K-Folk QI

This programme contains some strong language

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Well, GOOD...evening!

Good evening, good evening, good evening and welcome to QI,

where tonight, we're cavorting with the K-folk.

Please welcome the kind-hearted Katherine Ryan!

APPLAUSE

The keen-eyed Josh Widdicombe!

APPLAUSE

The king-sized Phill Jupitus!

APPLAUSE

And kiss my keister if it isn't Alan Davies!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And tonight, their buzzers have a story to tell.

Katherine goes...

CAVALRY TRUMPET

Josh goes...

WA-WA-WA!

Phill goes...

DRUM AND CYMBAL

And Alan goes...

SAWING

CREAKING AND CRASH

I hope you were sitting the right side of the branch, Alan.

So we start in the Kalahari. So tell me,

how did the meerkat cross the road?

Carefully. That's not a life-sized one, is it?

That's not... Well, it is a life-sized one.

I'd say it was in the foreground,

except there's a bit of road before it.

-Yes, it's confusing, isn't it?

-It's just a very tiny car.

It is, it's a little dinky car.

Do they cross in a group?

Like, you know when you see those kids

-in the reflective jackets...

-Yes.

..snaking across the road with some sort of handler?

I think that's what children have.

Well, meerkats are, despite their cutesy-cutesy reputation,

they're pretty mean, fierce animals.

And they have levels of superiority.

And the leading meerkat sends across

the less important meerkat to test the road.

-Amazing.

-And it's the youngsters...

-That'll be you tonight, Josh.

-Do you want me to test it tonight?

-It's your children...

-It's your first time,

you have to cross the set.

-Unbelievably, it's the children they send.

-The children?!

They send their little children.

Once again, that'll be me tonight.

Well, we do the same, we do the same with buggies.

Right? You push that, that's straight out into the road before you.

So, what are they testing?

That it's not going to get hit by a car?

Yeah, exactly. That it's safe.

And if the youngsters get gobbled, they go, "Oh, I'm not going there."

But do they not understand

that there might be another car in a minute?

Well, it seems odd, but all...

"No-one's been killed by a car, so we'll all be fine."

Are the tiny meerkats wearing high-vis jackets

like human children do,

or do they just rely on their own gorgeousness?

I think they rely on their own gorgeousness. But the leading,

-the sort of head, not exactly...

-ALL: Aw!

You see, you're all going, "Aw!"

I don't fancy that one at the bottom's chances, if that's a road.

No, exactly. He knows he's about to be sent.

That one behind him is just about to do that.

You have alpha females with meerkats

-and, in fact, they kill each other's children.

-What?!

Yes, they're pretty nasty animals, when it comes to it, I'm afraid.

-They're not very nice at all.

-I hate them.

They're child murderers, to be perfectly honest.

Here are three young meerkats crossing the...

HE IMITATES FAST CAR

IMITATES HORN BEEPING

Two have spotted the vehicle.

Will the youngest one...?

Barry did not.

Unfortunately, because of the adverts,

a lot of people have bought them as pets.

And they very soon abandon them because they're smelly,

they're aggressive and they attack people they don't know.

But do you know what, these people have never died

-crossing a road, have they?

-No, they haven't. Exactly.

And the meerkat, always worried

that someone's about to kick them in the knackers.

They do have that look too.

It looks like someone's about to take a free kick, doesn't it?

It does.

The only thing that could make that picture even more gorgeous

would be three tiny pianos.

Meerkats know each other by their calls individually

and you can send a meerkat almost insane

by recording one meerkat's voice that it knows,

playing it in a certain area

and then whizzing round to another area and playing it again,

-and it will...

-Why would you do such a thing?!

-It's very mean, but they get utterly baffled by the fact...

-Barry!

How can you be in two places at once?

There is no meerkat called Barry, by the way, but it's...

-Oh, come on, there will be.

-No.

But you could do that with a human voice, because we recognise

everyone through their voices as well, don't we?

-True, but we also know about recordings.

-Oh, yeah.

-So they would probably guess.

-It's a trick missed.

-Maybe you don't.

-There was a time when only one person

knew about recordings. Ho-ho! He had great fun.

Well, there you go. The meerkat road safety code

is to send the kids across first.

Now, Alan, why will you never eat my noodles?

It was bound to happen that this show

would just become about you two.

Just haven't agreed on a fee, have we?

If you remember, we're involving people

from countries beginning with K.

-Kenya.

-Well, which have a particular association perhaps with noodles.

-Kent.

-Kent!

Famous for the Kentish pasta.

No... East.

Korea.

Thank you, Josh. In Korea, noodles, of course, are very popular.

Of course.

"When will I eat your noodles?" means...

"When are you getting married?" In other words,

when are you going to be throwing a party

in which you will serve noodles?

So it's just a Korean phrase.

-It's like saying, "When are you going to tie the knot?"

-Oh.

When am I going to eat your noodles?

But you're already married, so I'm not going to eat your noodles,

and you didn't invite me to your wedding.

-I did invite you, you didn't come.

-Oh, that's right.

LAUGHTER

I was abroad, of course.

-I was abroad.

-Yeah, you know what you were doing,

-you were filming an episode of Bones.

-Yes, I was, I was.

-I've never been so insulted in my life!

-I'm so sorry.

I'm so... Oh, God, how embarrassing. I'm so sorry.

Anyway, that's what it means. Here are some other Korean phrases...

"The other man's rice cake always looks bigger."

What would be the British equivalent of that?

"The grass is always greener."

Or as my uncle used to say, "The other man's arse is always cleaner."

"If there are too many ferrymen on a boat,

"it will sail up a mountain."

Is that just literal?

Well, yes, it's probably... Maybe.

If they say that in North Korea, the boat is going up the mountain.

-That's true.

-"Too many cooks spoil the broth."

Too many cocks... Too many cooks spoil the broth.

"So, Stephen, tell me about your childhood!"

OK, here's one.

"He worked as if he were tending the grave of his wife's uncle."

-That's brilliant.

-What would that mean?

-I might start using that.

-Not much.

-Yes, is the answer.

-He did bugger-all.

Because in Korea, it is your duty to tend the graves of your family.

But the more distant the family, the less attention you give the grave.

So all he was doing was just, basically,

sprinkling a little bit of water on the...

It's only his wife's uncle.

Whereas his grandfather, his father or his mother,

he'd be putting flowers and giving it great attention.

-So that's what that means.

-So like shagging the dog.

Not really.

Not really, Katherine.

Is there something you want to share with us?

"Like shagging the dog?"

Yeah, like if you don't work very hard,

you're just shagging the dog.

Not in this country, Madam!

In this country, when we shag a dog, we know what we're doing.

And it's pretty hard work, I can tell you.

Not as easy as it looks, I tell you that.

-So in Canada, you have the phrase "shagging the dog"?

-Yeah.

-Wow.

Or like, "shagging the sheep," if you want, whatever.

That's not a phrase.

Again, perfectly common practice over here,

but not considered a light or unburdensome task.

It just means, like, having an easy day.

-There's a lot I have to learn about Canada.

-Well, I suppose it's easy

because with, like, a lady, you have to take her out to dinner

or woo her a bit, but with a dog,

it's just like, "Here, boy, come on!"

Oh, I see.

You say that, you say that...

But I'd say once he's here,

most of the work is still to be done in that situation.

Yes. And I'm thinking it... Oh, let's move on.

So, "showing off your wrinkles to a silkworm"?

You have found a silkworm in your underpants.

Silkworms are pretty wrinkly.

So if you show your wrinkles to a silkworm, he's going to go,

"Nah, I can do better than that."

-So it's like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs.

-Oh.

It's, that's the...

-Imagine how wrinkly a silkworm's knackers are.

-Exactly.

And finally, "He disappeared like a fart through hemp pyjamas."

I think that one speaks for itself, doesn't it?

It does. It's a Korean phrase.

"Awkwardly," basically.

Embarrassingly, awkwardly, not with maximum grace.

Now, who are these men and what did they have for breakfast?

-The guy there, front left...

-Yes?

..he looks like he's having a Calippo for breakfast.

He does, doesn't he? He does.

It's a very early Calippo commercial.

A very early Calippo commercial, absolutely right.

They've got the lifestyle element of the Calippo commercial all wrong.

Calippos have changed over the years.

Bizarrely, when first made, they were for poor mining regions.

Well, this is a poor village.

Is that the Dales? Is it Yorkshire, is it in the North?

-It's not, it's remoter. It's British, but remote.

-Oh.

-Is it Devon?

-Hebrides.

The Hebrides is right, and it's the remotest of all of them...

-Kelp.

-..and the largest.

-Seaweed, do they eat seaweed?

They don't eat seaweed.

They lived, for a thousand years, this community...

-On kittens.

-On Calippos?!

For a thousand years, this community was isolated from Britain.

They lived on gannets and skuas and puffins.

It's the largest puffin colony in Britain,

the largest gannet colony in the world.

-So can you think of the name of the island?

-Is it...? No, I can't, no.

It's St Kilda. St Kilda.

And who was St Kilda?

I'll give you ten points if you can tell me.

-Patron Saint of Ducks.

-Was St Kilda male or female?

-Male.

-Male.

-No.

-Female.

No. No. St Kilda was not a saint.

It's merely, unfortunately, a sort of...

Font?

It's an old Norse word for a shield, "skildir,"

and it just became St Kilda.

But it's not a saint at all.

So it's known as St Kilda.

And it wasn't until 1930, the last 36 natives of St Kilda

voluntarily left their ancestral home.

But, oddly enough,

they were given jobs in the British Forestry Commission,

and there hadn't been trees on St Kilda for 1,500 years,

so none of the St Kildans had ever seen a tree before.

And they were given jobs in forestry.

-IN SCOTTISH ACCENT:

-"What the fuck is that?!"

I imagine, I mean, because they're big...

-Trees are big.

-I mean, the reaction - "Argh! Orks!"

-So did they want to come to Britain?

-Sorry?

-When we brought them all over here in the '30s...

-Yeah?

-..weren't they resistant?

-No, no, it's voluntary.

I mean, this was a place that was so windy

that, literally, sheep were blown off the cliffs.

It's terribly sad.

And there was one windy period where for a week afterwards,

they were all deaf.

I mean, it really... It was a pretty hostile climate.

I'm still very confused,

cos I feel like until you told me about the wind

and the dead sheep, it sounded like a beautiful place to live.

-And now, yeah.

-Because it's sunny and, like, in the '30s,

nobody wanted to live here, no offence.

It now sounds a bit more like Canada, doesn't it, to be honest?

Wahey! Sorry.

No, no, no, I'm only kidding.

And it's like, you know, they had all these delicious birds,

like the original Nandos. I...

-I would like to live there.

-Yeah.

I want to find St Kilda and see what they're about.

I dare say you could visit it.

What we saw was actually the parliament, the men only, gathering.

-What?

-Wow.

-That's their parliament, and they talk until...

-Cabinet meeting.

-Are they split down the middle by party?

They talk about what the issues of the day...

"I'm holding the Calippo, it's my turn to speak."

The worst thing is that dog in the middle is the Prime Minister.

PHILL: No, he's the Minister of Forestry.

Anyway, anyway, let's move on.

If you follow a kulgrinda, where will it get you?

Oh, oh, oh, it's not... No.

-It's not that... Oh, no.

-What?

-No, that thing...

-What could you be thinking?

-That thing, that application.

-That thing...

-I can't imagine what you're talking about.

Yes, you know, you know, you know...

Turn it on now, how many are in the studio? I bet...

I imagine your outfit will set it off straightaway, Phill.

I'm just bear bait.

This is not, this is nothing to do with...

-No, it's nothing to do with that.

-..the gay man-on-man action app, no.

OK.

Kulgrinda is spelt K-U-L-G-R-I-N-D-A.

It's a rather remarkable thing that exists in the Baltic.

Particularly in Lithuania,

but also in Kaliningrad.

A naturally occurring phenomenon?

No, it's a man-made phenomenon, which is a very cunning way

of deceiving your enemies,

running away from them, or causing them to drown.

Making a misty fog thing?

No. What you do is...

you make stepping stones that are under the water...

A cunning thing.

..which are enough for you to stand on,

but only you know where they are.

The really cunning thing is how you lay them.

In the winter, it's incredibly cold,

so you get these huge stepping stones, put them in a line

across the ice, and as the ice melts, they drop and form a line.

And if they're big enough, you can actually drive a coach over them.

I mean, you've got to be pretty sure you're going to be chased soon,

to go to that trouble.

The Estonians and Kaliningradians were pretty often at war.

-There was a lot of war going on.

-It'll happen this year.

"I think we will be chased in the summer."

They were often invaded.

"Which way shall we go? Over the river...

"I'm going to make a kulgrinda, will you help?"

"Only if you're certain about this chase.

"Tell me more about it, who's involved?"

Basically, you set it up

and then you start a game of 'It' in about June.

The most famous one is the Sietuva swamp,

which the Lithuanian explorer Ludwik Krzywicki

navigated by coach in 1903.

And he wrote that at the deepest point,

the water was up to the sides of his horse.

So they're really impressive little things.

I'd say the most famous one is the one Jesus used.

That's true.

To trick everyone in the Bible.

That's true.

Kulgrinda are ingenious secret paths through Lithuanian swamps

which allow you to make a quick getaway

from your enemy, if necessary.

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."

-This is clearly not Naomi.

-No, Emu.

Karen is the answer here. Who is this Karen?

Tom Cruise always likes girls, like, tall girls with long necks,

but then he doesn't let them wear heels around him.

No, because he is not the tallest man in the world.

Well, then why date the girls with the long necks?

So they can spot predators.

-Say again...

-Tribe, is it a tribe?

-Tribe.

-The Karen tribe.

-The Karen tribe.

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

"Hiya, you all right?"

The neighbouring Tracey tribe...

-ALAN:

-Argh!

-They hate the Traceys.

-"Stay away from Gary!"

Here come the Garys.

-HE GRUNTS

-"Bovered?"

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

-Do they put rings round the...?

-Exactly, let's have a look at them.

-Extending over time.

-There we are, look at that.

-Oh, my word.

-Wow!

-Wow, isn't that impressive?

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

-They're so-called giraffe-necked...

-At the end of the day, "Oh!"

Well, they can't...

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

The surprising thing is that X-rays show that their necks...

They can't have any more vertebrae, can they?

No. X-rays show their necks are not longer than normal people's.

-So what's going on?

-It's just that we're all hunchy.

That does look quite long, but it's actually what's lower

-is the collarbone, or are the collarbones.

-Wow.

They're supposed to wear them until they get married,

but a lot of them keep them on forever.

It's a sign of beauty, traditionally,

although it's supposed also to protect them against tigers,

who will attack them by the neck. That's one theory.

That is great, I always thought,

OK, maybe they're sacred, all right, it looks pretty...

-Tigers! I'm totally with it now.

-Yeah, it's tiger-proof.

-Put those around your neck.

-Exactly.

-All right.

Most of them now live in Thailand, having fled Burma,

and you can pay to go and see them.

There's another nearby tribe, who also wear brass coils,

not only around their necks, but around their lower knees and arms.

I don't think this is so mad, really. I think... I get it with the tigers

and here, you've got Katy Price doing loads of crazy stuff

to her body and all her friends, and they look lovely,

but they're, like, orange and they've got fake hair and fake nails,

-how is this worse?

-You're absolutely right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

APPLAUSE Yeah, girls, yeah.

Points to Katherine, naturally, for that good observation.

Now, where's the best place to keep

-a load of old rubbish from the 1980s?

-My loft!

-Your loft.

No, this is a story you're not likely to know,

but it is a 16-year voyage of a ship.

It's called the Khian Sea, trying to offload rubbish from Pennsylvania.

In 1986, it was loaded with 15,000 tons of non-toxic ash,

bound for dumping in the Bahamas. But they said no,

so they went to Puerto Rico, Bermuda, the Dominican Republic,

Honduras, Guinea-Bissau and the Netherlands Antilles.

They all said no.

Then they cunningly re-classified the cargo

as "topsoil fertiliser"

and managed to get rid of 4,000 tons of it in Haiti.

And then they were rumbled and sent packing.

So they then went to Senegal, Cape Verde, Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka,

Indonesia and the Philippines.

And then Singapore, where she was found to be empty.

And then the captain and the ship's executives admitted

they'd dumped the ash at sea and were jailed.

And at the insistence of Haiti,

the ship had to go back to pick up the 4,000 tons they'd left behind.

So eventually, Pennsylvania, where it originated from,

took it back, and in 2002, 16 years later,

it was offloaded and taken by train to a landfill just 120 miles

where it had originally come from.

How impressive is that?

I quite like the idea of that boat sailing around

and the captain, with a teaspoon, just going...

Like in a prison yard, bring it out of the bottom of his trousers.

And the amazing thing is, it wasn't toxic,

it's just people didn't want American rubbish...

Don't say anything. Erm...

Now, name the nearest Third World country?

-Oh, steady, we could get into all sorts of trouble.

-Yes, you could.

Oh, hello.

I'm not going to make any jokes about our near neighbours

-on this fine island.

-Good. Let's just say...

it's as well that you didn't say Wales, or Scotland.

I'm too scared to answer.

Let me give you the original definition of a Third World nation,

then you'll be less embarrassed, all right?

-French historian Alfred Sauvy coined...

-France!

ALARM WAILS

-We jumped the gun. ..coined the phrase...

-Oh, Stephen!

..the Third World, "le monde troisieme," in 1952.

It meant "states not politically aligned with the USSR or the USA,"

ie, the Soviet Bloc or with America.

So any state that wasn't in some way politically aligned

was called Third World.

Now, which is the nearest one of those to us?

France was, although it wasn't a member of NATO,

-it was politically aligned.

-Ireland wasn't, was it?

Ireland is the right answer.

-The one I was most afraid of saying.

-Oh, there, you see!

It's only more recently that it became a term meaning poverty.

And nowadays, of course, it's not a politically correct

word to use, anyway. We don't say a Third World country, we say...?

-Developing.

-The developing world, exactly.

We say a vibrant tourist destination.

Absolutely, bravo! That's exactly what we say.

-Unspoiled, we say, unspoiled.

-Unspoiled, exactly.

And finally, a really easy one, does the Paris-Dakar Rally

start in Paris and end in Dakar, or start in Dakar and end in Paris?

It starts in France and ends in Africa.

-Oh!

-ALARM WAILS

Sorry. Anybody else?

-Is it neither?

-Yes.

-Well, I know it ends in Africa...

-It doesn't.

..so I presumed it started in France.

-It doesn't end in Africa.

-Where does it end?

-In South America.

-What?!

-What?!

-What the heck?!

No, the Paris-Dakar rally has been held in South America

for the last five years, since threats in 2007 from Al-Qaeda.

And so the organisers relocated it in South America.

-Really?

-Absolutely.

The Mongol Rally starts in England and ends in Ulan Bator,

which is the capital of Outer Mongolia, as I'm sure you know.

I'd just take a mobile phone, rather than doing that.

There, you see the...

-The problem is, you can't get the signal.

-This is 1990.

It starts in London and ends in Ulan Bator.

And what route does it take?

A2.

-The fact is...

-He's not wrong.

The fact is, any way you want to go. Because there is...

-A33.

-There is no set route, you can just choose to go through...

-Dover, Folkestone.

-..whichever countries

will allow you to get through them.

They don't want to cramp the style of the rallyists.

In India, there's a very good rally called the Blind Man's Car Rally.

A 40-mile race in which blind navigators use a Braille map.

The drivers are sighted, but they must adhere to the directions given

by their unsighted navigators, who are using Braille.

Even if they know it's going to be a collision?

"Left, left, left!"

Anyway, now we have a Knick-Knack exploding custard powder experiment.

For something to explode, you need certain things.

You need something to light -

in this case, custard powder.

You need something to light it with

and you need oxygen.

But you need a little bit more than that,

because if I try and light this custard powder, you will see...

ALAN IMITATES EXPLOSION

..that nothing happens.

The trick custard powder, ha-ha!

I blew his arm off! Ha-ha!

It doesn't... The whole point is, nothing happens.

Nothing would happen to that, it's custard, you fool.

I bet Heston could make it burn.

Ah. He couldn't in this state.

-No?

-What you need, in order to get something like custard,

or any powder, even metallic powder, to burn and really burn,

is one of these ordinary everyday objects like this.

As you may see, I have a funnel and I have some safety glasses,

to save my beautiful eyelashes.

And I have a lighter.

I miss Jacques Cousteau.

And I have a pump.

ALAN IMITATES DIVER'S BREATHING

I have a pump that rather wants to fall over.

So we'll just raise this here...

-HE CONTINUES TO IMITATE DIVER

-..so it doesn't fall over. OK...

What I'm going to do...

I don't want to know what you're going to do!

What I'm going to do is - I'm going to pour the custard powder

in this funnel. And I'm going to...

I'm going to present a flame across it.

-Oh...

-Yes. Yes. Be afraid, be very afraid.

-Can I use Alan as a human shield?

-No, you're the shield, you're new!

-Oh, my God!

-Ooh, ho-ho!

-There's flame,

-there's custard powder in there.

-"I feel the need!

"The need for speed!"

-All I need to do...

-Where are you going?!

Why the fuck am I next to it?!

I'm going to the pump.

I'm just going to the pump,

-because I'm going to pump...

-We are now nearer than you!

Can you see what I'm going to do? I'm pumping air...

There's just too many double entendres, you pumping custard.

Stop it. Are your ready for me to pump the custard?!

Oh, my God, don't do it!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

All right.

Oh, God!

Yes, I'm ready for you to pump your custard.

I need a countdown from the audience.

This is not how I wanted to go, I've got to be honest.

Audience, I want you to count me down from three...

AUDIENCE: ..two, one,

go!

AUDIENCE CHEERS

Wasn't that dangerous!

Well, it's quite warm there, actually.

-Can you feel the heat?

-Yeah, I can feel the heat.

-SHOUTING:

-If I'd been sitting there, I could have been igni...

-QUIETLY:

-I could have been ignited.

You could have been covered in hot custard.

I told you before you did this experiment!

Which hot and exciting experiment brings me

to the little matter of the scores.

And they are fascinating.

In last place, although he's played it so many times,

with minus nine, is Phill Jupitus.

APPLAUSE

A highly creditable third place, with minus eight, Katherine Ryan.

APPLAUSE Wow!

First appearance, second place, with minus seven, it's Josh Widdicombe.

APPLAUSE

Ladies and gentlemen, can you believe your ears?

14 points, in the lead, with plus seven, is Alan Davies!

CHEERING

Enormous thanks to Katherine, Phill, Josh and Alan. Good night.

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