Killers QI

This programme contains some strong language

Gooooooood evening,

good evening, good evening, good evening,

good evening and welcome to QI, where tonight's theme is Killers.

And our keen ktenologists - look it up - are...

the menacing Jason Manford.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

The merciless Sandi Toksvig.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

The murderous Trevor Noah.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

And the mostly harmless Alan Davies.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

So, let's hear their homicidal death-knells. Sandi goes...

CLOCK CHIMES

Just once. Jason goes...

CROW CAWS

Trevor goes...

KNIVES SCRAPE

And Alan goes...

# Killing me softly with his song, killing me softly... #

Well, it was common in the Second World War, death by Flack.

So, name the world's second-best hunter.

I mean, human beings must be the first, surely.

We get rid of entire species without any trouble at all.

-Which one is that?

-Second-best hunter...

-Do you recognise him?

-Hemingway.

That's Hemingway, he was mad on hunting.

And man is indeed the most efficient,

-we wipe out whole species.

-Yes, so who's second?

-Sharks.

-Killer whale.

-I always get...

-Killer whale is the right answer.

Very good.

He's even got it in his name.

That's how successful he is, he even called himself a killer.

He's even got the word killer in his name, you're right.

And the point about the killer whale is firstly,

that they're misnamed, that it was the Spanish name for them,

which we misinterpreted as killer whale.

They're actually whale killers. They kill whales.

I've seen a documentary where they pursued a mother and a baby.

Grey whale, yeah.

-For hundreds of miles.

-Up the coast of California, probably.

Two or three of them, and eventually they get too tired to fend them off

and then they eat the baby whale.

I know, the point is they act in packs. And they're not whales.

They're people.

Can you tell from, almost from the arcing leap that he's making?

-It's a dolphin.

-It's a dolphin.

They are dolphins that really, really are very intelligent.

And they have an amazing way of attacking their prey.

And apart from whales, they're particularly fond of a juicy...?

-Seals. They eat...

-Yeah, they love their seals.

But what's so impressive is the technique they use

-and also how they...

-Well, they beach themselves, don't they,

-they actually...

-That's one way,

is they actually get them on land, yeah.

But there's an even more impressive way, which is they

try and tilt the little ice flow that the seals will be on...

-Knock them off.

-And if the ice flow is too big,

they line up in a row with a leader who sort of blows a signal.

The young ones watch and they literally,

they sort of check that the young ones are watching so they learn

the technique, and then line abreast, they charge the ice flow,

creating a bow wave, which goes over the ice flow so the seal falls off.

We can show you that. Here they are.

There you are, there's the line of them.

And there's... The wave is going to go right over the...woof!

Knock the poor thing off.

-But it's very cunning.

-And sad.

-And sad, it's true.

-Clever.

-But damn, it's clever.

Also, as you rightly said, they do attack on land,

that's to say they come precariously close to beaching themselves.

They're always in disguise then, aren't they,

-they wear hats and scarves.

-They look like lifeguards.

-Seal moustaches.

-Two of them standing on each other's shoulders

-with a long coat.

-We can see them doing it actually,

we've got a little bit of footage of the attack of the orca

on the poor old...

The seals think, "We're safe now..." Oh, no.

Ooh.

But, oh...

Well, it's in there somewhere. Oh, there we go.

You should voice-over more wildlife documentaries.

That one got away.

Bizarrely enough, I did voice-over one called Ocean Giants,

which was about dolphins and whales, yeah, precisely.

But fortunately it wasn't quite such a vague script.

I did a show for the BBC called Walk On The Wild Side.

Oh, yes, I did one of those, yeah.

And you did, you played a panda, I think, that was over-eating

or something. And we also had Sir Tom Jones do one.

And everyone, like yourself, we just sent them the script

and you know, it takes two minutes just to record it

and send it back in. And Tom Jones,

we just got a phone call one day in the studio,

and he said, "I've been, I've been sent this script

"saying you want me to play a lion." I was like, "Yeah, that's right."

He went, "I don't really like lions." And I was like, "What?"

Like...

and I said, "Well, we're recording tomorrow,

"is there any animal you'd prefer?"

He went, "I'm a big fan of the penguin."

I had, like, 24 hours to write a penguin sketch.

Did it sing, the penguin? Did you get it to sing?

-No, it was just, it was a penguin...

-It did when he'd finished with it.

Well, there you are. Killer whales, they're not whales,

but they are killers.

Now, how can a bottle of whisky save your life?

Aah.

Well, in a fight, I'm assuming.

Is it the bottle or the contents?

It's the contents, ingestion of whisky.

Well, if you suffer trauma and you've got ethanol

in your system, presumably you're going to be better off. Presumably...

Shut up, how did you know that?!

Because I've had a lot of trauma while drunk.

You are absolutely right.

There is a documented case where it was literally a bottle of whisky.

There was a New Zealand chef called Duthie,

who went on a vodka binge, and he went blind.

He was literally blind drunk.

They think it was because he was on diabetic medication,

and that this basically turned it all into formaldehyde,

which can cause blindness, as well as preserving you very nicely.

And the usual thing is to put someone on an ethanol drip.

They didn't have any medical ethanol in this particular hospital,

but they did have an offy, so they went and got a bottle

of Johnnie Walker Black Label, and they put him on a drip,

and five days later, he woke up with sight fully restored.

-Wow!

-Wow.

-On a whisky drip.

-It was a whisky drip, literally a bottle of whisky.

-Sounds like a good name for a pub, doesn't it?

-It does, actually.

-The Whisky Drip.

-I think it's a fact,

if you have an accident or a serious injury and you're drunk at the time,

you're probably more likely to recover than if you are...

Shut up again!

..sober. Oh, sorry.

Did you sneak into my dressing rooms and look at my cards?

No, no, no! I mean, I know this, I wrote a play,

which was a lot about soldiers and how they deal with things.

And some of the soldiers who were intoxicated at the time

of the battle did better, they recovered better.

Well, you're absolutely right. Did you know this?

TREVOR: I always knew about the rag doll effect,

if you have the alcohol and then if you fall or if you're in a

car accident, because you don't brace,

it's the same as a baby, if you drop babies, they're fine, they just...

So if you're drunk, that's why you recover quicker,

because you just don't brace and then it just goes through you.

Do you think they probably end up in more situations

where you're likely to get hurt, so...?

That is true, because...

You get other injuries, you get other DRIs, don't you,

-Drink Related Injuries.

-DRIs, I like the fact you know that.

-That's a bit disturbing.

-Yeah, well, a friend I know...

All right, we've got Mr Davies presenting with a DRI again.

I had a friend who had a great DRI where he managed to get home,

against all odds, and then fell asleep against a radiator.

Oh!

-Quite a nasty burn on his arm, he had.

-Yeah.

There was like a practical joke, like kids did,

when I was growing up, which was to fill a ball, a football,

up with cement, for example, you know, from somebody's garden...

-Oh, wow!

-You fill a football and leave it outside a pub.

And drunk men cannot resist.

Oh, Jesus!

They just can't resist a football.

"I've got this one, Dave!"

Oh, argh!

-That is the...

-It's a hell of a practical joke, but it's...

-Especially if you put a goalpost on the wall.

-Yeah.

But this is extraordinary, all I have to do is fill in the dots here.

It was Lee Friedman of the University of Illinois in Chicago

who spent 14 years examining this effect.

He analysed the blood alcohol of 190,000 trauma patients.

He found that with the exception of burns,

death rates from all types of traumatic injury fell as

blood alcohol levels rose, which is extraordinary, isn't it.

190,000 seems like an enormous number of...

It's a big cohort, as they would say, isn't it, exactly,

which makes it quite a respected study.

Amongst the extremely drunk, mortality rates were cut by

nearly 50%. Gunshot and stab victims, however,

showed the greatest benefit, which wouldn't be the ragdoll effect,

-I don't suppose.

-There's some kind of anaesthetic element to it, really.

There is the anaesthetic element, which I suppose makes you behave

less dramatically in a way that increases blood flow.

Yeah... "Oh! I'm bleeding!"

-You say, "Oh, look at that."

-"Oh, no! Oh, no!

"Awww.

"Must've been shot!

"Ha-ha-ha-ha!

"Oh, I'd better just have a short.

"And then I think I'll go to hospital,

"it's going to be so busy on a weekend."

"One more Jager Bomb couldn't do any harm, could it?"

"Well, this isn't going to wait..."

Yeah, exactly.

"Come on, let's go to hospital.

"They've got a bar, they'll have a bar there."

"Hobs, hobsital."

"I'm fine. I've been shot, but I'm fine."

Amongst drivers, however, you were two-to-four times more likely to die

in a car crash, or of a car crash, as it were, involved in a car crash.

But I think you've covered everything quite brilliantly.

There's the ragdoll effect

and there seems to be an improvement in recovery from trauma.

So if you think you're going to get shot or stabbed, get drunk first.

Now, you use a silver bullet for...?

-Vampires.

-You could try it on a vampire,

I don't think it would do any good. Got to be a werewolf.

Or silver does, or silver...

-Oh, is silver good for vampires?

-Silver's good for vampires.

-Are these real now?

-You're very knowledgeable about this.

The reality of vampires.

Because part of the myth was that the silver came from the coins

-that Judas got, you remember.

-Yes, 30 pieces.

The first vampire came from Judas when he was,

when he hung himself after Jesus...

SANDI: Did he turn into a vampire?

TREVOR: Well, they say that Judas became the first vampire,

and then the silver burns them

-because that's what they gave Judas to betray.

-The silver pieces.

He got the silver pieces. So that's why it's silver for all of them,

but you want a bullet for a wolf because they're fast.

Vampires, just, the gun is useless, so...

Well, that's covered the vampire side of the question

quite perfectly. But the square bullet, on the other hand,

these don't need to be silver.

Against who would...

I think this is... I think this is a very old gun

and I think it's something politically incorrect.

-Is that right?

-Again, yeah. You've been...

I'm going to test my cards for your DNA and fingerprints.

No, it's the... I'm slightly distracted

cos that so looks like a woman I went out with, but...

Every morning I'd say the word orthodontist.

I don't think any man would ask for oral sex

from that particular werewolf, to be perfectly honest.

I think that would be a risk.

You're right, it was designed in the early part of the 18th century,

-in fact in 1718.

-I think it was to kill Turks.

-Turks.

Turks, but most specifically Muslims, I think.

The square bullet was to show them how great Christianity was.

I think that was the kind of plan behind the square bullet.

There was a specific gun...

It was called the Puckle Gun.

-Puckle Gun, James Puckle.

-James Puckle, invented it in 1718,

and his idea was that you used the round bullets for Christians,

and the square bullets were for the Ottoman Turks.

Quite a good idea, the square bullet,

because if you drop one, it won't roll away.

There is, however, a bad side to it.

You can't rifle a square bullet,

and it's the rifling that gives it accuracy through the air.

So are they a bit rubbish, the square bullets?

It makes it spin and go fast. It would just go wobble, wobble,

wobble, wobble, wouldn't hit anybody.

So if you were a Turk or a Muslim,

you'd be encouraging the square bullet.

"I think you should definitely use the square ones on us."

It was supposed to show the benefits of Christianity,

in fact it showed, it inferred, the deficiency of James Puckle's ideas

of aerodynamics and rifling.

You might hit a Christian!

You might accidentally hit a Christian.

It's not really right to call it the first machine gun,

but it was three times faster to load and fire

than the current musket.

It was nine rounds a minute, which wasn't bad for 1718.

It's interesting, cos I guess technically the first bulletproof

vests were created by the Zulus, when they were fighting the British.

And Shaka discovered that if you dip your leather shield in water

before you go into battle, then the pellets couldn't penetrate.

-Oh, is it really, was that...?

-Yeah, yeah, that's...

-It hardened the leather that much.

-Yeah, and that's how the Zulus

could kill so many. Because what will happen is,

they only needed one bullet and then they would advance so quickly

that then they would kill five or six British people

before they could reload.

Do you have Zulu blood in you?

I do, I guess, yes, because (CLICKS TONGUE) Xhosa people are of the Zulus.

-Oh, you're Xhosa, oh, do that again, I love that.

-Yes, I'm half Xhosa.

-Oh, do it again.

-Xhosa. Xhosa.

-I can't do that.

It's given as an exclamation mark, isn't it?

No, that's the X, so there's three clicks,

there's the X, which is the click-click,

and then there's the Q,

and then there's the C, which is...

So those are the three different...

-Oh, it's just... I love that.

-So, like, that's the...

-You've seduced me.

-Oh, thank you.

Not that you wanted to, I'm sure.

Who was that wonderful... Was it Miriam Makeba who sang...

TREVOR: Yes, The Click Song. It goes...

HE SINGS THE CLICK SONG

-That's the song.

-Oooooh!

Yeah, so the Xhosas were technically...

they were basically pacifists of the Zulus, you know,

-they were chased out, they separated from the tribe.

-Right.

So they weren't as... Like, the Zulus were really our pride...

-The Zulus were very martial.

-In terms of military,

-they are our pride and joy, they are...

-With the assegais...

Yeah. Everything they did was revolutionary, just like the first...

They were the first ones with the shortened spear,

so Shaka invented a spear that was quicker to stab with

and not as cumbersome to lug around.

-Right, like a sort of javelin...

-Yes, yes, yes.

Cos the spear hadn't really been changed over all those years,

and he... So he changed that, he changed everything.

-He was one of the best military, you know...

-Yeah.

You guys, if it wasn't for the guns, you guys wouldn't be here.

I know, we wouldn't have had a chance.

Just do that bit of singing again.

-With the...?

-Just do that bit of singing again.

SINGS THE CLICK SONG

That's the song.

You don't know me well, Trevor, but I'm on the turn, I'm telling you.

You've only got Jason and Alan left to seduce, Trevor, I have to say.

I think he's a cracking fella.

Well, there you go, that's your man Puckle and again, well done, Sandi.

The knowledge, just amazing.

Now, describe the curriculum at the British Hate Training Academy.

-Oh, dear.

-Watching Jeremy Kyle all day and all night.

-Yeah, that would be...

-That would be good hate training.

It would, actually, wouldn't it.

I would imagine that maybe it's very difficult to get soldiers

-to hate anybody.

-Kill, yeah.

I would imagine maybe there was some scheme to try and get them...

In the Second World War, we had hate schools.

Has there ever been a more pointless padlock in the world?

"You're not getting my shirts!

"Back orf!"

It's a pretty astonishing look, isn't it.

But, no, Sandi, you're right.

There were hate schools.

"These medals are sticking into my chest! Agh!

"Agh, God!

"All of them are pinning me in the chest!

"My hat is too small!

"Get me a new hat!"

What do you suppose the chances are of twins getting the same number

of medals?

It's a good point.

Do you know, I've gone deaf in my left ear now.

Very sorry.

Back to the serious and terrible fact, is that in order

supposedly to encourage British troops of the Second World War,

we put them into rooms and showed them appalling atrocities.

Rotting corpses, starving people.

They were then taken to slaughter houses, where they watched sheep

being killed and they were smeared with their blood, and made to...

This was common, though, wasn't it? Because didn't they say to...

the Viet Cong that the US Marines ate babies, that kind of...

Oh, it was certainly true that this black propaganda was given out,

you know, in the First World War the Germans raped nuns and all that.

But this was actually being made to witness really awful things,

in order to get your blood up, was the idea.

But when the papers and the public found out,

there was an absolute uproar.

No less a figure than the Bishop of St Albans said,

"The attempt to inculcate hatred in the fighting forces

"and civilians is doing the devil's work."

And General Sir Bernard Paget,

who was Commander in Chief of the home forces, he agreed.

He said that hate was foreign to British temperament.

"And we hate it."

But it is a, it is a...

He didn't say that bit.

It is a very serious issue.

I think it was after the Second World War,

they estimated only between 15 and 20% of anybody

-in any armed force had ever fired their gun.

-Yeah.

-Because mostly people don't want to.

-That's right.

And if they do fire their gun, they tend to try and miss.

TREVOR: They very famously said the most gentlemanly fighters

in the wars were the air forces,

because they almost had an unspoken rule that they wouldn't shoot a plane

that's already going down.

And you wouldn't shoot a guy on a parachute either, you would...

-He's down, he's out, so you wouldn't...

-No, never do that.

And if it was a good fight, and you respected them

and they were going down, they would do a little wing tip salute

as they flew away from them, which is just touching.

Yeah, that would be like, "Argh... Oh, that's nice.

"Argh!

"Oh, fair enough, right."

Anyway, which is most dangerous - a thousand bananas,

half a litre of wine,

1.4 cigarettes or two days in New York?

You could fall on quite a lot of those banana peels.

-Slip, yes, you could. You could.

-Or spiders inside.

Yes, you could have a tarantula on the inside, yeah, yeah.

But they're all quite dangerous, I suppose.

In fact, we know that they're all equally dangerous.

-Oh.

-And how can we know that?

Is there a scale of dangerousnessnessness?

TREVOR: There's the banana-cigarette-New York scale

-that they generally use.

-Exactly. That's the scale.

Is it about toxins, that you absorb or take in?

Well, it's a Professor from Stanford called Ronald Howard,

as long as it's not the guy who was in Happy Days,

and directed Apollo 13.

It was in 1968 he developed the micromort.

And a micromort is a one in a million chance of death.

So the higher the risk, the more micromorts, obviously,

so if a million outings on a hang-glider result in eight deaths,

then there's a fatal risk of eight micromorts attached to hang-gliding.

-So how many micromorts in a banana?

-Well, I'll tell you.

If you take the normal background risk in the UK,

it's actually 41.6 micromorts.

So the chances of sudden death in Britain

from leading a normal life are about four in 100,000.

What, four people die unexpectedly from eating a banana?

No, no, just that's background. This is just background.

We've not come to the bananas yet.

Oh, sorry, I'm overexcited.

Yeah.

-Your ordinary risk...

-Yes.

..of dying suddenly is four in 100,000.

-I've got it now.

-Right.

But activities that raise the level of risk...

-Have you died suddenly?

-I died suddenly.

There you are. Activities that raise the level of risk

from 41.6 micromorts, which is the average risk we all share,

by one micromort alone, are smoking 1.4 cigarettes yourself,

living for two months with someone else who smokes.

Half a litre of wine.

Not doing a wee when you really need one.

-1,000 bananas is actually because of their radioactivity.

-What?

-They do contain a lot of potassium.

-Ah, yes.

-But they are faintly radioactive.

-Wow.

Very faintly. 40 tablespoons of peanut butter...

So, I'm still on the bananas, you have to...

You have to eat a thousand bananas?

If you ate a thousand bananas, not necessarily all at once,

-because that would kill you straight away.

-Yes.

Obviously, you would burst.

-The point is, for every thousand bananas you eat...

-Yes.

..your chances of sudden death increase by one micromort,

-which is...

-What is the matter with scientists?!

Who? Who is going to eat a thousand bananas?

Why would you even work this out?!

Over your lifetime. I've eaten a thousand bananas.

-So should you be counting how many bananas you've had?

-No.

It's only one micromort, it's a one-in-a-million chance.

But how does the thousandth banana kill you?

Because of the level of radioactivity.

Oh, God!

For every thousand you eat, you're...

You've already got 41.6 micromorts, which is...

I feel unwell.

I'll give you a book to read afterwards and it'll explain it.

-Thank you, darling.

-Cos it takes too long.

But go to New York, have a cigarette with a glass of wine

and a banana split.

And say, "Fuck you, world!"

All of these increase your... They're such tiny margins, that's all.

"I'm going down."

My headmistress at boarding school was always in a terrible panic

-about fruit.

-Fruit?

Fruit, yes. She found that...

She spent hours teaching us how to eat a banana correctly,

because of the manners, and I remember her saying...

Which mustn't make the cheeks bulge, no...

And you don't, you don't do this either.

So she didn't like... She taught you how to eat a banana.

She was very worried, and she'd spent a long time on bananas, and I said,

"Well, how do you eat an orange?,"

and she looked over the top of her glasses and said,

"No young woman should ever embark upon an orange."

Wise words.

Anyway. Yes, micromorts.

Now, here are some killers, but what do they prey on?

I'll perhaps give you a clue, if you don't know its name.

-Seafood, that's a seal.

-It's a seal.

-It is, it's called the crabeater seal.

-It eats fish.

So the clue...

CROW CAWS

Yes?

-Crab.

-Oh! Hey!

KLAXON SOUNDS

-Surely you'd know better.

-Just getting it out of the way...

..just so we could all move on and find out what the real answer is.

If we show you its teeth more close-up,

you might get a sense of it.

It's pretty...

Ooh.

That's weird, why would you have teeth like that?

To be on a show like this?

It's to sieve. It's like a baleen plate in a whale.

It sieves out all the bigger things, so it actually just has,

like a whale...?

-Krill.

-Krill.

Yeah. It just eats krill. And our next contender is...

Oh, I say.

Yes. That's called the Bagheera kiplingi spider.

Does that ring a bell?

TREVOR: They kill tigers, don't they.

-Well, bagha is the Hindi for tiger, and Bagheera is?

-The Jungle Book.

-Is in the Jungle Book, and is a panther.

-Is it the panther?

Panther, and hence the Kiplingi,

so for some reason it's named after Rudyard Kipling.

Do you not think the spider looks like he's trying to be cute

-for the photograph?

-He does, he's posing.

-"Hi."

"Hiya, you all right?"

-Spiders are known to be feeders on what?

-Flies.

Flies, they're known to be carnivorous.

But this is the only vegetarian spider on earth.

-Well, no wonder he's cute.

-Yeah. Exactly.

They actually go out of their way to avoid rather nasty-looking ants

and hide round corners, until they can get to their staple food,

which is the buds of acacia trees. The acacia is very thorny.

This is the laughing stock of the spider community.

Yeah, they are, they're probably...

"Call yourself a spider? You're a disgrace."

Yes. They occasionally, to be fair, will eat meat.

It's a bit like, I don't know, the spectacled bear...

-If they've had a drink.

-..will be known to eat, you know, ants.

-He'll have a kebab on the way home.

-Yes.

They can't resist it.

Oh! Let's have a kebab.

And we come finally to this chap.

-Piranha.

-It looks like a piranha, it's a distant relative,

though it lives in a completely different part of the world,

it lives in Papua New Guinea, and is known as a pacu fish,

but has a nickname, which might give you a hint.

The teeth it has are designed to deal with its main food source,

which are seeds and nuts which fall down from trees above.

Which quite a lot of fish do.

But, if you happen to be swimming naked,

as many a Papua New Guinean might...

-Uh-oh.

-..it fully deserves its nickname, the ball-cutter fish.

Ow!

There are at least two recorded examples of people

dying from castration from these.

Oh, does that count, does that count as a background mort?

Yes, that's definitely a micromort.

-Presumably you can tell as the screams get higher and higher.

-Yes.

Until they're beyond the range of human hearing.

-So they're pretty nasty.

-Wow.

But, what's the worst thing a swan can do to you?

They can famously break a child's arm.

Aaah!

KLAXON SOUNDS

No, there is no recorded example ever.

They have hollow bones, and the chances are they would break

their own wings if they attempted to swipe hard on the human bone.

Oh, I've been cautious of them ever since primary school.

Well, they're aggressive, they'll chase after you.

And I dare say, if anyone rings in and says, "I know someone who

"claims their arm was broken," the chances are almost certain...

-The school liar.

-That, well, not if they were the school liar,

-or they might well have...

-If you're running away and fell.

-They might well have fallen over.

-Yeah.

-Exactly.

They are very aggressive. They can't break your arm, so there.

And now it's time for one of my Knick-Knacks.

Crikey, how did that get there?!

I'm now, I'm going to demonstrate...

-What a marvellous outing for the word "crikey".

-Yes.

I'm going to demonstrate to you how a chain reaction takes place.

Imagine these are little atoms, and what I have

is a series of mouse trap... Ow!

Mouse traps. Used for obviously killing mice!

And, fortunately, no mice will be harmed in this experiment.

All you will see is the spectacular sight of random and explosive

chain reaction caused by one atom touching another,

which are all in...

"Ball number 16, the eighth appearance this year."

-So are you ready?

-Yes.

Here we go.

All that for three seconds.

It's a lot of effort for the money.

On that nuclear bombshell, we reach the final curtain.

It's time for the scores. And how fascinating they are.

Way out in front, as you might imagine,

with her astonishing knowledge is Sandi Toksvig on 14 points!

Points-wise, one of the greatest debuts of all time,

Trevor Noah has plus nine!

And in third place, with minus six, Jason Manford.

I'll take that. I'll take that.

Colour me astonished, in last place,

but with a deeply encouraging minus 28, Alan Davies!

Thank you.

And it only remains for me to thank Trevor, Jason, Sandi and Alan,

good night.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd