Levity QI XL

APPLAUSE

Good evening, good evening.

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

and welcome to QI and to an evening of levity.

Let's see who's got the "light" stuff -

the light-fantastic Sue Perkins...

APPLAUSE

..the light-footed Josh Widdicombe...

CHEERING

..the lightly-armed Frank Skinner...

CHEERING

..and the light's on but nobody's home, Alan Davies.

APPLAUSE

So, light up your lamps,

and the Latin L, which is of course 50 in Roman numerals, if you can

tell me what they have in common,

all these little buzzer noises.

Sue goes...

OWL HOOTS

Josh goes...

BEARD CLIPPERS BUZZ

Frank goes...

CLOTH RIPS

And Alan goes...

PIG SQUEALS

Any thoughts?

They're all noises made by Jeremy Clarkson during the intimate act.

LAUGHTER

We've kept you two apart whenever we've done a show, for good reasons.

-OWL HOOTS

-Yeah. Yeah, so you've got an owl.

PIG SQUEALS

He howls like an owl. "He squeal like a pig."

CLIPPERS BUZZ

And it definitely, definitely ends...

RIPPING

That's the final rip to the trouser.

APPLAUSE

It's hard not to say that you've probably...

That's when Richard Hammond pops out.

-Oh!

-Oh! I must say!

That's the final rip of stonewashed denim, isn't it, that noise?

Would it help if I said it was L for law.

-Law with a W, not an O-R-E.

-No.

Jewish law, which was known as, for eating?

For...kosher.

-Kosher, yes. And I said levity was our theme, levit...

-Leviticus.

-Leviticus. Leviticus!

-Oh! So shellfish and...

-Well, we didn't hear any shellfish, did we?

-No, we didn't.

-No.

-Unless, I wasn't sure about Josh's.

-But we heard an owl.

-Yeah.

A beard being shaved, the rending of cloth and a pig.

Ah, and a pig. So they're all things prohibited by...

-Anything to do with a pig is forbidden.

-Brian Blessed!

-AS BRIAN BLESSED:

-No, Brian Blessed is not kosher, no.

No! Oh, dear, dear.

So that's what they have in common. All your buzzers are forbidden by Jewish law.

-That's very awkward, because I'm Jewish, so...

-Also...

-I can't take part in this for the rest of the show.

-No.

Also, if I were to go round and say, "Josh, can I have sex with you?"

-just on the top of my head, that would also be...

-Sex on the top of your head?

That's not the bit I had an issue with. No.

-That would be an over-protected thing.

-I've never heard of kosher sex.

-That would be an abomination, according to Leviticus.

-It would indeed, Stephen.

So, they're all things forbidden in the Book of Leviticus - you mustn't

eat an owl, trim your beard,

tear your clothes or have anything to do with a pig. Sorry.

No, what does it mean "nothing to do with it"?

What if he comes up to you, you just have to go...

You have to shun him, Josh.

-Blank him.

-Blank him. I know... Sorry, mate, not interested!

-I just blanked him.

-Snub.

-Like a chugger in the street.

-Snub that pig.

-Pretend you're on your phone, sorry.

-Yeah, blank him.

Now, one of our questions tonight is likely lavatorial.

See if you can flush it out by going for a Spend-A-Penny bonus.

All you have to do is brandish your baton and buzz your buzzer.

And there are lots of points for it, lots.

It's really worth risking that the answer might be something

lavatorial.

But first here's a lark. You each have a balloon, as I do.

And what I want you to do is, oooh, is a levitation trick.

It's all to do with static electricity,

as you might have guessed.

Well, the idea is to... Oh, that's already, whoa, that's...

Oh, oh, no, that doesn't. Oh, no!

Yes! Yes!

-Wow!

-Yes, oh!

Alan got it.

You charge up the plastic and the balloon,

but you have to charge both of them.

Well, yes, you can use your hair.

If anybody's hair can do this, it's Alan's.

I take that as a slight.

I can't get it off now.

I know, that's as well, as it sticks to your fingers, you have to just...

-Oh, and now, oh, not quite.

-Yes! Yes!

Oh, brilliant!

Aargh!

Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner there, very good.

It's that sort of fatal thing they get in Star Trek

when they didn't have any money.

Ooh, put some music on, and they go, "Arrgh!"

Someone in a red top.

The fact is, yes, scientifically, you should be able to do it

repeatably and predictably, but it's quite hard.

But I promise you this, I will show you, before this evening is

over, a levitation effect that will blow your socks off.

Not literally, but will really impress you.

That's going to come.

Meanwhile, what's the funny thing about lightning?

-Oh.

-The funny thing about it?

Well, given that it is a natural phenomenon that mankind

has been aware of for all the time that we've been on the planet.

-It makes you laugh.

-We're still captivated, freaked-out and surprised by it...

-We're captivated, and surprised and don't understand it.

-Oh!

-No.

-We can't explain it.

-We know a little bit about it.

-Oh, we do...

-We know that thunderbolt and lightning

-is very, very frightening.

-Very, very frightening!

-It's white, it's forked.

-Yes.

-Or sheet.

-It's electric.

-"Or sheet," you say? No, not "or sheet".

Sheet lightning is the same as forked lightning, it's just hidden by a cloud.

Oh, so it's an illuminated cloud that gives that band of...

-Yeah, it's just basically... Exactly.

-OK.

But one of the myths about it is that it will always strike

what part of a building?

-Highest.

-The highest point, and that's not true.

We've got a photograph to show you how untrue that is, of it

hitting Grant's Tomb there. There's a branch of it hitting the top,

but the huge part of the fork there is hitting two thirds of the way up.

Half of lightning goes up from the ground,

and at about 300 feet up they meet each other.

-I know, it's weird. Yes, so...

-What? Lightning goes upwards?

-Oh, yes, absolutely.

-Wrong.

No!

90% of strikes on the Empire State Building,

for example, are ascending strikes, rather than descending strikes.

I know it seems astonishing, but photography allows us to see

this phenomenon of it coming up from the ground

and meeting with the sky forks, as it were.

-Wow.

-"Sky Fawkes".

-"Sky Fawkes".

-Weird.

My dad used to, whenever there was lightning, we had to open

the knife drawer and put a tea towel over the knives and forks, to

avoid it coming through the window and striking, and turn the TV off.

It's the only time the TV was ever turned off,

it was quite a big thing.

The drawer is closed, is that not doing it?

He'd open the drawer to cover it with the tea towel.

-No, there's something about the tea towel.

-Individually cover?

You know, tea towels have got that earthing quality.

-JOSH:

-Did you not have anything else that was metal?

-Just the knives and forks.

-The taps.

No, I think that's all we had. That was it.

And can I say we had no piercings in our family.

From lightning to lighthouses.

What is the most famous lighthouse in the world?

Oh, I don't know, the one on the Needles is quite famous.

The Needles is quite famous, yes.

I mean, there was one that was the...

one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Oh, which is in Spain, is it not? Or, is that Hercules's Tower or something, there's a...

It's something Hercules.

Faros, Faros, it's the Alexandrian lighthouse.

I love the way you looked at me as though I got that right,

whilst telling me that every aspect of it was wrong.

-You were, you know...

-I loved that, it made me feel good about myself.

-You were wrestling the puppy knowledge with great affection.

-Yeah.

Actually all those lighthouses, the Eddystone, the Kenilworth,

might be known by quite a section of the population,

but this one, everyone knows the name of this one.

What they probably don't know is that it was originally a lighthouse.

-Empire State Building.

-Not the Empire State Building.

-Statue of Liberty.

-Yes! The Statue of Liberty, well done.

-Oh, of course.

-Absolutely right. There it is.

It was visible from 24 miles out to sea.

It was a gift to America from...?

-France.

-From the French, yes. And originally what colour was it?

-Orange.

-Was it?

Not red and white like, oh, like that!

Well, it was always intended to go green, because it's copper colour.

-That's the gayest lighthouse I've ever seen.

-It's copper colour.

You're absolutely right, Alan, it has a thin sheet of copper leaf, as it were, over it.

-So it can go that...

-Originally it shone copperly, but like all copper does...

-Oxidizes.

-Yeah.

-Gets verdigris.

And so you get copper carbonate and verdigris is the name for it, exactly.

You see those domes and things, that green colour that is Lady Liberty.

And there's her torch. And in 1986 was the centenary,

and they decided to give her a bit of a makeover.

And actually, the one bit that didn't need the makeover

was the copper skin, except in the torch.

And it needed a special technique called repousse or repoussage,

and no American craftsman could be found who could do it,

so a French team came over.

And Americans, we think of them as very...you know, capitalist,

-as America is a capitalist county, obviously...

-And fat.

-And fat!

It's also very unionised,

and the American labourers were totally antagonistic.

Da Teamsters?

They gave the French... yeah, they were like Teamsters.

They gave the French workers the complete cold shoulder.

The French workers wore uniforms,

and every lunchtime, set up a long table with a tablecloth

and had wine and fantastic food...

and the Americans sat alone eating burgers and other things

and letting their stomachs push out further and further.

And the French used this wonderful technique of little hammers.

"Marteaux", you know? And someone from the French team said,

-FRENCH ACCENT:

-"We did everything by hand. The Americans couldn't believe

"that the best way to rivet is with hammers.

"It's cheaper, faster and better,

"but they will always try to find some machine."

And that is absolutely... You go ice fishing with Americans,

they have these... you know, extraordinary motor augers

-that drill a hole.

-Oh, yeah, like in Fargo.

-Exactly.

-Yeah. In the Titanic museum in Belfast...

-Mmm.

..which is quite good.

LAUGHTER

They'll be using that on all their promotion.

"Quite good" - Alan Davies.

-IRISH ACCENT:

-You'd better do a bit better, there, Belfast, now.

Not good enough, really, for Alan!

LAUGHTER

I think that's one of his best ones. You go there and they've got

the reconstruction of the building of it, and that's the best bit.

-Yeah.

-And lots and lots of the rivets were done by hand.

-Yes, they were.

-And you'd got hundreds of riveters,

and they would do an incredible number of rivets in an hour,

and in awful conditions. Very cramped, hot...and so...

It's really quite absorbing. Riveting, I meant(!)

LAUGHTER

I was at the airport in Belfast,

and I bought the journal of the Titanic Society -

a sort of photocopy, but quite a fat thing.

And I read it. It's about, I suppose, 100 pages,

and lots of stuff about the captain and the way it was put together -

not one reference in the entire book to the fact that it sank.

LAUGHTER

I love it when people are positive!

LAUGHTER

With the Titanic Society, their ship is always half-empty of water.

LAUGHTER

Was it Bill Tidy who did the most fantastic cartoon of all time?

-And it was a queue of people...

-Oh, I love this one, yeah.

.."information about Titanic", and people are queuing up

to find out about survivors, women in shawls, and at the back,

there's two polar bears standing, calling,

"Any news about the iceberg?"

LAUGHTER

-I love that! So great.

-Perfect. But I've always thought that

had I been on the Titanic when it hit that iceberg,

even though you know you're going to perish,

seeing, like, 40 penguins fall over is probably about as funny...

-LAUGHTER

-I think the possibility of seeing penguins in the North Pole,

or the northern reaches of the planet, is pretty remote.

-But there are...

-They come from Antarctica.

Oh, damn that global warming!

You might have seen a Fox's Glacier Mint, probably.

-JOSH:

-What did happen to the iceberg?

-Now gone, broken up...

-It moved on with its life.

-Did it?

-Yeah.

-It didn't face any punishment, or...?

Now, it would be followed around by the press!

LAUGHTER

Raking over its life, you know?

"Who is this bastard iceberg?

"He's always been a bastard. He's foreign..."

LAUGHTER

"Other foreign icebergs we hate who've ruined our good stuff..."

Nigel Farage, exactly, is...

You don't want an iceberg moving in next door to you, do you?

APPLAUSE

Anyway, the Statue of Liberty used to be a lighthouse

and in those days it was brown.

Now for some light relief.

What's the most interesting thing you can do with a sausage?

Well, she's used hers for a hairpiece.

-She's coiled that round.

-A lovely little... Yeah.

-What's the most interesting thing?

-It's got to be something to do...

-With the loo.

-It's got to be.

-Yes.

I'm going to give you the points, because there is a way,

which is very lavatorial, in which you can improve a sausage,

which is quite interesting and very surprising.

What, poo in it?

-Yes.

-Oh...

-Come on!

-Really?

Baby faeces in a sausage will improve a sausage. Now...

Oh, no, and I've been throwing them away!

-Bear with me here.

-You need to get some casings and eat that.

-Yeah.

Bear with me here.

According to a study in the journal Meat Science -

M-E-A-T Science -

you make sausages healthier by adding bacteria

extracted from babies' faeces.

Now, the point is, many sausages, pepperoni...

What are they doing in laboratories, for God's sake?!

What they try and do is improve things for us to make us healthy.

And pepperoni and salami are made with bacterial fermentation.

And the best way you can do that is to use what are known as

pro-biotic bacteria, ie, bacteria that are said to be good for you.

And, oddly enough, this Catalonian team

decided that one of the best types would be baby faeces,

because, by definition, they would have

passed through the human system and passed out again,

and because baby faeces are easy to obtain -

in fact, the study used nappies

provided by mother and baby support groups.

Still don't make it right.

Professional tasters confirmed that sausages tasted the same...

-Oh!

-Who does that for a living?!

-I know.

-Did they know what they...?

They tasted the same, you wouldn't notice.

That's a rough day down the Jobcentre, that is.

They are lower in both fat and salt and therefore healthier.

But it's poo, Stephen!

It's literally poo!

It gives a new meaning to potty mouth, doesn't it?

But it does mean that Alan gets his Spend-A-Penny bonus,

-which is very good news.

-Shut the front door.

APPLAUSE

Though, in fact, that was a supplementary question,

because the original question

involved the use of sausages in history.

Sausages...such that a country... We showed you a photograph

that shows a country that is really fond of sausages...

-Germany?

-Yes.

It's so useful with the sausages, for Germany, at a particular

time in history, that people were banned from eating them

and they were banned in Poland, in Austria,

in northern France, and...

Were they using them as part of the war effort?

Yes, World War I.

The Germans had a very impressive weapon, which terrorised London.

GERMAN ACCENT: The Bratwurst lasso.

Which can take a human head off at 100 paces.

-The Zeppelin.

-The Zeppelin, is exactly right.

The Graf Zeppelin, the Count Zeppelin invented this dirigible.

Are you saying that's one enormous sausage?

Well...

They flew and they dropped baby excrement over London.

What made it lighter than air?

-Helium.

-Helium.

-Not helium, no.

-Hydrogen.

Hydrogen, that's why they were so dangerous,

because hydrogen is very combustible.

And they would go over London

and the chappie at the bottom in the little gondola

-would drop a bomb...

-You make it sound really lovely.

"The little chappie would go over London..."

But the thing is, the hydrogen would easily leak from the patches,

and they found that sausage skins would go over the joins,

and they would latch onto each other, a bit like Velcro,

they would stick to each other and they'd seal the whole thing

so the hydrogen wouldn't leak. Well, now...

God, more bad news for pigs!

LAUGHTER

It was cattle rather than pigs, it was beef sausages.

So they would just fly like an apocalyptic cow balloon

-over the top of London and just drop...

-Yeah.

And bullets would go through and they wouldn't be enough

to bring it down, and it took two years for the British to learn

how to use incendiary bullets to cause the hydrogen to blow up.

Were they ever struck by lightning?

Yes, three Zeppelins were downed by lightning.

-Yeah, how about that?

-That's brilliant.

It shows that God was on our side.

A quarter of a million cows they used, per Zeppelin -

that's pretty impressive.

So a quarter of a million cows went into the making of a Zeppelin?

Per Zeppelin, yeah. Which is why they had to

stop the Germans, the Austrians, the Poles

and those in Northern France at the time

from getting their sausages.

What a shame they didn't do a big cow's face on the front of it.

Oh, that would have been brilliant, wouldn't it?

They just don't have those artistic flourishes, the Germans, do they?

-Everything's very functional.

-That was my problem with the Nazis(!)

We spoke earlier about lightning and the Empire Strike...

-er, Empire State Building.

-Empire Strikes Back!

Confusing me and driving me... The Empire State Building.

What's the connection between the Empire State Building

and big dirigible balloons?

-It was a mooring place.

-Yes, a mooring place.

They originally thought they'd be able to land passengers on the top.

-I've seen that picture.

-Wow. That...

One of these did actually moor itself, in 40mph winds,

-for a few minutes.

-What they needed to do,

they needed to rub the top of it with a towel...

LAUGHTER

-Somebody rubbing the airship.

-That would have done it.

And what is the mast for? Do you know what the mast is...?

The mast was only there to be taller than the Chrysler Building.

You're absolutely right.

The Chrysler Building, they didn't know...

APPLAUSE

Were they built at the same sort of time, and competing?

Yeah, the Chrysler Building was going to be the taller one,

and they took the mast up the inside of the Empire State Building

and stuck it on the top at the end.

The Chrysler Building, I think we can all agree, is more beautiful,

although they're both quite marvellously decorated.

-They are.

-But the Chrysler Building is stunning.

Well, there we are. The linings in German airships

caused a sausage shortage in World War I.

What was the charge for the world's first charity single?

Oh, it's not going to be Band Aid, is it?

-Is the clue in charge?

-Yes, it certainly is.

The Charge of the Light Brigade?

Well done, you.

Absolutely. So that's the beginning of the puzzle opened up.

So, how can the Charge of the Light Brigade

have anything to do with a charity single?

You can't really release... They didn't release a single.

Well, not a single, as it wasn't called a single in those days.

Tennyson, there are cylinder recordings of Alfred Lord Tennyson.

-Indeed. Yeah.

-So maybe he read

-the Charge of the Light Brigade onto cylinder.

-He may have done.

His voice, "I am Alfred Tennyson," you do hear that, absolutely.

He did live into the age of the phonograph, as it was then called.

But this is actually slightly more touching, in a way.

There was actually a bugler who recorded the Charge,

which is a particular call on the bugle,

and he was himself a survivor of the Charge of the Light Brigade,

and I'll give you all the full details of it.

He plays the charge that he blew on the day,

on a bugle that was used at Balaclava,

which had also previously been used at Waterloo.

-It's a heck of an historic bugle.

-That's a pedigree, yeah.

It was recorded as a charity single to raise money

for veterans of the Charge who had fallen on hard times.

And we can play it...

That's the last thing they want to hear, though, isn't it?

-They'd be terrified.

-Oh, my God!

But we can hear it now.

SCRATCHY RECORDING OF BUGLE PLAYING

There you are.

That was Martin Landfried, who was a bugler

and he made that recording in 1890, and the Light Brigade was 1854.

Incredible quality.

It's not bad quality, really, is it?

And that was to help all veterans?

Or just specifically veterans of that particular failed...?

Specifically the veterans of the Charge, yeah.

So, bugler Martin Landfried lifted

the spirits of the Light Brigade at Balaclava.

How did Chicago get completely screwed up?

They put Catherine Zeta-Jones in it.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

You are a naughty girl.

-I love that film, it's brilliant.

-Didn't she get an Oscar?

-Yeah, she won an Oscar.

-I'm joking, she was really good.

-I liked it.

-It was a cheap shot.

-The sort of Bob Fosse-style choreography.

-They boarded it up with screws.

-Sort of.

-It was literally screwed up?

-Is it to do with Prohibition?

-Because it's the Windy City?

-Not because it's windy, no.

Or Barack Obama. It's always prohibition or Barack Obama.

-No, it was before either.

-Valentine's Day Massacre.

-It's Prohibition or Barack Obama or Valentine's Day Massacre.

-Before any of those.

So it's, what, Victorian?

Literally the founding of Chicago. It was a huge stop off on Lake...?

-Michigan.

-Michigan, Lake Michigan.

And, unfortunately, it was built on a swamp,

and typhus and typhoid were absolutely ravaging the population.

So they decided, with good old American know-how

and sort of optimism, they would jack the city up,

they would screw it up with screw jacks, as they're called.

And there you can see the grey bit all along the bottom,

because they literally were screwing it up,

while people were living in it. There was the Tremont Hotel,

which covered a whole acre, which they screwed up, there it is.

They screwed it up and they didn't even close the hotel

while it was being lifted up off the ground.

And underneath, in the space, the crawl space, you might say,

they put sewage and fresh water and so on,

and it was a resounding success. And Chicago became...

So there wasn't someone who went to bed in that hotel

-and woke up and went, "What the hell has gone on?"

-"I'm on a different floor!"

And, also, the river was full of sewage,

it flowed into the clean Michigan, and so with an ingenious

system of locks they made it reverse in the other direction.

And once a year they dye the river,

which goes beautifully like a Venetian canal,

they dye it green. Why would they do that?

-Paddy's Day.

-Indeed.

Cos there are lots of Irish and they have the bagpipes and so on.

And it's a beautiful city, I love it.

That is actually for real, we haven't done that with Photoshop.

-Really?

-Yeah. That is how it looks.

So what dye, what...?

-Green dye.

-LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

-I'm sorry, I can't do better than that.

-I'll accept that. No, no.

-I wish I could help.

Probably named viridian or something, emerald.

The towns and cities further down the river

-get St Patrick's Day on the wrong day.

-LAUGHTER

Yes, the entire city of Chicago was jacked ten feet in the air

to make room for the plumbing.

Now let's lighten the mood with a little light General Ignorance.

Fingers lightly on your buzzers, please.

Name one of the rules in a walking race.

You're not allowed to run, are you?

Well, you certainly can't run, but how do you judge that?

Isn't it that some part of your foot

-has to be in contact with the ground?

-Oooh...

KLAXON BLARES

There you are, you see.

Are those shorts strictly legal, though?

-No.

-Oh, hello!

-There's a little bit of swinging.

-Oh, God, you can really see it!

-Just cover that with your hand.

-Oh, dear.

-Oh, that's really...

-Please make that stop.

-Oh! Wahey!

-Please make that stop.

-Oh, that's so wrong.

-Oh, dear.

Ah, he's getting nearer! Oh!

Look at the feet!

-God, no, no!

-Look at the feet!

-God, no!

I feel like we've gone back to the sausage round.

It's gone, it's gone.

Look at the feet, don't look at the trunks.

That isn't a tip to one of the rules we should know, is it?

-No pants.

-Yeah. Swinging basket.

Keep the junk in the trunk, I think is one of the rules.

No, the fact is, I will read you the rule if you want to know it.

-It's the...

-Why are penises so funny?

From the International Association of Athletics Federations,

the rule book says, "Race walking," as it's called,

"is a progression of steps so taken that the walker makes contact with

"the ground so that no visible to the human eye loss of contact occurs."

All Olympic walkers, when you slow them down on TV, have moments,

a few milliseconds, sometimes, when both feet are off the ground,

but it's not visible to the human eye.

Nowadays you can freeze frame just about anything incredibly accurately,

so Olympic Games broadcasters and Olympic judges

get absolutely bombarded with calls from people

furious cos they've seen both feet off the ground

and they're convinced that must be against the rules.

-But, actually, it isn't.

-How do you get into it? That's...

-I know.

Because it looks so silly, the bottom swinging...

We've all... I know people that are fast walkers,

but you never go... "You should go for this."

-No, I know.

-But it's that action with the elbows

-that I find really weird.

-It's very hard to talk about it without...

It's like when you go on a spiral staircase and you do that.

I'm feeling my bum going now.

I've actually picked several stitches out of this upholstery.

Have you seen that video, the two women finishing,

trying to finish the walking race? I'm not sure if it's the Olympics.

-And they end up crawling.

-Oh, no.

-It is absolutely...

-Because they're so exhausted?

They're so exhausted.

Both their legs have gone... Never seen legs go like jelly.

My legs went to jelly. I did this thing with Bear Grylls

where I had to do this rappel down a sheer face.

I have never been so terrified in my entire life.

-I got there, I...

-Sorry, you rappelled down Bear Grylls' face?

LAUGHTER

Kind of(!) If you like. He chose the face.

LAUGHTER

And then your legs went to jelly.

LAUGHTER

The really frightening thing was, he took me to the edge

and then there was 45 minutes of...

Sorry, Bear Grylls took you to the edge... LAUGHTER DROWNS SPEECH

APPLAUSE

And then what? Then there was a tantalising 45 minutes...

I mean, that's a wait. That is a wait.

-That's high-tensile, that is.

-I'm so sorry.

-The real thing!

-Yeah.

-Sometimes I don't know what comes out.

-To be on the cusp for 45 minutes...

There was 45 minutes of true talking about safety things

and about the sound people hiding themselves in nooks and crannies

so that a helicopter shot could go round...

Top drawer porn.

LAUGHTER

You don't get many aerial shots, do you?

You won't get that on Redtube.

So once I'd got down this sheer face, I found my legs had -

exactly the same - just gave way. I couldn't stand.

So I had to arse-luge all my way down this slope...

LAUGHTER

And it ripped the entire outer layer of trousering.

Did it sound like this? RIPPING CLOTH

Yes, it did!

LAUGHTER

He is terrible. Anyway.

Race walking is often seen as a comical event

and someone once described it as like having

a competition to see who can whisper the loudest.

Now, here's the crew of the International Space Station.

Why are they weightless?

-Oh...

-Yes?

-Because they're in zero gravity.

-Oh, dear!

KLAXON

-A common misapprehension.

-Yeah.

No, that's not it at all. There's a huge amount of gravity, they're very close to the Earth.

-The moon is...

-Oh, they weren't in flight at that point?

No, they were orbiting the Earth.

But they're in free-fall, a bit like sky divers.

And, fortunately, unlike sky divers,

they're also travelling sideways at the same time.

If they weren't, they would crash into the earth.

there's certainly not zero gravity, there's a lot of gravity.

The Space Station, and the astronauts in free-fall inside it,

is plummeting towards the Earth but, because of its curvature,

the ground is falling away from them at the same speed

as they're falling towards it.

To put it another way, the Space Station is constantly falling,

but its tremendous horizontal speed means that it always falls

over the horizon.

They love karaoke, don't they? They love that.

But it's not that there is no gravity acting on them.

There's a huge amount of gravity acting on the spacecraft,

or it would just be lost in space.

So, you didn't do so well on that, so maybe you'll do better on this.

Why do spacecraft get hot on re-entry?

Why do they get hot?

-Friction?

-Oh, darling Sue, thank you.

-Yeah, you're welcome.

-We hoped for that.

Yeah. Well, you came to the right place if you wanted idiot.

No! You're not idiotic, most of us would have said friction.

It's not friction, actually. It's what's called a bow shock.

It's the pressure on the air in front of it,

like a bow wave of a ship, and the faster you go

the hotter it becomes, because of this enormous pressure on the air.

And there are other examples of that sort of effect,

like a sonic boom, for example,

when you're going faster, which is also a sort of bow shock.

Everything I know about space is entirely taken

from Sandra Bullock's performance in Gravity.

Everything I know about space comes from reading The Right Stuff,

and I know that if you get it wrong, when you re-enter,

-you can skip off the atmosphere.

-Oh, absolutely.

No, what, like a stone?

Yeah, then you'll just never come back.

-Then you just keep going.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Well, the fact is, spacecraft heat up on re-entry

because of the bow shock, not the friction.

What do beavers eat?

Good beaver shot.

-LAUGHTER

-Yes, Josh.

Erm...wood.

..is the right answer. We were hoping you might say fish.

They are, in fact, completely vegan. They just eat wood and plants

and algae, seaweed, things like that.

Absolute nightmare at a dinner party.

-The wood course.

-So they dam the river just for breeding purposes?

They dam the river for breeding, exactly. For creating a lodge.

I've seen one. I've stood on one.

You've stood on one?

-Oh, you can. They're really solid.

-Oh!

Did you deliberately stand on it?

-Yeah, well, it...

-You can. You're invited to.

-Is it like surfing?

-It's like a tourist thing.

-They don't mind. They don't seem to mind.

You can get from the bank onto it,

and it's this great construction of logs and branches.

Oh, I thought you stood on a beaver! You didn't stand on...

LAUGHTER DROWNS SPEECH

I thought you were beaver-surfing!

We've all got the internet, after all!

Beaver-surfing is quite different.

I'll tell you a very interesting beaver fact, though.

If you take a beaver out of its natural environment,

which is by a river,

and put it in the middle of a forest far from a river,

and turn on a tape recorder which has the sound of a gurgling river,

it will build a dam.

It doesn't need to see or feel the water.

Unfortunately, in Scotland and places like that where

there have been attempts to try and reintroduce the beaver,

people wrongly think they eat fish

and that they'll threaten the salmon or trout or whatever,

but, of course, they don't eat fish.

-They just destroy forests!

-Well, yeah!

Well, they have a nibble, anyway.

And, finally, who fancies a quantum-locking levitation lark?

And to help me tonight we have Professor Andrew Boothroyd

of the Physics Department of Oxford University.

Hello, Andrew!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

So, here we go, this is going to go over my head, so I'm going to duck.

Ta-da! There it is.

An exciting tray and what looks like a bit of sort of Scalextric

and let's just line it up there.

We've got a little bucket here, what's in this bucket, Andrew?

That's a bucket of liquid nitrogen.

Liquid nitrogen which, as you know, is extremely cold,

and I'm going to dip a rose into it, just to show how cold it is.

I'd better put these gloves on first. Health and safety.

Heston Blumenthal's making a rose dish!

Oh, and these. All safety. Safety, safety, safety.

-Yeah, as long as you're safe, that's the main thing!

-Yeah, quite.

Here we go.

So, I'm going to dip a rose into this, you might have had this...

Ooh! Bubbles away.

It's really cold now.

And it might even shatter.

Oh!

Look at that, like glass.

-Shall I not touch the bit that's landed on me?!

-No, that's fine.

LAUGHTER

Is it burning into your skin?

It shatters like glass.

I've got a little wart on my finger, is this a chance to burn it off?

-You might get a little cryo...

-And the rest of your hand.

It would be a great way of dumping someone on Valentine's Day.

LAUGHTER

So, what have we got here, Andrew?

We've got here a piece of ordinary-looking black ceramic,

which, when we cool it down to very low temperatures,

acquires a very extraordinary property.

-OK.

-So if you'd just like to cool it down with liquid nitrogen.

-I shall baste it with liquid nitrogen.

-Oh, my word.

-There we are.

-And we have a second one over here.

-Oh, right.

-Do that one, too.

-I'll cool that, as well.

This is like the beginning of every pop video in the '80s.

Tell me what's particular about this?

It loses all its resistance, its electrical resistance,

-and becomes what's known as a superconductor.

-Ah, yes.

That's one thing.

And the other thing is that it acquires the property

that it can bend magnetic field lines

in such a way that it will always try

to resist any motion, even if that means hovering above the ground.

All right. So let's pick it up

and pop it...

Whoops!

There it goes.

-Whoa!

-Oh, wow!

-Cool.

-Yeah, it's pretty good, isn't it?

-Literally.

That makes no effect and you can just give it a tip...

SUE: Oh, that's very strange.

Yeah. There we are.

And as it warms up it'll slowly sink.

-Oh, wow.

-There you go.

Is this what you do most days at the Oxford University?

Almost every day.

It's not a bad old job.

So this one here,

is very exciting.

And now it's nice and slidey.

But look at this.

-Cool.

-And what's happening there?

-It's the magnetic field, isn't it?

-That's correct.

-It's interrupted

-by this superconductivity.

-But it's not like a normal magnet,

cos a normal magnet would repel when it's up that way

and then it would just fall off.

So this is both repelling and attracting at the same time.

I'm going to give it one more little go

and then we can try it on the track.

I thought you were going to say, "And then we can try it on Alan."

-LAUGHTER

-That would not be nice.

-No!

-Upside down in a bucket of nitrogen.

There we go. Pop it there.

-Oh, wow!

-Fantastic.

-Round it goes.

-That's cool.

-That's amazing.

-Isn't it good?

-FRANK:

-Can someone pass the Sellotape?

-It's like a steam train.

-And it's like a steam train,

it can go the other way.

-We can put the wrong type of leaf on the track.

-LAUGHTER

And is this going to get us to Mars? That's the main question.

Well, what do you think, Andrew?

Are there any practical applications we can think of?

You could use it as a piece of transport like that,

but it's expensive because of the cost of cooling the nitrogen.

So it's not efficient.

But if we could find a superconductor

that worked at room temperature, then it would be viable.

-Right.

-SUE:

-Are you working on that?

-We are, yes indeed, yes, I am.

-I trust you.

-JOSH:

-I bet they're not!

They're just playing with this all the time, that's what I'd be doing.

I know, isn't it gorgeous?

So you'd think it would almost be like a maglev train.

That's what it would be like.

-Oh, there we go again. I love that.

-Oh, I love it.

And this, of course, can go on here, as well.

-Oh!

-Oh! Oh! Oh!

Argh! Ahhh!

Don't be too scared. It's all right.

LAUGHTER

What a pussy!

Sorry!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

-That's my favourite one.

-Boing!

Oh, it's coming round, it's coming round, it's coming round!

Unfortunately, this one is less insulated and it'll probably get...

-Oh, that's stopped it.

-It's doing pretty well.

-It is, isn't it?

-Oh, my God, that's coming for me. Oh, no.

Cool.

Oh, there you go. Bless its heart.

That would be like the best Christmas present in the world.

What is the magnet made of?

It's rather exciting names - boron and...?

The magnet is made of neodymium, iron and boron

-and that's what the track is made of.

-Neodymium?

-Neodymium and iron and boron.

-Wonderful.

The superconductor is made of gadolinium, barium,

copper and oxygen.

SUE: But you can just use sticky-backed plastic...

LAUGHTER

..and a Fairy Liquid bottle.

Well, there you have the miracle that is quantum levitation.

-Thanks to Andrew Boothroyd.

-SUE: Amazing, Andrew, amazing.

-APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

-Thank you, Andrew. Thank you so much.

For once...

For once I can say what could be cooler than that?

That's all the levity we've got time for,

so let's have a look at the scores.

It's very exciting.

I'm afraid, bringing up the rear with minus 14 is Sue Perkins.

APPLAUSE

With minus seven, in third place, is Frank Skinner!

APPLAUSE

Well, in a brilliant second is Josh Widdicombe, with five.

APPLAUSE

-Be still, my pulsing member, in first place...

-LAUGHTER

..with 11 points, is Alan Davies!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Well, thanks for watching and good night

from Sue, Frank, Josh, Alan and me.

We leave you to ponder upon the last words of the French satirist,

Francois Rabelais, in 1553.

These were his dying words -

"I have nothing, I owe much, the rest I leave to the poor."

Good night.

APPLAUSE