Operations QI

APPLAUSE

Hey, good evening.

Welcome to QI,

for a show which is an overwhelming O-ssortment of operations.

And joining me in my theatre team are, Dr No, Bill Bailey.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Dr Who, Rhod Gilbert.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Dr Doolittle, Katherine Ryan.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And...

"Doctor, Doctor, I think I'm a pair of curtains", Alan Davies.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-Pull yourself together.

-Pull yourself together.

Right, let's see how the patient's doing. Rhod goes...

FLATLINING HEART MONITOR BEEP

LAUGHTER

Oh, that's bad, we've lost one already. OK, Katherine goes...

REGULAR HEART MONITOR BEEP

Oh, that's better, that's much better. Yes.

Yeah, we've got it.

OK. Bill goes...

RAPID HEART MONITOR BEEP

Wow, that's... And Alan goes...

BEEP

Vehicle reversing. Vehicle reversing.

Vehicle reversing...

-They're so loud, some of those trucks.

-They are!

Somewhere, the other day, I was about 50 yards away

and it was going, "This truck is turning left!"

"It's turning left!" And it wasn't.

I know, it's annoying.

Right, let's start with a special operation.

How can you turn a muffin into an offensive weapon?

I have muffins for you all.

There you are, there's some muffins, help yourselves.

Douse it in petrol.

-OK. Yes.

-I don't know, just chuck it at someone?

Chuck it at somebody? Rhod, what do you reckon?

Turning a muffin into some kind of offensive weapon?

Just remove the "May contain nuts" label from it.

LAUGHTER

Yeah. We're in World War II.

You drop it out of a plane.

Just a single muffin?

A muffin.

"That'll teach you, Germans! Yeah."

"Argh, it's got me in the eye!"

Was it poisoned, was it presented to Hitler?

"Oh, there you go, obst und mein Fuhrer."

It is the most bizarre thing, Bill.

During World War II, flour mix was invented

that could either be eaten, or used as an explosive.

LAUGHTER

And, yeah, so the mix was invented by the Office of Strategic Services,

so that's the CIA's parent organisation.

Wow.

It consisted of 75% explosive powder and 25% ordinary wheat flour,

which is the way I like my muffins.

LAUGHTER

And if the holder was challenged,

it could either be eaten, or you could blow somebody up.

-So the early versions made you quite ill.

-No shit!

-Yeah.

-Yeah. I think that was part of the problem.

-Yes, yes.

LAUGHTER

But, later versions, they made it fully edible

and it didn't matter whether you had made the flour into a cake.

You could stick a fuse into a muffin and it would still blow up.

Have you ever done that thing of making an exploding cake

for a children's birthday party?

It's very naughty, but it's terribly funny.

-And potentially fatal.

-Yes.

LAUGHTER

You make a totally hollow cake and then you stick a balloon

in the middle and then you ice the whole thing

and when they cut into it, it goes, boom!

LAUGHTER

-A very good idea.

-That's a good trick, isn't it?

-I'm very, very pleased with it.

-That's a brilliant idea, yes.

Of course, the Germans had it, as well,

they had bombs that were disguised as a chocolate bar.

They had a mess tin full of bangers and mash,

which in fact was exploding.

Irresistible to the British Tommy!

LAUGHTER

"We jolly well shouldn't eat this, Roger."

"You're right, we shouldn't eat it."

"Enjoying your breakfast, Tommy?" "Yes, thank you." Boom!

LAUGHTER

And bombs were sometimes left in books

and were triggered by the removal of a picture

of a scantily clad woman!

COMEDIC GASPS

"Don't remove the picture, Roger." "I can't resist her."

Can't resist her.

LAUGHTER

Now, I am about to carry out an operation.

What's the first question I should ask myself?

LAUGHTER

Is there a balloon in the patient?

LAUGHTER

Should I have taken all these selfies with the sleeping patient?

LAUGHTER

Am I sober?

Yes. Where am I?

Should I at least have a quick look on Wikihow?

Absolutely.

LAUGHTER

So, there's a list of questions.

-Is there? An official list?

-There's a list of questions.

The first thing you have to ask yourself is,

do we have the right patient?

-Do we have the right patient?

-Is the very first question.

Make sure you know which bit of the body

you are going to be operating on.

-I thought "location" meant am I in the hospital?

-Yeah. Yes.

I'm in the shed with the pliers, is this best practice?

LAUGHTER

If it had said "identity" and then "location, location, location".

LAUGHTER

What are we doing in that location?

In other words, what is the procedure that we're going to do?

And did the patient, before they were conked-out,

say that it was OK to do this?

-Ah.

-So these are the things.

-It's really basic stuff, this.

-Yeah.

I thought our surgeons were kind of ahead of this stuff.

That's the extraordinary thing. 2008, the World Health Organization,

they composed a set of 19 questions to be asked before

and after all surgical operations, to reduce hospital errors.

And it's called the Safe Surgery checklist.

And it sounds really simple,

but the use of this check list has reduced deaths by 40%...

Oh, no!

..and complications by one third.

So is that the... So before all these checks then,

were there just surgeons just going, "Right, bring him in!"

Yeah, yeah.

LAUGHTER

"Right, all done! Right, come on."

"Let's just tuck in, come on!"

"He looks like he could have his leg off."

"Come on. Next!"

LAUGHTER

One surgeon who had no problem identifying the patient whatsoever

was a Soviet surgeon called Leonid Rogozov.

So he realised he had appendicitis, but he was visiting

the Antarctic and so he had no choice but to operate on himself.

-Oof!

-So he described the pain as...

"A snowstorm whipping through my soul, wailing like 100 jackals."

LAUGHTER

I think he wrote that long after he was better

because I don't think you're going to come out with that sentence

-while you're...

-"What's it feel like, Leonid?"

"It feels like a snow storm whipping through..."

Yeah. He worked on himself for an hour and 45 minutes,

and he was back at work within a fortnight.

He worked on himself for an hour and 45...

LAUGHTER

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Well, it's that kind of thought, Rhod,

that led a man called Boston Corbett to perform self-surgery.

Here is Boston Corbett.

He is famous in history as the man

who killed Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

But he believed that he was very tempted by ladies, and that he

didn't like this, so he castrated himself with a pair of scissors.

-Ooh!

-GASPS

Oh, good action, good action from the audience there.

In order to avoid temptation of prostitutes...

He cut his own testicles off with a scissors

to avoid the temptation of...

-Yes.

-Why didn't he just walk down a different street?

-Yes.

LAUGHTER

He thought that eunuchs were more likely to get into heaven.

-Oh, my word!

-I like him, I wish more men would take this path.

Every house has got scissors.

LAUGHTER

They say that delivering a child hurts as much as having

your leg amputated at the thigh

without any pain relief.

Who has been through those two things that could tell?

LAUGHTER

That's unlucky. That's a bad day, isn't it?

Yeah, that's not good. Now, doctors, what's your diagnosis here?

LAUGHTER

He'd fallen asleep on a stag do.

LAUGHTER

He was running a circus school and his students hated him.

The world's worst.

It's a party game, is it?

Pin the sword on the nutter.

LAUGHTER

So, this is possibly one of the earliest

anatomical drawings for medics.

He was known as the Wound Man.

It's a medieval image, first printed in a book, 1491, in Venice.

It's all the various things, so he's been injured, if you look there,

with daggers, he's been shot with arrows, he's been lacerated,

he's been stung by bees, scorpions, been clubbed in the head.

Bitten by a dog, scratched by thorns.

Blasted by cannonballs, he's definitely got plague

and bad spots, and he appears to have a toad in his stomach.

So, it's, as it were, the contents page to the book.

What a shame though, for a guy who obviously looks after himself

and goes to the gym.

LAUGHTER

To go down like that.

-He eats Paleo.

-Yeah.

You know, he's really healthy, he thought he'd have a long life...

-Uh-oh.

-Yeah, all of those things happen to him.

He's a curious contradiction, though,

because he doesn't look after his appearance enough

-to remove a sword from his head.

-No.

But he does buy his underwear in Agent Provocateur.

LAUGHTER

Yeah. They're quite snug.

They are on the tight side, aren't they?

-Yeah. Ironically, that's the most pain he's in.

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

"It's gone right up me arse, that has!"

-Ooh.

-He's come back from a sort of Civil War re-enactment, you know.

"So, how did it go?" "Don't ask!"

"They nicked my armour, I'm left in my pants, look at this!"

LAUGHTER

Oh, dear.

The doctor's going to go, "I'm going to try something new."

"Don't pooh-pooh it straight away, it's called acupuncture.

Yeah.

LAUGHTER

They also had one for women, it isn't just the Wound Man.

They had Disease Woman.

LAUGHTER

There she is. And...

Is Marvel running out of superheroes?

LAUGHTER

Look over there, it's Disease Woman!

In the United States they have an exceptionally complex system

for categorising injuries.

It's called the ICD-10 System.

The International Classification of Diseases.

There are 140,000 detailed codes for different complaints,

and they are extremely specific.

So they include "bitten by orca".

"Forced landing of spacecraft injuring occupant."

"Asphyxiation due to being trapped in a car trunk."

"Burn due to water-skis on fire..."

That's really hard!

-How could that ever happen?

-I don't know.

-That is so unlucky.

But my absolute favourite - "hurt at opera".

Otherwise known as the Abraham Lincoln.

Yes. The first attempts to categorise diseases in this country

are the Bills of Mortality.

And there was a man called John Graunt,

who was actually a haberdasher, but he was very interested

in trying to work out the various things that people died of.

So we're talking 16th century. And he put together these

Bills of Mortality, and they're great. If you have a look,

these are the different things that people died of. They are just...

"Griping in the guts," 1,288 people died of that, "griping in the guts".

Griping.

-"Lethargy" is already my favourite.

-That's a good one.

-That's quite good, yeah.

-"Oh, I can't be bothered."

-That's the way I want to go.

-Yeah!

-Lethargy.

-Just too lethargic to live.

I quite like "frighted". 23 people died "frighted".

That's good - "killed by several accidents".

I like the "found dead in the streets, field, etc."

"What, how did he die?" "I don't know, they just found him."

-He, no, he was just, he was just dead.

-Just found him.

Some of these Bills of Mortality, they just had,

"Cause of death - suddenly." That's it, just...

-That'll sort you out.

-Yeah.

-"Teeth and worms"!

-How do you die of teeth and worms?

Two thousand, six hundred and...

I'll tell you what, Wound Man would have read that, and he'd go,

"Yeah, I've had that, I've had that, I've had that.

-"I've had all them."

-Brain surgery - new, old?

Oh, no, it's probably old, isn't it?

I don't know. This is not brain surgery,

but it's about a doctor's understanding of the brain.

There was a guy who got, on the railroads,

who got, he had an accident

and he got a four-foot metal rod through his head.

-Right.

-Phineas somebody.

-Phineas Gage.

-Phineas Gage.

-Yeah.

Phineas Gage had an accident, pole through his head,

and they left it in,

because they didn't want to take it out in case it killed him.

-Yeah.

-And he was fine until a train came through.

And then it affected his mood, so they were wondering where it had,

had it damaged his frontal cortex? Because I mean, I don't know

why they were so surprised it affected his moods, to be honest.

-Yeah.

-But his boss was saying he started swearing,

his wife left him, I think.

All his friends saying, "He's a real misery now."

I should imagine his wife left him.

-He probably couldn't get in the house.

-I know.

"Watch what you're doing with your pole!" "What?" "Ow!"

He had to do a three-point turn on the trains, just to turn round.

But we're going back much further than the 19th century, so Neolithic.

It's probably the oldest of the practised medical arts,

-brain surgery.

-Would this be trepanning, or something like that?

-So, trepanning, yes.

-Yes.

-They'd drill a hole in the head

because they want to get out the little tiny bits of bone that have

gone into the brain when they've been hit with a club or something.

A drill, though, how did they have a drill in Neolithic times?

-Ah, well, they would have had, like, a chisel.

-What would it have

-been in Neolithic times? What would the chisel be made out of?

-Stone.

A stone chisel. And then the hammer was made out of stone?

-Yeah.

-And the bed was made out of stone, I'm guessing?

There was a lot of stone. There was a lot of stone, yeah.

Have you seen The Flintstones? It's just like that, yeah.

But surely in Neolithic period, they didn't know that your brain

was as important as it is. Because wasn't there a time

when they thought that your whole personality was in your chest?

Yeah, but everybody would have known what it was to have a headache.

I don't think that's a new thing.

Can you imagine if you'd said that to Phineas Gage?

"Yes, Phineas, we all know what it's like to have a headache."

I think maybe a lot of your personality is somehow

-in your chest.

-OK, some girls feel that. That's fine.

I like her.

I think we think from here sometimes.

Yes, we think in an emotional manner, rather than...

-Yes, I would agree with you.

-Yeah.

It's a good foot above where we think from.

Wound Man was a medieval superhero

whose superpower was having everything wrong with him.

What would you do if you found 2,000 skeletons in your closet?

I would cancel my dog's credit card.

Katherine, what do you reckon?

I live in a Catholic church conversion,

so it is likely there are.

-Oh. Does it feel spooky?

-It doesn't feel spooky.

My nana was really upset, but it's been deconsecrated

so that you can swear in it, and do all sorts.

I expect that happened before, don't you?

-She checked.

-Oh, really? OK.

-Mm-hmm.

-Is she Catholic?

-She is Irish Catholic, so, I mean...

-Oh, right.

-And dead.

And yet she still came over to check. That's love.

She was a little too nosy for her own good.

So, a collection of thousands of skeletons was discovered in Rome

in 1578, and nobody knew who they were, and the Church thought,

"This is fantastic," because for several decades, the Protestants had

been stealing their relics, and what they really needed was new ones.

So, they employed psychics to try and see if there were any martyrs

amongst them. And when they found a likely candidate, they gave them

a new name and a back-story and they sent them out to the churches

across Europe.

They couldn't actually sell them as relics, but what they could do is

they could charge them transport, decoration, induction, blessing.

They would dress them up, they would cover them in jewels,

like this, and put them on display.

The real problem with this was they didn't send them

with any instructions.

So it was like a flat-pack without instructions.

Come on, put a bit of make-up on it!

-So loads of the skeletons were just...

-Bunged together.

Honestly, just all over the shop.

Looks like the House of Lords, doesn't it?

Now, time for a secret operation.

What is the point of a tap in the ocean?

That's not a real picture.

It isn't a real picture,

because in Britain, you'd have two taps for no reason at all.

OK, I don't understand this.

So you have a... You have a hot tap and you have a cold tap, right?

-What? Yes!

-Yes, well, how is that?

-So you're trying to wash your hands.

-Yes...

And what happens, you put it under the hot tap, you go, "Argh!"

-"Argh, argh!"

-And then you go for the cold tap, and go, "Argh!"

-"Ooh-hoo-hoo, oh, hoo-hoo! Argh! Ooh-hoo-hoo!"

-Yeah.

How is it the British haven't discovered there's a mixer tap?!

-What is it...? What...?

-It's the only excitement we get.

Oh, is that...? Did you find that baffling when you arrived?

-I still find it baffling.

-Yeah, no.

-And I don't understand radiators.

Why you want to heat an entire house

with a small hot metal plate in the corner.

-It doesn't work!

-What would you do instead?

We have forced air in Canada, otherwise you freeze to death.

-What do you have? A four what?

-What?

-Forced air, just same as air-con.

-You know...

-Oh, forced air-con.

-Yes.

-Yeah.

-I've never heard the term... I'm 40...

..late 40s, and I don't...

I genuinely didn't know how old I was then, but I've never...

I'm not going to bother sitting here working it out,

but I mean, I'm 50 soon, and I've never heard the term forced air.

-Well, not in that context.

-I love the fact...

I love the fact, Rhod, that I'm asking you some quite complicated

science questions, and you don't know how old you are.

-I'm about 49.

-You're about 49.

-About 49.

-Have you just worked it out?

Yeah.

I'm so used to saying "I'm 50 in a few years,"

I'm so used to saying that, that, for a moment, it stumped me.

No, but the thing is, though, it is quite good to know how old you are,

and the producer has just told me in my ear, Rhod, that you're 48.

APPLAUSE

Is there a really easy way to remember how old you are?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-Is there like a little...?

Like some kind of song I can sing, or something? Or...

I've never needed a mnemonic for my age, but I'm sure we can invent one.

I'm going to come back to what's the point...?

-What's the point?!

-What's the point? That's the question.

-What was the question?

-Yes.

-I've written one for you.

-Yeah?

-I've written one for you.

-OK, here we go.

-How about like,

# What year are we in today?

# When am I born? Just take that away

# You don't have to be a whiz,

# That's how old Rhod Gilbert is. #

APPLAUSE

-Sweet!

-Very good.

I've just followed your poetic guidelines - I'm 48.

-Is this...

-At the risk of repetition,

WHAT IS THE POINT OF A TAP IN THE OCEAN?!

Is it so that when sea levels rise, you can turn it off? I don't know.

-So it's not actually a water tap.

-It's not a tap.

-No, it's a rather...

-Oh, tap, oh...

And so what else could you tap? What is another kind of tapping

-that people do when they're trying to listen in?

-I know.

-TAPS DESK

-There's a shark behind you.

-Yeah.

-Is it a wire,

when they put a transatlantic radio communications wire?

So, it's Cold War.

It's called Operation: Ivy Bells, and it took place from 1971 to 1981,

and it was the USA wire-tapping a Russian underseas cable.

That thing - they're moving it into position there -

is a giant tape recorder, and they just put it onto the wire.

-Good God!

-So the sailors on a submarine,

-the USS Halibut, located a Soviet cable...

-USS Halibut!

They located a Russian cable off the Russian east coast,

and they moved a six-metre long recording pod around it

to track the communications.

The thing I really like about it, because this - we're talking

some years ago now - the device had to be updated every month,

so divers had to leave a submarine once a month and change the tapes.

But it was hugely successful, it ran for a decade,

until a National Security Agency employee of the United States

sold the information to the KGB.

Spying was a lot more hassle back then,

when you've got to train a team of divers, get submarines...

-Yeah.

-Now you just need somebody's maiden name

-and their first pet's name, and you're off.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Or if you're the Russians, you just have to go and see Donald Trump

and ask him.

APPLAUSE

99% of all international data

-is transmitted through underseas cables.

-Good Lord!

And so you know when we talk about the cloud?

It's actually underwater.

The cloud is underwater, Sandi?

-Good Lord.

-That's done your head in, hasn't it, Rhod?

-Yes.

-How old am I again?

# Happy birthday to you... #

I'm going to write down 48 and make a badge.

There we go.

550,000 miles of cable, so enough to get to the moon and back. And...

If you were on the moon, and you jumped off...

-Yes?

-..would you land on the earth?

Hold on, hold on, what are you doing on the moon anyway?

Well, I don't know, maybe...

Have you been left behind by a spacecraft?

Yeah. You got an Uber, and it went horribly wrong.

It depends which side you're on.

I just think if you jumped off the moon, you would just fall...

-..and you'd land on earth.

-Yeah.

-No.

I don't think you'd be in a great state.

I mean I think you'd be like Wound Man by the time you got down.

-BILL:

-Yeah, you would. Yes.

-KATHERINE:

-They know about space, this is my problem with the sea.

-Right.

-They can tell us all kinds of things about planets and space

and other galaxies, they've been to the moon, allegedly,

but they've not been to the bottom of the sea.

I've been to the bottom of the sea, in parts of it.

-Have you?

-Yes.

-What's down there?

-My feet.

Now, which body part was used to stop the Netherlands flooding

in 1953?

Yes, Bill?

Somebody put their finger in a dyke.

Oh!

KLAXON

No, it's been mentioned on QI before,

the story of the Dutch boy sticking his finger in the dyke is a myth.

What other body part might you put in a hole to...?

Anybody?

-The penis.

-Penis!

KLAXON

Hurray!

I was sucked into that!

I can categorically tell you no dyke needs a penis. So...

Wahey!

APPLAUSE

No, sadly 100 men just put their shoulders against the water barrier,

that's all. So it feels...

GROANS OF DISAPPOINTMENT I know, tame, it feels really tame.

-Is that what it is?

-Yeah.

But there is a story of sort of plugging a hole,

it's done in a rather more dramatic manner.

So these were the great North Sea floods, and there was a danger of

three million people being at risk if this particular dyke had burst.

And what the mayor of the town did, he requisitioned a grain barge,

and he ordered the captain to steer it directly at the dyke head-first,

and it plugged the breach and it saved thousands of lives.

So, yeah, there is a story where somebody did something heroic, but

it was neither done with a finger nor their nether part of any kind.

That must have been difficult, the water rushing.

Yes. And the captain having to decide to do that.

Trying to steer it. They could make that a film with Tom Hanks.

Yeah.

Did you know that some British canals have got plugs in them?

In 1978, a man called Bill Thorpe was employed to work on

the 18th century Chesterfield Canal - there it is, extremely beautiful -

and he was dredging the canal to get rid of rubbish,

and he accidentally pulled the plug out.

And when he got back to work the next day, the canal was gone.

Gone!

Most canals were built with some form of emergency drainage,

but he had no idea there was a plug.

Now for the mopping-up operation that we call General Ignorance.

Fingers on buzzers, please.

To the nearest five years, what was the average age in the Home Guard?

Yes, Rhod?

60.

KLAXON

60 is a very, very fine answer.

35.

-It's 30. It's...

-30.

-I was going to say 30! Oh!

-Damn!

-I went up to 35!

-Yes.

But 30 was my first thought!

Half of the membership was younger than 27, and a third was under 18,

so the average age was about 30.

My dad was from Ebbw Vale, and my mum was from Abertillery,

and they used to have... The Home Guards in each of

those towns in the Welsh valleys used to battle each other, you know.

What they used to have to do was take the flag off the town hall

of the opposite town's thing.

And he said that all the Ebbw Vale boys were up in the hills,

trying to make their way through the kind of forests and stuff,

across to Abertillery, and then they looked down and saw on the road

below, and the Abertillery boys were going into Ebbw Vale on the bus.

It was incredibly popular, being in the Home Guard.

So when they established it, they thought about 150,000 men

would volunteer, and in the first 24 hours, 250,000 men signed up.

At the end of June, 1940, over a million, 1942, nearly two million.

My grandfather was an ARP warden,

and I thought that was quite special when I was a kid.

And then I looked into it, and there were 1.2 million ARP wardens.

-Yeah, it was, it was...

-People just volunteered for everything.

They wanted to help.

If you put it in context, the Chinese People's Liberation Army,

which is the largest army in the world, has got 2.2 million men.

And we had two million people in the Home Guard.

But they did very important work - anti-aircraft guns,

coastal artillery, and in fact, over the war,

1,206 Home Guard men were killed on duty, or died of their wounds.

So not quite the comic thing that Dad's Army shows us.

-I see.

-Now, how many stars are there in Orion's Belt?

Three.

KLAXON Three. Yay!

Oh.

Five, there's five.

KLAXON Five, no, there aren't five.

Seven, there's seven.

KLAXON Seven, there's not seven.

It looks like three, it's one of the most famous things.

Do you call it Orion's Belt, or do you refer to it...?

Yeah. I mean, we have the same solar system.

But it has... It has lots and lots of different names,

so in Latin America they call it the Three Marys,

the Arabic name is the Accurate Scale Beam.

Really? I mean, what is it going to be,

hundreds of thousands, but looks like three?

No, it is in fact nine, is the answer that we were looking for.

-One more go, I'd have got it!

-It looks like... I know.

I was going to go nine next. I was going in twos.

I know. It was like the guy who invented Six Up,

and he was so close to a successful soft drink.

There are the three that we think of,

the bright ones that you can see.

They're called Mintaka, Alnilam, and Alnitak.

But if we take Alnitak, it's actually three different stars.

There's a blue super giant and two smaller companions.

And each of the three main stars in Orion's Belt is at least

20 times the size of the sun, and at least 18,000 times brighter.

Blimey.

-But it's just far away?

-It's so far away.

-This is why I hate space!

-Why?

Because I don't have the ability to conceptually understand

how a mathematician can go, "Oh, well, because of this and this,

"and my periscope, then, like, it's that far away".

I don't understand.

-BILL:

-That's where you're going wrong.

-Using a submarine, that's the...

-Using a submarine.

Orion's Belt may have three notches,

but it's actually made up of nine stars.

Now then, one test of a great surgeon

is their ability to concentrate while under stress.

So, while you are answering the next question,

you have got next to you bananas, and you have got a needle.

So this is how surgeons learn to do surgery.

What I would like you to do is half-peel the banana, like this, OK?

Your needle has been already threaded for you.

And I want you to sew the banana back together.

I can't. I can't open it.

Can't open it?! Monkeys have mastered this, Alan.

Darling, put it higher up, because that looks awful.

Can't open it!

Argh!

Argh!

Before you start, what's your first question?

-Am I a surgeon?

-Is this the banana you were looking for?

Yes! Have I got the right banana?

-Yes.

-Is exactly right. OK.

So try and sew the banana back together.

Now one of the great tests, because the whole thing

about a surgeon is the ability to concentrate,

I want you to tell me the name of the food that you are holding

if it was made without using any pesticides.

Organic banana.

KLAXON

Organic banana, there we go. Off and running.

-Oh, me thread's not enough.

-Might as well go for it - plum.

Mine's a mess.

Katherine's doing a wonderful job here.

This is where I shine on a panel show of lots of men.

Oh, look at that!

In fact, although it's true that organic food contains

fewer pesticides or fertilisers than any other foods,

the answer is that none of them contain none.

I'm afraid, if you're eating organic food and you think,

"Yay, look at me," it has all got a bit of pesticide in it.

I'll tell you what, I have made quite an effective sort of dolphin

-there, look at that.

-Actually, yeah.

Let's put our bananas away.

That brings us to the end of tonight's operation.

The anaesthetic is wearing off, the gloves are in the bin,

and the panel and the bananas have been royally stitched up,

which brings us to the scores.

And, with minus 35, yes, indeed, it's Rhod.

APPLAUSE

Equally creditable minus 27, Bill.

-APPLAUSE

-Hurrah!

Minus 16, Alan.

-APPLAUSE

-Thank you very much. Thank you.

And with an amazing whole 4 points, Katherine!

-Thank you.

-APPLAUSE

It only remains for me to thank Katherine, Rhod, Bill, and Alan.

And I leave you with this -

when the West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer

succumbed to a heavy cold at the age of 90,

he did nothing but complain to his doctor.

"I'm not a magician," said the doctor.

"I can't make you young again."

"I haven't asked you to," said the Chancellor.

"All I want is to go on getting older."

Thank you, and good night.

APPLAUSE