Alex Insert Name Here

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello, and welcome to Insert Name Here,

the show where we discover surprising facts about people with just one thing in common,

they've all got the same name.

Joining me are six of my favourite people, all differently named,

but all equally easy on the eye.

They are Danny Baker and Kate Williams and their team captain, Josh Widdicombe.

And over on the other side, Gabby Logan,

Adil Ray and their captain, Richard Osman.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Now, Danny, let's start with you,

it's fair to say that you've come across some very odd names in your

-journey of life. What's the strangest?

-Mine?

-Most exotic.

I did, on the radio,

and I have been doing a thing we called the exotic register, where we

ask people to call up and say the names that they envy.

There was a woman and she was in the Philippines and she said my name is

Usanavy and I said, OK.

She went but the point is we lived by the docks

and my dad spoke no English but you'd see these big ships coming in

with USA Navy on the back.

He named her Usanavy. That was her name!

Well, so to the all-important question of the evening,

which name we'll be featuring tonight?

Usanavy.

Well, they can have the force of a hurricane or just give you

the hairdryer treatment because tonight's name is...

Alex.

Oh!

Of course, Alex tonight is going to include Alexander, Alexandra and Alexis.

Along the way, our teams are going to be collecting as many Alexes as they can.

At the end the winning team will have the honour of deciding who is

officially the greatest Alex of all time,

and that person will then be inducted into our

Insert Name Hall of Fame.

There isn't a living thing... I don't know why I'm gesturing, I just wanted to do it.

I was hoping for a sound effect and a lighting change.

I actually turned around then!

So, any early thoughts who might be the greatest Alex of all time.

-Josh?

-Well, there's a guy who carries an afternoon quiz show.

-Oh, he's good.

-He is good.

Oh, he's got it all, he's got it all.

Alexander Armstrong.

-RICHARD:

-I tell you what, if that got sold to Channel 4 he would stay,

I guarantee that.

He would. He'd take the money. I'd be at the BBC.

Now, Richard, who is your favourite Alex of all time?

There's a certain Alex who absolutely carries,

I don't know if there's a Channel 4 late night comedy show called

The Last Leg...

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Right. Time to crack on with the show.

Time to pick an Alex, any Alex.

Our panellists will choose a category

behind which lurks a famous face

which our teams must then attempt to win.

So, what have we got? We've got a great Alex, a really great Alex,

the greatest Alex, and grated Alex.

So, Richard's team, care to pick a category?

Let's go for great Alex, please.

You've gone for a Macedonian leader, horseman and drinker,

Alexander the Great. Any relation, Josh?

OK, let's have a look at Alexander's stats.

Alexander had it all, he's been immortalised in many sculptures,

like this one. And this one.

-Oh, hello.

-Hello.

-And this one.

-Whoa!

-That's Howard from Take That, I think.

The one on the right reminds me,

-do you remember the video to Lionel Richie, Hello?

-LAUGHTER

At its peak, the fourth century BC,

Alexander's Empire crossed three continents

and covered around two million square miles,

but what unusual form of transport did Alexander pioneer?

Segway!

-The bendy bus.

-A bendy bus?

-A bendy bus!

I'll give you a clue, it was underwater.

-JOSH:

-Submarine.

-RICHARD:

-Underwater space hopper.

-It was a submarine.

-No.

-What?

-I'm telling you it was a submarine.

Let's have a look.

This is a picture from 1402, I've seen it.

And that's his unfaithful wife trying to cut the cord so he drops down,

so he's at risk of dying but he's got his secret weapons,

which is the dog, the cat and the cock.

Hah!

-Here we go.

-He's got the cat because it's meant to be a re-breather so...

Kate, Kate, you said cock, no-one's listening any more.

Sorry, the cat was a re-breather?

-The cat was a re-breather.

-What, like an inhaler?

Like the way trees take in CO2 and breathe out oxygen,

that's what the cat was doing.

So they thought that cats breathed in carbon dioxide

-and breathed out oxygen.

-Pretty much, yes.

-Oops.

-And so the dog,

what happens is as the air-quality gets bad,

if the cat's not breathing hard enough, the dog will die,

so Alexander will realise it's time to come up.

-So they're like the canary.

-Yes.

-The canary down the mine.

The canary, Sue, that's it! The cock is supposed to be the compass.

-Oh...

-Oh...

-Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

-LAUGHTER

You got that all right!

-Yours is pointing due north, innit, mate?

-Exactly.

Anyfink you want, love!

The cat's the re-breather and the dog's the canary so in this picture,

because she, the evil wife, is trying to cut Alexander adrift

so he drowns in that very deep sea...

-Yes.

-Alexander is too wise to this woman so he kills the dog

and as a consequence the bathysphere pops up and he lives forever,

so that is the medieval version of Alexander's submarine.

-Wow.

-Oh.

-And he's here tonight...

Alexander, a famously heavy drinker.

Part of Macedonian life to worship the God Dionysus and Macedonia was

famous for its all-male drinking clubs called symposia.

Now, some members of these symposia had special drinking privileges.

What did they have to do to get them?

Nobody knows because the first rule of Macedonian drinking club...

What happens stays...

I mean, I'll give you a clue,

they were hunting, shooting, fishing types,

-so what would you do to...

-Hunt, shoot, fish?

Yes! They would have to hunt.

-What would they have to kill?

-A boar.

-Fish.

-Fish.

-A boar, correct.

I've got a reputation kind of being, you know...

sort of butch. Anyway...

Nothing could be...

Never has anyone backed out of a sentence more than...

Nothing could be further from the truth.

You know you're not Danny Dyer, don't you, you know that?

I have no traditional masculine skills at all

and it's actually notorious in our family. My wife used to say,

you must be able to put that up and it was a little bedside table,

which I thought, I ain't that useless,

so I'm sitting on the floor in the end and I've turned it upside down

to put in the very last...and I've done it and I've shouted "when"!

And it was pretty good, it was solid, it was pretty good,

and I sat beside it and she come down and I said...

And I went to stand up and I'd screwed my sock into the floor.

Alexander died in 323 BC.

-Oh, spoiler!

-Sorry.

Two years before his body was brought back from Babylon to Macedonia,

-how did they preserve the body?

-Was it Oil Of Olay?

Oh, no, sorry, it would have been Oil Of Ulay at that point.

Yes. Guaranteed to get rid of the seven signs of ageing, but not death, sadly.

-It's one of the key signs of ageing, death.

-It is.

I read that, sorry, it may or may not be true,

but that after 80, you stop, you've lost all your elasticity by then,

so any kind of sagginess and wrinkles that you have at 80,

it won't get any worse.

-Oh!

-Which is good news, because I'm from a family of centurions.

I've got three relatives who've gone over 100.

-Centurions or centenarians?

-I'm calling them centurions.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

In my mind, I thought you were raised by those people

who were half man, half horse.

Centaur!

Do you know how many people in United Kingdom are aged over 105?

I do, yeah.

Go on, how many?

-850.

-850!

Really? Oh, no, I've got some bad news for you.

848.

So, come on, let's get back to how they preserved the body?

-How do you think?

-Fat. I know this one, vat of fat.

-Urine.

-Honey.

-Honey it is.

A vat of honey which is still available today

if you go to the Co-op and order the Winnie the Pooh funeral plan.

Now it's time to play for the Alex.

What did Alexander first come across at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC?

At a battle? What would you come across?

-Persians with spears.

-Elephants.

-Elephants it is!

-Whoa!

-Well done. Boom, sir.

I backed the wrong horse!

-Elephant.

-Elephant, of course.

-It was indeed.

-He'd never seen them before.

-Yeah.

He decided when he saw them to create his own magnificent elephant army.

Here is a depiction of Alexander being presented with a herd of elephants.

LOUD GUFFAWS

Literally, what?

Yes, that was painted by someone with only the vaguest idea

of what an elephant might look like.

Literally, the first thing he said was,

we're going to need a bigger submarine.

Well done, Josh's team, you win the Alex.

-There you go, boom!

-Well done, Danny.

Well done.

Right, Josh, it's your turn, time to pick an Alex.

We've got a really great Alex, the greatest Alex and grated Alex.

I'm going to go with a grated Alex.

-Oh!

-So you have chosen grated Alex,

it is Blur bassist turned Oxfordshire cheeseologist,

Alex James.

So let's have a look at his stats.

And as we all know Alex found fame with Blur.

There he is. Now, you consider yourself a bit of an expert on Blur.

Oh, yeah, they were my Mastermind subject, Blur.

-No!

-Yeah.

Really? When did you win? You won?

Only Celebrity Mastermind, not like normal.

-That is...

-Not like clever people Mastermind.

No. They make it a lot easier!

I beat someone from Emmerdale and then afterwards she said to me,

-"Your questions were easier."

-Oh!

-Does she?

No-one likes a sour farmer.

-No.

-So you went on Mastermind, I know this,

-and you scored 11 points on Blur.

-I scored 11/13.

But we are going to have our own mini Mastermind.

-Uh-oh.

-Oh, no.

-Now.

-Oh, wow.

MASTERMIND THEME PLAYS

Oh, I wasn't told about this and I don't approve of it...

So, your specialised subject is your very own appearance on Mastermind.

Oh, my God!

Your question is...

What did you say when you were told you'd scored 11 points?

Oh. I don't know and I don't want to know!

Would you,

would you like us to illuminate you as to what...

You're not going to show the clip, are you?

Well, I think we might.

There we are. You got 11 points.

Bah!

LAUGHTER

Well, what's that? That's not a word.

It's not a word, it's an ejaculation.

-It is.

-Well, that would have been far worse on Mastermind!

Although, to be honest, when I won, I was close.

Did he say you've started so you can finish?

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

So in the early days Blur obviously went by the name of...

-Seymour.

-Seymour, exactly.

What did the band do before they went on stage?

-What was their...?

-Was it an enormous amount of cocaine?

That may have featured but it's not on the card.

I don't know.

-You don't know.

-It's not drinking lots of champagne?

-No, well, they got drunk and they...

-Alcohol is involved.

Oh, did they just do an antiseptic hand wipe?

Did they have an alcoholic footbath they walked through, like you do the

swimming pool to stop veruccas?

You know what, I'm going to give you that because it's actually not too far off it.

They basically poured wine all over themselves.

-Oh!

-Really?

-Alex said...

So, Alex James and Graham Coxon were absent for a performance on Italian TV.

-Who replaced them?

-Was it Mel and Sue?

That time may well come.

There's a few windows in the diary, unexpectedly.

If Alex and Graham ring me and say we're supposed to be on Italian TV,

we can't be arsed, Mel and I will go, we're there.

Oh, so you're going to ITALIAN TV, that's fine, is it?

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Think inanimate objects.

One of their replacements was inanimate.

-Oh, Paul McCartney?

-That's not fair.

It was a roadie and a cardboard cutout.

Alex James always insisted on three bottles of champagne

being put in his dressing room before a gig, that was his rider.

What did he demand go with it?

Another three bottles of champagne.

Is it a carrot?

-It is a carrot!

-It's a carrot.

How do you know this stuff?!

-Bravo.

-I'm an expert and I don't know this stuff.

He thought that it would get rid of any kind of breath smells

-if he would eat a carrot.

-He did indeed. Absolutely right.

He basically said that drinking champagne made your breath smell,

but a carrot, grated carrot after it, neutralised it.

Have you ever met a drunk rabbit?

-Never!

-No.

-You just don't know though, do you, Gabby?

You don't know what they're masking.

Maybe they're not meant to hop like that.

Right. Alex spends a lot of his time in the company of women.

What was his chat up line to supermodel Helena Christensen?

Fancy a carrot?

She's from Denmark, so did he say something along the lines of

I've always fancied a Danish?

Oh!

-Smooth!

-If he was going for the Denmark puns did he offer her a leg-over?

Wa-hey!

-Lego.

-That got less than it deserved, Josh.

Do you know what, I thought this was the best thing I've ever said,

-and it didn't prove to be the case.

-I enjoyed it!

She'd have said though, you go and Lurpak your bags.

-Hooray!

-Are you kidding me?

I'll tell you what he said, he said, "God, I think you're beautiful.

"Do you like cheese?"

Time now to play for the Alex.

James, famous for creating Artisan cheeses from his Oxfordshire farm,

as a tribute to Alex we'll have a little cheese tasting.

Here it is... There you go, one for you, my lovely.

And...

-Thank you so much.

-That's for you, darling.

Now, according to the makers...

Is one of the words "cheese?"

-It's not cheese.

-A hint of cheese.

Is it Earth, wind, with a hint of fire?

It's boozy.

Think of booze, what could the booze be?

-Vodka.

-Vodka.

-Think Napoleonic.

-Brandy.

-Brandy.

-Correct.

There is a nut in there, can you give us the nut?

-Walnut.

-Nutty.

-Walnut.

-Almonds, Almonds.

-Indeed. Oh, indeed!

-Bloody hell.

-Just the last one.

There's something musty that could give you a rise.

-Yeast.

-Yeasty.

Well done. Correct.

Yeasty, almondy, with a hint of brandy.

That is exactly right. OK, well done,

by finishing it off you got the Alex!

Well done, Richard.

Richard, your turn.

Your turn to pick an Alex, a really great Alex or the greatest Alex.

I think we'll go for the greatest Alex.

You've picked the most successful Premier League manager ever,

with 49 trophies, Sir Alex Ferguson.

Let's have a look at his stats.

The legend that is Sir Alex Ferguson,

or, as this guy remembers him,

Sir Alex FEGUSON...

Off you pop to Tattoo Fixers.

He was born on New Year's Eve, 1941, brought up in Govan, Glasgow,

struggled at school, especially, this will come as no surprise,

with authority. And in 2001,

what did his teacher, Bill Dobie,

sell to an antiques dealer for 55 quid?

Was it Jaap Stam?

-His bad report?

-No.

-His homework?

-No.

Was it an art, a bit of art?

-No, it's not.

-Like a detention record?

It was something to do with punishment, it is punishment.

-Was it his cane?

-I'll give you that, yes, indeed.

Colour of buttocks, bright red, as it goes.

It was the belt, actually, that he used to beat Alex Ferguson with.

Isn't that horrific? It is horrific.

At Aberdeen his players gave him the nickname Furious Fergie.

Ferguson fined one of his Aberdeen players, John Hewitt,

for an unusual transgression.

-What had he'd done wrong?

-Was it on the pitch or off the pitch?

No, it was off the pitch actually.

-Oh...

-He didn't leave his things tidy enough?

No. He overtook Ferguson on a public road.

-Just overtook him.

-He fined him?

-What, for overtaking him?

-For overtaking him.

-Was he speeding?

Well, nowadays they would kill for three points, Man U.

GROANS AND CHEERS

You must have had dealings with him, Gabby, did you?

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-Was he scary?

I sat next to him once at a charity dinner and Roy Keane was there,

he still played for Manchester United.

Oh, my God, that is my nightmare table.

Turn up at a wedding and you are between Alex Ferguson and Roy Keane.

-RICHARD:

-They probably wouldn't be delighted either.

1999, Ferguson was found not guilty of illegally driving

on a motorway hard shoulder. What was the excuse that he gave?

He needed the toilet, he had some bowel condition.

He had some bowel, he had a bowel.

And a need to evacuate it.

-No.

-Yes, that is absolutely right.

He said he was caught short?

So you are saying that Alex Ferguson had a shit on the hard shoulder?

-No.

-Imagine driving past that.

You're not going to believe what I've just seen...

There's a seven mile tailback because people are looking at Alex Ferguson.

-RICHARD:

-The traffic stops because no-one is allowed to overtake him.

They're all just waiting him out...

As he's foraging for leaves on the hard shoulder...

Oh, that's my favourite thing we've ever talked about on this show.

He told Bury magistrates, because it went that far,

it did go to Magistrate's Court,

he had been experiencing stomach cramps the night before,

when he got on the M602 he started to feel the cramps again

and he had no choice but to use the hard shoulder

to get off the motorway.

M602 of course is now rhyming slang.

Now time to play for the Alex.

We will return to Fergie's legendary hairdryer treatment,

specifically the famous dressing room incident

in which he kicked a boot, which cut David Beckham's eyebrow.

How did they mark this event in Hong Kong?

Is there some kind of tableau, waxwork?

A waxwork is exactly right, well done, Danny.

This was at the Hong Kong Madame Tussaud's,

the plaster and fake blood were removed once Beckham's wound had fully healed.

Congratulations and well done,

because Josh's team, you win the Alex.

So, time now to fire up our Alex flavoured fruit machine.

Each spin will reveal three faces.

Our teams must then match the extraordinary fact

to the extraordinary Alex. Right, let us spin.

First up we have got Princess Alexandra,

mystic and mentalist Alexander the crystal seer and Obi-Wan Kenobi,

Alec Guinness.

Who predicted that James Dean would die in a car crash

one week before he died in a car crash?

Now, Josh's team, you're going to get to choose this one.

-Oh, that's spooky, isn't it?

-Ooh...

I'd suggest it's got to be Alec Guinness.

-Because...

-He's like Yoda.

It's too obvious...

I mean I'm not an expert on Star Wars

but I'm pretty sure the character he plays isn't Yoda.

Yeah.

I would suggest it's Alec Guinness because he's in the same profession.

And it's too obvious to have the middle one, is that what we are saying?

It's too obvious... The Queen's cousin, why would she be talking about James Dean?

I don't know, but I can imagine Alec Guinness saying, "Son, you had better be careful in that car."

All right, you want to go with Alec Guinness, who are you going to go for, guys?

I don't know, the one in the middle does seem a bit too obvious.

-A bit obvious.

-And Princess Alexandra,

we don't know much about her, she's not one of the most prominent royals,

maybe that's because she's got an embarrassing habit

of predicting high-profile deaths.

Possible, possible. The Queen in the '50s famously had

an affair with James Dean.

Very famously.

And so perhaps Princess Alexandra got a whiff of that and just said,

you know, "He's going to die within a week."

They found one of his leather jackets, didn't they, in the Palace.

-Yeah, in the Palace.

-That's how they knew.

Yeah, and Philip said "Whose is this?"

And she went, "Oh, I think it's the Chinese ambassador."

And he was like, "Hmm, I don't know."

The following week James Dean was spotted on a chat show in the States,

it was Here's Johnny or something,

just wearing his white T-shirt with no leather jacket.

Yeah, and Johnny Carson said, "Where's your jacket, boy?" And James Dean had no answer.

-He went, "Erm, er..."

-"Don't know."

And then rushed home and then the rest is history.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

All right, so you are saying Alexandra, let's see - the correct answer is...

CHEERING

He went out to dinner with Dean, who showed him his brand-new car.

Alec Guinness said to James Dean, to his face,

that if he went out in that car he would be dead in a week,

and sure enough he died a week later.

Spooky, that is.

Josh. Congratulations, you win the Alex.

So, we're spinning, we're spinning, we're spinning,

and we have got Scottish political firebrand Alex Salmond.

The other one off Pointless, Alexander Armstrong,

and cage fighter and Katie Price ex-husband Alex Reid.

The question is which Alex was such a big fan of Star Trek

that they used to stand in front of the mirror with a clothes peg

on their eyebrow whilst perfecting their impersonation of Mr Spock?

Interesting that all three of those are ex-husbands of Katie Price.

Is it likely to be Alexander Armstrong?

I think it wouldn't be because he will crack open an impression

at any time and he's never done a Mr Spock.

Or has he? Oh, no, hold on, he does it a lot.

No, he does Mr Spock a lot and he has always got the clothes peg,

-but I don't think we'll go for him.

-Alex Salmond would be...

-Right age group.

-I'd be leaning towards him.

-Shall we go for Alex Salmond?

-Yeah, I think it's Alex Salmond.

Alex Salmond, although Xander, I'm telling you now for a fact...

-Always does it.

-Does a lot of impressions of Spock.

So you're saying Alex Salmond.

Josh's team? Who are you going for?

Well, it's Xander, we've got all the facts.

Well, Richard tried put us off the scent.

If it was Alexander Armstrong he might have,

rather than put us off the scent he might have gone with it himself.

Exactly, that's what I mean.

He's not trying to close the game out for a 0-0!

You know what,

I'm going to go with Alexander Armstrong

just to double bluff the double bluff.

Let's see what the right answer is?

Alex Salmond.

Richard, you, congratulations, win the Alex.

Right, everybody, let's play Finish The Fact.

I'm going to start by reading out an Alex-based gem.

You have to buzz in when you think you know how it ends.

First up, Three Musketeers writer, Alexandre Dumas.

BELL

Was it only to discover

that all Americans pronounced his name "dumb ass?"

-BELL

-Did he discover the real duel was against Shadow from Gladiators

using pugil sticks?

No, but I'll give you that because actually...

Will you?!

No, I'll give it you because it's true that they didn't use pistols.

Dumas won the fight despite...

-BELL

-Despite what? Danny?

The other man having a pen, so there goes that phrase.

What was the worst thing that can happen during a duel,

apart from being killed?

-BELL

-Oh, is it despite being French?

-RICHARD:

-That is the worst thing.

-Didn't he drop his sword?

He didn't drop his sword, he dropped something else.

-His trousers.

-His trousers.

-Indeed, his trousers fell down

because despite...

Oh, it was that kind of sword fight.

Despite the cold weather, Dumas agreed to remove his cloak

and upper clothing for the duel,

only to have his braceless trousers fall down,

causing bystanders to laugh out loud.

Congratulations, Josh, you win the Alex.

Next up, fashion design Alexander McQueen.

-BELL

-A bespoke potato.

-BUZZER

-It was Prince Charles, I think.

It was Prince Charles. Absolutely was Prince Charles.

And, as I say, Prince Charles,

and hand sewn into the lining, the phrase...

-BUZZER

-Made in Bangladesh.

I actually do know the answer to this but don't want to say the word

because I'm collecting an OBE and I really love Prince Charles.

-I'll say it.

-Let me... What, do you want to say it?

-Oh.

-No, I don't want to say it.

-Let's nobody say it.

He actually hand sewed into the lining this phrase...

-No!

-Wow!

That is absolutely outrageous,

it should have said, "One is", not "I am".

Absolutely disgusting.

Wow.

But when Charles noticed,

he immediately phoned Prince Andrew and said, "I think I've got your jacket."

Congratulations, Richard, you win the Alex. Well done.

So, we've come to the end of the show and I can now reveal

the team with the most Alexes is...

Richard's team!

Well done.

Richard, you of course get the big prize,

you get to name the greatest Alex of all time.

-It is hard, I think.

-What about the...

-Graham Bell.

-Graham Bell, we haven't talked about him at all.

That's a really good one, he invented the phone.

-Alexander Graham Bell.

-Without that, where would we be?

-Exactly.

That's a really good one.

We wouldn't be listening to PPI calls every five minutes!

See, I was going to say Alex Higgins but I think actually will say Alexander Graham Bell.

Richard, that is a perfect choice,

not least because he was the really great Alex that you didn't get round to picking in round one,

so I am delighted to say that Alexander Graham Bell

is the greatest Alex of all time.

APPLAUSE

So let's put him up in the Insert Name Here Hall of Fame.

Up they go.

-AUDIENCE:

-Whoo!

Yeah. It really is... It really is just that.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Thank you to all my guests.

Special thanks to all the Alexes here, there and everywhere

and thanks most of all to you at home for watching.

See you soon, goodnight.