Marriage and Mating QI

This programme contains some strong language

APPLAUSE

Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,

good evening, good evening - and welcome to QI.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate Marriage and Mating.

To help me tie the knot, I've brought along a few mates -

the ministerial Bill Bailey... APPLAUSE

..the matchmaking Greg Davies... APPLAUSE

..the Maid of Honour, Jo Brand... APPLAUSE

Maid of Honour?

..and the Must We Really Invite Him? Alan Davies.

APPLAUSE

So, let's hear your mating calls. Bill goes...

TOAD CROAKS

You'll recognise that, Bill, being an animal man.

Oh, should I? Is that an animal?

-It's an amphibian.

-I thought it was a...

Oh, it's a frog of some kind?

It's a marine toad.

LAUGHTER

And Jo goes...

MOOSE CALL

I do actually go like that.

Well, that was a moose.

And Greg goes...

MONKEY CHATTERS

It's been a few years since I did that.

-That is a spider monkey.

-Of course it is.

-Two animals for the price of one.

-Wonderful.

So, Alan goes...

-MALE ESSEX ACCENT:

-'Hello, darling, you all right?'

LAUGHTER

And that's the mating call of... Where do you come from, Alan, again?

-Essex.

-Yeah. There we are.

And then you have sex, that's how it works.

LAUGHTER

Everybody wins. Fantastic.

But what's the recipe for a disastrous marriage?

MOOSE CALL Oh, Jo?

Dead vicar?

It would be, you're right.

MONKEY CHATTERS Yeah?

Live vicar, lovely couple, escaped Bengali tiger.

Yeah, that would be tricky.

You've painted a word picture, Greg, there.

Let's think first about budget.

The price of the wedding?

The price of the wedding, yeah.

Isn't it about 20 grand now? To get...

Yeah, is that a good thing?

-I mean does that affect the long-term...

-Oh, I see.

So the more you spend

doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have a happier marriage.

It's actually the more you spend, the shorter the marriage.

-Oh.

-Yes.

-Oh.

-Really?

-Isn't that extraordinary?

-It IS extraordinary.

Mine should be over in a couple of weeks.

LAUGHTER

Cost a bloody fortune.

It was a columnist at Emory University, Atlanta, who discovered this.

They found an inverse correlation between money spent

and how long it lasts.

Those who spent less than 1,000 - which is what, £700? -

had divorce rates 53% below average,

while those who spent more than 20,000 -

you were talking about that as a sum -

had divorce rates 46% above average.

What about numbers who attend weddings?

Is that a similar inverse correlation?

The more who come, the shorter the marriage?

-I presume so, because of the cost factor.

-Expense, yeah.

Oddly enough, the reverse is true.

The more people who witness the wedding, the longer it lasts.

So you've got to have a cheap wedding with lots of people.

That seems to be the key.

This is Randy Olson, a PhD student at Michigan State.

He found that couples who marry in front of more than 200 people are

92% less likely to get divorced than those who only have a few witnesses.

-So really you want to get married in Selfridges on Christmas Eve.

-Yes!

Or maybe, if you want to have it cheap and cheerful,

but lots of people, maybe somewhere like McDonald's, you might think.

In Hong Kong.

For 900, you can get 200 guests at a McDonald's.

-McDonald's Happy Marriage.

-It's a Happy Marriage, yes! LAUGHTER

You get a two-hour venue rental,

you get 50 McDonaldland character gifts.

You get two McDonald balloon wedding rings.

Yeah, but how many burgers do you get?

LAUGHTER

Come on, give us that info,

I'm thinking about getting remarried there.

It's a very simple ceremony, isn't it?

You point to the bride, "Do you love it?" "I'm loving it."

-"All right..."

-APPLAUSE

It's all over in five minutes.

Yeah. Put a ring on it.

Yeah, that's right. Oh, onions, lovely, put a ring on it.

Onion rings.

If you love it, put an onion ring on it.

Randy Olson from Michigan State, who discovered that we should be...

I can't get a picture of an erection

-with an onion ring on it out of my head.

-Oh!

LAUGHTER

-I get that.

-How do you get a thought out of your head?

What, like onion ring quoits?

LAUGHTER

I used to do a bit of stand-up about this thing that I found...

-About onion rings?

-That sounds great.

-That sounds brilliant.

What it was, we were doing a secret Santa, right,

and it was a £10 limit.

And I went in... There was quite a good adult shop on the Essex Road,

and for under £10 the only thing they offered was anal hoopla.

LAUGHTER

Anal hoopla consists of a stick,

-which goes, guess where...

-Oh, yeah.

-And three hoops.

-LAUGHTER

That's...that's the actual game.

It's an ice breaker. It's an ice breaker.

-If things have gone a bit flat, you know, in the bedroom area.

-Come on!

-I mean, the tone of this show is SO difficult to get right.

-I'm sorry!

I'm just, I'm recalibrating.

-All this anal hoopla.

-Who would have predicted anal hoopla?

On the front of it, on the front of the packet is a cartoon drawing,

a bit like a saucy postcard.

Two people playing,

as if they couldn't get anyone to actually demo it.

-Oh, my goodness, yeah.

-I dare say it doesn't work.

Where was this for sale? At the ARSE-nal football ground?

Wahey!

BILL SHOUTS GIBBERISH

-Thank you.

-That's Klingon for, "Anal hoopla?"

LAUGHTER

SHOUTS GIBBERISH AGAIN

"No, thanks."

"Let's play Scrabble."

Now, who's still having sex?

-Not me.

-Not me.

-I'll tell you what, these toads.

-TOAD CROAKS

-They're begging for it.

-Begging for it.

-But are they having it?

-Are they having it?

Who's still having sex?

What, long-term? Some animals lock together for ages, don't they?

Are we still... are we in the animal kingdom?

Well, Alan, you're in absolutely the right area,

in as much as you've spotted our phrase,

"Still having sex," as being having sex in a still position.

Ah!

So it is the species that most has to be utterly motionless

when having sex that we could discover.

Is it nuns?

LAUGHTER

It's not nuns.

-It's a moth.

-A moth?

-It's a moth. It's a moth.

-And so...

-There it is.

-Oh, right.

There it is, beautiful, beautiful moth. It's the gold swift moth.

And it's at its most vulnerable when mating.

Because it might move and exhibit ecstasy.

So what it does instead is keep incredibly still,

so that the bat doesn't spot the twitch, any movement.

But it has a wonderful repertoire of positions...

(sexual positions.)

-(Why are we whispering?)

-Unique amongst...

-Because we don't want to disturb it. Look, there they are.

-OK.

Do you know what, you went all David Attenborough then.

As though we were sort of... (just about to watch it.)

-I think Stephen's worried about being attacked by a bat.

-I was.

AS ATTENBOROUGH: "On the left there is the standard, facing position.

"And in the middle, an extraordinary upside down..."

"See the tiny moth cock."

"Mr Moth and Kate Moth..."

LAUGHTER

-Wahey!

-Thank you.

But they are a marvellous species, I think you'll agree.

Yeah, the gold swift moth,

it has to remain completely still when having sex.

Now for something completely different.

Who's still having sex?

The, erm, gold...fish moth? What was it called?

-God, dementia already.

-The swift.

-Gold swift moth.

-The gold swift.

-Oh, the gold swift moth.

JAUNTY TUNE

-Well done. You get points for remembering.

-Oh.

We are so impressed, because it's very rare that anyone on QI

can remember the question that's just been asked.

Oh, I was so close, I said goldfish moth.

You were close. I know.

-Is this a new thing, then? Master Of Memory?

-Yes, that's right.

-Wow!

-Yeah, well done you.

-Will we get some slightly easier ones, like our names?

-Because my memory's terrible.

-Mine's terrible.

-Yeah, really bad.

Such a fabulously middle-aged new feature.

-Isn't it?!

-I love it.

-I know.

Master of Memory!

Well done for remembering something seconds ago.

LAUGHTER

FRAIL VOICE: "Is it Neville Chamberlain?"

-Anyway...

-"One of those rave parties."

LAUGHTER

So what was the question?

-Eh? What?

-Eh? What, what?

-What was the question?

Who's still having sex?

Yes, well done. You remembered that, good.

"I like a bit of kedgeree in the morning..."

LAUGHTER

So it's another question, who's still having sex?

Is it anything to do with that lady in the picture?

-No, the picture, as always, is a complete distraction.

-She's washed her smalls.

-Oh, I suppose that's what it is.

-Old ladies don't wear underwear like that.

That one does.

-I think they're her husband's.

-Do you?

LAUGHTER

So who's still having sex?

-It's a fetish.

-A cult.

-Another animal?

A fetish about having sex with things that are still.

-Oh, oh...

-Oh, I see.

-Statues?

-Yes.

-Oh.

-Absolutely right.

-Is it?

-Really?

-Yeah, yeah.

And what's the Greek myth of someone who fell in love with a statue?

-Oh, thing.

-"Thing," yes.

-Can we do better?

-What's it begin with?

-It begins with, well, the...

-Pygmalion.

The sculpture begins with P, Pygmalion, exactly.

Pygmalion is the sculpture of...

-Yes! Memory, memory!

-ONE PERSON APPLAUDS

Thank you. That one person.

-APPLAUSE

-Well, no, but...

Pygmalion made a statue of Galatea and he fell in love with it.

And in the myth, the gods took pity and breathed life into her.

But it does seem to be a genuine passion people have.

Even in Greek times, the first recorded case, Pliny claimed...

-And we love Pliny, don't we?

-Yeah.

-Oh, yes, yes.

Pliny claimed that Praxiteles' naked statue of Aphrodite of Cnidus,

-which is the first naked female statue of that time.

-Yes.

Apparently she had a permanent stain on her leg from where

a sailor got carried away.

-Wow.

-Ugh.

What you might call seaman stains. AUDIENCE GROANS

Seamen stains, yeah, well, it's true. Quite literally.

But Cleisophus was a man who tried to make love to

a statue in the temple of Samos.

When he found the marble very, very cold, he changed his mind

and laid out a piece of meat on the floor and made love to that instead.

AUDIENCE GROANS

-It's an incredible jump to make, isn't it?

-It is, a species...

"Oh, this statue's not working for me, get me down the butcher's."

It is a bit odd, isn't it? That would make...

But surely a statue is only a kind of less giving blow-up doll,

-really, isn't it? Don't you think?

-This is a really good point, Jo,

because you've absolutely...

APPLAUSE

Yeah, thank you.

Sex psychiatrists have -

sexologists as they like to call themselves - were early on puzzled by

the fact that this particular fetish seemed to die away in the 1950s,

until they'd considered that maybe it was replaced by the love

of blow-up dolls, as they arrived on the market.

So it is, whatever that fetish is, that desire to...

I suppose it's to... so often the case, men's control,

power and all that sort of thing,

that you can control and have power over something that

-can't answer back, that is inanimate.

-Well, I saw...

-Yeah?

I saw a picture in the paper the other day of a very lifelike woman robot.

And I must admit thinking to myself, it's not going to be long.

-It isn't, is it?

-No.

Wait a minute, that was Theresa May.

APPLAUSE

Now, who married Big-Mouthed Margaret?

Denis.

KLAXON BLARES

Oh, thank you. Thank you for that.

Well, how can you know Big-Mouthed Margaret?

Was it Tiny Todger Tony?

LAUGHTER

If I said Muckle-Mou'ed Meg, would that help?

Muckle being big and mou'ed being mouthed, Meg being Margaret.

Is it Rabbie Burns?

Well, no, but, astonishingly, you're in the right area,

in as much as it involves a very - probably after Robbie Burns -

-the most famous Scottish writer.

-Wee Willy Winkie.

The most famous Scottish writer after Robbie Burns.

-Walter Scott?

-Walter Scott, yes, brilliant.

-Bloody hell!

APPLAUSE Really good.

-You're on fire.

-I'm on fire!

You are on fire.

Yeah, and there you can see William Scott and the woman herself,

Muckle-Mou'ed Meg.

And William Scott was Walter Scott's great-great-grandfather,

and he stole some cattle off a man.

And he was sentenced to be hanged, or to marry the man's

incredibly, apparently, ugly daughter, Muckle-Mou'ed Meg.

-I know, it's...

-What sort of a court was this?

And William Scott said, "I think I'll be hanged."

LAUGHTER

But at the very last minute he changed his mind and he married her.

And they had a very happy marriage.

And because of it, they had Walter Scott as a...

Even Robert Browning wrote a poem on it, because they all

worshiped Walter Scott in a way that we don't any more.

Jane Austen venerated him,

particularly the European writers, Balzac and others venerated him.

Yes, William Scott said, "I do," to Muckle-Mouthed Meg.

And it's a good thing he did, or we wouldn't have Sir Walter.

But who advised dissecting a woman before marrying one?

I think my husband said something similar,

when we were a bit pissed one night.

Some great, one of the Victorian...

He was a great, and he was 19th century.

Oddly enough, I've mentioned his name today.

He was a great writer.

-Walter Scott.

-No.

-Balzac.

-Honore de Balzac.

-Pliny.

-Honore de Balzac is the right answer.

-I just said Balzac! I said Balzac!

-No, he did just say that. He did.

-You didn't say the first name!

-All right, calm down. There he is.

There he is, I'd know him anywhere!

Did his fiancee hang herself?

-Bless him.

-Well, his fiancee stayed his fiancee for a very, very long time.

He fell in love with a countess, who said, "You can't marry me

"until my husband dies," because she was already married.

And it took 17 years.

Eventually they got married.

Five months later, Balzac died.

So, he didn't get much use out of her,

if that's the right word.

-I don't think it is.

-No.

He wrote a book in 1829 called The Physiology Of Marriage,

in which he said, "A man ought not to marry without having

"studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman."

-So, I mean a dead woman, he's not...

-Oh, that's such a creepy suggestion.

-It is a bit creepy.

I guess it's so he knows what's... the bits, where they all go.

-And where everything is.

-Really?

No, I hand my mother a cup of tea without knowing

the workings of her hand.

-That's a very good point.

-It's not very romantic, is it?

-No.

-"Darling..."

-Well, I don't want it to be, she's my mother.

LAUGHTER

There's a lot worse coming, which I'm not going to read you,

-because you'll never read Balzac again.

-Ooh, great.

-Oh, please.

He said that "A man should weaken the will

"and strength of a wife by tiring her out under the load of constant work,

"so that she has no energy left to cause trouble."

-He deserved a big spank, didn't he?

-He was an early founder of Ukip.

LAUGHTER

And, very weirdly, he said, "Never allow her to drink water alone.

"If you do, you are lost."

I mean, it's interesting,

within a few sentences he is clearly just a fucking nutter, isn't he?

-Yeah.

-He's having a laugh, surely.

I'd find him hard to forgive if he wasn't such a looker.

LAUGHTER

Do you know the Rodin sculpture of him, which is fantastic?

It's one of the great works of art.

-I've rubbed against it.

-Have you?

-No!

LAUGHTER

Now, what do monkeys spend their money on?

It depends on the monkey, doesn't it?

Your macaque will spend it on cigarettes and drink.

Your mandrill, DIY.

LAUGHTER Clever!

Very good. Man-drill.

-Surely the macaque would spend it on lavatory paper.

-Of course!

Oh, we're going that way, are we? Oh, OK. I see.

Food, I bet this...

Is this going to be some sort of experiment where they got rewarded

with something and they had to take it somewhere to get something else?

-Like sort of a monkey thing?

-Well, they actually were taught...

they were taught the principles of money, monetary exchange.

They were given silver discs

and taught that they could exchange them for food.

These are capuchins.

So called because of their colours, the creamy top...

-They really do look at a camera lens, monkeys.

-Those do, yeah.

-You see those shots of loads of monkeys all staring at a camera lens.

-Yeah.

If you've noticed, there's one of them who's not looking at the camera lens.

LAUGHTER

Quite notably, yes.

Unless that monkey has had a very unfortunate accident with a camera.

Or he's looking for a game of anal hoopla.

Why are capuchins called capuchins?

-Isn't it something to do with...

-Cappuccino.

Cappuccino? Because they're coffee-coloured?

Because they are the same colour as cappuccino,

cream colour at the top, dark at the bottom.

-But that's why...

-Monks.

That's right, it starts with the monks.

APPLAUSE

What is going on today?

Something's gone wrong with me, I tell you, because normally...

Capuchin monks have a cream-coloured cowl and dark habit.

And so the coffee was named cappuccino,

-because it was creamy at the top and coffee below.

-Oh!

And similarly, capuchin monkeys have that colouring.

It's impossible to take your eyes off that one, I want to.

I just imagine what's going on in his head.

It is so severely inspecting, isn't he?

"Mate, you've got a problem back here, seriously."

"Something's just crawled into your arse."

LAUGHTER

Researchers at Yale taught capuchin monkeys that in exchange

for a certain number of tokens,

they could buy a certain number of grapes or little cubes of jelly.

Once they grasped this, the extraordinary thing was,

they really got the whole concept.

One of the monkeys used their new currency to give to a female

to have sex with him -

essentially a prostitute.

And the female would then take the disc and buy herself a grape.

So the money had gone, you know, through the system, as money does.

Anyway, what uses can you think of for a parachute on your wedding day?

Dress?

Yes! It's that simple.

APPLAUSE

You're running away with it.

Well, normally I'm thick as shit,

I can't really understand what's going on. Anyway.

It was particularly in World War II, and parachutes were made out of?

-AUDIENCE:

-Silk.

-BILL:

-Silk, yes.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, exactly.

And any spare, or ones that were found in fields,

were grabbed by grateful people to turn into wedding dresses.

There was a village in 1941 where a German soldier

landed in his parachute and he...

Didn't have a swastika on it, did it?

No, no, fortunately not! Or if it did...

ALAN SINGS THE WEDDING MARCH

"I say, she's got a bloody swastika!"

LAUGHTER

"I think that's in very bad taste."

Even if they were, it was great, because that village

turned them into bloomers, you known, into long knickers.

Oh, that's all right, to have a swastika on your bloomers, though.

-Well, no-one would see.

-I think it's positively encouraged, actually.

"There's something you don't know about me..."

LAUGHTER

But there you see a wedding dress,

and the majority of wedding dresses were not white until after the war.

White was a more common colour than any other,

but it still wasn't the majority.

Jane Austen's mother wore a bright red dress, for example.

And Queen Victoria had a white wedding dress,

and that was quite a sort of fashion statement that people copied.

But things didn't get really white

until the age of the washing machine and things like that.

Right, it was a luxury, afforded by the rich.

And even in the '50s, people expected to wear their wedding dress

again, it wasn't a one-off thing, as it is now.

But I'll tell you an interesting thing about Queen Victoria.

-Yeah?

-Yeah.

When she died, towards the end of her life...

LAUGHTER

-No, it's gossip and I feel guilty about telling you.

-Go on.

She won't find out.

She was wider than she was tall.

-Really?

-So?

APPLAUSE

-I wore my wedding dress again, actually.

-Did you?

Yeah. I went to a fancy dress party as Alaska.

-LAUGHTER

-Anyway...

Tell us about...more about old...

She was 59 inches tall,

-and she was 66 inches wide.

-Wow!

-Bless her.

-Really?

-Yes.

-But wide or in circumference?

-In circumference.

-Yeah, I was going to say.

-Sorry, not wide.

-She can't possibly have been...

-No, no. Sorry. LAUGHTER

That's circumference. Yeah.

-I don't mean width, but I mean...

-"Here she comes."

All the way round was 66.

-"We're going to have to knock through."

-Yeah.

Can't get through any of the doors.

And that's how the Victoria Line was started.

She needs a pew of her own.

The Albert Hall was just a cast of her body.

This is her bust size, I'm talking about. 66.

-Wow!

-66 bust?

-Yeah.

-Crikey!

-Good Lord!

-She was very short.

-Oo-hee, there's some lovin' there.

Her bloomers were sold, quite recently, for over £6,000.

Must have been an enormous swastika on there.

-Almost certainly a swastika.

-What do you think their waist was?

Bloomers start at the waist, they're like pants...

-80 inches.

-Well...

-XXXL.

Yeah, they were XXX... There were lots of Xs, 52 inch waist.

-And she was what, what did we, how tall?

-4'11".

-59 inches.

-4'11". Aw.

-Bless her heart.

-A tiny, little Queen.

-Yes, she was!

Now it's time to enrol in the dreaded school of General Ignorance.

Name a monogamous bird?

Me.

LAUGHTER

Swan.

KLAXON BLARES

Sorry, we just had to get you there.

-MAN IN AUDIENCE:

-Penguin.

Penguin. Penguin from the audience.

Oh, does the audience want one? KLAXON BLARES

APPLAUSE

-That's what happens...

-We've got a dumb audience.

-Yeah, you see.

-Not so clever now.

LAUGHTER

-ANOTHER MAN:

-Magpie.

No, it's a nun, it's a nun.

APPLAUSE

Almost no birds are monogamous,

even ones that are thought of as monogamous are not truly monogamous.

They misbehave. They cheat.

I mean, the only one we've come up with is the black vulture.

-Where you do genetic tests...

-Nobody...

-Nobody will have him.

-No.

Ugh!

A proud, handsome fellow.

-Or girl.

-He is monogamous?

-He is, yeah.

-Not by choice.

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

No infidelity is found by DNA testing,

whereas in almost all the other birds...

Ducks are... They're dirty sods, aren't they?

Swans have also...black swans in particular - one in six signets is

the result of extra-pair copulation, what we would call extra-marital.

-Yes.

-Despite the love hearts

and the beautiful romantic shape that they make.

Other orders or classes of animal that are genuinely monogamous,

apart from black vultures, are the flatworm Diplozoon paradoxum.

When a male meets a female, they actually fuse together,

so they don't really have any choice in the matter.

So they remain faithful till death.

And voles.

-That's very sweet. Look at that.

-Aw!

How can you not love a vole?

Everything eats them as well, it's such a shame for them. Yeah.

-Owls in particular.

-Yeah.

-An owl can hear the heartbeat of a vole or...

-Or a shrew.

-..or something, from, when it's four feet underground,

-when it's flying overhead.

-I know, it's amazing.

And they've got their concave face, the owls,

it's like an echo chamber, and they can hear the heartbeat underground.

-Isn't that amazing? They say they can, anyway.

-Yeah.

"Yes, I heard it underground. Hmm."

I was like that when I had my ears waxed

and it was like that, you know, coming out of the surgery.

"Oh, my God, I can hear a vole four miles away!"

I saw an owl flying for the first time in my life this year.

-And they make no noise at all, do they?

-No.

-And apparently they're really thick.

-Are they?

-They're not as wise as people have been going on about, are they?

-No, apparently not.

Barn owls are really stupid, they don't even know where they live.

They have to have the habitat built into the name.

"Where do I live? Barn, barn! That's it. Oh, yes."

LAUGHTER

Well, voles are monogamous and charming

and indeed their names are an anagram of?

-Love.

-Yes. Isn't that nice?

Well, many supposedly monogamous birds have a little tit on the side.

Who can marry you at sea?

The captain of the ship.

KLAXON BLARES

A vicar who happened to be on the ship.

Ship's entertainer?

No. No, I don't think so.

That would be great, wouldn't it? "Des O'Connor's marrying you."

The thing is, a ship's captain can't, and never has been able to.

-It's a total myth.

-Oh.

-Where's that come from, then? Why do I know that to be true?

It seems to come from films, you know, all kinds of things.

The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders, it happens.

-Look, Bill, there's your pipe character made flesh.

-Oh, yes.

-Oh, yes. It is, yeah.

-Look at that moustache.

"Good God!

"I can't marry you, but I can have a bloody good go."

LAUGHTER

"The things I can do with this moustache,

-"you wouldn't believe, madam."

-"Extraordinary."

"Ooh, oooh!"

"You can actually play hoopla with this moustache."

"And once I bring the pipe into play...

"..you'll be begging for mercy."

"Ooh, ho-ah!"

A ship's captain is no more qualified to marry you than I am.

So, to the scores. Oh, my actual.

Well, in first place, the blindingly, anagrammatically,

factually gifted Jo Brand, with seven points!

APPLAUSE

Well done, Jo.

Plus 7, that's a rare plus.

In second place, what a debut, with minus 4, it's Greg.

Well done, Greg Davies. APPLAUSE

In third place, with a mighty minus 13, is Bill Bailey.

APPLAUSE

But never knowingly out-hopelessed,

with minus 32, is Alan Davies.

APPLAUSE

It only remains for me to thank Greg, Bill, Jo and Alan.

And I leave you with this wise old adage off a bumper sticker.

"Marriage is like a hurricane,

"it starts with all that sucking and blowing,

"and in the end you lose your house."

Good night. APPLAUSE