Making a Meal of It QI XL

This programme contains some strong language.

APPLAUSE

Good evening, good evening, good evening and welcome to QI.

Tonight we're making a meal of it with a muster of master chefs.

On tonight's mouthwatering menu, mincing his words, Phill Jupitus.

APPLAUSE

Mixing her metaphors, Cariad Lloyd.

APPLAUSE

Marinating in his own juices, Dermot O'Leary.

APPLAUSE

And with a soggy bottom, Alan Davies.

APPLAUSE

So let's hear their buzzers. Cariad goes...

# Food, glorious food. #

-Nice.

-Phill goes...

# Hot sausage and mustard. #

Dermot goes...

# While we're in the mood

# Cold jelly and custard. #

And Alan goes...

LOUD BELCH

So, what's missing from this menu?

Three tortoises.

Can you imagine the anal retentives looking at that picture at home?

I just want to say "hare."

KLAXON

Welcome to our world, Cariad.

-Thank you.

-The tortoises and the hare, not, sadly.

-That's 69 tortoises.

-69 tortoises,

and the bitch ain't one.

-That's what we were thinking of.

-Is that a song?

I believe it's popular in the hit parade right now.

You've had that on Radio 2, I'm sure.

What do we know about tortoises?

They are old.

There's one that just died that was around in George III's time.

-Yes, there was.

-How would you know if it was dead?

It belonged to Clive of India. Sorry?

You'd have to wait a few months to be sure it's dead or just asleep.

Don't bury it, for God's sake.

Why do you think they have such enormous shells?

They've got big TVs.

Lot of stuff. Lot of belongings.

That's the thing about getting old, you look around and you think,

my God, look how much shit I've got.

If you're an agoraphobic tortoise.

-Terrifying.

-It's better than being a claustrophobic tortoise.

There's three in London Zoo and the oldest is about 90...

-Cos they live to about 150, right?

-Oh, indeed.

And as Cariad said, even longer.

There's one that lived at the time of Mozart

and it only died a few years ago.

Didn't Darwin's tortoise die recently, or is he still around?

Well, interestingly, there was a story

that Alan may remember of Darwin and giant...?

-Oh, yeah. Didn't they all get eaten on the boat?

-Yeah.

They were so delicious, that's the point.

Wouldn't it be brilliant if The Origin Of Species

just halfway through turned into a cookbook?

"I basically put it to you all, members of the Royal Society,

"everything is bloody delicious."

Funnily enough, Darwin at Cambridge was a member of a club

which specialised in eating rare animals.

-Oh.

-And he loved that. So he obviously...

-So that is why he went?

-For recipes.

-Well, one of his interests was...

"Dear Diary, today I tasted deli-cious dodo.

"Rare."

Well, to return to our question, yes, these tortoises...

I was guiding you towards the idea that they might have been delicious

because they are evidence of the first ever human feast.

-The first ever menu.

-Rather than just eating, a real feast.

And there were 71 tortoises consumed at this feast,

it would seem from archaeological evidence.

So Alan said there were three tortoises missing from that list.

In fact, there were two missing, because it should have been 71

instead of 69, so you're going to have to have a point for that.

Why not?

APPLAUSE

I'm plus one, so I'm not going to speak again.

There was a female shaman's body discovered

next to all these shells and it seems there was a giant feast.

It was 12,000 years ago.

Seems just unfair, really.

You're basically born with a wok on your back.

The original microwave meal.

The tortoise.

Just pierce the top.

GROANING

It was 12,000 years ago, guys! I wasn't there!

Too soon!

If it's anything like a micro meal, you stab it lots of times.

Never sure how many they mean when they say...

Have you got a set number you do?

-Have you got a microwave?

-Yeah.

-The idea of you at the microwave!

I had to do TV dramas where you...

"I was playing a rough type!"

My microwave annoys me, I used to have one that just went ping,

-that was fine. Ping - it's finished.

-Simple.

Come and get it, don't get it,

whatever, we're just letting you know.

Now we've got one that goes, beep, beep, beep, beep...

As your food slowly reverses out of the kitchen.

APPLAUSE

I wish it would!

I'm at the other end going, "I know! In a minute!

"Sorry, the microwave is pissing me off."

If we leave the fridge open, it goes, beep, beep, beep, beep!

The washing machine is going, "I'm finished! Beep, beep, beep!"

Oh, Jesus. It must be like living with Kraftwerk.

Get them all synced up right.

These weren't microwaved, were they, Stephen?

These were not microwaved.

They were roasted in their shells.

-Alive, probably?

-Yeah. Heroes in a half shell. Very sad.

Very sad.

Leonardo, Donatello...

Is that Splinter at the bottom, then?

So, when might the first menu have appeared?

When do you guess that archaeology discovered the first actual menu

-as opposed to signs of a feast?

-Oh, the first menu?

The Chinese were the first people, I thought.

-They did discover one in ancient Egypt.

-Oh, really?

And it was quite detailed.

It was the celebration feast for two twins that had been born,

one of whom became Ramses II, so it was quite an important event.

-This was a menu actually not for the diners.

-For the camels.

-No.

-Was it for the chefs?

-Yeah, for the kitchens.

The first record that we have of a menu for diners is actually French.

18th-century French menus, they used to have,

where people could choose their food.

The oldest known feast was turtle-y delicious!

That was the menu for the world's first shared feast. GROANING

All right! Back off, you lot.

Tell me, why wouldn't you want to share a meal with these men?

They'd kill you.

Looks like it. As you can see they've got napkins.

-That doesn't mean they won't kill you!

-No, it doesn't.

Well, THEY wouldn't. The meal might.

One of these men invented Pringles!

Was it that one with the moustache?

"I have an idea for a tubular-based potato snack.

"You laughed at my moustache.

"You won't laugh at my potato-based tubular snack!"

See if you can place a date on this.

Er, '20s? Early '20s.

-1910s.

-Closer.

-1909.

-Closer still!

1908.

This guy's on fire!

-It's between 1902 and 1906, that picture.

-OK. Edwardians.

-Yeah, Edwardian if it were English, but it's not.

-Oh. Are they French?

-Not even French.

-American?

The United States, yeah.

Was it the Americans who introduced certain cutlery?

They have a word for cutlery.

They do use the word cutlery, but in certain places in America,

they very rarely use cutlery. They have another word for it.

-Do you know what that is?

-Hands?

They call it flatware.

Where did they get the plastic kettle from in the late 1900s?

-Morphy Richards, suddenly.

-Strangely popped in.

Something odd going on here.

There's a guy from Tefal's got a TARDIS. He nips back in time.

Share a meal with this lot, bad idea.

-It's a bad idea.

-Are they cannibals?

-Lethal foods.

-They...

-Eat people!

-No.

They were paid in meals,

three meals a day was their reward for eating...?

-Food?

-Poison, or at least eating additives

that could be considered dangerous.

It was the first move on the part of the US Department of Agriculture

to codify the possibility of additives being something

that you could regulate, so they got these volunteers

who swiftly gained the nickname "The Poison Club."

They ate some extraordinary things.

October 1902 to July 1903, they experimented with eating borax.

Their Christmas menu was apple sauce, borax, soup, borax,

turkey, borax, borax, carrots, green beans,

sweet potatoes, white potatoes, turnips, borax,

chipped beef, cream gravy, cranberry sauce, celery, pickles,

rice pudding, milk, bread and butter, tea, coffee, little borax.

They were well fed.

"I don't like borax!"

"You're having it! I've told you, it's Christmas,

"everyone's having borax! Your dad likes it."

"And now Andy Williams with A Very Borax Christmas."

Can you name something that we use borax for today?

-Is it an element?

-Cleaning.

-Washing powder.

Cleaning, as a detergent, but it's used as a fire retardant

and an antifungal compound.

Quite useful to have in your system then, really?

Resistant to poison and flames.

That's true!

No record of any of them actually dying but they were weighed

and their blood pressure was taken and their pulse and everything else.

Until 1912, when they introduced LD50 testing,

and then it all went tits-up.

And in 1906, Congress passed a couple of acts,

the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food And Drug Act,

which was to help with food, for the first time, that's the point.

There you are, never accept a dinner invitation from The Poison Squad.

Who likes to feast on a breakfast menu of horse manure,

rancid pickled mudfish, Thai Boy shrimp and Big Cock shrimp paste?

Vietnamese? This is items...

I got sent some Big Cock paste.

An Amazon order went terribly wrong in your house.

It exists, Big Cock shrimp paste and Thai Boy shrimp paste, both exist.

I'm married to a Norwegian,

and they eat a dish all over Norway called lutefisk,

which is a jellified fish, and it's cod, really,

but they bury it, I think, then dry it out,

and then they served this for me, my in-laws.

Those bastards!

They saw you coming, mate! They saw you coming.

My mother-in-law made me a fish pie, it was delicious.

So I ate this thing and I did what we always do

when you don't like something and you're round someone's house.

"OH, GOD!

"WHAT IS THIS?!"

I just ate it really quickly,

at which point my mother-in-law went,

"This is fantastic, you must have some more."

And I finished and I thought, I've got to be honest with them,

and I said at the end, "I'm really sorry but I really don't like it."

They went, "We hate it, we're only serving it because you're here."

That's Norwegian...

That's brilliant.

Well, it may be the case that that's what this particular feaster

on these foods also thinks,

but it seems unlikely because it's not human.

-I was going to say, is it an animal?

-It is a living creature.

-Very beautiful.

-Flamingo.

Not a flamingo, it's one you'd find in Britain.

In fact, it's in Britain that it's offered this food.

Regularly, once a year as a sort of tribute to its beauty.

Prince Philip.

APPLAUSE

Has it got four legs?

Six. Six legs.

Is it an ant?

It's not an ant, but it is definitely an insect.

-Is it a bee?

-No, but it's a flying insect.

Is it a fly?

It has the word "fly" in its family name.

-Dragonfly.

-A butterfly.

A species of butterfly.

There it is. A very beautiful butterfly.

It's a Purple Emperor.

A cock-hungry Purple Emperor.

-Yes.

-"Settled on my bell-end."

-Please!

-"At four o'clock in the morning."

"I was out in the garden the other day

"and I was admiring a cock-hungry Purple Emperor

"on my red-hot poker."

"There was paste everywhere."

"The poor bugger couldn't take off."

Now, calm down.

Anyway, they live in the trees high up,

so how do they know they have a taste for all this?

Well, they've been observed midsummer coming down from their usual

feeding areas high in the trees and going for cowpats

and that sort of thing, and other rotting and horrible things,

and so - because they are so admired and particularly in Northamptonshire,

a little picnic is spread out for them in midsummer

including rancid pickled mudfish, fox guts, stinking Big Cock shrimp paste,

and Thai Boy shrimp paste, and they seem to like this,

possibly because of its sodium content.

No-one is quite sure but it's a weird thing

if you find yourself midsummer in Northamptonshire, follow the smell.

Lots of those beautiful animals.

-In a forest, they lay this out, did you say?

-In a clearing.

You could get into real trouble

if you go looking for a dodgy smell in a forest.

If you go looking for the smell of sodium and shrimp paste,

you might walk into something other than a butterfly celebration.

I'm just saying.

Especially in Northamptonshire.

What are you implying, especially in Northamptonshire?

Just suggesting.

That they indulge in butterfly dogging, is that what you're saying?

Maybe.

Anyway, a beautiful animal, the Purple Emperor butterfly.

Likes to start its today with rancid pickled mudfish,

Thai Boy shrimp paste and Big Cock shrimp paste.

Mmm.

What are you, 12?

Come on!

When will the phrase "Big Cock shrimp paste" not be funny?

Never.

All right.

Speaking of mornings, where's the worst place to be

if you're not a morning person?

Funeral.

Ah-ha!

You see, you know me well enough

to know that I say "moor-ning" for that kind.

For so many things, love.

Erm...

Is this somewhere where it's morning all the time or something like that?

Not quite all the time, but you get a lot of mornings.

-Some human beings have experienced it.

-The Space Station.

-Yes, the International Space Station.

-Oh, very good, Dermot.

How many mornings do you think you get in a 24-hour period?

It goes... I did a show about it last year.

It goes 17,500 mph and it laps the planet every 90 minutes.

Someone else do the maths!

-Very good info. It's 15 mornings you get in a 24-hour period.

-Wow.

An incredible astronaut called Luca Parmitano,

who I interviewed last year,

almost drowned in his own space suit

because the cooling fluid started leaking into his helmet.

And just as they said,

"Listen, we've got to get you back into the air lock," which was...

You know, he was on a five-hour spacewalk...

The sun went down like that.

And so he immediately was just in pitch-black, pitch darkness.

He had to find his way all the way through.

And I said to him, "How weren't you panicking?"

He said, "It's just training." You know it so well,

because they've got biggest swimming pool in the world there

that they train on underwater,

and he said he was just able to feel every part of the space station.

He knew exactly where he was.

-That's absolutely wonderful.

-It's a great story of survival.

The best ISS story they told me when I was over there -

because the Russians built half of it

and the Americans built half of it,

and so they had to link when it got 250 miles above the Earth.

And...

Excuse me being crude, but one half has to be the female

and one half has to be the male, i.e...

HE CLICKS

And neither the Russians or the Americans wanted to be the female.

Oh, pathetic!

-Unbelievable, isn't it?

-Pathetic!

-They had to redesign...

-So it did a monkey grip?

-Yeah, pretty much.

Locked in like that.

Childish beyond belief!

Can they redesign everything to...?

-We can all...

-That's just fine.

-We can all just monkey grip.

That sounds great.

I was with Dermot as far as that,

but I didn't know what the clock was.

I mean, I've not been putting myself through 45 degrees.

-Have I been making a mistake?

-Maybe.

That's why I've got two girls.

Didn't follow through.

-When...

-I didn't carry on till there was a click.

HE GIGGLES

And here's some more that Dermot may well know.

How do you brush your teeth in space?

I don't know. You use a powder or something?

You brush them normally, but afterwards, obviously,

you can't spit it out.

-Swallow it?

-So you swallow it or you spit it into a towel.

Showering?

-Er, wet wipes.

-Wet wipes.

-Yeah, can't do it. Exactly.

-Cat's lick.

Space wipes! You can put "space" in front of everything.

Space wipes!

"Gotta use my space brush and my space towel!"

It's like Glastonbury, though. You can't...

You know, quite often you can't get access to showers at Glastonbury,

so you just take a lot of wet wipes,

or a J cloth and some bleach.

It's called a cat's lick wash.

-I like that.

-That's...a certain East London... A cat's lick.

You get a flannel. Cat's lick. You just do the bits that matter.

But they're quite keen on organics at Glastonbury.

Do you think they have trained cats?

I'm sure they do.

And I'm sure those cats know how to monkey grip as well.

I have a fact for you that I want you to explain how this can be true,

and it is true.

The first British woman in space...

Sue Barker.

Helen Sharman, right.

Not just the first British woman in space, the first Briton in space.

She came from Mars.

OK...

-Is Mars a place in Northamptonshire?

-No.

-It's not.

-Slough?

That's where they make Mars Bars.

Yes, she worked for Mars before she worked for the space agency.

She came from Mars. So, she might have come from...

you know, Walkers crisps or something, but she came from Mars.

In fact, she worked on the team that created...

-The Milky Way!

-..Mars Bar ice cream.

That deserves going into space for.

And the way she became an astronaut is entirely pleasing.

Competition winner.

She was driving along and she heard on the radio, the car radio,

she heard an advert that just said, "Astronauts wanted.

"No previous experience necessary."

And she applied and she got it and she became the first Briton in space.

-I think that's really fabulous.

-I missed those adverts.

When did they play those adverts?

Now, from breakfast time to teatime.

Name two things you can get from a kangaroo's nipple.

Do you see? When I said "teatime," I said "teat time."

Yes. Clever, wasn't it?

-I bet they don't lactate.

-Oh, they do.

-Is it a trick?

No, they do lactate and that's what's so interesting.

Castlemaine XXXX out of one, Foster's out of the other.

They have little babies that are born almost still foetuses.

Like little maggots, they're tiny little wriggly things, called joeys.

And then they have to crawl to the pouch of their own accord.

And the nipples are in the pouch.

But there might be a much older brother or sister in there.

They can do something with their eggs, can't they?

If they're nursing one joey, they can hold off the egg...

No, actually. Quite the reverse, they can have two joeys who are

completely different ages and have different needs.

-Yeah.

-That's the thing. There they are. All these nipples.

And the nipples know whether it is a young joey who needs

a kind of semi-skimmed milk,

which is not so very rich and strong and thick, and there's the older joey

at another nipple, or even the same nipple later on,

and it will know that it's an older joey and give it a much thicker...

And that's a rather magical trick.

It's because of the power of the suction.

The young ones don't suck so hard,

whereas when they really have a go, which the older ones do, they get...

How do the scientists find these things out?

What are they doing?

-AUSSIE ACCENT:

-"I'm just popping off down to the kangaroo enclosure

"for a bit of a suck."

"That's rich, that's definitely rich."

"I'm going to suck quite powerfully."

"I'm taking my younger brother.

"My younger brother is going to suck a little bit less."

If you saw a kangaroo with a tiny, tiny joey and a really big joey

both still suckling,

you would wonder if they needed the same sort of proteinous drink.

It wouldn't have crossed my mind, Stephen, to be honest.

I saw one once and they're quite fun.

There was a little joey and the tourists came round

in this wildlife park, and it got a little bit spooked

so it bounded across to its mother and just leapt in, headfirst.

Oh, they do that!

The mother went "Oof," like this,

-and then it was stuck in the sack.

-And you see the legs...

She was going, "Oh, for God's sake!" Then his head came out.

You think the legs are going to burst through.

How are they holding that?

A bin liner couldn't hold them.

Stronger than a bin liner.

That's the miracle of kangaroo suckling.

Who do you think...?

-PHILL LAUGHS

-I'm sorry.

This is the only show where I hear sentences like that.

"That's the miracle of kangaroo suckling. Next."

Which mammal has the most nipples?

-Well...

-If I said it came from an M-country, this being an M-series?

-Someone from Madagascar.

-Is the right answer.

-One of their monkeys?

-A lemur?

-They don't have monkeys in Madagascar.

They do have lemurs, but it's not a lemur.

-It is another kind of very small mammal...

-The great-titted earthworm.

-No...

-A shrew of some sort?

No, well, it's like a shrew

because they don't have shrews or anything or hedgehogs,

but they have a class of mammal that looks exactly like hedgehogs,

-exactly...

-An echidna?

..that have evolved separately and distinctly

and they're called tenrecs.

T-E-N-R-E-C. Amazing animals.

And this is obviously not the hedgehog tenrec,

this is the one that boasts a really bizarre number of nipples.

It's 29.

A prime number. Maybe it's a mathematical...

Does it have large litters? Do they have lots of babies?

They do have a lot of babies, yeah.

I don't think they have enough to justify a whopping 29 nipples.

I'm going to give you another little teaser.

When human mothers give suck to their infants,

they are feeding two species.

Right?

-So the baby is one of them.

-Yes. One is a human child.

-Bacteria?

-Very specifically, it is the bacteria,

you may say it's feeding the baby and then of course the bacteria,

but this is not feeding the baby, it is only feeding the bacteria.

In human breast milk, there are oligosaccharides

and these are indigestible to human babies,

but they are adored by the bacteria in the baby's tummy,

so they bypass the baby's system

to go to the stomach to feed the healthy bacteria.

-That's great.

-Isn't that pleasing?

-It's rather nice.

-See? Mothers, always giving.

Always. Always.

"Who else needs feeding? The bacteria, fine! I'll do it!"

Perfect parasite.

"Well, why didn't you tell me he was coming for dinner?

"I've only made enough..."

Who would like to see some milky magic because I want to show you...

LAUGHTER AND GROANS

-Stranger danger!

-APPLAUSE

I wish I hadn't put it like that.

If a man says this to you in a park, say no.

-RASPING:

-"Would you like to see my milky magic?"

You know what I meant.

"Would you like to see my milky magic?"

OK, I've got some... Mm!

Here we are... Lovely milky things.

Stop saying it!

Well, now, because here we are.

This is just the thing about milk, there's never enough,

you always want more.

This is what happens when you get to the clearing in Northamptonshire.

Bear with me. Here we have...

Here we have some milk. What I'd like to do

is just transfer it along the way.

From smaller to larger glasses, as you can see.

This will fill it about halfway up, maybe, just checking the size.

-Well, that fills it up completely.

-That's weird.

That's all right, that's good,

-because we've got more than we started out with....

-No!

-Fast forward, fast forward.

-With milk...

-No!

-Got to have that, haven't you?

-No!

-That makes sense.

And then see if we can get even more, because what we're doing

is earning ourselves lots and lots of milk.

Which has got to be good, surely. There we are.

Can you do this with wine?

Oh, no! You're Jesus!

APPLAUSE

There. You like that?

It's quite pleasing, isn't it?

"And that's how we get the European milk mountain."

Somehow you can find much out of little

and that's maybe a lesson in life.

-Redefines the second coming anyway.

-Exactly.

-Oh, what?

-Oh, no.

"And then Stephen took a can of tuna,

"and lo, he did share it out amongst the audience."

And that's how much we've now got, out of nowhere.

Which is very pleasing.

APPLAUSE

There we are.

-Well, from milk to meat...

-Whoa, whoa, whoa,

aren't you going to tell us how you did it?

APPLAUSE

Oh, Alan, you know well enough, the milky magician never tells.

-Disappointing.

-Oh, dear!

From milk to meat, so for a meaty question now,

why did five Royalist men from Milton fail to eat their own buttocks?

-They were trying to?

-Yes. That's the weird thing.

That's what that man has just suggested in the corner.

"Guys, look. I think we should eat our own buttocks."

And everyone's, "No."

That's what happened in a pub in Milton.

-Too painful for them?

-Was it a dare, like a bet?

It wasn't a bet. How did I describe...?

See how much they love the king?

Yes, I described them as Royalists

so that must mean they came from the 17th century, Civil War time.

-Just to stick it to Cromwell. "Up yours, Cromwell."

-Cava-lee-ais?

They were Cavaliers, yes. They wanted to toast the king's health.

And they wanted to show that they were more loyal than

just about anyone else, so to hell with beer, to hell with wine,

we're going to toast him in our own blood,

and the best way to get a bit of blood, you'd think,

is just to prick your thumb, but no.

Slice off their buttocks.

But why the bum? How does the bum show you're loyal?

The biggest muscle, they thought they'd have some to spare.

The Royal Fat-Arse Regiment, I don't know.

They probably thought that it wouldn't hurt too much,

but in fact what happens is they sliced off a bit of butt cheek

and it bled profusely. So profusely. It was shocking.

"Men, to the delicatessen. Onto the slicer with you!"

Argh!

"To the king! Wow!"

As long as they didn't have any salami, they'll be fine.

-I think the idea was they sat on a gridiron...

-Ooh!

..and a bit of buttock poked out and they sliced off...

SHOCKED GASPS

They must have been so pissed when they came up with it.

You'd only even come up with it if you were pissed.

They did that, the blood poured out, and everyone got in a panic.

Their wives heard about it and were furious.

"What's he done?"

"I'm feeding two species, I haven't got time to pick him up!"

There was so much loss of blood, the whole thing was a disaster.

-We know about this...

-You think they still talk about it,

like, "Oh, that day. It was such a bad idea.

-"From start to finish."

-Cut to the pub the next day,

"The special today, pork medallions."

Well, the village of Milton was in Berkshire. It's now in Oxfordshire.

And we think the pub is the one that now calls itself

the Plum Pudding, which is rather appropriate somehow.

It was called The Dog at the time of the event.

It's since been called the Red Lion and the Admiral Benbow.

Yeah, during the Civil War,

five men from Milton got rather cavalier with their own buttocks.

What's the most expensive lump of meat in the world?

Royalist buttock.

-Very rare. Very rare.

-Very rare!

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

-Good answer.

-He's pricey.

-And meaty!

-Well pricey, well meaty.

-Is it the Japan...?

-Ooh, you're in the right part of the world.

-Wagu beef?

-Type of...

It's not Kobe or Wagu beef, although those are very expensive.

Supposedly massaged and fed on beer and all that sort of thing.

-No, this is a piece of art.

-Oh!

An ancient piece of art.

-Qing Dynasty piece of art.

-Really?!

-Yeah. A piece of meat

-rendered in jasper.

-Wow.

-And there it is. A piece of pork belly.

-You can see the pork...

-Still looks great, doesn't it?

-Yeah, it does.

I would eat that.

I really like pork belly and that... That looks good.

It's nearly six centimetres tall,

and people come from all over the place to see it.

It was recently shown in Japan, where thousands a day came to see it.

When you go to the Far East, they've always got models

-of what you can order in the window, haven't they?

-Yes.

-Was this done for a restaurant? Something like that?

-Maybe it was!

-Maybe it was.

-"Yeah, we got the pork in jasper this week.

"Would you like one of them?"

This one drew 84,000 people for its reasonably short exhibition

in Japan, whereas the Qing Dynasty jadeite cabbage drew even more.

-And there it is.

-Wow.

-People were fascinated by it.

That jacket at the back there. What was she thinking?

"I like EGGS!"

It's in the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

And there's the meat stone and the jadeite cabbage both there,

and you can buy souvenirs for your mobile phone.

Just in 2012, they sold over a quarter of a million of them,

the museum.

Right, well, there you have it. Jasper meat and jadeite cabbage.

I can't help wondering whether it's supposed to be funny,

as an item - jadeite cabbage.

And so I got on the phone to my friend, Jiang Kun,

who is China's most famous comedian,

and he flew over just to be here to answer that question

with his daughter, Charlotte.

-So, JK, where are you? Hello! How are you? Nice to see you.

-Hi.

I really need to know,

and thank you for coming all the way from China to answer this -

is jadeite cabbage funny in Chinese?

-No.

-LAUGHTER

That's answered that.

Well, there you have it.

I like difference in the world.

Now, onto the smorgasbord of smugness that we call General Ignorance.

Fingers on buzzers, if you please.

I'm going to say this quite fast so listen carefully.

How much sugar in a sugar-free Tic Tac?

# Custard. #

There's no sugar in a sugar-free Tic Tac.

KLAXON

You'd done so well up to this point.

Is it sugar-free doesn't mean there's no sugar, does it?

It does, but within certain limits

according to the Food and Drug Administration.

One calorie.

A little bit.

It's pretty much all sugar, but they're so small,

the law says that if it's only half a gram of sugar it doesn't count

as sugar, it doesn't count as anything.

According to their own website, Tic Tac "registered trademark" mints

do contain sugar as listed in the ingredients statement.

However, since the amount of sugar per serving -

one mint is a serving...

Since the amount of sugar per serving is less than half a gram,

FDA labelling requirements permit the nutrition facts to state

that there are zero grams of sugar per serving.

-Unbelievable!

-And they wonder why people get killed with hammers.

You're weird.

In America, sugar-free Tic Tacs are pretty much all sugar.

When you lose weight, where does most of the fat go?

# Mustard. #

You exhale it.

Is exactly the right answer.

Far and away, most of it.

-Very impressed indeed.

-I'm on the balloon diet.

I spend my time quite light-headed most of the day.

We were going to forfeit you had you said sweat, urine, faeces,

turns into muscle or energy, or any of those things.

No, when you lose weight, your body breaks down the fat cells

and metabolises the compounds into triglycerides

which are made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

For every 10kg of fat lost by your body, 8.4kg are breathed out.

The rest, about 1.6, is fatty water, what they call fatty water,

-which is excreted...

-Oh, dear.

-..in urine and sweat.

-Fatty water?

-Fatty water, yes.

He's a really good blues player, isn't he?

Fatty Water, over here.

Yeah, when you lose weight,

most fat you lose comes out of your mouth and nose.

What kind of bird does the Goliath bird-eating spider consume?

Oh, God! Whoa! That should have had a warning.

Whoa! That is fucking horrible.

-The little furry animal!

-It's still there. Still there. Still there.

SHE SCREAMS

-Oh, my God!

-There's a still image of one.

-It's not moving any more.

-Eyes on me.

-Eyes on me, eyes on me.

-It's all right, Phill.

It's OK. I'm all right.

SHE SCREAMS

-That was naughty.

-What?!

Sorry.

-What a pathetic reaction.

-I'd be the same if not for all the therapy.

-We should have...

-No, it's not moving, so that's OK.

They're big - it must be said, they are very big -

and they are called Goliath bird-eating spiders.

But it's never eaten a bird in its life?

Well, that one may not have done

because it's very, very rare for them to eat birds.

It just so happens the person who discovered it happened upon one

eating a hummingbird. And so called it the bird-eating spider.

That's like in your family when you do something once.

"Cariad always gets sick on holiday."

You're like, "It was one time!"

Oh, Poland-invading Adolf!

"Once, I invade Poland!"

He was just eating the hummingbird, just eating it,

and he was like, "Oh, no! This is not what I normally do.

"What? No, stop writing that name down! Stop it!

"I was just really hungry."

That's more or less the story of the Goliath bird-eating hummingbird...

Er, hummingbird eating spider.

They live in South America and they are a form of tarantula.

They will eat insects

and very small...

Oh, God!

Somebody help her!

Somebody help her, it's on her face and she doesn't know!

Despite its name,

the Goliath bird-eating spider usually just eats worms.

-Alan.

-Hello.

-Let's bring this to a beautiful conclusion.

Cariad has been bitten by a snake.

What's happening to me?!

This is not I'm A Celebrity!

What should you do?

Suck her.

KLAXON

In every sense, no.

You can't afford it, love!

APPLAUSE

Even when you've been bitten by a cobra...

-You're going to haggle prices.

-Oh, yeah.

You'd soon drop your prices once you've tried it.

Do you tourniquet it?

KLAXON

Not even a tourniquet.

Guys, I'm dying! I've been bitten by a snake!

-The spider's coming!

-SHE SQUEALS

Stay still so it doesn't go round your blood. Is that in there?

Well, if you're not near a car, but drive her to a hospital.

-Take the snake if you can.

-Exactly, or a photograph of it.

I didn't say selfie!

It was sort of implicit in the question

that Cariad and I were alone somewhere.

Not on the M4 or something.

I had to take drastic actions,

despite her constant demands for money.

Why am I on the M4 with you? What happened to me beforehand?

You're going to Reading! Come on!

Where did we find a venomous snake on the M4?

-I suppose...

-Adder...

-An adder.

-Very unlikely.

-My dad got bitten by an adder

on the golf course.

-How old is he?

-My step-sister, who's a GP, said,

"No, that's just a scratch from a bramble. It's not a snake bite."

And then his leg nearly came off. It went black.

So, yeah, my aunt went down to the golf club

and said "Are there adders in the golf club?"

to the groundsman. And he said, "Oh, yes.

"They've been reintroduced."

What sort of backward thinking is that?!

"This is what we haven't got enough of,

"venomous snakes in the long rough."

Well, it adds a little, because it was getting too easy, that par-4.

The answer is if you do go somewhere where you think there may be

venomous snakes, find out where the nearest hospital is

that has antivenom, because that's really the best thing you can have.

But in Britain it's going to be fine. An adder is not going to kill.

I would still offer to suck you, Cariad.

It's the right thing to do.

If your friend has been bitten by a snake, all you need is car keys.

Any other course of action sucks.

Which brings us to the end of our feast of questions,

and so all that's left for me to do is to let you know... Ooh!

How the scores are doing.

They're doing rather wonderfully.

In first place with a magnificent plus four,

wearing plus-fours,

is Phill Jupitus!

APPLAUSE

And with a very stunning score of nothing,

wearing nothing - oh, that doesn't work -

zero, Cariad!

APPLAUSE

It seems so unfair, because he had the most information,

but third-place for Dermot O'Leary with minus ten!

APPLAUSE

And a very respectable - for Alan - minus 16!

APPLAUSE

So it's thank you from Cariad, Phill, Dermot, Alan and me,

and I leave you with this mealtime story

about rissoles.

Man goes into a restaurant and looks at the menu

and says to the waiter, "I'll have some pissoles, please."

And the waiter says, "No, sir, that's an R."

He says, "Oh, I'll have some R-soles then." Thank you.

APPLAUSE