Kitsch QI

APPLAUSE

Goo-oo-oo-ood evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,

good evening, good evening, good evening,

and welcome to the Quite Interesting world of Kitsch,

where tonight everything is in the worst possible taste.

Let's meet those '70s icons,

the girl off the Athena tennis poster, Sue Perkins.

APPLAUSE

And complete with medallion and chest wig, it's Reginald D Hunter.

APPLAUSE

Our man on the water bed in black satin pyjamas, Jimmy Carr.

That is a troubling image.

And not really giving a flying duck, Alan Davies.

Thank you very much.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Now, if you want to avail yourself of my avocado bathroom en-suite

with all the trimmings, all you have to do is call.

-Sue goes...

-DING-DONG!

-Reginald goes...

-THEME FROM "THE STING"

-Jimmy goes...

-CAR HORN PLAYS "LA CUCARACHA"

-Brilliant.

-And Alan goes...

-QUACK QUACK

There we are.

So, here's a load of old tat that includes

everything but the kitsch sink.

Have a look.

LOUNGE MUSIC PLAYS

A flowery chair.

A cute balloon.

A Tiffany lamp.

And a donkey cigarette dispenser.

LAUGHTER

Now, which is kitsch?

See, I don't know where kitsch becomes tacky,

there's a sort of hinterland, isn't there?

Hmm. We're going, unusually for QI, by dictionary definition.

It's a quality, something that a kitsch thing must have

-in order to be kitsch.

-Ubiquity?

-No.

-Popular?

-Ordinary?

Ordinary. Worthless.

-Yes.

-Worthless.

-It would be that chair, wouldn't it?

Well, the Tiffany lamps, I saw a Tiffany lamp in a store,

in the Kings Road, and I thought, "Oh, it's kind of

"a kitschy kind of thing, but it's all right."

And it was like 80 grand or something ludicrous.

-Oh, yes.

-So you bought it!

-They sold a very...

-So I bought three.

-Yes, quite.

There was one from the 1890s that was sold for 2.8 million.

They are far from worthless, the originals.

But as you know, there are many imitations, which would,

I suppose, count as kitsch, because essentially

it's a stained-glass Art Nouveau lamp, with a bronze fitting.

2.8 million and then you can just very easily knock it over,

-can't you?

-That would be...

Just come in pissed and you'd knock it over.

But that's true of Ming china, I suppose, as well.

So what about the balloon animal, is that...?

Is that not the one, that's not a balloon animal, is it?

That is... What's the guy called?

-The American artist.

-The Pop Art guy.

-Yes.

The guy who makes...who was dating La Cicciolina, Jeff Koons, is it?

Jeff Koons is the right answer,

and his work goes for a huge amount of money, vast.

I mean, one of his pieces went for 38 million.

It really did look like a dog.

Yes, he just does stuff that is kitsch in every sense,

but the worthless sense.

Now, the chintz armchair.

Chintz has become somewhat unfashionable,

but when it first arrived from - do you know where it first came from?

Bournemouth.

-LAUGHTER

-Originally... I think it comes from John Lewis.

Let's move a little bit away.

-China.

-India is the answer.

-Oh.

-It arrived as early as the 1680s in Europe,

and was so successful and so remarkably popular

that in the court of Versailles, Louis declared

that it should be illegal everywhere, except in his court.

because it was ruining the French textile industry.

And the same happened in Britain in 1720 - all chintz was banned

because our own weavers were going out of business,

because it was considered such a luxury item.

So there's a chintz chair.

And finally we had on our conveyor belt, this lovely object here.

-Oh, my God, you're so lucky!

-Oh, I want that!

You put...yeah, out comes a cigarette.

-Wouldn't want to smoke it though.

-It poos a cigarette.

I think, instead of going,

"Oh, we're going to get rid of all cigarette advertising,"

-I think they should say they all come out of donkeys' arses.

-Yes!

This would be kitsch, because it's worthless.

Well, it's £6.

And it's pretty kitsch, to be honest, isn't it?

I like it. I'll buy it for a fiver.

-It's yours.

-Oh, you are a darling.

-There, yours to cut out and keep.

Hello!

LAUGHTER

Isn't anything coming out there?

Get off! He's just prolapsed!

You've prolapsed my donkey!

-Did you just finger her ass?

-Yes.

-I literally did.

-LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Well, you're not to.

Yeah. I'm putting that away from your roaming anal fingers.

So, let's look at some things that may or may not be kitsch,

like the fluffy dice.

I like the way we can go from like heavy, you know,

obscure depthful meaning words to donkeys' ass-holes in the same...

That's what we like to think of as the QI difference.

-Uh-huh. Range.

-Fluffy dice. Is there a word for that?

-Tacky is the word I would probably use. Is that wrong of me?

-Yeah.

But they're used ironically now, aren't they?

That's what's so interesting.

When they first came out, it would have been a tacky thing to have

in your Cortina in the late '70s, and now it's an ironic thing.

Ditto those things behind me that are also on the screen, lava lamps.

-Yeah.

-And those...

-I've got a lava lamp.

-Have you?

-Yeah.

Excellent. And the word one tends to use of that is?

Arsehole?

LAUGHTER

Hippy.

I was going to suggest retro.

Oh, sorry.

-QUACK QUACK Retro.

-Yeah.

-So, have you got any of these, Reg?

-Any of...? No.

In fact, I can say safely that I've never had any of those things.

Not one? No gnomes in your garden?

-No, man.

-Are they kitsch, or just...?

-They're, again, postmodern ironic now, aren't they?

-Yes, they are.

Gnomes seem to suggests something,

and I don't know what they suggest, but I know for years

when people see gnomes, they go, "Oh, you've got a gnome."

and you're like, "What does that mean?"

"Oh, man, ha-ha-ha!" And you don't know what that means.

Do Americans have gnomes in their gardens?

-I mean the fake ones, right?

-Yes. Yeah, obviously.

I don't know whether...

Sometimes you see them and you don't know if it's like

-an Irish offshoot or something, or...

-Yes.

On the end there, that doll with the, er...

Do you know what that is?

Well, my aunt had one and it was supposed to obscure the fact

that you are a person who owns toilet paper.

That's it, explained, well done. It is indeed.

-You're not that type of person.

-No, I don't.

I don't have a bottom and I don't push things out of it every day

and therefore I would have no need

for any sort of paper to wipe that residue.

The donkey shit pusher would have been horrified.

So kitsch is really in the eye of the beholder.

Now, stop me now when you know what I'm talking about.

Originally made out of shower curtains,

could be used as wallpaper, works as a burglar alarm,

prevents sweaty toilet syndrome,

covered Farrah Fawcett when she modelled for Playboy,

good for stress relief and wraps things up so they don't break.

Nylon. Lino.

What was the toilet syndrome?

don't worry about that, that's quite hard to guess.

-Rubber?

-It wraps things up and...

-Plastic, cellophane?

-Cling film.

-CAR HORN

-Bubble wrap.

-Bubble wrap! Yes.

APPLAUSE

I'll tell you a few things about bubble wrap.

It was invented in... Guess what year it was invented.

-1947.

-It was 1957, in 1957 by Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes,

who put two shower curtains together hoping to find some use for it,

and it wasn't until they...

-What?!

-That's how they invented it?!

That's a crazy shot in the dark, isn't it?

I'm just going to put a couple of pencils together

and see if we come up with anything.

-Does this... What?

-They were clearly covering the bed...

-Yeah.

-..to protect the mattress...

-Oh, now! They thought it...

..and as they lay there, they heard, pop pop pop!

"Was that you?" "No, it wasn't me." "We might be on to something here."

Must be the shower curtains.

They thought it could be sold as wallpaper, it didn't work.

Nor did greenhouse insulation, which they also used it for.

And it wasn't until 1960, three years later,

they hit on the idea of wrapping up components for IBM.

And, since then, the Sealed Air Corporation

now makes enough every year to encircle the world ten times.

That's pretty impressive, isn't it?

That's good if we ever have to send the world anywhere.

Unfortunately, you'd send it Royal Mail

and it would get lost, so...

The thing about that is, where does it all go then?

Because it just goes in the bin, doesn't it, bubble wrap?

-Once you've popped it.

-Or you sit in front of the telly relieving yourself.

LAUGHTER

You know what I mean.

Yes.

But let's get back to the bubble wrap.

If you put it in the bin, where does it all go?

It goes in that sort of whirlpool, between...in Hawaii.

-Oh, the great Pacific gyre.

-Yeah.

-The size of Texas.

That vast eddy which is full of bin liners.

The sweaty toilet thing, you stick it inside of a cistern,

because in hot tropical countries,

the toilet cistern sweats and it apparently cures that.

Now, I've got this little test for you. Here we are.

And, with any luck, the audience might have some bubble wrap, too.

They're waving their bubble wrap. Thank you, audience.

Do not pop it. This is a really important exercise.

-What do you mean don't pop it?

-Don't pop it, do not... No!

No! No! This is really important.

-Why?

-OK.

-No problem.

-Why not though?

This is a test of your worthiness. Don't pop it yet.

One of mine's already popped, I didn't do it.

That's all right, as long as you didn't,

because in 2013, a group of Yale psychologists,

they found another use for bubble wrap,

which was to measure aggression, all right?

They showed pictures of "cute" animals, all right?

-Ooh!

-Oh, now, now, wait, wait, wait.

-Oh, the two little chicks!

-Ooh!

-Stop it.

People were told to pop bubble wrap as they watched.

They thought that it was a test for their motor activity and memory.

But in fact it was a test for what's called "cute aggression".

If you see something very cute, you start popping more and more.

Not because they wanted to hurt the animals, but because they were

frustrated at not being able to touch them and cuddle them.

And this is called cute aggression.

It's when you kind of go, "Oooh!" like that.

So, audience, hold your bubble wrap,

we're going to show you some very cute animals and it's all up to you.

Let's start with the cuteness.

-Oh, dear!

-That's not. Come on, that's not that cute.

-Oh, it is.

-He looks sort of dead.

He's not that cute, yeah, I think he's been shot.

-Oh! That's horrible.

-He does look like he's been shot.

Oh, the blue-eyed one!

No, not that cute, not worth a pop.

THEY ALL POP BUBBLES

-You did it!

-Definitely.

Yeah, that's getting quite a few pops.

-Look at his little eye.

-No, I'm not gone yet.

I want a dog and then I'm going to pop my load.

That's the first time I've heard that phrase since last night.

-Oh, there...

-Oh!

-That's pretty cute.

-That was the last one.

Not cute, ginger.

All right. You can put away your bubble wrap now.

That kitten is basically saying,

"Help me, they're about to close the lid on this box."

-He's probably the Schrodinger's cat.

-Yeah, he is.

-He's about to do the experiment.

-I'm not going to exist in a minute.

You may like to know that the last Monday in January

is Bubble Wrap Awareness Day.

-Oh, good.

-It's the appreciation of bubble wrap day.

-That's in my diary.

-I'm sure they have a website.

-Yeah.

-They must do.

And Rhett Allain of Wired magazine calculated that you need

to wrap yourself in 39 layers of bubble wrap

in order to survive falling out of a sixth floor window.

-DEADPAN VOICE:

-Oh, please, don't try that at home.

-So...

-Because you don't have a six-storey house?

-It may be that.

-So if you wrapped yourself in bubble wrap six times,

-you could jump out of a building and you'd be...

-No, 39 times.

-39.

-Oh, thank God we clarified!

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

-So you're going to go up to the sixth storey of your house...

-Yeah.

I'm going up to the 39th storey and wrapping myself six times.

Which, by my calculations, I should be fine.

Anyway, so, here are tonight's specials.

There we are.

See if you can read that. They're on the board, as well.

Plats du jour. Sea kittens.

-Sea kittens.

-Sea kittens is a madey-uppy phrase,

by people who don't want us to eat fish.

Oh, so they try to make us go into a bubble wrap mode,

by calling it sea kitten instead of cod.

So that would be a group of people who are very against anything

to do with any kind of aggression or beastliness to animals.

-Vegans.

-Which would be vegetarians.

No, an actual specific organisation.

-PETA?

-PETA, or...

-PETA is the right answer.

The People's... Oh, what is it?

Something for Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Something for Ethical Treatment of Animals.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I assume.

And so they thought that if they called all fish sea kittens,

people would say, "I wouldn't want to put a hook in a sea kitten."

-So that was the idea.

-A lake puppy.

I think, if anything, it would make me want to try kittens.

And we've also got Nymphs of Dawn.

-Nymphs of the Golden Dawn.

-I know one thing there.

-Yes, go on?

-I've certainly had the Nymphs of the Golden Dawn.

-Which are Nymphs of the Golden Dawn?

-Which are they?

-Yes.

Are they oysters?

-They're not oysters, no.

-Then I was mis-sold!

They were first served for the Prince of Wales...

-Sounds like a strip club.

-..in 1908.

They were served for the Prince of Wales in 1908,

who would have been the future George V.

They were actually a creation of one of the great chefs,

-or THE great chef, really, of the 19th...

-Auguste Escoffier.

Very well said.

And he persuaded the British to eat this dish, specifically

the Prince of Wales, by calling it Cuisses de Nymphes de l'Aurore!

Thighs of the nymphs of dawn.

-Frogs' legs.

-Yeah.

-Frogs' legs is the right answer.

And there's a picture of frogs' legs.

And they are now a standard dish, which people eat very happily.

Tastes like chicken, as everything does that you're a bit scared of.

We've got a couple left. Mendip Wallfish.

Is that what PETA calls kittens, so we wouldn't harm them?

No, where are the Mendips?

Is it between your bum and your testicles?

LAUGHTER

Mendips, men dip.

Are they sort of Gloucester area?

-A bit further south, yes, Somerset.

-Somerset.

Like the Quantocks. The Mendip Hills.

-I know where my Quantocks are.

-Yes, they all sound rude,

don't they, like the Trossachs?

But this was served in the Miners' Arms in Priddy in Somerset.

And they served it as Mendip Wallfish because,

like frogs' legs,

it's one of those things that British people tend to go yuk!

-Snails.

-Snails?

-Snails is the right answer. Somerset snails.

And it's a Mendip Wallfish.

Rocky Mountain Oysters, I think are testicles.

You're absolutely right, bulls' testicles, can be sheep or pigs.

-They're prairie oysters. Yeah.

-Prairie oysters, yeah.

Also called prairie oysters.

There are lots of names for them, some of which are quite amusing.

-Ball sack.

-How did you get that photo?

They're pretty good, aren't they? They're called Cowboy Caviar...

-Oh, God!

-..Montana Tender Groins...

I had that once.

..Dusted Nuts, Bull Fries...

Dusted Nuts is quite on the nose, isn't it?

Plate of knackers.

-Bull's bollocks.

-Yeah.

-Bull fries.

-Cream of bollock soup.

-Wow!

-They're also called Swinging Beef.

Which is a good title for them.

Swinging Beef is what I'm calling my autobiography.

Or they're sometimes called criadillas or huevos de toro,

-which is...

-Huevos de toro.

-Huevos de toro is bull's eggs. Yeah.

What are they called in English?

-Plums on a plate.

-Very good.

-It's not sweetbreads...

-Sweetmeat.

-Sweetbread. That's the thymus gland, isn't it?

-You're very right.

-It's pancreas.

-Spot on.

The pancreas or the thymus gland is sweetbreads.

The testicles are sweetmeats. Very good.

We found our way through those unusual foods.

Now, I'll put the blackboard away, and it's time to ask you this.

What is Kaninhoppning?

Kanin is, I think may be related to the English word "coney".

-Does that help?

-Rabbit, like a...

-Rabbit.

-OK.

-So rabbit hoppning.

So hopping like a bunny. Bunny hopping.

Hopping like a bunny, but it's a sport.

-Rabbit.

-Oh, for sure it is.

-Show jumping.

Show jumping for rabbits is the right answer.

-LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

-Sure, sure.

Ahh!

-Argh!

-POPPING

-It's not that big a sport in Britain...

-Cute.

..but in Denmark and the Scandiwegian countries

they take it pretty seriously,

and they have world records and championships and...

Who's winning? Who's the current world champion?

Well, I can tell you the world record holder for the long jump

is Yaboo, who is Danish.

-Three metres.

-With Flopsy a close second.

Tosen has the high jump record, at 99.5 centimetres.

They haven't yet broken the metre, on the high jump.

But there are nearly a thousand rabbit show jumpers in Sweden alone.

And the sport is also practised in the UK, Denmark and the US.

And Lisbeth Jansson has written two books about the sport.

Do they dope test them afterwards?

She does say that the sport will allow a rabbit to live

twice as long, up to 10 or 12 years,

as compared to the average five years that one in a hutch will live.

Yeah. It's very important to take care of your rabbit properly,

you've got to bathe them in hot water with potatoes and onions.

Oh, now!

Let's have some footage of some working show jumping.

-Large footage.

-Here they go.

-Sure, OK.

Oh, cute. Oh, it's cute!

Oh, I can't bear it.

That's a big one. Oh!

Oh, he's going to refuse. No, he's up.

-Oh!

-Just shattered now.

Over he goes!

-Oh, he's had enough.

-And a final little one. Bravo!

APPLAUSE

Well, as you could see, they weren't being led, the human is not allowed

to get ahead of the rabbit, or that's a forfeit.

So the rabbit has to lead the human,

I don't know if you noticed in that footage.

The human was just behind.

OK, so, solve this one for me, will you, please?

-I'm going to give you all muddled-up...

-Oh, doom!

-Can you do these? Oh, there we go.

-It smacks of bullying at school.

-Bullying at school?

-Yeah, anyone who couldn't do this got bullied.

How many combinations do you think there are?

-I think there's...

-Too many for my small brain.

-It's actually 40...

-One thousand.

-43.25 quintillion.

Shall I tell you how we did it in Croydon? We just picked them off.

-There you go.

-Wahey! Jimmy's done it.

APPLAUSE

Alan!

Alan, you're so close. Oh, you almost had it.

-No, no, I've forgotten...

-You've messed it up.

-Oh!

-Just start picking them off.

Do you know what's completely tragic?

We told Jimmy and Alan how to do it with six moves.

Jimmy remembered, but Alan, unfortunately...

Oh, he's done it! Have you? Yay!

APPLAUSE

Any luck, Reginald?

Well, I didn't receive that instruction.

-You didn't get the benefit...

-You and me, exactly.

-It was unfair on you two.

-It's fun.

-It is fun, isn't it?

-It just brought back a lot of bad school memories.

I was obsessed with them in the '80s.

As I say, it is a staggering number.

It is more possible combinations

-than light travels inches in a century.

-God!

There's the number up on the screen,

it is such a huge number. it's inconceivably vast.

But you can make it impossible, do you know how to do that?

Take the stickers off?

Yeah, you sort of replace the stickers one with the other,

so that it's actually never do-able, which would drive people insane.

-But there are these.

-The other way you can make it impossible

is to break someone's fingers.

-Yeah, really nice.

-They'll come and shove a bone in your face.

There's the 4 x 4, and you can imagine

the combinations are even more gigantic.

It's probably 8 or 9, I imagine.

In 2010, which is quite a long time after the Rubik Cube became popular,

science and computing finally came up with the minimum

number of moves from any combination that it takes to solve the cube.

Can you imagine how many that might be?

-I bet it's 12.

-19.

-Six.

-It's 20.

It's called God's number and it's just extraordinary.

You say you were obsessed when you were a child.

-Under pressure, can we see if you can do it now?

-Oh, gosh!

-Come on, under pressure.

-I can do the first two rows, but that's it.

-That's pretty messed up.

-Oh, God!

-OK, come on.

-Look, look...

-You're on the clock.

We've got a lot of time ahead of us,

I've got to decide which colours... All right, so that's going to be...

We need a backing track for this really. This needs...

Let's get green and...

-SUE HUMS A TUNE

-Oh, stop it!

Um... Oh, stop, stop!

-CONTINUES HUMMING

-You are being so unkind.

And you're out of time and I've had a birthday.

Stop it. Blue goes there.

-We could do one of those fade out, fade in...

-Yellow goes there.

Let's get some beers. Can we get some beers?

-Yeah, some time later, yeah, yeah.

-Stop it.

Right, so I've got all the middle ones here.

Now we do the corners.

Might kick back, go to the bar, come back in a couple of hours.

That's it, so I've got those four there and those two middle ones.

You should be able to do it within 20 moves, Stephen.

Yeah, I know that!

-But I can't.

-It's God's number, you know.

Yeah, don't be mean to me.

-It takes an atheist a lot longer.

-Yeah.

Anyway, there's the first layer. Yeah. Thank you.

-APPLAUSE

-That's pretty impressive.

It gets quicker after that, but anyway...

So, there's your Rubik's Cube.

Now, I'd like to take a picture as a memento of this lovely evening.

-LAUGHTER

-Oh, they're in love.

What, what...?

Reg, it was a fantastic weekend we spent. What?

-That mohair look is working for you.

-Yeah, it really is.

-That softer knit. Sexy.

-Reggie takes Jimmy to Georgia.

That's so disturbing, in so many ways.

Oh, there you are. Oh, don't you look lovely!

-Yeah.

-There we are. Now, what's the quickest way to develop it?

-What should I do to develop it?

-Shake it, shake it, baby.

-HOOTER

-Oh!

-Oh, Sue!

Oh, no, I'm a buffoon.

The quickest way to develop it is to take it to Boots, the chemist.

No, it isn't. That would take a lot longer.

It's quicker to do an oil painting.

It does take a bit of time. Let's have you two, as well.

Smile. Aaah. That's so cute.

Now, what they used to do, the old pros, when they took

photographs with proper film, they used to do a little Polaroid first.

Oh, yeah, always do a Polaroid first.

-They used to put it under their arms.

-Their arse cheeks usually.

I'm sorry? Arse cheeks?! Fair enough.

We had different photographers.

I think Polaroids, it's sort of a slippery slope, though,

-because photography used to be...

-Between your arse cheeks, go on.

It used to be you went on holiday, took photos, then you got back.

Don't shake it.

You went to the chemist, put them in, and it took a week.

LAUGHTER

I want to see that shot.

I didn't realise you were pulling that face, Reg.

-I didn't realise you was pulling your face.

-Nothing.

What I'm saying is, you used to get photos from a holiday,

the last two shots were of the dog, because you hadn't taken enough,

then you'd go to the chemist, then you'd remember the holiday.

-Now we reminisce instantly and it's ruined it.

-It's true.

You go, "Oh, look at us, we were so young four minutes ago."

And you go to one of those rock gigs, where people perform,

and everybody watches them through their cameras,

-instead of watching the real people.

-I like that.

When I do a stand-up show, someone will be taping it on their phone.

As if like, "Now is not a good for me."

I'm going to take this and enjoy it later on in this supreme quality.

-They just can't enjoy the moment.

-It's so bizarre.

You used to get your pictures back

-and they'd have a sticker on sometimes, wouldn't they?

-Yes.

Saying, "This picture is shit."

-Those old disc cameras.

-Or this picture has been sent to the police.

A copy of it.

Well, can you tell me who invented the Polaroid photograph?

-Do you remember his name?

-Mr Roid.

-He had a brother named Haemor.

-Very good.

Was it Eastman or Kodak or...?

It wasn't Eastman or Kodak, no.

"Fuji!"

No, it wasn't Fuji.

Land, his name was Land, was his name.

And he made polarised sunglasses

and that's why he called it Polaroid.

-There he is, Mr Land.

-"I feel the need!"

I feel the need for speed. Indeed.

-Oh, you can ride my tail any time.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

And then the Polaroid camera was launched in 1948.

Because the company was already called Polaroid,

he called it a Polaroid camera.

It used to be Polaroids were always a bit grimy, weren't they?

-Absolutely.

-If you ever found a box of Polaroids in your parents' room,

-it was worth leaving those alone.

-Hello!

That's a mental scarring right there.

-Oh, years of...

-Hang on, what's that? Oh, no!

Well, anyway, the point is,

shaking a Polaroid had no effect on how quickly it developed.

And lastly, to wrap up our kitsch-fest, here's some karaoke.

What is the world's most dangerous song?

Is this the song that's playing most often during traffic accidents?

No, it's not that, this really is a karaoke issue,

-at least six people in the Philippines...

-My Way.

-..have been murdered for singing?

-My Way.

-My Way!

-Exactly.

-Sorry, murdered for singing My Way?

-Yes.

What, because they didn't do it right? They did it their way!

They murdered My Way and were murdered as a result.

So singing, "And now the end is nigh..."

-Yeah, exactly. "At last I face the final curt..."

-Argh!

But in Thailand, the song to be wary of is even more dangerous.

In 2008 a gunman shot dead eight of his neighbours

after becoming enraged at the noise from karaoke parties,

at which they sang this American song, by a good old mountain boy.

From West Virginia, Take Me Home...

-Oh, John Denver.

-Yes, that's it, Take Me Home, Country Roads

became the song that killed eight people.

-And thus they were taken home.

-Thus they were taken home, exactly.

Most people credit the invention of karaoke to a Japanese fellow

-called Daisuke Inoue in 1971.

-Oh, he's to blame.

Well, yes, but he didn't make any money out of it whatsoever.

But he has patented a cockroach killer which is specifically

designed to kill cockroaches that live in karaoke machines.

-Presumably by playing them Peter Andre.

-Yes, presumably.

Well, you'll be excited to know that we come now to the scores,

and how fascinating they are.

In first place, with a towering plus 9, is Jimmy Carr.

Oh, come on!

Yes! Finally. I've never won this before, it's brilliant.

APPLAUSE

In second place, with a very impressive plus 6,

is Alan Davies!

-APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

-Wow!

In third place, with a highly respectable zero,

is Reginald D Hunter.

APPLAUSE

And I'm afraid sweeping up the dead karaoke cockroaches tonight,

with minus 8, is Sue Perkins.

APPLAUSE

My thanks to Sue, Jimmy, Reginald and Alan, and goodnight.