Messy QI XL

This programme contains some strong language

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Goo-oo-oo-ood...

evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,

good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening and welcome

to QI, where tonight we'll be one massive, marvellous, molten mess.

And here's the mix.

The massive Noel Fielding...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..the marvellous Eddie Kadi...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..the molten Sarah Millican...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..and who will clean up this mess?

Alan Davies.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And let's hear your messy buzzers.

Noel goes...

GLASS SMASHES

Hmm. Eddie goes...

BUILDING COLLAPSES

Sarah goes...

CAR CRASHES

And Alan goes...

FOOTBALL CROWD CHEERS

LAUGHTER

Do you know what that was?

April 2010.

What's our theme?

Mess.

Lionel?

Lionel Messi.

Messi...scoring how many times against ARSENAL?

Oh, four. Four times.

Yes.

I'm afraid so.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

There you are.

Oh, dear!

Anyway, what's...the meaning of this mess of M words?

Just choose one as it passes by.

Oh, mumbudget is how much your mum's got in her purse.

So, is that literally the budget that your mum has?

Cos when I was growing up, I'd ask my mum for £10

and she'll always be like, "I don't have £10, here's £1."

Right? If I asked her for £1, she'll give me 20 pence,

so I asked her for a million...

-Just to get it up.

-Just to, yes, just to get it up.

And she slapped me.

Mumbudget is like keeping mum, it's to be silent about something.

You put the word budget after, like, there's a word fussbudget,

for example, which is someone who's very fussy.

"Oh, don't be such a fussbudget" was a Regency sort of word.

Munge! Monster Munge.

Monster Munge!

Munge is New Zealand for minge.

Oh, munge!

LAUGHTER

Oh, dear, horribly true.

Monarsenous.

Yeah, a single, er...crack.

Oh!

Mammock, the mixture of a mammoth and a hammock.

-SARAH:

-It's a bra, it's a bra.

-A useful one to sleep in.

-It's where...

-A mammock?

-It's where I hang my mammaries.

-Oh, your mammary hammock, yes. A mammock.

-A maness is a woman.

-Yes.

-Is a mormal...?

-Is it?

-Yes...

-Is it?

-But what's surprising...

-Is it?!

-Yeah.

-You got one right!

-I got one right, yeah. I'm going!

-Is it actually?

-Yes.

You might think that it was a recent word for a woman, a maness,

but actually it's 16th century.

Tudor, 1500s, maness.

-A man and a maness.

-Yeah, a man...

-NOEL:

-Mazology, the study of mazes.

BUZZER ALARM Oh, no!

The study of mazes.

Oh, you must be so stupid to get one of those go off!

-It's actually the study of mammals.

-Oh!

-Mammals in zoology.

-That live in mazes.

Mazology, yeah.

Mogi, mogi...

Is a mutton-monger like a Welsh person? No!

I'll get into trouble for that.

It could be a man with extreme sexual appetites can be called a mutton-monger.

-Oh, really?

-So a Welshman, then.

I pulled it back, did you see?

Moley is someone who's like a mole, not actually a mole,

-but like a mole.

-Is mole-y.

-They're sort of moley.

Is a mournival like a really good funeral?

-Whoo!

-APPLAUSE

I'll catch up with a moley - it's actually rather a grim thing. Wonderful there is a name for it.

1950s gangs, racecourse gangs and things

were often known as razor gangs, and razors were the weapon of choice.

People used to shave each other.

-They used to...

-Their legs.

They used to conceal razors inside a potato.

-Oh, nice.

-And they called it a moley.

-NOEL:

-Oh...

-EDDIE:

-"I'll mole you!"

-They could keep it in their pocket without hurting themselves...

-Wow.

-..and then attack.

-Better than having it concealed in your sandwiches.

-Well, yes, that would be horrible.

And what other words have we come up across?

A mugwump is when you put your biscuit in your tea

and half of it falls to the bottom.

Oh! That would be so useful as a word.

What about munge, is that a man with a vagina?

No, it's...

Is moggadored like if you're a cat lady?

I'm mog-adored.

Munge is actually a verb, and it's something mothers do,

but I don't know anybody else would do it, unless they were weird.

-I munge, you munge, we munge, they munge.

-We munge, that's how verbs work.

They munge!

You've conjugated the verb "to munge" very nicely.

I have.

-Mothers...

-I munge daily.

-Yeah.

-I am munge...

-I will have munged, would be future perfect.

-Yes.

I could have munged.

-Could have munged, I might have munged, I may well have munged.

-Yes.

I cannot remember if I munged or not.

-To munge is to wipe someone else's nose.

-Wow.

-I did not munge.

-You didn't munge.

I munge about every 15 minutes at home.

Mesopygion...mesopygion is interesting,

because you almost mentioned that.

-A mesopygion.

-Mesopygion.

Mesopygion.

It sounds like you're doing yourself down, "Oh me-so-pygion."

Oh, mesopygion. Er...

Pyg, P-Y-G is buttocks in Greek, as in styrop, styropigus,

and beautiful fat buttocks, styropigus.

-And mesopygius is the crack between the buttocks.

-Eso what?

It's your anal fissure, your anal fissure.

-That's what I call sexy times.

-Did I say anal fisher? I'm an anal fisher.

A fissure. A fissure, I mean.

Yeah.

Not an anal fisher?

What else were we?

No, no, no. An anal angler.

Oh, dear.

-So, if you've got like an itch, you could be a mesopygion.

-Yeah, that's right, yeah, you could.

-It's amazing.

-Oh, it's all running down my mesopygion.

-Yeah...

Yup, there it is.

-There's got to be a word for these things, hasn't there? It's good that it exists.

-Yeah.

But you talked about mugwump earlier - "mugwump" is a word that most Americans would know,

because it has a historical place in American politics.

Mugwumps were Republicans who deserted the Republican Party

in the 1880s and voted Democrat.

Oh...

And so it means a turncoat,

-a political turncoat in American political discourse.

-Wow.

That person must have been really angry, who decided that word.

-Well...

-"Oh, they've gone to the other side, the mugwumps!"

-It's an Algonquin Indian word.

-Mug-wump!

-It's Algonquin Indian.

-Mugwump.

-Mullipuff?

-Mullipuff.

It's a thoughtful...

Puff!

Steady!

-It's a contemptible...

-It's an absolute minefield!

-It's a contemptible, despicable person, a mullipuff.

-Is it?

Or it is a type of puffball fungus.

Yeah, there we are.

If you want to know what the rest mean,

go to...

It's a real site.

There's one last thing I'd like to mention from the list, though.

Mytacism, which we haven't commented on, it's an excessive use of the letter M.

Ah-h-h.

So, let's let the mytacism roll.

Name a politician with raw animal magnetism.

Oh...wow...

-Ed Miliband.

-THEY LAUGH

No, but seriously.

THEY LAUGH

It's actually a politician long dead.

Animal magnetism - where did that phrase come from?

It's not actually an obvious or natural phrase.

It seems so to us, cos we use it all the time,

but why animal magnetism?

There's something charismatic about them physically,

-the way they move or look or do things.

-Mmm.

It's not what they say, it's their aroma.

Is it the way...

Yeah, free spirit.

Yeah, is it the way like a gorilla can sometimes be sexy,

but you're not allowed to say that?

It's not banned in zoos to go, "I'd do that one, wouldn't you?"

-Where are we, is it American politicians?

-No, we're back in the 19th century.

-19th century.

-19th century, and...

-It'll be either Gladstone or Disraeli.

-A German Austrian figure called Franz...

-Franz.

..who achieved huge public recognition for what he claimed to do,

which involved using the magnetic fluids of people

to make them do things they didn't want to do.

And he coined the phrase "animal magnetism,"

meaning a very basic, primal, human, magnetic quality.

And his name was Franz M...

M...

Magnet.

Mugwump.

M...

It's a word that means it's absolutely hypnotic

and amazing, I'm m...

Mesmerising.

Yes, and so his name was?

-Bobby Mesmeriser.

-THEY LAUGH

I've already given you Frank...Franz, haven't I?

Franz Mesmer.

Franz Mesmer was his name.

-And he was the first great public figure to hypnotise.

-Oh-h-h.

To use hypnosis.

Even the name's quite mesmerising.

It is, the name...

-GERMAN ACCENT:

-"I am Bobby the Mesmeriser."

-Yeah. Forget the Bobby.

-Frank, Franz.

-Yeah.

-I like Bobby.

-You prefer Bobby, OK.

-Yeah, cos you don't see it coming, do you?

-No, you don't.

-"Hi, I'm Bobby." "Yeah, he's harmless."

-Bobby Mesmer.

-Where are the fluids, bodily fluids?

-The magnetic fluids?

-Yeah.

-It's nonsense, but that's what he claimed existed.

-Oh.

He used what we would call basic hypnotic techniques,

but he claimed that he was exploiting these magnetic fluids,

which don't exist in the human body,

in order to sort of pull out the things that he could make people do.

-It's called Rohypnol now.

-Yes, I'm afraid it is!

But plenty of people believed in what he did and said -

Coleridge, Marie Antoinette, Edgar Allan Poe, Mozart, Dickens, Conan Doyle, a lot of them.

Dickens liked to try and practise on a friend of his,

Madame de la Rue, and he once, on a train, with his wife,

was practising hypnotising on Madame de la Rue, and he wrote

that he "heard the sound of his wife's muff falling to the ground."

THEY LAUGH

Why are we laughing?

I think mine sometimes comes loose, but it's never hit the deck.

THEY LAUGH

Oh, dear. We might come back to muffs, I hope not, but we might.

What happened is, he hypnotised his wife into a trance by accident.

-And he heard a sound...

-He heard the sound of her muff hitting the ground,

and he turned round and saw that she had been the one who'd been hypnotised, not Madame de la Rue.

So, his wife was...she just came in with a cup of tea, and, bang, gone.

Yes, exactly.

But the politician whom Coleridge characterised as having animal magnetism,

which was an insult,

was Pitt the Younger.

-He thought Pitt the Younger exhibited these traits of animal magnetism.

-Wow.

In other words, that he somehow used some sort of force, or some

sort of power over people, in order to persuade them to his cause.

Yeah, and there were royal commissions to investigate it, especially in France,

Louis XVI set one up.

It was the first placebo-controlled trial in history.

They ruled that it had no basis in fact,

but nonetheless people continued to believe it. Yeah.

Pitt the Younger possessed raw animal magnetism,

at least according to Coleridge.

Now, here's an interesting effect - listen to this.

DISTORTED RECORDING OF SPEECH

What was being said?

Is that the Devil?

It was the Devil, but do you know what he was saying?

"I'm going to be late, put the dinner on."

Have another listen.

DISTORTED RECORDING OF SPEECH

Now...

Chances are you just didn't understand what it was saying,

but if you heard it said, clearly,

then listen again to that distorted sound.

And so this is what was being said.

-RECORDING:

-'Try saying "blue whale" - that's bound to come up eventually.'

DISTORTED RECORDING OF SAME SPEECH

LAUGHTER

-Isn't it extraordinary?

-Wow!

-Hear that again...

-RECORDING:

-'Try saying "blue whale" - that's bound to come up eventually.'

DISTORTED RECORDING OF SAME SPEECH

-EDDIE:

-Yeah!

-You really can hear it, can't you?

-Sounds like he's saying it with a cold.

-You're right!

It's amazing what the human brain can process.

But it needs a little bit of information -

from that apparently random sound that you thought you could never, ever understand,

once you're told what it is, you can instantly imprint the structure of it.

It's amazing, I think. Phenomenal, phenomenal!

What's the most inappropriate thing beginning with M that the Pope has kissed?

LOUD CRASH Yes, Sarah Millican?

My breasts.

Well, this has come as a shock to me, tell the story, where were you?

That's it, he just, he sort of fell.

He fell on your breasts?

I was in, like, WH Smith's, and...

He'd come in to bless some Bibles or something,

and he just tripped on, cos the carpet was...and...and I had

-a low-cut top and I don't wear one for QI, because it feels disrespectful.

-Yes.

But I normally have them out, and he just landed,

and cos his natural inclination is to kiss things,

-he just kissed them.

-Wow!

What was his reaction?

Did he like it?

He was pleased.

-Did he, did he go, "Mmmm"?

-No, he was too polite for that,

but I could see a little glint in his eye.

THEY LAUGH

There's been a rapid succession of pontiffs in the last ten years or so.

So was this John Paul II, was it Benedict...?

I can't tell them apart.

THEY LAUGH

Well, this is...

-It would help if they wore different outfits, but they're always in the same dress.

-They are!

Anyway, a merkin, what's a merkin?

-It's a pubic wig.

-A pubic wig.

-Yes.

Could a Pope kiss a pubic wig? Is it likely?

-If he was drunk enough.

-THEY LAUGH

-On communion wine.

-Had he tripped in a different way.

Well, we're going back to the 17th century.

-And it was a rather...

-If it was a tall lady.

I think you're going to like this man.

There's an English...

English highwayman called Captain Dick Dudley.

Dicky Dudley!

Dick Dudley. I think you're going to like Dick Dudley.

He was hiding in Rome,

and while he was hiding from the law enforcement officers,

he bought a dead prostitute's pubic wig,

a merkin, from an anatomist.

"He dried it well and combed it out," that's in inverted commas

cos it's a quotation, "and sold it to the Pope."

-There they are, there's a selection of them.

-Wow!

I like the one on the bottom right.

-That's excellent.

-Yes, nice curls.

Yeah. That's had a perm, that one.

-So, this was Ann Summers back in the day.

-Yeah.

-Kind of.

My goodness.

He sold it to the Pope, it could have been Clement X or Innocent XI,

as a piece of St Peter's beard.

THEY LAUGH

And...

THEY LAUGH

Oh, well done, him!

Popes like relics. He's a great man, I like Dick Dudley.

Pope Gullible IV.

Yeah! Exactly! THEY LAUGH

-"A beard, you say? Hmm."

-THEY LAUGH

"St Peter's!"

Exactly, Alan, the Pope put it on his mouth, kissed it multiple times

and appeared to be thrilled with his purchase.

Dick was paid 100 ducats, and he immediately skedaddled it

out of Rome before anybody caught up with him, called his muff...bluff!

LAUGHTER

Wow.

But they've existed in Britain as pubic wigs since the 14th century, at least.

And were especially useful for women who'd lost their pubic hair due to...?

-Disease.

-Waxing?

-Yes, syphilis. Through what?

-Waxing.

-Waxing. No! HE LAUGHS

That picture looks like the sun if it forgot to shave.

Yes, it does rather, doesn't it?

-Or Mick Hucknall.

-Hipster sun.

You have to get up early to catch the sun unshaven.

Anyway, when in Rome, don't kiss St Peter's beard,

you don't know where it's been.

What did Marie Antoinette keep in her muff?

-Cake.

-BUZZER ALARM

Oh!

-We were there before you, Eddie, I'm sorry.

-Welcome.

Yeah, welcome to our world, exactly.

I told you we'd return to muffs, and here we have with a vengeance.

What did people keep in muffs? What did women keep in muffs?

There was a particular thing, a fashionable accessory.

Mirror.

-A living, moving accessory.

-Ooh.

A hamster?

Maybe that just WAS the muff.

Well, you know what Chinese people kept in their large sleeves?

A crocodile.

A wild guess, and I wish it were correct, it's...

-A duck.

-Not a duck.

-That's what Pekingese dogs were bred for.

-A dog.

-Yeah, so dogs.

-In their sleeves?

-Yeah.

But the muffs, which were sometimes known as snuffkins in England,

were worn by both men and women, not just women.

-King Louis XIV had muffs made of tiger, panther, otter and beaver skins.

-Wow.

In his diary, Samuel Pepys reported that,

"This day I did first wear a muff, being my wife's last year's muff."

SARAH LAUGHS MANICALLY

All right... The Marquis de Sade, who was imprisoned in the Bastille,

of course, had letters smuggled in by his wife,

which she kept in her muff.

LAUGHTER

Now, come on. If I say muff enough, it's...

Can you just control yourselves?!

YOU don't...you, how...

Well, I haven't said anything about the vagina for four minutes!

There's a marvellous woman called Celestine Galli-Marie,

who was the first woman to play Carmen.

-She always kept a marmoset in her muff.

-Of course she did.

So, there you are. There's a lot of...

-Where else are you going to put it?

-Yeah, exactly, there's fun to be had from muffs.

Muffs were once used to store dogs. Muff said.

Now, for a question about meteorology.

Why did the inventor of the weather forecast think that dinosaurs had died out?

Maybe he loved dinosaurs, right? He loved them so much

-he wished he could actually let them know before the weather changed and killed them off.

-Yeah.

And he started going, "Do you know what? I'm going to resist this happening again,

"I'm creating the weather forecast, just in case dinosaurs come back and they need it."

Here's a man who had...

..an extraordinary and brilliant idea,

and he had an incredibly stupid idea.

But the world believed his stupid idea,

but laughed derisively at his good idea.

His name was FitzRoy and he invented the weather forecast

and said he could forecast the weather, given, you know, enough knowledge of the variables.

And people laughed him to scorn.

But then he said, "I know why dinosaurs died out.

"Because they were too big to fit onto Noah's Ark."

And people said, "That's a brilliant point, you're right."

And that's true. He was genuinely respected for thinking that.

-And that is rubbish because that ark was huge, wasn't it?

-Yeah, that's right.

It's because Tyrannosaurus Rex's arms were so small,

they couldn't get the umbrella over their head.

And he...

I'm sure Noah would have factored that in, wouldn't he?

Noah would have had a whole... dinosaur section, it's absurd.

You seem to be buying into this whole Noah's Ark idea.

Was there a weather forecast?

The dinosaurs said, "No, no, we'll stay, I'm sure it'll be fine."

They're just really positive.

-They were deluded.

-They were very sort of optimistic.

And when the flood came they thought, "Oh, shit, actually it's much worse than we thought."

I've just got the image now of a weather...cave weatherman doing the weather...

-I don't know why there'd be a cave weatherman.

-..on a cave, and then

all the dinosaurs sort of gathering round to see the pollen count.

FitzRoy, does the name mean anything to you, in terms of natural history?

A bastard.

He was perhaps best known for being the guy in charge of the Beagle.

-He was a friend of Darwin's.

-Oh.

But despite being a friend of Darwin's, he didn't believe anything Darwin said.

In fact, he was outraged by Darwin's Theory of Evolution, because Darwin didn't take into account...

"Oh, Charles, for God's sake, they just didn't have enough room on the Ark for them!"

Yeah, exactly. THEY LAUGH

Basically, that's what he tried...

"Oh, yadda, yadda, yadda, Charles!

"I'm telling you, it's going to rain in the morning."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous, FitzRoy!"

THEY LAUGH

"You can't possibly know that."

"I'm telling you, it is!"

-Well, it was 20 years...

-What a pair!

-They were a pair.

20 years after the Beagle, he started his weather forecasting,

and actually it did catch on, despite the initial scepticism.

In fact, even Queen Victoria used to send word round

asking what sort of crossing she'd get to the Isle of Wight.

He lived in Norwood and he would send a message saying, "It'll be windy."

Lived in Norwood! That's funny to me.

-It is, I know. Only Victorians lived in Norwood.

-Norwood.

Maybe Norwood was quite nice then, but, Christ, it's a khazi.

His first ever weather forecast, it was in the Times,

and was four words.

"Moderate, westerly wind, fine."

I thought you were going say, "Bloody pissing down."

Well, there you are.

The word "meteorology" comes from the Greek for "things high up,"

and in terms of high up,

they used to use frogs for telling the weather forecast.

They built them little ladders and put them in a jar.

-Of course they did.

-And they thought if they went up the ladder, it was going to be fine.

If they went down the ladder, it was going to be a bit wet.

Giving you the idea of it. OK.

Did frogs... Did frogs even know what ladders were?

I don't think they have to know what they are, do they?

-Did they just like...?

-They just have to have the instinct to climb.

-So, it could have been anything, didn't have to be ladders.

-It didn't have to be.

"Where's the frog?" "He's halfway up." "But which way is he looking?" "He's looking down."

Just say, "Scattered showers, scattered showers."

-I think you're right.

-"Sunny spells. Sunny spells."

Just do a cloud with a bit of the sun, half the sun.

What if it was foggy?

"He's gone on an escalator, it's foggy."

-Maybe he was trying to get out the top.

-Yeah. That's what he's trying to do.

-He's trying to escape.

One day, the ladder's right up to the top and the frog's fucked off,

and then what's going to happen?

Left a note, "I've no idea what the weather's going to be like.

"I'm out of here."

I'm out of this game.

APPLAUSE

There we have it.

That's right, the father of meteorology thought that

the dinosaurs were too big for Noah's Ark.

When does the weekend start?

-Here!

-Here!

BUZZER ALARM

Nooo!

Oh, Alan, wrong.

THEY LAUGH

I'm speaking in what historians use as that rather annoying present tense, that they say,

"And the World War starts in 1914,"

and the weekend starts...

In other words, it's historian's past tense...

No, the one that I really hate is the columnists,

when they're going somewhere,

and they always put, "To the awards at the Dorchester..."

Oh, yes. So annoying, isn't it?

Also being "caught up" - they interview someone and say,

"I finally caught up with him in the rehearsal rooms of..."

You didn't catch up with him, you arranged to meet, precisely there.

This idea that you were running round going, "Where is he?

"I'm going to catch up with him!"

-But a worse one than that...

-Preposterous!

I gave an interview to a journalist once who was late, wasn't his fault, but he was late,

and I said to him, "Are you going to have enough? You've got to write quite a lot."

And he said, "Oh, I don't know..."

I said, "If you think of anything you wanted to ask me, just give me a ring and we'll..."

So he rang me the next day, and he left a message, and I rang him back.

Anyway, when they put the article in the magazine, they put,

"A few days after this interview, Davies calls me..."

STEPHEN GASPS

What ch...

-"He wants to talk about the gig I saw him do at such-and-such a venue..."

-What?!

"It's playing on his..." I didn't fucking call you!

LAUGHTER

You were late, you useless shitbag!

Like I was desperate, I was so...

Pacing about thinking, "Oh, my God, I'd better call him about the gig."

"Davies calls me"!

"Davies calls me and climbs halfway up the ladder."

"Looks like rain again."

Ohh, dear.

"A few days later, Davies punches me in the face."

-Hashtag #celebrityproblems.

-Yeah.

Erm... It's...

It's 15 years ago, it still pisses me off!

THEY LAUGH

APPLAUSE

Oh, dear!

So, yeah, the weekend starting now.

Well, it is actually a fairly modern concept...

-Is it?

-..ish, yeah.

Yeah, in The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists,

they work six days a week, they don't work on Sunday, of course.

And then they have one day's holiday a year.

-Yeah.

-And they go on a beano to Margate

-and get completely wankered.

-Mmm.

Magnificent work. It is a great...

-No, it is a great novel, it's a truly great novel.

-Brilliant book.

Robert Tressell wrote that, didn't he, just after the invention, if you like, of the weekend.

Before, for 300 years at least,

there'd been what was known as Saint Monday,

which was very much a holy day for workers on which they didn't work.

-Like a bank holiday.

-Yeah, every Monday.

It started in the 17th century,

you spent Monday with friends drinking and socialising.

I always feel slightly cheated if it's a bank holiday

and I haven't realised. About 12 o'clock, Spartacus comes on

and I go, "There's no-one on the streets."

THEY LAUGH

"Spartacus is on. It's got to be a bank holiday."

I have to phone my friends with jobs and go, "Is it a bank holiday?"

"Yeah, it is."

"Never had a job, you dick."

Yeah, after the Industrial Revolution introduced regular working hours,

factory workers adapted by routinely taking Monday off.

Those who DID turn up to work on Monday usually got sent home from factories

-cos there weren't enough people manning the machines.

-Wow.

-Yeah, surprising, isn't it?

-But a lot of people are still playing into that culture.

Yes, they are!

But, yeah, the weekend was introduced as a compromise from employers

to overcome this Saint Monday business, and they gave...

-Half of Saturday was off.

-Half of Saturday.

-And that's why football was a big thing.

-Yes, that's exactly right.

Because football was three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, so the factories would empty and...

Then they had Sunday off, so they had a day and a half that just became the weekend,

and then that slowly became the whole Saturday.

And that's why Saturday night became the big boozy night,

-cos you couldn't drink on a Sunday cos of God.

-Mmm, that's right.

-God was inflicted on people as a punishment for trying to have a nice time on their day off.

-Precisely!

"No, no, no, you've got to think about God, dress up and..."

Yeah. Thing is...

LAUGHTER

-I don't think that's...

-Shops weren't open until 1994.

-Those were the days.

-Cor!

Those were the days, when you couldn't get bread or milk,

I used to love those days.

Yes, thank God it's Friday,

but thank Saint Monday that you get the weekends off.

Now, I'm going to do something with my mouth.

What do you think?

HE INHALES TWICE

Yes or no?

Er, yes.

Yes is right.

-Oh, phew!

-That was yes.

THEY LAUGH

Well done.

In the Swedish town of Umea, that is "yes," to go...

HE INHALES TWICE

Which you can sort of do in English, going...

RAPIDLY INHALES: "Yeah, yeah, yeah..."

-Oh, that's their way of saying yes?

-Yeah, their way of saying yes.

What's interesting is the idea that there may or may not be

a universal way of signalling yes or no.

Darwin was very interested in the idea,

and he looked all over the world to the different cultures to see

whether they nodded and shook for yes and no.

Mostly, it seems that nodding for yes and shaking for no...

Shaking for Timotei.

Yeah, indeed, in the middle.

And nodding for dandruff.

But there's a reason, some people think,

why it may be that there's a "yes" and a "no."

The babies, if you offer them food and they don't want it,

-what do they do?

-Yeah, they...

They turn their head away, they do that.

It's a shaking of the head, if you like, a kind of...

-I never do that.

-And if they want... No!

If they want food...

LAUGHTER

Oh, dear!

..they incline their heads if they want food.

They seem to incline their heads, generally speaking, around the world.

Is it, do you know, well, you grew up in Democratic Republic of Congo,

is there a "yes" and "no" head-shaking thing?

You know, my friend was in Ethiopia,

and she said she was at a restaurant,

and the guy was asking, "What foods do you have?"

-And he just kept going...

-HE SQUEAKS

-"Do you have any...?"

-HE SQUEAKS

So she's like, "I think he's having a panic attack!"

He goes, "No, they've got everything on the list."

-Literally, that was yes, their way of saying yes was...

-HE SQUEAKS

But in Africa in general, including Congo,

we have sound effects that we use.

You know, your mum, when she's going, "Ah-ha!",

it means she's agreeing.

When she goes, "Ah-ah!" it means she doesn't want it.

So, Dad will be like, "Darling, did you, you know, put the kids to bed?"

And she's like, "Ah-ha."

"So can you put me to bed?" "Ah-ah!"

-Very dramatic.

-And it literally is that, you see,

you'll see a lot of Africans, when they're talking, it's like,

"Ah-ah! Ah-ha!" "Ehh?" "Ohh!" "Ah-haaa!"

LAUGHTER

It looks like an argument,

but they're having the most pleasant conversation.

You mentioned Ethiopia there, cos actually, Darwin, one of the peoples he looked into were the Abyssinians,

as they were then called, and they apparently said "no" by jerking the head to the right shoulder

and making a slight cluck... HE CLUCKS HIS TONGUE

..while "yes" was expressed by the head being thrown backwards and the eyebrows raised for an instant.

But it's Bulgaria where the opposite is true,

that a nod means "no" and a head-shake means "yes."

What about if you're patting your head and rubbing your tummy?

What does that mean?

Too much time on your hands.

It means, "I'm available but don't touch me."

LAUGHTER

Now, why do you never see a mongoose and a rat together?

-Same person.

-Yeah.

BUZZER ALARM

Oh! Oh, no!

It was too good to be punished, I'm so sorry.

-That's really sad. SARAH:

-Do they just not get on?

Well, we're talking about their lifestyles.

Yeah.

One is day, one is night?

Exactly.

SHE GASPS

Rats are nocturnal, and mongoose...

-Mongooses, mongeese, are diurnal, they...

-Do they not, like, pass, like...

One's like, "Night-night," and the other's like... Yeah, yeah.

"Have a nice day - I've shat everywhere."

LAUGHTER

It was a particular issue in Hawaii.

They had a rat infestation,

so they decided to bring in some mongoose to deal with them.

-But...

-Playing the didgeridoo.

LAUGHTER

They brought in the mongoose to deal with the rat population,

and of course it didn't work,

because they lived at different times of day.

And so the mongoose also fed on the natural endemic birds of Hawaii,

and their populations went screaming down...

-Somebody should have worked that out before they did that.

-They should have done.

It was in the early-ish, mid-19th century,

when people were less knowledgeable about wildlife than they are now.

The people of Samoa were about to introduce to mongoose

to deal with their rat problem

when a resident of Hawaii wrote to them and said, "Don't do this, it's destroyed our birdlife even more."

So it saved Samoa.

That's why they invented the moon, to get rid of the sun.

LAUGHTER

-I think you're onto something there.

-Yeah.

It's... I'm loving it.

It was a mongoose that invented the moon.

There's one bird which,

surprisingly, they're very pleased has not thrived,

or thriven, in Hawaii,

and that's one of the most beautiful of all birds.

-The dodo.

-Peacock.

-Not the dodo, that's not thriving anywhere. SARAH:

-Flamingo. Tits.

-EDDIE:

-The robin.

-Peacock.

-The hummingbird, did you say?

NO, I said robin, but, yeah, I'll take hummingbird.

Hummingbird is the right answer, Eddie, well done.

You'd think, why would anybody not want to have hummingbirds?

But one of the main crops of Hawaii,

-out of which they make a lot of money...

-Pineapple.

..is the pineapple, absolutely right.

And hummingbirds are marvellous pollinators of pineapples,

but unfortunately if you pollinate it, it's filled with seeds and is much less juicy and much less tasty.

-Right.

-So they don't want hummingbirds.

I once ate a whole pineapple.

-DID you?!

-Yeah.

-Not the skin, though?

-No, no, I, like, you know...

I cored it and stuff, I didn't, like, eat the whole thing, just...

THEY LAUGH

That's what I imagined.

Just like that with the spiky top hanging out.

-NOEL:

-I thought like the Pope, you just fell over and swallowed...

THEY LAUGH

It was just after the Pope kissed her on the knockers.

-That's how I celebrated.

-"Imagine what I'd do with an entire pineapple!"

Now, what could you learn from a meerkat?

-EDDIE:

-Oh...

Oh! How to accessorise?

Well, clearly, very beautifully clothed.

-Not how to put mascara on.

-No, that's not impressive, is it?

Don't offer a cigarette to a drawing of a cat?

No!

THEY ALL LAUGH

What are meerkats a type of?

They're a type of meer, or possibly a type of kat.

LAUGHTER

-They're actually a sort of mongoose.

-Mongoose.

-Oh!

-A sort of mongoose.

-Do you know what they do?

-Is a mongoose a goose?

-The men fight...

-What's that one doing?

-What's he doing with his hands?!

-He's meering!

-EDDIE:

-Impression of a mongoose.

The males fight so that one becomes dominant, and then he has his pick

of the females, and he thinks he's in charge, and he'll usually

drive out the second most dominant one, and then he'll live on his own.

But the women sneak out to see him.

Oh, that's very sweet.

And that's how they keep mixing up the genes, you know?

-Yes, getting a diverse pool.

-The women sneak out.

I saw, there was a whole programme about it. It's quite funny.

They had quite funny little footage

of the women kind of sneaking out of the camp.

-Like, climbing down, like, knotted sort of...

-Yeah, basically, yeah!

And then she met up with Brian or whatever, and they did it,

they literally did it in a bush!

LAUGHTER

And then she went back to camp as if nothing had happened!

No woman would sneak out for a Brian!

No?!

-We're quite choosy.

-Animal magnetism.

Animal magnetism. That's the one.

The question asked was, "What do we learn from meerkats?"

-Well, if it's a driving instructor, it'll be driving.

-Yes...

Let's...let's suppose it isn't a driving instructor.

-Let's suppose they're in the wild, in Africa.

-Is it a danger thing?

We learnt they're one of the very few animals,

other than human beings, who teach their young.

-Oh, they have classes.

-Kind of do, yeah.

Ah! Little books and things.

They sacrifice time and effort, with no apparent gain to self, to teach.

That one's a supply teacher.

LAUGHTER

He's got that look!

They also gradually make their lessons harder for their pupil.

One of the things they have to teach them,

for example, is how to deal with a scorpion.

So they start by giving them a scorpion that's dead,

-then a live one with no sting.

-Oh, my God!

And then, finally, as you can see - there it is watching -

making sure that it's all going well,

if the scorpion escapes, it pushes it back in.

And then eventually they give one a scorpion with a sting,

so that they make sure their young pup...

The last lesson is, "Don't get in that square with a scorpion!"

Yeah! LAUGHTER

But I think it's rather...

If you see a square with a scorpion in it, go round it.

It is pretty impressive, isn't it?

It's amazing! And do any of the young die?

I think they're such good teachers,

-they know exactly what they're doing.

-Really?

-Yeah.

They don't give them a live one, even WITHOUT a sting,

until they're absolutely sure they can cope.

-And you would start on, like, your least favourite bairn. Wouldn't you?

-Yes!

While you were learning how to teach.

"He's boring, let's do him first. He's lazy."

And you'd keep your good bairn for the end.

Are you saying there's no bad students, only bad teachers?

I mean, imagine that. "You are ready." G-doong!

"Oh, you weren't ready, shit!"

"Brian!"

"I said a scorpion with no tail! Oh, God!"

But other animals teach. I mean, it seems that

formal teaching is clear in the ant world.

They engage in tandem running,

whereby a leader guides a pupil to a food store

like that. There we are.

The leader adjusts its speed of running, even though

it means getting to the food four times more slowly

just so the little one can catch up.

So you can see it's very clearly leading it,

and the other one's following.

They also count their strides to measure how far they've travelled.

It's easier on that cos they're on squared paper.

LAUGHTER

"This is a grid. Shit!"

Well, we've much to learn from ants and much to learn from meerkats.

And so to the fearful mess that we call General Ignorance.

Fingers on buzzers, please. How can I tell the age of this tree?

-Chop it down.

-CRASH!

-Yeah, count the rings.

-KLAXON Oh!

-Is that not right?

-Well, not really, no.

It's a sort of rough guide, but it doesn't really tell you the age.

-Well, it's still a rough guide. Maybe that's all I'm after!

-LAUGHTER

It's not all...

Maybe I don't care about accuracy, Stephen! Maybe I've got shit to do!

Did the question say...? LAUGHTER

I'm afraid the answer is extremely annoying.

There are some years when it doesn't put down rings

and other years when it puts down two, even three rings.

So it's very hard to tell precisely.

-Wow. As it's getting older, it starts lying.

-Yeah.

Not putting a ring down.

"Yeah, I'm doing it, I'm doing it.

"This ran out years ago, mate.

"32 again!"

Dendrochronologists give a very annoying answer.

They say the most reliable way to tell the age of a tree

-is to find out when it was planted.

-Yeah(!)

-Oh, shut up!

-I know! It's not my answer, it's their answer.

-Passport!

-Yeah!

But some are a little too old to be able to do that.

In 2012 there was a seed,

that was the oldest seed ever known

successfully to germinate. How old do you think it was?

-DECISIVELY:

-1 million years!

-No.

-You said it like an evil genius there!

"Mr Bond"(!) No,

it wasn't a million years...

-36...

-32,000.

-Oh.

-You were going to say 36,000?

-Yeah.

It was 32,000. So you were jolly close.

They used carbon dating and that sort of thing.

30 metres below the Siberian ice it was discovered,

in a fossilised squirrel burrow.

So it was probably buried there by a squirrel.

How annoyed would that squirrel be?

There was one in 2008 - a 2,000-year-old seed grew, and you may say that's not so impressive

but it sprouted into an extinct date palm.

-So that was rather wonderful. SARAH:

-Wow!

A new species came back to life. Yeah.

Now, what colour is the moon?

CRASH!

Black.

LAUGHTER

OK! Well...

The dark side of the moon.

-I'll accept black, cos it's...

-The dark side of the moon.

-Well, the sides are all the same colour.

-I know!

-It's a nice thought, dark side of the moon.

-But actually, all the moon is very, very dark grey.

-Yes.

Basically kind of charcoal. Almost black.

Not a light grey and not a silvery colour. I mean, of course we get light...

It's weird, cos you can't get grey cheese.

LAUGHTER

Right. I hadn't thought of that.

Yeah.

It's quite bright, but not as bright as the Earth.

A full Earth seen from the moon

is a lot brighter

than a full moon seen from the Earth.

That's cos people leave their lights on.

That's probably the reason, yeah, yeah.

So the moon is very dark grey. But - what colour is the sun?

I've heard it's...green.

-Not bad...

-Tartan?

Oh, you were doing so well, Noel. Tartan(!)

Well, on the Farrow and Ball colour chart...

-Yes?

-..it's mushroom.

Well, it is actually a kind of turquoise, so green is not bad.

-Is it?

-It's bluey-green.

-Turquoise?

-It emits photons of all the colours.

-Like a blue flame.

But slightly more blue-green photons than any other,

-so it is, you know, a slightly blue/green tint.

-That is not fair.

-The moon and the sun are just playing with us.

-Well, yes!

-It would actually look white from space, more or less totally white.

-Right.

-As it does at noon if you looked at it from the ground.

-Like a star.

-But don't, obviously.

Yeah, the sun is white with a hint of turquoise.

What is "agoraphobia"?

Ah, now, that's... Now, hang on...

"Wait a second, I'm not going to get suckered into this!"

You've spelt it different or something, have you?

-No...

-It's a bit like when Phil Brown said, "Why does Andrea Pirlo

"not leave Italy and play in the Premier League?

"Why does he want to stay in Italy? Is it because he's homophobic?"

LAUGHTER

He thought "homophobic" meant he was afraid of leaving home!

-Well, it kind of makes sense.

-Out loud, on live radio.

It was absolutely brilliant.

Is it a fear of really fluffy rabbits?

No! "Angoraphobia", very good.

Thanks.

-Agoraphobia...?

-Yeah. Most people think "agoraphobia"

means a fear of open spaces.

"Agora" is the Greek for the marketplace,

the equivalent of the Roman forum, it's the open place.

But apparently in psychiatry,

agoraphobia can be a fear of any kind of space you don't like.

So claustrophobia is a kind of agoraphobia.

Other phobias...

Do you know, according to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in North Carolina,

80% of high-rise buildings in America do not have what?

Windows.

No. 80%...

A lift.

-We're talking about phobias...?

-A 13th floor.

80% of buildings in America do not have a 13th floor.

So what happens when they come here? Americans, and they see, like, "13th floor."

-"I'm not staying in this hotel!"

-No, they won't.

Or at least they won't want to be on the 13th floor, they won't want the room on the 13th floor.

"You're principally unlucky... because you're American."

LAUGHTER

Now...!

APPLAUSE

Alfred Hitchcock had a very powerful fear - of...?

There is a word for it.

-Hummus.

-LAUGHTER

Might as well have been.

It was alektorophobia. "Alektorophobia", not "electro-".

-It's all the more extraordinary that he made the film The Birds...

-People called Alec.

No, not people called Alec. It's not a fear of birds, but it's a fear of something birds produce.

-Eggs.

-Eggs, he had a fear of eggs.

-Never ate one...

-Really? He used to weep around omelettes.

He actually looks scared in that picture,

as if you'd shown him the eggs.

-I'd be scared if an egg that size was coming...

-That's true, it's a big egg.

And all that's left now is the rather messy business of the scores.

HE GASPS DRAMATICALLY

I've got a fear of the scores.

Well, don't have, because...

in last place, with minus 15 is Sarah Millican, I'm afraid!

APPLAUSE

In third place, with a jolly minus 14, is Noel Fielding!

APPLAUSE

With a highly impressive minus 4, in second place, Eddie Kadi.

APPLAUSE

It can only mean one astonishing thing.

In first place, with minus 1, Alan Davies.

CHEERING

Well!

That's this mess cleaned up.

So we thank Eddie, Noel, Sarah, Alan and me.

In the words of that prolific writer, Anne Onymous,

"Chaos, panic and disorder.

"My work here is done." Goodnight.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING