Knits & Knots QI

Ah, good evening, good evening, good evening.

Good evening and welcome to QI, where tonight the K is silent,

as in knits, knots, knackers and knobs.

Let's meet a knitwit, Sue Perkins.

APPLAUSE

Knot a lot, Ross Noble.

APPLAUSE

Slightly knackered, David Mitchell.

APPLAUSE

And a complete kn... say no more, Alan Davies.

APPLAUSE

Right. All the K's are quiet and so are their k-noises.

Sue goes...

Sh!

Ross goes...

SHEEP BLEATING

-David goes...

-PIN DROPPING

-That was a pin dropping. You could hear it.

-Yeah.

-And Alan goes:

-# Silence is golden! #

Very nice. And how many knots are there in this picture?

# Silence is... #

-Yes?

-Two.

-CLAXON

-No.

-Four?

-CLAXON

It's a trap!

-Well, you've got some options.

-Oh, none.

CLAXON

David?

-One?

-Yes!

-APPLAUSE

Oh, you're such a swot!

Is it the noose, is that the only one?

There are two hitches, a bend and a knot.

-The one on the right is a k-noose.

-Yes.

-A noose, but it is a knot.

-Oh, a noose is a knot?

-A noose is a type of knot.

-A hangman's knot.

The hitches are the first one and the third one.

Is correct, they are hitches, and the second one is what's known as a bend.

In everyday speech, of course, the word knot is used for all of them

but this is QI where everyday speech is completely...

MUMBO JUMBO

So the highwayman's hitch, for example,

I have an example of a highwayman's hitch.

That's where you hitch your horse and the tighter you pull,

the tighter it goes but when you want to get away quickly,

-you pull the short one, da-dum!

-Oh, that is good.

-Isn't that clever?

Does he not just run off with the stick then?

-It's a post in the ground.

-Oh, I see, right. Sorry, yeah.

Because if you tied up your dog to that and you went, right,

and then threw it and the dog ran after it, a lot of confusion there.

Yeah. Another one was called the European Death Knot,

the Euro Death Knot, or EDK.

Was that named by UKIP?

It's also a one sided overhand bend.

It's used for joining two ropes, as you can see.

It's perfectly safe if used right, but a lot of climbers thought it wasn't safe

and it was invented in Europe, so American climbers called it the Euro Death Knot.

In fact it's very, very old and the 5,300-year-old man, Otzi,

who was discovered in the Alps, dead, obviously...

-For a moment there I thought you...

-He was preserved, preserved...

Been there for 5,000 years and going, "Help, will somebody help!"

He had amongst his possessions a knot tied exactly in that fashion,

so it shows we've been doing it for a very long time.

And that would have been before rope was invented, for sure.

How he pulled that off..?

And the other hitch we saw was called the snuggle hitch.

Which is a more secure version of the better-known sailor's knot,

the clove hitch.

-You look at me as if I would know that.

-Sorry, I just...

"Come on, Susan, you know the knots."

One of the surprising things about it,

because it looks reasonably simple,

was that it was invented in 1987.

Or at least that's when it was very first introduced into the International Knot Tyers Guild.

Didn't they think they had enough knots, without inventing more?

Yeah, I know. There are 3,800 in their...

We're not going to go through each one of them, you'll be pleased to know.

So that's a very specific '80s knot?

Did somebody go, we need a way of tying down Bananarama. Now...

It was a man called Owen Nuttall, anyway, who invented it

and he called it the snuggle hitch.

-NASAL SPEECH: I imagine he speaks like that.

-Well, he may.

"Nuttall here. I invented a knot."

The hangman's knot is named after one of the most famous

hangmen in history, Charles II's hangman.

-Oh, Johnny...

-It's a French guy.

-Johnny Noose.

No. Oddly enough, his surname is a sailing vessel. Jack..?

-Boat.

-Yacht.

-Ketch. Jack Ketch.

Which if I'm not mistaken has a tall mast at the front

-and a small mast at the back.

-Indeed, indeed, yes, the ketch.

-Yeah, well, I just like to point that out.

-Well done.

-Thank you.

This became pretty much the standard hanging noose that was used

because it broke the neck very quickly.

So, it was a very quick death when you dropped. The drop, as they called it.

So, in a way, it was humane.

It's good that you say he was an effective hangman,

-cos if you weren't, you're essentially just a bloke that opens a door.

-Yes.

Do you know what I mean?

Because where was it?

There was a place where the prisoners built the gallows

and when you stood on a particular plank it forced the wood out

and then the door didn't open and no-one was getting...

Then they would test it and the door would open and then they'd go, all right.

And then they'd put the person there and then it would push the wood

and then it wouldn't, and they'd go, all right.

Take him away, test it again, fine. That happened loads of times and...

And so they decided God didn't want this person to die and let them off.

I think that's a real thing, or I might have seen it in a Scooby Doo episode.

I'm not sure. I'm not quite sure.

Do they do a lot of hanging in Scooby Doo?

-Now you come to mention it...

-No more!

No, it's not. How would that be Scooby Doo?

Like, like, like... IMPERSONATES SCOOBY DOO

-Shaggy!

-That can't be Scooby Doo.

AMERICAN ACCENT: It was Mr Ketch, the hangman, all the time.

So, now, I want you to take one of those each,

and tie yourselves together, as it were.

-This has gone quite dark now.

-It has, hasn't it?

Is it just me? It's like a party game in the '70s.

So, put each one of those around your wrist.

-No, no, don't undo it.

-Well, I can't get my hand through that, can I?

-Oh, sorry.

Little cock grab, that is.

-Cock ring!

-Try with this one.

-Swap. You can give me that one back.

-That's more like it.

There we are. Put your wrists through.

That's it, and then do that, so that you're tied together.

-OK.

-Yes, is that right?

-Is that good?

Without undoing the knots, untie yourselves.

DAVID: Oh, I see.

-Don't turn around, don't turn around.

-That hasn't helped.

DAVID: No!

-ROSS: No, that's it, you go through there.

-Yes!

-Yes!

No!

Emphatically no!

Completely not.

I'm going back up, I'm going back over.

Right, go, go through. Yes!

No!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

I've got it, I've got it. Right.

Right. I've got it. If I do a forward flip...

Now...

Right, let's see if we can get...

Oh, oh.

I think technically you are now married.

You have let...

I'm coming down, I'm coming down.

You two hold it for a second and watch,

-because I think Sue is onto something.

-OK.

This is what we did when we were regularly handcuffed together as children.

No, watch. You mustn't untie the knot.

But...

Oh.

Yeah!

Well done. Brilliant!

-Have a go.

-I actually, I have no idea what you did.

Neither do I, but I feel alone now. I liked it when we were together.

Show them, if you can remember it.

What's properly weird is, I've now got a purple one round there.

-It's a magician's trick, it's a good...

-So what you have to do is, you have to make a loop.

And then you feed the loop through.

-What?!

-Then you go over your hand.

No way.

You are free.

No, you're not!

Is this your watch?

APPLAUSE

Oh, we've given up, we've given up.

Hang on, if I take my trousers off...

I think we have to call that a disaster.

But well done, Sue Perkins.

It was like playing S&M Twister.

It was rather, wasn't it?

It was a wonderful sight that will never leave my memory banks.

So, why would anyone ban knitting patterns, flowers, hugs and kisses?

This is a real ban, that is to say, a governmental ban.

It's got a war-time feeling about it.

-It has got a war-time feeling about it.

-Code?

-Code is the right word.

-What, they knit in code?

Yes.

So in World War II you were not allowed to send abroad

any knitting pattern, just in case there was code embedded in it.

So you couldn't send, you know, socks to prisoners of war?

You could send socks,

-but not anything with a knitting pattern in it.

-Oh, right.

Because they could be used as some sort of code.

Open out a blanket and it says "June 6th, 1944."

Normandy.

Also postal chess was not allowed,

even kisses at the bottom of letters,

in case they had some meaning.

Presumably messages saying where the troops are moving...

Yes, those were obviously pretty much banned.

Could you not have got like, you know you get knitting machines,

could they not have made like an enigma knitting machine?

Where it makes the jumper and then scrambles it up,

-so that they couldn't pass the message.

-That would be very clever.

-It's an opportunity missed.

-It is an opportunity missed.

We have a Karen Templer, who is a QI watcher, has knitted us...

Oh, look at that.

And this says, in Morse code...

"I wool always love you."

Oh, that's cute.

Aaah. Thank you, Karen. Bravo.

APPLAUSE

-Isn't that nice?

-You know what she was doing there?

-She was indulging in a bit of four-ply.

-Hey!

AUDIENCE LAUGH AND GROAN

-Good night.

-Very good.

And let's hope that it is Morse code and not Braille.

"You'll what? Get off me!"

Now, how can knitting be used to reduce fear, crime and disorder?

-Well, you know if he was knitting he couldn't be holding a gun.

-Yeah.

Well, that's true.

It's harder to stab, shoot.

You can only really kick people while you're knitting, can't you.

You can stab.

We'll come onto that, there is something called

Extreme Knitting, which we will come to.

It's called Guerrilla knitting, or sometimes Yarn Bombing.

And it is actually a way to make a place more peaceful.

It's to deter crime.

And it was tried out in Leicester, where they hung pompoms,

and put things round trees.

Oh, I feel calm already. It's like a tree-warmer.

Well, they used cosies for tree trunks, parking meters,

even buses, and tanks has been suggested, in the military areas.

But as I say, there's Guerrilla Knitting,

but I alluded to it earlier, there's Extreme Knitting.

What do you think that might be?

Now I've got Gregg Wallace in my head going,

"Knitting doesn't get more extreme than this!"

"First you get a slip stitch, then comes a taste of pearl."

Is it about doing knitting in places where you wouldn't normally,

like driving a Formula One car, or...

Well, sort of.

..parachuting or something.

The great heroine of this is one Susie Hewer,

aged 55 at the moment of going to press.

She has the world record for knitting a scarf

while running a marathon.

-Oh, that is good.

-That is impressive.

And she's also crocheted while running a marathon too,

and she's ridden a tandem,

and she does it to raise money for Alzheimer's research.

So it's all pretty good in the end.

Yeah. I did a half marathon when I was a student,

to raise money so that we could go to the Edinburgh Festival.

-Well, dear me.

-Do you know how much I raised? Have a guess.

-So that's what got you here.

-50 quid.

-70.

-Oh, that's good.

-70 quid.

-For 13 miles.

And then we got two grand off the Student's Union to top it up.

-Well, it worked out all right for you, didn't it?

-Yeah.

I would say.

Now, what about the biggest knitted objects in the world,

-how big are they?

-Massive.

Yes, is the answer. Give me a...

Thanks, I'll have a point, thank you.

-The biggest knitted object.

-Yeah.

Well, I've had my doubts about Venus for a long time, you know.

Is it going to be like a suspension bridge or something,

is a knitted object?

In as much as it is, yes, it is a physical object

-on which people can live.

-It's a house?

Is the internet knitted?

-Does it count as a huge knitted thing?

-No.

It's a series of man-made knitted islands on the Peruvian side

of Lake Titicaca. And there are 45 of them.

They're from totora reeds, and there's a church on one of them.

There are buildings and houses, people live on them.

But they're quite...

But the scariest thing is the size of the nanas that built them.

Yes.

But several hundred people live on them, they get so used to

this rather springy surface that if they then go on land, they just,

they can't walk, it takes them ages to get their land legs back.

I think that's where Bez from the Happy Mondays,

-he's from there, isn't he?

-Yeah.

-Very good. Excellent.

-Be a great excuse, wouldn't it,

if you turned up somewhere pissed,

to say, "No, actually, I'm fine, I just usually live somewhere knitted.

"And it's very odd, everything..."

Just used to a very different surface.

"Everything feels very wobbly, but honestly, I am a professional."

ROSS: But the Lake Titicaca Olympic team must be amazing. Bang!

Give me a statistic about Lake Titicaca.

It is the biggest innuendo place in the planet.

It's got titties and it's got caca.

Caca, exactly. Exactly.

Is it very, very high?

It's the highest navigable lake in the world. That's quite right.

Navigable means you can go in one end and out the other.

Yes, you can get ships on it and there are many ships on it,

and ports and things like that.

There are higher lakes which you couldn't get a ship onto.

Not been made more navigable by loads of knitted islands.

-Yes, they get in the way.

-Yes.

So, anyway, now for a new round. What Katydid.

Here are five creatures and five names.

I want you to match the creature to the name.

Oh, right, OK.

There's a dragon-headed, a spike headed, a horned,

a mimicking snout-nosed and a small hooded, and they're all called?

-Sheila.

-No, no, they're called katydids.

Why might they be called a katydid?

A "cat-idid?"

No, it is actually pronounced katydid.

It's because supposedly the sound

they make by stridulating their wings is "katydid, katydidn't."

I don't know, we haven't got a recording of it,

so I can't help you.

Katydid, katydidn't.

Let's show the answers in a colour-coded sort of way.

-Well, there you can see...

-The dragon-head.

But they're strange creatures.

And the most impressive, in some ways, is the small hooded,

which as you see is the purple one, which looks like a leaf.

We're looking at it very closely and it's moving, but it wasn't

discovered till 2010, it's lived for millennia and it's not even rare.

It's in Australia.

It's because its camouflage is so astonishing, the mottling

of the leaves and everything else is such that people just don't see it.

That's the longest game of hide and seek.

-Yes, that's ever been ever played.

-Finally!

Eventually someone, "Look, what's that little blighter in there?

"That's an animal, it's alive."

"Oh, you got me, you got me!"

It would be a terrifying thing, actually suddenly to, you know, that

things that we've been looking at for ages turn out to be animals.

-Yes.

-You know, that you're suddenly looking at four trees

-and suddenly realise, "Oh, no, they're legs."

-Yes.

There's another katydid which does a really extraordinary thing,

it's a record in the animal kingdom, as far as we know,

it's the male Tuberous bush cricket.

It has the largest testicles for their weight of any animal.

That's 14% of their body mass.

-14%?

-14%.

-Gonads.

-It enables them to fertilise as many females as possible.

They do this by inserting a jelly-like package, called...

Why are you looking at me?

I'm sorry, called a spermatophore, into the female.

But the back end of this spermatophore,

this bulging packet of spermatazoic jelly,

there's too much of it, it bulges out

and the female reaches back and eats it for lunch.

LAUGHTER

So it's a romantic dinner for one, so it's a double little present.

Yes. Only a man could say that.

The thing about that...

40%...yes?

The thing about that as a creature though,

cos it's got such massive balls, like when you film it close up,

it must go like, it must leap and go, oh!

Quick, oh!

Oh, the agony.

Every time it lands, it's just, ooh.

Where's the penis? Is the penis massive?

I don't think the penis is as massive as the testes.

Just a little thing like that, and then two great melons.

Yeah. It's really...

That's quite a powerful squirt, you'd have thought.

-She could be a mile away.

-Yeah.

Well, there you are, there's your katydid.

What's the longest distance of mating in the animal kingdom?

-What is?

-Yeah.

-Gosh, I don't know.

Some fish put the eggs and then the male fish comes along later...

-By post.

-They don't even meet.

Oh, that's true. You could send by post, I suppose.

Can you?

Well, there's the ninja slug.

No, this is a real thing.

A ninja slug?

The ninja slug, and when it's doing the loving,

-it er... Yeah, I'm like a proper expert.

-The slug loving.

Wax on, wax off.

Yeah, slug loving.

And then instead of getting involved,

it comes up and then it fires like all the necessaries towards

the lady slug, and she "hoof", and then, I don't know what it's called.

-Catches it?

-Sort of, yeah.

But she leans backward to catch it?

I don't think she's got hands,

but she, she sort of... That's the thing with a slug,

if you rush a slug like that, they don't go, "Urgh," they just,

"Oh." And then, yeah. Go like that.

Oh, it's that bit, on the... yes.

Wah!

-And then, yeah.

-Are you saying it's like the meat and two veg detach?

-Yeah. Takes it off...

-And fires, takes it off and fires it at a...

Takes it off and it... Again, I'm not sure where I found this out.

Scooby Doo.

That is definitely Scooby Doo.

It sort of, its bits go, and then it, woo, like that. And then it...

I definitely seen that on Scooby Doo.

And then she's, I think she's like that, "Wey!"

And she's basically like a goalkeeper, just readying herself.

Exactly. Yeah, honestly, it's like an explosion in an Ann Summers.

Well, that's terrific, well done.

There's nothing worse, though,

when this slug comes towards the lady and she dives the wrong way.

That is, oh!

Nightmare.

Moving on, moving on from the enormous knackers of the katydid.

What can you tell me about the royal knackers?

Well, I imagine they're pretty toastie right now.

Is it where royal horses are killed?

The Royal Knacker's Yard?

Well, yes, they don't any longer have a Royal Knacker's yard,

but they used to.

There was of course, in the Victorian age, and earlier,

a great need to get rid of horses who had died,

and to make the most of them.

And they went to knacker's yards. And there was...

And thence into lasagne.

And they were made into all kinds of things.

And the royal knacker was one John Atcheler,

who had the royal warrant from Queen Victoria, to knacker her horses.

And he was the official horse slaughterer.

He had two knacker's yards.

The first was in Sharp's Alley near Smithfield

and then later near Kings Cross, at Belle Isle.

And they were famously malodorous, you wouldn't want to live near them.

Huge, huge copper vats filled with horses being rendered down.

But here from 1844 is an extract from Bentley's Miscellany,

"The knacker's cart arrives in double quick,

"The mob admires the cart, the royal arms and the inscription:

"'Knacker to Her Majesty.'

"The royal knacker, a swell knacker in cords and tops,

"with a bit of butcher's apron, just as big as a bishop's,

"merely to distinguish his profession,

"pole-axe in hand, descends from his vehicle."

-Well, that's pageantry.

-That's pageantry, isn't it, exactly.

That's what I want to see televised, David Dimbleby doing

the commentary, "The slaughtering of the royal horse."

Absolutely.

It wouldn't be David Dimbleby though, it would be Fearne Cotton.

I'm afraid it would, wouldn't it?

People would say, "They've ruined the horse slaughtering this year."

"They've trivialised the knackering."

"It used to be so respectful."

There was so much pomp and circumstance.

Explain what bit of the horse was bubbling up to the top now,

is it a bollock, is it an eye?

-Yes.

-But they don't know now, these new presenters.

Well, if anyone from Leeds tells you to eat kicker, what should you do?

Run away, because that's Kicker there.

You can see we're still in the world of meat.

Is it horse?

It is actually just plain horse, yes, it's horse.

And Yorkshire was the last place really to eat horse

on a major scale in Britain.

Until quite recently.

Well...

But of course recently there have been a few scandals

which mean we've probably all been eating horse.

That dark brown horse has the hair of Tina Turner.

You're spot-on.

What you're looking at here is the entire line-up of Horse Kajagoogoo.

You're absolutely right.

It's really spooky, that.

Well, horse was very popular right up until the first millennium,

until Gregory III, the Pope, deemed it too pagan.

But the Scandinavians had always loved eating horse

and the greatest Scandinavian, as it were,

presence in Britain was in Yorkshire.

And so it remained as a tradition to eat horse

right up until really the '30s.

And the last butcher selling horse in the county was Arnold Drury

in Doncaster, who died in 1951.

He proudly advertised "Viande Cheval,"

meat horse, "of super quality horseflesh."

And other butchers called it kicker, more euphemistically.

And in the 19th century, rural Yorkshire folk who moved to the city

were known as kicker eaters.

I've eaten horse.

-Well, most of us have, apparently, without knowing it.

-Yes.

Isn't it odd how we rebel at the idea of things

that we're not used to.

You know, we are totally used to drinking the proteinous

fatty stuff that comes out of an alien animal,

that is designed to make its calf double in weight every week,

and we're perfectly happy,

skull it back and go, that's all right, I'm eating a cow's milk.

But even more so...

But someone says eat a horse's milk, you go, "Ugh!"

Even more so than that, when my sister-in-law

expressed some breast milk and kept it in the fridge,

and her brother came in and drank it...

It made everyone feel a bit unwell, but no-one quite knows why.

Well, exactly, because it's a lot more...

-Clearly it's designed for human consumption.

-Precisely,

much more than cow or horse milk is.

I tell you what, it makes a lovely rice pudding.

-It really does.

-But wasn't there a shop selling...

-Breast milk ice cream.

-Yeah.

We should all try lots of different animals' milk.

I'm very happy to try horse milk.

-I had some of that breast milk ice cream.

-Did you?

Yeah. I was on a television programme

and they brought it round as a gimmick, I didn't seek it out.

No.

And it tasted completely like normal ice cream.

I thought you were going to say completely like tits.

-Yeah, it tasted very, very strongly of tits.

-Very breasty.

No, it tasted very much like dog or horse milk, in fact.

Well, the most famous 19th century Royal Knacker was Jack Atcheler,

responsible for dealing with 26,000 horses a year.

Now, what should you watch out for when handling these?

It's roses, rose stems.

Oh, is it, is it old women with secateurs?

Yeah, well, that's one thing.

What else might harm you if you try to pick them?

The thorny bit?

KLAXON SOUNDS

-No, roses don't have thorns.

-Not a thorn?

Well, they do, it's a known...

Thorn bushes have, thorn bushes have roses, is that it?

-Is it a trick?

-No, on roses they're called?

-Prickles.

-Prickles, well done. Absolutely right...

-They prick you.

-They're not thorns.

A thorn is a very specific thing, botanically.

Thorns are modified branches or stems,

and prickles are part of a plant's skin, which is what those are.

They come out from it.

So when Bon Jovi sang Every Rose Has A Thorn...

-They were lying.

-He's made an absolute fool of himself.

They did.

# Every rose has a prickle #

That would be great, wouldn't it, if you went to a Bon Jovi gig, and

# Every rose has a... #

Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! And the QI thing went off...

We've got to invite him on the show, absolutely right.

So let's see if we've learned something tonight.

I'm going to show you something and tell me,

is there a thorn in this picture?

-Er, there's not one on the rose.

-No.

KLAXON SOUNDS

Oh, God!

Well, you said no, didn't you?

But you were more accurate. You said there's not one on the rose.

But isn't there one on the crown?

-No, there isn't one on the crown either.

-One on the grass?

Oh, Alan, you were the only person on the programme

when we covered this.

There is no such thing as Ye Olde Rose and Crown,

it's THE Old Rose and Crown, and the letter Y is called a...?

-Thorn.

-Thorn.

The letter is the thorn.

-So the Y is called?

-A thorn, yes.

-A thorn.

-It's a "th" sound.

When you see that, you don't say YE, you say THE.

THE. So when people say ye olde, they're completely wrong, it's THE.

I will never get it wrong again.

So you no longer have to say Ye Olde Tea Shop, it's The Olde Tea Shop.

What if you open a new one?

How does that...?

Then just call it The New Tea Shop.

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.

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.

APPLAUSE

We can now make it disappear.

Gone cloud.

Come back, cloud!

Oh, isn't that exciting?

All of which brings us to the scores,

and our winner tonight on minus six is David Mitchell.

HE MOUTHS: Minus six.

In a very respectable second place on minus nine, is Ross Noble.

Who knew?

Improving all the time, in third place, with minus 17,

Alan Davies.

But tonight's frayed knicker elastic is Sue Perkins on minus 22.

Well, that's all from Sue, David, Ross, Alan and me.

Good night.

Subtitles By Red Bee Media Ltd