Journalism QI XL

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Well, goooooood...

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

And to a greater or lesser extent, good evening, and welcome to QI,

where tonight we'll be delving into the seedy world of journalism.

Before we start sexing up the facts,

let's look at who's going to be on my press-gang.

Hold the front page, it's Shappi Khorsandi!

APPLAUSE

Drop the dead donkey, it's Ross Noble.

APPLAUSE

Another world exclusive Johnny Vegas!

APPLAUSE

And, personally responsible for eating Freddie Starr's hamster,

Alan Davies.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Now, before we press on, let's hear their buzzers.

Shappi goes...

NEWS AT TEN THEME

That's newsy. Ross goes...

BOMBASTIC NEWS INTRO

Quite newsy, too. Johnny goes...

DRAMATIC NEWS DRUMS

And Alan goes...

IT'S A KNOCKOUT THEME

LAUGHTER

Very pleasing.

That's great! So you've actually given...?

It's A Knockout, yeah.

You've given us the It's A Knockout theme?

So at any point we can play that and just wrestle around in that.

LAUGHTER

I could go "HA-HA-HA-HA!"

Then every time I press mine, something terrible will happen.

Yes, well, yes...

I can't press my buzzer at all, in case there's a tsunami.

A volcano has killed the population of Sunderland.

Anyway, let's start.

What kind of person lived here?

NEWS AT TEN THEME

Yes, already the tragic tones.

-Initially, you think a very angry person that's quite small.

-Yes.

LAUGHTER

Small-minded, or just small?

It did genuinely exist, this Daily Mail model village.

This was after the First World War, when housing was in short supply

and we were trying to build a land fit for heroes...

And it was made entirely of Daily Mail papier mache, was it?

Well, the Daily Mail was never shy about trying to draw

attention to itself with publicity stunts of all kinds -

athletic stunts, firsts in aviation, and so on.

It was the Daily Mail that sponsored Amy Johnson to fly to Australia, for example.

And they decided that they would lead the world, because this was the way they ran in those days,

and they thought they would contribute to a model village.

I can see that, like if they go, "Let's have an air race,

"let's try and cross the Atlantic," they're all quite...

BOMBASTIC NEWS INTRO

-..like that. But then, model village...

-But then...

IT'S A KNOCKOUT THEME

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

You know, it's the sort of thing where, like, Richard Branson said,

"I'm going to send a rocket to the moon and I'm going to take people,"

and they go, "Wow, Branson's amazing!"

And when we get here, I'm going to build a model village!

Well, I suppose you have to go back to after 1919,

all those people wiped out by Spanish flu, before that

all the people wiped out by the First World War,

and the Daily Mail thought we needed a new, modern Britain

with new, modern cities, and so they devised this village

which they thought was going to be absolutely marvellous.

But the plans were a little overambitious,

and they were overtaken by the...

SHAPPI: Guardian village.

LAUGHTER

The company who owned the land around

and who named this new town Welwyn Garden City.

-Oooh.

-Ah.

There it was, the Daily Mail model village at Welwyn Garden City, 1922.

It's a good job it wasn't the Sunday Sport model village,

because it would be the "Well-In Garden City!"

LAUGHTER

Phwoarr!

Check out the fronts of those houses!

LAUGHTER

Total frontage!

And there is always the back alley, too!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Oh, dear. Er...

-That is a rubbish model village, it's clearly full-size...

-Yeah.

Did the Daily Mail believe in giants, and there was a readership that they were missing out on?

So they built a model village that was normal size,

so giants would visit and go,

"Oh, it's tiny!

"Oh, look at the attention to detail!"

Don't forget "model" has two meanings -

there's "model" in the sense of a paragon, a model of its kind.

-That's what they meant by it.

-It's got three meanings, hasn't it?

Because "model village" everyone just walks around like that.

LAUGHTER

The high street is called "The Catwalk", yeah.

-Everyone's just in their pants.

-That's true!

I have to say, I weep when I think of my childhood

and the amount of time we spent around a model village...

-Oh, Bekonscot?

-..and what kids have today.

-Yeah.

-They've got so much, and my mum and dad were going,

"Look at that, it's Big Ben but this big,"

and we'd go, "Wow."

-JOHNNY:

-Your dad didn't drink.

My dad would go to a model village, drink and go, "I'm King Kong!"

LAUGHTER

And just start smashing stuff!

Oh, how we'd laugh!

You know why I can't go to model villages?

Cos when you walk around, because of the painted faces,

they all look like people who've been trapped by witchcraft.

-They do, don't they?

-"Help, get me out of here!

"I'm not really queuing for a newspaper."

And I come home, shrouded in guilt, and drink.

LAUGHTER

I don't know enough about the dark arts to make them all fully-sized.

If only you could save them.

The fact is the Daily Mail's model village didn't work.

They were bought up by the Welwyn Garden City Company, who eventually

built 41 houses on the six acres and renamed it Meadow Green.

So it was no longer Daily Mail Village.

Tell me about the Daily Mail, who founded the Daily Mail?

-Lord Beaverbrook.

-SHAPPI: Satan.

Not Lord Beaverbrook, that's The Express - Satan is closer.

LAUGHTER

Was it just a load of beavers in a brook?

No, it's a family that still exists and still controls the group.

Is it the Patak family?

-LAUGHING:

-No, it's not the Pataks.

That would be great!

-That would be pleasing.

-If we found out the spice dynasty...

It was founded in 1896 by Alfred Harmsworth,

who later became Lord Northcliffe.

So, Alfred Harmsworth was a great showman

and he had a brilliant gift for making Daily Mail readers

think they kind of owned The Mail, so he was always having competitions

asking them how The Mail could be improved, for example.

There were people who wrote in and said

"You should perforate your articles so we could tear them out, like stamps,"

which is an interesting idea.

Are you sure that wasn't for toilet paper?

LAUGHTER

Someone else suggested each page should be perfumed differently, so it smelt different.

What if you confused the chip paper with the toilet paper?

Madness would ensue.

But before he was a press baron,

he actually wrote a rather QI-style book,

which had the marvellous title of

"Answers To Correspondents On Every Subject Under The Sun."

The first edition contained articles with headlines,

"What The Queen Eats", "How To Cure Freckles",

and "Why Jews Don't Ride Bicycles."

LAUGHTER

And those three answers covered everything?

-That wasn't the sum of the questions.

-Oh, right.

But part of the showman in him was that he guaranteed that,

if you died with a copy of that book on you, your estate would get £200.

If you come from a family like mine where they tend to drown themselves,

-that's the preferred suicide...

-Right...

..without scuba gear, how are you going to get down there to plant the book?

LAUGHTER

I love the fact that he said "That's the PREFERRED method"!

Like they've gone... "Oh, I've got to do the old suicide, but..."

-Well there's been a couple of sloppy ones.

-Has there?

Yeah, coating themselves in dog food, going to the zoo...

Good God!

The ones who've really thought it through. It's not just been a last-minute...

"Lions!"

Shouldn't it be cat food? For the lions.

You walk into the lions' enclosure covered in dog food...

Ross, they haven't thought it through!

Or else they would drown themselves.

In Japan... Sorry.

What they've introduced on the underground, because of

the delays of people killing themselves is the family get billed,

and the further out of the city that you kill yourself by jumping on

their version of the Underground,

the less money you have to pay,

so everybody's been going right out to like High Barnet and places like that...

Honestly! To top themselves, because they don't want to leave the expense for the family.

-"At least he had the taste to kill himself at Cockfosters"!

-Yeah.

-Have you got any happy stories?!

-No...

If you go to Clifton Suspension Bridge, there's a sign as you get to the bridge

with the phone number of the Samaritans.

-Yeah.

-Just in case anyone's thinking of jumping off.

And then no telephone.

LAUGHTER

It really makes me think that if you are feeling that way,

you're going to think "Well, that's just typical of my luck!"

Wasn't there somebody... I might be making this up.

Who used to hang around at Beachy Head...

-Which is a common suicide spot.

-And talk people out of it.

-Yes, indeed.

-There's priests walking around.

-Priests, and ordinary good, kind people.

But the thing about Beachy Head is that I've been on to Beachy Head

when I've say, had a gig in Brighton, and if you just want to have

a little sit-down, and have a little think, people panic.

-Well, they assume...

-I had the police come up to me. Yeah.

Because it is such a popular suicide spot.

I was just having a little bit of a read.

I think it was a bit attention seeking of me, if I'm honest. To be honest I was quite down.

Were you dangling your legs over the edge(?)

LAUGHTER

Choking myself!

HE HOWLS HISTRIONICALLY

"I'm fine, I'm absolutely fine."

Now, listen to this obituary,

and let me know what kind of person is being described.

"He was a tireless raconteur,

"who gave colourful accounts of his exploits,

"but did not suffer fools gladly.

"An uncompromisingly direct ladies' man,

"he was affable and hospitable at every hour,

"but he did not uphold the highest ethical standards of the City."

NEWS AT TEN

-Sounds like a bit of a wrong 'un.

-Yes.

Because they're all things that you kind of...

I've got a problem with that expression,

-"Didn't suffer fools gladly."

-You've put your finger on it.

Who does? Who does suffer fools gladly?

Who goes, "I want to spend the weekend with a fool?"

You have, you're on my team.

LAUGHTER

You've put your finger on it, Shappi.

The point is, all those phrases are what used to be obituary code,

and basically you had to translate it.

"A tireless raconteur" means a crashing bore.

Is it Nick Clegg?

It's not one individual, it's just these different things.

"Affable and hospitable at every hour",

or simply convivial a drunk.

Basically, a terrible drunk.

"Uncompromisingly direct ladies' man" -

a serial groper.

You'd also get, "Devoted much of his time to the Boys' Brigade and the Boy Scouts."

That also tells you a lot about such figures.

-"Gave colourful accounts of his exploits."

-Liar.

Liar, exactly.

"Did not uphold the highest ethical standards of the City."

-Thief.

-Yeah, fraudster, basically.

-And "Did not suffer fools gladly."

-Intolerant!

A total shit, exactly.

LAUGHTER

A howling shit.

LAUGHTER

And these were the codes, and you read the obituaries

and you kind of understood what was being said about them.

The longest Times newspaper obituary was 60,000 words.

Who do you think for?

Queen Victoria.

-Queen Victoria's the right answer, well done.

-Point!

APPLAUSE

Very good.

That's very good, very good.

But can you name anyone who's actually read his own, premature, obituary?

Has anyone ever read their own obituary while being alive?

There's a weird thing about... You know Frankie Howerd

and Benny Hill died on the same day,

and they rang up Benny Hill to say...

This is apparently true, right.

Don't laugh. This is death! I'm not inviting you to my funeral!

Apparently they rang up Benny Hill to get

a quote about the death of Frankie Howerd,

and his agent couldn't get a hold of him, so she made up a quote.

But he'd already died.

SHE GASPS

And he was at home, in his flat,

and then the TVs were already broadcasting his thing

on the death of somebody else, and he was already dead.

SHAPPI: That's such a typical agent thing,

to not realise you're dead!

LAUGHTER

My wife used to work for an agency,

and one of their clients,

who was called Rory, passed away.

But she, mistakenly, thought it was Rory McGrath.

So for about a week, every time somebody rang for Rory McGrath, she'd say...

.."I'm so sorry..."

And they would say, "But I only saw him on Tuesday!"

"He seemed so well!"

I had a friend who ran an agency like that,

and her now ex-husband,

who wasn't the most sensitive type,

one of the clients,

somebody rang up, rang the house and obviously said she'd passed away.

And he just left a note on the fridge saying,

"Mrs Johnson, brown bread."

And so she went shopping!

Oh, no!

LAUGHTER

-He thought that she needed groceries!

-Oh, dear.

There are two stories, one was that Alfred Nobel read his own obituary

and was described as being "a merchant of death"

-because he invented...

-Dynamite.

Dynamite, yes, exactly.

And he was so horrified, and he wasn't dead,

that he instituted the Nobel Prizes

in order to try and reclaim his name.

That is not, in fact, a true story, it's a myth.

The other one is Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican black nationalist,

apparently died as a result of reading his obituary.

He had a stroke when he read the Chicago Defender newspaper,

which printed his obituary describing him as

"broke, alone and unpopular."

AUDIENCE: Awww.

-Terribly sad.

-That's like Googling yourself.

Mine would just say, "It's safe to come out now."

LAUGHTER

"He's gone, honest."

"Friends who knew him said, 'Yes, he really was like that.'"

LAUGHTER

The other day, I was driving through Islington,

and there was a hearse slowing everything down,

and I did say to my wife, "If it's my funeral,

"tell the bloke driving the hearse to step on it, I would not..."

Vroom!

Instead of having a coffin, as well, just have the body

so that as you're going round the corners you're slamming against...

LAUGHTER

Get some chickens...

Get some chickens in a cage and some boxes to drive through,

just make it look like...

LAUGHTER

Like an A-Team finale.

What music do you want your coffin to go...?

-When your coffin disappears?

-The Sweeney theme.

That would be a good one.

HE SINGS THE SWEENEY THEME

The end music when it's really slow.

When the foot presses on the accelerator.

I'd quite like the music from 'Allo, 'Allo

with "You have been watching..." and my body like that.

LAUGHTER

You know one of the most popular ones is the Countdown theme.

STEPHEN SINGS THE COUNTDOWN THEME

When my dad died, he was a big fan of sailing,

so we gave him a Viking send off.

We put his ashes in a boat and tried to set fire to it.

But, cos it was in the North Sea, it wouldn't light...

LAUGHTER

..so what we did was, we were trying to fill the boat full of his ashes,

and we were going, "Do you tip the ashes straight into the boat, or do you put them in bags?"

And my mum, who's ever practical, went,

"I've got some sandwich bags, I'll get some sandwich bags."

LAUGHTER

So we went out to sea, then off he went and shot off into the distance.

Was it a remote-controlled boat?

-It was, yeah! Like a proper big yacht.

-You're joking!

No, seriously.

-You sent your dad off with four double-As?

-We did!

LAUGHTER

Keep going till the batteries run out!

Going around in circles!

You're there with an air rifle, like that.

And the people from the miniature village were going, "Help that man!"

"Someone, help him!"

A little lifeboat comes out.

LAUGHTER

Did you not argue over who used the remote control?

That wouldn't work in our family.

"Give it here, you're doing it wrong!"

"He was my dad, too! Give us a go!"

LAUGHTER

The word "dignity" is not the first...

LAUGHTER

This is the thing, that's exactly what he would have wanted,

And I've said the same thing - like Hunter S Thompson, when he died,

he was put in a cannon and fired off across the valley he used to own,

and what I'd quite like to do is be put in pepper spray,

and then people that I don't like

I'm going to get my wife to go "Fffft!" like that.

LAUGHTER

Face full of Noble!

Oh my God, how did we get here? I can't even remember.

LAUGHTER

The fact is, no matter how many character flaws you have,

you can be sure they'll be euphemistically dealt with

in your obituary.

Journalists are not above a bit of muck-raking, of course,

but can you describe the most expensive piece of shit

to come out of a British bank?

Is it some sort of fossilised, dinosodic poo in the...?

How extraordinary you are, Ross Noble.

For 20 minutes you've been gibbering like an idiot...

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

..suddenly you've come up with a brilliant answer.

APPLAUSE

You're absolutely right.

The only way you could be righter is if you could give me

a technical name for fossilised shit.

-Is there going to be faeces in the thing?

-Well, yes,

you can call it palaeontofaeces, or you can call it coprolite.

"Copra" is shit in Latin.

Coprolite sounds like a chocolate bar.

It does, rather, doesn't it? Not a very nice one.

But it was a Lloyds Bank in York, of all places,

and they found this period poo in 1972.

It was 23 centimetres long, five centimetres wide, a human poo.

It was a Viking poo.

Did they find this within the bank, or was it...?

I'm taking it it was a staff day out.

LAUGHTER

It was found under the branch, this stone hanging down...

-To be honest, it just looks like an old Wotsit to me.

-It does,

but when you examine it more closely you will see it is a poo,

and you can actually even determine what was eaten,

and that is cereal bran, so they were quite healthy and regular,

and hence the...I wouldn't say

it's the most normal looking stool I've ever seen...

So you're telling me that every time I go to the loo

I am flushing away millions?

In future I'm going to go to my bank and have a shit there.

But I'm going to tag it so that my family in future...

You're going to walk in and say, "I'm just going to make a deposit."

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Oh dear, oh dear.

The poo's discoverer, Andrew "Bones" Jones,

said, "this is the most..."

LAUGHTER

"..the most exciting piece of excrement I've ever seen.

"In its own way, it's as valuable as the Crown Jewels."

There was another exciting coprolite that was discovered.

It was a T Rex turd that was found in Saskatchewan in 1998,

and that was 17 inches long and six inches thick.

And that was reckoned to be a bit of it knocked off,

that the actual turd would have been even bigger.

How did they know?

Was there a dead T Rex next to it that had pooed itself to death?

LAUGHTER

It was found reaching for the toilet roll with its tiny claws.

LAUGHTER

-How does it wipe...?

-T Rex's died of frustration,

cos they couldn't get round to wipe.

Coprolites are not everybody's cup of tea,

collecting fossilised turds...

-People like poo, though.

-They do, don't they?

They do like poo, they like drawing with poo.

I went to someone's house and they had this elephant poo painting.

But when communication breaks down, it does make a bold statement.

LAUGHTER

When you write something on the wall, like, "Call me a taxi..."

they do do it, honestly.

LAUGHTER

You know like one of them parties when you've had enough?

You write on the wall with your own faeces,

people start listening to you!

LAUGHTER

You've just got to do one big enough to go,

"I was not fond of the cheesecake..."

LAUGHTER

"..and considering you're out of vodka and I'm low on turd,

"I would like to go home now."

The odd thing is when the forensic scientists come in and find out

that it was Johnny Vegas's poo, but it was Lorraine Kelly's handwriting.

LAUGHTER

Yeah, the diction was perfect,

and even the sweetcorn was used for little commas.

AUDIENCE: Awww!

Oh, now! Now, there's the line!

We've found the line.

You've crossed a boundary.

Are you finding you're not selling as much Tupperware at these parties?

LAUGHTER

I don't mean to keep it in that area, but I will.

-My wife once had, you know those bath bomb things?

-Yes.

-Yeah, the fizzy ones.

-Yeah, "lass grenades" I call them.

You chuck them in the bath and they fizz up

and fill the bath with glitter, and I didn't realise,

went in the bath, and quite a lot of glitter had gone in my...

in my bum, and I didn't realise,

and I did a poo, and I looked into the toilet,

and it was sparkling, right...

LAUGHTER

I, honestly, for a minute I thought I had a magic arse.

I honestly did. Yeah.

That was lovely.

That's a beautiful story. Anyway, moving on.

What's the name of the highly fortified building

where most of the gold in America is kept?

Aww! Now, don't do it, don't do it.

SHAPPI BUZZES

The Beckhams' house?

The Beckham house is a good answer.

Most of the gold in America is kept in a single place.

Is this a double bluff and it IS going to be Fort Knox?

ALARM RINGS

It's not Fort Knox, no.

Nearly twice as much gold is at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York,

their equivalent of the Bank of England.

They have there about 7,000 tonnes of bullion,

and in Fort Knox, they've got no more than around 4,500 tonnes

-which is not quite half, but...

-A pittance!

-..still a lot.

But they've had some interesting things in Fort Knox apart from gold.

They've had one of the great English treasures.

If I were to say the year...

Oh, Thora Hird?

Not Thora Hird. I'll say the year 1215 to you. Does that...?

-The Magna Carta.

-Very good. They had the Magna Carta

in Fort Knox for some short time.

They also stored the crown, sword, sceptre, orb and cape

of Saint Stephen, King of Hungary was stored there

and then returned to the government in Hungary in 1978.

Was it like a cloakroom? Did he come in? "Oh, all right, take the cape!"

-"There's me orb."

-He lost his ticket and they wouldn't give it back.

Really annoyed.

Honestly, I am the King of Hung... let me try the crown on,

-it's a perfect fit, I promise.

-Anyway...

And where do Spandau Ballet fit into the equation?

They're like the Rasputin of the new government.

Is there something I'm missing out here?

THEY SING "GOLD" BY SPANDAU BALLET

Let's sing that and run at him!

# You're indestructible Always believe in

# Boom, boom, GOLD! #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I'm just going to move on to the next question if I may,

which is can you think of a way of promoting railways

that is guaranteed to get into the papers?

SHAPPI BUZZES

Make them work.

Ah! Very good!

APPLAUSE

-Good answer.

-Crash?

-Mmm!

-Crash them.

-You're right. You get the points.

-You're joking?!

-I'm not.

-I just saw Branson and thought "Crash."

-Make them crash.

Funnily enough, a man called Crush was a rail magnate in America,

and in order to draw attention to what he thought

was his supreme line across Texas, he arranged for this public display

of two trains charging into each other.

They were either end of a four-mile track.

They began to accelerate and then they collided to great cheers.

Both boilers exploded, metal began to fly,

spectators ran in blind panic, two young men and a woman were killed.

At least six other people were seriously injured in the debris.

There's a lot of death in the show today.

Sounds like something Branson would attempt, doesn't it?

It sounds to me like Thomas The Tank Engine Does Die Hard!

IMPERSONATES RINGO STARR: Thomas and Percy were flying towards each other

in some horrific showdown to the death!

That'd be the Thomas The Tank Engine video game with the 18 certificate.

-Yes.

-Grand Theft Thomas!

LAUGHTER

IMPERSONATES RINGO STARR: Thomas went chugging down there,

he killed a prostitute for extra money.

I very much like this idea. We must write this down.

"Thomas video game."

Other ways of trying to get publicity for things.

Honore de Balzac, the great French writer, he wrote a play.

It's called Les Rubriques de Quinola.

And his way of drumming up attention for it was to tell everybody

that it was sold out. Unfortunately, this backfired cos everyone thought,

FRENCH ACCENT: "No point trying to buy a ticket.

"It's sold out, I can't go and see it." so it was a complete failure.

There's a brilliant novel by Ted Heller called Funnymen,

and it's about a fictional comic double act.

In one of their shows, someone had a heart attack

and they came upon this brilliant publicity scam

where they would have ambulances outside the theatre,

cos they were so funny,

it was almost certain someone would have a heart attack and die.

Then they would have people feigning heart attacks

-and being ferried off in ambulances.

-That's happened at one of my gigs.

A girl was laughing so much, she had a really bad asthma attack.

That's a dilemma, cos on the one hand you're thinking, "That's terrible."

But on the other hand you're thinking, "Ye-e-es!"

Nearly killed one!

I killed them tonight! I killed them!

-That one's dead. 999 to go.

-Exactly.

Now, some people will do anything for fame.

But what did The Famous Five have lashings of?

NEWS AT TEN THEME Ginger beer.

-ALARM RINGS

-No!

-Someone had to say it.

-I read all of those books.

I'm gutted that I don't know.

It's funny, cos in the books there is only one foodstuff that is referred to

-in all the Famous Five books, of which they had lashings.

-Yeah, they... They eat the dog.

-Treacle.

-They don't eat the dog, no.

Asbestos.

They had lashings of asbestos.

Before they realised just how dangerous it was in powdered form.

-The dog in The Famous Five was Asbestos?

-No, not the dog.

-Sorry, I thought the dog was Asbestos.

-They just packed lots of asbestos

for its fire-retardant qualities.

-Asbestos is a very good name for a dog.

-It's good, isn't it?

-Asbestos!

-SHOUTS:

-As-bes-tos!

The reason...

-My uncle had a dog named after Charlie Mingus, the jazz musician.

-Yeah.

Mingus. Problem was, is that he's got the same accent as me.

He'd be in the Park, and he'd just be shouting, "Mingus! Mingus!"

-And the... The local girls thought that he was...

-Yeah, talking to them.

"Mingus!" "Piss off!"

"Mingus!" "Who are you calling mingers?"

And it led to all sorts of problems.

I'm sure it did. Why do we think of the lashings of ginger beer?

Because of The Comic Strip Presents...

Because The Comic Strip Presents..., their first film was The Comic Strip Presents Five Go Mad In Dorset...

-It's very funny.

-..and they kept going on about having lashings of ginger beer.

But in the actual books, there is no reference to lashings of ginger beer.

But in one of the books, Five Go Down To The Sea,

they did arrive at a Cornish farm and immediately settled down to

a high tea of lettuce, tomatoes, onions, radishes,

mustard and cress, carrot grated up and lashings of hard-boiled eggs.

-Eggs! I was going to say eggs!

-You were going to say that!

They always go in to farmhouses and get free eggs.

The only lashings Enid Blyton gave The Famous Five were lashings of hard-boiled eggs.

-They never had lashings of ginger beer.

-That's a terrible picnic.

Who has onions at a picnic?

It's very hard to lash an egg.

Unless you're in some sort of S&M thing with Humpty Dumpty.

That's why they couldn't put him back together again.

I'll give you 10 points if you can give me, within three,

the number of books that Enid Blyton wrote a year.

-42.

-You were damn close. You were just out of range, I'm afraid.

She actually wrote 37 books a year.

And, talking of busy women, let's move on to another question here.

Why have we never heard of Harriet Quimby?

-You've heard of Fred Quimby who produced the...

-Tom and Jerry.

-Tom and Jerry.

And Mayor Quimby in The Simpsons,

but Harriet was the first American woman to become a licensed pilot,

and the first woman to fly the English Channel.

But unfortunately, it just so happened her record-breaking flight didn't make the news

because she completed it the day after the Titanic sank.

So, it just was a damp squib, to say the least.

She was famous in her day. She was one of the very first screenwriters at the very

beginning of Hollywood. She wrote seven scenarios for the father of cinema, DW Griffith.

She died aged 37 at an aviation meet, sadly crashing.

But it was an impressive and a short and brilliant life.

Who was the first man to fly the Channel, do you remember?

Oh, we all know him! We all know the MEN that fly the channel.

-A mean, I don't...

-Well, he was the first person.

LAUGHTER

Louis Bleriot. It was one of the great achievements.

He flew from England to France, but the French authorities,

when he landed, didn't have a form,

and so they signed him in as having landed

on a yacht called Monoplane, because that's the best they could do.

It was a huge feat at the time, and it was a £1,000 prize offered by...?

-The Daily Mail?

-Of course, the Daily Mail. Well done. Exactly.

But you know what, Harriet did that backwards and in heels.

-Exactly. Very good. Good point.

-Thank you.

I'm sure it was harder for her.

But it can be...

LAUGHTER

It can be very difficult to die at the wrong time.

Can you think of people who died unfortunately on the same day

as somebody even better known than themselves?

Oh, I know! NEWS AT TEN THEME

-Mother Teresa.

-Who died the same day as...?

-Diana. The Princess of Wales.

Precisely, so she was not only below the fold, she was over the page.

I only realised couple of months ago Mother Teresa was dead.

Yes, yes. Who died on the same day as Michael Jackson?

Arr! It was an actress, wasn't it? It was...Farrah Fawcett!

Farrah Fawcett is the right answer, well done!

Summoned up from nowhere.

I've just found out this moment that Farrah Fawcett's dead!

-Oh, you didn't know that?

-She died on the same day as Michael Jackson.

LAUGHTER

Apparently when the ambulance men

were driving up Michael Jackson's drive,

they heard he wasn't breathing and they're driving up there

and one goes, "What are we going to try first?"

And the other one went, "I reckon the rollercoaster."

LAUGHTER

-Terrible.

-But do you do that thing where, if you're on a plane

and there's somebody famous on there, you look at them and think,

"If this goes down, who's going to get top of the bill?"

I have to say, I haven't yet thought that.

It would be a sad thought, "Would I get the headline?"

I was on a plane with Sting once.

Well, "Sting and Alan Davies Go Down" would be...

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

It was in Australia...

"Sting and Jonathan Creek man!"

We were going on an internal flight in Australia,

and he knelt on his seat talking to the person behind him

so everyone on the plane could see him for the whole...

and he didn't do a single song, not one song!

Was he not just doing Yoga?

He was sat there but his head was fully...fully twisted.

-Finally, 22nd of November 1963. Who died then?

-Kennedy.

Right, so, JFK.

That was obviously huge news, the American president dying.

As it happens, two very distinguished authors died on the same day.

Both British, as it happens.

CS Lewis and Aldous Huxley both died on the same day as Kennedy,

so both got rather tiny-winy little obituaries.

Now, how can you get a German on your side

before he's even had his Corn Flakes?

NEWS AT TEN THEME

Allow him to put his towel over them first.

Mine definitely do.

This is a reference to a very specific operation

-in the Second World War, and it was called Operation...?

-Corn Flakes.

-Operation Corn Flakes, exactly.

-Put the milk in the bowl first,

-because it's more...

-Maddens them!

-Does it?

-No, no!

LAUGHTER

Tell me anything now and I'll believe it.

This was an ingenious method of distributing Allied propaganda.

A bomber would bomb a mail train in Germany

and a second plane would come along and drop tonnes and tonnes

of fake mail addressed to real German addresses,

that was filled with anti-German propaganda.

Some of the stamps were even...you can see the one on the far right,

they looked so like the real one.

That says, "Futsches Reich," "Ruined Empire."

And it has Hitler as a skull.

And those were the normal stamps the German empire had at the time.

A group in Rome prepared envelopes

with more than two million names and addresses.

The whole point was that the train had appeared to be derailed

and the people would come to rescue the mail and they'd see amongst it

these mailbags, identical to proper German postal mailbags

that had been dropped by the second Allied bomber,

and they were addressed to thousands of people

telling them they were losing the war, Hitler was lying to them.

It was known as Operation Corn Flakes

because they opened their letters with their Corn Flakes, as it were.

Quite interesting.

But it's time for a Dubious Theory.

1940S-STYLE RADIO ANNOUNCER: "A Dubious Theory from Stephen Fry."

RECORD SCRATCHES TO A STOP

Yes, erm, according to Dutch writer Iman Wilkens,

the Trojan War actually took place in England, near Cambridge.

The area which Homer calls Crete was Scandinavia, Sparta was Spain

and Lesbos was the Isle of Wight. Dubious or not?

Read out the arguments at Trojanschmojan.co.uk

and then decide for yourself.

1940S-STYLE RADIO ANNOUNCER: "A Dubious Theory From Stephen Fry"

-Is that a website that's been set up by the elves?

-Yes, it is.

But it basically assembles all the facts

which people who genuinely adhere to this theory, that the Trojan War

really does not seem to qualify for a Greek war. For example,

there's no mention of any Greeks anywhere.

Troy's attackers are referred to as Danaeans and Achaeans,

who could be Danes,

could be people from Argos, the kingdom of Northern France.

And Homer's Troy also has a climate which is very un-Mediterranean,

-full of storms and wind and rain.

-But Stephen, were this true,

would we not have relics all around East Anglia?

Swords and helmets and that kind of thing?

-And a massive rotten old horse...

-And a rotten old horse, exactly.

..in Cambridge City Centre.

Exactly! There are counter arguments,

and most people will believe that it is dubious.

Canakkale in Turkey is generally believed to be

the archaeological site of Ilium or Troy,

but there are serious historians who maintain

that Homer was writing about a Trojan War

that in fact took place in Britain. In East Anglia, would you believe?

All right, What kind of hat did they wear in the Wild West?

Ten-gallon hat.

-ALARM RINGS

-Ten-gallon hat?

Five-gallon hat?

-No, no.

-Of course, cos now it's litres, isn't it?

-45 litre?

-No litres or gallons.

-Was it a Stetson? Can I have Stetson?

-It wasn't a Stetson, no.

-ALARM RINGS

-The most popular hat by far...

-ROSS: A cap, a flat cap.

-No.

-It was the, it was the...

-Say it.

-A bowler hat.

Yes, a bowler hat is the right answer.

-APPLAUSE

-Far and away. There we are.

We think of the bowler hat as the British businessman,

but in fact it was THE preferred hat in the West.

That's a pretty wild bunch, there. Butch Cassidy, seated front right.

Sundance Kid, Harry Longabaugh, of course, front left.

In fact, their pride in having their photographs taken with those hats was their undoing,

because the Pinkerton agency reproduced the photographs

and gave it to their agents, who tracked them down and killed them.

It was hat makers Thomas and William Bowler who created the hat,

but they weren't known as bowler hats in America, nor are they to this day. What do they call them?

-AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Derbies.

-Derbies, yes. "Darbies" or "derbies"

Bowlers basically were much more common in the Wild West than Stetsons.

Who fancies a shoot-out with a real, live vortex canon?

I've given you one each. You've got a box. See that box, there?

It's simply a box, all right?

Now, the hole is where the vortex emerges,

so if you lean it so that the hole is pointing at the target, all right?

And basically, what you've got to do is smack the side of the box.

All right? After three, two, one... Smack!

-Very good. There you are!

-Wow!

APPLAUSE

LAUGHTER

But what we can...

Yes. What we can do, before you destroy the box,

Before you destroy the box, you can do something even more exciting,

and that is fill it with smoke,

and it will demonstrate what, in fact, was happening with the air.

You should all have smoke machines.

LAUGHTER

That's it, fill with smoke. Fill it with smoke. And now...

-AUDIENCE GASPS

-Look! Look at that!

Just a gentle tap. That is a vortex, those beautiful smoke rings.

A lovely one, there.

I've got... I've got an enormous cannon, here.

I'm going to fill mine with...

SMOKE MACHINE HISSES

I'll see if I can get mine across the... Across the room, here.

SHAPPI: You can even chase each other!

Here we go. I've got it the wrong way round.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

AUDIENCE GASPS

We'll let the smoke drift a little.

Would anyone like a big dustbin?

It's simply pressure of air creating this wonderful vortex.

-No, it's not, it's magic.

-Nice one, Alan!

Hey, with this kind of magic we could make the tiny people big again.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Basically, ladies and gentlemen, that's it.

Hours of fun can be had

-playing with your own home-made vortex canon.

-Quick! More smoke!

And I suppose it must be time now for me to give the scores.

And how interesting they are.

In first place, with minus 5, is Ross Noble.

APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH

Second equal with minus 6, Alan Davies and Johnny Vegas.

APPLAUSE

And a slightly unhappy Shappi with minus 17.

APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH

THEME MUSIC

Those lovely smoke rings. Lovely smoke rings.

So, that's all from Shappi, Johnny, Ross, Alan and me.

And I will leave you with this from Abraham Lincoln.

"The trouble with quotes taken from the Internet is that you can never know if they are genuine."

Thank you and good night.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd