Gifts QI

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Gooooooooooooood

evening! And welcome to QI,

which tonight is a general grab bag of Gs - gifts, gags, genetics, gaols and granaries.

Let's open the gifts first. I have been given the most fantastic presents.

-First out of the box, Jimmy Carr!

-AUDIENCE: Oooh!

-And Jan Ravens!

-AUDIENCE: Mmmmmm!

-But what about Clive Anderson?

-Ohhhh!

-And just what I've always wanted. My very own puppy - Alan Davies!

-Ahhhh!

Now what am I going to get in the buzzer department? Jimmy goes...

# Gimme all your lovin' All your hugs and kisses too! #

-Jan goes...

-# Give me just a little more time! #

-Clive goes...

-# Gimme, gimme, gimme a man after midnight! #

-And Alan goes...

-# How much is that doggie in the window? Woof! Woof! #

Here's a gift of a question. Suppose you want to send a present to someone in the USA.

What's the commonest item that is seized by the Customs?

# Gimme all your lovin'! #

-I'm rather enjoying that.

-Yes.

-Mexicans.

That's a reasonable guess. I actually have a bag of items...

Of Mexicans?

Can you pass that to Jimmy? Keep one. And vice versa.

-What's in the bag?

-These are all items that may or may not be banned

-by US Customs if you try to cross the border with them.

-Chopped pork and ham?

-Money. Dirty handkerchiefs.

-Dirty handkerchiefs.

-Some seeds and a lottery ticket.

-A cigar!

-I bet you're not allowed to have seeds.

-You're not allowed to have anything in there.

-A shoe?!

One is the most confiscated item.

-I've been to America and I definitely remember wearing shoes.

-It's a shoe that's been to a farm lately.

It's got soil on it, the shoe. Is this because of Cuba?

Exactly right. It's a Cuban cigar.

Does this just indicate you've got flu or a disease?

A hankie that is covered in any amount of human disjecta, any fluids...

-Is money too obvious?

-It's not real money. It's counterfeit money.

-I'm going to go with shoes.

-Shoes.

-Lottery tickets.

-Lottery tickets.

-Who tries to import lottery tickets?

-You can go to prison for two years.

-Worth it for a £10 million prize.

-IF! Yes.

-So which do you think is the item?

-Hessian bags!

-They are also illegal. The bag.

-It's made out of hemp.

-Extra point.

It actually rhymes with "tinder egg".

-Kinder Egg?

-The egg with the secret surprise in it.

-Because you can easily open them?

-Then fill them with heroin?

-No.

-A child may easily choke on the small parts.

-Exactly.

In their poetic phrase, "It poses a choking and aspiration hazard."

It's happening now! Oh, no! Quick!

-That is a Creme Egg!

-A Creme Egg.

-Is it tidy up time now?

-You can tidy up, thank you.

But the fact is that there is the "surprise toy" egg

which is the most confiscated item. And all imports from Cuba.

For 17 years in a row, the United Nations has deemed what illegal?

-The US boycott.

-Yes. The US boycott on Cuba

has for 17 years in a row been deemed illegal by all the UN countries except...

-Cuba!

-No, Israel and the Pacific state of Palau.

I'll tell you, bizarrely, what is legal to import is what Americans call a switchblade, a flick knife,

-but only if you can satisfy one condition. One type of person is allowed it.

-A fisherman?

-Nope.

-Teddy Boy.

-A gang member. >

Think about what distinguishes a switchblade from any other knife.

-You're a one-armed person.

-You've got a good brain, Clive Anderson.

-So if you got caught with a switchblade...

-Chop your arm off.

-Ha!

-You've got it.

-There you are.

-Put it in your hand luggage. For reattaching later.

Fishermen are supposed to use them sensibly. When you're catching a fish you have to cut the line.

That was always the justification we used to use!

Anyway, chocolate eggs with toys in are the commonest items seized by US Customs, then Cuban cigars.

-What do you call someone who never laughs?

-That bloke.

-LAUGHTER

-You're right.

-He hasn't cracked a smile all evening.

-Might be dead. Nudge him.

-Are we looking for a phobia word?

-Agelastic, meaning they don't laugh. There are people.

-It seems...

-They can't laugh?

-Well, who knows?

There's a sort of epilepsy where you...hahaha...a lot,

which is an unusual affect.

That was shocking.

I've got an interesting sort of Greek-type word for something that I do sometimes

where I can't help the urge to do an impression of somebody.

Sometimes if somebody's got a limp or a funny walk, I want to... go along with it. It's terrible.

Apparently, when you want to take on somebody's limp, it's called echopraxia.

-Oh, brilliant.

-If you do it with words, imitating them verbally, it's echolalia.

That is very... Points! Points!

-Brilliant.

-APPLAUSE

It's also, I think, if I'm not mistaken, it's called taking the piss as well.

-Yeah.

-It almost defines being human, laughter. Animals don't laugh. They don't put two things together.

It's very social. People tend not to laugh on their own. Even watching a show as hilarious as this,

at home on your own you won't laugh in the same way, which is why people think it's canned laughter.

You ARE laughing at bits. It's a very social thing.

-You're showing that you get the thing and understand.

-A communal thing.

People said to be agelastic include Isaac Newton, who is supposed to have laughed once in his life.

-When an apple fell on his head!

-Someone asked the point of studying Euclid and he burst out laughing.

That is a good one, though. What was he like?!

-According to Marshal Zhukov, Stalin didn't laugh.

-I'm amazed. He seemed such a chirpy chap.

-Behind the moustache, he's chuckling.

-Jonathan Swift and Gladstone.

-He was a funny writer.

Lots of comedians don't laugh. Lots of comedians are miserable in real life. Not us, obviously.

The bloke on the left and the bloke in the middle are the same.

-On the left, he's been on a diet.

-It's an advert for the Chin Gym.

-The one on the left is Isaac Newton.

-That's Newton.

-And Jonathan Swift.

-Trollope, on the other hand...

-Couldn't stop laughing.

-He died giggling.

-Didn't he work in the post office?

-That's probably it.

-He did.

-He invented the post-box.

-Yes.

-And lived to regret it.

-He couldn't get out.

No, he was sorry for a very odd reason. He was very old-fashioned about what women shouldn't do.

He hadn't anticipated that the post office would allow women to communicate with anyone, freely.

Before the post-box, they would have to go to their father or a servant who would put the stamp on.

Suddenly, they could send their own letters and have relationships without their parents' consent

-and he resented this.

-What has he done?!

-The law of unintended consequences.

-Good old Trollope.

There are theories of laughter. The superiority theory - the glory we feel when we see someone suffer.

-I believe it, but a lot of people don't understand it.

-Very good. There's the incongruity theory.

The decorous and logical abruptly dissolves into the low and absurd.

We wouldn't farting well want that. For example.

Not that I'd say that. The relief theory, Freud - naughtiness of the joke liberates the laughter

-from inhibitions about forbidden thoughts.

-Watching Jackass.

-You've written a book. The Naked Jape.

-Yeah, with my friend Lucy, about the nature of jokes.

-Have you come to a theory?

-There's all these different theories from around the world.

And they're all pretty much nonsense. They all work in the same way - all jokes are two stories.

The first makes you make an assumption and the second makes you realise it was erroneous.

An Englishman, Scotsman and Irishman go into a pub and the barman says, "Is this some kind of joke?"

-A meta joke.

-Yeah. When I told them I wanted to be a comedian, they laughed. They're not laughing now.

-That's a brilliant one.

-Monkhouse.

-Bob Monkhouse.

It's hard when you write about comedy to make it funny as well. Did you...?

In the end, we put a joke on every page. Some of it's complicated.

They say analysing jokes is like dissecting a frog - no one's that interested and the frog dies.

-Like digging up the roots of a plant.

-And killing it as you do it.

Exactly. Anyway, agelasts are people who don't laugh at gags.

Answer me this. Who is responsible for the oldest joke in the world?

# Give me just a little more time! #

Well, I don't know who is responsible for the oldest joke,

but I can tell you something quite interesting about the subject of the first impression,

-which was Socrates.

-Really?

In a play by Aristophanes called The Clouds.

The interesting thing about it was that this portrayal resulted in him being put on trial

and put to death for corrupting youths.

-And they used the impression of him...

-As evidence.

David Steel complains about his Spitting Image puppet ruining his career or whatever.

Well, these are all excellent. There's a joke here,

which is a pretty old Greek joke. There was an absent-minded professor who was on a sea voyage

when a storm blows up and his slaves are weeping in terror.

He says, "Don't cry, I have freed you all in my will." That's a joke.

Slave-related humour there.

The Abderites were stereotyped as being incredibly stupid.

This is really frustrating. This is joke 114 in the Philogelos, the joke book.

This Abderite asks a eunuch how many children he has.

You see? And the eunuch goes, "Duh! None. I'm a eunuch."

So the Abderite says... And the fragment is missing. We don't have the punchline.

So...I'm inviting you to provide the punchline.

"How many children have you got?" "I don't have any. I'm a eunuch."

-The Abderite, who's thick, says...

-How many grandchildren?

-Very good!

-"Excellent. How many grandchildren?"

-APPLAUSE

I like working with old material.

The oldest joke I found that still sort of works, and I've seen it performed on stage,

is an old Greek joke. A barber says to a man, "How do you want your hair cut?"

And the man says, "In silence."

It still kind of works.

-Very good.

-That's an old one.

There's a much older one. A Sumerian one from 1,900 BC, which is really pretty old.

Something that has never occurred since time immemorial -

a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap.

Don't open with it, Stephen, don't open with it. Work it into the set somewhere.

Time immemorial in those days was a week last Tuesday.

An old English one is what is the most cleanliest leaf?

-Holly leaves, for no one will wipe their arse with them.

-LAUGHTER

Humour was about farts and bottoms.

-We've moved on from there.

-Thank God for that.

Farting in the lap? I don't...? Was everyone doing it?

-For the first time, a young woman did NOT fart in his lap.

-So women probably weren't allowed chairs.

Chairs were expensive. The woman would be on his lap and would fart.

-Once there was a woman who didn't and it was worthy of report.

-"She hasn't farted! Ha ha!"

A very interesting joke.

Here is a good gag. What sort of person wears one of these?

Lord!

You can try it on yourself if you like. It's got little...

-The sound of polystyrene! Ah! Ah!

-There you are. Sorry.

-Oh, this is a tongue thing.

-Yeah.

This is to stop... I can't remember what it's called. They've got one of these in the Museum of Torture.

You can open the side somehow.

-That bit goes in the mouth.

-It stops your lady talking.

-That's it.

-Would Pony Boy come in this answer?

-Pony Boy?

-Yes.

-Excuse me?!

That's it. Oh, I say. Fits you rather well.

You sounded like you were having an idea then, Stephen!

-It was quite disconcerting.

-Giddy-up!

"You've given me a thought there, Alan, I must say. Have him scrubbed and brought to my room."

LAUGHTER

Don't bother to have him scrubbed.

-They're called, does anybody know?

-MUFFLED:

-A witch's cradle.

-So close.

-A witch's cradle.

-MUFFLED:

-I can't talk!

What's the answer, Alan? Let's do the letters. One for yes...

-Is it A?

-Uh-uh.

-It's...

-Is it a device used for pigs when they are constipated?

Ohhh(!)

Sorry, Alan. I probably should have said before. What they do is strap it on and ram it home.

It's a sort of chastity belt for the face?

-Known as a scold's bridle.

-Scold's bridle!

Was she ducked in the river? Get it before he says it!

-You were ducked in the water?

-The more common punishment was a cucking stool, not ducking stool.

-It is actually a cucking stool.

-"Excuse me! That's the wrong word!

"Get me off the cucking stool!"

So who had to wear one? Other than Alan.

Nagging and malicious, spiteful, gossipy women.

The male equivalent is barratry. A barrator was a male equivalent.

There are no real records of these being used. There are 50 in Britain.

This is the replica of one that comes from Walton on Thames.

-Look at that. Extraordinary.

-Makes her look like a dog as well!

That second one's not practical. Is that the front or the back of the head?

That's the male version. See the beard? For a barrator.

There you are.

-A bit of fun with genetics now. What do you get if you cross a butterfly with a caterpillar?

-A butterpillar.

-Oh!

-HOOTER

-Should have said the other one.

-Caterfly.

-Oh!

HOOTER

I feel such a fool!

I'm reading a book at the moment about a very, very hungry caterpillar...

I might know where it's going, but I don't want to spoil it.

Are you saying a species reproduces halfway through its life cycle?

No, there is a theory which is that actually they are different species.

-I know it sounds insane.

-What he's done there is he's not understood.

Fair enough because it is complicated and you might not... Was it Alan who put this forward?

I'll tell you. Donald Williamson, formerly of the University of Liverpool.

It's called hybridogenesis. It does seem pretty off the wall, but...

-..he has some...

-That's a fantastic idea, though.

But sometimes you see an old guy in St Tropez with a beautiful young girl and think a similar thing.

-Maybe the caterpillars had a lot of money.

-No such thing as an ugly rich bloke.

-Williamson,

his star witness was Luidia sarsi, which starts life as a small larva with a tiny starfish inside.

As the larva grows, the starfish migrates to the outside and they separate. This is normal.

But in this one, instead of degenerating, the larva swims off

and lives for several months as an independent animal.

It's like the caterpillar and butterfly are alive at the same time.

His point is that for millions of years, particularly in the sea,

sperm and seed have been mixed, hundreds of thousands of species,

and just once every million years, happen to create a double species. He thinks it's not impossible.

We're intrigued by the possibility.

Now something disconnected. Where are 1% of American adults?

We could find out. Use Google Earth. Some of them are quite big.

-You could.

-"There's one. He's got his own postcode."

-1% - what's the population?

-300 million, isn't it?

-So you're talking about 2.5-3 million.

-Jail!

-Yes! G for gaol. English spelling of jail, of course. G for gaol.

-That many people?

-3 million people are locked up?

-2.3.

-One in every 99.1 adults.

-All of those guys are innocent.

-They were arrested for having switchblades, but only have one arm!

-Well spotted!

APPLAUSE

The proportion is more than twice as many as South Africa, more than three times as many as the Iranians,

more than six times as many as the Chinese. No society in history has imprisoned more citizens.

-But we top the European league.

-We're ahead of China, Turkey and India.

-Yes.

148 prisoners per 100,000.

-It's three strikes and they're out.

-That's the problem.

A legal system based on baseball(!) It just seems bizarre.

"You don't understand the law. It's complicated. What's simple? Baseball!

-"Right, then. Here's the rules..."

-Three strikes and you're out.

If the first two crimes you're convicted of are serious enough, the third, no matter how trivial,

will get a life sentence, 25 years or more.

Leandro Andrade is serving two consecutive 25-year terms for shoplifting nine videotapes.

-He took nine?!

-Yes. Kevin Weber, 26 years for stealing four chocolate chip cookies. It's astonishing.

It's really stupid. You know you're on this sort of deal...

-Take five!

-That is the idea.

Go nuts! < Do another murder!

-Do a bank job.

-No point in doing anything trivial.

It is a bit bonkers. The racial and gender numbers are worrying. One in 30 men aged 20-34 is behind bars.

But for black males it's one in nine. One in nine.

There are more 17-year-old black people in gaol than in college.

5% of the world are American, 25% of all prisoners are American.

-Isn't there controversy with the business end of it?

-It is a business.

-They make loads of stuff.

-Well, one thing I should have said when talking about contraband

is you're not allowed to bring in to America anything made in prisons,

but in America you can almost say, if you are so minded,

that they've re-invented the slave trade. They produce, for example, 100% of all military helmets,

ammunition belts, bulletproof vests, ID tags and other items.

93% of domestically produced paints, 36% of home appliances, 21% of office furniture,

which allows the US to compete with factories in Mexico. The workers can't refuse to work.

I'd like to say something hilarious, but something must be done. It's more Question Time-y tonight.

-It is a bit amazing.

-Extraordinary. It's slavery by the back door.

-Exactly.

-Another video I've got.

LAUGHTER

Ohhh! You found the joke.

-If you're in prison, is there an incentive for you to work?

-You get solitary confinement if you refuse.

More than one in 100 American adults are in jail.

Now it's General Ignorance time. Fingers on buzzers.

What mischief did Cornish wreckers get up to?

I imagine it involved the gene pool.

-# Give me just a little more time! #

-Jan?

-They lit fires

and lured boats onto the rocks by pretending... Is that...?

-HOOTER

-Oh, dear!

You're thinking of mermaids.

-I was totally sold on that idea.

-That is the myth. They didn't. No record of it ever happening.

No contemporary source mentions it.

-There was one accusation in Anglesey but that turned out not...

-Weren't people hanged for this?

-No. No record of it.

-Never happened?

-Only in novels like...

-Jamaica Inn.

-Jamaica Inn.

-By Daphne du Maurier.

Which you know all about. You won Celebrity Mastermind.

-What was your specialist subject?

-Daphne du Maurier, curiously.

But I'm very surprised at this, actually.

It was invented, many people believe, by Methodist preachers

and taken up by Victorian romantic novelists and Daphne du Maurier.

-The stuff you learn on here.

-Repeated by Rev Sabine Baring-Gould, who wrote Onward, Christian Soldiers,

and was the subject of a strange story. He was at a children's party

and he said, "Whose little girl are you?" and the little girl burst into tears and said, "Yours, Daddy!"

He did have 15 children, but it's shocking.

Nearly as bad as the comedian who did an act. An agent approached and said, "You're very good.

"Do you have representation? Who's your agent?" He said, "You are!"

LAUGHTER

Oh, dear. Edward James, the great art collector, recalled in his autobiography his mother shouting,

"Nanny! I'm going to church. I want one of my daughters to go with me."

The nanny said, "Very good, Mrs James. Which one?"

"Oh, the one with the red hair. She'll go with this coat."

There you go. Anyway, it seems, sadly, that wreckers made a living salvaging stuff from shipwrecks,

but there's no evidence that they lured ships onto the rocks.

How could Archimedes have moved the Earth?

# Gimme all your lovin'! # He could have made love to me like a wild man.

# Gimme, gimme, gimme! # Didn't he say he wanted a fulcrum big enough and then a lever?

-HOOTER

-But he couldn't have done it.

-I'm only quoting him!

-He said...

-He's your best available source.

The best way to move the Earth is a montage with a Coldplay song.

Some sporting achievements and maybe Take That's Greatest Day.

-You'll say next Archimedes' screw wasn't up to much.

-I'm sure it was.

-He did say...

-SPEAKS IN GREEK

"Give me a place to stand and I will move the Earth." He discovered the power of the lever.

He was big, wasn't he?

One of our elves worked out that if he weighed 100kg, which is reasonable, I suppose,

and placed his fulcrum a kilometre from the bottom of the Earth,

to balance the planet he'd need a lever 6.5 billion light years long.

Assuming he moved his end one metre, the Earth would move by less than the diameter of a single proton.

He wasn't to be taken literally, Stephen, for goodness' sake!

I'm being penalised for you taking his words as though he meant it. He was merely...

-I'm asking how he could have.

-Who is he on the phone to?

"This isn't working."

"Is that Socrates? I saw a play about you..."

"Just leave it, mate."

Can we all move the Earth when we walk around? In a literal sense. Does it move a little bit?

-Well...

-They say if everyone in China at the same time jumped up and down, they'd be livid.

He's saying, "Did you put my toga in with that red towel?"

No, if you jump up, according to Newtonian insight,

you could move the Earth by a tiny amount, but it would cancel itself out under the Third Law of Motion.

-The jumping up and down would cancel itself out.

-So all that effort is a complete waste of time.

-It is.

-Speaking literally.

-Archimedes would have moved the Earth more by jumping than by using a lever.

This is all we have time for this week. The scores - oh, my goodness!

Our winner is, for the first time, Jan Ravens with six points!

-APPLAUSE

-Plus six!

In second, with minus seven, Jimmy Carr!

APPLAUSE I'll take that!

In third place, with minus 14, Clive Anderson!

That's not bad. APPLAUSE

I'm afraid that means this week's loser is Alan

with minus 18!

APPLAUSE

That's it from Jan, Jimmy, Clive, Alan and me.

The actress Tallulah Bankhead was in a stall in the ladies lavatory and heard someone in the next one.

She said, "Honey, I got no paper in here. Is there some in your stall?" The woman said, "I'm afraid not."

"Could you check by the hand basins for paper towels?" The woman says, "I can't see any."

Tallulah says, "In that case, have you got two tens for a twenty?" Good night.

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