Noble Rot QI XL

This programme contains some strong language

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Oh, how nice. Thank you very much.

How lovely!

Welcome to QI, where tonight it's a lot of noble rot with knobs on.

Nibbling at the upper crust are the incomparable king of comedy,

Jason Manford.

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-Hello, hello.

The quintessential queen of quips, Sara Pascoe.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The peerless prince of pleasantries, Jeremy Clarkson.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And Lordy, Lordy, it's Alan Davies.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Right. Please ring down for service.

Jason goes...

SMALL BELL TINKLES

Sarah goes...

SCHOOL BELL RINGS

Jeremy goes...

LARGE BELL CLANGS

And Alan goes...

ACAPELLA SINGING

# Ring-a-ding, ring-a-ding

# Ring-a-ding, ring-a-ding-ding Ring, ring, ring... #

Let's start off by hobnobbing with a top nob.

Name a nobleman who invented a hot drink you might enjoy with a hobnob.

-JEREMY:

-Coffee Annan.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

That's a drink and a snack, I think.

-Baron Horlicks?

-Very good.

Hobnobs, of course, are an impostor

and no nobleman would have had a hobnob.

-No, that is true.

-They have the air of a classic.

They do, and yet it's a PR invention.

Actually, they're a kind of '70s hallucination.

OK. So this hot drink is also a kind of PR invention,

which we call by the name of a Lord, but it isn't really.

-Earl Grey.

-Earl Grey.

-It is Earl Grey.

It is a black tea which has been flavoured with bergamot oil,

and it is named after Earl Grey.

Almost certainly nothing to do with it.

Even though I think it continues to say so on the packaging.

What about Lady Grey?

-I like Lady Grey.

-I was going to ask that. That's lovely, that one.

Well, you and me both! But... LAUGHTER

-It's not a euphemism, it's an actual tea!

-Oh, I see.

I'm not into Earl Grey.

-Why's that?

-It's like someone's melted some pot pourri in a cup.

The fact it smells exactly like it tastes is weird.

Yeah. You do know you're drunk at a party

if you're eating the pot pourri, don't you?

POT pourri, he started this.

-POT pourri.

-POT pourri is how it's said, isn't it, Jason?

Oh, why, is there another pronunciation of it?

-I'm going to say Po Pourri.

-Oh, I see.

Po Pourri. I don't know, we don't have it in our house.

-Have you eaten it?

-We just have a Magic Tree.

From the car.

It's all over your shirt, Jason, it's all over your shirt!

Do we know why it's been named after Earl Grey?

-I've no idea.

-Indeed, that is correct.

-He insisted.

No, he was probably dead 40 years when somebody first came up with it.

Oh, like Jesus.

LAUGHTER

If I'd said that I'd be in so much... He probably will be.

LAUGHTER

Anybody know what Earl Grey IS famous for?

When was he alive?

Well, I can tell you when he was in government, which is from 1830-1834.

-Was it a law? Was it a movement?

-It is a law.

OK, so 1830...

-1832 there was an important law. What was that one, Jeremy?

-Yes.

-In 1830...

-Corn Laws. Repealing the Corn Laws.

-It's the Great Reform Act.

-The police...

-That's it!

-Great Reform Act...

# Ring-a-ding, ring-a-ding... #

-Yes?

-The Great Reform Act of 1832.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Yes. So the reforming government extended the right to vote

and got rid of the rotten boroughs, when there were, maybe,

only nine voters returning a member of Parliament,

so it helped to re-establish the authority of Parliament.

But it was also that he led the most nepotistic government

in British history. OK?

It was described as the most

aristocratic administration that has ever been formed.

All but one of his 13 Cabinet members were either peers

or heirs to a peerage and, in the lower ranks,

-large numbers of his own family.

-Did they call it 50 Shades Of Grey?

They should have done. LAUGHTER

-They would have been ahead of the game.

-And pretty sexy.

I don't...

Tea, of course, the great British cure-all.

There are some historians who consider that tea ought to take

credit for the fact that the Industrial Revolution

happened first in Britain. Why might that be?

-Caffeine.

-What, keeping you awake?

-Yes.

-No, it's not that.

-What was the question?

No, I was, I'm a bit deaf.

-I'm so glad you joined us.

-You're mocking the afflicted.

-Not at all.

-That's my job!

SHE SHOUTS: Some historians take a view...

Yep.

It was last Tuesday! LAUGHTER

There are historians who take a view that tea is responsible

for the Industrial Revolution. Why might it be?

-A determination to get tea here quickly?

-No.

So, industrialisation, what happens is you get a concentration

of the population in cities and that usually leads to epidemics.

However, in Britain

the health got better rather than worse in cities...

Oh, cos they were boiling the water?

-Because they were boiling the water.

-They didn't have the germs.

Exactly right. So other foods associated, I don't know,

more or less plausibly with eponymous nobles?

Baron Kit Kat?

A Baron Kit Kat sounds like one without chocolate on it, doesn't it?

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Beef Wellington. Beef Wellington!

-Good one.

-Which I find too rich. Does anybody like beef Wellington?

-I like it, me.

-Do you?

-Yeah, we didn't get it much at school.

-Did you not?

-I've grown into the taste, yeah.

Battenberg cake, which was created especially for

the marriage of Prince Louis of Battenberg in 1884.

Are we looking for titled people who give their names to food?

Well, yes. That would be ideal.

LAUGHTER

Wellington.

I will catch up with you in about five minutes.

LAUGHTER

It's a new thing. Honestly, have you tried being deaf?

It's bloody difficult!

-You can't...

-Sorry?

-It is.

Put your fingers in your ears. It's all just like I'm underwater.

-I'll lean forwards like that then I can stay in tune.

-If you say so.

Anyway. Moving on.

One way to get a good job is to be a nobleman's nephew.

But how can you improve your job prospects by getting nicked?

Is this Duke of Marlborough type stuff?

No. Not particularly.

We have to think about other words for...

Oh! So if you're trying to get a job, and it would be good if you

got nicked, maybe the job is, like, testing how sharp paper is.

-OK.

-And are people going to get paper cuts? That meaning of nicked.

-That would be a great job. I would like that.

-Just work with paper

all day, like - those ones are too sharp.

That one's lovely.

What about when you lick an envelope and you cut your lip?

-Oh!

-Yeah. That would be, like, for the boss person

to do that one, with tongues involved.

Half your face falls off.

-Yeah.

-OK, weirdly...

-That's how the Joker got like that.

-Weirdly...

-An envelope accident.

-..you are in the right area.

-Excellent.

-..of cutting your face.

Shaving! Shavers!

-No.

-Razors!

-Barber!

-No, it's nothing to do with shaving.

It is until the Second World War

the tradition of duelling with swords was absolutely woven

into the fabric of life in the higher echelons of society.

We are talking about the German-speaking world,

I should be specific.

And the professional classes,

they wore the resulting scars on their cheeks as badges of honour.

And even today there's about 160 student duelling clubs.

We can have a look at them fighting here.

So one of the things is you mustn't move.

You're not allowed to move your feet at all.

You have to keep your left hand behind your back.

-Are they beekeepers or...?

-LAUGHTER

They're a bit like Freemasons.

And so the old boys of these duelling clubs,

they absolutely dominate lots and lots of the jobs in big business.

And you can see it's very ritualised,

and they have these extraordinary get-togethers.

They sing patriotic songs and they have such prodigious

beer-drinking contests that they have special puking basins.

Is this before the fight?

I'm very much hoping it's afterwards.

-I very much...

-That would be great, drunk-duelling.

-I'd like to see that.

-I think you did that on about series 16

of Top Gear, didn't you?

LAUGHTER

And the scars, they're known as schmitte,

or Renommierschmisser,

and they're known as bragging scars.

-HE SLURS:

-I was really drunk...

They were terrible injuries.

In 1566 the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe

lost his nose to a fellow student.

Sorry, he was an astronomer?

A famous Danish astronomer. So I'm trying on each show, Jason,

to put in a random Scandinavian fact.

-Good.

-Which I call my Randy Scandi.

LAUGHTER

He lost his nose and he had to wear a brass

-prosthetic for the rest of his life.

-Brass?

-Brass, yeah.

You'd look a bit ridiculous going through airport metal detectors.

That's right. They couldn't get a better nose replacement than brass,

but there were aeroplanes.

-LAUGHTER

-He can't hear.

This is the best, we can say anything we want about Jeremy

and he can't hear us.

LARGE BELL CHIMES

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

-Can we get Jeremy a trumpet, one of those trumpets?

-Yes!

I want to get back to his nose.

Why did they fit a brass one?

-It's a talking point, isn't it?

-They had chewing gum in those days.

-How did they fit it?

-There was an adhesive,

but he is said to have had a green line on his face

where the adhesive... And it's possible he also had

a special gold or silver one for parties.

He's an interesting guy.

He was really concerned about the look of things,

and it is possible that he died from extremely good manners.

So 1601, he was at a banquet, and it wasn't the thing,

when you are at a banquet, to excuse yourself to go and wee.

And he may or may not have died of a burst bladder.

Or maybe he was doing coke?

Again...

Which would probably be really tricky with a brass nose.

-Yeah.

-I think I'd have denim.

LAUGHTER

Or gingham for parties.

LAUGHTER

Like kitchen curtains. There's a hole!

LAUGHTER

Or you'd have a miniature sword...

LAUGHTER

"Look, madam, look at my rapier!"

Terrible if you're trying to get off with someone.

"Oh, sorry!"

Unless they'd lost their nose as well, and they had a little shield.

That's how you'd know you were made for each other.

Literally, been made for each other.

Duelling scars were so valued that people sometimes inflicted them

on themselves, or they would stuff horsehair into the wound,

pour red wine onto it, they wanted it to be as prominent as possible.

And having a manly scar was once thought to make one

good marriage material.

So would you be more or less likely to go out with somebody,

-Sara, who had a scar? Particularly on the face.

-I'm not scarrist.

-No.

I mean, I would like to say I'm not that shallow at all

-and I go for personality.

-Yeah, but...

But, love a man with a scar.

Well, there's been recent research on this which is really interesting

-which suggest that women do indeed favour men with scars.

-Do they?

But for short-term relationships.

Oh, yeah, women tend to change their tastes when they're ovulating.

-Do you know about these studies?

-No.

And they think it comes from our multi-partnering history where

essentially we pair up with guys who would make, if we're straight,

good fathers, but when we're ovulating,

we fancy something a big bigger and rougher.

-The one with the scar.

-Yeah.

It depends how we got the scar, really.

My scar is from a clutch pedal going through my leg on a lorry.

But that's not interesting...

# Sexy! #

This is why we've sat you two far apart.

I don't go around saying, "No, this scar was from saving

"a school bus full of children and a tiger came."

That would be quite good. That's a good scar.

But, "I had an accident in a lorry

"and the clutch pedal went through my leg" is dreary, don't you think?

You say that but I'm actually ovulating at the moment

and I find it...

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Anybody think women did duelling, or just a boy's thing?

Have you been to the Bigg Market in Newcastle on a Saturday night?

I hope that women did do duelling as well.

Yeah, they did. It was called petticoat duels

and possibly the most famous...

ALAN MIMICS GUNSHOT

LAUGHTER

A kind of a snatch-and-grab!

LAUGHTER

Never thought of hiding a pistol there.

So the most famous one, 1892 in Austria,

it was a topless duel...

Oh, that's brilliant! Channel 5, where are you?

LAUGHTER

..between Princess Metternich and Countess Kielmannsegg

and what I love about it, it's said to have been caused by

a disagreement over a flower arrangement.

Any excuse.

That sounds like, "Yeah, well, I don't like the flowers,

"so get your top off!"

LAUGHTER

I'll duel you!

Apparently both the women were worried that if they were wounded

and some fabric got into the wound it would get infected.

It's the very first emancipated duel, in that every single person

who took part, all the seconds, the two duellers

and indeed the medic, were all women.

It's hard to say who won.

The Princess, she was injured first, on the nose,

so the Countess got first blood, as it were.

But she was then injured on the arm which is a better wound.

So there's points for where you cut the person, then?

-Who does better.

-OK.

As long as you come out with both your nipples

I'm sure you'll be all right.

Oh!

LAUGHTER

Milk everywhere.

AUDIENCE GROANS

Boobs aren't full of milk!

That's not why we have...

Do you suppose that there's milk all the time?

We've got a baby in the house, there's milk everywhere.

Boobs are sometimes full of milk.

Possibly not those four.

Perhaps they weren't at the time of the duel.

LAUGHTER

"Stop it!"

"Stop it!"

"You are perforated."

I often wonder how we get to where we do.

LAUGHTER

The rule for German businessmen is, "You scratch my cheek

"and I'll scratch yours." How can you tell a nob from a yob?

So we were talking about PO pourri and POT pourri.

How would you know your upper-class from your not so upper-class?

Would they say he's a YOBE?

A NOBE and a YOBE.

It is absolutely to do with what you say.

So in 1954 there was a linguistics professor at Aston University

in Birmingham called Alan Ross. And he devised the terms

U and non-U to distinguish speech patterns

of the English upper classes and what they, unfortunately, called

the lower social strata.

The following year, Nancy Mitford, the extraordinary...

one of the Mitford sisters - there she is on the right there

with her sisters Unity and Diana -

she picked this up in an essay and she said that, nowadays,

you couldn't tell the upper classes, cos they were no longer

cleaner, richer or better-educated than anybody else.

It was principally by language,

and this caused tremendous anxiety in the middle-classes.

So the question is, would you use loo paper or toilet paper?

Bog roll!

LAUGHTER

Do you know, it really is an interesting question.

I was away last week, I was Namibia, and I went up to the man,

cos we were camping. I said, "Have you got any bog roll?"

And he went, "What?" Like, it obviously doesn't work in Namibia.

And I was actually flummoxed, thinking, "Now, what do I say?"

What did you do, did you mime?

-Yes, I did.

-Did you?

Rather than say loo roll.

Which is just... I know.

LAUGHTER

That's the whole thing with powder rooms, wasn't it,

so women never had to say where's the bathroom or the toilet.

The best I heard from that, I had a girlfriend years ago,

went to see a very posh friend of mine.

And his mother, when she got there, this girlfriend of mine, said,

"Would you like to look in a mirror?"

Which means would you like to go and have a piss. But...

-What?

-It can mean "Do you want a line of coke?"

Depends what party you're at.

-Here's an interesting fact about wiping your bum.

-Yes.

I worked this out on the last tour of mine, right.

Half the population, right, when they're wiping their bottom,

they stand up, a hand goes back and they wipe, right.

And the other half, they stay sat down and reach in and have a wipe.

And the weirdest thing is one half, until I just said it now,

didn't even know the other half existed.

-How did you get inspired to start this survey?

-Yeah.

How did you know about the other people?

I think I just walked in on someone.

LAUGHTER

I was like, "What are you doing?"

"This is how you wipe your bum." I went, "It isn't, watch this."

LAUGHTER

So this is a survey based on two people?

LAUGHTER

-I started mentioning it on tour.

-Oh, started mentioning it...

-And I noticed that... We'll do it now.

-OK.

-Right.

LAUGHTER

If you stand up after you've finished and wipe your bottom...

-Yeah.

-..give me a cheer.

AUDIENCE CHEERS

If you stay sat down and reach in and wipe your bottom,

-give us a cheer.

-AUDIENCE CHEERS

50-50. It's weird! It's weird!

APPLAUSE

I didn't think it is 50-50.

I thought the ones who sit down were a slightly camper noise.

LAUGHTER

When you go to a festival or any outdoor event,

what is it that causes somebody to sit down on the lavatory

and then completely mess up all the rest of it?

"What shall I do with that? I'll throw it on the floor.

"Then I'll completely unravel all the rest of the bog and then,

"somehow, get all that blue stuff all over the seat."

You think, do you do that at home? I mean, how...?

LSD! They're on LSD.

Ah!

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

I'm in a blue box!

I'm more suspicious.

I think they might have known that you were behind them in the queue.

LAUGHTER

It's every one of them! Every single one you ever go.

They can't all imagine I'm in there.

Although somebody did once push one of those things over

when I was in it. Yes, they did know it was me.

-Did they?

-At least you can stand up.

For women it's really difficult because you sort of have to hover.

And I remember one time I went to the ladies,

and the lock didn't quite work. This is a very tricky

moment for a woman, because you have to sort of hover...

LAUGHTER

And I...so obsessed with not making a mess on the seat, I thought,

"Oh, sod it, I'll just sit down." And as I sat down

the door burst open and a woman came straight in

and she went, "Oh, I'm so sorry." And then she shut the door again.

And then she burst it open again

and she went, "You're Sandi Toksvig. Can I...?"

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

"Give us a minute!"

Let's find out which side of the tracks you were born on.

Let's play Posh Or Becks.

SWINGING JAZZ-STYLE JINGLE

Are you going to be Posh or are you going to be Becks? OK.

Question, you get a bit squiffy at a do,

what's the one thing you shouldn't do?

Don't mention your allegiance to the Nazis.

It depends which sister you're out with, really.

Is it anything to do with being ill?

-No, it's to do with being argumentative.

-Oh, don't...

So, don't have an argument.

What Nancy said was, "When drunk, gentlemen often become amorous,

"or maudlin or vomit in public but they never become truculent."

So when you're drunk, next time, think, "I'm not doing truculent.

"Truculent is not happening."

So, tell me what you can see here

and make sure you watch your Ps and Qs.

So, let's start on the left, what do you see?

-Tutu.

-It's not to do with the clothing, it's to do with the...

-Ballerina.

-There are boys and there are...

-Girls.

-Girls.

So, if you are posh, you pronounce girl to rhyme with hell. "Gehl."

Or Hal, "gal." Not to rhyme with curl, not girl.

That's a Bridgestone tyre,

that's probably not relevant, though, is it?

LAUGHTER

Nothing wrong with your eyes, Jeremy.

So, what's the next one, next to the gal, what's the next one?

-That would be a golf ball.

-It's a "gof" ball, though.

-Absolutely.

I don't want to be technical as well

but golf balls aren't usually that big.

No, it's really more for the purposes of illustration.

It depends where you're stood.

If you're stood down the fairway, it probably does look that big.

-It is without the L if you are posh.

-Gof?

-Gof ball.

Well, they're saying it wrong!

I mean, that's not posh and common, that's right and wrong.

It has got an L in it.

I heard somebody refer the other day to the Alps as the "Awps".

The poshest person I've ever heard.

What about the next one, what about the Bridgestone?

-A "tahr".

-Tahr.

-Tahr.

Tahr, yeah. And the next one?

"Larn." Larn. To rhyme with barn.

You have to say these things

as if you have got a "gof" ball in your mouth.

Anyway, what's so darn shocking about this map?

-Is "darn" important?

-Darn is very important, yeah.

-So it's something to do with knitting?

-No, not that kind of darn.

In the United States what might darn be for?

-Darn!

-Darn!

-People who say "darn"?

Yes, people who say "darn". It's a euphemism for "damn" from 1781.

And this is its Gi-z score.

OK.

LAUGHTER

It's statistics, people.

LAUGHTER

There was an analysis done of nine billion words in...

-Nine billion...

-..in America.

-..ejaculations!

LAUGHTER

Blue's bad, but orange is really bad!

LAUGHTER

Nine billion words in American tweets and then they geocoded them,

so they analysed where they are, pinpointing it on a map.

And then they displayed them as heat maps.

So this is "darn".

And if you look at the more the word is used, the darker the red colour.

And the less it's used, the darker the blue.

So it shows that darn is used very heavily

in the northern-central states, well, in tweets, at the least.

-Is that Kansas right in the middle?

-Yes.

Oklahoma's the one with the sticky-out side bit.

-Yes, you've totally got the hang of America.

-I know some of these.

Utah. I'm quite good at these.

We don't know where you're pointing!

New York, California, Florida. Got them all, got them all.

The genius Joan Rivers said that

intelligence was something to do with proximity to water.

She said, "If you look at the United States,

"you get a lot of clever people on the coast,

"and then it goes clever, dumber, dumber, dumber,

"Kansas."

LAUGHTER

So have a look at this one.

What word do you think this map represents?

It's another American swearword.

"Golly".

You're close, it's "gosh".

-Gosh.

-Gosh.

-Gosh darn!

So heavily used around Texas -

you can see where the red is and hardly at all up in New England.

They don't use "gosh" very much.

-I like these ones.

-Is this words that people use when they jizz?

Is that what it is?

-LAUGHTER

-"Gosh!"

LAUGHTER

"Gosh darn it!

"I'm sorry, Miss Ellen."

This show's changing, isn't it?

Yeah. And I'm just trying to wrestle it back.

So have a look at this one.

Very heavily used in New England,

hardly used in the south-east at all.

-Goddamn!

-It's "asshole"!

-Asshole.

-Asshole. Of course.

-That and...

-Do they not use it, then?

-They don't say "asshole" in Arkansas?

-Georgia.

-Or the Carolinas?

-Not used in Florida.

-It's not used in Montana, cos there's nobody there.

-That's true.

It's not often you see a map of the Gi-z score for "asshole", is it?

LAUGHTER

Not now Stephen's gone.

LAUGHTER

So here's the question.

Do you think that people who swear a lot are more articulate

or less articulate?

-More.

-Why?

Cos they've got more words.

That's exactly right. No, it's exactly right.

Like "wank" and "bloody", and things like that.

People who don't swear haven't got those words.

You were doing so well,

and now you're hardly going to appear in the programme at all.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

-It's just going to be you going, "What?"

-What?

It's since I started wearing cardigans my ears have gone wrong.

-Is that what it is?

-Yeah.

-I think you're putting them on wrong.

LAUGHTER

No, there's a swearing fluency test,

and if you do the test and you ask people to write down how many

swear words they can think of in two minutes,

the people who will succeed best are the people who are the most

articulate, although it depends what language you speak, so Japanese,

very, very few swear words.

Dutch bargees, they can swear uninterrupted, most of them,

for two minutes without repetition or hesitation.

-Can they really?

-Yeah. Dutch is really good.

-They've got, what's that word, "Swaffelen".

-What does it mean?

Well, you certainly couldn't say it on Dutch television.

It means to bang your penis against the Taj Mahal.

LAUGHTER

Who amongst us hasn't had that urge?

Jeremy, when I finish this show,

if I get into trouble for googling that, I'm coming after you.

LAUGHTER

-How many swear words roughly do you think we have in English?

-200.

-48.

-I'd say 107.

-Yeah, but you invented about half of them.

-Borrowed from the Dutch.

-Alan's the closest, actually only about 20.

It is actually not as many as you'd think.

The people who had the most swear words were the Romans.

They had about 800. So if you compare that to our 20...

We're doing all right.

We use swear words between 0.3 and 0.7% of the time.

Actually, it's not all that common.

-I think Jeremy's listing swear words.

-I'm way past 20.

-Are you?

-JASON:

-Press the red button now to see what they all are.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Can you make sure that for the next recording, this book's thrown away?

It's just that anyone who opens it up is going to be

a bit surprised by what I've written down there.

You could just sign it, Jeremy,

and then nobody would be the least bit surprised.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Anyway. Moving on.

What can't you have knobs on in Canada?

-Furniture.

-Sort of.

It's against the law in some places.

Isn't everything against the law in Canada, really?

They're very polite, Canadians, they're like America with manners.

They are incredibly nice and Vancouver always wins the best place

in the world to live, because nothing ever happens there.

-OK, so it is Vancouver that we need to be in.

-Oh.

And it was a law passed in 2014.

-Doorknobs.

-Doorknobs, yes.

You cannot have doorknobs at all in Vancouver.

-Are they trapped inside?

-They can't get out.

LAUGHTER

Has anyone heard from anyone from Vancouver in the last year?

"It's the best place to live in the world,

"we won't let you out again!"

No new buildings, domestic or commercial, is allowed to have

doorknobs on them. They can only have levers. Why might that be?

Is it when it gets caught in your pocket as you wander past?

Really annoying, isn't it?

No, it's to do with the elderly and the infirm.

-They can't turn the knobs.

-Arthritic hands.

Yes! The idea is to make all buildings work for everybody,

so that you don't have doorknobs any more.

Anyway, a year before the ban was introduced

there was a pro-knob lobby.

Who were up in arms about the incursions of the nanny state.

And the president of the Antique Doorknob Collectors Of America,

Allen Joslyn, said, "To say that when I build my private home

"and nobody is disabled, that I have to put levers on

"strikes me as overreach."

And they do have one rather telling objection,

because the advantage of door levers is not restricted to

the old and the infirm. So, operating a doorknob requires

-pronation and supination of the wrist.

-Yeah, a dog can get in.

That's the point.

To be fair, that dog deserves to be able to open a door.

Yeah, that's true.

-If that's skills he's got.

-But they prefer levers to knobs

because if you haven't got an opposable thumb

you can't possibly work it.

However, there is a county in Colorado, Pitkin County,

which has gone the opposite way to Vancouver and banned all levers.

You can only have doorknobs. Why might that be?

-Bears.

-Absolutely right. It is bears.

Look at them. "We can't get in, what are we going to do?"

"I'll pick you up. You go through the window."

LAUGHTER

If you want to keep bears and old people out of your house,

hang on to your doorknobs. And now to one of nature's aristocrats.

-Alan, would you say you were nice and natural?

-Yes.

KLAXON

Oh, you're doing yourself down, that's the trouble.

Oh, I'm not nice or natural? Look at that idiot.

So, the word nice has completely reversed its meaning.

It used to be an insult, it's the nasty thing you'd say to somebody.

Yeah, it's derived from the Latin for ignorant

and it originally meant foolish or silly,

and up until the 17th century

to call somebody nice was always critical and negative.

It could also mean wanton.

And then in 17th, 18th century, you begin to get

the modern sense of the word as being a nice thing.

-They started to appreciate wanton people a bit more.

-Exactly.

"She's nice."

-"Oh, thanks."

-Yes, she is.

And an earlier meaning of a natural was a born fool or idiot.

That's our family at Christmas.

LAUGHTER

So, there used to be a natural idiot or a natural fool,

that used to be the thing.

Now a natural is a person who is naturally talented,

-you say, he's a natural at doing something.

-The natural.

-Anybody remember the term "The necessary?"

-Lavatorial, wasn't it?

Yes, so a necessary woman was a lavatory attendant,

-somebody who worked in the loo.

-Oh, really?

But there seems to be a tendency for words meaning fool

to start with an N.

Have a look at this list of words and see if you can spot

whether any of them don't mean fool.

Numpty, nincompoop. Noddy.

-They're great, aren't they?

-Ninny-whoop, I like that one.

-Which one did you say not?

-Noddy.

No, there's only one that doesn't meaning fool. What did you say?

-Ning-nang.

-Ning-nang, it was a useless racehorse.

Gosh darn ning-nang!

Goddamn ning-nang!

In the old days, nice and natural meant stupid, twice over.

What should have won a Nobel Prize but didn't?

Oh. Rosalind Franklin.

-Ah, well, people do say that because of DNA.

-Yes.

In fact the absolute case of it is that

they never awarded them posthumously

-and she had already passed away.

-She'd already died.

But it's somebody unbelievably famous, a scientific discovery.

-Einstein.

-General relativity.

-It is absolutely Einstein

-and it's the theory of?

-Relativity.

-The theory of relativity is right.

-APPLAUSE

-She said that.

Did you say it? I didn't hear, I apologise.

Deafness is a cruel mistress.

He did win the physics prize

but it was for his work on the photoelectric effect.

He just didn't get the one for...

He won the prize for rubbing balloons on your head

and sticking them to the ceiling.

So, Einstein was nominated every year for a decade

-for his work on relativity.

-Oh, wow.

-He's like the Leonardo DiCaprio of his day.

-Yeah.

And he really needed to win because he had promised the prize money

as part of the divorce settlement to his wife.

That's a brilliant one to tell the lawyers.

"I'm going to win the Nobel Prize, I'll be all right."

-Quite confident.

-But because there was

no experimental confirmation of his theory,

and also because there's, possibly there was an anti-Semitic faction,

they just excluded him every single year.

Then in 1919, a man called Arthur Eddington

measured the defection of light during a solar eclipse

and he proved what Einstein had been saying four years earlier.

And even so, they cast Eddington's measurements into doubt

and then they gave him the physics prize for something different,

they just didn't want to give it to him for the theory of relativity.

Anyway, what's great is that when news of Eddington's experiment broke,

the New York Times sent their only reporter in London to meet him.

It was a man called Henry Crouch and he was their golf correspondent.

And he hadn't the faintest idea what Eddington was talking about.

So he filed the most classic bit of hope-for-the-best journalese.

He wrote, "Lights all askew in the heavens,

"men of science more or less agog

"over results of eclipse observations.

"Einstein theory triumphs, stars not where they seemed

"or were calculated to be but nobody need worry."

LAUGHTER

Very good.

-That was very lively journalism for the period.

-It was great, wasn't it?

-From a golf correspondent.

-Very good journalism.

-It is wonderful.

The theory of relativity never got a Nobel Prize

because it was only a theory.

What did the royal families of Europe

wear under their uniforms during the 19th century?

Pot pourri.

They were naked.

No! KLAXON

They had rather fine underwear.

-Armour.

-What was the question? I've forgotten this one as well.

What did royal families of Europe wear

-under their uniforms during the 19th century?

-Silk undies.

It's closer to the skin even than your underwear.

Lice.

LAUGHTER

Just loads of lice moving around.

That that's even a thought in your head is a worry.

No. Decorative.

-Tattoos.

-Tattoos is exactly right.

There was a craze for tattoos.

According to the Harmsworth monthly pictorial magazine,

the Grand Duke Alexei of Russia was most elaborately tattooed.

And they were lots of them - Prince and Princess Valdemar of Denmark,

Queen Olga of Greece, King Oscar of Sweden,

the Grand Duke Konstantin

and, in fact, also in the UK, King Edward VII,

and his son George V.

Edward VII had five crosses, which he had done on a visit to Jerusalem

when he was the Prince of Wales, when he was 20.

And then George, his son, had the same design done

by the same artist 20 years later.

And my favourite story features a random Scandinavian,

a Randy Scandi of sorts,

Napoleon's marshal, Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte,

he was a revolutionary firebrand, and he rose to become

King of Sweden and Norway,

and had turned against Napoleon.

He reigned for 26 years after Bonaparte's deposition and

while he was king he never allowed doctors to see his naked torso.

And there is a reason, that became apparent after death,

when he was found to have a tattoo from his revolutionary days

that said, "Death to kings"!

LAUGHTER

And his heirs are the royal family of Sweden to this day.

Wow. I mean, a lot of people do regret tattoos, don't they?

Have you got any tattoos?

I haven't, no, I've never really liked my body so much

that I thought, "Oh, I'll decorate that."

LAUGHTER

But I did see a guy in our local pub once that had a tattoo here

that said, "Sarah,"

and then it was crossed out and then underneath it it said, "Chloe".

Oh, I remember him.

-All these regrets.

-Damn you, Chloe!

-Chloe can have him.

Some people are very passionate vegans,

and they get a tattoo about their veganism,

and tattoos are made from burned animal bones.

So themselves not vegan.

So you can go in and say, "I'd like a vegan tattoo, please?"

-Or go to a special...

-No, please tell me there aren't vegan tattoo places.

-There are, really?

-Yes.

-That's very funny.

That's 1,200 words in the Sunday Times next week right there.

LAUGHTER

-All life is material, Jeremy.

-It is basically, basically.

Anyway, lots of kings have had tattoos,

but we can't show you any for regal reasons!

AUDIENCE GROANS

-All right, that's enough!

-Thank you.

Now let's look at a noble gas.

What gas is being used to light up this sign?

It's neon, Sandi.

LARGE BELL CHIMES

KLAXON

-Well, now, hang on a minute.

-What were you going to say?

-I was actually going to say oxygen.

-No.

KLAXON

I actually thought I was going to get through my first-ever QI

-without one of those things. I blew it, that's it.

-Sorry about that.

-Anybody else?

-I was going to say argon.

-It is argon, you're absolutely right.

-Yes!

-APPLAUSE

-Hey! Thank you.

So, it depends on what colour you what, that's the thing,

not all neon signs contain neon.

Neon, of course, one of the noble gases,

so called because they don't react with other elements.

They rather hold themselves aloof from the other compounds.

They do not become truculent

no matter how much they've had to drink.

And several of the noble gases are used in lighting.

So if you wanted to use neon,

that would give a very distinctive red light.

There are other colours produced by other elements.

Or you could just colour the glass of the tube,

that's the other way, I suppose, you could manage to do this.

Now we descend from the airy mansions of the nobility

to the bleak basement that is general ignorance.

Fingers on buzzers, please.

What was this person's first name?

-Victoria.

-It is Queen Victoria...

KLAXON

-..but it isn't her first name.

-Oh!

She was born on 24th May...

Brian.

LAUGHTER

..and christened Brian.

Could it be something, Gertrude or something German?

It's Alexandrina.

She was named both after her godfather, Alexander I of Russia,

and her mother as well. When she was a child she was known as Drina...

-Are you writing that down as well?

-Yeah, it's nice.

He's got swear words and you're writing down history, which I like.

And when she became Queen, so 1837,

in the official documents she is originally Alexandrina Victoria,

and then she decided that she wanted her first name removed

and never to be used again.

But I think it was part of her wanting to be her own person,

because her very first royal act, when she was 18,

and she became queen,

was to have her bed moved out of her mother's bedroom

and to have her own bedroom.

That is quite old to still be sleeping in your mum's room.

-Especially if you're queen.

-Fair play, I'm in charge now.

It's weird when you get to know the nicknames that people have.

So in 2000, Nancy Reagan published a collection of letters

between herself and Ronnie, who was her husband for 52 years.

And the pet names are just excruciating.

Little Mommy, Your In-Love Gov, First Papa, Prexy,

and my favourite, Mommy Poo-Pants.

-Oh.

-That was one of the later ones.

LAUGHTER

-I've got a little bit of sick in my mouth.

-Have you?

-A little bit.

The Victorians were nearly the Drinians.

Under the Emperor Diocletian, the Roman Empire had four capitals,

please, name two of them.

Constantinople?

KLAXON

No. Any more for any more?

Not Constantinople.

-Rome.

-What had four capitals?

KLAXON The Roman Empire.

-London?

-Not Rome, not London.

Keep going, I don't think you're going to guess.

Venice, Tripoli, Florence.

Something Germania.

When he came to power, so 284 AD,

the Roman Empire, it was threatened to collapse

and he did this brilliant thing. He decided to do a tetrarchy,

and that is to be ruled by four emperors.

And so he had four capitals.

They were Nicomedia, which is in modern-day Turkey,

Sirmium, in modern-day Serbia.

Mediolanum, which is modern-day Milan.

And Augusta Treverorum, modern-day Trier.

And actually it worked so well

that Diocletian was the very first emperor to be able to retire.

He retired to the Dalmatian coast,

so that's modern-day Croatia, and he grew vegetables.

So that's the real moral about outsourcing.

-Yes.

-Don't get too stressed,

-give other people your job and grow some vegetables.

-Franchise!

-JASON:

-Just delegate, man.

-Yeah.

-Chill out.

Now, which is the BBC's most popular television export?

-Oh.

-Oh.

Doctor Who.

KLAXON

-I think I know this.

-Doctor Who is the most popular drama.

So the BBC's most popular export?

Yes, the BBC's most popular television export.

Television, not World...

More than any other series in the last 40 years.

It's not Keeping Up Appearances, is it?

-It is absolutely Keeping Up Appearances.

-Gasps of amazement!

-Hyacinth Bucket?!

-Yes, that gentle comedy of social snobbery.

-How do you know that?

-I just remember reading it.

It's very popular in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe,

in fact Denmark has just placed another order for the show,

and it's subtitled, they also have dubbed versions.

Do they like it because no-one dies?

No-one gets murdered, it's so ground-breaking.

It's very different to the Game of Thrones

in that regard, it really is.

Attenborough is very popular with monkeys because of his wooden cock.

LAUGHTER

I do my best to steer this show.

Even then, even then you couldn't hear very well,

look at you, you're going, "What?"

The hair had been blown out of my ears.

It also looks like Billie Piper's looking at it.

"Doctor, what is it?"

"It's Attenborough's wooden cock."

All of which brings us to the scores.

Well, a fantastic and outright winner,

in first place with eight points,

it's Jason!

APPLAUSE

You'd better check them!

In second place with minus five,

it's Jeremy.

Thank you so much.

-APPLAUSE

-Thank you.

In third place, minus 21, Sara.

CHEERING

And with a commendable minus 64...

LAUGHTER

Alan!

APPLAUSE

It only remains for me to thank Sara, Jason, Jeremy and Alan.

And finally, in case you're feeling envious of the nobility,

spare a thought for Lord Ivy.

The head of the Guinness family in the 1980s

was injured in a traffic accident in Dublin and taken to hospital.

Under the Irish system, people earning more than £11,000 a year

had to pay for their treatment, so when he arrived they asked him,

"Do you earn £11,000?"

To which he replied, "Some days I do, some days I don't."

Toodle-pip!