Journeys QI XL

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello!

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

and welcome to QI, where tonight our topic is Journeys.

And let's see who's in the arrivals hall today.

All the way up from Down Under, it's Cal Wilson.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello!

The only way here is from Essex - Phill Jupitus.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And...from Port Talbot Parkway, stopping at Pyle, Bridgend, Pencoed,

Llanharan, Pontyclun, Ninian Park and Cardiff Central -

Rob Brydon.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And bearing the label, "Not Wanted On Voyage," Alan Davies.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And they all have little buzzer noises and Cal goes...

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT CHIMES

And Rob goes...

STEAM TRAIN WHISTLES

Phill goes...

FOGHORN BLARES

-Which you do, in fact, don't you?

-I do.

-LAUGHTER

-And Alan goes...

HORN HONKS

That's your chosen mode of transport.

We've travelled a lot, Alan,

and one of the places we travelled to a few months ago was Australia,

and that's where we found Cal,

who is New Zealand's perhaps greatest stand-up comedian

-and works mostly in Melbourne now, don't you?

-Yes, I do, I do.

-I've got the Antipodes covered!

-Yeah!

But we liked you so much we smuggled you in our luggage

-and we brought you back here, so, welcome.

-Thank you.

I make a better souvenir than an interesting key ring, I suppose.

Exactly, exactly!

-I did want a koala but...

-A stuffed koala?

-Not on, apparently.

-No.

The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single question -

where the hell did I leave my passport?

I lost mine on a plane once and it had gone down,

-under the cushion of my seat.

-Oh!

-Oh, yeah.

-The actual plane seat.

-Yeah.

-I was on the plane for a... I refused to get off the plane.

-Yeah, you have to get your seat disassembled. I've had that.

-Eventually, I found it.

That's the end of the story.

LAUGHTER

Oh, that's a beautiful story! That is...

That is a lovely, lovely story.

Stephen, is that Alan Davies or is it...?

Hang on, is it Peter Ustinov?! LAUGHTER

That was a hell of an anecdote!

If that is the level of the bar this evening, I may go home.

LAUGHTER

Is it you? Specifically you? Where did YOU leave YOUR passport?

No, it's technique.

The University of Wisconsin, when you lose something,

it actually helps to say the name of the thing that you've lost,

or you are looking for.

-Dignity.

-Yes!

-LAUGHTER

-Very good.

APPLAUSE

-Brilliant!

-You see?

-Exactly.

-For me, that would make it worse.

-That would just draw attention to it.

-Your wallet has a name?!

Well, no...

"Peregrine!"

-LAUGHTER

-"PEREGRINE! Baaa!"

"Peregrine!"

-LAUGHTER

-That's how...

-It might work!

-It has now!

From now on it will be called Peregrine.

But anyway, that's not the point, the point is, for example,

you open a cutlery drawer and where the hell's the garlic peeler, or whatever?

-If you just say garlic peeler.

-Yes, the garlic peeler. Again...

-"Andrew! "Andrew!"

-LAUGHTER

You're missing my point about names, here.

I just mean the word we give the thing.

Its normal description, as found in a dictionary.

Not from the list of given names.

It isn't Julian the cheese grater.

LAUGHTER

It isn't Barbara the corkscrew.

It'd put a different complexion on Marlon Brando yelling "Stella!"

when it was just a pair of glasses he was after.

-He lost his wallet!

-His sunglasses are called Stella. Exactly.

So, what did you do? You have to say,

-"Wallet, wallet, wallet"?

-"Keys, keys, keys, keys,

-"keys, keys."

-Yeah, exactly.

So, you say, sort of, you know, "bottle opener, bottle opener."

You've got more chance of seeing it, you're look...

-"Money, money, money..."

-LAUGHTER

-You know that phrase...

-"GOLD, GOLD!"

-LAUGHTER

-You know that phrase, "It was just staring me in the face,"

and you somehow couldn't see it?

The act of speaking does something in your brain

that actually allows your eyes to see it more clearly.

-That's been demonstrated.

-Reminds me of that phrase,

"Couldn't see the wood for the trees,"

-have you ever come across that phrase before?

-I have, I have.

-I never used to understand it.

-What it basically means is

you're looking at... Wait.

-LAUGHTER You're looking for wood.

-Yes, yes.

-Not in the way you might!

-No, not in that sense!

-LAUGHTER

-You're looking, you're looking for wood...

-Yeah.

-..and you're looking at trees.

-Yes.

So, you are, in essence, looking at wood.

-They are wood, aren't they?

-But you're s... I've got it, Alan. LAUGHTER

But you're seeing trees so you can't see the wood for the trees

and, I think, in a funny old way, it's a little bit like what you're talking about.

-LAUGHTER

-Almost exactly not.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-LAUGHTER

It's nice you brought that up. It's a good...

Now, the other thing, before I finish,

the other thing I'd like to bring up is this business now with passports.

-They don't like you to smile in the photograph.

-Oh, no.

-When I grew up, a smile was always mandatory.

-A big grin, yes.

Like, if you're...

LAUGHTER

But now, you have to look like you're suspected of having done something.

I look like a Russian prison guard in my passport photo.

I can see that! I can see that! Absolutely.

LAUGHTER

A hatchet-faced Silesian fish wife.

LAUGHTER

Every single photo booth I get into appears to be set on "paedophile".

LAUGHTER

Try and recreate that look for us now, could you?

Right, for a kick-off, what you have to do in a photo-Me booth

is, they don't let you wear glasses either,

and, also, because the camera lens is behind the mirror

and you don't know where it is you're always looking slightly off...

-That's true.

-Is it down...? OK, this is the look.

LAUGHTER

Stay away from my children!

APPLAUSE

It gets you... It gets you out of a lot of baby-sitting duties, though.

I bet our passports would look quite good together

cos you're the paedophile and I'm the prison guard.

Yeah, we should travel together.

-LAUGHTER

-I'm with my Kiwi handler.

-Do kiwis have handlers?

-LAUGHTER

-There's not, they're not very good...

-Are they edible?

-We're not allowed to eat them.

-Like swans?

I mean, the Queen's allowed them. Is the Queen allowed kiwis?

-I don't think she is.

-Could she eat anything cos she's the Queen?

-I wouldn't be the one to tell her not to but...

-I imagine not!

-No, no.

"Stop eating that kiwi, you dreadful old woman!"

LAUGHTER

I imagine that you'd be a bit more polite.

You are Stephen Fry off the telly.

-You don't have to do the "dreadful old woman."

-No...

But it would be a dreadful thing to do.

-You could say, "Stop eating that kiwi, ma'am, have some jam."

-Exactly, exactly.

-"Your Majesty, put the puffin down!"

-LAUGHTER

Let's just have situations where we tell the Queen to stop eating...

That sounds like a children's game.

"And now have a round of Your Majesty Put The Puffin Down!"

-LAUGHTER

-"You're the Queen, so, one...two...three...

-Trousers off!

"..Your Majesty, put the puffin down!" Yes, very good.

I don't know why or how we got there,

but that's what journeys do to you.

Anyway, describe the travel arrangements

of the Japanese flying snail.

-FOGHORN BLARES

-Where is it going?

LAUGHTER

Er, it probably won't travel more than 11 miles, but very fast.

Does it drop?

-Yes.

-Is it a fall?

Yes, but how would it get up?

-They haven't got wings, have they, you see?

-They haven't.

They haven't, but we haven't got wings and we fly, how do we do it?

-In an aeroplane.

-In an aeroplane.

-We get in...

-I've got the answer.

-..a conveyance of flight.

-STEAM TRAIN WHISTLES

-They hop on a bird or a creature with wings - a bird.

-Yes.

Erm, they hop on...

Could have been a bat?

Could've been a bat. Could have been a bat or a bird.

Or a strange hybrid of bird bat. LAUGHTER

They hop onto a creature with the ability to fly.

But 11 miles, that's very, very high.

-It's not the height, it's not the altitude, they travel...

-LAUGHTER

They are not going up into space!

I've got it in my head that they're dropping 11 miles.

It's not a voluntary act, they get eaten by birds.

-Oh.

-There are two types of bird on the little island of Haha-jima.

Haha-jima, it's one of the Ogasawara Islands, south of Japan,

as you can see, and there is the Japanese White-eye and the Brown-eyed bulbul,

which are two types of bird. There they are.

And they eat this particular snail...

and about 15% of them survive the process

and are excreted out alive and so they are, kind of, spreading their,

-spreading the genes further around.

-Is this to scale?

-Yeah.

-Because that seems unlikely.

-No, it's not!

LAUGHTER

That'd be a seriously weighed down bulbul.

That snail would eat that bird! I'd back the snail!

Is the, is the bird on the left, is that a white ring around its eye

-or has it just excreted a full size snail?

-Yeah! Oh!

"Whoa!"

LAUGHTER

It can be up to between 30 minutes or two hours later

that it passes through the bird's system, as it were,

and the bird can fly at about 11mph.

Is the snail doing some of the work, to pass through that quickly?

Is it trundling towards the exit of the bird as well?

It's the normal peristaltic action of the digestive system of the bird

pushing it through its crop, down into its tummy

-and then out of its little botty.

-Does the snail go into his own shell,

by which I don't mean get a little self-conscious?

Does he retreat into his shell to take shelter?

I should imagine he would. I should imagine he would.

Don't they pick them from the shell? Don't they...?

Like you do in a restaurant with a little special fork?

-They've got a special fork!

-Which is called Arnold, by the way.

-I'm writing it down. Ice cream scoop called Vanessa.

-Yes!

-So, anyway...

-What would you call one of those pizza cutters?

The rolly pizza cutter?

-Clement.

-Clement.

-Can we call it Dave?

-LAUGHTER

Well, there you are.

Yes, good. So, the cry goes up, "Abandon ship," now.

That's our next question, "Abandon ship."

Now, we are proud Britons and one proud Kiwi,

what do we say next? What do we chaps say?

Women and children first!

Oh!

KLAXON BLARES

As far as we know, that's only ever been cried twice.

It's called the Birkenhead Drill

and it happened on board a ship called the Birkenhead

but that was cos the captain pointed a gun at his crew

and said, "Women and children first."

This had not been an idea that especially existed before

and, in fact, it's very un-British.

Women have a lesser chance of surviving

if a British ship sinks than a Continental one.

-That's good to know!

-Yup, so there you go.

-LAUGHTER

So, we aren't the gallant creatures that we thought we were, at all.

The Titanic was the other one in which men were told to stand back

and there was, we've had this on QI before,

there was one crew member who survived,

went all the way home to Liverpool

and he had the door slammed in his face by his mother

who was ashamed of him for having survived.

-But, in fact, more...

-She sounds nice.

-Yeah, charming!

LAUGHTER

Extraordinary. I mean, unbelievable!

But, obviously, you want a fair number of fit, strong people

who know their way around the waters, as it were,

once you're in the lifeboat cos if it's women and children

there's not really going to be that much, necessarily, use in being in the lifeboat.

That's a bit sexist, Stephen!

You need at least one crew member who can navigate by the stars or who can operate the oars efficiently.

Or isn't going, "Oh, look,

"there's a fish over there! Let's go over there!"

I wasn't going to be the one to say that, I'm glad you did.

Known as the Birkenhead Drill, it's not common.

Has anybody here ever had to muster? Have you ever mustered, Stephen?

Not on a ship.

Well, I was filming something on a cruise ship, and it hit a rock.

Good gracious.

And we had to genuinely muster.

And the important thing in that situation

is to stay calm.

I absolutely cacked myself.

LAUGHTER

-I was terrified.

-Really?

-Yes!

Yeah, hard to believe(!) I was.

It was very frightening. We were filming a scene with James Corden.

It was a thing called Cruise Of The Gods.

We'd blacked out the windows of this cabin to simulate night.

All of a sudden, the boat tipped at an incredible angle one way.

-James Corden gone over to the...?

-LAUGHTER

-Naughty!

-That's very naughty, Alan.

That's very naughty.

APPLAUSE

You know, a lot of people in Britain struggle with their weight, Alan.

-Yes, I do. Yeah.

-I wasn't thinking of you!

-< Were you with him?

-LAUGHTER

And we ended up having to abandon ship that night,

-just like...similar to Titanic.

-Wowser!

LAUGHTER Yeah, I don't want to say just like...

-Yeah.

-It wasn't that bad.

It's a good enough story without embellishing that much.

All right, yeah. But we get off,

and we're watching the ship lit up in the background...

And where was the nearest land?

We were close to land because we were coming out of a port.

The captain was coming out of port too fast,

and sure enough, we went... CRUNCHING SOUND

So we were quite close. But a very frightening experience.

I mean, with all due deference to the captain of this vessel

going too fast out of port,

I mean, if he doesn't do that, his kids can't water-ski.

-LAUGHTER

-Fair point.

-He's got to give them a treat, hasn't he?

-Yeah.

What's the point of being a captain if you can't have a laugh?

Anyway, there you are, yes.

Who used to hang out with Richard Burton

and drive cabbies round the bend?

-PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT CHIMES

-Yeah.

Elizabeth Hailer?

Oh, very good!

That is...no.

-Who is that? Go on.

-It's not OJ Simpson?

It is OJ Simpson! Very good. With Burton,

of course, so, now we're confusing you,

because this is a bit naughty of us.

This enemy of cabs was a real enemy of cabs.

And oddly enough, by mentioning Elizabeth Hailer,

for which, chapeau, as they say, you've got the right gender,

because the person who annoyed this cabbie was in fact a woman.

-That's the Richard Burton we're talking about. Who was he?

-Was he an English explorer?

He was an amazing man.

He went off for years at a time and occasionally wrote letters to his wife?

As seems to be... no tweeting or Skypeing.

There was no tweeting. Absolutely. He spoke 29 languages.

He was a quite remarkable man.

And he gave the English-speaking world

the unexpurgated translation of the 1,001 Nights,

and indeed, the Kama Sutra.

So he was considered by Victorians as absolutely outrageous and scandalous.

But he was an extraordinary scholar and adventurer, a remarkable man.

But he had a friend called Mrs Prodgers,

who I assume must have been...

that sounds like a Welsh surname, presumably, is it?

Is Prodgers a name you've come across before?

-No.

-It's a new one on me.

-I've never heard Prodgers.

-Quite a nice name. Mrs Prodgers.

-"Mrs Prodgers came in yesterday."

"What did she want?"

"Well, she wouldn't say. She was looking for you."

You've built up a whole little scenario in your head!

"She looked upset, though.

"I hear her Bronwyn is taking her exams this week."

"Yes, she is. Mind you, that glandular fever has played hell with her revision."

And we'll look in next week for Episode 2 of Life With The Prodgers!

LAUGHTER

But this woman, whose name was Prodgers,

had conducted a lifelong, insane,

very typically Victorian-ly eccentric battle against cabbies,

for whom, for some reason, she really had it in for them.

Seems they ply a harmless trade, in those days, of course,

using horses rather than engines, and she knew to within feet

the exact limits of the journeys they could make for one shilling,

and she would make them make the journey

within a few yards of the boundary which would then allow them to charge more,

and then she would wait precisely the amount of time she was allowed to wait

without them charging extra waiting time.

And then she gloried more than anything else in them trying to get more money off her,

and then she would take them to court, and she would usually win.

It was a bizarre practice.

But it got to the stage... she also travelled in some style,

so when she arrived at King's Cross station, she'd have five porters -

three for her luggage, and two to carry her children.

And there'd be the line of cabs outside just as there is today

in any station, and there would be a shout of,

"Mrs Prodgers! Mrs Prodgers!" and they'd all bugger off.

-LAUGHTER

-They'd all disappear.

And in 1876, on Bonfire Night,

they made an effigy of her, the cabbies, and burned her in a huge bonfire,

and there were music hall songs about it.

It was a very famous bizarre thing,

that this woman had it in for cabbies.

Who knows, one of them may have tried to molest her

-or failed to molest her or whatever.

-What an awful moment, when you realise she's in your cab.

I know. "Oh, it's bloody Prodgers."

"Taxi!" And she jumps in... "Oh, shit! Mrs Prodgers!"

Yeah. "I've got Mrs Prodgers." Very extraordinary.

But for some reason, she was very friendly with Richard Burton,

and he helped her and gave her advice, and considering he was,

as you rightly say,

not considered a particularly gallant man - as far as his wife was concerned, he was away a lot -

he was helpful and kind to her.

The rest of the family never understood,

because he was usually short-tempered with them.

It was a standing joke, his regard for Mrs Prodgers.

She wasn't his alter ego? Like his...

No, I don't think he...

He'd dress up as Mrs Prodgers.

Were they ever seen in the same room?

Because he goes off exploring, thousands and thousands of miles,

-but as Mrs Prodgers, he only goes about 20 centimetres a time!

-Interesting thought.

I got into a taxi once in London,

and the taxi driver saw me in the mirror and went,

"Hello, mate. Can I say, we do enjoy, the wife and I, watching you,"

and I thought, "Oh, this is going to be lovely."

And he started telling me what he liked.

But he was mistaking me for Ben Miller.

A lot of them do that.

And he started listing lots of Ben's projects.

"I like that Primeval!"

Yeah, and he said The Worst Week Of My Life,

so I just played along. I said, "Thanks very much,"

and then he actually said,

"I'll tell you who you must get confused for..."

LAUGHTER

"It's that Welsh one. It's that..."

And I said, "Oh, Rob Brydon?" He said, "Yeah!"

I said, "Oh, he's good," I said.

I said, "I think he's fantastic."

And he said, "What, him? The Welsh one? I think he's a twat."

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

So, there we are. That was Richard Burton.

How long would it take you to bicycle from Land's End

-to the northernmost part of Britain?

-What, John O'Groats?

-Oh!

-KLAXON BLARES

-Mean of me, wasn't it?

-No, no, ask clear, well-defined questions!

-We just like to make you say things!

-You can't buzz buzz me on chitchat!

LAUGHTER

-No, it's not the northernmost part of Britain.

-Is it not?

No, surprisingly.

It, sort of, advertises itself as such and it has a little hut.

There's the last house in Scotland, in John O'Groats.

There's one of those boys in callipers.

I haven't seen one for years.

-A long time ago, I know.

-There was one on the high street when I was a kid.

It used to be called the Spastic Society, it's now Scope, isn't it?

-You put a penny in and he was still there the next week.

-LAUGHTER

Did you put the penny in to make him go away?!

-I thought it would get him better, poor lad.

-Oh, bless!

Look at him, there, he's obviously on his holidays, isn't he?

I used to like those ones where you put the penny in

and it just rolled round and round, and round...

We had a guide dog, you put the penny in its head.

-We had a lifeboat one where you put the penny in and the lifeboat came out.

-That's right! I like that.

There's a brilliant model of Queen Victoria's dog in Sydney,

outside the Queen Victoria building,

and it's like a, you know, you put in your donation, but it talks.

So, it's a little, like, Highland terrier

and it says, in very beautiful newsreader tones,

"During my lifetime because of my good deeds,

"after my death I was granted the power of speech." LAUGHTER

Like this. And then it goes,

"If you put a coin in the box I will say thank you."

And then it pauses and then goes, "Thank you." LAUGHTER

"Woof."

That lad said nothing to me.

-Not a word!

-Every week, I put something in his box.

Which...? Do you put it in the box or is it his head?

It's got a slot in his box.

He might have two slots. Some of them would have two slots.

-Two slots in the box, yeah. Women... No, stop it!

-LAUGHTER

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT CHIMES

-I never said that!

-I resign!

-Yes, quite right. Absolutely shameful.

-We've established this is not your area.

-Yeah, exactly.

He looks, he looked a little bit like...

-It's like you're talking about Narnia or somewhere.

-LAUGHTER

-It's a fantastical land you've only heard about.

-Exactly.

"You make your way through the fur coats and suddenly...!"

-Whoa!

-LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Whoa-ho-ho-ho! Dear, oh, dear!

Wielding a coin. A single coin.

For a while you have a magical time but then you meet an ice maiden.

-Yes. It's all... Oh, dear God!

-LAUGHTER

-Anyway, yes...

-You're telling me there's somewhere further than John O'Groats?

There is indeed - Dunnet Head. That's the actual northernmost spot.

If you've got to John O'Groats and you haven't gone there...

You wouldn't cycle on there, would you? It's a bit bumpy!

It's rather beautiful, isn't it?

It's about 603 miles, as the crow flies,

but by road it's about 800 miles.

Cyclists could take 10 to 14 days doing it.

The record for running the route, what would you say, is...?

-Have a guess.

-You couldn't do it in less than a week, could you?

No, no. It's nine days and two hours, which is pretty damn good going.

-I'll say!

-In 2005, a golfer named David Sullivan

hit a golf ball all the way. Took him seven weeks.

I don't know what his score was.

Be awful if he didn't fill his card correctly at the end. Disqualified.

-Was it a putter?

-LAUGHTER

Did he mean to do it? Did he mean to do it?

Was he just trying to get it in... "Wait a minute!"

-Just playing it where it lies...

-"Oh, I've lost it again!"

It would land in the back of a lorry going the other direction -

"Oh, Christ!"

I feel sorry for the bloke that was standing waiting for him

-holding the flag.

-LAUGHTER

So, people have done it in all kinds of different ways.

In 1911 there was a motorcycle record of 29 hours and 12 minutes,

which led to a ban on further attempts

because the time necessarily proved that they had been breaking the speed limit, which was 20mph.

Now, here's a bird you might see near John O'Groats. What is it?

-Well...

-Gannet!

-Fulmar.

-Not a gannet, it's not a falcon.

Is it the one puffin the Queen hasn't eaten?

It is a puffin, well done!

-It's a puffin?

-It is a puffin.

Yes, we usually think of puffins as looking more like this, don't we?

-There, that's, exactly. Well...

-Photoshop. Photoshop.

-..when they've had sex...

-It's a ninja puffin.

..and it's winter they don't need to look all bright like that, and so they go all dull.

But its beak is...?

-Well, I suppose its beak has shrunk enough...

-It falls off.

-It falls off?!

-Yes.

-What?!

Yeah. I know. It's just there to attract a mate and then once...

-The dirty, dirty puffins!

-LAUGHTER

Is it the equivalent of a woman losing her figure

after she's got married? LAUGHTER AND GROANING

-The minute the ring goes on, they just go to pieces.

-Oh, now, behave!

To me, it looks more like a woman taking her padded bra off.

-That's what it looks like.

-Yes, I'm afraid there is...

She's just not making an effort any more, is she?

The eye, there, has just been stuck on? Is that...?

Yeah, again, it's a colour, there. It's all to, kind of...

-Just blind. I look great.

-Brighter, sexy...

-"Oh, hello, it's worked!"

-LAUGHTER

They rather sweetly pair for life, male and female puffins,

and they make one egg a year.

So once they've mated, they don't need to attract each other any more.

So, you know, for the winter season, when they're busy feeding

and then they just, sort of, put on their spring make-up...

"I remember when you cared about me!"

-Exactly.

-"You used to have a pink beak!"

-LAUGHTER

-But then it comes back?

-Yes.

-"You should put the eye make-up on!"

-It comes back again.

-It comes back?!

Yes, but they are lovely little creatures, aren't they?

Do you know what a baby puffin is called?

A puff.

STEPHEN CHUCKLES

-It's a puffling. Isn't that lovely?

-ALL:

-Ah!

-Exactly, ah!

-That's like something out of Harry Potter.

-They loved that!

Say it again, they loved it!

Puffling.

-ALL:

-Ah!

How many people now have a new nickname for their partner? LAUGHTER

-Exactly. Puffling.

-"For their partner," did you say?

-For a moment I thought you were going to say their penis.

-LAUGHTER

-For some people, that is their partner.

-Puffling.

Aren't they like those party hats you can get with a bit of elastic?

-Handy.

-The one on the left, he looks like "whoa"! He could easily...

Honestly, a toucan could do great on that puffin island.

-Can you imagine?

-He'd score big-time.

-Oh, Nelly!

-Oh-ho-ho-ho, yeah!

-"Hey, ladies, yeah."

-Well, they spend the time...

-"From the tropics."

-LAUGHTER

-"This doesn't fall off after."

-LAUGHTER

"No, I'm keeping this. Yeah, I've still got the Guinness money."

-They are...

-He'd be freezing cold, though, wouldn't he, after a while?

"Ahhh! How'd you do this up here?"

Would his beak gets smaller in the winter?

Are these just Arctic toucans?

Right, no, they're not, actually, they're a kind of auk, in fact.

Most of those, you'll find in the north Atlantic.

These, indeed, John O'Groats would be a very good place to see them.

-Not Auckland?

-Not Auckland, oddly enough.

That's spelt with a C, a little redundant C, A-U-C-K.

-Oh, of course it is.

-Yeah. But out to sea,

they are pelagic and they have little backward,

sort of like barbed rows of things,

to, basically, to store fish in their mouth

but they are lovely, lovely creatures.

Of course, the Catholic Church counted them as fish, so you could eat them on Fridays. Good.

So, for evolutionary reasons, puffins' beaks fall off after sex,

assuming you believe in evolution, that is.

Like that, what was the name of the naturalist on board the Beagle?

-Charles Darwin, you mean?

-Oh!

-Oh, drat!

-KLAXON BLARES

This is a whole new tactic he's doing!

He wasn't the naturalist on board the Beagle.

There was an official naturalist on board the Beagle

and it wasn't Charles Darwin. He was the...?

-I don't care any more!

-Oh, you're angry, I'm sorry.

-Phillip, I wish it hadn't happened to you.

-He was the cook.

-He wasn't the cook, no.

-He was the figurehead on the prow. STEPHEN LAUGHS

He wasn't that either! He was, in fact, the geologist.

-The geologist.

-He took four times as many notes on geology

as he did on zoology, oddly enough.

It was the doctor, whose name was McCormick,

who was the official naturalist,

and he really resented Darwin being there.

It was for rather snobbish British 19th century reasons

that FitzRoy, whose voyage it was, wanted a gentleman companion

and Charles Darwin fitted the bill rather more than the doctor.

Was there an advert in The Telegraph?

"Wanted - puffling"?

-LAUGHTER

-Yes, "to accompany on long voyage."

The doctor resented Darwin because he took his place at the captain's table,

and was treated as an equal. Fitzroy was an independently rich gentleman,

as they called him then.

Darwin writes in his diary, in fact,

"My friend the doctor is an ass, but we jog along very amicably.

"At present, he is in great tribulation

"whether his cabin should be painted French grey or dead white.

"I hear little, excepting this subject, from him."

So he was obviously a man to go,

"How shall I paint my cabin?"

That's all he ever talked about!

But Christmas Day in 1835,

there's the young Darwin before he grew that massive beard,

they went to Tierra del Fuego, the land of the fire, right down below South America,

and there, Darwin was very astonished to note what happened

when the local people had a famine. What they turned to eat.

Can you imagine what it is that they ate when times were difficult?

-Guinea pigs?

-Penguins?

-Guinea pigs are eaten in South America commonly.

-Just a snack!

-That's...

-One another?

-One another is right,

-but a particular type of person was chosen.

-Elderly people.

And the particular type of...?

-Elderly women?

-Elderly women is the answer.

The elderly women ran for the hills when there was any kind of famine

-because they were the ones...

-"Mmm-mm! That's some good old lady!"

-LAUGHTER

-"I've got the GILF cookbook!"

-LAUGHTER AND GROANING

That's terrible!

That's just awful, Phillip Jupitus.

-Erm, but the reason being that...

-"Their arms are so tender!"

Well, they explained to the crew of the Beagle that the reason was,

I'm afraid to say, that the old women were the least useful members of the tribe

because old men and children, and others could otter hunt

-but the old women couldn't hunt for otters.

-What about the knitting?!

-I'm sorry?

-What about the knitting and crochet?

-Well, exactly.

-I know, exactly.

-And who is going to teach you rummy?

-That's a very good point. Yes.

-LAUGHTER

They can make dumplings. All these things, only old ladies can do.

How does their society evolve with nobody to say, "Oh, I know!"

-LAUGHTER

-"Oh, I know!"

-The thing is, they'd still be able to make dumplings.

-"Hello!"

-Completely devoid of that.

-They could make dumplings out of them.

-Yes, exactly.

-That's true.

Very, very good point.

There we are. That's one of the exciting things

that Charles Darwin, who was not the naturalist on the Beagle, discovered.

So we travel to a more exotic place where they had jackal-headed gods.

-Where would I be?

-Egypt.

-Ah!

KLAXON BLARES

"What, Egypt, you mean?"

-You didn't quite say that, did you?

-Sorry, I didn't quite say...

"What, Egypt, you mean?"

LAUGHTER

Not Egypt, in fact.

Those have been known as jackal-headed gods.

-That particular God, extra points if you know that.

-Anubis.

-Well done!

Anubis is the right answer.

Anubis who was, do you know what the duty of Anubis was?

Something to do with death.

Didn't he guide you into the spirit world?

Another five points, I think, there.

There's a name for a god that guides you into the underworld,

like Mercury, who guided you as far as the River Styx,

and that's a psychopomp.

-That's a good word!

-A psychopomp?

-A psychopomp.

Sounds like something you'd find in a medical examination.

"I'm sorry, you've got psychopomps."

-"It may be benign, it may be malignant."

-Yes, "We're going to have to operate."

A malignant psychopomp, you wouldn't want.

Erm, but, in fact, what has been discovered,

and this is, you won't find this on Egyptological websites

where they will continue to call Anubis and other Egyptian deities jackal-headed,

but the animals that existed at the time of ancient Egypt

were, we now know from DNA, wolves, not jackals.

So, from a zoological point of view,

if not from an Egyptological point of view,

they are in fact the wolf-headed, not jackal-headed.

You heard it here first. A very recent discovery.

So, that's exciting, isn't it?

But now we come to a very special part of the programme here.

In this series, we're occasionally featuring

theories which are interesting,

but which we don't necessarily believe, 100%, at least.

We call them Dubious Theories.

'A Dubious Theory from Stephen Fry.'

Yeah, thank you. Yes.

The years between 614 and 911 AD didn't exist.

The Holy Roman Emperor Otto III got his chroniclers to fake

nearly 300 years of history,

so there was no such person as Charlemagne,

and we're currently actually living in the year 1715 AD.

This is called the Phantom Time Hypothesis.

Is it dubious? Look it up on phantomschmantom.com

and decide for yourself.

That's like the earliest version of Wikipedia, then, isn't it?

Like someone's just gone in and changed the pages to make it...

Yeah. The theory is that this emperor wanted to be on the throne

in the year 1000 AD, but in fact it was only 700 AD,

so he basically got the chroniclers to pretend these 300 years existed.

It was one Heribert Illig who started this argument in 1990,

and his evidence is the apparent stagnation

in the development of architecture, ceramics and thought at this time.

It is, after all, the beginning of the age known as the Dark Ages.

And there's very little archaeological evidence

which can be reliably dated to this period.

There's a very limited number of written sources, which could be faked or just wrong.

I know it's just mad, but anyway,

there are a range of achievements that are given to Charlemagne

that make you think he must have been mythical rather than real.

His size, his warrior, his scholarship,

his inventions, his brilliance, and so on.

Anyway, it's worth looking up, and you can decide for yourself

whether or not it is true.

It's an amazing thought that this could be the year 1715.

-I'm all for it.

-In which case, we'll have a Jacobite rebellion any minute.

-LAUGHTER

-There you go.

There we are. So, as I say, look it up in phantomschmantom.com.

Now, name two interesting things you can do with a coconut in Hawaii.

Do you get different coconuts in Hawaii from other places?

It's a very touristy thing which is frowned upon

by the officials who do, nonetheless, do it.

Thousands and thousands of these are done every year.

Some kind of...you throw them from a moving vehicle?

You use it as a postcard.

Postcard.

Yeah, and you can see, there they are.

You buy them like that, and they will help you decorate it.

You can see the writing on one of them there.

"Just nuts about...", "See you some time..."

You put a stamp on. 10 dollars it costs, something like that,

to send it to the mainland of America.

It'd be annoying to get one of those.

-It really would, wouldn't it?

-"Where's the coconut I sent you?"

-Where is it, then?

-"Oh, well, there was a fire."

A fire that I threw it into!

LAUGHTER

A bit of rationality, and I threw it in a bin.

I had a friend who was nearly killed by a coconut. I've known him for 20 years,

and I was furious with him,

because he only told me a couple of months ago,

and if I had nearly been killed by a coconut,

-I would be...

-Everyone would know about it.

Every conversation. "Hello, I'm Cal. I survived a coconut."

LAUGHTER

But he said he was just standing on a beach,

and a coconut fell from a tree, and he said it was such a good shot -

it hit him directly on the head -

such a good shot, he could hear other coconuts high-fiving each other.

LAUGHTER

Other things you can do with a coconut,

not necessarily in Hawaii...

-Get the coconut milk out.

-Well, yes, the water, the milk.

You can use it as a rehydration drip, which they did

during World War II, both the Japanese and Americans,

cos it's sterile, but it's perfectly serviceable

for rehydration to use it as a drip.

Have a little coconut into you, dripping into you.

The other thing to do,

if you have a tooth knocked out, immersion in coconut water will keep it viable

for reinsertion better than milk.

So there you are.

Little things you can do with coconuts.

Now, why did JFK keep a coconut on his desk?

And there he did, you can see.

-No question about it.

-Was he missing a tooth?

No, that wasn't it.

-Was it a recording device of some sort? A CIA nut?

-No, it isn't.

-No, it isn't.

-Postcard from a friend?

It's not a postcard from a friend. It's a rather important memento.

Amongst JFK's achievements, obviously he was a youngish and...

-He was on a torpedo boat in the war.

-A torpedo boat, PT109, yeah.

-Famously, he was heroic.

-Is it from then?

-Yes.

His torpedo boat was sunk by the enemy,

and he found himself stranded on the Solomon Islands,

completely isolated, and there were local islanders.

He had no pen or paper, so he carved onto a coconut,

which he gave to some of the local native islanders,

and asked them to take it to the capital, Rendova, and he carved on it,

"Nauro Island. Commander. Native knows position.

"He can pilot. 11 alive. Need small boat. Kennedy."

The natives took it, and eventually he was rescued.

"Hurry up and pick us up. We are eating the old women here."

LAUGHTER So it was a postcard?

It was indeed! You're kind of right.

He started the whole fashion, and of course, they gave it back to him

as a memento and he kept it on his desk.

Didn't bring him much luck, but...

LAUGHTER

-Bit dark!

-Sorry.

Sorry! That's awful.

I can remember it. You're too old. I mean...hang on.

LAUGHTER

I think I may actually be getting dementia.

Can you really remember it?

-Yes, I can.

-"I was standing on a grassy knoll with a rifle..."

And a voice told me...

APPLAUSE

Yeah. I was six years old, I think.

-Something like that.

-I can remember Ronald Reagan being shot,

and my dad was in the kitchen,

and I said "Reagan's been shot."

-And he went, "Oh."

-LAUGHTER

That's a bit blase!

And he thought I meant Regan in The Sweeney.

-Oh!

-LAUGHTER

In 1981, they had this premiere of a British movie, Chariots Of Fire.

And they asked our comedy troupe, me and Hugh and Emma and Tony Slattery,

if we would perform a little cabaret

at the Dorchester Hotel after the premiere.

And I'd spoken to my mother. I'd said to her,

"I'm very excited. We're going to the Dorchester." She said,

"Do you know, the last time I went to the Dorchester,

"it all broke up very early because it was the night Kennedy got shot."

In 1962. I said, "Oh, gosh, blimey."

Anyway, so I'm doing the sketch with Emma, and suddenly

-we notice the audience going,

-HE MUTTERS

and everyone's disappeared, all these executives from Fox

and everything. And Reagan had been shot.

So I rang my mother up and said,

"What happened?" She said,

"No member of this family is ever allowed to go to the Dorchester again.

"It's not safe for Western democracy."

Which is why, during W Bush's administration,

Stephen dined there on a daily basis!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

-Anyway...

-"Waiter, any news?"

-LAUGHTER

-Dear me. Still.

Which travel organisation includes a mandatory fee

for the repatriation of your corpse?

Er, the AA? Thomas Cook?

No, this is a very particular event that you can subscribe to,

which, er, they sort out your travel

and your participation in this event,

but included in it is a fee for the repatriation of your corpse.

It's not expected you'll die, but there is a chance.

It's not running the bulls at Pamplona, is it?

No, not the bulls at Pamplona.

-I was going to say dining with you at the Dorchester!

-That might do it.

-It's not one of these Ironman races, is it?

-It's that sort of thing.

It's an incredibly difficult marathon.

It's called the Marathon des Sables,

-which your French will tell you means...?

-Marathon of the sable.

LAUGHTER

These little black furry creatures... Yes.

-Sand is sable in French.

-Oh, sable. Sorry, sorry.

It's the Marathon of the Sands,

and it's an extraordinarily enduring and gruelling event

in which you have to carry your own food, although there are water stops,

and it's a six-day... Each day you run a marathon in the Sahara Desert.

People are very weird, aren't they?

I have a friend who does it and she's done it twice, which is extraordinary.

Did she have to go back because she had forgotten something?

-On two separate years!

-They'd better not tell Izzard about it.

-AS EDDIE IZZARD:

-"Really? Er... OK!"

LAUGHTER

"How many? How many do they do? OK."

LAUGHTER

"Er, I'm going to do 120 Desert marathons a week, for a year."

-LAUGHTER

-"Yes, true story."

Very good Eddie, I have to say!

APPLAUSE

I'm going to the pub every night for 27 years.

LAUGHTER

In tribute to Nelson Mandela.

Consider the case of Mauro Prosperi,

who was a very experienced runner, an Italian policeman, in fact,

who, in 1994, was doing the Marathon des Sables and there was a sandstorm,

and he disobeyed the official instructions

that if you are in a sandstorm, you hunker down

and wait till it passes.

I guess he wanted to win, so he carried on running and got lost.

And this is a bad thing in the Sahara, as I'm sure you can imagine.

By the second day he was drinking his urine, naturally.

On the third he found an abandoned shrine,

managed to kill a couple of bats, whose blood he drank.

He then decided to kill himself with the penknife, but he was so dehydrated, the blood didn't flow.

He was rather encouraged to wake up the next morning,

and so he ran for the next five days, drinking urine and dew,

and eating the occasional lizard that he found and managed to kill on the way.

After nine days, he encountered some nomads who got him back to safety.

He'd lost three stone and was 130 miles off course in Algeria.

-LAUGHTER

-So, and then he did it again for six years.

He went back and did it again. Amazing.

I mean, bizarre, but there you go. Sheesh!

-No-one gives the nomads much credit in that story, do they?

-No, quite!

"He was out there for nine days". "Oh, my whole life!"

Yeah, exactly.

-PHILL LAUGHS

-"He walked for six days."

"Oh, get over yourself!"

LAUGHTER

I was doing that when I was three.

-"Drinking your own piss? Luxury."

-LAUGHTER

But his description of it is really a very good ode to life, isn't it?

He said, "I didn't panic, I just despaired."

There you are.

Anyway, what did Napoleon say to Josephine

-on his way back from a journey?

-Ah, I sense a trap!

LAUGHTER

The only thing I know about Napoleon to Josephine was he said,

-what was it? Rob, what was it?

-LAUGHTER

Phill?

-LAUGHTER

-Cal?

I'm, I'm going to do it! "I'm coming back, don't wash!"

-Oh!

-KLAXON BLARES

No, that is one of the two things that people know that Napoleon said.

"Yeah, I shall be home soon, don't wash." Cos he liked them dirty!

There is no evidence of that whatsoever.

The earliest place this quotation can be sourced is 1981.

I only know the other one.

The other one, which might be...? What?

It's the one... Rob?

LAUGHTER

Phill, you know it.

-Cal, it's... Really?

-I'm still stuck on the no washing.

-"Pas ce soir, Josephine."

-Oh!

-Ah, got away with it!

Josephine, on the right, there, she's got the same black eyes

that all the people in my pictures have got on my computer

when I try and get rid of the red eye.

They end up with massive black dots

and they look like something from a zombie film.

I'm sorry you fell into our trap,

but you managed to avoid the trap of, "Not tonight, Josephine,"

which is the other thing he was supposed to have said.

That appears in a play, WG Wills play called The Royal Divorce, which didn't come out until 1891,

some 70 years after the death of the Emperor.

-"An army marches on its stomach."

-Yes, well, indeed, yes.

-Did he say that?

-Unlikely to have said that to Josephine,

-but he might have done.

-LAUGHTER

I think he meant it more as a, sort of, you know, point about logistics.

Maybe he discussed all sorts of battle stuff?

He might have done.

He said, "I prefer a lucky general to a skilled one," as well.

We don't know anything particular that Josephine and Napoleon might have said to each other

but we do know one thing - "Journeys end in lovers meeting,"

-that's Shakespeare...

-LAUGHTER

..and in fourth place.

PHILL LAUGHS

In fourth place, we have, I'm sorry to say

but he did fall into some of our honeytraps rather cumbrously,

Phill Jupitus with minus 16!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And...

our little kiwi fruit is third with minus eight!

Cal Wilson!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

But hold the front page...

second, with minus three, Rob Brydon!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

With an astonishing plus four, Alan Davies is the winner!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

So, that's all from Rob, Phill, Cal, Alan and me.

The last word on journeys comes from Erma Bombeck, who said,

"Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic

"who waved away the dessert cart."

Have a safe trip. Good night.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE