Illness QI XL

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening.

And welcome to QI, in my breeziest and most patronising bedside manner,

for a show that's all about illness, infection and injury.

Joining me in Casualty are the slightly indisposed Andy Hamilton.

-APPLAUSE

-Thank you. Thank you.

The disturbingly insidious Ben Goldacre.

APPLAUSE

The seriously infectious Jo Brand.

APPLAUSE

-And the terminally ill-informed Alan Davies.

-Thank you.

-APPLAUSE

And, to tell you the truth, their buzzers don't sound so hot.

-Andy goes...

-COUGHING

-Ben goes...

-SNEEZING

-Jo goes...

-SIREN WAILS

-And Alan goes...

-THE FUNERAL MARCH

And...don't forget, of course, that you have your Nobody Knows jokers.

-FANFARE 'Nobody knows!'

-Yes.

In this series, the answer may well be "Nobody knows".

If you guess which question that is, you can get extra points.

Before we start, I have to ask you all to fill in this questionnaire.

It's on the Epworth Sleepiness Scale. It's about how likely you are to fall asleep

under certain circumstances and whether you have a healthy sleep cycle.

You're all concentrating very hard! Well, you were...

-Jo has fallen asleep.

-Filling in questionnaires!

-Yes, that's the one that makes you fall asleep.

-Finished!

Have you really? Well done. I'm very impressed.

I've always filled in questionnaires quickly. I think if you finish first, you get marks somehow.

-You better put your name on them.

-Oh, who hasn't put their name on their work?!

-I'm feeling more than usual like a schoolmaster.

-Jo...Brand.

-LAUGHTER

-I feel that men fall asleep more somehow. Do you cat nap during the day?

-Only during sex.

-Fair enough.

-When you're watching sex or doing sex?

Either. I don't really mind.

It is one of the afflictions of getting old, I fear, falling asleep.

While you sleep, we'll be playing QI.

The first question is why would you swallow a pill made of a poisonous metalloid?

-SIREN WAILS

-Yes?

Would it be because you got really pissed one night and you woke up

and realised you were next to Michael Winner in bed?

Well, oddly enough,

until you got to that last point, one use of that poisonous metalloid was as a morning after pill.

But its other use was for the other end.

It's a metalloid called antimony and it's a poison.

It was popular in the Middle Ages as a pill. Very good for constipation.

You'd make a pill of antimony and it would pass through the body.

You would then rummage through your leavings and wash it and use it again.

-GROANS

-"Rummage through your leavings."

LAUGHTER

-I wasn't quite sure how to put it.

-I'm certainly going to use that again, though!

These got handed on from father to son, through generations. They used the same one.

Your father's leavings and his father's leavings before.

-"This pill was good enough for your great-grandfather..."

-The earliest repeat prescription.

-Very good!

-For hundreds of years.

-APPLAUSE

Absolutely. The other use of it was an antimony cup.

You'd pour wine into it overnight, when you'd had a large evening, and in the morning

you'd take the wine from the cup and it made you vomit instantly. So it was used as an emetic.

-So it's a naturally occurring... thing?

-An element.

-And an irritant, presumably?

There's a mnemonic for remembering laxatives - bulkers, lubricants, irritants, softeners and explosives.

Explosives work like...cholera.

You stick them up your bum. That's a technical term.

A suppository, as we comedians say.

-So that's for a really serious case of being stuffed up.

-Yeah.

-Proper phosphate enema. Rocket fuel.

-Wow.

-On a skateboard.

-In Ancient Egypt,

there was a doctor whose special function was to administer enemas to the pharaoh - the neru phuyt,

which literally translates as "shepherd of the anus".

-An official job. Rather pleasing.

-With the crook?

Oh!

It's not a natural thing. Animals don't pump warm water up their arses. It doesn't happen in nature.

-How did it come about?

-They are very popular with quacks.

There's something quite attractive about how transgressive it is to squirt something up your bum

-that makes pretend doctors feel like real doctors. John Harvey Kellogg...

-The Road To Wellville, yes.

Yeah, yeah. He had this big kind of quack clinic that he ran

where the moment that you arrived you had to make a visit to a man called the Rear Admiral...

who would bend you over and fill you with fresh yoghurt. And then you'd poo that out.

Then you'd crack on with your detox.

-And deal with your thrush.

-What time's this show going out?

-LAUGHTER

-Will people be eating?

-Well, it is almost the most kind of...basic fact about us all,

that we poo. And also that we are, as we age supposedly, we get more obsessed by it.

It's all you've got left, really, isn't it? There are stories of nurses who get sent stools

-by grateful patients. You must have heard those stories.

-Not necessarily grateful.

LAUGHTER

It's an expression of love!

I've no idea why, but that habit has followed me into my comedy career.

A chap recently tried to kill somebody. He packed his anus with explosives.

It was a Middle East prince. His plan was to shake the guy by the hand and then trigger it.

Unfortunately, the body is very good at absorbing explosions. That's why people jump onto hand grenades.

So all that happened was... he shook this prince by the hand and the bomb went off

and he just bounced up in the air slightly and crumpled to his knees.

And the prince, like any royal, just went, "Very good."

Oh, dear, oh, dear. Well, that's antimony.

Antimony pills were quite literally passed down through the family. Now placebos.

Placebos are often administered in the shape of sugar pills.

My question is: how do they work?

-Oh, oh!

-Very good!

-'Nobody knows!'

Now you might want to question this, Ben.

APPLAUSE

-Well, they do work.

-They do.

-But nobody quite knows why yet.

Not only do they work, they work even when you tell someone it's a placebo.

-You've studied this more than most.

-Mm, it's amazing.

I think the magic ingredient of the sugar pills is belief and expectation.

-We know that four sugar pills a day are a more effective treatment than two sugar pills a day.

-Yes.

And a salt water injection is more effective than taking a sugar pill,

not because it does anything physically to your body, but because an injection feels more dramatic.

Is it to do with you just feel you're being taken care of? Some part of your body yields

-to the authority of an injection even more than to a pill.

-Yeah.

-Pacemakers start working before they've been switched on.

-Yes!

I've heard this. Or knee surgery. They've cut people's knees open, then sewn them up,

and they've said they feel better. But they've not done anything.

That's why it's important to do proper trials, otherwise you'd think it was worth cutting people open

and messing around with their heart. And actually it wasn't.

The almost priest-like nature of the doctor, the faith in them,

goes some way, I suppose, to explaining homoeopathy. That's as inert as a sugar pill.

I know someone who was told to take arnica for her Caesarean scar.

She went and spoke to an obstetrician and said, "Is there any truth in that?"

He said, "The thing is with homoeopathic medicine, there haven't been proper clinical trials,

"but arnica is one that has been tested. It has been found to have absolutely no effect whatsoever."

Homoeopathy's a really good teaching tool for evidence-based medicine.

The homoeopaths' trials, in general, are so crudely rigged

that they make extremely good teaching examples.

They're not double-blind, randomised trials in the approved manner?

Each individual trial has been done poorly or you get cherry picking.

So if you run 100 trials of something, it's inevitable that maybe five give positive results.

If you only cite positive trials, it looks as if your treatment works.

The pharmaceutical industry are even bigger buggers for that, really, than the quacks

because it matters more. There are still no laws to stop people hiding trial data. Not meaningful laws.

This is the problem with people like me who are lazy...

-Lazy?!

-No, I mean when we read in a newspaper, "Studies show..."

-He's writing a novel under the desk!

I mean lazy in this sense. If I read, "Studies show..."

I kind of go, "Gosh! That study shows..." but it takes Ben to go, "What's the study?

"How many people were used?" That's basically the problem.

-But to be fair, this show's probably more guilty of that than anyone!

-Oh...

And it's a very easy thing to fix. I think every news story or feature or TV show or anything

that makes a reference to a piece of primary research should give a link to that piece of research

-so people can go and see what the evidence was.

-Indeed.

Anyway, the placebo effect is incredibly powerful. On the other hand, drugs are powerful, too.

-If you inject someone with cyanide and say it's a sugar pill, they will die.

-Yes.

As Andy rightly said, nobody really knows how placebos work, but work they jolly well do.

-What kind of condition that astronauts suffer from is measured by the Garn Scale?

-Garn?

-That's what Steptoe used to say!

-Yes!

-"Garn!"

Eliza Doolittle says, "Garn!" doesn't she? Yeah, it's named after Senator Garn,

-a senator who became an astronaut and he suffered from what most astronauts suffer.

-Depression?

No, seasickness. Or travel sickness. It's really, really bad up there, apparently.

-There's a lot of vomming, which is not nice in weightlessness!

-Drifting around the cabin...

-In fact...

-AUDIENCE GROANS

They can't do that - they've got a helmet on. It would have to be...

Yeah.

47% of all the medication used by the Shuttle astronauts was seasickness tablets.

The sickest was Jake Garn in '85. After him, they used the Garn Scale.

-A score of one Garn means you are completely incapacitated.

-It's the right word.

-It sounds like someone chucking up.

-Do you know what causes seasickness, for example?

-Is it going up and down on the sea?

-Yes...

-That's the condition in which it happens.

-Oh, you mean physically causes it.

I've felt unwell on a ship just from the throbbing of the engines. The boat wasn't moving.

There's some sensation of constant movement that starts to make things come up.

-It's a disconnect between the visual information and balance information.

-That's right.

-I'm about half a Garn at the moment.

-Just looking at that?

-Watch the horizon!

-Why don't birds get it when they bob about on it?

-How do you know they don't?

That's true. Or maybe they've just evolved not to.

The bad things to do are going below deck for long, reading a book or staring at one point.

You should stay in the fresh air, drink plenty of water, avoid fatty and spicy foods...

They say that for everything!

You can't move for advice now. You turn on 5Live and someone's always telling you,

"We've got an expert in because it's sunny today. What should we do?"

"Well, watch out for sun burn so apply a cream or wear a hat." Are we seriously saying this?!

-What are we doing?

-Or avoid fatty and spicy foods.

-"Don't jump out of the window from the 10th floor."

-That must be from The Perfect Storm.

-It looks like a film.

That's an exceptionally good photo from another boat!

That's such a good point!

"How did you hold that so still?"

Anyway, that's the Garn Scale. Almost half of all astronauts suffer from space sickness it seems.

What is intelligent falling? ..Jo Brand.

Is it when you see Michael Winner coming towards you

and you deliberately trip so that you can squash him?

LAUGHTER

That would be intelligent falling. APPLAUSE

-A very good example.

-You've really got it in for the Winster.

-I have.

-Is it because he's not returning your calls, Jo? Is that what it is?

He won't take me out to dinner!

Is intelligent falling what Ronaldo does in the penalty area?

No, it's a way to demonstrate what scientists mean by theory.

As you'll know, they have in America this idea that it's equivalent to teach Intelligent Design

as it is to teach the theory of evolution because they say,

"The theory of evolution is only a theory, so why can't we suggest our theory?"

-Which misunderstands what scientists mean by a theory.

-You've lost me.

-You've heard of the theory of evolution?

-Yes.

-And you've heard of Intelligent Design?

-No.

-Ah.

In America, religious people who decided that evolution is contrary to what the Bible says,

they want children to believe that all creation was made by an intelligent being, ie God.

-That the universe was designed by something.

-And the name for it is Intelligent Design.

-I see, right.

"It's the THEORY of evolution, so why can't we have a theory taught in the same way?"

Theory has a rather specific meaning in science. It's not like "guess"!

It's not even like "hypothesis". This is what the OED says:

"a statement of what are held to be general laws, principles or causes of something known or observed."

That's not a guess. The theory of evolution, as any biologist says,

is true. I mean, it is supported by facts.

-So what's intelligent falling?

-It's saying, "Newton had a theory of gravity, overturned by Einstein's.

-"So why can't we suggest our theory?" Which is intelligent falling.

-Isn't the point partly

that different theories are supported by different amounts of evidence? David Icke has a theory

that the Royal Family are all 7-foot green lizards in 6-foot human skin suits, with not a lot of evidence.

-Does he?

-Whereas evolution is supported by a lot of evidence.

-If you want to question a theory, you should do so by challenging its evidence...

-Exactly.

-..rather than...

-Intelligent Design believers, what do they think they put in their cars?

It's a hard position to be a fundamentalist.

On the one hand you have to forgive people, on the other, take their eye out.

-It's difficult to know which one to do.

-If Michael Winner's around... LAUGHTER

-I'd manage to make a decision.

-I've got this fantasy of Michael Winner sitting down saying,

"Oh, it's Friday. What shall I do? I know, I'll watch QI. Jo Brand's on. She's my favourite."

-The disappointment when he sees you...

-No, he won't be disappointed.

Perhaps he won't.

So there we are. Evolution and gravity may be THEORIES, but they work perfectly well in practice.

Describe the symptoms of either drapetomania or dysesthesia aethiopica.

-Who the hell is that?!

-LAUGHTER

I don't know, but that's what the girl is thinking as well.

They're all thinking, "I would."

It's nothing to do, I have to say, with Gregory House.

We're in the 1850s. Just before the Civil War is the clue.

Drapetomania was a diagnosis of a quite inexplicable outbreak

-of a sort of mental failing among the slave population.

-Were they singing?

-No.

-Cheerful songs?

No, a doctor called Samuel Cartwright coined the phrase to explain the mental disorder

-displayed by slaves who wanted to run away!

-Right.

-Surely not!

-I know! He said,

"It was as much a disease of the mind as any other species of mental alienation and more curable."

-He thought it was caused by slaves getting too much authority and freedom.

-My husband's got this.

LAUGHTER

He's always having a crack at running away.

-Shackles.

-Shackles are the answer, that's right.

-Massive bungee rope.

Yeah! He claimed the slaves should have the desire to run away beaten out of them.

-That's always the answer with slaves.

-What was the first one?

-Drapetomania? And the second one?

-The second one I'll tell you about.

Dysesthesia aethiopica. It's an aversion to doing slave labour.

What a peculiar thing! Other symptoms include rascality and not taking care of property.

The prescription was to put the patient to some kind of hard work in the sunshine.

You do get a lot of these weird diagnoses even now.

In Russia and China, they had political mania - convincing friends of the need for political change.

In China, political mania has got symptoms like carrying banners, shouting slogans,

-and expressing views on important domestic and international political matters.

-Yes, you're right.

The Russians, famously, through the '60s and '70s had the psychology turned backwards.

-Paranoia was defined as a yearning for justice.

-"Truth and justice are commonly found

-"in the personality of the paranoid delusional."

-That's the phrase they used.

There is a book, well known to anybody who studies mental health, called the DSM.

-The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. It has various editions.

-A lot of it is cock.

-Indeed.

But very important cock because, for example, if you sue your employer because you have a medical condition

it is the DSM which defines whatever supposed mental disorder you have. I think there's four editions.

-It's coming up for five.

-In 2013. And people submit to it their idea of a condition.

And some of them are accepted and some aren't. We have some for you

which are under consideration or might have been suggested.

-What are they? Sluggish Cognitive Tempo Disorder.

-Can't dance.

-LAUGHTER

-That's just people who can't...

Guilty feet have got no rhythm.

Is that being a student?

Basically. Your Daily Mail journalist would write off, as they do, any mental condition

as a shabby excuse for a character flaw, but when you read the descriptions

of the symptoms of sluggish cognitive tempo disorder, the word that you come up with is "laziness".

-It's basically laziness. Relational disorder?

-Unpleasantness.

-Yeah, an inability to get on with people.

-Ryan Giggs.

-Sorry?

LAUGHTER

-Ryan Giggs has got that.

-Ryan Giggs is not getting on with people.

-He gets on with SOME people.

But they're usually married to other people.

Anyway, negativistic personality disorder?

-Not being very nice.

-It's being negativistic about something - whining, basically.

-Jeremy Paxman.

-LAUGHTER

Whining and complaining. Intermittent explosive disorder?

-Farting.

-That's flatulence.

Well, it would... This is the DSM - basically, adult tantrums, people who lose their temper.

The point is that one can laugh at these, but there are some things that are obviously real

that produce terrible mental conditions and that is well-known,

then somewhere along the line, there are things to do with concentration disorders

and compulsion disorders which seem so limited that you think, "Is that worth putting in a book?

"Do you need special treatment for that?" Where do you draw the line? Doctor, do tell us.

Some people want to be pathologised and have a label

and sometimes it's about flogging a treatment.

I mean, female sexual dysfunction, for example, started being pushed

at the time that various companies were trying to get licences for things like Viagra

for the 50% of the population unlucky enough not to have a penis.

-Steady!

-Along with that... LAUGHTER

Jo's got loads of penises, but they're all in a drawer at home.

LAUGHTER

But FSD was about medicalising it and saying that, um, you know,

desire is a matter of clitoral blood flow imaging and nitric oxide molecules in your body...

I think that's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard!

-Rather than relationships...

-Clitoral blood flow imaging?!

-Dot com.

-Dot com!

That is a dirty book!

No, that's true. I'm pretty sure that if I had been born later,

I would have been diagnosed with having attention deficit disorder and been given one of those drugs.

As it was, I was called a "tosser" and expelled from lots of schools.

Part of me thinks I WAS a tosser. I couldn't concentrate, I was extremely aggravating,

I was expelled from schools and I was a damn nuisance,

but probably something in my brain was different to others

and some people will always see that as a moral character thing which is under your control

and refuse to accept there is a medical condition for it.

It's not only moral. It's social and cultural as well.

-Yeah.

-Because 50 years ago, people who were gay were given electric shocks or whatever they were

to "cure" them of their illness,

-so as history moves on, you medicalise different sorts of behaviour, don't you?

-Yeah.

There you are. Some psychologists seem to have disorder-naming compulsion disorder,

which is not exactly fatal, but who was the last British monarch deliberately killed?

Was it one of the ones that got beheaded?

No.

You avoided saying Charles I whom most people would think...

Only cos I couldn't bloody remember what...

It happened in Norfolk. Where would that likely be if it was a monarch?

-Sandringham.

-Yes.

-It's the Queen's dad.

No, the Queen's grandfather. This is King George V, the grandfather of our current monarch.

There he is, looking spookily like his cousin Nicholas... Tsar Alexander.

It's an attested story by the man who did it.

In 1936, he was at Sandringham, feeling unwell.

On January 15th, he retired to his bedroom.

By the 20th, he was comatose and clearly dying, but still clinging to life.

This presented his doctor, Lord Dawson, a bit of a problem.

In Dawson's opinion, the world at large would be better served

by hearing of the King's death in the morning papers,

rather than by him lingering on a bit and it being in what he sniffily called "the evening journals".

So he decided to force the issue.

He wrote a very famous bulletin on the back of a menu card which was telephoned to the BBC.

"The life of the King is moving peacefully to its close."

He went up to the bedroom and this, according to his diary, is what he did.

"I therefore decided to determine the end

"and injected morphia, three-quarters of a grain,

"and shortly afterwards cocaine, one grain..."

Lucky old King!

"..into the distended jugular vein.

"I did it myself because it was obvious that Sister B, the King's nurse,

"was disturbed by the procedure."

"So I injected Sister B as well(!)"

Essentially, isn't that what a speedball is? He's basically gone the same way as John Belushi.

He gave him a speedball of morphia and cocaine which is pretty....

-He told the family?

-He wrote it in his diary and this was revealed in 1986.

-Treason?

-Well, it was quite extraordinary.

Being a Lord, he was in the House of Lords, and he voted against euthanasia in the euthanasia debate.

He said, "I'm not opposed to euthanasia per se..." Having just killed the King, not surprising!

"I just felt it should be left to the discretion of doctors, not anybody else." There we are.

-Or "a" doctor.

-Or myself, basically.

Now for a bizarre illness. What would you call a man who eats literally everything?

Winner.

LAUGHTER

KLAXON SOUNDS

Gotcha!

Oh, no!

APPLAUSE

Everything? Like pens and paper clips?

-Light bulbs?

-Yeah, polyphagism. It's also known as "pica",

an excessive appetite, often for non-nutritious substances - coal, clay, chalk, nuts, bolts, soil.

It's an exaggerated version of what can happen in pregnancy. Did you get any weird appetite things?

Yeah, I ate a bit less.

Some animals suffer from it. In horses, it's called "depraved appetite".

But the most extreme example we can come across is a man called Tarrare, a Frenchman in the 18th century.

He was abandoned by his family as a child because they couldn't afford the food he ate.

After working as a street entertainer swallowing stones and live animals, he became a soldier.

They tested his appetite and he ate a meal intended for 15 people in a single sitting.

He tore apart and ate without chewing live cats, snakes, lizards and puppies,

so they thought he'd be a useful spy.

They gave him things to swallow. They were at war with Prussia. But he was caught first time.

He'd be a good spy? He'd rather draw attention to himself...

-Well, no...

-Eating everything all the time!

They thought he could swallow a box with military secrets, so when he was searched, he would have nothing.

He was then put on a diet in a military hospital.

He would scavenge for offal in gutters and outside butcher's shops.

-Scavenge for offal in gutters?

-Yes, and outside butcher's shops.

-Someone had gone, "I don't like the look of that liver," and chucked it?

-Yeah.

He attempted to drink the blood of other patients and eat the corpses in the hospital morgue.

You know who's like that, don't you?

I don't even need to say it any more, do I?

Anyway, he was eventually ejected from the hospital under suspicion of having eaten a toddler.

-A toddler?

-A toddler, a little baby, yeah, a child, an infant which is against the law in France.

-Yeah, it is.

-Yes.

-They're picky, the French, aren't they?

They drew the line somewhere.

He had a belly so loose, he could wrap the loose folds of skin around his waist.

He sweated constantly and stank to such a degree that he could not be endured within 20 paces.

-His eyes would become bloodshot and a visible vapour...

-I'm becoming increasingly attracted towards him.

A visible vapour would rise from his body when he ate.

-Sounds bloody marvellous!

-Someone's got to make a film about him!

He didn't gain weight or vomit and he seemed perfectly sane.

-He didn't gain weight?

-No.

-On the "eat everything" diet, he didn't gain weight?

With a whole cat and a dog inside, they'll have eaten everything else.

-Like the old lady who swallowed the fly.

-They had a diet pill like that.

People would eat tapeworm egg, wait till they got to their ideal weight,

then take the helminthicide to kill the tapeworm, they'd poo out the worm and get on nicely slim.

I wish they still made that(!)

His autopsy revealed an enlarged liver and an enormous stomach covered in ulcers and oozing pus.

So that's nice(!)

Time to hand your test results in.

Let's talk about your sleepiness here. We've got Ben here first.

I'll tell you what the questions are. You fill in how likely you are to doze off

in the following situations, according to the following scale.

The situations are sitting and reading, watching TV,

sitting inactive in a public place, e.g, theatre or meeting,

travelling as a passenger in a car for an hour, lying down to rest in the afternoon,

sitting and talking to someone, sitting quietly after a lunch without alcohol,

in the car while stopped in traffic.

Ben here scored 6 and you'll be pleased to know that 7 to 8 is average.

0 to 6 indicates you get sufficient sleep. I don't know that my taxes are going properly

if a doctor gets sufficient sleep. I pay you to be utterly overworked and underslept.

-I thought this was a confidential medical...

-Oh, sorry. Damn!

This is Jo "Marlon Brando".

LAUGHTER

-You answered zero to everything. You sleep enough. You never fall asleep.

-I never fall asleep anywhere, no.

That's fantastic. Andy...

Sitting and reading - 1, watching TV - 3. Your total, which you haven't done... Thanks.

I got too tired.

Your total is 14.

-Yes.

-Alan has answered "3" to almost everything, except sitting and talking to someone.

-I don't sleep there.

-And you score 19.

If I sit and read a book, I fall asleep immediately.

Anyway, you get sufficient sleep, Ben.

The rest of you, I'm sorry to say... 7 to 8 is average.

Anything above 9 indicates you should seek the advice of a sleep specialist without delay.

-YAWNING:

-I'll get on to it straight away.

There you are. Drop your trousers. It's time for a dose of general ignorance. Fingers on beepers.

Why shouldn't you sleep with a dog?

-COUGHING

-Yes?

He won't respect you in the morning, will he?

-LAUGHTER

-It's against the law, isn't it?

Not in a sexual sense. I mean "share a bed with". I'm afraid it's terribly unhealthy.

Quite a lot of plague, amazingly, good old bubonic plague,

-especially in the southern USA.

-Not in this country surely?

-At the moment, we seem to be OK.

-Because dogs are wearing those anti-plague hats.

LAUGHTER

Can I just say a propos of nothing, what hideous pillow cases!

-They are, aren't they?

-Is it from the '70s, that picture?

I bet they're that kind of brushed nylon where you catch your fingernails on it.

The diseases you get off animals are often worse than the diseases you get off people

because the diseases that live in humans can't kill you off instantly and universally,

otherwise the disease would die out.

They need you to carry on sneezing on the bus and scratching your arse and preparing food

and the things you do to transmit stuff,

but something that lives on a dog doesn't care if it kills off a dead-end host like a human.

-It's not bred to... It's not part of its normal life cycle.

-Yeah.

Letting dogs and cats share your bed can cause all manner of problems.

Now I'm having a panic attack. What do you recommend?

A paper bag. KLAXON SOUNDS

Ah, yes, the good old paper bag.

-Is that not recommended any more?

-No, it isn't.

-Nor indeed the other stand-by - take a deep breath.

-"Pull yourself together."

-"Pull yourself together" is probably OK.

-Yes.

-"Doctor, I think I'm a pair of curtains."

-Slap her, she's hysterical!

-She had, I think...

-She had good reason to be hysterical.

-Jack was not behaving normally, was he?

He was being odd. There's a new treatment called capnometry assisted respiratory training

or CART. It encourages people to take shallow, not deep breaths.

-You want to avoid blowing off too much carbon dioxide.

-Yeah.

Because you're hyperventilating, you're getting rid of too much CO2.

The idea was that if you do it in the bag, you're breathing back in the CO2,

but this is now not considered a good idea. "It's dangerous and should be retired" is the opinion.

-It's quite hard to find a paper bag.

-I'm still going to try it on Winner.

And avoid if you can fatty and spicy foods.

So now I'm feeling extremely angry! What should I do?

Calm down, dear!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

That's very good. You're quite right.

-What's the best thing to do when you're angry?

-Have a cigarette?

-I'm not sure that's medically recommended.

-Lie down in a dark room? Think about something nice?

-Puppies?

-Those are all good suggestions.

The suggestion I'm glad you didn't make is "let it out".

There was this idea that if you got very angry, you should punch a punchbag and shout.

They've done some experiments and those that let out their anger became over time more aggressive.

The hypothesis is that blowing off steam may reduce psychological stress in the short term,

but it acts as a reward mechanism, reinforcing aggressive behaviour.

You feel good when you let it out again, so maybe it's better to bottle it up.

Be British, in other words. Stiff upper lip.

-Don't make a scene or a fuss.

-Don't make a bloody fuss!

And above all... avoid fatty and spicy foods.

Yes, also according to psychologists at the University of California Santa Barbara,

it's best to make decisions when you're angry which is not what you might think.

It seems that anger will actually... Again it's a hypothesis.

..that anger is designed to motivate people to take action.

-It helps people take the right action.

-Buying shoes.

-Buying shoes when you're angry.

-Make sure you're livid when you go in the shop.

-"I want my shoes!"

"Which pair would you like?" "THOSE! I'm pleased with these."

Letting your anger out just makes matters worse.

If you want to wash the bacteria off your hands, what temperature should the water be?

I would say it would need to be above 30, 40...

To kill the bacteria, the water would have to be far too hot to touch.

It would have to be about 80 degrees centigrade.

It's nothing to do with the temperature. It's the vigorousness of the scrubbing action.

For proper infection control, we should all be naked below the elbow.

-Short sleeves is the answer?

-Yeah.

-Which you do see in some doctors nowadays.

-Is that now the norm?

-I think so.

-That's interesting.

-I like those taps they have, the elbow taps.

I'll get some of those for home.

But do, above all, avoid fatty and spicy foods.

How many portions of fruit and veg should you eat each day?

Oh, now, in Japan they say nine.

Yes, it's different all over the world, it seems.

The five is being chosen in Britain because that's the most they could persuade the British to eat.

-We are the most reluctant to eat...

-"There's no way they'll eat any of it."

-Anything green is repulsive.

Denmark says six, France ten.

-In Canada, it's between five and ten.

-Somebody just went, "Eugh!"

-The idea!

In Scotland, it's one.

A month.

Supposedly, it's seven for women and...

Haribos count in Scotland!

Wine gums, things like that.

-SCOTTISH ACCENT:

-Have some vegetables - Starmix!

"I'll have a bag of Dolly Mixtures!"

I really wish my fridge looked like that.

-Does anyone's fridge ever look like that?

-Certainly not mine, no.

I can't see a single pork pie in there.

-No.

-I have a lot of veg in my fridge.

-Do you like pork pies?

-I love them.

-I love pork pies.

I like pork pies, but you start a pork pie and you think, "I really like this,"

but two-thirds of the way through, I start to go off it and I don't know why. Is that to do with me?

Send it to me, the rest of it.

-You've got pork pie avoidance syndrome.

-Yes, you have.

It's rather staggering there are any British people left alive in the world. It's just amazing.

We all eat fatty, spicy food and certainly don't get our five a day.

Lastly, here's something every teenage boy should know.

What is it that burns when you set fire to your farts?

-You want someone to say "methane", don't you?

-I'll say it. Methane.

-KLAXON

-Thank you, Andy.

-I thought it was methane.

-Everybody does.

No, most human beings do not produce methane in their extrusions.

It seems that we produce about three pints of wind a day.

-Pints?

-Yes, it's measured in pints.

Released in 10 to 15 individual episodes.

You can get a box set as well.

LAUGHTER

Best...

Or you can have a feature-length episode.

Pyro-flatulence, igniting these episodes, can lead to serious burns, so don't try it at home, everybody.

Methane in the body results from microbes called methanogens,

but only a third of humans have methanogens in their gut flora. It seems to be genetically determined.

A 2009 study by Arizona State University showed that methane producers are more efficient

at converting their undigested food into fat reserves, which bluntly put, means fat people fart more.

-The major components of flatus...

-LAUGHTER

The major components are all odourless.

The aroma is caused by skatole, indole and hydrogen sulphide.

During the Great Plague of London, doctors recommended patients store their farts in a jar,

then when they were feeling unwell, smell them. Apparently, this would help.

Anyway, it's usually hydrogen that's lit.

As I always say, better out than in.

-Definitely.

-A bit like Simon Cowell in a lifeboat.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

And now the complications set in as we look at the final scores.

It's very exciting because in first place

with a very positive and a very thrillingly impressive eight points, it's Andy Hamilton!

-APPLAUSE

-That's not happened before.

And in...

In second place with five points, it's Dr Ben Goldacre!

APPLAUSE

But by no means the sickest patient on the ward with only minus seven is Alan Davies!

Oh, no! APPLAUSE

I'm afraid it's get the mortuary trolley ready at minus 24 - Jo Brand!

APPLAUSE

That's all from us tonight, so it's good night from Ben, Andy, Jo, Alan and me.

I leave you with this heart-warming tale from America.

In 1981, the Mayor of Springfield, Illinois suffered a heart attack during a council meeting.

The council voted to wish him a speedy recovery by a margin of 19 votes to 18. Good night.

Subtitles by Subtext for Red Bee Media Ltd 2011

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