Oddballs QI XL

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello, and welcome to QI,

which tonight is an omnibus of Oddballs.

Let's meet our obliging odd-fellows. An odd bod, Jason Manford.

-APPLAUSE

-Odd? Odd bod?

An odd fish, Jimmy Carr.

APPLAUSE

Really? Odd fish? OK, fine.

An odd lot, Victoria Coren Mitchell.

APPLAUSE

What is an odd lot?!

And Odds Bodkins, Alan Davies.

-APPLAUSE

-Hello.

Right, let's hear their Odd Ball buzzers.

Jason Manford goes...

TABLE TENNIS BALL BOUNCES

Very good.

Jimmy goes...

BALL BOUNCES HEAVILY

Oh.

Well, my apologies.

A Mexican lunch.

Victoria goes...

PINBALL MACHINE PINGS

Oh, you... And Alan goes...

# Bouncy bouncy

# Bouncy bouncy

# Bouncy bouncy

# Bouncy bouncy. #

Oddly enough, we start with Oddball games.

So you've each got a selection of odd balls under your desks.

Odd balls coming up.

Kindly invent a new ball game, and I would like you to use your heads.

LAUGHTER

-That was funny.

-What did you do, just...?

I threw it at his head, look.

Not the baseball!

OK, can we get the orange one back again?

Can we have it thrown back by somebody?

-Somebody will throw it to us, I'm sure. Come on.

-Oh, whoa!

-That was terrifying!

-Do you know what?

If you can't throw, don't volunteer.

-Unbelievable! Unbelievable.

-Underarm, as well.

If it comes over here again, I'll put a bloody knife through it!

-Curmudgeonly old man.

-OK.

There is a German game called Headis,

and it is ping-pong played without a bat,

where you just hit it with your head.

So, it was invented by a sports science student.

-Push.

-But don't forget the net.

-The net?!

-Yes - so, there's a net in the way, right?

OK, are you ready? Try now.

Yes!

APPLAUSE

Can you get that?

-Result.

-APPLAUSE

He caught the ball.

It was in 2006, his name is Rene Wegner,

and he invented this game Headis.

It is now played internationally.

It is on the official sports programme of 15 German universities,

and have a look at this, because the top players are extraordinary,

and they use sort of noms-de-guerre -

like, well there's things like "the Sausage Seller", "Leek Face",

-and "Bob Der Headmaster", which I'm...

-Wow.

-..very pleased with.

And they have astonishing rallies.

So they're replaced the bat with their heads.

I suppose it's better than the ball.

Oh!

ALL: Ooh!

APPLAUSE

I can't help thinking of the corners of the table.

I know, yes.

Another ball game we've discovered is a Swiss game

called Hornussen, and this is one of Switzerland's national sports.

You have two teams, but there seems to be no limit

to the size of the team, or the size of the pitch,

and there is a ball, which stands on this little thing like this,

and then what looks like a bendy golf club, right?

And you hit the ball and it goes out into a field,

and then the opposition have these enormous sort of placards.

So here's the guy who hits the ball.

It's a bendy golf club, yeah -

and then a guy with a placard... LAUGHTER

..tries to stop the ball, OK?

And yes, a lot of shouting...

..and then - oh, there they are - and there seems to be no limit.

-That is good.

-It's good!

-That is brilliant.

It's been around since the 17th century,

and it evolved from the ancient tradition

of hitting burning logs down the mountainside to expel evil spirits.

LAUGHTER

But the ball can go up to 306km per hour -

I mean, it's a fantastically fast thing.

Ah, well, that explains why that fellow in the video

-didn't have many teeth left.

-Yeah, I think that's the thing.

-300km an hour?

-Yeah, yeah.

-That's really fast, isn't it?

-It's really fast.

This game I like the look of,

although I would not be able to play it.

It's called Cycle Ball, it was invented in 1893,

it is enormously popular in Germany.

Anybody work out how you play it?

Is it not like polo, but they're on bicycles?

Yes, and you have to use the front wheel of the bicycle -

and, again, just extraordinary skill that the players have with this.

Obviously, it's tremendously exciting.

-Wow!

-Ooh, what a goal. Oh, nice.

-Yeah, yeah. Look.

-Ooh, he's lobbed him.

-He's lobbed him...

-Ooh, ooh!

-Crikey O'Reilly.

-Oh, this is a good show reel.

-Yeah, that's, I mean...

-I would actually watch that.

-It's quite exciting, don't you think?

-Yeah.

-I would totally watch that.

-Yeah.

This is, I think, I seem to...

-For - I mean, for a bit.

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

One I like is a game called Pushball.

So, there's a guy called Moses Crane, in the 1890s,

who watched a lot of American football, and he got confused.

You know in American football they always have sort of like a scrum?

They couldn't find the ball, so he invented this game.

-"It's so big!"

-It is.

It's a six foot ball that weighs 50 pounds.

Wow.

-So those guys are about to die.

-Yeah!

No, the idea is you have to either get it across the line,

or you have to get it across a crossbar.

People played it on horseback.

Is that the... Is that the American remake of The Prisoner?

We did some filming once for Jonathan Creek

and there was a polo ground.

There was an Argentinian polo player milling around in jodhpurs.

The make-up and wardrobe department, I swear to God,

all began to ovulate simultaneously.

And I thought to myself,

he was magnificent.

He was the sexiest thing you've ever seen in your life

just wandering about in jodhpurs and boots

looking for his pony.

There's a line in one of the Jilly Cooper books,

"Well, everyone looks sexy in jodhpurs."

No.

No. Some people look like badly packaged sausages.

Do you know a football club in Telemark in Norway

called the Odds Ballklub, do you know that?

I do not know of them.

It's just known as Odds, so its greatest claim to fame is that

it had a goal, believed to be the longest headed goal ever scored.

There was a man called Jone Samuelsen and he...

From within his own half...

Well, he's cheating, to be fair.

Yes.

Look at that beauty.

From within his own half, he headed the ball 190 feet.

So unbelievable, they called the police in to make sure it was real.

Someone would have thought it

and then someone would have had to agree with them.

-Yeah.

-"Have you seen that header that went in from the other half?

-"We'd better ring the police."

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

The thing I really love is when football is played

in a district of Bangkok called Khlong Toei.

It's a really densely populated area,

there is no space to play football,

so what they have done is reclaimed patches of an odd size.

They carefully designed a pitch

so that it is exactly two different halves.

Look at that. That is just to make it fit in

so they can play a fair football game.

That's brilliant.

-They play round the corner?

-Yes.

They can't even see the ball coming.

Wonderful, I love that.

You say it's a good use of the space,

but they could have built a hospital.

LAUGHTER

It's all relative.

I'm going to guess the football pitch was cheaper,

what do you think? OK, balls away, please.

-Balls away.

-I should never have got them out.

Now, here's an odd question.

How can I persuade you to do what I want using only my thumb?

-Er...

-Ah, well, now, well...

-I can think of a couple of possibilities.

-Yeah.

-Just...

-Yes?

-No, I've got nothing that isn't filth.

-Nothing.

-Nothing, no?

-Nothing that isn't filth.

It is known as the "thumb of power" and it's a hand gesture

used very widely by modern politicians when they make speeches.

Oh, it's to stop you doing this, isn't it? To stop you going...

-Yeah.

-"You!"

-Apparently it's more powerful -

don't do that because people don't like it,

-but if you do that, you look like you're a powerful person.

-Yeah.

-Never do that as a politician.

-No.

There's a science of oratorical hand gestures,

and it's called chironomia,

and it was set out in precise detail in 95AD, so a really long time ago,

Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria.

It says here, "One of the commonest of all the gestures

"consists in placing the middle finger against the thumb

"and extending the remaining three.

"It is suitable in the statement of facts,

"but in that case the hand must be moved with firmness

"and a little further forward

"while, if we are reproaching or refuting our adversary,

"the same movement may be employed with some vehemence and energy,

"since such passages permit of greater freedom of extension."

-You know, I'll tell you who does it...

-Yes?

I think, Paulie Walnuts in the Sopranos.

-Does he?

-And Spider-Man.

LAUGHTER

But the study of oratory and rhetoric

dates back a really long time -

and there's all sorts of rules about classic rhetoric

based around the rule of three, which is the same as in comedy.

So, tricolon, "I came, I saw, I conquered."

Or veni, vidi, Visa - "I came, I saw, I shopped."

Molossus, so that's three stressed syllables.

"Yes, we can."

And epizeuxis, so, "Location, location, location,"

when you repeat the same word over and over again -

but it hasn't changed, it hasn't changed.

So you get ethos, logos and pathos,

those are the three modes of persuasion.

So, ethos is how you establish the credibility of the speaker.

So, "Watch QI, I'm on it."

Logos, you present the logical argument.

"Watch QI, it's really good."

And pathos, appeal to the emotions.

"Watch QI or we shoot this kitten."

LAUGHTER

I was just using it as a rough example.

There have been manuals about how you gesture

since there have been speeches.

-This is a wonderful one.

-Oh, I've done this on a stag do.

-LAUGHTER

-It's brilliant.

-Zorb - zorb football, it's called.

-You run downhill.

It's a right laugh, 12 of you, "Boing, boing..."

We didn't dress like that.

Hob, dob, do.

Hob, dob, do.

Hob, dob, do.

Ao.

LAUGHTER

I think he might - I think he might be learning the Macarena.

LAUGHTER

I'm totally sure.

A study of TED talks - anybody given a TED talk?

Erm, no, I think we'd remember.

-No?

-Have you given a TED talk?

-Of course I have, yes.

-What was your TED talk?

I gave a TED talk on how feminism could save the world.

CHEERING

What about the other half of the audience? Nothing!

They know their place.

Anyway, no, it's cool. So, the most successful ones tend to be the ones

when people use lots of hand gestures.

And politicians can't help but use them.

My favourite example is Richard Nixon

on the day that he was made to resign as President,

that's what he chose to do as he left.

He clearly hadn't got the message it hadn't gone all that well.

I think I could play a young Nixon.

-Yes, actually, that's slightly terrifying, isn't it?

-Yeah.

And Angela Merkel always holds her hands like that.

In fact, in Germany, it's known as the Merkel-Raute,

the Merkel diamond, that's just how she always holds her hands.

Trump, also, lots of signature hand signals.

When Donald Trump took to office, little did he know.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

-JASON:

-Very good.

-VICTORIA:

-I like Angela Merkel's one -

it's like she's going to go, "Open the door, see all the people."

It does look like that!

GERMAN ACCENT: "I have ze steeple and zen - oh, look.

"Ah, zere's no British people."

LAUGHTER

-There's a whole conspiracy theory around that.

-Oh?

It's about an Illuminati symbol.

I did it once inadvertently on a TV show, like,

for like a split second.

Someone did a freeze frame on it and went,

"Oh, Illuminati. That guy's in the Illuminati."

Which I am, but that's not...

If you Google it, there's lots of pictures of Jay-Z doing this...

-Like...

-Jay-Z's in the Illuminati?!

-You heard it here first.

-Oh, my!

Victoria, when you have your photograph taken,

isn't it awkward to know what to do with your hands?

If you're a woman, especially.

-You can't put your hands in your pockets, can you?

-No, yes, terrible.

I've read things that say, you know,

if you put one foot forward, you look thinner.

I like the idea of the one foot forward.

-Just do that. Always just do that.

-Why is that?

Because people will always remember you.

LAUGHTER

"Remember that man

"that thought there was a robbery going on all the time?"

"Yeah, I remember him, yeah."

-VICTORIA:

-Am I alone in this?

When you see great-looking women at premieres,

and they have a picture and they're looking over...

Whenever I see a picture like that, I don't understand how they do it.

-No.

-They used to have a pose they did on Page 3

where it got the tits and the bum in the same shot.

Really?

Tits and the bum in the same shot?

AUDIENCE CHEERS

I think I've got it.

-Yeah?

-You be the bum, you be the bum, and I'll...

Bend over, be the bum, like that.

There we go.

APPLAUSE

Enough oratory.

Let's look at some optical odds and sods.

Which of these paintings is awful?

-Is awful.

-Awful.

-As in terrible.

Which painting is awful?

Well, the bottom right, as I'm looking at it.

-You don't like that?

-A kid's done that.

Yes, and you think it's awful?

Well, not, I mean... Er, yeah.

OK.

Some nice six-year-old called Eloise Fell

and now you've made her feel terrible.

LAUGHTER

-Top row.

-You want to go top row, what do you think about it?

It's upside-down.

So this is actually rather a famous painting,

it is called Libre Mer and it is by Spain's premier abstract artist,

a man called Antoni Tapies.

So what we're talking about is what's known as

outsider art. It is called all sorts of things.

You know, people call it naive painting,

or they call it primitive painting, or whatever,

and now a lot of this work is worth an absolute fortune.

But have a look at some of the others,

-some of them you must recognise.

-Lowry, we know Lowry.

Yeah. He was variously described in his day as a Sunday painter,

a concealed sophisticate,

deceptively simple, all those kind of things.

Primitivist. In fact, he had trained and he looked very annoyed

when people called him a Sunday painter.

He said, "I'm a Sunday painter who paints every day of the week."

He wasn't very well thought of and that is quite often the case

from people in the outsider art category.

It was also known as art brut, raw art.

In fact, the one on the top left there is Jean Debuffet,

it's actually a sculpture.

And he rejected what he called beauty in art.

He said he liked the savagery of it,

especially art that exists outside the normal tradition of art.

Initially it was people, as it were, outside of society,

it was people who had been put into an asylum,

rough sleepers, anybody who'd been socially excluded.

One of my favourites is Grandma Moses,

she didn't start painting until she was 78.

So bottom left there.

She was a friend of Norman Rockwell's.

What I like is that she was named as Mademoiselle's Magazine

Young Woman of the Year at the age of 88.

-Brilliant!

-Isn't that wonderful?

-That's great.

She hadn't started painting until she was 78.

There's a difference between the naive art and the bad art.

There is a Museum Of Bad Art in Boston, Massachusetts

and here are two examples from it.

You see, I have no confidence about this,

I don't... You could have told me these are hugely expensive paintings

that went for millions and everyone thinks they're wonderful

and I'd go, "Wow, OK." I don't know why they're awful.

Why are they worse than the ones we looked at before?

Yeah.

They say that the definition of bad art is that it lacks

both artistic inspiration and technical competence.

If it's meant to be a picture of a horse,

it lacks technical competence.

LAUGHTER

If it's a horse that's run into some French window...

My kids bring pictures home sometimes, we put them on the wall.

-Yeah.

-I mean, a lot of them are rubbish.

Like, terrible.

Eloise Fell, who you picked out, our lovely six-year-old...

Be nice about my painting, or the dog gets it.

Pathos. Pathos.

What's the youngest someone's been taken seriously by the art world?

Well, Picasso, by the time he was 18 could draw anything to look

exactly the way it was supposed to.

He said he spent the rest of his life trying to draw like a child,

trying to release the child inside himself.

But, yeah, I guess because we're not trained in what to look for

we would...if you said that was done by a genius,

we'd go, "Oh, right." And that's worth £12 million.

"All right, fair enough." Like the Tracey Emin unmade bed thing,

we've all got unmade beds but she's made millions of pounds out of it.

Like, how... What separates that from the rest of us?

Pure evil.

LAUGHTER

I sometimes think it would be nice if artists

would think inside the box, for a change.

Now, here's another kind of outsider.

How did this man's bare bottom help Britain win World War I?

He looks really different with his suit off, doesn't he?

LAUGHTER

Like, you wouldn't even know that was him.

Do you know what that bit's called, the cleft there?

-Do you know what that's called?

-The fun bit?

Which cleft are we talking about?

Where you might park your bicycle?

No, I don't know what that's called. I'm excited to learn.

It's called the intergluteal cleft.

You old romantic, you.

It's just a great thing to say to a builder as you go past.

"Oh, hello, intergluteal cleft on display.

"And your sacral dimples."

Give us a clue about the man -

-did something go into his bottom or come out of it?

-Well...

-The man is called William Lawrence Bragg...

-Oh!

..he was a physicist. He was a Nobel laureate.

In fact, he remains the youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize -

he received it in 1915, along with his father, a famous physicist.

In 1915, he was serving as a subaltern in Flanders,

trying to find out ways to use sound to locate enemy artillery.

So, one day he was sitting on the latrine

at the house where he was billeted - it was a tight little closet,

with no window at all, and he'd shut the door,

and so there was no other opening to the outside world

apart from the one that he was sitting on -

and he noticed that when there was gunfire nearby,

his backside momentarily lifted off the seat.

Even when he didn't really hear the explosion,

there was a sort of a thing, like this -

and meanwhile, another physicist he was working with,

a man called William Tucker, was billeted in a tar paper hut,

and he noticed that by his cot there were just a couple of little holes,

and even on a day when there was no wind,

little puffs of air were blowing through,

and they compared notes, the two of them,

one from the loo and one from these two little holes,

and they deduced that this was the result

of inaudible low frequency sounds of artillery,

and they set about devising detectors,

and by 1917 it was so advanced

that the allies had a really devastating advantage

in locating and targeting enemy guns...

-Wow.

-..and it all came about

-because his backside lifted off the lavatory.

-Ooh!

Is this maybe the most inspiring story I have ever heard...

-About a lavatory.

-..about a men's toilet and holes in a wall.

LAUGHTER

-Normally, these end super differently.

-Yeah, yeah.

Normally it's, "Then they had to shut down that garage."

LAUGHTER

And did they have to use his specific arse on all of this?

No, I don't...

Did he have to go round the whole - "Oh, it's over there."

That's how he discovered it. You get other ones in history.

Martin Luther, so 16th century,

he also had his eureka moment sitting on the privy.

Martin Luther, the man who led to the Reformation,

suffered from terrible constipation and he was sitting there for so long

-that he decided to read the New Testament in Greek.

-Yeah.

That's when you start reading the back of the Domestos bottle.

LAUGHTER

Why is there a phone number...?

And his theological breakthrough, the Justification By Faith,

happened while he was sitting on the loo, suffering from constipation.

There are still 40,000 outside lavatories in the UK.

I'm surprised they've not all been turned into cereal cafes or summat.

That's the sort of thing people keep doing now,

turning toilets into bars.

-Yeah, there's one not far from here.

-Yeah?

-It's a toilet.

-That turned into a bar?

It's called The Toilet, I think.

I think it is, actually, that's right!

Where you go to the loo, God knows.

You can go out on the street and do it up the side of a pub, like...

There used to be a thing,

when people were peeing up the sides of buildings, boys, let's be honest.

-Let's be honest, yeah.

-Boys peeing outside buildings.

-And talented girls.

-Yeah, and talented - very talented girls

who were straight from Page 3,

showing their arse and their tits at the same time.

Lots of London buildings had special tilted metal bars,

so that if somebody did pee against it,

the pee would splash back on the person's shoes.

The most southerly public loo in Britain

is on the island of the Minquiers.

Here is a picture of it. It says, "This toilet has the distinction

"of being the most southern building in the British Isles.

"Please use with care as the nearest alternative is in Jersey, which is 11 miles away."

LAUGHTER

It looks like those rocks are leaning against the toilet.

It looks like they're queuing up, doesn't it?

It does look like a queue, doesn't it, and they've solidified waiting.

LAUGHTER

"Oh, hello, we're the Minquiers.

"Is there anyone in there?"

That's a great title for a band.

-"Hey, hey, we're The Minquiers."

-"Hey, hey, we're The Minquiers."

On a lighter note, who takes their mother-in-law to a lunatic asylum?

-LAUGHTER

-Ooh...

-Terrible picture.

-Look at us there.

-I'm just thinking of mother-in-law jokes now.

-Go on, then.

Well, the Les Dawson one is the best mother...

KLAXON Ah!

-I haven't even told a joke!

-APPLAUSE

Damn you! That is not fair!

He had the cl...,

I was walking down the street with my wife

and I saw my mother-in-law,

and she was being beaten and robbed by six men.

And my wife said, "Aren't you going to help?"

-I said, "No, six should be enough."

-LAUGHTER

-AS LES DAWSON:

-I knew the mother-in-law was around,

-because all the mice were throwing themselves on the trap.

-Yeah!

-He's amazing, amazing.

-Fantastic comic.

-Is this the old school... Like, the day out?

-Yeah.

-Like you would take...

-Yeah.

-..to watch.

-Absolutely right.

-It was just down the road from here, wasn't it? Bethlem Hospital.

-Yeah.

You could go and they had a viewing gallery,

-where you used to watch the crazy people.

-Yeah.

In 19th-century America, if you could afford a honeymoon,

you would go on a grand tour, like you'd go to Niagara Falls,

but you would also take an excursion to an insane asylum, prisons,

battlefields, homes for the deaf and dumb, orphanages -

and it was normal practice to take your new in-laws along with you.

Can you imagine?

It's funny how, like, there's a part of you that hears about that,

and you suddenly think, "Oh, well, I'm glad we've moved on,"

and then you think, "Isn't Big Brother still on the telly?"

-Yeah, yeah.

-And Britain's Got Talent auditions.

-Yeah, I know!

-It's pretty much the same thing.

I only actually watch those at the beginning,

when you've got the nutters. "Where are you from?" "Hull."

"Where are you from?" "Carlisle." "Where are you from?" "Narnia!"

"Right, you're in."

LAUGHTER

So, odd outings, and odd days out, if you were interested -

-sewage treatment works, for example.

-Oh, yeah.

The Sha Tin sewage works in Hong Kong

offers, "Thematic tours, display panels,

"model exhibitions and game booths,"

as well as "stage performances,

"a fun area for kids and photo-taking corners."

Can you see the guy in the bottom right?

LAUGHTER

That really, that's very much like, "Oh, this is a terrible..."

-Yeah!

-"I thought it was a funny idea,

"and now I'm here and it's bad."

There's a treatment plant in New Zealand.

"Sturdy, flat-soled and closed-in shoes are required,

"and rain coats are recommended."

AUDIENCE GROANS

That sounds like they need a redesign,

-if you've got to wear a raincoat.

-Yeah.

-Going on a log flume.

-LAUGHTER

Yeah. "Close your mouth!"

The Dubbo Sewage Treatment Plant in New South Wales,

their open day includes "spectacular drone footage plus a free barbecue."

As the man in charge said, "I would be surprised

"if we didn't have at least dozens of people through."

LAUGHTER

Other open days on offer, a halal abattoir in the West Midlands.

A cigarette filter factory being demolished because of asbestos.

-That is the one that you want to go and see.

-Wow!

-There's an open day there.

-Yes.

-You can go...

-You can go.

-Well, that's date night sorted.

-Mmm.

The council tip in Padworth, Berkshire holds a free

family fun day.

LAUGHTER

A chance for children to sit in a bin lorry.

Now, here's something rather odd, who keeps their cheese in the bank?

The Swiss.

It should be, shouldn't it?

You're not far off, though, it is about cheese and money.

In this case, it is about overdrafts.

Since the 1950s, the regional banks in Emiliano have accepted

Parmesan as collateral against overdrafts of cheese producers.

The bank needs to help with cash flow, and so they accept young

wheels of Parmesan as security.

-What's the deal with the Parmesan? I like the taste of Parmesan.

-Mmm.

But it smells like sick, what's going on?

Well, it does give off bacteria.

Cheese and the stuff that's growing in your feet

is almost exactly the same kind of bacteria that it's giving off.

I'm really working up an appetite.

So next time the guy comes round, no.

"Parmesan?" "No, you're all right, mate."

"You're all right, but can I have a lick of your sock?"

-The banks have special cheese vaults...

-They actually take it?

They take it. Millions of pounds' worth of Parmesan

in a climate-controlled vault.

There are specialist staff who clean the cheese

and hit it with little metal hammers to make sure it hasn't gone soft.

-To this day, they do this?

-Yes.

It is thought that without it, the Parmesan industry would have died

because it takes so long for it to mature.

As with any valuable commodity, of course,

it's a wonderful thing for thieves.

Parmesan is the most stolen food on the planet.

-Wow!

-In fact, more than 3% of all cheese produced in the world

is stolen each year.

LAUGHTER

And the most large-scale theft of cheese is Parmesan in Italy.

2013-15, six million euros' worth stolen,

most notably from Italian bank vaults.

So 2009, they tunnelled into a vault and made off with

570, 40kg wheels of cheese.

Imagine being the kids of those robbers.

Every day... "What's for dinner?

"Oh, you're joking!"

LAUGHTER

It's the most shoplifted item in Italy, Parmesan.

It is 10% of all goods stolen from shops and, in fact,

they've now started microchipping some cheeses

to make them traceable.

-You can get it up your sleeve, I suppose.

-Yeah.

It's easy, it's a good shape.

The world's most expensive cheese, Pule,

anybody know what it's made from?

It's from the Balkans. It's a creature that...

A war criminal?

It's a wa... LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

It's made from the Balkan donkey's milk.

-Oh.

-Yeah.

That sounds like a euphemism, doesn't it?

-LAUGHTER

-Donkey cheese.

-Donkey cheese.

-About £1,000 a kilo.

-Wow!

The weirdest and the most disgusting is casu marzu.

It's a sheep cheese from Sardinia.

It means rotten cheese

and it is literally filled with maggots.

AUDIENCE GROANS

There's live insect larvae in there

and locals consider it unsafe to eat once the larvae have died.

So it's served while these translucent white worms,

about a third of an inch long,

-are still squiggling.

-Wow.

Some people clear the maggots from the cheese before consuming,

others think, "Get right in there!"

-You don't have to eat everything.

-No.

LAUGHTER

The people who leave the maggots, they have to cover the cheese

with their hands because when disturbed,

the maggots can jump six inches in the air.

Stop it!

It's like my dad still eats tripe.

I'm like, "Dad, we're not even at war."

LAUGHTER

"People are making food now that's nice."

So another way to secure your overdraft,

hunting, shooting, fishing types in the UK

would deposit their valuable shotguns after the end

of the shooting season.

With their stockbrokers they would buy shares,

and this was a perfectly reasonable way to do it.

When the shooting season reopened

they would sell their shares and buy their guns back.

That was another way of having an overdraft.

So you go in with a gun and you say, "Give me some money?"

-It seems like it.

-It feels like an armed robber

that's sort of lost his bottle.

They walk into a bank with a shotgun and they go,

"What are you doing?"

"Er, I want to buy some shares."

Then he just styled it out.

He went, "Yeah, yeah, I thought maybe you could just..."

"Why is it loaded?" "No reason."

Anyway, moving on.

Which is the odd one out of these four?

Odd, odd, odd or odd?

Um...

Er...

KLAXON

It feels like this is...

I can't... Yeah.

I think the last one we pick is going to be the good one, right?

-Do you think?

-One.

KLAXON

Does someone get paid when that sound effect goes off?

KLAXON

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

They've been waiting 15 years for that gag!

So they are all acronyms.

The number one ODD is One-Day Decorating.

And this is a service you can get, particularly in California.

It's called the One-Day Decorating.

Anybody have any idea what that might be?

Um, decorating in a single day.

No, it's slightly weirder than that.

It's professional furniture rearranging.

-Ah.

-So, it's a person who comes in, looks at how you've had it for ages

and goes, "It's not working."

And just moves everything around.

That's it.

It's a rearrangement specialist.

-I like that.

-Yeah. OK, here's the next one.

Outdoors And Dirty - they're pastimes for the person

who likes to be active.

That's presumably on, like, dating sites and things.

-It's things like camping and hiking and climbing.

-OK.

Paintballing, that sort of thing.

The other that we had was the Official Designated Driver.

This is an idea that began in Scandinavia as early as the 1920s

but in the 1980s, the US had a campaign

led by the Harvard School of Public Health

because at the time drink-driving

was one of the leading causes of death in the US,

aged between 15 and 24.

What they did is, they approached Hollywood script writers,

people writing sitcoms and movies and so on

and they got them to put lines in.

So he'd say to somebody, "Would you like a drink?"

"No, thanks, I'll just have a soft drink because I'm driving these guys home."

That was how they introduced the idea

of the Official Designated Driver.

When it became part of culture, death figures dropped dramatically,

it really did work. So the odd one out, obviously,

-is the other ODD.

-Ah.

How could we possibly have got this?

It's the word "odd" four times.

-I know. The point of the game is for you not to win.

-Oh.

LAUGHTER

It is an actual thing, Oppositional Defiance Disorder.

It is the odd one out

because it's the only bona fide medical condition.

And, I don't really get this, OK,

because it's when children, or teenagers exhibit

an ongoing pattern of defiance.

-Is it teenagers being...?

-Yeah.

You know, argumentative, angry.

-So you can actually go and see a doctor...

-My child's a bit ODD.

-You child, ODD.

-Yeah.

Just, it's a diagnosis.

It turns out that ODD was the odd one out.

What were the odds?

LAUGHTER

Now, what do vegetarian goatsuckers eat?

LAUGHTER

-Right, wow...

-Can you show that on television?

I think that's taking vaping too far.

Is that a goat bagpipe?

It is a goat bagpipe.

He's done something odd to his hair.

Yeah, his hair, that's the problem with that picture.

LAUGHTER

So vegetarian goatsuckers, what do they eat?

He must eat the rest of the goat, surely,

before it becomes his instrument?

It's a vegetarian goatsucker.

-VICTORIA:

-So...

-Not goats.

-It's no use saying that.

What's a goatsucker?

-It's a kind of bird, it's an order of birds called goatsuckers...

-Oh.

..and they were named

because there was an ancient belief that they lived nocturnally

sucking the milk from the teats of goats,

-which sent them blind.

-Ooh, God!

-Ooh, hello.

-Feels like a fun-size owl.

-Well...

Like, if you're like, "Oh, I want to get an owl,

-"but I haven't got the space."

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

"I'll get one of these."

They're called oilbirds, also known as guacharo,

and they are the only vegetarian species of goatsuckers.

Most goatsuckers eat insects.

These oilbirds eat fruit.

Sorry, you said that like it's like a huge surprise to us.

-What?

-We only just heard they existed,

and you went, "These are the only ones that are vegetarians."

Well, I've just found out. I mean, I literally couldn't care less.

LAUGHTER

And I'm speaking on behalf of everyone in the room

when I say, "No, really, these are the only vegetarian ones?!

"Wow, let's get this down."

What are you talking about? You've lost your mind!

They live in caves in the northern part of South America.

Well, no wonder they're vegetarian - what is there to eat in there?

Well, the thing about them is that they get so fat

from the fruit that they eat that they become incredibly plump

and there's an annual oil harvest,

where people take the plump babies in their thousands,

the local people, and they render them for the oil.

Because apparently, it's excellent for fuel, and also for cooking.

Do they still suck the goats?

Nobody sucks goats, it's...

There is no goat-sucking.

-How do you get the oil out of the bird?

-This is like a...!

Well, you can render any bird for its fat.

If you've ever cooked a duck,

you can get an enormous amount of duck fat out of it.

-Imagine a world where I've never cooked a duck.

-OK.

-LAUGHTER

-Imagine - I mean, it's...

I mean, it's like...

We're not really on the same wavelength here at all.

But fat runs off a chicken.

Have you cooked a bird of any kind?

-You'll have a drip tray.

-Yes. Yes, you have a drip tray.

-You've got one under your bed.

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Do you remember when Sandi had a breakdown on television

and she was talking about goatsuckers?

And then we just gave up, we asked about three times,

"What has this goat got to do with anything?"

and she just went, "Oh, it's a bird,"

and then she kept on talking about goats for ages before,

but then we just let it go.

You could look back on it as the tipping point,

they say that was it, it was one show too many -

and she explained to everyone,

"It's the only vegetarian goatsucker,

"but it doesn't suck goats, doesn't do it,"

-and she thought it made sense.

-Yeah, and then...and then she was...

..she was someone's mother-in-law, and then she ended up in an asylum.

LAUGHTER

And we went to visit her. Yeah.

It was an ancient belief that they sucked

the teats of goats for the milk, but they don't.

Sometimes, in the old days, they got things wrong.

I'd quite like to live in a cave.

Would you? Why?

I don't know, I always like being in a cave.

Whenever I'm in a cave, I feel quite relaxed.

This is the weirdest therapy session of all time.

I went into some really big caves once, and it was great in there.

LAUGHTER

I'd say whatever Sandi's got is catching.

LAUGHTER

And do you know what?

If my calculations are correct, I think the wind's blowing that way.

I don't think Jason's got much hope.

But you talk about the things that -

you say they're called goatsuckers and you don't believe me,

-there are...

-Oh, we're back to this, are we?

I mean, God bless Alan for taking one for the team,

but you really... Oh, yeah, no, back to the goatsuckers, yeah,

let's pull this round, because this lot can't believe it.

There is a thing that's also known as an oilbird,

but the type of bird it is a goatsucker.

That's just the - what they became called

even though it isn't actually the...

Hundreds, thousands of years ago somebody went,

-"I bet they suck the teats of goats."

-Yes, exactly.

-"Let's call them goatsuckers."

-Yes, and it stuck.

Everyone else went, "But they don't do that."

-"I've named them now!"

-Yes.

"OK? I've written it down in the bird book!"

LAUGHTER

It's like that joke, "You shag one sheep..."

Yeah, exactly.

One of them mistook a goat's nipple for a berry...

..and the whole species was named.

Right, moving on.

The oilbird is the only vegetarian goatsucker.

It eats nothing but fruit. Right.

Let us move on to the outer limits of knowledge,

the odd world of General Ignorance.

Fingers on buzzers, please.

How many time zones are there in China?

Ooh.

Yes, Jimmy?

One.

-Yes.

-Come on!

-You're absolutely right, one.

APPLAUSE

-So...

-No, no, no, don't even explain, let's just...

Let's just enjoy that moment for a second.

I mean, I've never got anything on this bloody show.

-You're absolutely right.

-It's one, actually.

-Why do you think that?

Well, do you know what? That's not important. What matters is...

LAUGHTER

-..there's one time zone in China.

-Yeah.

-You can take that to the bank.

-Yeah.

I imagine the Communist Party decided what the time was

-and that was it.

-Yeah. You're absolutely right.

So, given the size of the nation,

-you would think that it would be many different...

-At least four.

At least four - but it's always Beijing time,

no matter where you are. So, if it is noon in Beijing,

then 3,000 miles away, it is also noon.

It was standardised, time, in 1949,

following the revolution and the civil war.

Are there people in the middle of the night forcing lunch down them?

-Yes.

-"Ooh, lunchtime again."

HE YAWNS Yes.

In the summer, there are places where the sun sets

in the middle of the night, and then in the winter

the sunrise might not come until ten o'clock in the morning.

Hang on, what's this? Is this an eye cutting out salon?

That's right.

LAUGHTER

He's the village blinder.

I'm looking for a haircut,

have you got anything near an oil pipeline?

First adoption of standard time in Britain?

-Why did we adopt it?

-Was that wartime?

No. 1847, so we're talking about the railways.

It's because there's no point in having the railways

-if you're all on different times.

-Oh.

You say that, but I don't know if you've used Southern Rail...

LAUGHTER

GMT. You start to get it -

1855, about 98% of the country is using it,

and then it became Britain's legal time in 1880 -

but there were still places,

some British clocks have got two minute hands,

so there is a still working public clock

over the old Corn Exchange in Bristol,

and it has a black minute hand for GMT

and it has a red minute hand for what was known as Bristol Time,

and it's ten minutes behind,

and that clock is still working.

Ten minutes behind!

-I've done some gigs in Bristol, that makes sense.

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

Sometimes they don't get it straight away.

RENEWED LAUGHTER

I think they might be in.

-That reaction.

-What should I do if my child has got flat feet?

Oh, store them on a flat surface.

LAUGHTER

Why would I mind?

Ah, well, you're absolutely right, it doesn't matter.

-Nothing, nothing.

-It doesn't matter in the slightest.

-I've got very flat feet.

-Yes, it doesn't matter.

I mean it doesn't matter to me.

I don't give a damn about your feet. LAUGHTER

You've... You've really changed.

You were super-friendly earlier.

Why has it ever mattered?

You used to be able to get out of military service.

-Yeah.

-Pike in Dad's Army - it was his feet, wasn't it?

-Yeah.

-That and his stupidity.

LAUGHTER

It's an old wives' tale, and we have no idea

why both the medical and the military establishment

decided to adopt it as something that was important -

and you could indeed be given exclusion from service

in the Armed Forces because you had flat feet.

-Not any more.

-Those are nice little feet.

-They're so... I love babies' feet.

-Mm.

-They're just so...

Like little slices of rare roast beef.

LAUGHTER

OK, that wasn't where I was going, but, yes.

LAUGHTER

-JASON:

-I've got a feeling the wind's blowing the other way now.

LAUGHTER

It's really, it used to be seen as a disability.

Some people thought it needed treatment, even surgery,

-but nowadays it's...

-That would feel like taking the piss,

if you parked in a disabled bay and went, "Yeah, I've got..."

-Flat feet, mate.

-Flat feet.

-"I've got very flat feet."

What we think now is that feet just come in different shapes and sizes.

-That'll be it.

-Like ears and noses,

they come - you know, there's no right or wrong.

It's possible that the whole concept of arched feet

is just a cosmetic ideal.

People thought it was rather beautiful.

I don't really get the foot fetish thing.

-Do you not?

-Like, how did that start?

Well, there was a goatsucker and...

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

The best treatment for flat feet is no treatment at all.

When a boa constrictor squeezes its prey,

what is the cause of death?

Oh, that's so horrible.

No, snakes are brilliant.

It'll be something creepy.

-Yeah.

-Snakes are real murderers.

Is the answer, you're beaten to death with a candlestick?

Oh! In the library by the boa constrictor.

They are the absolute Agatha Christie of killers.

Do you know, I normally quite like snakes,

-but that one is just rude.

-Yeah.

Don't they, don't they sort of trigger a heart attack?

-Yes, that is exactly right.

-Is that their thing?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

It used to be thought that they squeezed so hard

that the victim couldn't breathe,

and that each time the prey exhaled,

the snake would tighten its grip

until they couldn't breathe any more -

but what they've now discovered is,

it's stopping the blood flow to the vital organs.

They've done these studies

to know how the snake knows when to stop squeezing.

Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, they gave their boa constrictor

dead rats into which little robot hearts had been inserted.

So, although the rat was dead, it still had a heartbeat,

and the snakes didn't relax their grip

until they turned off the heartbeat.

They seemed to have the ability to work out, to monitor the heartbeat.

They're like a, they're like a demon blood pressure cuff.

LAUGHTER

Listen to the things people have done,

and you haven't even cooked a duck!

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

That's told me! That's told me.

Time to look at some odd numbers.

It is the final scores -

and our winner, with minus four, this is very exciting,

is Victoria.

-Oh, fair play.

-APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

In joint second place, with minus eight,

it's Jason and Alan.

-APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

-Oh!

-That's good.

We came second.

I've never even cooked a duck!

Or sucked a goat.

In...

-LAUGHTER

-Well...

-Too much information.

-I had a fabulous gap year,

I don't want to discuss it.

With minus 23, last place goes to Jimmy!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

So, Victoria takes home

our objectionable object of the week.

It's this lovely piece of outsider art by her six-year-old.

APPLAUSE

So, it's thanks to Victoria, Jimmy, Jason and Alan -

and we leave you with a memory of Winston Churchill,

who was not only a great orator, but a great student of oratory.

He used to rehearse his speeches constantly

to make them sound natural.

He'd practise in the bath, for instance,

and it's said that the first time his valet heard him doing this,

he asked, "Were you speaking to me, sir?"

"No," said Churchill, "I was addressing the House of Commons."

Good night.

APPLAUSE