19x16 - QI VG: Series S Compilation - Part 2

[bunniefuu]

APPLAUSE

Hello. Welcome to QI, where
tonight, we're seriously Sexed-Up.

Stark naked underneath
their clothes are:

the sultry Suzi Ruffell...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..the sensual Sara Pascoe...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..the stimulating Ahir Shah...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..and old sexy pants himself,
Alan Davies.

APPLAUSE, WOLF-WHISTLE FROM AUDIENCE

My face!

Let's hear you giving me
the come-on. Suzi goes...

MUSIC: Let's Get It On
by Marvin Gaye

# I've been really tryin', baby. #

Oh, right.

Sara goes...

# I believe in miracles. #

# Where're you from?

# You sexy thing
Sexy thing, you. #

Ahir goes...

# Sexbomb, sexbomb
Uh-huh

You're my sexbomb
Sexbomb

# You can give it to me
when I need to come along. #

He's still got it, hasn't he?
He really has.

And Alan goes...

# All by myself... #

LAUGHTER

Aww!

# Don't wanna be

# All by myself... #

I tell you, after...

# Any more. #
Yes, all right!

LAUGHTER

Just rubbing it in.
After several months of lockdown

in a family of five with a dog...
Yeah.

..that's just a fantasy!

Who struggles to speak to people
of the opposite sex?

SARA: Oh, is it the QI elves?

LAUGHTER

Oh, "who doesn't?"
would be my answer.

Yeah, well, there is that.
Let me rephrase it.

Who seems to speak a different
language to the opposite sex?

Mane khabar nathi, uh...

That's fantastic.
And I'll speak Danish! Yeah!

But actually, interestingly,
that is a sort of clue.

So you say something to me. Uh-huh.

SANDI SPEAKS DANISH

OK. That is a clue.

I think that a w*r has just broken
out between India and Denmark,

and neither of us...

No, finally, a peace accord.

After many years,

the upset over butter
has been solved.

It's called ghee!

Oh, sorry!
Oh, we've started it again.

So the Ubang people of Nigeria,

they have separate language
variations for men and women.

So it's a farming community,
a population of about 11,000 people,

in what's called the Cross River
area of Nigeria.

And they have a wonderful
creation myth which states

that there were two people,
first two people on Earth,

a bit like Adam and Eve,
Ubang and Iwame,

and God gave them a language each.

And the intention was to give all
tribes on Earth two languages,

one for each sex, and then God
ran out of languages.

You know how that happens?

Or it's possible that he made one
more language than he made tribes

and thought, "I cannot make
another tribe." Oh!

Do they say that it makes
things easier?

Do they prefer it that way?

They don't find it confusing at all.

And if you have a look at some
of the words, for example,

some of them are
completely different

and some of them are rather similar.

For example, let's have a
look at the word for clothing.

The women's word, ariga,
and the men's word, nki,

are very, very different. But then,
if you look at the word for book,

koshang and oshang, they're
rather similar. Yeah.

Apparently the women's version
is easier to pick up.

They do less puns, which I like.
Yeah, OK. Very good.

But all children grow up
speaking the female language

and the boys transition to the
male language about the age of ten.

What, so on your tenth birthday,

your dad takes you to one side
and says... "Now, my boy."

.."a yam's actually an itong."
Yes, yes...

No, from about the age of
three or four,

they begin to be teased
for using women's words.

But by ten, you would not dream,
if you were a boy,

of using any of the women's words.

And they don't have any
gendered pronouns.

Their word means both his and hers,
and they don't assign gender

to words, you know, like the French
will do.

Actually, about a third of
the world's population

speak a gendered language,

where inanimate objects are
male or female or...

I really love that. Do you? Yeah.
I think it influences

how people think about the
thing they're talking about.

And it makes you think of them as,
like, nice gentlemen and ladies.

Like, "Oh, Mrs Teapot." Yes!

"Oh, Mr Coat-Stand."

In German, bridge is "Brucke"
and it's feminine,

so they tend to describe
bridges with feminine stereotypes

like elegant or
beautiful and fragile.

In Spanish, it's puente,
which is masculine,

so Spanish speakers will use words
like long and strong and dangerous,

that kind of thing, and it really
has an impact on how people think.

Yeah. The women's bridge in London
is the Waterloo Bridge,

which was completed by women
in the Second World w*r,

and that's the strongest bridge.

Which is terribly pleasing.
Very pleasing.

So English is a Germanic language,
used to be grammatically gendered,

but it sort of faded over the years.

We still have metaphorical genders,
so ships are sometimes known as she.

And people refer to their cars,
often, as women. Yeah, yeah.

Or their guitars. I'm thinking of
the same kind of guys here. Yeah.

LAUGHTER

A survey of people that own,

you know one of those robotic vacuum
cleaners? SUZI: I've got one!

Is it a boy or a girl?
He's called Victor the Vacuum...

He! Two thirds assigned it a gender
and three quarters called him "he".

AHIR: Do you think it's
the legacy of the Henry?

I think it's cos he wanders
around aimlessly,

consuming everything he sets
his eye on.

And he sometimes gets stuck
in the corner. So, yeah. Yeah.

What's the sexiest thing you can do
with a sausage-making machine?

Oh.

SUZI'S BUZZER PLAYS

Is it doing like what they did
in Ghost, around it?

Is that the sexiest thing you can
do?

So one of you's doing it and
then there's someone behind you,

sort of doing it...

And what's really nice
is if you do something sexy

and then breakfast is ready.
Exactly!

The casing is the important bit.
Not a condom?

Yes, darling, a condom is exactly...
With a sausage machine? Right, yeah.

So the US condom industry
began in 1883.

There was a German Jewish immigrant
called Julius Schmid, and he was...

I mean, it's a terrible story.
He was virtually penniless.

He was hobbling around on crutches.
It's quite Dickensian in a way.

And he was working in a
sausage-making factory,

and he started selling the
animal intestines as condoms.

I mean, who thought
that's the next progress?

Wow. I want a Hamilton
about that guy.

LAUGHTER

A great set with all the
intestines... Yes!

Anyway, he was arrested in 1890

because peddling in
contraceptives was ill*gal.

But couldn't he just be like,
"This, officer?

"This isn't a contraceptive!"

Yes, it's a delicious snack! Yeah.

This is in America?
In America in the 1890s. Brilliant.

He changed the name of his products
to "French goods and medicines".

French? Cos the French are sexy!

And then by 1918,
condoms become legal

and by then, he was already
king of the condom.

The sheaths in the 18th century
were made of...

This is horrible, just warning,
this is quite unpleasant.

They were made of sheep's guts,
so they needed to be... Yes.

Is that... Who wants that
coming at them? Nobody.

So a sheep's guts, soaked for
a couple of hours before use

then tied on with a ribbon,

and then washed, dried and
used again.

Yeah. I know you think it's gross,

but that is a lot better than
a kid you don't want.

LAUGHTER

It's eco-friendly, as well,
I suppose. Yeah.

So I thought I'd have a look
and I thought,

I wonder what other things
you can use a condom for?

And I love the internet
cos there was a list.

Anybody have any thoughts of
what you might use a condom for,

other than the purpose for
which it was designed?

Well, keeping things dry, like,
for example, your phone. Yeah.

Or your watch. I'm always dropping
mine in the loo. Yeah.

But you would look weird, getting
that out of your pocket. Yes!

"Ah! Missed it!"

AHIR: Or, like, you thought
your phone was vibrating,

but it was actually just ribbed.

Very good for opening a tricky jar.

Oh! Oh!

That is a good tip. Yeah.

SUZI: My nan always had trouble
with jars.

It's also very good for retrieving
things from the toilet.

If you drop your phone
and you haven't got it in a condom,

you could use the condom to put
your hand down the toilet.

Yes, cos people don't like to
put their hand in the loo, do they?

Here's my two favourites.
Sneaking booze in anywhere.

A good condom will hold up
to six pints of alcohol.

They're going to find that
if they search you, though.

And this one, which is my favourite,
came off an American website -

you can cook a delicious meatloaf.

Yeah. In a condom? Yeah.

You put the meat in the condom
and tie it and boil it,

and it apparently, like,
boil-in-the-bag things... Wow. Yes.

Boil-in-the-bag. Yes, you could.
I know. See?

Are there things that people use
when they don't have a condom?

There was a rumour at my school

that you could use a crisp packet.

Yeah. Or a Tesco's carrier bag.
Yeah.

So clingfilm, sandwich bags,
crisp packets.

I don't know if you'd turn them
inside out, or the salt,

who gets the salty side.

THEY GROAN

Speaking of clingfilm, who suffers
from the shrink wrap effect?

Erm... Oh.

# Sexbomb. #

It's the hip-hop remake of
Honey, I Shrunk The Kids.

I love that! Shrink rap. Yes.

I'm going to give you a point,
but it's wrong.

You don't care, do you? No!

A point's a point. Let's take it!
Yeah.

So in 1995, the Reichstag building,
which is in Berlin, of course,

was wrapped in 100,000 square metres
of silver fabric,

two weeks by two artists called

Christo Javacheff and
Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon,

the married couple who worked
under the name of Christo.

The building was not
in use at the time.

Couple of people just in there...
Yeah. "Help!"

What was the artists' reason?

They described it as
"autobiographical", apparently.

There is another thing in terms
of the shrink wrap effect,

which I do think is
very interesting.

Palaeontologists have really
struggled to tell

the sex of a dinosaur
by its fossils, OK,

because pretty much
all the tissue has decayed

over the millennia and so on.

And when artists specialising in
prehistoric animals have drawn them,

they've rather assumed that the skin
is tight on the carcass, OK?

So it gives them this sort of
slightly skeletal,

slightly menacing look.

If you think about, there seem to be
no fat dinosaurs, do there? Yeah.

And lots of dinosaurs had feathers,
some might have had bulging muscles.

So you get this effect, and
there's a wonderful book

called All Yesterdays,
and it has a look at

what we might think modern-day
animals would look like if

we only had the skeletons and we
did the sort of shrink wrap effect.

So have a look at this one. Would
anybody know what that might be?

A hippo. It is a hippo. Yeah.
Absolutely. Oh, my God.

It's fascinating, isn't it? Yeah.
And it's about how

we cannot possibly know what things
might have looked like. Yeah.

Except that does look like a hippo!

But you think about hippos, they're
sort of enormous, aren't they?

I love hippos.

There's one in the zoo in Spain,
where we go on holiday,

and it's 3,000 kilograms.

I can hardly believe it!

Oh, on holiday, I can totally
believe it.

LAUGHTER

Just a little bit more tapas,
you know what it's like.

And have a look at these,
see what you think these are.

Oh, flamingos...

Ostriches? Swans.

Swans!

Actually, I think that is what
a swan's soul looks like. Yeah.

My dog fights a lot with swans
and they always win,

cos that is what's underneath those
beautiful wings. Bit scary. Yeah.

Those arms are amazing!

I saw a completely black swan
the other day. It was beautiful.

I'd never seen one before.
I think they're quite...

Well, I think they're quite rare,
I don't know.

Quite rare here. I sent photos
to all my friends,

so I hope they were rare.

"Sandi's seen a swan."

"Did it fly off with her?"
"No."

Now, how did Elon Musk
sex up the space suit?

# You sexy thing. #

When you're that rich,
everything's sexy.

Is this about actually
sexing them so that women

had the right space equipment?

Well, that certainly has been
a problem throughout

the whole of space exploration,
because space suits on the whole,

particularly the ones that you use
to go outside of the spacecraft,

they only made them in
medium and large.

They did not make any in small

and therefore no woman was able
to walk outside the spacecraft.

No small woman. Now I'm just imaging
Sandi in a massive space suit.

"I'd love to be able
to see something."

I believe the moon's out there.

"Come on, please,
are there any swans?"

You could do a puppet show

inside the helmet. Yeah.

PUNCH VOICE: "Hello, boys and
girls!"

"Argh, argh!"

When Nasa sent the very first
female astronaut into space,

Sally Ride, so it was 1983,
first of all the engineers

thought she'd need a make-up kit
and were worried about

putting that together.
And then she was preparing for

her inaugural flight that was going
to last seven days and they said,

"Um, we've got you 100 tampons,

"would that be the right number?"

Even though we speak the
same language, sometimes

we can't communicate, can we?
On the subject of bodily functions

in space suits, I know that the
first American man in space

was a guy called Alan Shepard,
and he was only supposed to be

going up for a very
short amount of time,

so there was no way for him
to urinate in his spacesuit

and the launch ended up being
delayed for five hours,

so the first American man in space
went up there in

a suit full of his own piss.

Oh! Yeah.

Anyway, back to Elon Musk, OK.

The question was about him
sexing up the spacesuit.

Is it something to do
with The Avengers?

Yes. What do you think it's
to do with The Avengers?

So, it's something to do with making
astronauts look like superheroes.

Look sexy. Yeah. Mm.
So, he got someone sexy... Yeah.

..to design it.

You're absolutely right.
It was a Hollywood costume designer,

a guy called Jose Fernandez,
who did work for franchises

like The Avengers, Gremlins, Batman.

And when he was asked to do it,

he thought SpaceX, which is the
Elon Musk aerospace company,

was a film. So he went,
"Yeah, yeah, sure."

And the goal was to make the
space suit look more like a tuxedo.

Er, because...

Who looked at Neil Armstrong

and thought he was
insufficiently formal?

"A wing collar, really?!"

And Fernandez used to design
Daft Punk's costumes.

And he used the designs for that
to help him design the helmets.

So is that it? Yeah. Oh!
But these are for walking about

inside the spaceship, these are not
for going out into space.

To be fair, the astronauts
do now look harder, better,

faster and stronger.

The earliest suit,
it was actually designed

for sea floor scavenging,
was the diving barrel,

invented in 1715 by John Lethbridge.

This is an extraordinary thing.

It pretty much is just a barrel
laid on its...

Got to just get in that! Yeah.
Just get in!

And it's got a section cut out
for the person's hands

to reach through, and you breathe

because, of course, there's a big
bubble of air trapped

inside the thing, and he was able to
reach depths of 22 metres

for up to half an hour,
and by the end of his life

he'd recovered so many valuables
from shipwrecks,

today it'd be about £20 million's
worth by going down...

And what about that is not sexy?

I know, yeah. The thing about the
designer John Lethbridge is

he's reported to have had 17
children. I think he's just trying

to get away. You could understand
that, couldn't you? Anyway, that's

the original, look at the original
drawings for the thing.

That is amazing.
Why would your mother-in-law

give you one of these?

Oh, because she's finally
ready for the home.

This is the last straw.

Happy Christmas, Sara.
All right, Mary.

Is it because she knows
I'm in training for

World's Greatest Potato Peeler?

Why do you say that?

Cos it looks like a really
difficult-to-peel potato!

OK. So, I will not be able
to say this correctly,

and my apologies
to anybody Peruvian -

pusi qachun waqachi.

It translates, the name
of this potato, to

"make your daughter-in-law cry".

That is so mean.

Yeah. So, we're talking about
the Cusco region of

the Peruvian highlands,
and a future mother-in-law gives

the bride-to-be these potatoes,

and if she can successfully
peel them...

Yes, quite right.

APPLAUSE

That is clever.

..then she will make a good wife.

I mean, how annoying is that, right?

But you'd be a lovely wife.

But there's about 4,500
varieties of potato,

of which 2,500 are in Peru.

And 25% of Peru's agricultural GDP
comes from potatoes.

I mean, it's a big industry.
Those have got "skin-on fries"

written all over them. Yeah!

There's a restaurant in Lima
called Central,

and they have 50 different ways
to prepare spuds.

My favourite is the Danish
preparation called 50-50.

Do you know what that is? No.

Yeah, 50% butter, 50% potato,
mashed together.

Anyway, they have two expressions

in their Inca language,
hok wayk'oy - I apologise -

"one cooking" and hok yanoy chika,
"one cooking so much",

and they're basically
units of time of day.

A bit like we'd use an hour,
I guess,

but they would time things
by potato boiling.

Oh! I think it's rather nice.

Some very old recipe books
have spells in them

and they think it's the same thing,
that by the time you've said

the whole spell,
the ingredients are ready.

That's a wonderful way of doing it,
isn't it? Yeah.

And particularly for oral societies.
Yeah. 13th-century Peruvians

and Bolivians were naturally
freeze-drying potatoes.

So, what they would do is they
would leave the spuds outside

exposed to warm and
then to freezing temperatures,

and then stamp out
the water in between.

It's basically instant mashed potato
that can be stored

for years without going off.

Presumably discovered by accident,
I would imagine.

Yeah, someone definitely
woke up and went,

"Ah, you know what?
I've left the potatoes out."

Yeah. "Just make it work, just make
it work." "It'll be fine!"

Does anybody remember Smash?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It goes black when it rots.
What, Smash does?

Yeah. I was a very dirty girl
at university, and also poor,

and that's how I know that.

Not all science experiments
come from wisdom. No.

It's still extremely popular,
sells over 100 million a year.

What is it? Smash. Oh, my gosh.
Have you not had it?

You know like coffee,
freeze-dried coffee? Yeah.

So you put it in a jar
and then hot water.

It's like that but it comes up
a bit like mashed potato.

There was a time, I think,
when they thought that

anything that was real could be
improved upon,

so fake everything was
the order of the day,

and that was one of the things.

There was granulated tea for
a while. Yeah. What?!

People were like, oh, teabags take
too long. Yeah.

Yes, this was the '80s.

"These teabags take too long,
I've got cocaine to do

"and industry to privatise!"

It was heady times.

But look what we achieved.

I know, right?

Who couldn't perform
without an audience?

I mean, I would say me, but
Edinburgh 2012 would, er...

You know? Me, my mum, my auntie and
the critic from The Sunday Times.

I once did a show with Helen Lederer
and Tony Slattery

and there was one person
in the audience

and we had a long debate as to
whether or not to do it or not.

Did you? We did.
It was my mother-in-law

and she'd come specially.
Afterwards she was like,

"You went through with the
performance, very impressed by that.

"Now if you can peel this..."

I was booked for a fundraiser
once for firemen

and it was in a field near
the fire station.

And no-one was in the tent,

so they made me start
without anyone in the tent,

cos they said that when people
hear that there's something

happening, they'll come and look in.
Oh, my...

And because it was a fundraiser,
I did do it,

but all that happened is that people
would periodically just look inside

the tent and go, "Oh, God!"

But no-one goes, "Oh, brilliant,
I'll go and listen

"to that mad woman
talking to herself."

"Oh, brilliant, part way through
an anecdote, count me in!" Yeah!

What was the place, darling,
we went to a festival

and there was a completely
empty field?

And I went to the toilet and
when I came back it was full.

Latitude. Latitude Festival.
There was nobody there

and I just thought, well, nobody's
coming. I went to the toilet,

came back, 5,000 people had turned
up. Alan had texted everyone -

"Toksvig's about,
and she's had two ciders."

"She's in the loo, come out now!"

"She's got that swan anecdote."

So, who couldn't perform
without an audience?

It's not a comedian.

So, we're talking about sex.

Oh, sexual performance.
So, people who like being watched,

like, as a thing.
Like camming or something.

Like what? Camming. When you...

This is my version of Smash.

Gather round children,
let me tell you.

So you get hot water...

And so some people make
their living from having

a webcam at home and people
give them money,

and they do those things in
their room.

And some of it can be quite mundane,
like folding or ironing.

It's mostly not.

But it can be absolutely anything,
and you spend time

with people just through your webcam
all day.

Where do you find this? Just...
There's a thing called the internet,

actually. It's really taken off,
Sandi.

So, I said to my son the other day,
I said, "Darling, people keep saying

"there's porn on the internet,
but I can't find it."

He said, "Mum, just type in the word
'porn'." And I said, "Oh, I don't

"think I could be that bold."
He said, "Maybe it's not for you."

Sandi, what were you putting in
before to not be able to find it?

Well, I don't know, I just thought
it just popped up all by itself.

It only pops up if you've
already been on it. Oh.

It doesn't just seek out...

Yoo-hoo!

My mother is a retired
primary school teacher

and when they brought interactive
whiteboards into the class,

she was trying to teach the children
about the Victorians,

and so went on Google Images
and typed in "Prince Albert,"

and out of this interactive
whiteboard...

Even I know what that is!

It's like, "Close, close!
How do you make it close?!"

Yeah, and then pop-ups.

Prince Albert is
the closest we've got

to somebody who couldn't perform
without an audience.

So, is it like a thing where,
for royalty, you had to prove

that you've consummated the
marriage? You had to be watched.

Yeah. It's the weirdest thing.
So, Henry VI was King of England,

1422 to 1461,
and his wife Margaret of Anjou,

they took more than eight years
to produce an heir.

And there were all sorts
of rumours that he was impotent

or that she kept refusing.
A lot of sheep going missing?

Yeah. Yeah, I think that condom
on his desk looks uncomfortable,

but, er...

They've discovered new evidence
to suggest that courtiers had

to accompany them to bed to make
sure that they did the deed.

But there also could've been
a lot of confusion,

because historically,
and sometimes even now,

when people don't explain to
children properly what sex is

and why it is,
people got married as virgins

and had no idea what they were
supposed to be doing. Mm.

Anyway, the Chamberlain of Henry VI
used to stay in the room

while they were in bed together.
On his phone.

They did finally have
a baby, Edward,

but it was thought to either be
a b*stard or a changeling.

People used to believe that
it was a fairy or

a devil child swapped in.

And then Henry had
a complete nervous breakdown.

She's very interesting, actually.
She's left to rule the kingdom alone

for the next couple of decades and
it's, in fact, her political

decisions that lead to
the w*r of Roses.

She's well worth reading about.

They were married, actually, for
a year before they met.

Did you know that? No. No!

Yeah. So, the Duke of Suffolk,
who was Henry's adviser,

went over to France, 1444,

and married Margaret in his place,

which used to be called
a proxy wedding.

That's the most Indian sh*t
I've ever heard in my life.

Well, tell me, what do you think
about this?

Because it wasn't just weddings that
were conducted in absentia.

Mary Tudor, who was the sister of
Henry VIII,

her marriage to Louis XII was
consummated by proxy.

Do you know about this? Consummated?
Consummated by proxy?! Yes.

Consummated by proxy.
So, the Duke of Longueville,

who was, at the time,
a French hostage in England,

he acted as a stand-in for Louis for
the consummation, right?

So, there's a whole lot
of spectators

and Mary gets her clothes off
and she climbs into bed.

And then the Duke takes off
his stockings,

doublet and hose from one leg,

puts his naked leg in under
the bed clothes

and touches her with it,
and everybody applauds

and that counts as having
consummated the marriage. Wow.

I don't understand straight people
at all.

Why would you stop halfway through
sleeping with someone?

The interval.

LAUGHTER

It's weirdly correct.

Ah! Ah, yes, please!

The safety curtain comes down. Yeah!

And then a little old lady comes
out to sell ice cream!

I like that, that you thought that.

But why might you have an interval?
Why might there be a...?

I mean, for snacks?
Snacks? Yes.

So, the tyranny of the eight hours
of sleep, which we have now, is

a relatively modern concept.
In the medieval period,

people had two-phase
sleeping patterns.

So they'd wake up around two,
three o'clock in the morning

and they would use that midway break
for praying, for eating, for sex,

for studying, for writing poetry or
whatever. That was the part of your

day where you actually got to do
anything that was just
for pleasure. Yeah.

Because you worked so hard
and you had to work with daylight.

My dad sort of does that. He gets...
He'll go to bed quite early

and then wakes up about three,

then quite often takes my mum
a cup of tea, and I said to her,

"Doesn't it really annoy you that
you're being woken up?"

And she went,
"No, I always like a tea."

ALL LAUGH

But it was called
split sleeping

and it was very common, sort of,
17th to the 19th century,

and then it kind of faded away.

But there's a new thing that has
sometimes been suggested,

polyphasic sleeping.
There was an architect

and inventor called
Buckminster Fuller,

and he managed to
reduce his sleep in total -

there he is -
to two hours in every 24.

It's really bad for you.
It's very bad for you.

He did this by having a half-hour
nap whenever he got tired,

so every six hours he'd have
a half-hour nap.

Yeah, and he absolutely talked
gibberish and had mice

and cats in his peripheral vision,
but other than that,

he was doing really well. So,
Buckminster Fuller believed that...

So, particularly in the 1940s,
that if people slept less,

it would shorten the w*r,
because thinkers would be able

to spend more time thinking and so
on. He thought it would shorten

the w*r? Because clever people would
be able to come up with

a better plan. He had a system,
which he called Dymaxion,

which is a sort of
portmanteau word -

dynamic, maximum and tension -

and some of the stuff is brilliant,
darling. If you don't know him,

there's a design he did for a car,
which I still, if this car

was available, I would
absolutely buy it.

I don't think it ever got made.
There. Is that it?

Yeah. The Dymaxion car.

You would look adorable in that
car, Sandi.

Isn't it great? Yeah.
I think it's fantastic.

It's still better, I think,
to have the wheels at the corners.

The idea was to maximise efficiency.
He gave up after two years,

because nobody else was awake when
he wanted to talk to them.

Doesn't your brain clean itself when
you're asleep?

That is exactly the problem,
darling,

and it interrupts your circadian
rhythms, your body clock,

and it can really affect
your health.

You become psychotic
really quickly. Yeah.

And the thing with modern people,
especially with stress,

is that people feeling tired
all the time,

it's like, you're not crazy, you
are, your body isn't actually

getting rest when you need it.

Well, Salvador Dali was always
worried that he was too tired in

the afternoons and he didn't like
wasting time napping,

so he used to do this thing. He used
to sit in an armchair with his arms

hanging over the side like that and
he had a heavy metal key in his hand

and an upturned plate on the floor.
He could go like that

and then go like that until he
nodded off

and dropped the thing
and it landed on the plate.

And he said it was enough,

that jolt, to give him a bit more
energy. Hm.

Is that how the clock ended up being
bent? That's exactly how, yeah.

But micro sleeps,
that's exactly what they say,

is that even if you can't have a
nap, just that exact little

thing that he's describing,
that little doze.

The thing that I like is

the idea that that jolt dates back
to sleeping in trees.

So you'd wake up with a start
to grab the branch.

So you don't fall out. You don't
fall out of the tree. Yeah.

My kids, when we went to Latitude,

we all stayed in the caravan, and
they all fell out of their bunk beds

within 20 minutes of one another.
Did they?

And two of them were low down,

but my daughter was up high,
and we watched her fall out.

And it took ages.

LAUGHTER

Anyone know who that is on
the right? Is that Descartes?

It is Descartes, absolutely right.

Oh, you're a clever pants,
aren't you?

You just knew all of
the facts about sleep!

But they were boring.
That was very impressive.

You're both really showing up my
four GCSEs here.

Anyway, Descartes,
the philosopher Rene Descartes.

He would always sleep until midday,

and it's something we think now
called delay sleep phase type.

It's a sleep disorder that throws
off your circadian rhythm.

Lots of people experience
it temporarily,

so students pulling
an all-nighter, for example.

But one in 500 people have it as a
permanent condition and they just

don't seem to be in the right frame
with everybody else.

But if... Isn't that sort of all
relative, right?

Like, it's not the right frame for
everybody else,

but it is the right frame for him.
So, I don't know,

why does it need to be
a medical condition?

Why can't he just be like,
"I love sleeping in"?

Yeah. No, I think it's absolutely
fine, unless you're meeting somebody

for breakfast or something,
you're right. It's got to be

the thing that works for you.
"I sleep, therefore I am."

As they say in advertising,
sex sells, right?

Yes!

KLAXON

No!

Darn. No!

"No!" is correct.
So there was a study in 2020,

they asked 200 Italian men
and women to watch ads

and see if sex really does sell.

And apart from a very, very small
group of men who were identified in

further analysis as having "higher
hostile sexism", the participants...

They sound fun.
Yes! Whoo!

They should do like a really quick
test, where you can just, like,

dip something in their drink...
Yeah.

People don't respond better
to sexualised ads.

Yeah, because the theory has always
been, not that you would

automatically buy a product, but
you're more likely to notice the ad

and spend more time with your eyes
looking at it, and then the ad can

then do its secret work while you're
looking. Except that the truth is,

people forget to notice what
the ad is for. Sure.

And just go, "Oh, sex!" Yes,
exactly. "I remember sex!" Yes.

Usually a pair of women's legs
would go across

the screen, do you remember those
days? In nearly every ad,

a little woman walked and then
you'd go... Yeah.

And then it'd just go, "Smash."

Women on the whole reacted more

negatively and they didn't care
for it. Yeah.

It made them less likely
to want to buy the product,

but the men were unaffected
either way,

it didn't impact on their buying
intentions whatsoever.

But the brain instinctively is
distracted by the sexualisation

and doesn't pay attention to
the product.

Anybody remember Cadbury's Flake
adverts were rather risque?

In the bath? Yeah. I did... At my
first-ever stand-up comedy set,

one of my hilarious routines...

..was I had a Flake and I took it
out of the wrapper

and I put it in a condom.
Right.

And at the time, if you remember,
in the '80s,

there were a lot
of ads about condoms,

because people were extremely
terrified of A*DS, rightly.

And so I put the Flake in
the condom,

wrapped it back up
and then peeled the Flake

and it had a condom on,
that was funny.

That got a laugh. But then -

this is where I had a lot
to learn - I ate it.

Oh! You ate the condom?

I tried to and I couldn't
swallow it,

I chewed it for a bit.

And then the laughter kind of went
a bit, "Ooh." Yeah.

Did you find that on the internet

when you searched other things you
can do with a condom, Sandi?

They stopped doing it after about
2010. It was polarising opinion.

Yeah, chocolate adverts who...

..when they're advertising
to women to eat chocolate

for pleasure, shouldn't use models.

They should be realistic.
I think that's the thing,

because you never think,
"Oh, that looks nice,

"I'll do that when I'm in the bath."
Yeah.

I want someone crying, eating a Mars
bar, and me going,

"I could get onboard with that."
Yeah.

"I'm so lonely. Ow, ow, ow! But now
it's all right." That kind of thing.

I don't know if you remember, there
was a woman called Janis Levy,

she was a former Flake girl,
and she hit the news again in 2008,

because it was reported that she'd
died. And they published her

obituary and nobody was more
surprised than she was,

because she was perfectly fine

and she'd been confused
with another Flake girl,

Marilyn Crossley,
who'd passed away.

But it's like, it's like when
a person of colour,

they get... whoever's putting the,
you know, the assembly together

of the article, uses the wrong
photograph of someone.

I've been Paul Chowdhry twice.

Yeah, I mean, but, like,
so literally...

I've been Jen Brister once.

But it's so crazy,
but because it's different jobs,

that person goes, "Here's my article
about Ahir Shah,"

and someone else goes,
"Brown man. Got it."

It's very nice that you think that
they're Googling "brown man".

I would have gone for a shorter
and more aggressive word.

Do you remember Abercrombie & Fitch
used to have a topless man

outside their shops
to try and help them sell?

And the people inside were dancing.
Yeah.

Sandi, did you ever go inside?

They were dancing but they weren't
allowed to speak to you.

So, if you went over and said,

"Oh, do you have this in, like,
a proper size for an adult?"

And they'd be like,
"Hey, I'm not here to chat."

Anyway, they're starting

to phase out these sexualised
adverts. Good.

Like the quote from the Austrian
economist, Joseph Schumpeter, who

said that a picture of the prettiest
girl in the world will,

in the long run, prove powerless to
sell a bad cigarette.

That's very good. I think that's
impressive. I like that.

But they've historically sexed
things up anyway.

So there's a thing in their company
history that their famous brand

Hollister was named after
its founder, John M Hollister,

and he was an adventurer who settled
in California

and he created the label in 1922,

and that's what's on the logos,
the date and so on.

The whole company started in 2000.

There's no such person.
You know the Moleskine notebooks,

they're sold as the notebooks of,
I don't know,

Hemingway, Picasso and Chatwin and
so on? Yes.

They were founded in 1997.

What?! OK, now I am angry.

I don't give a sh*t about Hollister,
but I've got a lot of Moleskines.

OK, Haagen-Dazs, the name
Haagen-Dazs doesn't mean anything.

Apparently it was supposed
to sound Danish to imply,

I don't know, sort of high-quality
craftsmanship, but that umlaut...

It's a made-up word? ..we don't have
a letter like that

A with an umlaut on top,
we don't have it.

But it was created by New Yorkers
living in Minneapolis.

What's so special about
your bottom?

I think I might know this.

Oh!

Are they unique? Like a fingerprint.
Yeah, in what way? Ooh!

It's why people sit on photocopiers,

because it's like a fingerprint.

It is, exactly. You're giving away
too much personal data if you sit on

a photocopier. Yeah, yeah. That is
absolutely correct.

I need to make some phone calls,
can we pause the...?

So, scientists at Stanford
University have developed

a smart toilet,

which is able to work out who's
sitting on it by taking

a scan of your bottom.

Oh, whoa!

And apparently your a**l print
is unique.

So it's got a little camera inside
and what it does is,

it scans the a**l lining,
also known as the anoderm.

OK, Sandi, you've told me how,
now tell me why.

Because if you'd know who's going in
the toilet,

what you can do is you can analyse
the excretion,

so, for the quality,
the timing, the speed and so on,

and it is a very, very good way
of developing

an individual health profile
for each user.

Will it also, like, tell them off if
he's on there for too long?

Yeah. Will it just be like an alarm,
like, "That's 45 minutes"?

What happens if you hit the lens?
Yeah.

I stayed with my father-in-law

a couple of years ago
and I went into the toilet

and it was all dark,
and as I approached the bowl,

it lit up and he has disco lights in

the toilet that change.

And I had to buy one, I've now got
one that hooks into the toilet.

And that's why there's always 5,000
people every time you go to the loo.

This toilet is still in
the experimental stages

and the first thing is that people
would have to be comfortable with

having a scan of their arse every
time they excused themselves. Yeah.

It would have to be really sold as,
like, why this is beneficial.

Well, the Advanced Institute

of Industrial Technology in
Tokyo are developing

a car seat that recognises
the bum print,

if you like,
of the driver in the seat

and it won't let the car start if
you are somebody who doesn't match

the bum of the person who owns it.

What if you put on a lot of weight?

Then you'd have to walk everywhere,
you'd lose the weight,

back into your car.
Back into the car!

But the car that I drive,

it knows whether it's me or my
wife driving.

But I think it's to do with

the phone connecting up in
some way. OK.

Yeah. Or that she can see over
the steering wheel.

LAUGHTER

And with that,
it's time for the pain in

the bottom that we call
General Ignorance.

Fingers on buzzers, please.

What shouldn't athletes do

the night before
a big sporting event?

INTRO TO 'LET'S GET IT ON'

Have sex.

KLAXON

No, there's no evidence that having
sex affects your performance,

and, in fact, if anything it
probably makes you more relaxed.

Lots of comics have that as well,
before a big gig,

because it's relaxing.

Are you shagging pre-gigs?

No, not immediately before,

like, "Ladies and gentlemen,

please welcome..."

LAUGHTER

No, but like, say, the afternoon of,
or, you know...

The late Paul Hunter,
the professional snooker player,

was very much down in
the interval of the final of

a major tournament,
and afterwards said that,

"Oh, yeah, did plan B
during the interval,"

because he came back from really far
behind and won.

And him and his fiancee later
revealed that B stood for Bonk.

And they just shagged in
the interval, and he was like,

"Right. Ready to go and play
some snooker!"

What's interesting - they've done
lots of studies on this -

they've done almost all
the studies on male athletes.

The key thing is that you're
well rested.

Drinking, not a good idea,

taking drugs, staying up late -
none of those things.

And the wonderful old manager,

Casey Stengel, of
the New York Yankees,

he says, "It's not the sex that
wrecks these guys,

"it's staying up all night
looking for it."

Yeah, I think that's where it
came from, is that was, especially

with teams of men, when they were
told, "Oh, it's bad luck to do it
beforehand,"

that is what they meant is,

don't go out, stay in your hotel
room, be rested for tomorrow.

Oh. Yeah. I mean, apparently the
Olympic Village is, like, you know.

Yeah, loads of STDs,
they have to have special doctors.

2016, the Olympics in
Rio de Janeiro,

they gave away 450,000
free condoms.

Yeah, just... Were they
the old-fashioned ones?

Yeah, it was a little cage.
There was some connection made,

wasn't there,
between a build-up of testosterone

and a kind of release
of aggression in competitors?

That's what I heard about boxers.
Yeah. Yes.

Foreplay only improves match play.

When were the first same-sex
unions in England?

# Sexbomb... #

Er, it's going to be something
a bit like 1167 or something.

Not quite as early as that.

1168!

LAUGHTER

So, it's the golden age of piracy.
Oh.

It was a practice
called matelotage,

and it was a union between
two male pirates

and they would share their wealth.

They often exchanged rings,
gold rings,

to symbolise their union,

they would put a clause
to pass all their belongings on,

their inheritance,
if the person died.

You get it about the 17th century.

And on paper it looks like
it's about economics,

but there is a book, can I just say,

by historian B R Burg, called
Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition,

and he said it's a relationship with
clearly h*m* characteristics,

and that's despite the fact that the
death penalty was in place at the

time for h*m*. There's a
famous case of this,

John Swann and Robert Culliford,

who'd sailed under Captain Kidd,

and, I mean, they sailed
for ages before settling down -

I think it's quite sweet - in
neighbouring homes in Madagascar.

Since the days of piracy,

same-sex couples have been
saying, "Aye, aye do."

Who introduced Britons to

the idea of clean-shaven
nether regions?

Oh. Is it Brazil?

KLAXON

Can I just say,
I shared that picture in confidence?

LAUGHTER

That big toe looks like
a sort of model for

a sourdough pizza or something, it's
very unpleasant. I'm right here!

Sorry! We've mentioned before,
darling, that we know that

the Brazilian wax was actually
invented in New York in the 1990s.

Oh, curses! Oh! Was it
something that happened, like,

because people wanted

to prevent, like, lice
and stuff like that?

OK, so it's really interesting,

because it's such a long time ago.
When Julius Caesar -

this is how far back we're going -
invaded Britain -

so we're talking about 55, 54 BC -
he described

the inhabitants as completely
clean-shaven from head

to toe, save for the head,

so they kept their hair long
and the upper lip and so on.

And there is a Welsh clergyman

and historian called
Gerald of Wales,

and in 1188 he confirmed,

"Britons were shaving their bodies
and even their heads,

"to allow them to run more freely
through forest groves."

Yeah, my pubes really slow me down.
Yeah.

Because they catch. It's one of
my big regrets, actually.

You could have been Zola Budd.
I know. Yeah.

Could be like Velcro on nettles.
Yeah.

He said that the Welsh were
"most particular about shaving

"the lower parts of the body."
What did they shave with?

Because it's difficult enough
nowadays with fancy things.

Well, if you have a look at the
stuff that's been discovered from

the ancient Egyptians,
I mean, there are proper gold

and copper razors that have been
found in their tombs.

Yeah, but they still look like
you're going to have
a lot of rash and cuts.

Well, around 2018, there was
an extraordinary step forward,

which you just think,
"Really? 2018?"

The razor company Billie
made news by becoming

the first women's hair removal ad

to show actual body hair
being removed.

And if you think about it, every
advert, pretty much... Hm.

Yeah, is a shaved leg being shaved.

..is an already shaved leg having
another shave.

Yeah. And then it makes you feel
like a real freak, like,

"Oh, I actually want it for hair."
Hmm.

Why should you be careful about
hair removal if you're a cyclist?

Oh, because you're supposed
to think that you are supposed

to do hair removal
to be more aerodynamic,

that's quite popular,
isn't it, with cyclists?

Hm. Or swimmers.
Is it now considered doping?

No, you actually need it,
it protects against friction,

and it also helps to remove sweat
from the rider's skin.

Oh. But swimmers remove their hair,
don't they?

And their coats. Yeah.
Yeah, that's fair.

Yeah. And boots, yeah.

Phelps still wearing his coat
and boots. "Take your coat off!"

"Duffle, get the duffle!"
"Take your coat off!"

"Yeah. Leave the hat,
leave the hat."

"Just leave it there, it
doesn't matter where."

Brazilians should really
be called the Welsh wax.

How often do men think about sex?

OK, I'm going to say...
# You sexy thing... #

..six times a day.
That's my estimate.

No? SUZI: I'm going to say every
three seconds. Wow!

AHIR: I'm going to say somewhere
between

six times a day
and every three seconds.

Three seconds is so fast that you
couldn't even have finished about

the time you were just thinking
about it before you started again.

I mean, you'd never get any sleep,
I think is the thing. Yeah.

No, and there is no time then
to think about football.

But presumably there isn't
that much difference between

women and men with this.
Well, there is a slight difference.

So, the Ohio State University did
a study on this,

the researchers in 2012,
they gave out,

you know those sort of clickers,
there's like a golf tally.

Like, "You can come in, you can come
in, you can come in, we're full."

Yeah, exactly, one of those.
They had three things on it

and you had to click one for
sex and one for food

and one for sleep, so there were
three different sort of buttons

on it. On average, men thought about
sex 19 times a day,

only once more than they thought
about food. On the whole,

women thought about sex
ten times a day,

but food 15 times.
But the interesting thing,

the best predictor of who logged

the most frequent thoughts about sex
were people who were

the most comfortable
with their sexuality.

So, the more comfortable they were
about sex,

the more they thought about it.
Like all of these people,

terribly anxious about it, I think,
terribly anxious about themselves.

Ah, the bookish little teenagers.

They did a different study in
Germany, participants,

male and female, were texted
seven times a day

asking what they'd been thinking
about recently. In the daytime,

people thought about coffee,
checking emails, watching TV

much more than they thought
about sex. And sex only became

a dominant thought somewhere around
midnight. But even then...

Who's still awake?
Yeah. I know, right?

I'm in the first phase
of my sleep at that point.

And even then, it came second to

the thought that, "I wish I was
asleep," so, you know. Oh.

If you claim you think about sex
every three seconds,

you're statistically an outlier,
possibly an outright liar.

Now that we've put that to bed,
it's time for the scores.

In last place, locked out of the
bedroom with minus 16,

oh, it's Alan.

APPLAUSE

Locked out of the bedroom?!

In third place, with minus six,
it's Suzi.

APPLAUSE

In sloppy second,
but with a positive seven, Ahir.

APPLAUSE

And the winner with a full eight
points, it's Sara.

APPLAUSE

My thanks to Ahir,
Sara, Suzi and Alan.

And I leave you with this

sex-related sign-off
from Tracey Ullman.

"As I get older, I just prefer
to knit." Goodnight.