09x11 - Infantile

[bunniefuu]

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

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

and welcome to QI.

Tonight, we're all going to be
pretty infantile.

Playing mummies and daddies tonight
are Daddy Cool, Dave Gorman.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Yummy Mummy, Ronni Ancona.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Happy Pappy, Lee Mack.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Thank you.

And the curse of the mummy's tomb,
Alan Davies.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

So, erm, why don't you give me
a ring some time? Dave goes...

PHONE RINGS

Ronni goes...
CONTINUOUS RING

Lee goes...
ENGAGED TONE

- And Alan goes...
- "For sales enquiries, press one.

"For service, press two.

"For two hours of irritating music,
press three.

"For more options, press four.
For fewer options, press five.

"Or to speak to one of our
operatives, emigrate to Mumbai."

LAUGHTER
Thank you, Alan. And don't forget
your Nobody Knows joker.

FANFARE
'Nobody knows!'

Yes, there may be a question tonight
to which the true answer is
that nobody knows

and if you play your Nobody Knows
joker, you get extra points. Your
ignorance might indeed be bliss.

So here's an intimate question
to start with.

What did the Pope's father
say to the baker's daughter?

Who is the current Pope?

- He's German, is he?
- Ratzenberger. - Ratzinger.

He was born in Germany,
he's a German Pope.

- There he is. That's him on the right
with those k*ller eyes that he still
has. - Some would say the far right.

Yes! Some would!
LAUGHTER

And his father, too,
was called Joseph,

so Joseph Ratzinger Senior
married a baker's daughter.

That's the mother in the middle.
The question is, how did they meet?

- On the interweb.
- Yes. It was the equivalent...

- Speed dating. They were speed
dating. - Before the interweb
and speed dating, there were...

- Singles adverts. - Singles ads.

- Would like to meet... Good sense of
humour... - Absolutely! This is what
the Pope's father, Joseph Ratzinger,

who was a Bavarian policeman, wrote.

"Middle-ranking civil servant.
Single. Catholic." That's a relief.

"43. Immaculate past.

"From the country. Is looking for
a good, Catholic, pure girl

"who can cook well,
tackle all household chores,

"with a talent
for sewing and homemaking

"with a view to marriage
as soon as possible."

He added, "Fortune desirable
but not a precondition."

LAUGHTER

He was 43, she was 36.
She was called Maria Peintner.

They met up at a coffee house
and were married four months later.

- Life was simple then, wasn't it?
- Life was simple then.

- Not so much a singles ad,
but more a job. - Yes! - Basically.
LAUGHTER

It would be great if the Pope
actually had an entry himself
in a lonely hearts column,

because it would be something like,
"Single guy, likes to wear a dress,

"drives a slow forklift truck."
LAUGHTER

"Expects you to kiss his ring."

LAUGHTER

EYTKHR.

- That would be it, wouldn't it?
- Because they've got abbreviations.

- Haven't they got three-letter...
- I have a list of abbreviations
to test you on

to see how much you use these
singles and wanted ads

and Craigslist and similar.

So D/D, what would that be?

Divorced deviant?

LAUGHTER
- Nice idea. - Divorced...

Does it stand for large breasts?
LAUGHTER

That may be perhaps quite...
Oh, I see, double D.

LAUGHTER
We haven't got all night, Stephen.

LAUGHTER
Not quite my area of expertise,
but I do understand.

LAUGHTER

- Drunk and disorderly.
- No, it actually means
drug and disease free.

- Does it?
- Yes. In the code of these things.

If you feel it necessary
to put that, that's just
going to raise suspicions.

LAUGHTER

- NK. - No knickers? - Massive knockers.

LAUGHTER
Sorry, that's M.

- Nassive knockers.
- NK? - Yeah, it's no kids.

WE?

- Weekends.
- That would be nice, but I'm afraid
it's a little bit more physical.

- Well-endowed. - Yes!
LAUGHTER

Why would you write that?
APPLAUSE

You'd just put that, wouldn't you?
Just put "well-endowed"
and the box number.

LAUGHTER

Possibly. ALAWP might be
the thing to do with WE.

- A large and wavy p*nis.
- All letters answered...

LAUGHTER
All letters answered! Sorry.

ALAWP, all letters answered with...

A p*nis.
LAUGHTER

- Photo! - Photo! - Oh, sorry, photo.
- Dave is earning points.

- You know an awful lot about
lonely hearts columns! - IPT?

So you might get, for instance,
IPT BBW.

- Big breasted woman.
- Oh, so you know BBW! Very good!

LAUGHTER
- Very good! Is partial to. - Right.

- IPT BBW. Is partial to..
- I don't know if this
is going to help me or not,

but some of these acronyms are shared
by the world of p*rn*graphy.
LAUGHTER

So take your pick
as to how I know them. It's either
from lonely hearts or porn.

- That's right, yeah. - Which would you
rather we assume... - I'm going to
leave you guessing, Ronni.

So what would be
WE SHM WLTM BBW for NSA fun?

- Does that stand... - No strings
attached fun. - Very good, Dave.

- NSA is... - A big breasted woman.
- Yes. So WE...

- Well-endowed. - SHM. H is an ethnic
type in American in particular.

- Hispanic. - Brilliant. So well-endowed
single Hispanic male...

- WLTM. - Would like to meet.

- BBW. - Big breasted woman.
- Big blue whale. - For NSA fun.

LAUGHTER
For no-strings attached fun.

- Exactly. - Which is when
you're into puppetry, but of
the glove-puppet variety, not...

LAUGHTER
- Exactly! That's a sweet way
of looking at it. - Absolutely.

Presumably, you would charge
by the letter in newspapers,
so that's why...

- To save money? - Yes. But you don't
need that on the internet.

You could say,
"I have an enormous dong".
LAUGHTER

- You don't have to go WE, do you?
- But tiny testicles.

LAUGHTER

- BTT. - In fact, it's actually an
average-size dong, but the testicles
make it look enormous.

LAUGHTER
It's a trick of the light!

They're like ball bearings.
LAUGHTER

It's only the top of the show.
LAUGHTER

Let's try to swim for the surface
before we hit the depths. Yeah.

Man gasping for air seeks BBW.
LAUGHTER

There used to be,
in San Francisco in the late 70s,

- there was a handkerchief code
in the g*y community.
- I've heard about this.

- Yeah. The yellow one?
- It was also which back pocket
it was in. If it was left, passive.

- If it was right, it was active.
- What did it mean if you tied four
knots and put in on your head?

That meant you were a h*m*
from up north.
LAUGHTER

You're from Blackpool,
from the Golden Mile.

No, if you had yellow
in your back left pocket,

- you liked being peed on. - What does
it mean if you wear a yellow thing
round your neck hanging down?

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

I like the idea of
someone going to a club

and he's got the yellow hankie,
and everyone else thinks,
"Urgh! Weirdo!"

LAUGHTER
I like the idea of a group of Morris
dancers going to San Francisco.

Sending off very mixed signals
wherever they go.
LAUGHTER

Honestly, in the 70s,
there used to be cards. You'd go
in a shop in Castro in San Francisco

and there'd be little laminated
cards telling you the code
so you didn't make a mistake.

They'd have to be laminated.
LAUGHTER

All right,
I don't know how this conversation's
gone in this direction.

Anyway, the Pope's parents met
through a lonely hearts ad.

What did the Viceroy of India's
daughter like doing with
flipperty flop and jumpkins?

- Is this... - If they're not rabbits...
LAUGHTER
..then something's amiss.

Yes, they do sound like rabbits,
don't they?
Flipperty flop and Jumpkins.

- Are they body parts?
- They're not body parts.

- Who are we talking about?
- The daughter of
one of the Viceroys of India.

In the Days of the Raj,
a man would be appointed viceroy,
vice-king of India.

The last one was Lord Mountbatten
before the independence of India.

This man was Lord Lytton
and his daughter Emily was
an extraordinary Victorian figure.

And she eventually ended up
marrying Lutyens, the architect.

He designed most of New Delhi,
the huge pink palaces of New Delhi
were Lutyens.

That's him there as an older man
and that's Emily Lytton.

He looks like she's just told him
a really dirty joke.
LAUGHTER

This flipperty flop and jumpkins,
she had an evening playing
flipperty flop and jumpkins

and I'm going to ask Ronni to read
out how she describes the evening
of flipperty flop and jumpkins.

"I assure you no words can picture
either the intense excitement
or the noise.

- "I always scream in describing it."
- SHE LAUGHS

LAUGHTER
She could be in the room.
There you are.

This was a description of
when she was 17 years old.

She played this game, alternately
known as flipperty flop or jumpkins,
and has a much better name.

- BOTH: Tiddlywinks. - Yes! - That was
weird. - You said it at the same time!

Absolutely brilliant! And I will
give you each a little cup.

It was originally called
tiddledy-winks.

For some reason, the second D
got dropped, so tiddlywinks.
Try hitting it into the target.

So we have to try and get it
in the hole.

You have the big one and the little
one is called the wink.

- Is this called the squidger?
- I think I went too hard.

- Surely if that's the wink, this must
be the tiddly. - You'd think so.

I do give a point to you for knowing
it's called the squidger.

- Off the lip! - It's meant to be yellow
and green versus red and blue.

- And they do have lots of different...
There's a squop. - Yes. - And a boondock.

And my favourite move, there is
a move in the official language
of tiddlywinks, the Good move.

- Right. - And it's not called that
because it's a good move,
it's named after John Good.

- Oh, how wonderful! - So it's named
for him. - The squop is one of the most
basic things. What is a squop?

A squop is where you're trying to
tiddle your wink so it lands on
top of somebody else's.

Exactly. And if your wink...
LAUGHTER

I can see why you're using
those lonely hearts columns now.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

- How do you get the lift?
- You get the lift, to be honest...

- Oh! - Oh, God!
LAUGHTER

- You have to play on felt
and then it works beautifully.
- Then you've got some purchase.

- Yeah. - This is my ideal gig, where I
come on QI but I don't have to talk,
I just have to play tiddlywinks.

- Oh! - This is bullshit!
LAUGHTER

- You can't get the lift! - I had plenty
of lift there. You've ruined it.

The Good move
is named after John Good.

Do you know what a page ranking is?
This is similar. You know,
in Google terms, a page ranking.

- Absolutely, yes. - Do you know why
it's called a page ranking? - Yes!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

- So... - I honestly thought you knew
the answer to Dave's question.

Finally, I've got one! I know why!

Are you telling me
that a page ranking
is not because it's a webpage?

It's named after Larry Page,
one of the founders of Google.

I'm going to hand out
some more toys
so there's even more fun to be had.

- Quoits. - I ought to tell you,
the winner gets the teddy bear.

- Well, fluffy toy.
- You've got to be joking.

LAUGHTER
- Wow, you've really raised the
stakes! - You will get the fluffy toy.

- We'll start with Dave.
- OK. - OK. Good luck.

ALL: Ohh!

- ALL: Ohh!
- It's like being at the fairground.
- Ronni, come on!

I've just got a bit of dirt
in my pocket.

Let's have a read.

LAUGHTER

LAUGHTER
Oh, the tension!

- Ohh! - Did you see that?

- I saw it! - It nearly went over!
Did you see that?

- I saw it. - I was there!
LAUGHTER

- He'll be unbearable. - It's all right,
he's already unbearable.

LAUGHTER
I was only joking, I've got my own
dirty mags in the dressing room.

LAUGHTER
- Don't let him get it!
- Watch out for the bloke!

LAUGHTER

CHEERING

In the net!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

- And you get the fluffy toy! - Oh, no!

- And here it is.
- Oh, it's like the fairground. - Yeah.

- It's like the fairground.
- I never said it'd be that one.

- I never said... No, no. - Anything off
the bottom, anything off the bottom.
LAUGHTER

- If Lee was a nice man,
he'd give that to you, Ronni.
- That's true, I would.

LAUGHTER
- Congratulations, Lee.
- Thank you very much. - A bullseye. 25.

OK, why, oh, why, oh, why
did they ban r*fle ranges

inside pubs in Birmingham?

LAUGHTER
Yes?

- Was it, er, common sense?
LAUGHTER
- You'd think so, but no.

- Price of ammunition.
- No. We're talking about
the early 20th century

when it suddenly became
very important to have soldiers
who were good at firing r*fles. Why?

- Cos of the w*r.
- The Boer w*r, exactly. And so they
started having r*fle ranges in pubs.

- Adds a new dimension to getting
a round in. - It certainly does!

And Birmingham was the very centre
of the world's g*n-making,
BSA and other such r*fle companies,

and so all these pubs would have
r*fle ranges inside the pubs,

sometimes literally inside. You'd
fire over the heads of customers
at targets. But they banned it

- and I want to know the reason why.
- Because there was
an accidental death. - No.

No, the answer is not
what you might say today,
which is health and safety.

It was another
more puritanical reason.

Either that picture's been mocked up
or they are really casual,
those diners.

There are still pubs
with r*fle ranges in them.
In Devises and places like that

they still have pubs with r*fle
ranges. There's one. You pull away
the centre part of the bucket

and there's a tunnel
with a target at the end.

Somewhere in the world
there's a giant dog with stitches
in his neck looking for that.

With a very small neck.

- Cos people were gambling on it?
- Yes, Dave Gorman. That's the weird
thing about Britain then.

They didn't care about the fact that
live rounds were being fired over
people's heads,

- it was that it caused gambling.
- Is that why they introduced the
curtain over the score board? - Yes!

LAUGHTER
- To hide it. - It's like
the British version of a speakeasy.

LAUGHTER
- Nothing here. - A beautiful curtain
it is, and immaculately measured.

LAUGHTER
In one Worcester pub, until quite
recently, you'd sh**t from a bar

across a passageway
and into an outhouse. And some teams
still sh**t in the open bar.

We've got Swindon, Devises, Newport,
Hinckley, Nuneaton, Worcestershire
still have pubs with r*fle ranges.

- There you are. Isn't that quite
interesting? - Very interesting.

Ah, that's more than we were hoping
for. Otherwise it would be called
VI. It's only quite interesting.

They did try to ban darts at one
point cos of gambling, as well.

Cos it was deemed a game of chance.
I think it was in Leeds.
And it went to the magistrate

and the landlord of a pub
who wanted to keep his dartboard
brought in a local expert

and made him play and demonstrate
that it was a game of skill.

The idea was you were just hitting
the board like a fairground game
and whatever you happened to hit

was your score and well done you,
you were lucky.

Then he came along and hit a few
treble 20s when asked and they proved
it was a game of skill.

Very good. There are lots of pub
games, of course. I'm sure you've
played pub games in your time.

- You may be familiar with some of
them. - Too busy drinking. - Of course.

But see if you can explain the rules
of milking cromock,

hanikin can'st abide it
or laugh and lie downe.

Laugh and lie downe,
that is a box full of rohypnol.

LAUGHTER
Er, no. No. That's...

APPLAUSE

- Well, milking cromock, I would've
thought that was a card game.
- We know that laugh and lie downe

and hanikin can'st abide it
are card games.

- Oh. So I managed to get the only one
that isn't a card game. - Yes.

Possibly. Because the time
has now passed. Oh, just in time!

Nobody knows is the answer.
Nobody knows.

FANFARE
- 'Nobody knows!'
- Extra points for Dave.

The fact is, we only know these
games exist because they're on lists
of games that have been banned.

So there is statute that says it is
ill*gal to play milking cromock,

hanikin can'st abide it
or laugh and lie downe

and all you can do
as a games historian is look at it
and try and work out...

- But there is some evidence
that those were card games. - I love
the idea of a barman just going,

"Hey, are you playing
milking cromock?" No.

LAUGHTER
But there are some we do know...

LAUGHTER

Two blokes running round and
probably just one cow going, "Mooo".
LAUGHTER

There are dice and card games
and dominos, but also games
called guile bones, noddy board,

- penny prick, hide under hat. - Hide
under hat, that'd be a great game.
LAUGHTER

- I like it cos it's self-explanatory.
- It is!

You need a massive hat
or a small person.
LAUGHTER

- Both, really. - Yeah.
- In 1938, a priest wrote to the Times
complaining that there was a pub

where they had on
the billiard tables tortoise races
with little toy jockeys on top.

LAUGHTER
- It's the jockeys that makes it
lovely, isn't it? - Yes, sweet.

- They could've used giant tortoises
and real jockeys. - If only they had.
That was in Weymouth.

- Competitive smoking
was very popular. - Oh, come on!

LAUGHTER
Seemingly.

- And... There you are.
- He's a bit smug.

- Yeah. - He's the champion. - He blows
smoke rings. - It still exists.

You now have to do it in an outside
place or a smoking shelter.

- But who would win a smoking
competition? - I guess the first
person to finish the pipe.

- No, the last person
to finish the pipe. It's keeping
the pipe alight for longest. - Oh.

It's a real skill. It's how you pack
the tobacco into the pipe and then
how few puffs you take of it

- so you don't burn it down.
- You're telling me this didn't
become a televised sport?

I know, it's shocking, isn't it?
Terribly exciting.

But it still exists,
competitive smoking.

- Wow. - So there are other games
we can think of.

There was an ancestor of darts
you may be familiar with,
a Belgian game,

Struifvogelspel. There is it.

You use a duck and the duck
has the sharp beak.

It's rather weird. It's tied
on the end of a line. It's peculiar.
You swing the bird round on a cord

- until the beak gets stuck
in the board. - That'd be a good thing
for a m*rder in Midsomer Murders.

LAUGHTER
- Actually, that would be brilliant.
- That's a good plot there.

- Is that the dartboard? - Yeah, that's
the back of it. You swing that round

- and wherever the beak lands
is your score. - She doesn't
want to play. He's making her.

LAUGHTER
There was a distressing betting game
in pubs called lark singing

which was very popular in Britain,
but also on the continent.

The one whose lark stopped singing
last won all the money.

There was the terrible belief
that if you blinded the lark,
it would sing more.

There was a campaign to stop the
blinding of larks which was led by
World w*r I blinded veterans.

- And some larks. - They knew that
being blind wasn't a lark.

But that was unfortunately
a popular sport.
Humanity's often been very cruel.

I don't know why this reminds me of
it, but there was an old variety act

who used to have a dancing duck
on his piano.

And he'd play the piano,
an upright piano, and he'd play
a tune and the duck would dance.

And they worked out he had
a hotplate in the top of the piano
and it was triggered by him playing.

- So when he started playing,
it heated up and the duck
would have to sort of... - Ohh.

- That is awful.
- Yes. And there's a magician who's
still working, I think, in Spain

who does a trick where
there's a goldfish tank
on top of a load of face-up cards

and he forces a card on you
and then his goldfish
selects your card by swimming to it.

And he's basically sewn a little
magnet into the goldfish and he moves
his knees under the table.

- Good lord! - Yeah, I know.
The entertainment world is cruel
with animals. - It is, isn't it?

Anyway, the fact is, the rules of
milking cromock are lost forever,
but it doesn't matter

because we're not allowed to play it
anyway. The most popular
entertainment venue in the world

used to be the Coney Island
Amusement Park in New York. What was
its longest-running attraction?

- Is it an elephant?
- No. - The bearded woman?

- No. - There are lots of that kind of
thing. - Was it a bearded elephant? - No.
LAUGHTER

There was one particular woman
who came to see this every week

- for all the 37 years it was on show.
- Cliff Richard. - No.
LAUGHTER

HE LAUGHS

- It was not what you might call usual
entertainment. It's very...
- Ah. Cliff Richard. - No.

LAUGHTER

I'm trying for a way of framing this
to which Cliff Richard
isn't the answer.

LAUGHTER
It was a really peculiar,
unlikely... No, that's not...

LAUGHTER
This is not what you'd associate
with entertainment. No...

- Barry Manilow. - What about,
"It's something you go and see
on your summer holiday"? No... - Ah!

LAUGHTER
I'm just going to have to tell you.
It was children in incubators.

The infant incubator with living
infants. Premature children

were put in incubators,
there they are,

and the public
would come and see them,
they'd pay a quarter, 25 cents.

Is there a grabbing hand?
LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

You are an evil man.

LAUGHTER
It's Angelina Jolie pick 'n' mix.

LAUGHTER
It does seem really weird to us.

But the fact is, it was a recent
invention, it was invented in 1880,

and no hospitals had them in
America. It was a French invention.

And the French inventor went round
trying to persuade people
they were a good idea

and this park thought, Coney Island,
what a great thing to do.

We'll get all the premature babies
that are born in New York,

we'll put them in incubators,
people can come and look at them
and watch them thrive.

- And they did thrive.
- It's literally just warm air. - Yeah,
it's a ventilated, sealed-off area.

It must have been laid open for
abuse for pushy stage-school mothers

who were desperate
to get their kids in.
"Get into the incubator, Lorelei!

"Go on! Get into the incubator!"
"But Mom, I'm 11."
"So squidge up a little!

"If someone comes to look at you,
do your shuffle three-step."
LAUGHTER

If someone was seven months
and their waters broke,

were they then driven to the
funfair instead of the hospital?

- Yes, because the hospital
didn't have any incubators. - Yeah.

It was only in 1940
when the New York City Hospital
invested in incubators

that they kind of went
out of business as an attraction.
It seems utterly weird to us

but it was the longest-running
attraction at Coney Island.

Anyway, staying with our infancy
theme, here's a parenting poser.

Eleanor Roosevelt considered herself
a very modern mother.
Where did she keep her baby?

- In a drawer probably.
LAUGHTER
- It's almost as weird.

It was a fad in the 1930s.

- Was it permanently attached to one
of those things? What are they
called? Papoose. - No, no.

That'd be fairly normal.
We'd consider this weird now.
In New York, space is at a premium.

There's a limited amount of space
in Manhattan,
hence the skyscrapers and so on.

And where do you put your baby?
Well, hang it out of the window
in a cage.

LAUGHTER

The baby cage.
It caught on for a while.

Was this the question that Michael
Jackson was trying to answer?
LAUGHTER

Probably. It is a bit disturbing.
The baby cage. But there were


They died out during the Blitz
because they were obviously
not suitable.

LAUGHTER
Eleanor Roosevelt got severely
criticised for it and got upset.

She recalled,
"It was rather a shock for I thought
I was being a modern mother."

You get extra points if you can
tell me Eleanor Roosevelt's
maiden name. Before she married FDR,

- she was Eleanor what? - BOTH: Rigby
LAUGHTER

Both said at the same time.
No, she wasn't.

- Roosevelt. - Yes! Well done!

- Oh! - She was Eleanor Roosevelt.
Very good.
APPLAUSE

She was the niece of president Teddy
Roosevelt, who was a fifth cousin
of the man she married.

- So did she... - There was no incest
involved, fifth cousin is a long way
away, but an amazing coincidence.

Do you think she
actually changed her name?

Seriously, do you think she said
"I'm officially changing my name"?

Then you've not officially got the
same name, you've got the same name,

but it's not the same as
registering it as a changed name.
Do you know what I mean?

- You should be a registrar.
- I ask, "Do you know what I mean?"
because I'm not sure I do.

- Do you see what I mean?
- I sort of know what you mean.

She missed out...
LAUGHTER

She missed out on the excitement...
APPLAUSE

Nobody knows what you mean.
She missed out on saying,
"I'm trying out my new name."

She may have written her signature
in a different way.

Now, describe
the miraculous secret machinery
that the Chamberlain family used

for delivering babies for 100 years.

BUZZER
Was it... What's that thing called
that you suck a baby out with?

- What? - The ventouse.
- The ventouse. Did they invent that?
- No, that was after.

- Was it forceps? - Yes.
- Because that's...
- Yes, they invented the forceps.

And they realised how brilliant
they were but they were terrified,
this was in the 17th, 18th century,

for 100 years,
there was no patenting laws,
so anybody could have copied it.

And so what they would do is
go into a house with this huge box,
covered in a cloth,

and say,
"We've got our secret device here."
They would blindfold the mother,

She was sat going, "One, two,
three, four, five, coming!"
LAUGHTER

No-one else was allowed in the room,
and then they'd play all these
sound effects to make it seem...

- Machinery? - ..like a piece of
machinery, then they would get out,
here's an early...

They're pretty disturbing
but there they are.
That's forceps. There they are.

But for literally 100 years,
they kept their secret
by disguising this simple device.

They'd get them out and smirk
at a barbeque, just turning things.
LAUGHTER

Nobody knows. Nobody knows.

Now, epidurals. Do you know when
the epidural was first devised?

- I would say...30s. - 1960.

He died in 1949,
he was a man called August Bier.

And he first had this idea
that if you put a painkiller
into the spine itself,

then anything below the pain
signals wouldn't get there.

He tried it on an assistant.
He injected his assistant's
lower spine with cocaine,

- which is a topical anaesthetic.
- She fell over, said "It worked,
let's go". - It was a he.

Then they'd laugh and lie down.
LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE
- It could have been worse, they could
have played Milking Cromock. - Yes.

He almost did.
He made sure the area was numb
by pulling the man's pubic hair,

- yanking his testicles... - And he
said, "Hanikin can'st abide it!"
LAUGHTER

He hit him
in the legs with a hammer
and singed his thighs with a cigar.

- And sure enough, the assistant
felt no pain. So that is how the
epidural... - He never walked again.

LAUGHTER
- A broken leg and terrible burns.
- Somewhat bruised.

The first woman in history
to have a baby under an aesthetic,
which was chloroform,

she was so thrilled by the
painlessness of the experience,
she named her baby...

- Not chloroform.
- Not chloroform, no. Anaesthesia.
LAUGHTER

That's actually quite a nice name.
It's like semolina or tapioca.

- Lil-Let. - It does sound like the most
boring dinner party guest ever.

Anaesthesia's coming. Oh!
LAUGHTER

Not again! Oh!

There were stories about this,
it's hard to know how accurate,
there were biblical objections

to the idea of chloroform being
administered to women in childbirth.
Do you know why?

- Cos pain is good for them. - It's
a very specific reference in the
Bible. It's right at the beginning.

Do you remember Eve gets Adam
into a bit of trouble
by making him eat the fruit?

And God says,
"Oh, you ate the fruit of the tree
whereof I spake thou shouldst not."

- And to the woman he says...
- You will marry Tom Cruise.
LAUGHTER

No. Unto the woman he said,
"I will greatly multiply
thy sorrow and thy conception.

"In sorrow
shalt thou bring forth children."

- Yes. - So it was as if God
cursed women to have pain.

Some ultra-religious people felt
that it was basically God's curse

and they should scream in agony
while giving birth.

But then Queen Victoria had Prince
Leopold when she had chloroform

and then the habit caught on,
and then the epidural
and various other such things.

- I didn't know Victoria
had a Prince Leopold.
- She had nine children, I think.

They're all named after pubs.
LAUGHTER

Da-ding-ting! Very nice. Excellent.

Here's another intimate little
secret for you. How can you tell
a French baby from a German baby?

BUZZER
Yes, Veronica.

The German baby will have wrapped
itself in a towel before the midwife
has had a chance to fetch it.

LAUGHTER

It's not often you can do the same
joke twice in one show but is
the German baby on the far right?

Hey!
LAUGHTER

- Is there a difference in cry?
- Yes! - They have an accent? - Yes.

- No! - It's not an accent exactly,
it's a melodic cadence.

In the womb, the baby is hearing
its mother tongue,

and the different languages
have different stresses
and cadences and melodies,

and you can actually do tests
in which someone will say, "That's
a German baby, that's French"

just by its gurgle.
It's heard the language.

Not only that, they like their
mother tongue. You show them videos

and there is someone speaking
a language that isn't the one
their mother and father speak,

and someone else speaking in their
own mother tongue, and they will
stare at the one that's theirs.

Even if it's not their parents,
they actually are drawn to it.

- So they pick up on the rhythms
very early on. - Glaswegian babies go,
"Get me out of that bloody cage!"

But it is fascinating that
that early on, in the womb,

they pick up on the melodic cadences
of their mother tongue.

- I think that's rather sweet.
- Yeah, beautiful.
- I think it's beautiful, too.

How long do the best hugs last?

- 20 seconds. - That's a very long hug.
I would get embarrassed and restless
if someone hugged me for 20 seconds.

- Do you want me to test that?
Shall we test that? - No! Please.

Oh, hello. Here we go. Aww!
APPLAUSE

That was lovely.

I'm on the clock. I'm on the clock.

- Yep. - I'm on the clock. - That was...
Oh, God, this is too long.
LAUGHTER

- This is too long.
- Dave, did you turn on the clock?
LAUGHTER

- Lovely. That's got to be at least
- That was very uncomfortable.

- See if you can beat it! - Oh, God!
LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Come on, Alan, come on.

APPLAUSE
Heavens above!

- I've been waiting years to do this.
- If you're all hugging, I'm playing
tiddlywinks. Sod the lot of you!

Right. That was lovely.
That was unusual. I wasn't expecting
that response but it was charming.

- You're both wearing nice aftershave.
- Do you want your watch back?
LAUGHTER

- Did you like my aftershave?
- I certainly did.

- Now, there have been tests, it seems
weird... - Four or five seconds.

- Well, three seems to be the answer.
- Three is the perfect time, you mean?

It seems to be that there is
a kind of inbuilt human moment
which is three seconds.

If it's less than three seconds,
it really is a bit like,
that wasn't really a proper hug.

If it's one, two, three.
That's nice.

It's just a rhythm that seems to be
built into the human race.

The three second period is known
as a moment. And it happens
in a lot of what we do.

- Don't say it!
- I just can't wait for my great aunt
to come round and give me a hug.

It's all very nice and I'll go,
"That was four seconds, you b*tch!
LAUGHTER

"Next time you'll keep it tight
or you don't come in."

What spoils hug is when the other
person goes, "..and break."

LAUGHTER
Yes. Well, have you heard of
the five second rule?

- Food. - Yes, what is it?

It is where, if you drop food
on the floor, it's OK to eat it if
you pick it up within five seconds.

- Right, do you believe that? - No, it's
nonsense. - It is complete nonsense.

It could be OK after five minutes.
It just depends on
whether the floor is contaminated.

And human beings tend to, if you
drop chocolate, or a biscuit, people
will pick it up and eat it easily,

but if it's broccoli or cabbage
or something they go, "Oh..."
LAUGHTER

With a big splat like that, you just
think, "Oh, I probably won't worry."

- Do you eat food off the floor,
presumably? - As a rule, I do!
LAUGHTER

- Oh, yes! - Is this what you do
at speed dating?
LAUGHTER

Do you eat food off the floor?
Move on! Do you eat food
off the floor? Move on!

Ah, you've got a yellow hanky,
perfect.
LAUGHTER

- It was a presumption. It wasn't...
- "You eat food off the floor!"
She's quite disgusting.

It's not yellow, it's a white hanky,
I've just cleaned that up,
thank you very much.

- Once you've got a baby, food on the
floor really is fair game. - Exactly.

If you didn't eat food off the floor
you're wasting about £90 a week.
LAUGHTER

Now, buzz when you know
what's so damn interesting
about this photograph.

BUZZER
- Yes. - You said "dam interesting."
- Oh. - What is it that's interesting?

- Yes, I've got it. - It's a dam, yes.
- It's got the goats walking across it.
- There are goats walking on it.

- Where? Where? - There. They scale...
- Oh, yes! - Now why would they do that?

- That is pretty impressive!
- That is. - Do you know
what kind of goat that is?

- Ibex. - It's an ibex. It's an Alpine
ibex. An extraordinary thing.

This is a south-facing dam in Italy,
the Cingino Dam,
and to get a salt lick,

they walk on what is
an almost sheer rock surface.

- Isn't it amazing, though? - Have their
little hoofs, sort of, adapted?

Well, you can see there. Yes,
I mean, they are, ibexes, like all
goats, are incredibly sure-footed.

And they're Alpine
and they can scramble up rock faces
and things like that.

- But it's astonishing, isn't it?
- Do they fall off sometimes?
- I hope not. I doubt it.

"Baah!"
LAUGHTER

There's a kebab stand at the bottom.
LAUGHTER

Terrible and believable
at the same time.

"Occasionally one does fall off."

Do you know what the Pyrenean ibex,
this is the Alpine ibex,
this is in northern Italy,

but do you know what the Pyrenean
ibex did in the noughties,
between 2000 and 2010?

- There's a Pyrenean ibex.
- Fell off something?
Got to the top, couldn't get down?

Something fell on it,
or on her, in fact.

There was a violent storm on
January 6th 2000 in northern Spain.

Celia, she was the last ever
Pyrenean ibex.

And the branch crushed her skull
and she died, and the species
was declared extinct,

but in 2009, nine years later,
she made a comeback

when she became the first
cloned animal that had been extinct
from a piece of her skin

that was preserved in liquid
nitrogen

and a little kid was born, but
lasted only seven minutes, and died.

But it is the way forward
with extinct species.

There are a lot of frozen arks
with highly endangered species
whose DNA is being kept

in the hope they will be resurrected
one day and this is an example.
For seven minutes, isn't that weird?

Talking of things that only show up
if you look closely, it's General
Ignorance. Fingers on buzzers.

Where was Louise Brown conceived?

BUZZER
- Yes. - In a test tube.

ALARM BLARES

As soon as it was coming out of
my mouth, I thought, "You fool!"

Louise Brown was indeed the world's
first in vitro fertilised baby.

But it wasn't a test tube.
It was a petri dish.

She's a fraud! She's told everyone
she's the first test tube baby!

- She was the first petri dish baby.
- The news claimed that
she was the first test tube baby.

There's another Louise Brown, who's
Stewartry of Dumfries in Galloway,

who has a record, we think,
in the United Kingdom,
which is rather extraordinary.

- There's no way you could guess it.
- It must be the oldest something.

- Well, she... - Oh, is it too late
for this? - No, we definitely know.

LAUGHTER
We could ask her.

We could ask her
if she's still alive.
LAUGHTER

We think she is the most prolific
library book borrower
in the country.

LAUGHTER
- She has read... - That's too much of
a leap from in vitro fertilisation.

Just happens to be the same name.
She has read
just under 25,000 books.

- Well, she says that.
She's borrowed them. - No, no...
LAUGHTER

- Yeah. - 12 a week. 12 a week and
she's never once had a late fine.

That proves she doesn't read them.
The fact that she gets them back on
time.

It's charming. They're
mostly Mills and Boon romances,
w*r stories and historical dramas.

Barbara Cartland
was writing that many.

- Yes, exactly, just.. - Just
for Louise to keep reading. - Yeah.

I was going to say,
if Louise is watching,
but she isn't, she's reading a book.

We salute her
in the world of dying libraries.

Where did marsupials come from?

BUZZER
Yes.

Marsupia.
LAUGHTER

- It could easily have been the right
answer. - They only live in Australia.

ALARM BLARES
Not true.

I knew that.

We'll let you off. They don't
only live in Australia, there are
marsupials in the Americas.

- Are there? - Yeah. - Yes. - What are they
called? - Oh... - They're cute.

- We'll show you a photograph. They're
the mammals with the tiniest babies.
- The echidna?

- Not the echidna, no.
- Are they Fingerbobs?

LAUGHTER

- They look like the Clangers!
- They really, really do look
like Fingerbobs. - They are opossums.

I didn't know, I thought that they
were born in the pouch.

I didn't realise they're born
and have to crawl up
and get in the pouch.

And in the case of the opossum,
you could get 20 baby opossums
on a teaspoon.

- They are absolutely miniscule. - Wow.

And the mummy licks her fur
to make a line,

from where they're born
and they crawl up into the pouch.

Cos the babies then develop further
in the pouch.

- But they first began...
- That's bizarre because I was under
the impression, wrong as ever,

marsupials evolved separately on
Australia because Australia was like
Madagascar, separate from evolution.

No, but like Madagascar and New
Zealand, they all originally
belonged to a super-continent,

- which was known as? - Australasia?
- No. It was known as... - Essex.
- Someone from the audience will know.

AUDIENCE SHOUT
Gondwanaland! It was
a super-continent that broke off

and is now South America,
Africa and Australasia.

- Or so the scientists say!
- So they say.

But the first marsupials came from
the part that is now South America,
that had been Gondwanaland.

But they crossed through Antarctica
while it was still one continent
and into Australia.

So there you are, that's your
marsupials, actually originated in
what is now part of South America.

- Which brings me to the matter
of the scores, and they make
fascinating reading. - Oh!

In first place
by quite a long way with
plus ten points, it's Dave Gorman!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Thank you very much.

I'm speaking almost now
like a proud father,

with a magnificent six points,
in second place, Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And only just behind with plus five,
Lee Mack!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

But with a very creditable
minus seven,

Ronni Ancona!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

So, all that's left is for me
to thank Ronni, Lee, Dave
and, of course, Alan.

I leave you with this thought
from Leo Burke,

"People who say they sleep like
a baby usually don't have one."
Good night.

APPLAUSE