Keys QI XL

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Hello, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,

good evening, good evening,

and welcome to QI, where tonight we are looking for our keys.

To help us we have a key man, Tim Minchin.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

A key woman, Isy Suttie!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

A key player, Bill Bailey.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

And an allen key, Alan Davies!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Ah, you see what he did there.

So, they've all got their keyboards. Tim, give us an A.

"A" NOTE PLAYS

That's an A.

Isy, in the great tradition of Blockbusters, I'd like an E, please.

"E" NOTE PLAYS

Very nice. Bill, give us a G.

"G" NOTE PLAYS

And Alan, give us a B.

BEE BUZZES

LAUGHTER

Aaah. Aaaah.

We have given you a musical instrument.

I have got the thing here, but...

BILL: Oh. A glockenspiel?

We didn't trust you with anything electrical.

It's nice. It's something for you to keep yourself occupied

if you don't know any answers.

Bill could teach me a couple of tunes during the record. I bet Bill will, too.

Here's a good one. There you go. Here's a good one, look.

HE PLAYS TWO NOTES There you are.

LAUGHTER

It's Airport Announcement.

Airport Announcement, by Ravel.

By Ravel, yes. It's a beautiful piece.

Absolutely wonderful.

FRENCH ACCENT: "An announcement aeroport," yes.

Exactly. Do know any, any tunes?

French? No. I don't know any tunes.

HE PLAYS TWO NOTES

Doorbell. Same, similar. Oh, very good.

I don't know who wrote whose first, I imagine doorbell came first.

ISY: They're always in a major third, as if to herald good news.

Yes, exactly. Yeah.

TIM PLAYS TWO NOTES - MAJOR THIRD

"Your flight is delayed by eight hours."

"I don't feel so bad!"

TIM PLAYS TWO NOTES - MINOR THIRD "Boarding now." "Oh, no!"

BILL: The best doorbells always frighten people away.

PLAYS NOTES FROM "CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND"

LAUGHTER

Marvellous. You haven't played anything for us yet, Isy,

just get your fingers warm.

SHE PLAYS JAUNTY PIANO TUNE

That was the jazz version. Wow! Pretty good.

BILL: That was great.

Anyway, there we are.

So, I'll give you the keys to the city, all right?

What's the first thing you'll do?

NOTE PLAYS Yes?

I'd make a copy of them.

Clever. TIM: Yeah, good.

In case I lock myself out when I'm drunk.

And I'd give a copy to my cleaner.

Very, very smart.

What else can you do with the keys to the city?

Drive a sheep across a bridge.

KLAXON BLARES

Ah. What?!

No. I am a Freeman of the City of London, as it happens.

Quite right. Oh, thank you. Very disappointed if you weren't.

And I did drive, I did drive a sheep over,

though in fact it was flagrantly illegal.

It's just one of those myths.

Also that supposedly that you can bear a sword in the city,

but that's not true, either.

Is there an actual door that you can fit that in?

No. No, there really isn't. What do you actually get?

Do you actually get a key in a nice presentation case?

No, you get a long sort of parchment,

wherein, heretofore, let it be understood the City and Corporation...

There've been mayors since 1213 and I said

"You must feel pretty extraordinary to be in a position that hasn't

changed for 800 years" and there was a cough at my shoulder

and it was the sheriff of London.

He said "There were sheriffs of London 500 years

before the first mayor."

He was in the 8th century, the 700s.

Through plagues and fires and all that. It's pretty amazing.

What does he do? How does one sheriff these days?

You wear extraordinary shrieval - it's the adjective of sheriff - shrieval laces and wigs.

In London you're free to trade without having to pay a toll at the bridge.

Today, it's a purely symbolic honour.

The City of London Police do not permit sheep

to be taken across the bridge aside from the occasional publicity stunt.

The City of London Police are so boring.

You can't do that there. Oh, come on. Freedom.

BILL: Is there anything you can do?

I mean is there anything... You can go naked, or something, or...?

No, no real rights.

I mean if you are poor, you can access some

educational and charitable funds.

Dick Whittington, probably the most famous London Lord Mayor,

in the early 15th century, left money in trust for water troughs

and children's education, and that charity is still giving out money.

Really? It's been wisely invested. That's pretty amazing, isn't it?

There are other people to get freedoms of cities.

To whom do you think Detroit gave the key of their city in 1980?

Diana Ross.

No, it wasn't Diana Ross, you'd think it would be a...

Someone off of Motown. Gary Numan.

It should be a Motown star. Wasn't Gary Numan.

Gary Numan? No. What wrote Cars?

No. That would be good. No, it wasn't.

It was actually Saddam Hussein.

AUDIENCE LAUGH AND MURMUR

What? Well, they're sick of him. What?!

It's the usual pattern. In 1980, he was our friend.

He was a friend. Yeah. Of course.

The City of Toronto has given the key to

Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and Mickey Mouse.

LAUGHTER

Never seen in the same room. Pathetic, the Dalai Lama?! Why him?

The Dalai Lama, what was it?

Nelson Mandela and Mickey Mouse.

Ah, my perfect Sunday.

LAUGHTER Those three round for dinner.

Corona, California, gave a cat the freedom of its city limits.

Oh, that's stupid, isn't it?

Because the cat had hit the Guinness Book of Records

by being the tallest cat in the world.

And, because we're QI, we rang up the city of Corona, and it's true.

They were very pleased to have it verified for us.

But Cher upset Australians in 2012,

when she sold her key to Adelaide on eBay.

Oh. She got 96,000 dollars for it.

Wow! What?! Yeah.

Someone paid 96 grand for a symbolic key to Adelaide?

To Adelaide, not even Melbourne or Sydney!

I mean, I like Adelaide, but that's...

BILL: It's a lot though, isn't it? I don't want a key.

She responded to the inevitable backlash on Twitter.

She said...

F'd up. Fudged. Fudged up, yeah.

Friend. So, there you are. Flowled. Flower-up.

Flagaba...

Keep guessing. I don't know.

Fruity. Flannel. Flannel up.

Flannel up and wait for me.

POSH VOICE: "Flannel up!

"Clean yourself and flannel up. I'll be up in five minutes!

I have to flannel you down!

"And put on the special ointment!"

Bring me another one, this one's flannelled-out.

Oh, dear. All right, OK. I like a flannel.

What key part did bigots play in the Second World War?

What do you mean...? You're talking...

Not that kind of bigot. BIGOT being a diversionary tactic.

That's a bit of a minor description. I think it is.

This word is... Oh, he was a bigot, was he? The more I hear about him...

Is it an acronym for something? "Big-oh". No, it's British.

Churchill chose it. Oh, really?

Beware, I've Got One...Trouser.

Beware, I've Got One Trouser?

I'm Going Out Tomorrow.

Blimey, I've Got..Owls...Turned.

He's so shit at I Spy.

BIGOT stands for British Invasion of German Occupied Territory.

So there's Monty and Winnie and they're looking at a map and planning... To flannel over there.

D-Day... Chaps, got your flannel?

Everybody got their flannel?

Churchill was the only person who Monty would let smoke.

It was so secret that anyone who knew any

details of the Normandy landings, they were on the BIGOT list

and they were not allowed under any circumstances to leave the country.

The only exception was Churchill himself.

No-one on the BIGOT list was allowed out of Britain.

Indeed, there was a rehearsal for the invasion

and ten people on the BIGOT list were killed accidentally.

All plans for the invasion were put on hold

until they could account for every single one of the bodies

just to be absolutely sure so the secret didn't get out. Well...

It's got out now, yes.

It wasn't that it was unlikely, that it wouldn't happen. England's there. France is there.

I know but we did everything we possibly could to

persuade them that it was going to be further across towards Belgium

and they withheld divisions further away from Normandy where we landed

precisely because... Fake landing.

..they fell for some of the spies - the Zigzag man

and that poor old chap who was a dead body

who was dressed as though he was an important officer

and dropped in the sea outside Gibraltar

with a chained briefcase with plans and they gave him a whole life.

He was called the man who never was. There was a film of it.

Who was he?

He was probably a very sad down and out Welsh chap who died very young

and had been found sleeping rough somewhere and they dressed him up

smartly to look like an officer. You wouldn't have to do that now.

You would just get someone from Big Brother.

People would volunteer for it.

Certainly the rest of us would.

The surprise is you're going to be killed and you're a fake general.

OMG!

It's a good film. If you ever see it coming round on Channel 4,

it's the sort of thing that pops up now and again. Yes, I will.

It's funny he didn't know when he was alive what a key part he'd play

when he was dead.

I know. Operation Mincemeat, it was called.

You can sign up to this service

when you're alive which monitors your Tweets and Facebook

and when you're dead, it continues to Tweet as you

until an executor of the will who you've nominated tells it to stop.

While you're alive, you give it feedback as to how good it is. What?!

I'm starting this business... No!

It already exists. That's bizarre.

And you can set how long it goes on till?

You give someone's name and say this person makes the decision as to when

the virtual me dies.

You give it feedback so if it's slightly funnier than you are,

you say, it's quite good, but bring it down a notch.

So somebody's employed to be you after you're dead.

Or just you going dead, dead, dead, still dead?

Then your followers go up. Ooh, he's dead, dead.

You know with one's contact list when people die,

I never have the heart to cut them out so I have

friends that have been dead 10, 12,

15 years who are still in my address book.

Have they ever called?

They manifestly haven't called and I haven't called them

but the act of going delete seems so...

I've done the same thing but the good thing is

if someone dead does call you, you'll know it's them.

I'll know not to answer it.

Of course that number might be reused. They do recycle them

so it is possible that one day...

That would be the shock of one's life.

In fact it's probable that coincidence will happen.

Someone who's got the old number of a dead person will accidentally ring a person who...

I can't wait till that happens.

Very exciting.

Now, secrecy, in the least order upwards,

what's the word for the least secret document?

For anyone's eyes only. Yes, basically it's "unclassified".

Then "protect", then "restricted", then up to... Up to look over there!

"Confidential" and then... I'm going to have to kill you.

"Secret" then... Top secret. Top secret. Yes.

It used to be, not top secret but...

Most secret. Most secret.

We're going to use this Americanism now - top secret.

Most secret's so British, isn't it?

Most secret.

Totes secret.

NERDY VOICE: There are some UFO conspiracy theorists

who will tell you that there are 38, 38 levels of secrecy above

top secret. Why are you talking like this?

Because these are UFO conspiracy theories. Is that how they talk?

They all talk like that.

NERDY VOICE: They all talk like that.

You can laugh. All right, I will. Ha ha ha ha.

You'll be laughing on the other side of your face

when you've been probed.

Yes.

The next level is "cosmic".

Even the President of the US does not have cosmic clearance.

Really? Who does? Look it up. It's all there. It's true. Totally true.

That's my favourite thing about conspiracy theorists.

This is something that the president doesn't know but I've figured it out!

Typing away.

Fantastic, isn't it?

What is CANUKUS' eyes only?

I beg your pardon? CANUKUS' eyes only.

Is there a creature called a canukus

and it's the only thing that's allowed to look at it?

But it can't speak and therefore will never tell anyone.

United States? No. Not bad. Canada, UK and the United States.

CANUKUS. CANUKUS. There's AUSCANNZUKUS

which is known as the five eyes,

which is Australia, New Zealand, Canada, US and UK.

There's also, basically, don't tell the French.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

BIGOTS were the key men in planning the D-Day landings.

Now, what's the best way to keep

the Open Organisation of Lockpickers

out of your homes?

Bucket of water over the door, a rake on the floor,

two miniature beds of nails and a very hungry tiger.

And you put all that outside the potential lockpicker's door,

so that they can't even leave their home.

Ah. You don't need to, is the point, actually.

The fact is, they are incredibly moral and ethical.

This organisation, which is literally called TOOOL.

The Organisation - there it is.

The Open Organisation of Lockpickers.

BILL: No, this is made-up. It's Dutch. Is it?

It's a Dutch organisation of recreational lockpickers.

LAUGHTER

They claim to have a good purpose,

they help spread the word in security

and show how things can be picked, but the point is, you're not allowed

ever, in this organisation, to pick a lock that doesn't belong to you.

That's how moral they are.

Well, that's boring, isn't it?

Pick a lock... That's when they're meeting,

but when they're professionally being lockpickers...

DUTCH ACCENT: "Hey, what a crazy bunch of guys.

"Let's go and pick some locks, but not someone we don't know.

"OK. What a crazy time we're going to have."

"How come it's only me today?"

LAUGHTER

"I am such a toool." Yeah.

Many of TOOOL's members are obviously lock-makers

and locksmiths.

There they are, tools of their trade. Wow.

It's incredible how you can have such a specific skill in one area

and be so bad with fonts.

Yes. Very true.

It's non-overlapping magisteria.

It is not an overlapping magisterian. Lock picking and fonts.

There's probably a fonts organisation, as well. Yeah.

Let's be honest.

Who cannot get into their house. That's right.

Do you know about Alfred C Hobbs?

He was a great American lockpicker and lockmaker.

He came to Britain for the Great Exhibition

Our great safemaker, lockmaker was...

He was a nice stout-sounding name. Chubb. Chubb.

Chubb safes and Chubb locks and they had an amazing Chubb

detector lock which was so subtle

and clever in the mid-19th century that if it detected someone

was trying to pick it, its tumblers would all fall down and even

the key for it would no longer fit.

You'd have to destroy it to open it. He picked that in seven minutes.

Wow. Astonishing everybody and horrifying Chubb, of course,

because they had the Bank of England account, apart from anything else.

The Bank of England then replaced its Chubb locks with Hobbs locks.

Good old American huckstering salesmanship and know-how.

It was a highly successful visit for Mr Hobbs.

Yes, it was till he got locked in a toilet somewhere.

Who in poetic law laughs at locksmiths?

The Queen.

"Ha ha ha." No.

The first Tuesday of every month.

"The official laughing at locksmiths.

"Locksmiths are lining up. She is now braying in their faces,

"snorting derisively..." No.

"You can't open it. Ha ha ha!"

Audience, who laughs at locksmiths?

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Love.

Love laughs at locksmiths.

Oh. You lock the girl up, you lock the boy up, or you put locked

barriers between them and they'll always find a way through to each other. BILL: Aww.

Except they don't, do they? No.

If you lock... They won't, will they?

No. That's the trouble with poetry.

It's bollocks. I hate it.

They just need a good lock. It raises false hopes.

All you need is your lock to be slightly smarter than the two

people in love and really dumb people are in love,

and there are really good locks. That's ridiculous!

You're right, you're right.

Oh, well.

Speaking of keys, what's the key part of an arch?

BILL PLAYS NOTES Yes, Bill?

Your light came on first. Was that you, sorry?

That's the trouble with these things.

You can't tell who it is.

Do that chord again and I'll know. We only know the same chord.

We're both... We play in C. The keystone is the...

KLAXON BLARES

I'm Alan Davies.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

It is commonplace to use the word keystone as being the thing

that makes the arch work, but it isn't true.

It's not the most important.

All the arch stones, or "voussoirs" are equally important.

But it is the last piece to go in and finishes rather

beautifully the arrangement, as it were. Yes.

In Roman times, they'd get the constructor of the arch to

stand right under the arch when the

support scaffolding was taken away,

just to show that he had faith enough in his own...

Well, it's natural selection of arch builders, isn't it?

"Is that guy any good?" Well, he's still here. Exactly.

I like that idea of getting people to test things. It's like going to a

barbecue and getting someone to try the sausage before you'll eat it.

Oh, don't. BILL: Oh, yeah.

There are certain things that you can only test by using.

So it's then useless.

I mean, a ring-pull, essentially, you say, "I wonder if this ring-pull will work."

Whoosh! "Oh, yes, it does. Good, now... Oh, you can't..."

Same with air bags, I suppose and other such things.

I've really tried to get the air bag to come out, but it's...

No? No luck? No, if you drive, really whack the dashboard

really hard with a mallet or something and...

Well, you realise how much force it is by just trying to

walk into a wall at two miles an hour and your body won't let you.

It just won't.

LAUGHTER

Hands will go up. No, no, no. I've done that.

By mistake when...

I did that after a night on here.

Yes, when drunk or texting or something.

But, I mean, if you actually consciously say,

"I'm going to walk into this wall..."

Only two miles an hour, not three miles an hour,

and you just, pah, your hand goes up.

You can't stop it. It's a reflex, it's so strong.

Is there a wall here? I'd like to see you not do that.

LAUGHTER

I've got this image of you not being able to walk at 2mph into a wall.

2mph, that's... What's a normal walking pace? 4mph?

So that's half speed. Half normal walking speed.

It's still enough to break your nose.

It would break your nose.

Is it the theory that, if you're walking at exactly 2mph, magic happens?

You've got to get it exactly right. I mean, just kind of slowly walk into a wall.

Try it at home. LAUGHTER

That's all I'm saying. Maybe it's just me being a coward.

It will take more than an hour to go two miles

if you keep walking into walls, wouldn't it? It's true.

That's the interesting thing about that. That's true.

So, the fact of the matter is that keystones are no more

important than any of the other stones in an arch.

Why were the keys in a QWERTY keyboard arranged the way they are?

Ah, now, this is that it makes it more difficult to type.

LAUGHTER

That's right. And they wanted to slow...

KLAXON BLARES

"They wanted to slow..." you were saying...

Typists down. Typists down. No.

What it is, is the ones that most commonly are done together

in English were put furthest apart, so they were less likely to jam.

So, in fact, it was in order to allow you to type

more smoothly and speedily,

so that you didn't get the jamming of the keys as they came up

and hit each other. Oh, I see.

Of course, these days, we don't use mechanical typewriters in that

way, with the keys flopping up. That's how I learnt to type.

Enormous typewriters. I was tiny.

LAUGHTER

I loved typewriters so much, I was obsessed with them.

Really? Absolutely adored them, yeah.

Stephen! Dinner's ready. Aaargh!

Do you know, it's true,

I once copied out a whole novel on the typewriter.

Did you? Just to practise.

Yeah, because I enjoyed the experience of typing so much.

Just to, yeah. While other people were getting on with their lives, you were doing that.

Yeah. What can I tell you? It's the sort of man you are.

I'm sad. I'm so modest. What, what novel was it?

It was Frozen Assets, by PG Wodehouse.

It's not one of his best-known novels. BILL SNIGGERS

Look, I'm sorry!

It's amazing you've come so far, isn't it?

What should I have been doing? Anything else!

Listening to Flink Poyd or something?

Yes. Clearly I was just lying somewhere wasting my life

when I should have been copying out novels on some archaic old bit of kit.

"Yes, what I like to do in my spare time,

"I write out Proust, I use my nail and I chip it into an old flint."

I can't help it. "No, get off, Nanny, I haven't finished yet."

You're such a bully!

You're mean. Sir, sir, Fry's copying out novels again.

Sir, he's chipping them, he's using a hammer and a chisel,

he's chiselled out War And Peace on the South Downs.

You really do live a different life to all the rest,

you're not like us, are you?

You're another, you're not a mortal. Clearly not.

You're like sent from some other planet.

You are, the planet Aesthete, that's what you are.

I have cosmic clearance. Yes, you do. You know when it's all going to end.

I always thought I was normal, and now I... No, you're not.

Oh, well, anyway... You're a freak.

You can reprieve my fury at you by telling me

a word that can be typed on the top line.

It's quite pleasing.

Twiquminator...

Typewriter.

Ah! It's nice, isn't it?

It's just a coincidence, typewriter across the top?

Yes, I believe so. There are a lot of people who believe... A lot of conspiracy theory.

People who believe it was brought to us by falcons from the planet Bletch.

Now, what starts with K and is killed by curiosity?

A kitten.

Oh! Oh, no. I'm sorry.

It's an animal species, but not a cat.

A lot of these begin with Ks... Kangaroo.

No, but you're in the right hemisphere. Koala.

Again, right hemisphere, not the right country. Kiwi.

Sorry? Kiwi? Kiwi. You're the right type of animal.

Kora. A kea. Kea is the right answer. Very good.

A kea is? A New Zealand parrot. A flightless bird.

No, it's not flightless, oddly enough, it's a parrot.

And there was a bounty put on them some years ago.

Kea, which as you can see, look quite ravenous,

they look almost like eagles, but they are parrots,

would ride the sheep, peck at them and eat the fat off the poor sheep.

And so there was a bounty put on their heads

and New Zealanders found keas were very curious animals.

It's partly a result of having grown up in a country with no mammals

for millions of years.

Anyway, what you do is, you stand behind a rock and wait for a kea

to come along, and then you drop behind the rock and disappear.

And the kea thinks, that's odd.

And he wanders up and he takes a look over,

and you just, with your club, just go bang, like that.

Then, that's the beauty of it, you've only just started,

because you don't have to move, you take the kea and you put it down.

The kea's friend goes, "Where's Kevin?"

Where's Kevin! Wanders round, comes along like that.

Are they all called Kevin? Then you drop down and disappear, and he goes, "What happened there?

"There was someone, then there wasn't. How does that happen?"

And he looks over, bash, like that.

"Where's Keith?" And so on, all the way through.

All the Ks. You get a huge swag bag of kea.

They're not the brightest of birds. They're not the brightest.

But the point is, they never needed to be.

Because New Zealand, just apart from a few bats, never had any mammals...

That's true. All they needed to do was mate and survive.

The kakapo, for example, another type of parrot,

the only thing likely to predate on it was a vast eagle

that used to live in New Zealand called the Haast's eagle

and so the kakapo solved that by becoming nocturnal like the kiwi.

So it could be afraid of nothing.

It developed this extraordinary mating ritual which is just beyond belief.

It's called the bowl and track. It's the only example of this particular version.

It would dig a bowl, a crater then a path towards it, the track that it would immaculately pick clean

and then it would sit for months during the mating season.

It has this huge booming sac.

It sounds like a giant blowing across a beer bottle. Whoo noise.

It would boom and boom and the females in the valley

below would listen to the boom they most liked and waddle up.

If by some terrible chance, a leaf had fallen on the track,

the female would turn and walk away.

The poor old male would have to pick it clean

and go back to booming again.

Sometimes three years would pass, booming away,

not getting his rocks off.

The only evolutionary pressure on this bird is to get laid. That's it.

There's nothing else.

It's fat, stupid, nocturnal horny bird and he couldn't even get laid.

That's like my life.

Kiwis aren't the most exciting birds, I have seen kiwis.

Have you burrowed into one of their dens? No, I haven't bothered to do that.

I did. It's exciting.

There's one on YouTube playing the piano.

Oh! No, no. Falling down an escalator.

I've seen them in special areas, you know.

I went out with this guide and he found one, and he said,

"Get in there, get in there."

And so I burrowed and burrowed and burrowed and burrowed.

And you just see this little eye winking at you,

and that long wonderful beak, and it just winked.

Aah. And I winked back and then sort of...

With a little look that just says, "you just destroyed my house."

Yeah. I was careful not to.

Aaah. Aah, lovely! It took three years to make this.

The New Zealand government,

they were given two pandas by the Chinese government in return for

two kiwis, and I just thought it was a bit of a swiz, you know.

It's like New Zealand, you know, the zoo in Auckland, all these

people going, aah, look at them, look at the pandas, and aah!

Some zoo in Beijing, people going, what?

What are they? These kiwis don't even sneeze. They don't, nothing.

Very good, very good, very good.

Now, what is this woman doing, though?

What the...? Is this Lady Gaga's new album cover, is it?

She's wearing a... It's an experiment.

No, she's using a device that's for sale, or was for sale,

it was built in 1929.

A new device. Knitting jumpers?

Patented by Dr Kurt Johnen, it records the motions

and bodily reactions.

A lady is pictured being examined by the device.

A pneumatic belt records the change of the circumference of her chest.

Pneumatic cuffs above the upper arms control the changes of muscle tension.

Through a hose is recorded the rhythms of respiration,

and another hose transfers the strength of touch.

It's a sex toy. You would think, wouldn't you?

But what about her hands? That's the clue, and our theme today?

Piano, she's learning piano.

Piano? A keyboard. Yes, it's a piano teaching machine.

Oh. Oh. Extraordinary, isn't it?

Wow. It's supposed to help you with your piano playing.

Your posture, your breathing.

There have been many others along those lines.

There was the Chiroplast, which was clamped to the piano

and trapped the player's arms, that's the one on the left,

so you were forced to play using only your wrist and finger action.

You were then crippled.

The one in the middle was the Dactylion, from the Greek "dactyl", meaning finger.

A contraption designed to strengthen the fingers, because

they're springs that you're going against in that middle picture.

And it's said that Robert Schumann used that

and it actually hurt his fingers.

Though others say that was syphilis.

It's a fine line, isn't it? It is a fine line. Oh, always.

When you're into fingering, syphilis is never far away.

Next to that is the Chiro, or the Chirogymnaste,

which is a tiny finger gym,

which has got little finger events and you can see them.

They still encourage you to do that.

There's little spring-loaded strengthening things

that I was given in the brief time I got someone to teach me the piano

and they said "You should strengthen your fingers."

I thought "I might as well be playing the piano."

My old piano teacher, she would be much better than that cos she'd use a ruler

and if you got it wrong, she'd whack you on the top of the...

That is more of a powerful incentive than any of this...

But if you do harm yourself by using one of these things,

you can always use the bed piano, for bedridden people.

Wow. Which is a rather splendid device. I think you'll agree.

I hope that's securely attached.

That is the laziest keyboard player in the world.

And as you see, it rolls up, pushes away neatly.

That's fantastic. It's great, isn't it? I want one.

You can slide pizzas down from the back.

Yes. Bill's sitting there going "I am going to get one of those."

I will, I'm going to get one. Bill will have one of those.

That's the piano for the bedroom. Ha-ha!

The upside-down piano, virtual. That's magic.

Be easier to strap yourself into bed and tilt the bed up to a normal piano. Yeah.

How would a left-handed piano work?

It would be high notes at the left.

There it is. And there it is. That is a left-handed piano. Wow.

It would take a hell of a lot of unlearning for you to play on that, wouldn't it? Good God!

Can you imagine? It would drive you mad. It would.

Transposing pianos, have you ever played with one of those?

Well, there's a device on the keyboard that will do that for you.

On an electric keyboard. On an electric one.

There are pianos with a mechanism that can... It's a lever on it.

It moves it across to the next string. Oh, right.

Irving Berlin used one, because he only composed in F sharp.

He's like Stevie Wonder, who likes the black notes. He couldn't read music,

but was the most successful songwriter of his age.

Really? Yeah. He couldn't read music, he was fantastically talented,

He wrote White Christmas, let alone Top Hat, White Tie.

He lived long enough to be able to see his own songs go

out of copyright, because his first hit was in 1911,

with Alexander's Ragtime Band.

You know, "Come on and hear, come on and hear Alexander's Ragtime Band."

They only go out of copyright after you're dead.

No, they do now, but in his day, it was 75 years after it was written.

Right. So he lived long enough to see some of his songs

go into the public domain. Now it's 70 years after you've died.

How old was he when he wrote it? Early twenties. But had this extraordinary talent. Amazing.

There's a long list of things I have to get after this show.

There's the upside-down piano, the upside-down dinner, I mean, everything, yeah.

It's funny you should say a list of things cos that brings me to Franz Liszt.

Ho ho! # Accidental segue! #

How did he change the piano? Did he have huge hands, Liszt?

He did. He could expand them, long, long span.

There were pianos made specifically for him.

Well, yes, then they became the standard type.

He gave it so much bloody welly that they made it out of an iron frame.

Before that, they'd been a wooden frame.

In Jane Campion's film The Piano,

when the piano is thrown out to sea, it should have floated.

instead of sinking because the film's set in 1850.

It would have been a pre-Lisztian piano.

Did that ruin it for you?

You won't be copying that film out. What's this rubbish?!

Plainly not possible!

Right, so... Good.

So, what did the man who knew everything think cats were good for?

Well...

Catching mice.

Catching mice. Isn't the man who knew everything Thomas Young?

Well, there's various people who were given

the title of the last man to know everything there was to know.

Erasmus, Leibnitz, Von Humboldt, and this man here, Kircher, his name is.

He was a German Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher.

And he certainly was very interested in lots of things.

He was lowered into Vesuvius. He believed the bubonic plague

was caused by microbes, well ahead of germ theory.

Claimed falsely to have interpreted Egyptian hieroglyphics.

He regarded things like magnetism

and love as branches of the same topic, attraction,

which is a very QI way of looking at things, I like that. Yeah.

But what are the cats doing?

Well, we'll come to that. Some things he got right.

He denied the possibility of flying tortoises.

I don't know who'd raised the possibility,

but he damn well squashed it and said, no,

there won't be such a thing as a flying tortoise.

Rubbish. But he did invent the megaphone, and the Katzenklavier.

Klavier is in fact German for key, from clavis, Latin, key,

but it's a keyboard instrument. The cat playing the piano. He invented You Tube.

I'm afraid, for cat-lovers, it's a bit more disturbing than that.

Oh, cat string, gut string.

No, not cat gut, no, arrange live cats in the right order,

according to their voice. Oh. And you play... Drums.

And there you go. Oh, brilliant.

That's awesome!

Oh, if only they had YouTube back then.

The outrage on the comments page.

It's another thing for your list, isn't it.

It's on the list. Yes, right up there.

You've got to get one of those.

Their tails are fixed in place underneath hammers.

When a key is pressed, the hammer hits the corresponding...

you can even get chords and of course there's dynamics.

The harder you hit, it the more of a yowl.

It wouldn't necessarily have to be cruel.

You could get the same mechanism,

but just have it sort of tickle the bollocks of a cat.

So it's more like...YAAH! As opposed to...YEAGHH!

For a trill. Yeah.

MIMICS CATS PLAYING "HOW MUCH IS THAT DOGGY IN THE WINDOW?"

What do they think, that you have an A cat and a B cat?

Yeah. And a C cat? I guess you just go round.

But there are only six cats and there are more than six keys, so...

Well, that's true, that's a limited range, it's very...

Experimental music. Experimental music.

All the other keys hit mice inside the box.

It's doubtful he actually built it,

but he certainly wrote out the plans for one.

There are reports for comparable devices for Philip II of Spain

which had the additional layer of hilarity by being played by a bear(!)

There are comparable records of pig organs,

that Louis XI of France, had one made by the Abbot of Baigne.

There you are, getting ascending order of pig, pig, pig.

That's fantastic.

I like the woman singing along with them as well.

You think she's playing the pigs, but the pigs are playing her.

And as late as the mid-19th century,

there was some instruments known variously as the Pig Organ,

the Hog Harmonium, Pigano, the Porkoforte,

or worst of all, the Swineway Grand.

So there you are, yes,

several people have tried to make musical instruments

out of live animals,

although it doesn't really work very well in practice.

And now for the welcome return of a keynote of QI,

a bit of General Ignorance very quickly. Fingers on keypads.

Nicely flexed and name something written by Winston Churchill?

Who was that? Yes?

The Second World War. Oh!

Have another go.

He won the Nobel Prize, didn't he?

He won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Yes, he did.

He wrote so much.

Our Prime Minister won the Nobel Prize for Literature, no question.

Can you out of interest name the only person to have won the Nobel Prize and an Oscar?

People wrongly say Al Gore because there was an Oscar given

to An Inconvenient Truth and he was given a Nobel Peace Prize,

but he didn't win the Oscar personally.

Any offers, punters? Sean Connery.

Shaw is the answer. George Bernard Shaw.

George Bernard Shaw came through the door.

He had a ladies' public conveniences built.

Yeah, he was very interested in stuff like that.

People said it was outrageous and disgusting

that there should be a public convenience for women. How appalling?

And he said, "No, I think women need to go too."

The first ladies' loos in London.

Winston Churchill did not write under the name Winston Churchill.

Our Prime Minister didn't. Oh, that's right.

What did he write under the name of? Anne Bronte.

The Gathering Storm, by Anne Bronte.

Daphne du Maurier.

My early years.

Katie Price.

No, what's his full name? Do you remember his full...?

Spencer. William Leonard Spencer Churchill.

Oh, Leonard. So he wrote under the name of Winston S Churchill.

Because when he started writing,

there was a very successful American novelist called Winston Churchill.

And so out of politeness to him

he wrote to him this very complicated letter,

which was sort of jokey, I think, he says -

"Winston Churchill has no doubt that Mr Winston Churchill will recognise from this letter,

"if indeed by no other means,

"that there is grave danger of his works being mistaken for those of Mr Winston Churchill.

"He feels sure that Mr Winston Churchill desires this as little as he does himself.

"In future to avoid mistakes as far as possible,

"Mr Winston Churchill has decided to sign all published articles, stories or other works,

"Winston Spencer Churchill and not Winston Churchill as formerly.

"He trusts that this arrangement will commend itself to Mr Winston Churchill."

And Winston Churchill replied,

"Mr Winston Churchill appreciates the courtesy of Mr Winston Churchill

"in adopting the name of Winston Spencer Churchill in his books, articles, etc.

"Mr Winston Churchill makes haste to add that had he possessed any other names,

"he would certainly have adopted one of them."

There you go. So how polite. That's so lovely.

I like the fact they refer to themselves in the third person.

Mr Churchill all the time, I know.

Clement Freud had a very good story he used to tell about when he was an MP.

He went to China on a fact-finding visit with other

parliamentarians including Winston Churchill Jr,

i.e. the grandson of Winston Spencer Churchill

who was a Tory MP.

One day Winston Churchill invited him

back to his room at the hotel for a nightcap.

Freud saw that his room was so much better than his.

So the next day, Freud said to the guide, "I'm not complaining.

"I just wondered why Mr Churchill's room is so much bigger than mine."

And the Chinese person said, "Because he has famous grandfather."

Clement Freud said "It's the only time I've even been out-grandfathered."

You'd think if your grandfather was Sigmund Freud, you were safe.

No-one could out-grandfather you.

You'd have the executive suite.

You should have seen Steve Hitler's room. It's enormous.

Now, what truly grim reading matter was banned in Germany after the War?

Romantic comedies? Mills and Boon?

"Say what you hear. The clue is in the question."

What was the question again? Say the question again.

What truly grim reading matter was...?

The Brothers Grimm.

Brothers Grimm. Oh, right.

Because people believed that real savagery of the Grimm fairy tales

had contributed to something that had turned the German people nasty,

the perceived barbarity of the people.

The argument they'd fostered obedience, discipline,

authoritarianism, nationalism, glorification of violence,

all that kind of thing, became part of the national character.

According to a British Major, TJ Leonard,

he said the fairytales had helped teach German children

"all the varieties of barbarousness."

Including light flannelling.

And it made them easy to fit the role of hangman,

and so on and so forth.

One of the stories was called

How Children Played Butcher With Each Other,

which was really savage.

That was removed from the second edition.

And in the Frog King, the frog is not kissed by the princess,

he's hurled against a wall with all the strength she has,

to turn him into a prince. A rather battered, bruised prince.

That'll do it. Yeah. At two miles an hour.

Two miles an hour, against a...

And he goes like that... Argh!

It was all he could do.

He's got little froggy arms. Yeah.

On the other hand, there is a lyrical quality.

The last in the collection, you'll love this story.

There's a little poor boy goes out into a wintry forest

to collect wood on a sled.

In the snow he finds a tiny key and next to it, an iron box.

The boy inserts the key, he turns it, he lifts the lid.

SUSPENSEFUL TUNE PLAYS

He lifts the lid...

TUNE CONTINUES

End of story.

Oh, really?

That's Pulp Fiction.

Exactly, it's the suitcase in Pulp Fiction,

exactly what I thought of it.

The rest is up to your imagination, boys and girls.

What do you think was in that box? A frog. Porn.

I think it was a stash of porn. Yeah. A flannel.

That's why I used to go into the woods.

Well, we've ended on a sour, bitter and very rude note.

Which is the way we like to end on QI.

Once again. Yes, hurrah.

Which brings us to the scores. And let's have a look.

My word, my goodness, my gracious, my goodness and my everything,

in first place, with plus three, is Bill Bailey!

Wow. I've never won!

How did you end up with plus three?

Second place for a first timer, with minus eight, it's Isy.

Oh, well done.

Third place, on his first appearance, is really not bad,

it's Tim Minchin.

And yes, in fourth place is Alan Davies!

So that's it from Isy, Tim, Bill, Alan and me.

And good night.

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