, actually.

-This is a small world!

-Alan?

-Yeah, I've been there.

No way! Alan's been as well, Sandi.

I made my professional debut at Nottingham Playhouse.

-Did you?

-I did.

Anyway, the city centre was once known as Tiggua Cobaucc,

which means "the place of caves".

So from as early as the 11th century, people lived in caves in Nottingham.

Under the Nottingham Inclosure Act of 1845,

it is still illegal to rent out a cave to anybody in Nottingham.

They were trying to stop unscrupulous landlords renting them

out to the poor. I'd quite like to live in a cave, though.

Don't you think it would be fine?

Um, no.

No? Oh.

What's your reservation?

Wi-Fi.

If you had a good hub?

That picture on the right, at the back, is that a downstairs toilet?

It does look awfully like some kind of font, doesn't it?

Or like a sundial but no light.

The world's worst sundial.

The classic underground sundial.

"Where do we put the sundial?" "In the basement."

Do you know what the original name for Nottingham is?

-Is it Ingham?

-It's got Nottingham in it.

No, but it's not just Ingham and then they changed it to "Not-Ingham"?

-No.

-Nottinghampton.

Nottingham is the shortened version of its original name.

-Snottingham?

-Exactly right.

-Come on!

-It was ruled by a Saxon chief named Snot.

And it was literally "the homestead of Snot's people."

It was Snottingham and then, I don't know why they dropped the S because

-I think it's perfectly charming.

-I think they should put it back.

Now, your ancestors could make fire using things that they found.

You have something on a tray and I will give you 20 points to anybody

who can start a fire with the things you have got there.

Can I use my lighter that I've got in my pocket?

Oh, now, look, can't you put that in the lemon, won't that work?

-Supposedly doesn't.

-Can't you get a charge out of citrus fruit?

-You can.

-Am I about to?

Not enough to upset yourself, I don't think.

Meanwhile, I'm going to use this to look for a match.

Does it matter if we open that? Would that help?

You don't want to open it but you can actually use a can of soda.

Is that what it is, just a can of fizzy pop?

It is a can of fizzy pop, yeah.

If you look at the base of your tin,

you can see that it is a concave shape.

If you polished that, you would be able to reflect enough sunlight

in order to be able to make fire.

And, in fact, we can demonstrate this in the studio,

but obviously we're going to need experts so we have with us our

friends from the Festival of the Spoken Nerd.

The science comedy phenomenon,

they tour all over the UK and have brought one of their experiments

from their show, please welcome, Matt, Steve and Helen, the nurse.

APPLAUSE

I was right, wasn't I, that the tin of pop is a kind of...?

Yes, it's almost the right shape to focus light in.

This is a natural paraboloid which is the perfect shape,

so we can use this to set fire to something.

Don't just point it at me.

We've got a graphic here of the two dishes we've set up and if you cut

one in half, so we can swivel one around, and if you unpeel it, it's

just a parabola, and the amazing thing about a parabola is that any

line which comes directly down,

parallel with the axes, will go through exactly the same spot,

the focal point. And the same thing works in reverse so if something

emits from the focal point it'll be sent out as a parallel...

That's how the Death Star works, isn't it?

That's essentially the cleverest thing that's ever been said near

you, Lee, isn't it?

We're going to give this a go but, please, can you put your

-sunglasses on?

-Because these are going to protect us, aren't they?!

So about 200 years ago,

this was a party trick where they would put a super hot cannonball at

one focal point and gunpowder at the other.

We thought we wouldn't try that.

We asked and apparently we're not allowed because it's no longer the past.

But they have let us bring a heat lamp and nitrocellulose so that's flash cotton.

This will be the past one day, you know.

Not on Dave.

APPLAUSE

-OK. Are we ready?

-Yeah.

-LEE:

-Don't worry, it's not right in my eye!

ALL: Oh!

APPLAUSE

Fantastic. Fantastic, guys, thank you so much.

And now a question about naked ambition.

Do you know what this man does faster than anyone in the world?

It's actually amazing.

-Hair growing?

-Oh, yeah, hair growing, because I want to see that.

What's the thing that we talk about, it's always impressive,

you go, wow, he's the fastest in the world at that?

-Running.

-Running, yes.

He's not faster than Usain Bolt, you're not going to say that?

In a way. He ran the mile faster than the current world flat record.

So downhill runner?

He's a downhill runner.

He's a British athlete, and when he was a 16-year-old schoolboy,

he ran the fastest mile ever.

In 1996, the Meltham Maniac Mile,

so it's one mile down a fantastically steep hill just outside

Huddersfield. The course drops 400 feet,

it has since been banned, this race.

For health and safety reasons.

But he completed it in three minutes and 24 seconds.

-Do you have to keep running?

-You can't stop.

-You can't roll?

-No, you can't roll.

This is the most British race, I think, of all time because it says

that the course started at the cattle grid by Tinker Lane.

Did they stop it after a terrible injury,

or just because something COULD happen there?

We can find out because Craig Wheeler,

fastest man over a mile, is in the audience.

APPLAUSE

Can you go to the top of the steps and run down?

-So, Craig, why did they stop it?

-No idea, obviously this day and age,

-health and safety in anything.

-And they ran it the other way as well,

in the opposite direction, didn't they? It was called the murder mile.

-That's the one.

-We've got a VT actually, Craig, of you,

I don't know if you can talk us through it but was there

any moment when you were running that you actually thought you were

just going to do what Lolly suggested and roll down?

Most of the race I thought I was going to go flat on my face.

-LEE:

-Did we actually see him stop then or does he just carry on?

"I can't stop!"

20 seconds faster than the world record for the flat mile.

Was it Record Breakers that you were doing?

Yes. I went back the following year to try to break the record with

Record Breakers and I fell two seconds short.

Which is still the second fastest time ever.

So you're first and second?

-Yes.

-There's a proper champion.

That was Craig Wheeler, the fastest man ever.

Now, what's the best thing anyone's ever done in the nude?

Running downhill?

-That would hurt, wouldn't it?

-If you were a woman,

it could take your eye out.

If you're me it could take your eye out.

So one day you're able to sit as comfortably as you are, Lee.

Someone discovered something?

Was Alexander Fleming in the nude when he discovered penicillin?

It's something that's absolutely extraordinary,

it was mostly done in the nude. It is, if I'm frank with you,

it's for the purposes of this question.

They did it for the purposes of this question?

Well, the answer is for the purposes of this question.

It's World War II was won in the nude,

so who might have been in the nude winning World War II?

Adolf Hitler?

And on the other side?

-Coronation Street.

-On the less grumpy side?

Are you talking about our very own Winston?

-Winston Churchill, yes.

-I don't think Winston would be called less grumpy.

I thought Hitler was actually quite upbeat even though he was

-a terrible guy.

-You can say what you like about him,

at least he was always starting the day with a smile on his lips.

He would wake people up and go, "D'you know what,

"this morning I was thinking Poland's lovely."

It looks like he's just thrown a dart, actually.

Like he's got a dart board at the end of the bath.

That's like you're perfect... Having a dartboard at the end of your bath...

-That would be great, wouldn't it?

-Imagine how clean you would be.

-That would be fantastic.

-Then you would have one of those targets in

a rifle range where you wind it up and get them out again and then wind it back.

Is it a boy thing? Can you imagine having a dartboard at

-the end of your bath?

-Yeah, definitely.

-Love it.

-Just me, then.

You had something to do with dartboards.

Something that he invented whilst in the bath?

He loved to be naked.

In fact, he so often received people while he was in the bath that his

ministers and staff officers were nicknamed "companions of the bath".

Oh, that old chestnut.

That's when he got out.

Chief Usher at the White House, a man called JB West,

and he wrote about Churchill, "In his room,

"Mr Churchill wore no clothes at all most of the time during the day."

And there's a story that when Churchill was staying at the White House,

President Franklin Roosevelt called on him in his rooms,

and Churchill was nude, and Roosevelt said, "I'm sorry,"

and Churchill said, "The Prime Minister of Great Britain has

"nothing to conceal from the President of the United States"!

And the President later told his secretary that "You know, Grace,

"he's pink and white all over."

What colour was he expecting, just out of interest?

I think he wasn't expecting to know any colour, is the truth of it.

Other famous nudists, Enid Blyton was a famous nudist.

-Oh.

-Apparently she liked to play naked tennis with her friends.

She didn't write that in any of the books.

No, she didn't. But until 1938 in America,

it was illegal for a man to be topless in public,

and that included on the beach.

And they used to monitor women's bathing suits as well, so in the 1920s,

there were special deputy sheriffs sworn in on some beaches in New York.

They were all women, they were called sheriffettes,

and their job was to measure the distance between the bottom of

a woman's swimsuit and her knees.

And, actually, when I was at boarding school,

at the beginning of every year, you had to put your skirt on,

and then you had to kneel in front of Matron,

and the top of your hem had to touch the floor, and if it didn't,

you had to go and get a new skirt.

Or a bigger pen.

-Bigger pen?

-Just get a bigger pen, and then you can have a shorter skirt.

Bigger pen, you see, so it reached the...

It was hem, it was hem, Lee.

-There's the problem.

-Oh, I thought you said pen!

-Hem.

-I wondered why

everyone was looking at me, going, "What are you talking about?"

I love that Lee has such confidence if he's thinking,

there is no way that joke didn't work.

Yeah, must be a technical error on that,

because this is gold, this stuff!

Oh, a hem!

Yeah.

Now, while we are in that area,

what can't you do to a naked Osman in Kyrgyzstan?

I genuinely turned round, then,

because I thought Alan's head was blocking something else...

I thought you were going to say, "I remember that horse", then!

Two wonderful weeks with her!

She looks exhausted.

OK, so it's not a person, I can tell you, a naked Osman.

-Kill it, eat it.

-You can't eat it any more, but you used to be able to.

-It's in the water.

-Catch it.

It's a trout-like fish.

It used to be the most populous fish in Lake Issyk-Kul in north-east

-Kyrgyzstan.

-And it's called an osman?

-It's called a naked osman.

-Oh, a naked osman.

-Why is it called the naked osman?

Something to do with the way it looks.

Whoa, whoa, come on!

But it's been overfished, so by 1986 was almost wiped out.

There has been a total ban, you'll be very pleased to know,

you can no longer catch a naked osman in Kyrgyzstan.

That is terrific news, although if you do want to catch a naked osman...

No, forget it...

It's a fantastic lake, Lake Issyk-Kul,

it's the second largest mountain lake in the world,

obviously after Titicaca.

And what is extraordinary about it is that it is endorheic,

and that means it has got no outlets other than evaporation,

so it's much deeper now than it was in medieval times.

It used to be a fantastically popular stopping route on the Silk Road,

and there is, as far as we know,

a 2,500-year-old city at the bottom of the lake.

-Oh, wow.

-Cool.

-So they've found all sorts of archaeological finds

round there. All of which brings us to the place that isn't wearing a

stitch of general knowledge, it's General Ignorance,

so fingers on buzzers, please.

First of all, how many shades of grey are there?

MUSIC: The Stripper

One.

Is not right.

Is it 49.9?

-Unlimited?

-No, well...

Limited.

For a very weird moment, I felt like Gypsy Rose Lee.

Compelled to take my clothes off.

The Pantone colour chart lists 104 shades of grey.

There are 71 of white, and there are 110 of naked or nude, i.e.,

skin coloured, but that one is really weird,

because you can buy nude tights, you can buy naked shoes,

naked sticking plasters, but they all presume that somebody's white.

-All of those colours.

-I used to get that when I used to go in,

and I'd ask for like a nude lip gloss,

and they'd give me a chalk white lip gloss!

There are 104 shades of grey, which is quite frankly plenty.

Now, name an extinct animal with teeth-like sabres.

MUSIC: The Stripper

Is it the saw-toothed cat?

Is it the rapier-toothed panther?

-Any more for any more?

-Is it the sabre-toothed tiger?

KLAXON

It isn't that, why isn't it that?

Because they didn't actually have teeth like sabres?

Because no such animal ever existed.

-That's what I said.

-That's exactly right.

No wonder it's extinct.

There's never been a sabre-tooth tiger or a lion.

-Never been a lion?

-Sabre-toothed lion.

Oh, I see, I thought you said there'd never been a lion, full stop.

I thought, have I just been falling for this?

It's a man in a costume at the zoo?

Yeah, it's a lion with the hem of his skirt, no...

Pen, what's he doing with a pen?

There's never been a sabre-toothed tiger or a lion.

Sabre-toothed cats are not closely related to either tigers or lions,

in fact, they weren't even cats, strictly speaking.

They were kind of stocky and bear-like.

-It looks like a sloth.

-It does look in the sloth area, doesn't it?

And they ranged in size from the large pet cat to one the size of the

horse that you took on your holidays.

When you say took...

-To a thing.

-Yeah.

There was a sabre-toothed trout,

that there was, six and a half feet long.

-Wow.

-Shut the front door.

Yes. But there's no such thing as a sabre-toothed tiger and there never

has been. What is this noise?

GROWLING

-Yes.

-Is it Winston Churchill taking a meeting?

That's his bath when they heard about the invasion of Poland!

"Me, nervous? No, I'm not nervous."

It is the noise of the small intestine

cleaning itself in preparation for food.

The noise is called bor-boring... borro-borrow...bub...

The noise is called borborygmus, borborygmus.

-What's it called?

-It's your tummy rumbling.

And it's one of the few physiological processes that we can

hear with the naked ear.

Is that the one where, when you're with your wife,

and you don't know who's done the noise?

-Yeah.

-That's true, isn't it?

If you're close to somebody and someone's tummy rumbles,

-it's impossible to work out whose.

-Yeah.

You would think if it was inside you, you'd be able to work it out, right, Lee?

-Yeah.

-But you want to say that next time, "I believe that was you,

"that borborygmus."

I mean, you can't read it, so I'm not going to be able to say it, am I?

Finally, I'll give you 100 points if you can pat your head while

rubbing your stomach. Anybody?

-Pat your head...

-And rub your stomach.

And rub your stomach.

KLAXON

Not there, not there.

-I didn't do it, Sandi.

-You didn't do it, give it a go.

Look at you, teacher's pet, "I didn't do it, can I have the points?"

Only cos you couldn't reach, it's quite high up, isn't it?

No, listen, currently I'm one point up on everybody.

-Have you worked it out?

-No, but if I don't do anything at all,

I make up a point on everybody, because you all did it wrong.

Why did they do it wrong, Richard?

Because the stomach was in the wrong place.

-And where is it?

-I don't know.

-It's much higher up than most people realise.

-Here.

No.

It's just under your pecs, really.

So it's not down here, it's up here.

And did you know, this is the most extraordinary thing,

the stomach lining blushes when you blush.

I don't think I can blush.

That will be all that naked foundation you're wearing!

I tell you what, it's a challenge for us though, isn't it, if you can't?

I bet Lee could make you blush.

I like a challenge.

So, to the scores, well, Richard was exactly right,

with a magnificent one point, this week's winner, in first place,

it's Richard!

-APPLAUSE

-Thank you.

Second place, with a fantastic debut of -8, Lolly!

In third place with -20, it's Lee!

Thank you. I'm happy with that.

And with -35, it's Alan!

APPLAUSE

My thanks to Lolly, Lee, Richard and Alan,

and I leave you with this Neolithic newspaper nugget from The Sun,

"This woman walked very close to me and it was obvious that underneath

"her clothing she wore little or nothing."

Goodnight!