Oceans QI XL

Hello and welcome to QI, tonight...

SHE IMITATES BUBBLES

..we are setting sail.

LAUGHTER

I do all me own effects.

Tonight, we are setting sail for the open oceans, so without further ado,

let's meet our crew.

Floundering about, it's David Mitchell!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Just for the "halibut", Aisling Bea!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

All over the "plaice", Joe Lycett!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And never mind the "pollocks",

it's Alan Davies!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Right, let's hear their call signs.

David goes...

MUSIC: How Deep Is The Ocean? by Irving Berlin

Aisling goes...

MUSIC: My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean

Tune!

Joe goes...

SKA VERSION: I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside

..and Alan goes...

KIDS SING: Row, Row, Row Your Boat

We were all so happy!

Agh!

Right, we start off with how many oceans are there on Earth?

-Oh... No...

-Six!

I can count them.

KLAXON BLARES

First time on the show.

Straight into that trap. Any more?

-Five.

-Five!

KLAXON BLARES

One!

One is the correct answer.

-Well, they're all joined, aren't they?

-That is the reason! Indeed.

According to America's National Oceanic

and Atmospheric Administration, there's only one ocean.

It's the World Ocean and it covers 71% of the world's surface.

So, to make it a bit more convenient,

they divide it into four smaller oceans - the Pacific, the Atlantic,

the Indian and the Arctic.

And the US Board on Geographic Names recognises the Southern,

that's the Antarctic Ocean, as a fifth,

but the International Hydrographic Organisation

has not yet approved it,

and I imagine there's going to be a fight.

LAUGHTER

They are a fantastic organisation,

and one of the things that they do is tables of tonnage,

and this affected me because I had this very strange trip once

where I canoed across Africa, I canoed the whole of the Zambezi...

-You can't canoe across Africa!

-You can.

-That's a lie.

-No, the...

There's sand and desert, you can't canoe across Africa.

So, I went on this mythical river...

LAUGHTER ..1,700 miles across Africa,

and when you get to the Indian Ocean, the harbour master said,

"How many tonnes?

-"Because I need to write it down in the table of tonnage."

-So rude!

It's true! It was...

LAUGHTER

Well, it was just me and a canoe, and the minimum tonnage was

half a tonne, so I went into the Indian Ocean weighing half a tonne.

-Half a tonne of Toksvig, next!

-Next!

So I'll be on some register somewhere in Mozambique.

-Tell me about this canoe.

-OK, so, it is a really wonderful story.

My father came home one day, we were living in New York,

and we had a very small swimming pool, and he came home,

he possibly had had a drink, and he said, "I've bought the canoe

"that Livingston charted the Zambezi with." And he very proudly...

It's a wooden canoe and it comes in two halves,

which you can lock together, and he put this canoe,

and we have a wonderful picture of my dad in our swimming pool

drinking whisky in this canoe, and years later,

the BBC said to me, "Would you like to make a journey?"

And I said, "Well, as it happens, my dad had the canoe,

"and I've got it now, that charted the Zambezi,

"and I would like to actually take it down the Zambezi."

-Sounds like a 100-year-old...

-No, turns out it was built in 1954.

LAUGHTER

My dad was sold a complete pup.

It has now been down the Zambezi!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Largest ocean in the solar system, anybody?

In the solar system?

-What do we reckon?

-It's not going to be an ocean with water in it.

Well, that is the thing that we do not know.

It's one of the moons.

Is it the one...?

Eucalyptus?

LAUGHTER

-What's it called?

-Titan. It's bound to be Titan.

-That's the only moon.

-Euripides?

-Europa.

-Europa.

I'm going to give you an extra point for that, because, yeah, very good.

Absolutely.

APPLAUSE

It's Jupiter's moon, Europa.

The Hubble Telescope has detected a water plume

which is 20 times higher than Mount Everest.

So, possibly there is three times as much water on Europa

as there is in the World Ocean.

-If it's water.

-If... It's hard to say.

-We don't know what... It could be custard.

-Yes!

-Famously.

Jupiter custard.

If it's custard, where were the eggs sourced?

LAUGHTER

Are you worrying about the organic nature of Jupiter?

No, I wouldn't mind if it's sort of powdered custard,

but either way, you've got to think,

where's the vanilla come from? The eggs?

You've got to think about it scientifically.

That's one of the things that means it probably isn't custard.

-Yes.

-That's why they've jumped to water.

I'm examining it properly.

Please don't let this be caught by you, this system that David employs.

I like powdered custard.

-AISLING:

-Well, you heard it here first.

How has this happened to me?

So, the etymology of ocean? Anybody know where it comes from?

-Billy, it's named after Billy.

-Billy!

It's great Oceanus, the great river or sea surrounding...

well, the only known land masses at the time,

Eurasia and Africa, and the river was personified by Oceanus,

son of Uranus for the Earth and Gaia from the sky.

A big, muscular fella, wasn't he?

-AISLING:

-He looks like he owns a Shoreditch coffee bar.

LAUGHTER

"Oh, my God, we've got every sort of coffee you could imagine.

"We've got the stuff made by weasels, we've got..."

And he was married to his sister!

Listen, don't knock it till you've tried it!

How many kids do you think they had? He and his sister Tethys.

Three kids, six heads.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

6,000.

6,000. 3,000 boy river gods and...

Were they all like tadpoles?

Yeah, 3,000 girl sea nymphs.

There's no picture of her, cos she just couldn't sit still.

There's just one ocean on Earth

and that's why it's called the ocean.

I call it the sea.

I think "the ocean" is a bit of an Americanism.

I think we should have waited till Series S.

Right, moving on, what's the scariest thing about this?

MUSIC: Theme from Jaws

Isn't that incredible?

What is the most scary thing about it?

That the cameraman never lived to see his movie be shown on QI?

What do you think is the most scary thing about it?

-DAVID AND ALAN:

-The teeth.

KLAXON BLARES

The fact that they can't go backwards.

SILENCE

LAUGHTER

I'm sorry, that takes them a bit long to type!

KLAXON BLARES

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

-What's scary is subjective, really, isn't it?

-What is the scariest?

Well, our perception of sharks is apparently shaped

by footage in nature documentaries,

which tends to be accompanied by ominous music.

So the thing that really scares you in it is ominous music.

So, they did a study at the University of California,

and they showed three clips of sharks to participants.

So, the one that we've just seen, with the ominous music,

here's one with silence.

"Hello, my friend!"

LAUGHTER

Oh...

HE IMITATES RUFFLING A DOG

Ahhhhhhhhh...

-# Ahhhhh-h-h-h-h! #

-Have a look at this.

HE VOCALISES

Do you know what? There's a whole show for you, Alan,

in just doing fish impersonations.

We had the trout faking her orgasm last series.

They've done that.

LAUGHTER

Different orgasm, same trout.

LAUGHTER

Can you do shark that has an orgasm?

HE LAUGHS

Ahh... Ah, oh!

LAUGHTER

Mildly surprised!

Because they don't know they're going to have an orgasm,

they haven't learned about orgasms

or experimented with themselves, I imagine.

Then, when they have an orgasm the first time,

it must be very alarming.

My worry is watching you do them

that you haven't seen someone have one before.

LAUGHTER

Ohhh-oh!

Ohhh-oh! Oh-oh!

When they do it for the second or the third time,

then they're much more, ahhhhh...

Ah...

Aaaah...

Is everything OK at home, Alan?

LAUGHTER

Anyway!

Let's have a look at the same clip with uplifting music.

MUSIC: Morning from Peer Gynt by Edvard Grieg

But here's the thing, they aren't actually that dangerous.

And the thought is that the ominous nature of documentaries

leads the public to have a distrust of sharks and that, in turn,

harms their conservation funding.

The truth is sharks kill, worldwide, about six people a year,

and the same number are killed by livestock in Britain alone.

So, a cow - more likely to do you in than a shark.

Ants - they kill 30 people a year.

-Jellyfish...

-What, how?

Luring them across the road.

LAUGHTER

Which do you think is the most dangerous out of all those animals,

in terms of human deaths?

Well, I know hippos are real psychos.

Yeah, it is the hippo. Absolutely, they kill...

Psychos!

"That hippo's a psycho, man!"

2,900 people a year are killed by hippos.

-Really?

-Compare that to six people killed by sharks.

You are 1,000 times more likely to drown in the sea

than you are to be bitten by a shark, even in an area with sharks.

I saw sharks up close once - they feed them,

the man puts chainmail on his arm and you all sit in a circle,

and they appear, the group, like, out of the fog,

you don't see them, they are incredibly fast,

and then he's giving them fish in his chainmail hand.

-Why are you handing the food up?

-Because you're sitting on the floor

and they are all above you, all around you.

-Are we talking about sharks?

-Yes.

I just don't understand why you're on the floor

and they are in the sky above you.

Because the environment is all sub aqua, that's what he's saying.

Oh, they're underwater!

Complete the plotline of the story so the audience understand!

Have you totally understood the theme of the show?

-If you look here, just look here for a brief moment...

-Yes, yes?

A kids' party is about to happen. I understand.

So, talking about the danger of sharks,

the contrast of sharks killing six people -

more than a million sharks are killed by people every year.

So, we are much more of a danger to sharks than they are to us.

They get caught in fishing nets, it's grim.

I've got to stop killing sharks, man. I keep doing it!

You know that wonderful tune written by John Williams,

the two-note theme to Jaws?

He described it as "grinding away at you just as a shark would do -

"instinctual, relentless and unstoppable."

So, here's the thing - the film is two hours and 10 minutes,

but the shark doesn't appear until 81 minutes in. Do you know why?

Because it was a very diva-ish shark,

it sort of refused to turn up at the right time.

That is actually the right answer.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

What?!

It was a mechanical shark and it kept breaking down,

so they had to keep finding creative ways to shoot round it,

so in a sense, the shark wouldn't come out of the trailer.

Jaws, of course, based on the book of the same name by Peter Benchley.

I have some working titles that he first thought of.

The Stillness In The Water,

The Jaws Of Death,

but my favourite -

What's That Noshing On My Leg?

Do you think in the book that he had typed,

"Doo-doo... Doo-doo...

"Doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo..."?

Page 2 - "Doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo..."

"Oh, this thing's writing itself!"

Benchley actually has a shark named after him.

Etmopterus benchleyi.

It's not exactly a killer, it's about 30-50cm long,

also known as ninja lantern shark.

It's fairly recently discovered,

it lives off the coast of Central America.

We don't have one, obviously, in the studio.

But I have a life-size cut-out. It looks like that. It's rather sweet.

That's the size it is in real life?

That's the size of the one that Peter Benchley, who wrote Jaws,

-has got named after him.

-That is pathetic.

-Yeah?

THIS is a shark.

LAUGHTER

HE IMITATES JAWS THEME

-Rarr!

-But see, you couldn't help yourself but do the music,

you immediately went... ALL IMITATE JAWS THEME

So he looks really nice and friendly there.

He looks rather sweet.

It's got lots of things on the side that says you shouldn't do.

But it doesn't say don't swim with actual sharks.

That is not the smallest shark, though,

the one named after Benchley.

The dwarf lantern shark is the smallest,

and it grows to only about 15 centimetres.

Aw!

I'd say, you know, a couple of those on a pizza, a bit of tomato...

Their stomach organs emit light

to camouflage them from creatures below, so it makes them

blend into the sunlight that streams from the light above.

My favourite shark that I've ever seen was Joe Lycett

in a swimming pool in Canada.

We were doing a gig there together and you know your little, like...

-Oh, yeah.

-Your shark that he does in the pool.

But you don't see Joe coming.

And then he goes... # Der-da! Der-da! Der-da... #

SHE IMITATES RIFF: I Love You Baby

LAUGHTER

There was a gay Jaws, as well, that I did,

which was # Der-da! Der-da! Der-da... #

Oooh!

"Scared of me? Shut up!"

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Did you know that female sharks can reproduce without male contact?

Finally!

-Living the dream.

-It is almost impossible to sneak up on a shark,

and that's because they have eyes on the side of their head.

They can see behind them just as well as they can see in front.

I'm very...

LAUGHTER

So, they've got two blind spots.

One directly in front of them, and one behind.

I'm interested that someone has worked out

how difficult it is to sneak up on a shark.

That would involve someone seeing a shark and thinking,

"I tell you what, I'm going to sneak up on it.

"I'm going to give that shark the fright of its life."

-Who...

-"Do you know, it's really difficult to sneak up on them!"

The kid's going... # Der-da! Der-da! Der-da... #

Who would like to see a shark which can bite chunks

-out of a submarine? Who would like to see?

-Yeah. Yes, please.

OK, I don't even... Alan, can you lift that up, darling?

It's very heavy. Here we have...

ALAN GROANS

So butch.

I shat that out earlier.

LAUGHTER

There it is, I don't know if you can...if you can see it that well.

You're going to be so sorry, because the expert who's brought that in

is about to speak to us, and you're going to be mortified.

LAUGHTER

It is about 18 inches long and...

In fact, we have a number of things.

Please welcome Chris Bird from Southampton University,

and Ali Hood of the Shark Trust, who are sitting just over there.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Chris, let's start with the one in the jar.

Is it true it could bite a chunk out of a submarine?

Yeah, there's certainly historical evidence

of them biting through the rubber coverings of submarines

and cables on undersea cameras and things like that.

-So what is this one called?

-That's the cookie cutter shark.

-And why's it called that?

-It leaves these really distinctive

kind of cookie-cutter bite marks on its prey.

So, it usually eats whales and big fish.

And it will suck onto the side of them, bore out a cookie cutter hole,

and then swim off.

And sometimes it confuses submarines and cameras and cables for...

-Right...

-..their prey.

-And could it hurt a person?

There's been one case of a person being eaten

whilst they were swimming at night between two islands.

But it would be in small... They'd eat them slowly, by chunks,

-like Hannibal Lecter?

-You wouldn't know it came.

"First I get the back, then I get the brains."

It would just dart by you, and then before you know it,

you'd kind of have a chunk missing without you realising what happened.

That could be a good weight loss scheme.

Yes!

Swimming between the islands, you lose half a pound each way.

If anyone's eaten too much custard, darling, that is wonderful.

Now, Ali, let me just talk about this,

because I have sometimes found these on a beach.

Tell me what it is. Is this a UK...?

Yes, yes, we have oviparous - egg-laying -

-sharks and skates in the UK.

-So what is this? This is a...?

-That's...

-That one is the egg case of a flapper skate.

It's found up in Scotland, around the north of Ireland.

And that's one of the largest skates globally.

It grows to two to three metres across its wingspan.

Some people call them mermaids' purses, but it's sharks' eggs,

-isn't it?

-Yeah, shark and skate and ray eggs, yeah.

And when you find them, they're all empty, is that right?

Generally, they're empty. If they're not, you'll know,

-cos they'll be quite stinky.

-And this one here?

The smaller species you have there are skate.

Or we call them rays.

If they've got curly tendrils...

-Yes...

-..those are cat shark egg cases,

so we have three egg-laying sharks in British waters.

And people could just find these

-on the beach for themselves?

-Yeah.

-OK.

So, the one that is really extraordinary is this beautiful...

It's a piece of art, really. What is this one?

That one is from Australia, it's associated with Port Jackson sharks,

and I found that just the other week when I was down there.

So, how does it work? It looks like a sort of screw.

Yes, the shark lays it, it takes the egg case in its mouth

and then it literally screws it into a crevice in a rock,

where it safely develops.

-AISLING:

-And is it just one baby shark in that?

One baby shark in all of those, yeah. Or skate, or ray.

Ali and Chris, thank you so very much. How wonderful.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Would you like me to put my shark away?

Yes, please, darling. Sorry, Alan.

Goodbye, old friend.

LAUGHTER

Right, what's the biggest thing in the ocean

that you've never heard of?

Oh.

Well, I mean, we've never heard of it,

so it's difficult for us to name.

Yes. That is true.

-Yeah, so...

-Shall we have a stab at it?

-Yes.

-The sherdobleh.

That's what I was going to say.

# Row your boat... # Blue whale.

KLAXON BLARES

I mean, they're astonishing, up to 98 feet, 170 tonnes,

but I want one you've never heard of.

# Row your boat... #

Red whale.

LAUGHTER

It's called the ocean sunfish.

The common mola.

It is essentially a giant head covered in mucus.

-AISLING GROANS

-Oh, God!

We've all been there!

LAUGHTER

I went scuba diving one time in Australia

and when I got back on the boat, the pilot of the boat said,

"Got a little bit of, er... in your mask there, mate."

And my mask was full of snot.

I mean, it was an extraordinary amount of snot that

I couldn't understand that that had been in my head in the first place.

-So, you were like one of these?

-Yes, I was a head covered in mucus.

They spend most of their time sunbathing

on the surface of the ocean.

One of these adults can literally weigh a tonne.

And they grow to be 60 million times heavier than their larvae,

so that would be like a human baby becoming an adult

the size of six Titanics.

They have a grey, round body and rough skin that feels

a bit like sandpaper, but the Germans call it

the Schwimmender Kopf - the swimming head.

Apparently, they have a permanently surprised expression.

They have a mouth that never really closes.

And they are very docile and very curious and friendly.

Tierney Thys, who is the world's leading expert, calls them "goofy".

She says that, when she goes to try and tag one,

they stick their fin out of the water and wave,

like they're going, "Hi, I'm over here!"

The other one looks like he's about to start a fight on a night out.

Like, "Oi, you! Over there! What were you saying about my mum? Eh?"

Apparently, they're just not aggressive in any way.

There's only one human death attributed to a mola,

and that's a man who was accidentally flattened by one leaping.

What size are they, then?

About six by eight foot, but really it's like having a car come at you.

-It's like a sort of Cadillac.

-Whoa! God, they are big.

-Yeah.

Where would you find one?

-Isle of Wight.

-Yeah.

In fact, the Isle of Wight is one big one.

They like it warm, darling.

You're not going to find it round the British coast.

They're very strong swimmers

and they can dive down to a fantastic depth of 2,600 metres.

And the females produce as many as 300 million eggs at a time, but...

only two survive.

Aww.

Yeah. I don't know...

We feel bad, we're invested now in the mola.

It looks like it's not finished.

They've sort of gone like,

"Just squeeze it in at the bottom. There, that'll be fine."

It's like the Good Lord went, "Er, it'll do."

-Unfinished sculpture of a fish.

-Yeah.

The biggest thing in the ocean that we'd never heard of

used to be the Mola mola, although now we know about it,

that title will have to be passed on to something else.

As an editor, what suggestions would you make to improve Moby Dick?

# The sea... #

Yes?

I think it should have,

like, a feminist remake

and it should be called Moby Fanny.

LAUGHTER

Do you want to give me any plot points at all?

She still eats a man whole, um...

LAUGHTER

The publisher who it was sent to, Peter J Bentley,

rejected Herman Melville's Moby Dick because he didn't like the whale.

This is what he wrote.

"First, we must ask, does it have to be a whale?

"While this is a rather delightful, if somewhat esoteric plot device,

"we recommend an antagonist with a more popular visage

"among the younger readers. For instance,

"could not the captain be struggling

"with a depravity towards young, perhaps voluptuous, maidens?"

LAUGHTER

Partly inspired by a real whale called Mocha Dick,

a whale that was fantastically fussy about his coffee.

LAUGHTER

-Well, Starbuck's a character in it, isn't he?

-Yes, absolutely.

So, it was a real whale, an albino sperm whale

who swam alongside whaling boats

and if the boats tried to attack Mocha Dick,

he would then destroy them.

In fact, when he was killed in 1839, they found 19 harpoons in his side.

-It was a legendary whale.

-What sort of whale was it, sorry?

Herman Melville talks about

-a sperm whale as the largest creature on Earth.

-Right.

But when he was writing, the blue whale had never been measured.

The blue whale's going, "Ssh!"

So, the sperm whale is sort of 67 feet to the blue whale's

kind of 98 feet, so not as big, but it's the largest toothed whale.

I was at the Natural History Museum, and the penis of the sperm whale

is just so intimidating, it's just so long, like, two cars, I'd say.

To carry that around with him...

Are we talking, like, a Vauxhall Astra, or...?

-Yeah, good point.

-Or a Range Rover?

Well, actually, our shark experts might know.

Would you know how long... Hi...

Just because they're shark experts

doesn't mean they're experts on whale penises.

They are very separate fields!

What specific car is a whale's dick like?

A limousine, I think.

-Limousine?

-Limousine, yeah.

Like a well-attended hen party limousine, or...

It's only like a stretch limo when it's excited.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Moving on...

Poor old Herman Melville,

3,715 copies of Moby Dick sold in his lifetime, and just 556.37,

he died virtually unknown.

And then in 2014, the Guardian named Moby Dick

the 17th greatest novel of all time.

So for an extra point, buzz in,

who knows the first line of Moby Dick?

-AUDIENCE MEMBER:

-"Call me Ishmael."

"Call me Ishmael," absolutely right.

"Some years ago, never mind how long precisely,

"having little or no money in my purse

"and nothing particular to interest me on shore,

"I thought I would sail about a little

"and see the watery part of the world."

According to American Book Review,

that is the number-one best sentence in the world.

I'm going to read out number two, and I will give a bonus point

to anybody who interrupts to tell me where it's from.

"It's a truth universally acknowledged

"that a single man in possession of a good fortune..."

It's Jane Austen, isn't it? Pride And Prejudice?

Pride And Prejudice, you're absolutely right, yes.

"..must be in want of a wife."

Have you got anything lower down,

like Harry Potter-ish that I can buzz in for?

Is the third one, "If it's custard..."

LAUGHTER

I tell you what I do have,

I have some of the greatest rejection letters of all time.

"An irresponsible holiday story that will never sell" -

The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame.

"An absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull" -

William Golding, Lord Of The Flies.

"I haven't the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say.

"Apparently, the author intends to be funny" - Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

"I'm afraid I thought this one as dire as its title.

"It's a kind of Prince of Denmark of the hotel world,

"a collection of cliches and stock characters

"which I can't see being anything but a disaster" -

Ian Main, a BBC comedy script editor, turning down Fawlty Towers.

AUDIENCE GASP Wonderful, isn't it?

And TS Eliot, who used to work as a director at Faber and Faber,

the great publishing house, he rejected George Orwell's Animal Farm

because he was concerned it was excessively Trotskyist.

He argued, "The pigs were far more intelligent than the other animals,

"and the farm needed more public spirited pigs."

So, if editors had had their way,

Moby Dick would have been a voluptuous maiden instead of a whale.

What kind of bag were all British lifeboats

required to carry until 1998?

A ha-a-andba-a-a-ag.

KLAXON BLARES

Sick bag.

KLAXON BLARES

-A bag for life?

-A bag for life!

-See?

-That's very good...

-See what I did there?

-It's a lifeboat, it's a bag for life.

-That's very good.

Is it one of those wet bags that keeps things dry?

-Well, it certainly has liquid in it.

-Ooh...

-So, what kind of liquid might you take with you...?

-Custard.

-A bag of custard.

-A bag of custard.

It's oil. They were known as wave-quelling bags,

so oil was commonly used to calm troubled waters.

I'm sure you've heard the expression.

It was kept in a canvas bag, which was attached to the anchor,

and it worked by reducing the wave height and the sea spray,

and lifeboats were required to carry oil bags until 1998.

How much oil would you need to put in the water to stop a wave?

It's really a small amount.

So a single tablespoon of oil dropped onto a lake

-can calm half an acre of water.

-No, no, that's...

What happens is it spreads out and forms a layer,

which is one molecule thick, and that is enough to prevent

the wind from whipping up the waves onto the surface.

This is something that has been known about since Pliny the Elder,

and he wrote, "Everything is soothed by oil," and this is the reason why

divers send out small quantities of it from their mouths,

because it smoothes every part which is rough.

Oh, my God. Like a salad dressing amount.

How are you making your salad?!

-I was giving it a bit of...

-She's tossing it, darling.

It's amazing, the amount of oil slicks there've been

in the last half a century,

it's amazing there's ever any rough weather at sea.

Nobody ever sees the positive side of an oil slick.

Genuinely, though, in an oil slick area,

would there then be no waves for ages?

It would genuinely calm the waters,

and one of the reasons why we know this,

the person who did so many experiments on this,

is the great American statesman Benjamin Franklin.

He saw two ships from a flotilla,

and they had smooth waters in their wake while the other ships didn't.

And he asked why, and he was told that those ships had jettisoned

their kitchen grease and that therefore gave them

the easier passage. And he checked this out.

And what's lovely, he did experiments on a place in London,

and there's a place called Mount Pond, on Clapham Common,

and that is, in fact, where he did his experiments,

and the pond is still there today.

It stinks of chip fat.

LAUGHTER

There's also a natural... It's not just us who do this -

swordfish, they've got a gland next to their noses,

and they secrete oil

and it's thought to coat the fish's head in order to repel water

and make it easier for them to swim through it,

and they can reach speeds of up to 62mph. So, and that is, again, the...

And when you go to fry them as well, it's really handy,

because you're just like, "Fzzzt!"

It doesn't stick to the pan. Straightaway.

You could just hold them by the nose and cook them like that.

Rub its face in garlic, you could use its nose to chop up

all the garlic and the onions, then put him in the pan.

Make a salad...

Now, describe the world's oiliest Valentine's card.

Er, "Oil love you for ever"?

Well, you're not far off.

Is it just Aisling's, because her salad dressing's gone everywhere?

We might send Valentine's cards that are also supportive of oil.

-Oh, like General Motors?

-Yes.

"General Motors loves how much petrol that you buy."

-OK, you are absolutely right, except it was Shell Oil.

-Ah.

So, 1938 to 1975, Shell Oil sent anonymous Valentine's cards

to their female customers,

and they wanted to make sure they were anonymous, so they bought stamps

rather than putting it through the franking machine,

but I think the verses rather give away that it was

a marketing gimmick, so, here is one.

"At last you know, my Valentine

"The news I've longed to bring

"Now let the petrol flow like wine

"Let joyful engines sing."

Wow.

I've got another one.

Aisling, perhaps you'd read one for us, please?

Of course, I can definitely read.

"My Valentine, my basic need

"O fly away with me!

"My heart is full, if not my tank

"To journey far with thee."

Aww! Lovely.

Is "tank" a euphemism in that poem?

But how did Shell Oil get their name? Anybody know?

I got a tiny dying memory in my brain...

The father of the guy that founded it collected shells?

You are absolutely right.

It was a man called Marcus Samuel, he had an antiques business

in Whitechapel in London, and then in 1833, he started importing

ornamental shells because they were hugely popular in interior design,

and in order to get these shells from all over the world,

he developed all sorts of trade routes,

and then his sons began trading in oil

and they used their father's routes in order to bring the oil in.

Isn't there something about the importance of oil as a sort of

global political thing, increasing massively

when Winston Churchill turned the Royal Navy from coal to oil?

Oh, I did not know that, but that makes total sense to me.

So, you would imagine at that moment,

if you want to rule the waves, then...

Yeah, suddenly, the coal that was underneath Britain

wasn't enough, and it was important to control

bits of the world that had oil underneath.

-So, it's Churchill's fault?

-It's Churchill's fault.

-You don't hear that very often.

-Yup.

Roses are red, oil makes us slick

Shell's Valentine's cards were a marketing trick.

-See what I did there?

-Nice, very nice.

-Thank you.

-Liked it.

Now, steady your stomachs and hold on to the handrail,

it's time for General Ignorance.

Complete this sentence.

There are plenty more fish in the...

# How deep...? #

Sea.

KLAXON BLARES

You don't learn, do you?

-# Row your boat... #

-Yes?

Sky.

Only 20% of the world's fish species actually live in the sea,

-where do the rest live?

-In the rivers.

Rivers. Rivers and lakes, absolutely right.

Amazon, Congo, Mekong, all those kind of river basins,

particularly diverse in fish species,

so one site in the Amazon basin, Cantao State Park,

contains more freshwater fish species than the whole of Europe.

-That's a lot of fish!

-It is a lot of fish.

LAUGHTER

I think that's the premise for mentioning it.

Hang on! Do you see how he's understood the show?!

David? The next time you come on, that chair's very comfy.

Possible...

Of course, we have polluted our rivers

and many of them don't sustain large fish populations.

Yeah.

Um...

You talked about fish coming from the sky.

So, in Utah, it used to be that remote lakes were once stocked

by walking miles and miles with milk cans full of fish,

and today they're dropped from planes 150 foot above the lakes,

and it's called aerial restocking. Ted Hallows,

who's a hatchery manager from Kamas County in Utah, says,

"Most of the fish make it to the water safely."

And each one of those fish has got a JustGiving page.

LAUGHTER

They are slightly obsessed with the fish.

Utah has a lake named Fish Lake,

you find it on the Fish Lake Plateau in the Fish Lake National Forest.

-That's too many nouns!

-Too many fish.

Fish, lake, forest - which is it?!

I feel like Fish Lake would make a less athletic ballet show.

LAUGHTER

Sometimes, there are fish in the sky -

in 2004, the people of Knighton in Powys were surprised to see

dozens of minnows flying around. It was after a thunderstorm,

and the usual explanation is that a small tornado has sucked

the fish from a nearby body of water, although some people

are sceptical of this, they think it's an overflow from a pond.

But why isn't there actually a fish that lives in trees or on the land?

-Because, you know, there's penguins that live in the sea...

-Yes.

..and mammals that live in the sea, you know,

why hasn't a fish had the gumption to start living like a rabbit?

-You know.

-I think it's lack of ambition.

Bats - bats are mammals, they can fly,

it just doesn't make sense that fish aren't trying!

I think that what you need to do is to start diving

and give those fish a good talking-to.

I wouldn't need to dive,

if there were fish running around the house...

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

The mangrove killifish lives on land.

-Oh, there's one.

-Well done!

Well done, mangrove killifish. That's my kind of fish!

Now, when do spring tides occur in the southern hemisphere?

-Ooh.

-Now, is it... Now...

-Ah.

-Yeah, yeah?

Oh...

# The sea... #

-Is it...

-Yes.

..the opposite to us here in the northern hemisphere, so...

-What are you going to say?

-I am going to go, Sandi, with

Augus-s-s-s...

Sept...ember...

Are you saying autumn?

-KLAXON BLARES

-You're not giving me a clue.

OK. Autumn, yeah.

-No.

-Darn.

-Anybody else?

-Spring.

-Hey!

KLAXON BLARES

Spring tides have got nothing to do with spring at all.

It is the high tide that follows a new or a full moon,

so it is the time when there is the most difference

between high and low tides.

So, basically, it occurs twice a month, all year round.

It just comes from an earlier meaning of spring,

which means to rise up suddenly, that's all it is.

But tide actually has a Norse origin, so in Denmark,

the word for time is "tid", T-I-D, and that's where we get tide from.

So, tide and time actually means the same thing.

It's like Eastertide, isn't it? Doesn't refer to the tide.

That means Easter-time.

-Yuletide, it's the same. It's about time, isn't it?

-Yeah.

Highest tide in the world, Canada,

the Bay of Fundy, which separates New Brunswick from Nova Scotia,

the difference between high and low tide at its most is 53 feet.

The level is the same as a three-storey building.

That's phenomenal.

Imagine, the tide's coming in, "Yeah, be all right."

-53 feet.

-"The house, the house!"

Now, without leaving your seat,

please somebody do an impression of an Olympic diver.

"Hello, it's me, Tom Daley."

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Do I get the point, or...?

Yeah, I liked that, you can have an extra point, that's very good.

-What do you mean?

-Er, well, what do they look like?

They go, they dive...

KLAXON BLARES No.

No, they lock their hands together, like this,

and enter with the palms entering the water first,

because it creates less splash.

So they're trying to make a cavity in the water

wide enough for the body to go through, so if you look there,

-when they impact...

-I'm looking, I'm looking.

-It is an odd angle to see somebody at, isn't it?

-Not particularly.

LAUGHTER

Do you watch dangling men?

"If you wouldn't mind putting your ankles up there?"

I went to see Olympic diving.

-Was it good?

-Well, the thing about it is...

..once you've seen one, you really have seen them all.

One by one, they go up the top and whoop, splash!

HE EXHALES

It's not a spectator sport.

So, you watched the Rio Olympics? Because the pool got, became...

-It went green.

-It went green!

Somebody had poured 160 litres of hydrogen peroxide into the pool,

and if you put chlorine and hydrogen peroxide together,

they neutralise one another and algae is free to grow.

The thing I like best about Rio was they had some of the world's

greatest swimmers, and 75 lifeguards. Now...

LAUGHTER

Well, they might be very, very fast,

but have they got a brick off the bottom?

Apparently, the issue is that synchronised swimmers can collide.

That is one of the things. And swimmers sometimes faint.

So, they had 75 lifeguards, who...

Two things that no-one has ever seen happen.

Do you know what was my favourite? My favourite sport of all time -

solo synchronised swimming.

LAUGHTER

OK, it was a sport at the Olympic Games between 1984 and 1992.

I mean, that's just splashing about.

-On your own.

-To music!

It's great fun, I'm sure,

but there's no need to make it a competition.

No, but what you could do is put a shark in...

Right, final question in our ocean show,

so we go to the greatest ocean of all.

How many lungs does Billy Ocean have?

I'm going to go one.

KLAXON BLARES

Three!

He has three. He has an extra pulmonary node

between his two regular lungs.

And some people attribute the fact

that he's got this extra lung capacity

as to why he's had such a long career.

I think it's cos he's one of the nicest men you will ever, ever meet.

Now, as we head back into harbour,

let's take a quick look at the score.

All at sea, in last place,

with -51, it's Alan!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

In third place, with -37, David!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

In second, with -17, Aisling!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And tonight's winner, with -15, it's Joe!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Tonight's objectionable object,

this lovely sausage dog drink dispenser, goes to Joe.

-Congratulations.

-I love that.

-There you go.

-Look at that!

Fantastic! It only remains for me to thank Aisling, David, Joe and Alan.

Now that we've all disembarked safely,

we hope you enjoyed your voyage aboard the QI2,

and we'll leave you with this.

During the early days of the Iraq war,

Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon stated in Parliament

that the port of Umm Qasr was like the city of Southampton.

"He's either never been to Umm Qasr or he's never been to Southampton,"

said one soldier. "There's no beer, no prostitutes,

"and people are shooting at us.

"It's actually more like Portsmouth!"

Thank you very much, goodnight!