07x17 - QI VG: Series G Compilation - Part 1

[bunniefuu]

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

You know when you find a bee
and it's crawling on its last legs?
I rescue them. Give it honey.

It's the only thing they eat. It
makes sense when you think about it.

Yeah, yeah!

No point just talking to it.
Give it honey. They're very much
a one recipe species.

I'm intrigued because I generally
give it the sole of my shoe, but...

Not to be harsh, but you know.
You'd tread on a struggling,
crawling bee?

As opposed to rehabilitate it?!

I like honey. I have it
on my porridge, you m*rder*r.

We depend on bees.
We need the bees.

So in future I should lure it back?
Do I get a syringe of honey?

How do I feed it? A teaspoon
of honey. Don't tread on it.

You should be arrested.
LAUGHTER

You should be locked up...in a hive.

Isn't it true, though,
that a bee in his entire lifetime
makes a tiny amount of honey?

I mean, just the minutest amount.
But there's lots of them. You don't
have to give much honey to this bee

before the world is making
a net loss.

That's true.

It's useless. If you only get
one teaspoon of honey
from a whole bee's lifetime

and every time
it takes a teaspoon and a half,
suddenly there's no honey at all!

This is more honey than this bee
has seen in its life. It's insulting
it, apart from anything else.

Like showing a very tired mason
a whole cathedral!
LAUGHTER

May...
APPLAUSE

Well, let's say you're
in between Alan and Dara.

Like Alan you want to help the bee,
but like Dara you also want
to k*ll, k*ll, k*ll,

what you can do is get
what I would term too much honey
and you see the bee

and you pour molten honey... No!
Hear me out. OK.

And then you watch him die a slow...
Yes, I carry on with NO!

I've now heard you out. Yes.
And it's no better.

That's much worse than what I did!

You're being humane? Yeah! You're
not. You get a kick out of it.

Drowning the bee ironically
in honey...

You can't drown bees!
"Is this too much honey?"

DAVID:
"Not so keen on the honey now,
are you?"

You may try to drown bees,
but I will follow you and...
It wasn't him wanting to drown them.

Yes, it was! He's a bee drowner.
I'd smash them with a hammer.

He wanted to tread on it.
If there's a bee in a bath,
I don't go, "Get the shoe!"

Splishy! Splashy! Very good.

Well, thank you for that...
interesting, fierce and,
I think, productive debate.

I did one of those Royal Command
Performances many years ago.

Anthony Newley wrote a song
for the end that we had to do.

It had the gorgeous line,
"At the London Palladium,

"the P-A-double L-adium,

"the super starry stadium
that showbiz calls home."

Ah, Newley. Brilliant.
# The London Palladium... # I'd
throw myself in the orchestra pit.

"Who's with me?"

And you do that thing...
Is there a word for it musically?
BLEEP ..Yeah!

For what I'm about to mention?

# That showbiz calls home
Have a banana!

# That showbiz calls home
And I love it!

# That showbiz calls home! #
What is that?

The annoying coda. Yeah.

I don't know what we're talking
about any more. I've lost track.

Who's this Newley man?
Anthony Newley. Anthony Newley.

He used to sing with 100 syllables.
# Aa-oh-aaah... #

And David Bowie stole his voice,
of course. Yeah, exactly!

And he was the first... Well,
not the first, but a very early
Artful Dodger.

He was one of the first.
# Aa-oh-aah... #

One of the most successful British
showbiz people of all time.
Won Oscars, Tonys, wrote Goldfinger.

There's a story, because
Tony Newley told me himself...

Ah-oh-aah...!

You haven't got a tie on, Danny.
He won the Oscar for Goldfinger
in '64 or '65.

And he was up against Henry Mancini.
And he was at the Oscars.
He said, "Dan, if you ever win..."

I'm doing Max Bygraves! "Dan, if you
ever win an Oscar, and you will..."

He said the first thing you want to
do is go straight to the toilets
and look at yourself in the mirror.

He said, "I was in the toilets
and I'd just won for Goldfinger
and Henry Mancini came in

"and he said, 'Where did you get
that melody? It's brilliant.'"

"Thank you!" Then he thought, "Oh!
He won last year for Moon River."

# Moon river... #

"I just won for..."
# Goldfinger! #

But Henry Mancini, gentleman
that he was, just left him with that.

He wrote the MUSIC for Goldfinger?
Yeah. I thought you meant the film.

Would you like a cup of cocoa, dear?

If cryogenics takes off, it might
benefit you to commit suicide. Why?

Die young, then get brought back
looking the same. Do it again...

True. So you get a couple of years,
top yourself, get frozen again.

Why not just freeze yourself?
Why top yourself AND freeze yourself
in the hope they'd cured suicide?

Some day medical science will have
moved on to have found some way

of dealing with massive g*nsh*t
wounds to the head! Then I'll score
because I'll look great...

Is the idea that every decade
you have a couple of good years?

Why would you even do that?

Then come back in 100 years' time,
see what it's like, top yourself,
come back in another 100...

You're not getting my point!
LAUGHTER

You started it with serial suicide!

Why do you have to top yourself
first?! Because you get frozen when
you're dead! Not when you're alive.

They freeze you when you're alive.
When you're alive?! Yeah.

How can you be so shocked?
"When you're alive?!
k*ll yourself first!"

There's got to be a moment of death
to quickly whip your brain out,
like with people's organs.

I don't think they're allowed
to freeze you when you're alive.

They say it's so you can wake up
in the future, but, in fact,
the freezing would k*ll you.

No, I'm thinking... But with
Alan's plan you'd already be dead.

And then they take your brain out -
that's something else he said -

and 100 years on they put the brain
back in. "You'd look great."

LAUGHTER

It's going to work!

Why would you not want
Private Gwilym Jenkins
of the Royal Welsh Regiment

guarding your rose bushes?

Sean? He's a goat.

Is the right answer!

APPLAUSE
Very good.

Very good.

Yep. Oh, he's a beauty. You knew
that or it was an inspired guess?

No, I knew that.
Various regiments were conjoined
a few years ago. And there he is.

Isn't he fine? Looks like Satan.
From the royal herd at Windsor.
He's... What?

He said he looks like Satan.

Satan in the '70s, you know.
He does a bit. You're right.

There's a regiment in Norway where
there's a general who's a penguin.

You're right again!
He was honoured.

He was honoured in Edinburgh, of
all places. Or inspected the troops.

A penguin did?! He wanders up and
down, with a thing round his neck...
Looking up the kilts.

Could be. No.
What was this thing round his neck?

They couldn't pin a medal on him.
Some seal of office.

A seal as well?!
LAUGHTER

Wow. We've got a seal, a penguin...
But other regimental mascots
include... The Irish Guards?

Leprechaun. A big dog.

BILL: A goldfish.

One of those Irish dogs.

A wolfhound? Thank you.
An Irish wolfhound, indeed.

The Argyll and Sutherland
Highlanders? A big cow! A haggis!

No. Pekinese.

A tiger! A big tiger! Arrr!

An Argyll and Sutherland terrier.
No, it's further...

It's about the same size as
the Irish wolfhound and the goat.

The bonsai panther!

What's up north of Scotland?
Er, Wales!

Shetland pony! A Shetland pony.
Well done, Alan, there.

And the Worcestershire and Sherwood
Foresters? A bottle of sauce.

A wood louse! A man dressed
as a bottle of sauce.

With his face out like that.

Chaffinch. Not a...!

I read that the current
North Korean leader...

Kim Jong-Il. The Beloved Leader.
He commands, Kim, Kimmy,

he demands that his duvets are
filled with the softest down
known to man.

And the softest down, apparently,
known to man

is the chin of a sparrow.

And he has 150,000 sparrow chins
stuffed into his duvet. No...

Do they shave a live sparrow
or do they k*ll a sparrow?

Just a tickle under the chin.
Chuck it under the chin.

Stephen fills his duvet with
the softest man known to sparrows.
LAUGHTER

Ah, I do. I do.

Who painted this picture?

"Aaaaow!"
Yes?

Van GOFF.
HOOTER

We're after...

I'm going to go Van GOTH.

HOOTER

Wha...?! Van GO! Van GO?

HOOTER

"Here's Jimmy!"

Cezanne.

LAUGHTER

At least you don't lose points
for that. Van h*.

Closer... Van HEUGH. What?

Van HEUGH. Now, listen. We can
help you out with that name.

Jolly close, Jack. Were you aware
there's a Dutch version of QI? Yes.

Would you like to see
the presenter? Not really.

He will tell us
how the name is pronounced.
Pretty good. Sho shexy.

Come on!
The correct Dutch pronunciation
is Vincent Van HOCH.

But, please, don't try this at home.

There you are. What would he know?
He wears more makeup than you,
Stephen!

Let's have the next word.
And it's..."grog blossom".

Would you like to explain
what it is? This is actually

the kind of mould that you get
on the inside of a barrel of beer

that you have to clean out
before you use it again. Phill?

I'd like to do it in the style
of the out of work actors they had
on Call My Bluff.

They'd do their definition
in an effort to beg for work.

FLAMBOYANTLY
Imagine if you will...

..a lone figure walking
across Hampstead Heath...

..the sun glinting in his very eyes,

for he is making his way back
from an evening at the inn

where he has partaken of mead

and other lascivious beverages.
LAUGHTER

Adorning the chin
of said stout fellow

are pimples,
for they betray his excesses,

and these, at the time,
were known as...

Marty Fitch - 01 287 469.

Available for panto.

..grog blossom.

Bravo! Excellent.

The true understanding of evolution
shows that nature is horrific.

The Victorians hated it because
they loved countryside, birdsong...

Mrs Alexander's All Things Bright
And Beautiful. Yes. Instead it is
a vicious struggle for survival...

All animals are hungry and afraid
and die before they get old
and it's a miserable, hard life.

Unless they live in zoos. A life
they wouldn't expect in the wild.

Maybe they could let them
out of the zoo for a little bit
and let them back in the circus.

Mmm... I miss a dog pushing a pram.
LAUGHTER

You... Cirque du Soleil
is all very well,

but an elephant counting.
You're pitching yourself in a
tailcoat, tights and a top hat,

welcoming everybody to
Circus X Factor Call Me A Nancy,
aren't you? No! You are.

You'd have to do the elephant's
back story. "This is
the elephant's last chance

"for a career in show business."
The elephant in tears.

"He's doing this for his dead
grandfather," and the elephant
staring at a big pile of ivory.

LAUGHTER

You are a sick puppy.
Give it some piano keys!

The band's about to play for him
and they go, "These?"

Tactless.

"Yeah, my grandad
was in show business as well."

Oddly enough,
it seems that both girls and boys
will take more pain from a woman.

They did calibrated tests of putting
fingers in a clamp and...
What?! ..both men and...

Who volunteers for that?
But you get to keep the clamp.

Now it all becomes clear.
You pay students. You say, "Say stop
when you can't take it any more."

In both women and men's cases,
women could turn it further.

Oddly enough, if there are
pleasant pictures on the wall
you can take more pain.

That's what art does for us all.
There's a wonderful thing
called Stendhal Syndrome.

Oh, yes... The idea that people are
so overwhelmed by a piece of art,
they faint. Did we cover that?

No...
LAUGHTER

That's the beauty. We can do
the questions again and again.

I go, "That rings a bell."

Also painkillers have different
effects. Right up until the 1990s,

drug companies did not test
painkillers on women.
Because they complain, anyway.

Oh, Jack, you're making friends[!]
I fear... I think Jack
better suffer for that one.

Actually, women's ability to take
different levels of pain alters

in different stages of the menstrual
cycle, so they said women were not
a reliable test of painkillers...

We're all over the place.
..but then the American FDA
said, "This is not good enough

"and you must factor it in."
I've just come back from America.

They have fantastic drugs.
You can buy shedloads.

I was in a chemist and I ended up
not in the haemorrhoid section,
but in the haemorrhoid aisle.

Yes, it is astonishing.
The size of those Walgreens
and huge pharmacies. Unbelievable.

Absolutely staggering.
Is it embarrassing walking down
the haemorrhoid aisle?

It's bad enough if you have to ask
for the stuff. Apparently.

"He likes to walk down
the haemorrhoid aisle." Yeah!

Oh, dear.

What about exactly an hour?
Where did the hour...?

Why did they decide on an hour?
What was that? Why an hour?

Why not make half an hour an hour?


Very factorisable. Divisible
by 2 and 3 and 4 and 6 and 8.

So is 10. It's only divisible
by 1, 2, 5 and itself.
Only in one dimension.

If you go into another dimension,
you can do anything you like.

Unfortunately, we weren't
in another dimension, Bill. Oh!
I'm sorry.

Why was it important to divide 24
by 8? No, it was to have
as divisible a system as possible.

Why not have 100? If you want to,
you can have decimalised time.

I'm going to make my own.
I've got to cross two of these off!

Yeah. Let's have a vote!
Which ones to cross off?



Well, last night...
You can't have 1 to 10. We'll
never have elevenses ever again.

Nineses! Nineses?! Nineses!

So how many hours are in your day?


Nice and simple. Call it a hoorar.
Right, OK.

A hoorar. A hoor!
A hoor?! Hoor!

A strumpet! That is a wh*re.


Aye!

It was 12 hours because the
Babylonians... What do they know?

They had a base 12 counting system.

But we have 10 fingers. Yes.
And 10 toes.

And you could count off the sections
of time by using your digits.

What time is it?
One, two...

Three and a half.
Two minutes past four. What would
that be, then? About six? Yeah.

There could be a line
in merchandisable metric clocks.

It's the Bill Bailey QI metric
clock. Metric clock. Yeah.
That's fine. That'll do me.

We've just done an hour
on that topic. By whose system?

I think you'll find it's an hour
and a bit. That can only mean
one thing - time to move on!

Where does the extra square
in this diagram comes from?

Those two are the same size.

But there's a white square
of bits missing. How can that be?

Because some of the triangles...
Have a look at it happening.

That one goes there,
that one goes there and there.

Like so, like so, like so.

And now there's more space in there.
Yeah. But that can't be possible,
can it?

Yet my eyes tell me it is.

It's not even longer? No.
It's the same.

Yup, there it is.

It is a cheat.
That's witchcraft! It is.

Rather appropriately, it was
a magician who discovered this.

It's five blocks high,
the same number of blocks long.
It's a very small, subtle cheat.

The hypotenuse seem to be the same,
but they are curved, not straight.

The red triangle has a ratio of 5:2,
the blue is 8:3,

so the two triangles are not
similar. One has a bigger area?

Exactly.
One has a slightly dipped line.
The eye assumes they're straight,

and it's puzzled by that gap.
Anyway, we thought you'd like that.
It's quite interesting, isn't it?

Curry's Paradox. Simply a trick.
The gap appears as the hypotenuse
is imperceptibly bent.

Curry's Paradox. That's nice.
Should you buy the insurance?

LAUGHTER

Or just risk it?

There are the lovely Osmonds.
Aren't they lovely?

What teeth! They were rubbish.

Apart from Little Jimmy Osmond,
a long-haired lover from Liverpool.

And Big Graham Osmond,
the one they kept in the attic.

Who had terrible teeth.
He had one massive one.
And he wrote all the songs.

He groaned them into a tin can.
It was connected
by a piece of string.

Aaaeiiee!

# Wild horses...nyah! Nyah! #

# Crazy horses! #

HOWLING

You're very bad.
# Paper roses! #

"What was that, Graham?"
"Aa-oooh!"

Behave.

Pull yourselves together at once.

The Church...

of Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints...

What a great idea! Aaa-ooyah!

That's a great idea for Dr Who.
Dr Who goes into the attic

and finds the elderly secret brother
of the Osmonds! And that's
how they k*ll off David Tennant!

Aaargh!

That's the Christmas show.
Played by Bill Bailey!

I was buying ties the other day...
I thought you had them selected.

They said, "Do you want them
in a bag or a box?" I said, "Bag,
though if I'd asked for a box,

"you could have said
you spent the day tie boxing."

I know... And we laughed[!]

This is the gold you miss if you're
not on the street where Stephen is.

All right, I regret it.
At the time... It's very nice.

I bet you when he came round...
LAUGHTER

When he picked himself
back up off the floor...

"Shall I still put them in the box,
sir?

"Any more of them?"

All right! Come up.

It was a light remark...
"Oh, I've gone!"

Yeah.

"Oh, I wish you came in here
more often."

Why did it take 300 years to give
the giant tortoise a scientific
name? A scientific name?

i.e. the Latin name.
It turned out to be Geochelone...

Is it because they thought that was
pretty good, giant tortoise?
We'll leave it with that.

No, I... I was going to say
something that now is unusable.

I'm going to have to say it now.
Go on. Get on with it, man.
They thought...

LAUGHTER

Better be good. They thought it was
a normal tortoise, but closer.

That's so sweet.
But I couldn't get that concept.

Will it be further away or...?
Further away would be a minute one.

Would they mistake a quite far away
normal one for a miniature one?
Or would...?

The thing that you're saying is
that the tortoise...

They go that way.

If there was a tortoise over there
that was giant, but I for some reason
thought it was there,

I wouldn't think it was giant.
"It's just one there.

"Oh, my God! It's over there
and it's massive!" On a huge beach
with no other points of reference.

That's not the reason.
Are they particularly litigious?

"If you give me a name,
I will sue you."

No, it wasn't that. They had another
property that was most unfortunate
for them. The tortoises did?

Yeah. They were edible.
They were SO edible. Anyone...

Anyone who saw one couldn't stop
to think of a name for it?
They had to eat it straightaway?

One of those... I don't know
what they're called. Just get one.
They're very good.

There's no Latin name
for pistachio nuts, either.

No-one can be bothered.
"Shut up with your Latin. Eat them!"

No Latin name for Maltesers.

LAUGHTER

It's kind of true. None of them
made it to London, to Europe.

"This time, THIS time,
we're going to take it."

"Leave it. We're taking it back."

There's a ferry coming in to Dover
and a bloke going...

Leaving the door
where the tortoise was kept.

"All right, look, there's nine.
We'll eat eight. But absolutely..."

And everyone's looking at it
and going, "Come on..."

The sea's becalmed, for days on end,
and there's one tortoise left.

"Come on, sir. Let's just go back
and get some more."

And the moment after they've eaten
that last tortoise,

they think, "We are..."
LAUGHTER

"I'm too full."

Even Darwin on his last voyage,

there were dozens of them.
He collected every species
in the world and ate that one.

They did. "We've done all the
butterflies, all the beetles..."

The only descriptions compare them
to chicken, beef, mutton and butter

and say how much better they are
than all of those things.

No-one had ever eaten
anything better.

And the liver and the bone marrow.
Every part of it was delicious.

Whereabouts are they from?
The tropics. Are there flights?

They are now protected!
All 12 species!

If they're that delicious,
they can't be. "We've protected them.
No need to look."

Burp!

Oops! But there were some
that survived, however.

Let me tell you about a very
extraordinary one. That bloke is
befriending that one.

"Come over here, my pretty.
I'm trying to think
of a name for you."

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for Red Bee Media Ltd - 2010

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