Jumble QI

Well, goooooood evening, good evening, good evening,

good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening

and welcome to QI, which tonight is just a jumble of J things,

and joining me in the land where the Jumblies live are an owl, Jo Brand.

APPLAUSE

And we have to have a pussycat, John Sessions.

APPLAUSE

And a beautiful pea-green Dara O'Briain.

APPLAUSE

And...all at sea, with a mind like a sieve, Alan Davies.

APPLAUSE

So, let's hear your J buzzers, if we may. Jo goes:

# I'm still Jenny from the block #

Yes, that was obviously some female artiste.

-ALAN: J-Lo.

-J-Lo.

-Yeah.

-John goes:

# I got 99 problems But a bitch ain't one - hit me! #

I'd give you ten points if you knew who that was?

Uh...Usher.

-I think J would have helped you.

-Jay-Z?

-It's too late now. But yes, Jay-Z is the answer. Jay-Z.

-Right.

Or Jay-Zed as we call him, in England. And Dara goes:

# It's not about the money, money, money

# We don't need your money, money, money

-And that was?

-The lovely Jessie J.

-Jessie J, absolutely. And Alan:

MAN: # J, we're like Jack and Jill

WOMAN: # K, we're so kissable

MAN: # L is lovelight in your eyes #

Aw...it's The Alphabet Song.

I think that was Perry Como. I may be imagining it.

-It wasn't a J person, was it?

-No.

I think it might have been his brother Jerry Como.

Never mind. Those are your J buzzers and J is our jamboree today.

So, what do jockeys use their whips for?

# Hit me! #

Oh, oh, oh...!

Do they have whips? Or are they not called...crops?

A riding crop is a whip, so that's not the problem.

Well, recently they have decided that they can only use the whip,

I believe, on the flat, eight times, and in the final furlong,

if they use it more than five times,

they forfeit their portion of the win, if they do, in fact, win.

Wow, this is very impressive. For all I know, you're right.

LAUGHTER

I know that in Britain, if you use your whip more than eight times,

there is almost always going to be a steward's inquiry.

Only if you use it on the horse. If you're hitting yourself...

Obviously. I was taking that as read.

If you go, argh, argh! They don't mind!

Is he being lowered on like the old kings used to be?

That is Frankie Dettori's signature leap from the saddle.

-He's wearing Arsenal colours...

-He is?

-..cos he's an Arsenal fan.

-Is that the reason?

-I made it up.

No, of course, it isn't the reason. He wears the colours of his owner.

There is, also, the very famous American jockey Robert Mapplethorpe

-who decided...

-Arse jockey!

-..to put his whip UP his arse.

-He did.

And photograph it. The way we all do, I think.

-And it caused rather a stir in American circles.

-It did.

-To say the least.

-It's a variation on the photocopier thing, isn't it?

-Absolutely.

Wherein you put a photocopier up your arse?

-Oh, surely, we've all been there.

-It was a helluva Christmas party!

No, I'm presuming it's some sort of encouragement to the horse to run?

You used a very important word - encouragement.

Because naturally the RSPCA and those who care for animals

are not particularly, frankly, pleased

by the sight of animals being hit for sport. They don't find it acceptable.

-Quite a weapon, close up, isn't it?

-It is a heck of a thing,

But there's been a study by the RSPCA at Sydney University.

They found that whipping does not have the effect of horsing a speed up.

-Er, speeding a horse up.

-LAUGHTER

-APPLAUSE

-These glasses...

I don't want to get all street on you there,

but when you horse your speed up, it does, say,

it's when you get your methamphetamines and mix heroin in with it.

And that will make you run!

What have you done with Stephen Fry?

All right, OK. Let me start that again.

They found that whipping does not have the effect of speeding a horse up.

The RSPCAA claims this settles the case against whipping.

The study has been criticised by racing authorities.

They say it's too small a cohort of testings,

only 48 horses in five races, etc.

According to jockeys, speed is not the main purpose of the whip.

The main uses are safety of both horse and jockey,

stopping the horse from veering, losing balance,

backing off from a jump, or prompting it to change the length of its stride.

They're never allowed to use it to coerce the horse.

The other is, precisely the word you used - "encouragement -

which, obviously, the animal lobby says,

-"Come on, that's just a euphemism for coercion."

-Yes.

"It would be delightful if you could run just a tiny bit faster now, this race is almost at an end."

I think we've all seen horses being enthusiastically "encouraged"

-in the last furlong of a race.

-LAUGHTER

If you were a race, with somebody alongside you, like at a parents' day, for school...

-Egg and spoon.

-More the three-legged one where you've got somebody with you.

-Oh, yes.

If one of the people had a whip and felt that you were lagging

and other parents were beating you and then whipped you,

your motivation wouldn't be to run, you'd be thinking, "Stop whipping me, you prick!"

-You'd punch them in the face.

-Yes.

And also the notion that "Ow! You whipped me on the bum, therefore, I will be propelled forward,"

as opposed to reacting veering off, randomly finding out what is...

I was caned in prep school and I never won a single race. It was terrible.

There you are, they whipped you every day.

They whipped me every day.

Did they whip you during the races? That would have been an impressive prep school thing,

if they gave you a head start and then ran after you with the cane.

-It would be a five-legged race.

-I'm not saying that on a...

When you say "a three-legged race," you're thinking of two people,

but what we're talking about here, Dara, is horses and people.

I wasn't saying that the last time I went to a school sports day, I brought a horse

in an effort to win the three-legged race, and nobody sussed it.

LAUGHTER I would love to see that.

Have you met my delightful wife, Juniper?

HE SNORTS

LAUGHTER

What happened to the old carrot dangled in front of the horse?

The carrot or the stick, you're absolutely right.

Well, inflicting pain is not part of the intended method.

The whip currently used in British horse racing

has an energy-absorbing design, which means it does not cause pain if used correctly, supposedly.

The fact is, some people, and I have to say,

I probably count myself amongst them, think it would be a nice idea

to have a sport in which you didn't have to hit animals at all.

Maybe I'm wrong. However, what does a robot jockey do?

Ah yes, these robot jockeys ride camels, don't they?

You are good, and you've already got the points.

Yeah, yeah, the robot jockeys,

they're a form of racing in Dubai, in particular, and perhaps across the...

In the UAE, generally.

They have camel racing and camels at that speed, probably could not take a human weight on them,

they'd have to be quite small. So I am presuming that at some stage

they experimented with either little people or with children.

But it was reintroduced by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia

in the 1970s, and children were indeed taken from their parents

and were forced to be the jockeys on these camels.

Well what do you mean, "taken from their parents"?

People would just turn up at a random house?

I'm afraid, as you probably know, much of the service industries

are performed by Sri Lankans and Indians.

The Gulf Arab people themselves don't do much of the basic work.

It was Indian children who were taken to be jockeys.

It was not a pleasant story, there's no way of dressing it up nicely.

How much control do they have over the camels, exactly?

Well, they've got reins and they also have GPS,

so they know where they are.

Now, you may say, "Why put a face and a hat and costume on it?"

The fact is, the camels were spooked out when the robots just looked like machines.

The camels were much more relaxed at the idea that it was

-a human, because they've sort of grown used to the idea.

-Right.

So these only weigh a few kilos, they're not that expensive.

About 500 each.

They whip the camels by remote control, because the managers

are following in a truck, so they do whip, I'm afraid.

They're far lighter than the child jockeys,

and I suppose it's less inhumane.

They were designed in Switzerland. Ha-ha.

LAUGHTER

Please may I tell you the only camel joke that I know?

-Please, please.

-OK.

There's two guys in the army out in the desert,

and there's a new recruit, and there are no women around at all,

and the new recruit says, "What do we do for sex?"

And the old guy says, "I'm afraid it's the camels."

And so that evening, they're all let out towards the camels,

and the old bloke's running really fast,

and the young guy says, "What are you doing? It's only a camel."

And he goes, "Yeah, but you don't want to get an ugly one, do you?"

LAUGHTER

So what are those camels we're looking at?

What sort of camels are they?

Hang on, I'm sorry, there is another camel joke.

LAUGHTER

Same starting point, taken from the first couple of minutes and said,

"Oh I'm afraid there are no women here, I'm afraid it's the camels."

So, late at night, the guy declares "I can't take it any more, I'm as horny as hell,"

and he goes out and he rides the camel.

He comes back in and he goes, "Well, that's the best we can do."

And the man says, "Well, actually,

"when I said 'We've got the camels, we normally ride them into town."

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

-Very good. Anybody else got any camel jokes?

-No.

-Excellent.

Now, which one of you can imitate an expectant jackrabbit?

-Me!

-Yeah, wow! That's quick.

-It's a kind of hare, a jackrabbit.

-It is a hare. It's American for "hare", basically.

It's an American hare, yeah. But the female jackrabbit, when she gives birth to her young,

makes no attempt to suckle them and they are just left to... forage for their own.

So she's a bad mother.

-Daily Mail is going to go crazy with this.

-And I would imitate her like that, with a fag.

LAUGHTER

What you say may be true,

but there is something more extraordinarily true about the pregnancy of the female jackrabbit.

And this was something that was suggested by Aristotle.

I know how you love to have an Ancient Greek...

I'm distracted by that rabbit being fisted in the background.

-LAUGHTER

-Absolutely.

I don't know who did our little silhouette.

It's not entirely successful.

It's a good effort and we thank them for it, but Aristotle suggested

that hares could get pregnant when they were already pregnant,

-which in most mammals...

-LAUGHTER

Isn't that rather sweet?

I think you'll agree, is a bit peculiar.

Aristotle thought it, and he was scoffed by scientists,

until very, very recently,

it was discovered that he was absolutely right!

-It was discovered in Berlin.

-Cats do this.

A male hare... Cats?

Cats do do this, yeah.

-A cat can have...

-Impregnated by more than one tom.

Yeah, we have two cats and they have the same mother, but different fathers.

And humans even can.

There were twins born in 2010, in Arkansas, conceived two weeks apart.

They were actually conceived at different times.

So one egg was fertilised and then another,

so they could have had different fathers.

Twins with different fathers - it's a weird idea.

All this is recently new knowledge, but Aristotle was spot on.

It's known as "superfecundation",

when two different ova are fertilised in the same cycle.

Aww!

-Or it's superconception... "Ah, da little fluffy bunnies!"

-LAUGHTER

So, complete the phrase, "Pregnant mothers should eat..."

Loads.

LAUGHTER

Erm... Burgers...

The equivalent of two slices of bread extra per day,

and no more is necessary.

That's probably about right and that's only in the third trimester.

The fact is, the idea that you should eat for two,

which you managed to avoid, is nonsense.

A pregnant woman should eat no more than she normally eats.

She might have changes in appetite.

Did you have any particular dietary desires when you were pregnant?

I gnawed my husband's leg occasionally.

And that was unusual?

LAUGHTER

-Not as far as our marriage was concerned.

-That's what I mean.

So did you have any peculiar appetites that were

specifically related to pregnancy?

-No, I was very boring, I didn't, really.

-No sort of coal?

They say that you only want to eat coal if you're lacking vitamins, don't they?

-Certainly, exactly.

-So, no one eats coal any more.

-So you were obviously not lacking anything.

-My mother smoked my father's pipe.

-Could she not get her own pipe(?)

LAUGHTER Your poor father.

-It was her pregnancy that made her want to do it?

-Yeah. She just loved pipe tobacco.

-God, that's extraordinary.

-Yeah.

There's no more beautiful image of motherhood than a pregnant woman smoking a pipe(!)

Just the essentials of nature(!)

A woman going...

Then tapping it out on the table, and then digging a little bit out.

I thought you were going to say, "Tapping it out on her belly."

When I got pregnant, my grandma said to me,

"Oh, eating for two, are we?"

And I went, "Bog off, I'm not cutting down."

LAUGHTER

Anyway, moving on...

..which should you avoid going to bed with,

a jactitator or a jactitator?

The second one.

LAUGHTER

Why?

Erm...because...it means, um...

someone that wiggles about a lot.

-Yes!

-Oh, does it?

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The official name for it is Willis-Ekbom disease,

also known as "restlessness", or particularly, "restless leg syndrome."

That's one meaning of "jactitation".

-The other...

-Yes, the other is?

..is speaking unpleasantly of somebody?

No, nice that you're trying and don't be put off.

LAUGHTER

It's a very specific... I won't say "crime", exactly.

it's a malfeasance, possibly, it's a wrongdoing that people do.

-And that is to maintain that you're married to someone when you aren't.

-That's right.

You are so angry, because... Wow, you're angry.

If a man says, "Oh yes, she's my wife, we're married," and she goes, "No, we're not,"

you can go to court, and your remedy is a "suit of jactitation of marriage,"

in which you ask the court to declare you are not married to the person who is claiming that you are.

Is the "jactitation" the denying of the marriage,

or is it the maintaining you're still married when you're not?

A "jactitator" is one who claims to be married to you when they aren't.

So "ding-dong," "Darling I'm home!" "You're not married to me."

LAUGHTER

-The bad guy is the "ding-dong," "Darling I'm home!" in this situation?

-Exactly.

-Stop doing this!

LAUGHTER

So I could take you to court, because you never stop...

Saying that we are married. But we're married in comedy, Alan.

-We're married in comedy.

-There you go again.

Comedy. Comedy and erotic love, those two, surely...

-Do you...

-Hello!

Do you know what the opposite is? Cos my husband often says he's not married to me.

LAUGHTER

-What's that called?

-Shame.

-Embarrassment.

-"Embarrassment"!

On the subject of twitchy legs, why do we dance around,

when we need a pee, why do we do that?

LAUGHTER

To try and keep it moving so it doesn't come out of the pipe?

No, the odd thing is, it is the worst thing to do.

If you really want not to pee, keep as still as possible.

Clench the end of your cock incredibly hard?

LAUGHTER

I've tried that, but it doesn't work.

I've found it best to get someone else to do that.

A full bladder creates a...

"Tie a knot in it". "ANOTHER one?!"

A full bladder creates a sense of urgency in the mind

and the conflict between the desire to take action

and relieve the stress and the fact that circumstances don't permit it,

is translated into various rhythmic displacement behaviours.

Wasn't it Enoch Powell who used to say,

"I always speak when I'm dying for a piss, because I do much more..."

It lends urgency.

Yes, and David Cameron thought he was going to have a crack at it,

didn't he?

-Oh did he?

-Mm.

-Oh, well, no wonder...

Wet himself.

-So, during Enoch Powell's famous Rivers of Blood speech...

-"Rivers of piss" speech.

-..Every time he said, "Rivers of..."

-he would go... HE GROANS

LAUGHTER

That poor fellow... I do think those urinals should be done

on an obvious demand, because the guy at the end

seems very relaxed about it, but, man, the guy number three, really...

-Wo!

-He's desperate.

..needs to go very soon.

There's a perfectly good tree, just there.

LAUGHTER

It's probably a pop festival, so half of them

are actually wanting to go and ingest drugs rather than urinate.

That's the thing.

"M'lud, they're probably horsing the speed, m'lud."

LAUGHTER

"They're smacking themselves with skank!"

"I know all the words, oh yes." All right.

Who gets most use from Jacobson's organ?

# Money! #

Mrs Jacobson gets most use...

KLAXON SOUNDS

APPLAUSE Hit me!

All right. It's your turn now, John.

Jacobson's organ enables, particularly lions and deer,

to chemically detect the pheromones in creatures of the opposite sex.

-In lionesses, or...

-Not just creatures of the opposite sex, but also prey and predators.

Prey and predators.

Yes. It's an organ. You see it in snakes,

lions, it's not just related to mammals,

but it's a patch of specialised skin on the roof of the mouth.

Many vertebrates have it, including humans. We have it.

Oh yes, we do.

Unfortunately, we seem to have lost the use of it.

But snakes and lizards can tell

when an ant has been present a week earlier...

-just by using that.

-Well, how useful's that?!

Well, it can tell them when it comes back again.

-"An ant was here a week ago"(!)

-It might be.

-LAUGHTER

-That's really improved my life(!)

And they're thinking, "I'd love an ant now!"

"No, it was last week."

But in the case of horses, giraffes, camels, zebras, big animals...

when they do it, there's an expression you've probably seen them pull,

where they almost turn their face inside out and stop breathing.

That's in order to get the chemicals onto their Jacob...

"An ant! There's been an ant!

"There's been an ant in this stable, last Tuesday!"

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

In their case, it's less likely to be an ant

than there was female or a male or a predator or a prey.

-Makes them look gorgeous(!)

-It's a funny old look, isn't it?

The one in the middle has had its hair styled by someone from Girls Aloud!

-LAUGHTER

-I think they're rather fun.

He's had the GHDs on that!

A rather fetching Emma Bunton look, I thought.

-Rather touching little bangs.

-LAUGHTER

So, what does a cockroach find absolutely disgusting?

Jeremy Kyle. LAUGHTER

Yes! Is the right answer!

Because Jeremy Kyle - almost, but he does count - is a human being, right?

We don't like cockroaches and cockroaches don't like us.

If they see us, they not only run away, as soon as possible,

they wash themselves after they've been touched by us.

They find us revolting.

I used to live in a flat when I was a student nurse

and it was absolutely inundated with cockroaches.

And one night, I came home from the pub and I'd left the telly on,

and there were two cockroaches sitting on the settee, watching telly.

Wow.

They were looking at the telly kind of going, "Werr..."

Was it a documentary about insects?

It was Jeremy Kyle.

LAUGHTER

-So they like Jeremy Kyle?

-No, there were people in whatever they were watching.

They really don't like people.

But also, as well, I was once painting the ceiling

in the flat and a cockroach actually fell in my mouth.

ALL: Oh!

The thing is, cockroaches are everywhere, aren't they?

In hospitals, particularly, anywhere where there's sort of...

I mean, it's a huge...

I once went into a hospital kitchen at night and turned

the light on and for a split second, the entire floor was brown.

And then it was white.

It's just astonishing. And then they disappear.

And they don't do that much damage, and yet they do repulse us.

And the point is, we repulse them, hence they disappeared so quickly.

But there is something that they must hate even more,

and this is a real test for anybody who's sung,

"All things bright and beautiful... the good Lord made them all,"

because He also made some things not very bright and beautiful,

and one of the least bright and beautiful things imaginable,

which is a parasitic wasp that has the most extraordinary life cycle.

They're called jewel wasps,

because they're faintly jewel-coloured.

They go up to the cockroach.

They then impart a sting into its brain

which turns it into a sort of zombie.

It doesn't kill it.

But it kind of makes it kind of... "Errh."

And they then saw off one of its antennae,

and uses the other one as a lead... literally, and pulls it to its nest.

There it's leading it, it's now pulling it.

-As you see, it's much smaller than the cockroach.

-Good God!

This poor cockroach, I'm afraid, will have a pretty miserable time.

He then gets packed into the nest...

and then he lays eggs inside.

And the baby wasp is born in, and eats the cockroach alive

from the inside, in a very special order, to keep the cockroach alive.

Because cockroach meat goes off very quickly and it's very warm.

And that is the life cycle of the jewel wasp.

Now, if you ask me that if there's a benign, divine God

who looks down on creation and loves it all, you just ask him

how the hell he came up with something so cruel,

so unpleasant, so vile.

Only evolution could cause that kind of horrible life cycle

for the cockroach.

I mean, it's a pretty grim business. So, there you go.

I thought I'd leave you with that charming thought(!)

-If only you could do that with Piers Morgan.

-Yes, oh!

APPLAUSE

HE LAUGHS

-A very pleasing thought.

-Very good.

Now, here's a simple question. Why are we all such arseholes?

LAUGHTER

Well, I'm contractually obliged.

LAUGHTER

Well, let me say that there are two types of living creature.

There are protostomes and deuterostomes.

"Stoma" is the Greek for "mouth".

If you're a protostome, when you are just developing as an egg,

and dividing and turning into what will become a lovely little person,

protostomes start at the mouth and then grow outwards.

But humans... we start as an arsehole.

We are deuterostomes, because we're "second mouths".

We start as a bottom and then work outwards.

So we begin as arseholes. We all begin as little botties.

It's a rather nice thing to know, it puts us all on an equal footing.

Next time you look at George Osborne saying something grand about

the economy, say, "You started life, and continued life, as an arsehole."

-LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

-So, there you are.

Now, this is very exciting,

because, we have a very special finale tonight.

Tonight, entirely alone, without the aid of a safety net,

I am going to do something that has never been done by any human being

since the beginning of time.

AUDIENCE: Woo!

-Yes!

-Rash claim.

And all I need is... this.

"A simple pack of cards." No.

All I need is, indeed, a simple pack of cards.

What I'm going to do is shuffle them. I'll shuffle this pack.

There are different ways of shuffling, as you know,

there's the overhand shuffle...

-Shut up!

-..like that.

There is your standard riffle, which just...riffle

-and push the cards together.

-ALAN APPLAUDS

Everyone can do that... wait, wait, wait! I haven't come to it yet.

And then there's the weave, which is rather more pleasing.

Some people can do a weave that's so accurate,

they actually go A-B-B, A-B, A-B, A-B, like that.

And there, that gives you nice little fan, like so.

It's a beautiful thing.

And now I have produced a pack of cards...

and that pack of cards, ladies and gentlemen, believe it or not,

has never before, in the history of our planet, been in that order.

It's never been in that order before.

How can you possibly know that?

How can we know that? It's a simple mathematical fact.

The order of cards is a gigantic number.

It's a number which is known by mathematicians as "shriek".

You write it as "52!" You'll know this.

52 factorial.

It's 52 factorial, which is 52 times 51, times 50, times 49, times 48...

These are all the possibilities in which a pack of cards can be.

Just 52 of them. And that number is big.

It's this big. Look how big this number is.

That number is so big that, were you to imagine

that if every star in our galaxy had a trillion planets,

each with a trillion people living on them, and each of these people

had a trillion pack of cards,

and somehow they managed to shuffle them all 1,000 times a second,

and they'd been doing that since The Big Bang,

they would only just now be starting to repeat shuffles.

So, I can say, with all the mathematical certainty that is possible,

that this pack of cards has never been in this order before.

It's an absolute world first!

Wow, very good.

APPLAUSE

I know that seems amazing, but that number tells it all. It is astonishing.

And I have done something, as I say,

that has never been done by any human being before.

I've produced this pack of cards in this order.

And for that I'm going to award myself some points, so there.

Anyway, that comes to the scores, I think.

We'll go in reverse order from... Well, from last to first.

It's actually marvellous. We don't have a single minus number.

We don't even have a zero.

Everybody's on a plus!

We have, equal,

Dara, Jo and Alan with one point.

APPLAUSE

In a clear second place, with 16, is John Sessions!

APPLAUSE

But the clear winner, with 52 shriek,

52 times 51, that number you saw, is me!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Well, that's all from John, Dara, Jo, Alan and me.

Thank you, be utterly lovely unto each other, and goodnight.

APPLAUSE

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