Making a Meal of It QI

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

Tonight were making a meal of it with a muster of master chefs.

On tonight's mouthwatering menu, mincing his words, Phill Jupitus.

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Mixing her metaphors, Cariad Lloyd.

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Marinating in his own juices, Dermot O'Leary.

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And with a soggy bottom, Alan Davies.

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So let's hear their buzzers. Cariad goes...

# Food, glorious food. #

Phill goes...

# Hot sausage and mustard. #

Dermot goes...

# While we're in the mood

# Cold jelly and custard. #

And Alan goes.

LOUD BELCH

So, what's missing from this menu?

Three tortoises.

Can you imagine the anal retentives looking at that picture at home?

I just want to say "hare."

KLAXON

Welcome to our world, Cariad.

The tortoises and the hare, not, sadly.

-69 tortoises.

-69 tortoises,

and the bitch ain't one.

-That's what we were thinking of.

-Is that a song?

I believe it's popular in the hit parade right now.

You've had that on Radio 2, I'm sure.

What do we know about tortoises?

They are old.

There is one that just died that was around in George III's time.

-There was.

-How would you know if it was dead?

It belonged to Clive of India. Sorry?

You'd have to wait a few months to be sure it's dead.

Don't bury it, for God's sake.

Why do you think they have such enormous shells?

They've got big TVs.

Lot of stuff.

That's the thing about getting old, you look around and you think,

my God, look how much shit I've got.

If you're an agoraphobic tortoise.

-Terrifying.

-It's better than being a claustrophobic tortoise.

To return to our question, these tortoises

are evidence of the first ever human feast.

The first-ever menu.

Rather than just eating. A real feast.

There were 71 tortoises consumed at this feast,

it would seem from archaeological evidence.

So Alan said there were three tortoises missing from that list.

In fact, there were two missing, because it should have been 71

instead of 69, so you're going to have to have a point for that.

Why not?

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I'm plus one so I'm not going to speak again.

There was a female shaman's body discovered next to all

these shells and it seems there was a giant feast.

It was 12,000 years ago.

Seems just unfair, really.

You're basically born with a wok on your back.

The original microwave meal.

The tortoise.

Just pierce the top.

GROANS

It was 12,000 years ago, guys! I wasn't there!

Too soon!

If it's anything like a micro meal, you stab it lots of times.

Never sure how many they mean when they say.

Have you got a set number you do?

The idea of you at the microwave!

I had to do TV dramas where you...

"I was playing a rough type!"

My microwave annoys me, I used to have one that just went ping,

that was fine. Ping - it's finished. Come and get it, don't get it,

whatever, we're just letting you know.

Now we've got one that goes, beep, beep, beep, beep...

As your food slowly reverses out of the kitchen.

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I'm at the other end going, "I know! In a minute!

"Sorry, the microwave is pissing me off."

If we leave the fridge open, it goes, beep, beep, beep, beep!

The washing machine is going, "I'm finished! Beep, beep, beep!"

Oh, Jesus. It must be like living with Kraftwerk.

Get them all synced up right.

These weren't microwaved, were they, Stephen?

These were not microwaved.

They were roasted in their shells.

-Alive, probably?

-Yeah. Heroes in a half shell. Very sad.

Very sad.

Leonardo, Donatello...

Is that Splinter at the bottom?

So why wouldn't you want to share a meal with these men?

They'd kill you.

Looks like it. As you can see they've got napkins.

That doesn't mean they won't kill you!

Share a meal with this lot, bad idea.

-Cannibals?

-Lethal foods.

They eat people!

They were paid in meals,

three meals a day was their reward for eating...poison,

or at least eating additives that could be considered dangerous.

It was the first move on the part of the US Department of Agriculture

to codify the possibility of additives being something

that you could regulate, so they got these volunteers

who swiftly gained the nickname "The Poison Club."

They ate some extraordinary things.

October 1902 to July 1903, they experimented with eating borax.

Their Christmas menu was applesauce, borax, soup, borax,

turkey, borax, borax, carrots, green beans,

sweet potatoes, white potatoes, turnips, borax,

chipped beef, cream gravy, cranberry sauce, celery, pickles,

rice pudding, milk, bread and butter, tea, coffee, little borax."

They were well fed.

"I don't like borax!"

"You're having it! I've told you, it's Christmas,

"everyone's having borax! Your dad likes it."

"And now Andy Williams with A Very Borax Christmas."

Can you name something that we use borax for today?

Is it an element?

-Cleaning.

-Washing powder.

Cleaning, as a detergent, but it's used as a fire retardant

and an antifungal compound.

Quite useful to have in your system then, really?

Resistant to poison and flames.

That's true!

No record of any of them actually dying but they were weighed

and their blood pressure was taken and their pulse and everything else.

Until 1912 when they introduced LD50 testing

and then it all went tits up.

And in 1906, Congress passed a couple of acts,

the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food And Drug Act,

which was to help with food, for the first time, that was the point.

There you are, never accept a dinner invitation from The Poison Squad.

Who likes to feast on a breakfast menu of horse manure,

rancid pickled mudfish, Thai Boy shrimp and Big Cock shrimp paste?

Vietnamese? This is items...

I got sent some Big Cock paste.

An Amazon order went terribly wrong in your house.

It exists, Big Cock shrimp paste and Thai Boy shrimp paste, both exist.

I'm married to a Norwegian,

and they eat a dish all over Norway called lutefisk,

which is a jellified fish, and it's cod, really,

but they bury it and dry it out,

and then they served this for me, my in-laws.

Those bastards!

They saw you coming, mate! They saw you coming.

My mother-in-law made me a fish pie, it was delicious.

So I ate this thing and I did what we always do

when you don't like something and you're round someone's house.

"OH, GOD!"

"WHAT IS THIS?!"

I just ate it really quickly,

at which point my mother-in-law went,

"This is fantastic, you must have some more."

And I finished and I thought, I've got to be honest with them,

and I said," I'm really sorry but I really don't like it."

They went, "We hate it, we're only serving it because you're here."

That's Norwegian...

It may be the case that that's what this particular feaster

on these foods also thinks,

but it seems unlikely because it's not human.

I was going to say, is it an animal?

-It is a living creature. Very beautiful.

-Flamingo.

Not a flamingo, it's one you'd find in Britain

and in fact it's in Britain that it's offered this food.

Regularly, once a year as a sort of tribute to its beauty.

Prince Philip.

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Has it got four legs?

Six. Six legs.

Is it an ant?

It's not an ant but it is definitely an insect.

-Is it a bee?

-No, but it's a flying insect.

Is it a fly?

It has the word "fly" in its family name.

-Dragonfly.

-A butterfly.

A species of butterfly.

A very beautiful butterfly.

It's a Purple Emperor.

A cock-hungry Purple Emperor.

-Yes.

-"Settled on my bell-end."

-Please!

-"At four o'clock in the morning."

"I was out in the garden the other day and I was admiring a cock-hungry Purple Emperor

"on my red-hot poker."

"There was paste everywhere."

"The poor bugger couldn't take off."

Now, calm down.

Anyway, they live in the trees high up,

so how do they know they have a taste for all this?

Well, they've been observed midsummer coming down from their usual

feeding areas high in the trees and going for cowpats

and that sort of thing, and other rotting and horrible things,

and so - because they are so admired and particularly in Northamptonshire,

a little picnic is spread out for them in midsummer

including rancid pickled mudfish, fox guts, stinking Big Cock shrimp paste,

and Thai Boy shrimp paste, and they seem to like this,

possibly because of its sodium content.

No-one is quite sure but it's a weird thing

if you find yourself midsummer in Northamptonshire, follow the smell.

Lots of those beautiful animals.

-In a forest, they lay this out, did you say?

-In a clearing.

You could get into real trouble

if you go looking for a dodgy smell in a forest.

If you go looking for the smell of sodium and shrimp paste,

you might walk into something other than a butterfly celebration.

Especially in Northamptonshire.

What are you implying, especially in Northamptonshire?

Just suggesting.

That they indulge in butterfly dogging, is that what you're saying?

Maybe.

Anyway, a beautiful animal, the Purple Emperor butterfly.

Likes to start its today with rancid pickled mudfish,

Thai Boy shrimp paste and Big Cock shrimp paste.

Mmm.

What are you, 12?

When will the phrase "Big Cock shrimp paste" not be funny?

Never.

All right, name two things you can get from a kangaroo's nipple.

-I bet they don't lactate.

-Oh, they do.

-Is it a trick?

They do lactate and that's what's so interesting.

Castlemaine XXXX out of one, Foster's out of the other.

They have little babies that are born almost foetuses.

Like little maggots, they're tiny little wriggly things, called joeys.

And then they have to crawl to the pouch.

And the nipples are in the pouch.

But there might be a much older brother or sister in there.

They can do something with their eggs, can't they?

If they're nursing one joey, they can hold off the egg...

Quite the reverse, they can have two joeys who are

completely different ages and have different needs.

-Yeah.

-That's the thing. There they are.

The nipples know whether it is a young joey who needs

a kind of semi-skimmed milk,

which is not so very rich and strong and thick, and there's the older joey

at another nipple, or even the same nipple later on,

and it will know that it's an older joey and give it a much thicker...

And that's a rather magical trick.

It's because of the power of the suction. The young ones don't suck so hard,

whereas when they really have a go, which the older ones do, they get...

How do the scientists find these things out?

What are they doing?

-AUSSIE ACCENT:

-"I'm just popping off down to the kangaroo enclosure for a bit of a suck."

"That's rich, that's definitely rich."

"I'm going to suck quite powerfully."

"I'm taking my younger brother. My younger brother is going to suck a little bit less."

If you saw a kangaroo with a tiny, tiny joey and a big joey

both still suckling,

you would wonder if they needed the same sort of proteinous drink.

It wouldn't have crossed my mind, Stephen, to be honest.

I saw one once and they're quite fun.

There was a little joey and the tourists came round

in this wildlife park, and it got a little bit spooked

so it bounded across to its mother and just leapt in, headfirst.

They do that.

The mother went "Oof," like this,

and then it was stuck in the sack.

And you see the legs...

She was going, "Oh, for God's sake!" Then his head came out.

You think the legs are going to burst through.

How are they holding that?

A bin liner couldn't hold them.

Stronger than a bin liner.

That's the miracle of kangaroo suckling.

I'm sorry, this is the only show where I hear sentences like that.

"That's the miracle of kangaroo suckling. Next."

I'm going to give you another little teaser.

When human mothers give suck to their infants,

they are feeding two species.

Right?

-The baby is one of them.

-Yes. One is a human child.

-Bacteria?

-Very specifically, it is a bacteria,

you may say it's feeding the baby and then of course the bacteria,

but this is not feeding the baby, it is only feeding the bacteria.

In human breast milk, there are oligosaccharides

and these are indigestible to human babies,

but they are adored by the bacteria in the baby's tummy,

so they bypass the baby's system to go to the stomach to feed the healthy bacteria.

-That's great.

-Isn't that pleasing?

-It's rather nice.

-Mothers, always giving.

Always. "Who else needs feeding? The bacteria, fine! I'll do it!"

Perfect parasite.

"Why didn't you tell me he was coming for dinner?"

Who would like to see some milky magic because I want to show you...

-Stranger danger!

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I wish I hadn't put it like that.

If a man says this to you in a park, say no.

"Would you like to see my milky magic?"

You know what I meant.

"Would you like to see my milky magic?"

OK, I've got some...

lovely milky things.

Stop saying it!

Well, now, because here we are.

This is just the thing about milk, there's never enough,

you always want more.

This is what happens when you get to the clearing in Northamptonshire.

Bear with me.

Here we have some milk, what I'd like to do is just transfer it

along the way, from smaller to larger glasses, as you can see.

This will fill it about halfway up, maybe, just checking the size.

-Well, that fills it up completely.

-That's weird.

That's all right, that's good,

because we've got more than we started off with.

Fast forward, fast forward.

-No!

-Got to have that, haven't you?

That makes sense.

And then see if we can get even more, because what we're doing

is earning ourselves lots and lots of milk.

It's got to be good, surely. There we are.

Can you do this with wine?

Oh, no! You're Jesus!

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It's quite pleasing, isn't it?

"That's how we get the European milk mountain."

Somehow you can find much out of little

and that's maybe a lesson in life.

-Redefines the second coming anyway.

-Exactly.

-Oh, what?

-Oh, no.

"And then Stephen took a can of tuna

"and lo, he did share it out amongst the audience."

And that's how much we've now got, out of nowhere.

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There we are.

-From milk to meat...

-Whoa, whoa, whoa,

aren't you going to tell us how you did it?

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Oh, Alan, you know well enough the milky magician never tells.

Disappointing.

For a meaty question,

why did five Royalist men from Milton fail to eat their own buttocks?

-They were trying to?

-Yes. That's the weird thing.

That's what that man has just suggested in the corner.

"Guys, look. I think we should eat our own buttocks."

And everyone's "No."

That's what happened in a pub.

-Too painful for them?

-Was it a dare, like a bet?

How did I describe...?

See how much they love the king?

Yes, I described them as Royalists

so that must mean they came from the 17th century, civil war time.

Just to stick it to Cromwell. "Up yours, Cromwell."

They were Cavaliers. They wanted to toast the king's health.

And they wanted to show that they were more loyal than

just about anyone else, and to hell with beer, to hell with wine,

we're going to toast him in our own blood,

and the best way to get a bit of blood is to prick your thumb,

but no. Slice off their buttocks.

But why the bum? How does the bum show you're loyal?

The biggest muscle, they thought they'd have some to spare.

The Royal Fat-Arse Regiment, I don't know.

They probably thought that it wouldn't hurt too much

but in fact what happens is they sliced off a bit of butt cheek

and it bled profusely. It was shocking.

"Men, to the delicatessen. On to the slicer with you!"

"To the King! Wow!"

As long as they didn't have any salami.

I think the idea was they sat on a gridiron

and a bit of buttock poked out and they sliced off...

They must have been so pissed when they came up with it.

You'd only even come up with it if you were pissed.

They did that, the blood poured out and everyone got in a panic.

Their wives heard about it and were furious.

"What's he done?"

"I'm feeding two species, I haven't got time to pick him up!"

There was so much loss of blood, the whole thing was a disaster.

-We know about this...

-You think they still talk about it,

like, "Oh, that day. It was such a bad idea.

-"From start to finish."

-Cut to the pub the next day,

"the special today, pork medallions."

During the Civil War,

five men from Milton got rather cavalier with their own buttocks.

Onto the smorgasbord of smugness that we call General Ignorance.

Fingers on buzzers, if you please.

I'm going to say this quite fast so listen carefully.

How much sugar in a sugar-free Tic Tac?

There's no sugar in a sugar-free Tic Tac.

KLAXON

You'd done so well up to this point.

Is it sugar-free doesn't mean there is no sugar, does it?

It does, but within certain limits according to the Food and Drug Administration.

One calorie.

A little bit.

It's pretty much all sugar, but they are so small,

the law says that if it's only half a gram of sugar it doesn't count

as sugar, it doesn't count as anything.

According to their own website, Tic Tac "registered trademark" mints

do contain sugar as listed in the ingredients statement.

However, since the amount of sugar per serving -

one mint is a serving -

is less than half a gram,

FDA labelling requirements permit the nutrition facts to state

that there are zero grams of sugar per serving.

And they wonder why people get killed with hammers.

You're weird.

What kind of bird does the Goliath bird-eating spider consume?

Oh, God! Whoa! That should have had a warning.

Whoa! That is fucking horrible.

It's still there. Still there. Still there.

SHE SCREAMS

There's a still image of one.

-It's not moving any more.

-Eyes on me.

-Eyes on me, eyes on me.

-It's all right, Phill. It's OK.

SHE SCREAMS

That was naughty.

What?!

-What a pathetic reaction.

-I'd be the same if not for all the therapy.

It's not moving, so that's OK.

They are very big and they are called Goliath bird-eating spiders.

It's never eaten a bird in its life?

That one may not have done because it's very rare for them to eat birds.

It just so happens the person who discovered it happened upon

one eating a hummingbird.

That's like in your family when you do something once.

"Cariad always get sick on holiday." You're like, "It was one time!"

Oh, Poland-invading Adolf! "Once, I invade Poland!"

They live in South America and they are a form of tarantula.

They will eat insects

-and very small...

-Oh, God!

Somebody help her!

Somebody help her, it's on her face and she doesn't know!

Despite its name,

the Goliath bird-eating spider usually just eats worms.

-Alan.

-Hello.

Let's bring this to a beautiful conclusion.

-Cariad has been bitten by a snake.

-What's happening to me?!

This is not I'm A Celebrity!

What should you do?

Suck her.

KLAXON

In every sense, no.

You can't afford it, love!

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Even when you've been bitten by a cobra, you're going

-to haggle prices.

-Oh, yeah.

You'd soon drop your prices once you've tried it.

Do you tourniquet it?

KLAXON

Not even a tourniquet.

Guys, I'm dying! I've been bitten by a snake!

The spider's coming!

Stay still so it doesn't go round your blood. Is that in there?

If you're not near a car, but drive her to a hospital.

-Take the snake if you can.

-Exactly, or a photograph of it.

I didn't say selfie!

Sort of implicit in the question that Cariad and I were alone somewhere.

Not on the M4 or something.

I had to take drastic actions, despite her constant demands for money.

Why am I on the M4 with you? What happened to me beforehand?

You're going to Reading! Come on!

The answer is if you do go somewhere where you think there may be

venomous snakes, find out where the nearest hospital is

that has antivenom, because that's really the best thing you can have.

But in Britain it's going to be fine. An adder is not going to kill.

I would still offer to suck you, Cariad.

It's the right thing to do.

If your friend has been bitten by a snake, all you need is car keys.

Any other course of action sucks.

Which brings us to the end of our feast of questions

and so all that's left for me to do is to let you know

how the scores are doing.

They are doing rather wonderfully.

In first place with a magnificent plus four,

wearing plus-fours,

is Phill Jupitus!

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And with a very stunning score of nothing,

wearing nothing - oh, that doesn't work -

zero, Cariad!

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Third-place, Dermot O'Leary with -10!

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And a very respectable, for Alan, -16!

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So it's thank you from Cariad, Phill, Dermot, Alan and me,

and I leave you with this mealtime story

about rissoles.

Man goes into a restaurant and looks at the menu

and says to the waiter, "I'll have some pissoles, please."

And the waiter says, "No, sir, that's an R."

He says, "Oh, I'll have some R-soles then." Thank you.

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