VG Part One QI

APPLAUSE

Goooood evening, good evening, good evening, good evening

and welcome to QI.

Where will this get me?

I'm going to find my broom, here.

If I were to move my hands together like this, what would happen?

Whether I did this one a bit more than that one,

or that one a bit more than that one. What would happen, at the end? When my hands met.

-The heavy end would fall down.

-No.

-Shut up!

-Extraordinary, when you do this,

you will always find it meets at the centre of gravity.

-Always.

-Oh!

Because the resistance from the heavy end slows...

Yeah, exactly, so as long as you're just sort of doing it without thinking, you know,

it just meets up like that. And it balances.

It doesn't actually look a very natural implement in your hand, Stephen.

Try it, you've all got... No. But you've got one.

-Maybe it'll look more natural in yours.

-Yeah, I am a drudge.

-You can ride it home tonight.

-Here we go.

You've all got one, so try it.

Obviously...

-His fell apart!

-Everybody except Alan. Now try properly.

Obviously the left hand won't move as far as the right one.

DANNY: Mine's not going at all. What? Oh, no, it's...

Is it working for you, Marcus? Please God!

-Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no...

-Jo isn't even trying.

-It does, it does.

-Ah, there you go.

-I can tell you, there are women all over the country going,

"look at the silly bastards, we've got to clean the floor with it."

-DANNY: Oh man, this is...

-I've been trying this all afternoon and I can't make it do anything else.

-No!

It's like, it's got the Uri Geller touch about it, it's just...

-Aaaah, cool!

-That is bizarre.

-Aaah!

-Well, that's really disappointing.

-This one's Kate Moss.

Yeah, baby.

I'm completely astounded. We're all very disappointed.

Every single person who's tried this...

Is there any money in doing it wrong?

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

-It's just like... I'm not doing it on purpose, I promise I'm not...

-Close your eyes.

-Look at that!

There, that's good. You've found the centre of gravity perfectly, there.

-Last time, last time, last time. Last time. It's level, yes?

-Yeah.

Level. It's going, I can feel it's going...

-Aah!

-Hurray!

Phew!

Didn't Muhammad Ali say that, didn't he?

He said he was so fast he could get into bed before the light went off.

-Yeah, and I think someone said, "just get a bedside light."

-Yeah, exactly.

Or just one of those ones. CLAPS HANDS

And then you can clap when you're in bed and who doesn't like that?

BILL: Ah, yes, but that's very interesting then,

-cos then, you see, the sound...

-You've just turned the camera off.

-What?

You've just turned the camera off, could you do two?

Could you do two, now?

-Thank you.

-LAUGHTER

We use the same system, we didn't expect anybody to clap.

-What? What just happened?

-You turned the camera off by clapping.

Just the whole universe, just... POWER DOWN NOISE

-Yeah.

-And... POWER UP NOISE.

Yeah, and you're back again now. That's it. Don't clap though.

POWERING UP: What... NORMAL SPEED: ..would happen...?

-If?

-No, I was just saying, it was rhetorical.

-Oh, I see.

I was just saying...

There's a question. What would happen, Stephen? Discuss.

-Yes. "Let's see whose house it is."

-"It is."

Now, that's interesting.

Why do you think you can balance it with the centre of gravity so high?

-Cos we know where the centre of gravity is.

-Because I'm a genius!

-LAUGHTER

-Yes. That's right.

But if you try and do that from the bottom end, but not grasping the brushes,

literally just balancing on your palm, it'll just fall over.

You mustn't grasp it.

-LAUGHTER

-Like that?

-Hello. Hello. That's really good, actually.

-Yes.

I'm just going to rip...

I think the show's broom techy might need a word after the programme.

APPLAUSE

Has anyone ever tested to see how quickly asparagus makes your wee smell?

Oh, that's... It's amazingly quick. But there are some people to whom that doesn't have the effect.

Just as some people have their pee going red when they eat beetroot and other people don't.

-I don't go red when I've had beetroot.

-I don't.

-Oh, God no, no not pee.

-What are you talking about?

-Have you never had the disaster?

What, do you mean? Other juice?

Oh, no, again, we're back on shitting, but I was having

a poo one morning and turned round and it was bright red.

And I just thought, "well, that's it, that's arse cancer."

-Arse cancer!

-And I'm history.

And so I thought, "well fair enough, you know, I've had a great life.

-"I've had a great life, and just relax."

-Yeah. Yeah.

And so this went on for several days and each morning, bright red.

-Bright red?

-Yeah. Beetroot.

Yeah.

-You shouldn't put them there.

-Beetroot stains. But the relief.

LAUGHTER

But what would...? I mean, if you just thought, "Oh, that's it."

And then you just go on a bender for five days.

-Ha ha! Phone up all your ex girlfriends.

-I did.

-Three days I didn't tell anyone, I was a bit weepy.

-Oh, really?

And then mentioned it to somebody who said,

"No, have you been eating beetroot?" And I had, I'd bought a load of beetroot salad and that was it.

I had a very similar experience, and I went, "Oh, my God! I'm an alien."

So I then phoned the doctor and they go,

"Oh, you'd better bring a sample in."

So got a sample in a jar and went into the doctor's,

obviously keeping it out of sight,

and went up to the desk and they said, "Name?"

And you know, "B Bailey," like that.

And they said, "What's it for?" And I went,

QUIETLY: "It's an abnormal bowel movement," like that.

And they went, "No, what's the initial for?" And I went, "Oh, Christ!"

LAUGHTER

You didn't hear that!

Now, everyone knows what knees, knuckles and kidneys are,

but what's the point of these less familiar K-parts of the body?

Kiesselbach's plexus. The valves of Kerckring. The end-bulbs of Krause.

The pores of Kohn.

That is the best nickname for someone's balls ever.

Behold the End-Bulbs of Krause!

Kneel before the End-Bulbs of Krause.

Kneel before them.

Are these not all Star Trek movies?

-No, I know, it does, doesn't it? Star Trek 19.

-Down the years.

The Valves of Kerckring. Kiesselbach's Plexus.

They are magnificent names.

They are all parts of the human anatomy.

The Pores of Kohn.

-The bell ends of...

-No, we're going to come to the bell ends, Alan.

Wait for the bell ends.

They will come, but the Pores of Kohn...

LAUGHTER

I don't know what's going to come out.

I never know what's going to issue from me.

It's another ring tone, I can't wait.

That is Twitter in a nut shell.

I'm so sorry.

Who gave Moses the horn?

-BUZZER

-Yes, Jimmy?

His wife, Joan of Arc.

And that is a joke from Bill and Ted's Big Adventure.

That would be... That was Noah.

-Noah's wife was...

-Oh, who was it?

-Moses.

-Oh, well, wrong Biblical...

-Wrong patriarch. I'm no expert in this area.

-Was there a horn of plenty?

-Is it a horn of plenty?

-No, it isn't.

Do you happen to know which saint was the first to translate

the Bible into Latin?

Was it Saint Lee?

No, I like that. He was saintly, but no,

you either know this or you don't. It was Saint Jerome.

And he made a few elementary errors.

I don't know if we have anyone in the audience called Karen?

-Do we have anyone called Karen?

-MAN: Yeah.

LAUGHTER

Very good, very good.

But if there is a real Karen in the audience, you will know,

probably, that your name means "rain of light" in Hebrew.

But also the same word in Hebrew can mean "horn".

And so St Jerome chose to take the meaning that Moses got down

the mountain with horns instead of with shining radiant light.

And so many artists, including Michelangelo,

represented Moses as having horns. There is Michelangelo's...

Classic Angelo.

Anyway, Moses wasn't so much horny, he was more sort of shiny. So...

What about these, then? Let me see, the end-bulbs of Krause.

The helmet.

We have them on the genitalia in mulberry-like clusters,

-as a matter of fact.

-Mulberry-like clusters?

We have a lot of them on the genitals.

The little funny bits on the...

Pimple bits on the...on the right, that are all...

LAUGHTER

Don't do that!

They're those bits, there.

-It's up there.

-These middle bits.

-On that, and that's...

-Those middle bits there and there.

-Here.

You know when you take it out to go to the loo, right?

And then you get the winch down.

-Stop it.

-I have to take a step ladder to go to the loo.

Behave. No, they're smaller than that,

-but they are incredibly sensitive to a particular condition.

-A lady.

To what, ladies?

To a particular lady.

A particular lady. No.

We also have them all over the skin, but they are very concentrated on the genitalia,

particularly the male genitalia are very sensitive to the...your swinging...

-Don't do that!

-What did he do?

-Are you having a look?

-Is that cheating?

-Yes.

You have a special isolated camera above you,

-I just thought I'd warn you.

-Oh, really?

-Well, I do. Anyway...

-Sorry Colin.

While we're in playful mood, I have one of my knick-knacks to show you.

-ALL: Oooh!

-Yes.

Now this, the great Lord Kelvin, in the 1890s,

was wandering along a beach with a friend, Hugh Blackburn,

who was a mathematician, and they found a pebble

and a surface on which to spin it, and they found it had

a peculiar property, not unlike this, which is called a Tippe Top.

And you give it a spin...

Ooh!

It turns upside down.

Now, what you sort of don't notice is that it's still going clockwise,

-but it's upside down, so it has reversed the direction of spin.

-Oh.

Ah.

And engineers and mathematicians like Bohr

and Pauli were fascinated by this.

And it is quite fun. You can have a go.

That's what makes... There, you'll...

We can show you some VT of it being done properly by one of our elves,

and you can see a slightly better spin there.

It keeps its...

So this is about, you know where they were saying...

And it's still going... Sorry.

Where they were saying that the earth axis is going to change,

and that north's going to be south, it's much like this.

-Sorry, Liza, is the world going to turn upside down?

-Apparently so.

That's the first anyone's told me.

The magnetic fields will close. We know that they will swop.

-Soon?

-Tuesday. It's happening on Tuesday.

I have some snuff for you to try, in different flavours.

You can see whether the lid is lying or not.

Arrgh!

In special QI lids. You can take it if you want.

You obviously inhale it up the nose.

-You do it all, right?

-Oh!

You're going to spill...

Don't do it all, no. It's very sharp.

-HAAA!

-It is, it's sharp.

Nothing. Nothing.

LAUGHTER

Oh, really! No!

Nothing.

Oh, you're licking it.

-OOOOH!

-On the gums.

Oh, a moustache.

It is quite sharp.

You've had a go. What's your flavour, Alan?

It says Christmas Pudding.

You've got Christmas Pudding.

The only time I've had a...

LAUGHTER

Ross Noble!

Honestly, it's fine, it's good, put it in your eyes.

It's good.

This is probably the only time my nan's going to watch me

on telly and I'll be like that the whole show.

What do you reckon, Colin?

Oh, that is the... This flavour says Kitty Litter.

LAUGHTER

That is awful!

You're not a fan?

I'm not a fan. It says Champagne.

Yeah, they're different. There are so many, I mean hundreds,

thousands of different flavours or sorts, as they're called.

-Ugh!

-What does yours say on the lid, Noel?

-What flavour?

-Yeah.

-Jealousy.

-By Calvin Klein.

-Whisky And Honey.

-Whisky And Honey. Does it taste...? Yours, Ross?

-No, not really.

-When you've come down?

-I can't see!

It could say anything.

-Noel will read it to you.

-Who's talking to me?!

Your flavour's Madness.

The problem is, it makes your snot brown,

so there are snuff handkerchiefs, brown silk handkerchiefs

or dark-coloured silk handkerchiefs. But you'll see, you'll get a...

-HE SNORTS

-It'll look as if you've wiped your arse, I'm afraid.

ALL: Ugh!

That, from here, looks like the Turin Shroud.

I can see the face of our Lord!

Even though you know it's snuff, you're like, "Urggh!"

-Even though, exactly.

-"He's shat in his hanky!"

Now, let's test your beer goggles, as it were.

A man in the audience is going to hold up a picture

-and I want you to tell me who's that of?

-Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn Monroe, yeah, you can see the picture behind it there,

Marilyn Monroe.

Now, Sam, walk towards us, if you'd be kind enough.

I don't think it... I wouldn't, I think...

It's supposed to look like her, but I'm suspicious.

-Albert Einstein.

-Albert Einstein.

BRENDAN: Holy crap!

It is, it is rather extraordinary. It's both.

-They're related.

-No!

-You would...

-Never in the same room, Brendan.

You'd hardly imagine they would be, would you?

I think Marilyn Monroe did have quite a bad facial hair problem.

From a distance the image does look like Marilyn Monroe, because what

they do is, it's created by the MIT, this illusion, the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology, as I'm sure you know, they remove

Marilyn's fine-grained features, like wrinkles and little blemishes,

and they remove Einstein's coarser features, like

the shape of his mouth and nose, and then they superimpose the two.

And from a distance we see just the broader strokes,

we see her, Marilyn Monroe.

And close up we see the fine details of Albert Einstein.

And we've done another version, just to show this really does work.

It's not just Marilyn. Who's that?

BRENDAN: Handsome man. That's Stephen Fry, I know him well.

That's me. That's me! Hurray. And if you come towards us. Hello?

Ah!

Hello?

It's Alan Davies!

Hey!

How about that?

Who is it now?

Oh, yeah, look at that.

Yeah, we have to be that close. That's fantastic.

It is an extraordinary illusion. I hope they've done two of them

-so we can have one each in our bedrooms.

-I want one in my house.

-What distance do you want it?

I want to be far away from it, Stephen.

-Toss you for it.

-Oh!

Sorry.

And I like the fact you can have words,

and they're both good old English words, aren't they? Spigot.

-Spigot. A wonderful word.

-Yes.

-Say it, Alan.

-We had a Mrs Bigott on our street.

-Mrs Bigot, you didn't?

-That was her actual name.

-Mrs Bigot?

-Mrs Bigot?

-Hmm.

-That's fantastic, and was she?

-I think it was a double T.

-Oh, right, Bigott.

Everyone was a bigot on our street, Stephen.

I knew a person called Mrs Willy and she would say Wiley,

-and it literally was W-I-L-L-Y.

-Oh, my God.

-"That's Wiley."

-Oh.

-Joan Willy.

-Joan Willy.

-We had a Mrs Pennis.

-Oh, no!

-P-E-N-I-S?

-She had to... N-N.

She had to come out of the phone book in the end.

-Because everybody rang up and said, "Is that Mrs Penis?"

-Exactly.

-"I know you boys!"

-Yeah. Furious.

-"You kids, pesky varmints."

-Yes.

I feel bad I did that now.

-We had a Rosy Balls at school.

-Oh!

Congratulations Rosy, if you're watching.

Rosy Balls.

At a clergy conference, I met a Father Christmas.

Oh, how fabulous.

-I've met a Mary Christmas.

-A Mary Christmas?

-Yeah.

In Sligo, a lovely man called Dita, Dita Christmas,

-and he said, "This is my wife, Mary."

-Wow.

And we literally laughed into her face.

Now, who fancies one of my knick-knacks to celebrate

the beauty of chemistry?

I've got a bottle here of alcohol, but this is not drinking alcohol. I'm just going to...

That was full at the start of tonight.

What I'm going to do is, I'm going to make a cloud,

which I think you'll find is rather exciting.

I've got a pump here, and Alan, I'm going

to ask you to pump for me, would you.

-Every Monday.

-That's it.

And by doing this I'm just making it evaporate a little, and I'm going

to stick the plunger in as soon as I can, so I don't get too much.

-Now by pumping it in, you're applying pressure to this... There you go.

-Shall I pump?

About ten. Two, three, four, five,

six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

-That'll do.

-Is it going to blow up? Is it going to explode?

-And... Oh! Cloud.

-Oh, look at that.

I've made a cloud.

But...pop it in.

We can now make it disappear.

Gone cloud.

Come back, cloud!

Oh, isn't that exciting.

APPLAUSE

Now what starts with K and is killed by curiosity?

-A kitten.

-Oh!

-ALARM BLARES

-Oh, no.

I'm sorry.

It's an animal species, but not a cat.

-A lot of these begin with K.

-Kangaroo.

-No, but right hemisphere.

-Koala.

-Again, the right hemisphere, not the right country.

-Kiwi.

-Sorry?

-Kiwi?

-Kiwi.

-The right type of animal.

-A kea.

Kea is the right answer. Very good. A kea is?

-A New Zealand parrot.

-A flightless bird.

No, it's not flightless in this case, oddly enough, it's a parrot.

And there was a bounty put on them some years ago.

Kea, which as you can see, look quite ravenous -

they look almost like eagles, but they are parrots - would ride

the sheep and peck away at them and eat the fat off the poor sheep.

And so there was a bounty put on their heads

and New Zealanders found keas were very curious animals.

It's partly a result of having grown-up in a country with no

mammals for millions of years.

Anyway, what you do is, you stand behind a rock and wait for a

kea to come along, and then you drop behind the rock and disappear.

And the kea thinks, "That's odd."

And he wanders up and he takes a look over,

and you just, with your club, just go bang, like that.

That's the beauty of it, you've only just started,

because you don't have to move, you put the kea down.

The kea's friend goes, "Where's Kevin?"

Where's Kevin!

-Wanders round like that.

-Are they all called Kevin?

And then you drop down again and he goes, "Hello, what happened there?

"There was someone and then there wasn't. How does that happen?"

And he looks over, bash! And then, "Where's Keith?" and then so on.

All the Ks.

And you get a huge swag bag of kea.

Wine doesn't taste as nice in a mug.

Wine, no that's very true.

And I think tea doesn't taste good out of a...

It's because of the amount of air you take in.

-Yes, that's probably true isn't it?

-No, no, it IS true, Stephen.

-Yes, no, sorry.

It's the thinness of the glass.

It's the amount of air you're taking as you sip.

If you like tea, just make one cup in a glass

and try the tea out of a glass.

-It is divine.

-Delicious, you're right.

-Because it minimises...

-My wife likes a thin mug.

Well that's your own business, but I'm just saying...

LAUGHTER

-I'd leave if I were you.

-I think I'll go.

I'm getting a pummelling off these two.

Sorry, it was, it was...

-But it is due to the air.

-Pitch, half volley and then...

Who thought that Fry and Carroll would be a double act? Look at them go!

-Well, that's why they taste wine, they go...

-HE SLURPS

-Yeah, to get the...

-To maximise the air they get in.

-But...

-OPERATIC RING TONE

-Is that your phone?

Yes.

It's Heston Blumenthal.

Now it's time for one of my knick-knacks,

-a little scientific experiment. And all I have to do...

-ALL: Oooh!

-I know, it's terribly exciting, isn't it, is bring up this.

-Ah ha.

I don't know if you can see in here

the tiny little grains of a kind of a little crystalline matter.

And a bottle here.

Salt and vinegar.

It looks like salt and vinegar. Bizarrely, that is what is

used for flavouring salt and vinegar - sodium acetate.

It's got caustic soda and vinegar, which is what makes sodium acetate.

It's then dissolved slowly in water.

It's very unstable - if I shook it, it would instantly crystallise, so I'm going to be careful.

But if you add it to crystals, it also crystallises,

-and I hope to make a dildo for you.

-Oh, good.

A dildo just out of this liquid.

I'm going to stand up to do it, if the camera allows me to, because

it needs a steady hand and I need to keep rising as I'm slowly pouring.

It's a bit like making mayonnaise, very slowly adding the oil.

-It's nothing like making mayonnaise.

-No, you very slowly...

You're making a phallus.

But in terms of the pouring...

This could ruin Mothers' Day for some people.

I'm just going to slowly pour it.

Can you see there's a tiny bit of crystal on there?

-So a really very small amount.

-Yeah.

-OK.

-Here we are.

I've got to have a steady slow stream.

Let's just hope it works.

-Ooooh!

-Ooh, I say!

JOHNNY VEGAS: It's a snowman dildo.

# We're walking in the air

LAUGHTER

# We're going to land for just a while. #

Snowman needs his private time!

Get off me back.

It's not very easy to be very accurate.

I've got to keep doing higher,

otherwise it'll blow back into the bottle.

But there you go. How's that?

APPLAUSE

There you go.

What is there to say about long-necked Karen?

She's got lovely eyes.

Yeah, you're always the first to see the nice.

That's one of those Family Fortunes ones, isn't it,

-we've had this before.

-Oh, yes, "Survey said..."

Name a bird with a long neck.

And the bloke goes, "Naomi Campbell."

Well, this is clearly not Naomi.

No, Emu.

Karen is the answer here. Who is this Karen?

-Is it a tribe or something?

-Say again?

-Tribe, is it a tribe?

-Tribe.

The Karen tribe.

The Karen tribe.

"Oh, hello, all right? Lovely to see you."

"Hiya, y'all right?"

The neighbouring Tracey tribe is...

They hate the Traceys.

"Stay away from Gary!"

Here come the Garys.

Huurrrr! Not bovvered.

But the tribe we're talking about, the Padaung Karen tribe, from?

Do they put rings round the... and do all that extending over time?

Exactly, let's have a look at them. There we are, look at that.

-Oh, my word.

-Wow!

-Wow, isn't that impressive?

It looks like she's kind of being bred with a Slinky.

They're so-called giraffe-necked.

-At the end of the day, oh!

-Well, they can't at the end of the...

"Beryl, Beryl, why are the curtains on the floor? Oh."

You know when you have a Jack-in-the-box ready to go?

-Oh, yes.

-P-ding!

Maybe that's what would happen, rather than go down, it just goes...

My mother-in-law makes absolutely no sound when she moves.

That's remarkable, like Jeeves.

She is the stealthiest person.

You've got a stealth mother-in-law. Is she sprayed black?

Honestly, she could be a brilliant spy, you know.

You might be in a room and looking in a thing or something,

and then suddenly she'll go, "Hello." "Oh, Jesus!

"Where did you come from?! Where did you come from?!

"It's a long way from the door."

Anybody would have gone, "Ahem," made a little noise. Nothing.

Oh, that's terrible.

It's like the famous story of the boy who was, you know,

having a play with himself in his bedroom, with his eyes closed.

And by the way, I was not playing with myself.

-No, no not you.

-In this story, before you conflate them.

-No, that's true.

-What's that story or that thing where Alan Davies

and his mother-in-law comes up behind him?

-Let's just separate those two things.

-All right.

But he closes his eyes in bliss and when he opens them afterwards,

he just finds a cup of tea next to him.

It sounds so appalling.

She thought, "Well, your father always likes a cup of tea afterwards."

And a biscuit.

Oh, gracious. Oh!

No.

Now, we have something, here's some potassium iodide,

it's a catalyst for my next experiment.

-ALL: Oooh!

-Yes.

My next experiment also involves me having,

for health and safety reasons, to wear these.

Cowabunga, dude, you look awesome.

Tell us, O mighty king.

And... Oooh!

"Oh, stop it, no."

I can tell from that sample you've had asparagus.

Well, what that is, is H2O2.

-Does anyone know what H2O2 is?

-Water water.

-Water water?

-Double water.

-It's H2O, it's water with an extra oxygen molecule,

-but it has a different name.

-MAN IN AUDIENCE: Hydrogen peroxide.

They're a good audience! Hydrogen peroxide. Well, that's partly

-because three-quarters of the women have got blonde hair.

-Yes.

But it's quite unstable and it's always trying to

lose its extra molecule and turn to water and to oxygen gas.

And we've mixed it here with some ordinary detergent,

some washing up liquid.

So, could you go and stand next to Bill,

-because it's not really violent, but it's kind of...

-Well, why...?

-Let's just say...

-Hang on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

What am I, a human shield or something?

It's all right, you can be this side of him, it's not that violent.

You don't seem much concerned with MY safety.

You can stand next to Jeremy, that's a good point.

It's that much nearer Alan.

You'll see, it's not going to be that violent...

-It isn't dangerous.

-It might be dangerous.

-It isn't dangerous.

-It isn't.

Just hold me.

It's basically...

Do you want to sit on my knee?

-Don't stop, I liked it.

-Here we go, are you ready?

Do you want to count me down, audience? Count me down from three.

-Three...

-Oh, what comes next?

ALL: Three, two, one.

ALL EXCLAIM

-Oh, very good.

-There you go.

I think you'll agree, that's quite a money shot.

JEREMY: Stephen, are you suggesting if I get some of that potassium...?

-That that will really make you perform in bed? No.

-No.

-No. That's amazing.

-Well, that's magnificent...

-JIMMY:

-Oh, yeah, that's it, baby.

-It's still flowing.

-That's the stuff.

-It's a rather horrible yellow at the edges, though, isn't it?

Yeah, it does get like that. It's horrible.

So, good night.