Ice QI

Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,

good evening, good evening, good evening.

Hello. Happy Christmas and welcome to QI on ice.

To keep us warm while Jack Frost is nibbling at our chestnuts,

my stable is fairly heaving with red-nosed reindeer.

Ding-dong, it's Sean Lock.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Why, aye, the lad's in a manger. It's Ross Noble.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And bless my rissoles, it's that merry gentleman,

Father Christmas himself, Brian Blessed.

ENTHUSIASTIC CHEERING

And as the old carol says, "Hither page and stand by me,

"Yonder peasant, who is he?" It's Alan Davies!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

So let's hear your jingle bells. Sean goes...

SLEIGH BELLS JANGLE

Ross goes...

BELLS CHIME

How pleasant. Brian goes...

CHURCH BELLS PEAL

And Alan goes...

PARTY HORN BLOWER SQUEAKS

Thanks for putting us in a party mood.

Don't forget that this year,

we are celebrating our ignorance with the Nobody Knows bonus.

"NOBODY KNOWS" FANFARE

Identify the one question tonight to which nobody knows the answer and you can get points galore.

Can you do me a favour? Can you just put that there?

It really is the Riddler!

LAUGHTER

He does look like the Riddler! Very good!

Now Christmas, of course, is a time for relaxing and feasting,

so answer me this.

Where do they take the most days off work

and have the most expensive Big Macs in the world?

Resolute in Canada, where the Eskimos, the Inuit,

six months of the year it's dark there and they have great,

big, bloody Big Macs and wonderful great big steaks and lots of sex.

-LAUGHTER

-They've got to shag all the winter.

That's true.

That's like the best voiceover ever. "Bloody big Big Macs!

"Shag the life out of you!"

It's a good answer.

This is a country themed to our series.

-Iceland.

-Iceland is the right answer.

It's extraordinary how many days off they take.

Per thousand people, they take off 367 days in the year,

compared to about 20-odd in Britain

and one in Switzerland.

-Probably minus seven in Germany.

-Have they always got a cold?

I think they just have that attitude to life.

-Because they're lazy.

-Possibly.

It's the access to all those delicious prawn rings.

At such low, low prices.

MEXICAN ACCENT: "I'm not going to work today."

"I've got another one. "I'm not going to work today."

"That's how we talk."

MEXICAN ACCENT: "That is how we talk in Iceland."

"It's very cold here! You want some more prawns, it's all frozen!"

Their Big Mac is more than twice a Big Mac in Britain.

It's so expensive that McDonald's has withdrawn from Iceland.

It's a very odd country. Have you been, Brian?

I've not. It's one of the few countries I've not been too.

It's full of firsts.

It has more Nobel Prize winners per capita than any country on earth.

Do you know how many it's had?

-14.

-No.

-One.

-Yes.

One is the right answer but the population is so small,

320,000, which is roughly the population of Croydon,

that as a per capita average...

There he is, Laxness. He won the 1955 Nobel Prize for Literature.

He was the only one to win but because it's such a small population,

it's four times more on average per capita than the United States.

It shows how useless statistics are, really.

It also uses three times more electricity than any other country on earth.

But what's good about their electricity?

Geothermal activity.

100% of it is from either hydro-electric or geothermal.

In that sense, it's the cleanest electricity in the world.

Doesn't everybody live on the edge?

Do you mean, like, "Let's take loads of drugs.

"Let's drive our cars as fast as possible."

-Literally live on the edge.

-Live fast, die young.

Living on the edge in Iceland is going out in just your pants.

You don't have to drive a car, even.

It's not wearing your thermals for a day.

On the coast, I mean. I think pretty much everyone lives on the coast.

It's also the world's youngest country. What do I mean by that?

-It's volcanic, so it came up...

-Geologically, it's the world's youngest country.

-It has the world's oldest...

-Parliament?

Yes! Yes, yes. 947AD and do you know what it is called?

-The Yakult.

-Do that voice again.

Is it "Ye Olde Parliament".

"Shall we pass laws?" "No, we're living on the edge."

"We don't need no laws."

"We've got a prawn ring and all that."

-What is a prawn ring?

-You don't know?

-No, I don't.

-It's prawns arranged in a ring.

-Is it battered?

It's a ring of prawns. WOMAN CACKLES

Run around a bit, that's what the old comics used to say!

-Run around a bit, will you?

-I paid for two.

There should be one over there.

-So it's party food?

-Yes.

-I had you down as an Iceland man.

-No, no. Sadly not.

It comes in like a little plastic circle, circular cover.

It's individual prawns in a layer?

Imagine a show called One Man And His Prawn.

He whistled and they all perfectly got themselves

into a circular pen and they were photographed.

-That's what it looks like.

-So they're all aligned.

It's like when they get attacked, that is what they do, go into a circle to defend themselves.

You want to get yourself a tiny sheepdog...

HE WHISTLES Come by.

-You need a prawndog!

-You need a prawndog.

What's the aquatic equivalent of sheepdog?

What are you talking about, Ross?

You're talking absolute nonsense. Sheepdogs for prawns?

You don't get a sheepdog, you get a prawndog for prawns!

That is, one, why I keep losing that competition.

-Two...

-The prawns are all over the shop.

And two, I've got prawns everywhere and I've been banned from Crufts.

-It's out of order. Appalling.

-Very good.

-Forget it.

-Excellent. Right.

The point is, Iceland is a world leader in surprising areas.

Here's something quite interesting.

Two points for anyone who can tell me this.

In what way is Iceland's most recent volcano similar to Genghis Khan?

I think they are both shag nasties.

Genghis Khan has apparently shagged everything that moves

and he is the father and mother of all populations in Europe and Asia,

so he shagged everything that moves.

And the volcano, of course,

has spurted out, had an orgasm of ammonia and has fertilised Europe.

Am I right?

Damn good answer.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

To be brutally honest, that's not what's on my card.

Oh, shit.

If there was no such thing as science, you would be right.

I think I know what it is. I think, obviously, that volcano stopped lots of transport.

He must have stopped something happening which the volcano stopped happening.

You are in the right area. The odd thing is it's beneficial, especially at the moment.

It's a thing we talk about a lot.

That volcano poured out, they reckon,

between 150,000 and 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

A huge amount of carbon came out as a result of it,

but if you remember, no-one flew for however long it was

and the lack of flying saved three million tonnes.

In fact, it was a huge offset of carbon

and in the case of Ghengis Khan, he slaughtered his way across the world

and had the largest empire the world has ever seen,

four times that of Alexander, twice the size of the Roman Empire, and he killed about 40 million people.

The result was there was so little farming that the forests grew back

and you can time a huge benefit to the world from his slaughter.

-That's extraordinary, isn't it?

-What do we have to pronounce?

That's what I was...

How did you know I was going to ask that as a supplementary question?

-I thought you already did.

-Did I already say it?

-Either that or I read it off the autocue.

-You read it!

You great big cheater!

APPLAUSE

-It's only there.

-I'd now like you to pronounce the name of the volcano.

-It's written up there for you.

-Oh, God alive!

Eye-eye-yarpn-oy-ey-jurp prawn rings.

You should have been a news reader.

With your accent, you've got the best chance.

Ay-ach-jolla-jokull.

It looks a bit like that, yeah. Any thoughts?

Ee-jaff-yallie-jock-rull.

Brian, have a go.

EE-YA-JAFF-JALLA-JOKULL!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

There's an Icelandic woman just gone...

You may have set it off again, doing that.

I think the umlaut changes it, doesn't it? Those little dots.

I think actually the way you are supposed to pronounce it is "udj".

-If only.

-It changes it.

Apparently it's... EY-ya-fyat-lah-YOH-kuhtl.

Is that translated as "big smoky bastard"?

"You will go by ferry".

That's basically the answer.

One of the oddest things about Iceland - I'll show you.

Have a look at this. These are Icelandic.

What do you reckon they are?

-Legs.

-Yes.

If I were to tell you that those are empty, does that help?

Hollow legs.

Oh, are they Icelandic cock pants?

Is it because, like, when you go out on the beach, everything shrinks,

so you put them on and then it gives you a little bit of profile.

Are they a pair of trousers? A pair of ski pants?

They are a pair of trousers made of human skin.

They are on display at the Icelandic Museum of Witchcraft,

which is an extraordinary place because Icelandic witchcraft is pretty odd.

What happens is you ask a friend when he dies, can you have his skin?

Can I have your legs?

If he gives you permission, you flay the skin below the waist,

completely, in one piece, and you wear them as tights.

It gets weirder.

You then have to steal, from a widow, a coin

and you put the coin inside the scrotal area, the sack,

as you see, the whole thing is more or less complete,

with a written incantation.

-And then...

-You open a bank.

APPLAUSE

And that's how the Icelandic economy works.

They sort of do because then the scrotum apparently fills with money.

That's the incantation.

They are sort of necro pants. There is an official...

Necro pants! That's the sort of thing you see advertised at three o'clock in the morning.

-"Do you want necro pants?"

-The Icelandic name is nabrok.

Now, I've got a little task for you to do. A Christmas party game.

I've got these phone books here and they have been interleaved.

There's no glue or anything. They are like a pack of cards.

-One page goes inside another.

-That must have taken ages.

-It did.

Our props people are very proud of their work.

-There you are.

-We'll share.

What I want you to do, you've got ropes, there,

is just pull them apart.

You can take one each.

-Pull them apart.

-It can't be done.

-Go on.

You can't, can you? You literally can't. It's quite extraordinary.

-Strong as Brian is.

-Pull, Brian. Pull!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Sean's alive!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

How come your water wasn't spilt? That's magical.

Yes, it's an old trick.

Me and Brian have been doing this trick for years.

I was trying to sit on top of my tipped-up chair.

A man as strong as Brian,

he may be able to pull Sean off his chair but it can't be done.

In fact, you need 8,000lbs of force in order to do it. It's bizarre.

It's friction and it's just replicated each time. I know.

If you loosen them...

This time it's me!

-It's personal.

-Having a tantrum.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Still can't do it!

AUDIENCE CHEERS

Has anyone got a lighter?

No. And you can stop reading the escort pages as well.

Very good eyesight from there!

I know my Alan!

-Well, there you are.

-WOMAN CACKLES

The fact is, yes, surprising as it...

LAUGHTER

Nurse, she's out of bed again!

From Iceland to Alaska.

The Eskimo-Indian Olympics have been held every year since 1961.

Phone books are not involved, but these are.

More toys for you to play with.

Voila. Voila.

And I'm afraid you have to be prepared to get sticky.

These lubed rods, here, which are very icky.

He's been trying to get me to do this for years.

Sorry, Stephen, but this contravenes my super injunction.

APPLAUSE

All you have to do is work out what the sports are

in the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics, as they're now called.

-That's obviously...

-You can play it with Brian.

It's actually...

Each ones of these games is, like most games,

to hone the skills you need

for the environment in which you live.

-Is this a two-person game?

-It is. You each...

-Is it fire?

Leave the string for the moment and grab the stick and...

-It's all right.

-Is that what I think it is?

No, you have to do it with your hands. No.

That's it.

It's the one who can, without twisting or jerking,

the one who can get the stick off the other.

-Oh, Christ, I've got no chance!

-LAUGHTER

Woo-hoo!

There you can see them doing it.

Well, have a go.

This time... This time you're going on the floor.

-There you go.

-You're holding my hand there, Brian.

-Sorry!

-No twisting or jerking.

-Hold on to one side.

-My hands are too big.

-Can you go...

-Oh, look!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Fabulous.

-Fabulous. And we have a string game yet to play.

-Oh, great(!)

-Let me guess. We have to wrap round our balls and pull.

-No, we don't.

You do have to wrap it around an organ.

That's it! Forget it!

Fortunately, not an organ of generation.

An auditory organ, one of your ears.

Each wraps it around the ear.

You wrap the other end round your ear and you pull.

With your ear! With your ear!

Come on boys, be brave.

-Is it round your ear?

-It's a pain endurance test.

-I'll go round the other ear.

-Look what's happened to his ear.

I don't want that to happen to my ear!

As you can see from the photograph,

it's endurance and pain are really the...

You've got glasses on.

Hello.

-I've got quite springy ears.

-Is that an advantage or disadvantage?

-It's a disadvantage, because they're very, very springy.

-Wow!

I declare the winner there Brian. Whose been winning on your side?

-You've turned it into a plait.

-I cheated, look. I've tied it.

Definitely cheating.

These are official sports of the Eskimo Olympics. It's a very fine part of the world,

I don't know if you've ever been there? It's very beautiful.

-You've been there, I'm sure.

-Yes.

-Icy wastes.

Now, in 1845, Sir John Franklin led an expedition to the Arctic

to discover the Northwest Passage.

A group of his men set off across the ice

with a sled-load of button polish, handkerchiefs,

curtain rods and a writing desk.

Why? What were they doing?

BUGLE SOUND

"Nobody knows."

Yes! You are right!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Well done.

My assumption is that, sadly, none of them made it back.

No, they didn't. It is one of the most disastrous expeditions in history.

They were off on a sled-boot sale.

It was 128 men who all perished in this expedition.

35 different rescue parties tried over decades to find them, and find out what happened.

It wasn't until the 1980s that it was discovered precisely what happened to them.

Their bodies were well preserved in ice. Do you know what it was that they discovered?

Laurence Llewelyn Bowen going, "Those curtains are terrible."

It was discovered that their bodies

were filled with toxic levels of lead,

and they had gone on the expedition

with some very early examples of canned food, and the solder that was used was lead-solder.

Lead poisoning, amongst other things,

can make people have mass delusions, and so these poor people

loaded the sled with button polish, and handkerchiefs,

and a writing desk, and went off into the wasteland.

I know it sounds funny, but it is awful, isn't it?

I imagine they went to open a really disappointing shop. A pound shop on ice.

We know from the archaeology of it that that is what they did,

but as Alan rightly said, nobody knows why they did it,

except that it was some sort of delusion that they must've had.

Now, where's the best place to look for the abominable snowman?

-I think this is an area of your expertise.

-Yeah, yeah, on your left.

I'll start it all off for the lads. Yes, yes, yes.

Of course, you are looking at one.

It is called Sasquatch, Bigfoot in Canada,

and in Russia it is called the Almas Giant, or the Yeti,

Sukpa, or Meh-Teh-Ma.

Then in China they have their own hairy men,

and it is Sukpa, Meh-Teh-Ma out there as well, yeti.

And then in Sumatra it is called Orang Pendek, or "upright man,"

not meaning an orang-utan.

There is no doubt at all that yetis obviously do exist.

There are great parts of the world that we don't know about.

When I was in Mongolia, the Mongols were telling me that in the late autumn you get migrations

of dozens, and dozens, and dozens of Almas Giants,

and they see them in the distance.

So, I want to go out there one day, and go to northern Mongolia

and just go... BELLOWING ROAR

And I think that might scare them off.

Brilliant. Well, that's fantastic, thank you very much.

APPLAUSE

There are some who are disbelievers. You are a believer?

Yes, from the different people I meet, the trackers I meet,

you have to remember that the large mountain gorilla

was only discovered about 90 years ago.

-Yes.

-That's a giant mountain gorilla in Rwanda.

There are so many more discoveries. We are discovering them all the time.

There is so much to discover.

So I think, I don't think we've scratched the surface yet.

And there are indeed centres for the study of them. One in Siberia, and one in the Bhutanese area.

-It has a Yeti Park, that's right.

-It's a hell of a thought.

Well, that is a brilliant answer, and completely correct, of course.

And now, an icy chill strikes the cockles as we brave

the frozen wastes of general ignorance.

So, frostbitten fingers on your buzzers as we ask, quickly,

-what are igloos usually made from?

-CHURCH BELLS RINGING

-Blue ice?

-Oh!

KLAXON SOUNDS

No. You get a forfeit. They are not made of ice, at all.

-They are made from glue.

-Nice thought.

-Is it an Apple glue.

-iGlue?

Very good.

Very good.

They're usually made from Caribou hide.

That is the usual igloo, very, very rare for them

to made out of blocks of snow of the cartoonist's fame.

There's your typical igloo, and there's your cliche igloo,

which is very rare.

Now, what do you say to a husky, to make it go?

I like that, that's a good shot of Brian.

-Most people think that you're supposed to say...

-Mush?

In fact, for years that hasn't been said.

Mush actually comes from the French "marche". Just meaning "go."

I thought it was just cockneys, "Come on, mush.

"Come on, dogs, all in, all in."

-So there are trends in what huskies respond to?

-Very much so.

So the huskies, if you say "mush" now,

they would go "Oh, that is so..."

"That is so last year."

You got to say, "Wicked," or "Sick."

Well, possibly, possibly wicked or sick.

They say "Hike-on" or "Hike."

-The fact is, they're so keen to do it, aren't they?

-Yes.

They get fantastically excited and happy.

It is one of the most exhilarating things you can do. It is fantastic.

It is interesting, when I did go to Mongolia,

in actual fact, the Mongols have mainly huskies and wolves.

They don't have dogs.

When I had a fire woman mending all the fires,

she had a great big bloody wolf.

It was in my tent, he slept with me, this wonderful wolf. It adored me.

I gave it Mars Bars, and things like that.

She said, "He will climb with you, go climb."

And I climbed 14,000 feet up this ridge, and I climbed it with a wolf.

We came back down, got back into my tent.

You have to understand, ladies and gentlemen, even at my age,

in my 70s, I'm a randy bastard.

I was missing my wife horribly.

I took this great big bloody wolf, looked at its face, and I went,

# Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme What I cry for

# You know you got the kind of kisses that I'd die for

# You know you made me love you. #

MAKES MUSICAL SOUND AND HOWLS

It absolutely adored me.

Right, you know earlier,

you were saying you don't suffer from altitude sickness?

I think you do.

I think we've worked out,

we know why Brian's huskies were going so fast.

"Hike, hike!" "Quickly, boys, he's gaining on us."

Dear God.

The whole time they're pulling him,

"He's still there! Come on. Bastard, he's fast""

Well, they are extraordinary animals.

A 73-strong team once pulled a 10-tonne truck.

-They are pretty impressive animals.

-They are amazing.

Finally, to round off this merry edition of QI,

let's see if we can perform, between us, a Christmassy song.

You've each got some bells. Now, this could be a disaster.

Put on your hats, there's a darling.

I don't mean to alarm you, but mine has a fuse.

-Now, have you got one of these cards here?

-It's really tight.

You see those bells? Your bells are numbered,

and you should have a card, and we're going to see if... That's it.

-Tuning up.

-Have you got your number's clear?

Don't do that. Stephen's butler'll turn up.

-I've got a baton.

-You rang, sir?

We're going to try and play a Christmassy tune. OK?

Are you ready? Have you got your numbers?

Can you see the numbers on your cards? One, two, three.

-One.

-DING

-Four, four.

-DING

-Five.

-DING

-Four, three, two, two.

-DINGING

-Two, five, five, six.

-DINGING

-Five, four, three, one.

-DINGING

-One, six, six, seven.

-DINGING

-Six, five, four, two.

-DINGING

-One, one, two, five.

-DINGING

-Three, four.

-DINGING

Well done.

APPLAUSE

Brilliant.

Staggering.

Such musicianship. Most impressive.

And with that, we must look at the horrible cacophony of the scores.

And it makes absolutely fascinating Christmas reading.

I'm sorry to say that in last place, with minus eight, it's Sean Locke.

APPLAUSE

In third place, with a very credible minus three, it's Ross Noble.

APPLAUSE

Our first-timer, in second place, with minus two, Brian Blessed.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

But, do my eyes deceive me? With plus nine,

a runaway winner, Alan Davies!

CHEERING

Well, there you are.

So all that's left me, is to thank Brian, Sean, Ross,

and of course Alan, and to leave you with this comforting thought from RG Daniels -

"The most delightful advantage of being bald

"is that one can hear snowflakes."

Good night, and a very merry Christmas!

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