21x09 - Unrelated

[bunniefuu]

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello and welcome to QI,

where everything is even more
unrelated than usual.

At least our panel are relatable.

The utterly unflappable Chris
McCausland.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

An unsung hero, Lou Sanders.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The likeness is uncanny, but no, it
really is Tom Allen.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

- That's very kind.

- And we think he deserves a
knighthood,

but he's as yet untitled, it's Alan
Davies.

- Ha! Sandi...
- CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And their buzzers are distinctly
underrated.

Chris goes...

- # Under the boardwalk... #

- Lou goes...

- # Under the moon of love... #

- Tom goes...

- # Under my skin... #

- Oh, this is a lovely start, isn't
it? And Alan goes...

- # It's over, it's over

# It's over... #

- I mean, underwhelming.

We begin, unsurprisingly, with
question numero uno.

Name any element of a British naval
officer's uniform from 1747.

- Belly ring.

- We did a long list of things and
that's not on it.

That's...

- # Under the boardwalk... #

- Chris?
- I know this game well enough now,
I'm going to say

they didn't have any, and they did it
naked.

And that is how Nelson lost his eye.

- That's an ITV show.

- Yeah. Apart from Nelson losing his
eye, you've nailed it.

No, until the mid-18th century,
officers in the Royal Navy

had no uniform... They didn't do it
naked, but they had no uniform.

But the Army had had one since the
mid-17th century

and the naval officers thought, "Oh, I
don't look quite respectable."

And so they introduced a uniform in
April 1748.

A blue coat with a flared skirt.

You'd like this, our Tom.
- What, a flared skirt?

- And white cuffs. It's rather...

- Oh, yes, I love a man in uniform.
- I think that looks very good,

doesn't it?
- I would like to be in the military

mainly for the dressing-up.
- Just for the uniform? The frocks?

- Yes, the dressing... I'd be terrible
in a w*r,

but the outfits...

- You'd look fantastic being blown up.

- I would look quite cool!

Yeah! "I wouldn't be seen dead any
other...

"Urrrrgh!"

- The guy on the left is James
Cornewall

and he died in 1744 by having both his
legs blown off with a canon.

And his is the first funeral monument
in Westminster Abbey

that the government put forward.

- How fabulous to have your hands on
your hips for a photograph.

Like, no naval officer would do that
now.

Imagine just like sort of bevelling.

- Yeah.
- Where would you see that outside of
a catalogue?

- Yeah.
- It's not a photo, Tom.

- Oh, yeah.

Silly me.

- The guy on the right has got

the brilliant name of Sir Cloudesley
Shovell.

- Oh, lovely.
- Oh!

- He unfortunately wrecked his entire
fleet off the Scilly Isles

and lost 2,000 sailors on the way.
- What?

- Yeah, because nobody knew how to
work out longitude.

And not long after that, they thought,

"We should do that, we should
totally..."

- Yes.
- We should totally work that out.

But Cloudesley, not enough children
called Cloudesley.

- No.
- Something to think about, certainly.

- Yeah.
- And if I get pregnant tonight...

- If you get pregnant tonight?

Is there a round of questions that I'm
unfamiliar with?

- Yes. I've brought my own round.

- Everything sounds like a pitch for a
show, with Lou.

- No, but it...
- Tonight on Dave, "If I Get Pregnant
Tonight".

- You may not know, I know perfectly
well

I will not get pregnant tonight,
that's...

- Yeah, me neither.
- And I'd put money on it.

- Shall we put money on me getting
pregnant, for a laugh?

- Well...
- Well, it's probably down to me or
Al, isn't it, so...

I mean...

- APPLAUSE

But the very first RAF uniforms... I
do like this.

So the unit was formed in 1918, the
RAF,

and the material that was used to make
the uniforms was made

specifically for the Tsar, for
Nicholas II.

The material was for his Cossacks'
trousers.

And what happened is, the RAF
approached

a clothmaker in Leeds called
Hainsworth,

and he had a whole warehouse full of
blue-grey material

that had been woven for the Tsar, but
was undeliverable

due to the Russian Civil w*r,

and he went, "You can have these, in
the exact colour that you need."

And that is still the people

who provide the material for RAF
uniforms today.
- Really?
- Yeah.

- Hmm.
- I know. It's just extraordinary.

Anybody have non-uniform days at
school?

Do you remember what they were called?

- Bullying days, they were called
bullying days.

Yeah.
- They got called mufti days at our
school,

but then everybody laughed at the word
"muff".

- Your dress-down day in school

would have been dress-up for you,
wouldn't it?

You would have turned up with a pocket
watch and a walking cane.

"Finally, I can wear my three-piece
tweed suit!"

- You know what, Chris? That is
actually what happened.

When we got to the sixth form, yeah,
we could wear our own clothes

and I wore a three-piece suit and a
pocket watch.

- Did you genuinely have a pocket
watch?

- Yeah, I asked my mum and dad for
one.
- I did that for comedy value.

- No, no, I had a pocket watch.

- Why mufti? What was the reason for
calling it?

- We called it, "own clothes day".
- Yeah, we did.

- We went for the Ronseal Quick Drying
Woodstain of titles for the day.

It does what it says on the tin.

- I think it's particularly a public
school thing.

So it's an Arabic word for judge

and usually refers to an Islamic
scholar.

And it's traditional robes

and these robes were adopted by the
British Army from about 1816.

It looks a little bit...dressing gown
and slippers and a night cap.

And so that's where it comes from.

It is actually...just means judge.

Now, how can a cow help you get away
with m*rder down under?

- Do they help moooo-ve the body?

- CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Well, weirdly, you're not that far.

- Do you train it to charge at a
person?

- Yeah. Yeah. Cows, famously
trainable.

- Trainable.

- But it has to be vegetarian and
quite nice.

- What, who are?
- Cows are.
- Cows.

- That's why no-one suspects them.
- Yeah, that's...

- They've got those beautiful
eyelashes and everyone's like,

"All right, I guess it probably wasn't
you, was it, Daisy?!"

- So, 1929, there was a novel about
the supposed perfect m*rder

and a guy in Australia thought,

"I'm going to try it out. See if it
works."

And a young English writer called
Arthur Upfield, I love this,

he failed his exams as an estate agent

so his dad sent him to Australia.

So he travelled all over the place in
the outback

and wrote a series of novels about a
mixed-race Aboriginal detective

called Detective Inspector Napoleon
"Bony" Bonaparte.

So the fourth in the series, The Sands
Of Windee...

- The Sands Of who?
- Windee.

- Rather than the Winds Of Sandi.
That's a different novel.

- APPLAUSE

It's only if you sit that side of me.
- Yeah.

- So Upfield, as well as writing, he
was working on helping to build

a rabbit-proof boundary fence in
Western Australia.

And in the book that he wrote,

the m*rder*r puts the dead victim
inside a cow...

TOM:
- From what end?

- You know, I think he splits open the
cow.

- Oh, I see.
- He doesn't go, "Open wide!"

Yeah, I don't think it's that.
- And he's already k*lled the body.

- So, the... He's already k*lled the
body? Yes, so... Yes.

- Both bodies. Well, he's k*lled a
person and a cow.

- Yes.
- Gosh, imagine all that blood
everywhere.

Imagine getting that out of your
sheets.

- I don't think he did it indoors, I
think it was...

- He lured them to his bed.
- Yes.

"Come, we shall have three of us. The
cow and you, come.

"What could be more fun?"
- You said it was rural.

- Reason for m*rder, jealousy.

- Classic love triangle.

- He puts the dead victim inside the
cow.

He burns both bodies, right, and then
he picks...

AUSSIE ACCENT:
- "Just another night in the outback.

"Oh, look, that was unsatisfactory,
guy."

- So he burns both bodies, the cow
and...

So he mixes it all up together.
- Hang on, this is still a novel?

- This is a novel, right.
- Oh.

- Thank God for that.
- No, no, cos it gets worse.

- Oh.
- So he then picks out any metal
fragments and dissolves them in acid

and then everything else is crushed
into dust and thrown into the wind.

Everything has been mixed up.

The cow and the human being, so it's a
perfect m*rder.

So it was so neat, this idea, that
Upfield, the writer,

could not find a way for his detective
to solve the case.

So he talked it over with everybody he
knew.

"How can I get him to solve this
case?"

And he spoke with a guy,

who was also working on the boundary
fence, called Snowy Rowles.

And as it happens...
- What?

They all sound like strippers.

- Anyway, as it happens, he was
planning to m*rder three people.

- What are the chances?
- What are the chances? So...

- Well, bearing in mind it's the
outback,

if it's three people, it's probably...
That's the other people you're with.

- Yeah. That's all there is. So he
borrowed this technique

and he carried out the first two
murders to the absolute letter.

No bodies were ever found.

But with the third m*rder, he forgot
to dissolve any metal in the ashes

and the victim was identified by his
very distinctive wedding ring.

And the local police, they knew all
about this unsolvable plot,

along with everybody else, because
this guy Upfield, the writer,

had told everybody about it.

And eventually they arrested Rowles
and he was convicted and hanged.

But he claimed to the very end that
the murders had never happened.

- Wow.
- So it was just...
- Wow.
- I know.

LOU:
- I don't think we can trust him.

- No.

Agatha Christie's book, The Pale
Horse, has anybody read that? 1961.

Wonderful book.

The m*rder*r uses something called
thallium sulphate,

it's a colourless, odourless,
tasteless chemical.

You find it in rat poison.

And in 1988, a Florida woman died and
the police

suspected that the Agatha Christie
method of m*rder had taken place.

Her neighbour was known to have openly
despised her,

a man called George James Trepal,

and he made the mistake of holding a
m*rder-mystery party, OK?

I know!
- They are fun.

- And the police sent a detective
along undercover

and she found thallium sulphate in his
garage.

- No!
- As well as a copy of The Pale Horse,
by Agatha Christie.

- No!
- I know!
- "The book! I left the book in the
garage!"

- "Argh!"
- "Oh, curses."

- Just feel so silly.
- Maybe people shouldn't write crime,

because it gives people ideas.

- Does it give people ideas, do you
think?

Like... Well, it obviously does.
- It does, absolutely, yes.

Yes. It is in fact the whole point of
what I've just been telling you.

- Sorry. And I shouldn't have said
earlier that I'm going to

get pregnant tonight, because I don't
want to give anyone

any ideas about that, either.

- I don't know why you made that
licking thing, where, what's that?

I mean, there's a lot about the
process that I'm not really familiar
with.

Which notable person has been seen
regularly in public

wearing rubber underwear?

- Is it a fetish thing?
- It's not a fetish thing, no.

- OK.
- It is to do with postmortem
preservation.

I'm going to give you a clue.

So it's about a specific person and
their name begins with U.

So it's a U, because we're in the
U-series.

- Oh, well, that's...
- Ursula.
- Ursula.

I'm talking about Vladimir Ilyich
Ulyanov.

So, but that's not...
- Oh, God, we'd have been here all
week.

- Yeah.
- Well, he had a name that he was
better known by.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov?

- Lenin.
- Lenin is exactly right.

- Oh!
- Is exactly right. It is Lenin.

APPLAUSE

Lenin dies in 1924 and he died in
January.

It was really cold, really, really
cold.

He's laid in state at the House of
Trade Unions in Moscow for about a
week.

And it's fine, his body doesn't
decompose because it's bloody cold.

And loads of people tried to decide
what we're going to do

with dead Lenin. That was basically
the discussion.

- Then they brought a cow.

- 500,000 mourners came to Moscow to
pay their respects.

And it was decided, because it was so
amazing, the display of affection

for him, that his body should be put
on permanent public display.

- That's what I would like.
- Yeah. But how?

The question is how and you won't like
it when I tell you.

- Stuffed.
- Well...

- That's what I... That's how I'd like
to die, actually.

- They preserved his body by dressing
it in a rubber suit and then they...

- So they... Oh!

- Then they encased it in a layer of
embalming fluid

and then they put his formal suit on
top, OK.

And his body today is still given a
regular bath of alcohol

and formaldehyde...
- It's not, there's not...

I'm looking at you now, Tom...

- Yeah. Yeah.

- Look, Lenin's dead.

- There is a look of Lenin about him,
there is a look of Lenin.

- There is a striking resemblance.
- That's Halloween sorted.

- Tom, you've already got the rubber
suit at home,

so you wouldn't stop there.

- Anyway, here's the thing. He's still
on display

and they now reckon that only 23% of
Lenin is original Lenin.

- Oh.
- So all the body fluids replaced by
embalming fluids.

His organs were removed.

The fats in his skin have been
replaced,

sort of bit by bit, over the years,

as they keep trying to preserve the
skin's original look.

His eyelashes were replaced with fake
ones,

because the original ones were damaged
in the embalming.

- It's like the Kardashian story,
right there.

- Well... CHRIS:
- 23% of your body is literally

just your head though, isn't it,
really?

- Well, not even that, darling,

because his nose had to be rebuilt in


- Gosh, you'd think they'd have other
things to do THAT year.

- Well...

APPLAUSE

1945, two scientists tried to
strengthen the skin on his feet

and accidentally dissolved a big chunk
of it instead.

So they had to make another bit of
foot.

At its peak, 200 people were employed
at the Lenin lab

just to keep his body preserved.

I mean, it's costing about £140,000 a
year to maintain his body.

And lots of people in Russia are
pushing for him

to just finally be buried.

- Mm. Like the Kardashians.
- Yeah.

I have to say that there are other
likenesses of Lenin

which are treated with much less
veneration.

There's a factory in the Ukrainian
city of Odessa

and they had a Lenin statue, so they
just thought,

"We do not want a Lenin statue,"

and so they added a helmet and cape
and this is what it looks like now.

APPLAUSE

- It's Darth Vader, it's Darth Vader,
Chris.

- Right.
- Darth Vader!
- And what's so brilliant,

his helmet emits free Wi-Fi.

- That's your chat-up line, isn't it,
Tom? "My helmet..."

- Go on...

- No, please don't.

It's fair to say that Lenin is only


How do you feel about being
unceremoniously buttbuttinated?

- Don't...!

- I don't know why I looked at you.

I'm so sorry, I'm going to do it that
way.

- It either sounds quite sexy, quite
painful or possibly both.

- Yeah.

It's none of those things, actually.

Buttbuttinated?
- It's not to do with the bottom?

- No.
- There's a photograph of a
stubbed-out cigarette on the screen,

Chris, which suggests...
- Something to do with smoking.

- Yeah.
- No, that's obviously misleading you.

ALL GROAN

- I was the only one with an advantage
there, I should have taken it.

- It's sort of to do with bottoms.

It's trying to avoid saying bottoms.

What's an American word for bottom?

- a*s.
- a*s.
- Assassinated...

- So, a*s-a*s...
- Assassinated!

- Assassinated! a*s-a*s-inated.
- Oh, assassinated.

- Yeah, there you go. So there are
websites which have got

what's called profanity filters on
them,

programmed to replace words which
people think are offensive.

Things like a*s and tit.

So they will replace a*s with butt and
they'll replace tit with breast.

But then you get...
- A blue-breast.

- You get ridiculous things.

So "CIA plots to assassinate foreign
leaders" becomes

"CIA plots to buttbuttinate foreign
leaders."

- So did Scunthorpe become
S-vag*na-thorpe?

- Well...

APPLAUSE

- No, it became Fanny-thorpe.

- There was a period of time, darling,
in 1996, when the web portal AOL

would not let residents of Scunthorpe
register.

- Yeah.
- Because it was too rude.

"What did the British Embassy do for
this British national overseas
passport holder?"

Becomes, "What did the British
Embbutty

"do for this British national overseas
pbuttport holder?"

But there were all sorts of problems
with towns.

Clitheroe, nightmare, absolute
nightmare.

I don't even know how... do you say
Pen-isstone or p*nis...?

- I say p*nis-stone.
- p*nis-stone, yes, go for it.

- Where is Penistone? I think I went
past it the other day.

No, literally I did, that wasn't
like...

- You don't want a p*nis stone, Tom,
you really don't.

- Oh, really hurts, get rid of that.
- Ooh.

- Sorry, I don't get the whole
Scunthorpe thing.

- Well, take the S and the horpe off.
- Yes.

- Oh, yes.

- APPLAUSE

- I was laughing along and then I
thought,

"I'm going to have to put my hand up."

- It took me a while to get
Lightwater, actually.

But then that's not one I know much
about...
- Oh, twat!

- Yeah.
- Oh.

- That's a very, very offensive word
in America,

but I think it's not so offensive in
the UK.

- I think it's a good way to get rid
of assassins though,

I'm going back to your thing.
- Buttbuttinate, thank you, darling.

- I think it's a good way to get rid
of assassins in the world

if we just start calling them
buttbuttins.

Who wants to be a buttbuttin?

- Yeah. It sounds like a sandwich of
some kind, doesn't it?

- I've just worked out p*nis-stone!
No...

- It's like somebody being on the show
in a completely different time zone.

- I mean, Clitheroe does actually say
"cl*t-hero", doesn't it?

- Yeah.

- That's your nickname, isn't it?

- Yeah.

That's how I sign all my emails.

- But there are lots of sort of online
unintended consequences.

Does anybody know what the Streisand
Effect is?

TOM:
- Ooh!
- Oh, you'd love to,

you really wanted to...
- I really want to know, I just felt
like

the g*y I am was like, "Streisand!"

I should know something about this.

She's got a shopping mall in her
basement,

is it something about that?

- She did have, didn't she?
- Apparently, apparently.

She forgot her words once, onstage,
didn't she?

Ironically, considering she was
singing the song Memory.

- She sings with autocue, I think.
- Because of that.

- She's amazing. I saw her in concert,
it was one of the best nights.

- She's the greatest singer in the
world.
- Absolutely.

Two gays... "Yes, Barbra!"

- Sorry, just to say, I have got off
with about four girls, once.

Just take me as one of your own,
that's what I'm saying.

- Thank you, darling, I really
appreciate that.

I feel warm all over.

- You're not the cl*t hero, I'm the
cl*t hero!

- APPLAUSE

- cl*t Hero, the PlayStation game that
never made it.

- So, in 2003, she was horrified,
Barbra Streisand,

to discover that there was a photo of
her house on the internet.

Now, only about six people had seen
it,

but she said, "It's an outrage, please
will you take it off."

Thousands of people decided to have a
look at her house,

because up until then nobody had known
it was there.

And this is it, that's the house
right...

No, we're not allowed to show it.

- It's just squares, Chris. There's
nothing there.

- Yeah, it's a pixilated picture.
- It's like when people protest

over something being offensive, a show
or something like that,

and it just makes more people want to
go and watch the show.

- Well, that's absolutely right,
darling,

because 1972, Idi Amin expelled 60,000
Asian Ugandans from

the country and lots of people in
Leicester,

because they already had a large Asian
community,

they were very worried that there
would be

a sudden influx of these people from
Uganda.

So Leicester City Council put out
loads of adverts

in the Ugandan press telling them to
avoid the city.

But this meant that loads of people
went,

"I didn't even know it was there."

And loads came. They all came because
they went,

"Oh, I've seen an ad, we'll go there.

"I think there's going to be..."
- They're all like,

"What does avoid mean?" "I think it
means come quickly."

- It means... A void means there's a
space there.

- Yes.
- A space for us!

- Now, what's interesting and hidden
under this snow?

So we've got a picture of a fox trying
to dive down,

head first, into snow.

- Food?
- What kind of food?

- Fox food.

- But why might there be food under
the snow?

- Because the snow comes from above.

- SCATTERED APPLAUSE

- And so...

..it tends to land on the things that
are below it.
- Yeah.

- There might be a food bin that the
council are yet to remove.

- Yeah.
- So snow can cover more than 40
million square kilometres

of the northern hemisphere in the
winter.

And what it creates is a hidden
ecosystem

called the subnivium, right?

This is amazing. Conditions, of
course, have to be exactly right.

The snow has got to be sort of light
and fluffy.

It's got to be about eight inches
thick.

And that allows the warm vapour to
rise up from the ground

and refreeze overhead, and you get an
icy ceiling.

And it holds up a series of tunnels.

So there's actually... I know, it just
seems extraordinary.

They're windless, they're relatively
warm.

And the foxes dig down,

either to get the food or just to be
warmer, to snuggle down at night.

- And eight inches is about that...?

- Yeah.

Thanks, darling, yeah.

But lots of creatures make their home
there, beetles, lemmings, mice,

grouse sometimes dive-b*mb into it to
get to the food.

- So the fox is sort of approaching it
like a freezer meal?

- It is that. And it's also a really
important ecological refuge

and global warming means we are in
danger of losing it,

that I did not realise. So there's
this whole world going on

just below the surface.

- But why was the fox not in it?

That fox was just on the surface, what
an idiot.

- Because if it was in it, it would
just be a photograph of snow.

- Yeah.

- Why isn't it in there?

- APPLAUSE

- The question would be, where's the
fox in this photograph?

- But what, but what's...

- No, you can't argue with that, Tom,
you really can't.

- Do your Lenin, do your Lenin.

- I love the fact that animals have
other unusual uses for snow.

And Japanese macaques, who are just
lovely,

even the babies make snowballs.

AUDIENCE:
- Awwwww!
- I know!

It's a very cute picture of a monkey
with a snowball. It is so sweet.

And they roll them downhill for fun or
they carry them about.

And I think we've got some VT of a
monkey playing with a snowball.

A macaque, there.

It's just...it's just a very cute guy

in a big fur coat, playing,

making a snowball.

There are actually crows in Alaska and
Canada that have been filmed

snow-boarding on steep snow-covered
roofs.

- No!
- I know, isn't it the sweetest thing?

They stand on something like a plastic
lid,

slide down and then pick it up with
their beak

and go back to the top and have
another go.
- Wow.

- Have we got a clip of that?
- No, sadly.

- So I don't believe that for a
moment...

- It's on YouTube.
- Everything else has got a clip

and there's no clip for that. No,
bullshit.

Crows, crows snow-boarding?
- There's actually tigers

that can ride scooters, Tom.

- There's a horse that can drive a
helicopter.

Great!

- I've seen that one with the
crocodile and a parachute.

- Yeah, great, great.

Snow-boarding down roofs?
- Yeah, crows, yeah.

- Crows?
- Sometimes just on their back, not
even with a tray.

Just, fttsss, down.
- That is on YouTube, I've seen that.

- Well, why haven't we got the clip of
that, then?

But I feel like they're just falling
down, aren't they,

surely, if they're on their back?
- No, apparently...

- Just falling off, you're just saying
a crow fell off a roof.

- Ooh, someone can't snow-board!

- I'm suddenly thinking of another use
for Lenin,

he'd go down a roof, wouldn't he?
- Oh, yeah!

They've got a bobsleigh run from the
Winter Olympics, haven't they?

He'd go down there like a rocket.

- Lenin the Luge.

- Lenin the Luge!

- There's lots of fun stuff under the
snow, if you get my drift.

AUDIENCE:
- Weeyyyy!

- Oh, yeah.
- What one thing unites you all

and could make you very good
undercover spies?

- Ooh!
- Jesus Christ, Our Lord Saviour.

- What I love about you, Lou, is

I really genuinely never know where
you're going.

- That's...
- No, where's she been? That's the
issue.

- Scunthorpe. Um...

- It's got to be something to do with
the fact that

we're all comedians, hasn't it?

So, our uncontrollable need for the
attention of strangers.

- So, it's not the comedian part,
really.

It's having a public life.

- You know I was almost a spy?

- OK. So...

- I applied to MI5, 20 years ago.
- Yes, so... OK.

So why, did you get... I mean, what
happened? Are you...

- Did you get the job?!

- I was unemployed for a while

and I started just applying for mad
things and I applied to MI5.

3,000 applicants and before I knew it,

I was down to the last 30.

- Wow.
- And I was blind and, like,

they were like, "Oh, like, this... I
mean, this is new,

"this is, you know, but we need
diversity."

And then in the end they came to their
senses and thought,

"What are we doing? We can't have a
blind spy!"

I think sometimes discrimination is a
necessary thing.

For the safety of the nation.

It's a terrible idea though, isn't it?

If you get, like, a t*rror1st attack
in London

and then the head of MI5 has got to
come on the news and go,

"Sorry about that, it's just the bloke
we had working on this is blind,
and...

"..he had the photos of the suspect in
his inbox for months."

- But, but at a party where you are
trying to overhear

about information, actually, you would
be perfect.

And the other sort of people who are
perfect are famous people.

And there's a long history of famous
people being

recruited for espionage, because...
- Wasn't Noel Coward?
- Exactly right.

Noel Coward, Somerset Maugham, Marlene
Dietrich.

- Wow.
- Audrey Hepburn, all hiding in plain
sight.

People wanted to meet them and they
would go to parties

and hear information and they would
pass it on.

And one of America's most successful
spies in the 2000s,

in Africa, was a guy called Darrell
Blocker.

He was in fact a CIA agent working
undercover in Africa.

So, he used to sing, as a boy, he sang
in the church choir

and he sang in the Glee Club and all
those kind of things.

And then he was recruited by the CIA

and in 2003 he was at a bar in Uganda
called Bubbles O'Leary.

And he saw a band called Kampala Jazz
All-Stars.

And the music wasn't going all that
well, so he suggested to them that

they should do a bit of Bob Marley.

And the crowd loved it and the band
asked him to join in.

And they became one of Uganda's most
popular bands,

and Blocker became a local Ugandan
celebrity.

In his other life, he was the head of
the whole of the CIA in Africa.

- Wow!

- But he said his cover was perfect

because nobody suspects a singer of
being a spy.
- Yes, that's true!

- I know.
- What would be even better is if you
had Daniel Craig

and Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan.

Hiding in plain sight as spies.
- Yeah, yes.

- We'd never suspect them.
- No.

- I'm one of the Men in Black.

- Are you?

- What, Old cl*t Hero?

- CHRIS:
- cl*t Hero!

- Keep an eye on all the aliens hiding
on Earth masquerading as humans

and cats and stuff like that, so...

- Cats.
- That's not true, Lou, OK?

- Maybe I'm an alien.

- There's no maybe about it.

- My absolute favourite of all of
these people who worked undercover

as a spy is Josephine Baker, who is
just one of the great heroes.

She is a sensational American-born
erotic cabaret dancer.

- That's her on the right.
- She...

It's a picture, this is a picture of
her with her pet cheetah, Chiquita,

on a diamond-studded leash.

She was a huge star in her adopted
Paris.

And she worked undercover throughout
World w*r II

for the French Secret Service.

She had these huge trunks, when she
travelled, of show business
paraphernalia.

In fact, concealed in them were stolen
dossiers and photographs.

Lots of n*zi officers wanted to meet
her,

and she went to lots of parties and
they drank

and then she would dash off to the
ladies

and she'd scribble notes on her arm
and on the palms of her hand.

And she would transcribe all of this
information later,

and she would pin it inside her
underwear.

This was then passed to an agent and
passed to Churchill directly.

- Wow.
- She was considered one of the
greatest assets in the w*r.

I think she's amazing.
- Do you mean butt-ets?

- Sorry. Yes.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Correct.

- It must have been quite a good day
for Winston Churchill

when Josephine Baker's knickers came
through the post.

- "I shall sniff them on the beaches."

- GROANS AND LAUGHTER

- "Cut, cut! We'll go again, Mr
Churchill, we'll go again!"

"Just a slip of the tongue, slip of
the tongue."

- OK, answer me this, you are trying
to get into the underworld.

What might the bouncer say to you?

- Not you again!

- We are talking about the Egyptian
underworld,

rather pleasingly called the Duat.

So to enter, you needed to ace a quiz,
right?

The quiz is set by the ferry man,
Hraf-Haf,

and the quiz is how you have to fix a
broken boat.

So here it is. What would you say to
this?

The weather is windy but the boat has
no mast,

what should we make our new mast from?

So bear in mind, this is, if you get
it wrong,

you won't get into the Duat, the
underworld.

You've got to get it right.

What should we make our new mast from
if there's no mast?

- Especially the afterlife, you've
probably been through a stressful
death as well.

- I would think, darling.
- Oh, I'd be exhausted.

- Yeah.
- No mood for quizzes.

- No.

So, this is according to

the Egyptian Book of the Dead, great
read.

You should answer, "The phallus of the
baboon god Babi,

"god of virility."

- That was my next guess, actually.

- Yeah. I don't really get this, OK,

because Babi's phallus is also what
makes

"the bolt on the doors of heaven" and
I don't really know how...

It must be quite a phallus to be the
bolt on the doors of heaven

and your new mast for your boat.

- Yeah.
- Oh, it's...

So, I mean, how would it propel you
along?

- Weirdly...
- You could suspend the scrotum of the
baboon...

..stretch it out.
- Oh, here we go, cl*t Hero.

- And that would blow you along, you
see. Yeah.

- But they really believed in this
boat

that's going to take you to the
underworld.

So there was a Pharaoh called Khufu.

He reigned maybe sort of 2500 BC.

And he was buried with an entire boat.

This is a reconstruction of it,

you can see it in Giza in the great
Egypt museum.

It is the most astonishing large boat,
Chris.

And then people would be buried with
board games in case

they got bored on the way.

There were lots of people who had
figures called ushabti,

so it would be like this, this little
figure here,

and they're meant to serve you in the
afterlife.

- Chris, it's a bit of Lego she's
holding up.

- You never ask a boy how much that
is. How big is that, darling?

- That's a foot.
- That's a foot?

But people had guides to the
underworld.

There's a woman called Ankh, she died
in 2010 BC.

And she had a guide to the underworld

stuck on the inside of her
sarcophagus.

- It's called The Book Of Two Ways.

Oh, is it?
- Mm. It...

- They really were keeping themselves
busy on the way, weren't they?

- What's amazing, it's the oldest
instruction book that we know of...

- Wow.
- ..that we found in her sarcophagus.

- They were like the ultimate
hoarders, weren't they?

They had all their stuff and they
liked to be buried with it.

- It's very annoying when you're going
'round the house

looking for your board games.

- Yeah.
- "Where are the board games?" "Dad's
taken them."

"What? He's dead, isn't he?" "Well,
yeah, but..."

- "My manual to tell me how to get to
the afterlife, has anyone seen it?"

- "What, he's down there playing
Dobble?"

- Do you know, do you know that...
- What games would you take?

Hungry Hungry Hippos?

- "Who's he playing Dobble WITH down
there?"

- Now, from one incredibly unfair quiz
to another,

it's time for a round of General
Ignorance.

Fingers on buzzers, please.

Ready? Who was the very first female
ruler of Egypt?

- # Over... #

- Cleopatra.

- KLAXON BLARES

We're talking way before Cleopatra,
like, a long time before Cleopatra.

- # Under my skin... #

- Um... So unnerving, that.

Um, Nef... I just keep thinking of
that cow as well,

maybe that cow wrote that song.

- APPLAUSE

- # Got you...

- # Deep in the heart of me! #

It's a m*rder*r's song, it's a creepy
m*rder*r's song!

- Wow. It's the musical you don't want
to see.

- Isn't it? Nefertiti.

- KLAXON BLARES

- Well, those,

those are the main ones, aren't they?

- So...
- Those are the main ones.
- No, Nefertiti...

- # Under the moon of love... #

- Maggie Thatcher.

- So there's very strong evidence that

there was a woman called Neithhotep...

- Oh, we would never have got that,
Sandi!

- She founded Egypt's very first
dynasty, almost 5,000 years ago.

She's buried in a tomb that's covered
in markings

which are usually reserved for
pharaohs.

There were actually seven Cleopatras,

of which the most famous is the last
one, the seventh one.

She's the one that we talk about
Cleopatra's Needles, right.

- The Carry On Cleo...
- The Carry On films as well.

- That's the most famous one.

- Stone obelisks, Cleopatra's Needle,
one in London.

One in New York, probably made 1,000
years before she was actually born.

And we're looking at the picture of
the one in London.

- That one's eroding, they should
really move it indoors.

- It is really eroding. When do you
think the two sphinxes

which sit below the one in London,
were made?

- 1972.

- Anybody else?
- 1860.

- It's 1881, in Pimlico. If you look
at them, they're really interesting,

they were damaged by a German b*mb in


TOM AND ALAN:
- 2017?!
- I mean...

- What?!

- We've been at w*r with Germany
again?

- Hitler's alive!

- APPLAUSE

Sorry, 1917.

If you go along, you can put your
finger still in the b*mb markings,

they didn't repair them.
- Oh, I'd love to do that.
- Hmm.

- What a fun afternoon.

"What are you doing?" "Shut up."

- Who were the Virgin Islands named
after?

- Lou Sanders.

- KLAXON BLARES

APPLAUSE

- Wow!

Wow, OK.

- Well, this has been a confusing
evening all round, hasn't it?

Don't know what to make of it.

- Who were the virgins?

- Nuns.
- Nuns. So they're named after a cult.

It's of St Ursula and the 11,000
virgins, right?

So, according to the story, Ursula was
a Christian princess,

we're talking about the third century,

and she agreed to marry a pagan
prince, because they, as usual,

they wanted to forge peace between
different kingdoms.

And before the wedding, she and


were allowed to make a pilgrimage to
Rome,

but they were k*lled on their way
back, in Cologne, by Hun warriors.

And Christopher Columbus named
the...what we're looking at,

the archipelago, during his second
voyage to America.

So we're talking about 1493.

The largest island was named Ursula

and the collection of the smaller ones
were called the Virgin Islands.

But what we now know is that the


That's like a lot, right, like, you
think Ursula,

she's going on a trip, what do you
need with you?

I'm going to take 11,000, I mean, can
you imagine...

- It's, like, all the girls, all the
girls.

- Yeah. Just, can you imagine just
doing the interviews,

you know, to get the 11,000.

- Have you had sex before? That's the
main question.

- That would be the top question.

- Also, why 11,000, do you think?
- We think it's a misunderstanding.

There was a Latin inscription

and probably the M for martyr was
mistaken for the M for 1,000.

- Oh!

- So it was just 11.
- So it was just 11, yeah.

- Wow.
- I mean, well, yeah.

- And there's a basilica, the Basilica
of St Ursula, which is in Cologne.

It still holds the alleged bones of
the 11,000 virgins.

- Oh, and they've displayed them so
tastefully as well.

- Oh, yes, yes.
- How respectful.

- It's an ossuary, so in an ossuary
they make displays and patterns

out of the... I mean, it's quite
weird.

It's meant to spell out certain Latin
phrases.

"S Ursula Pro Nobis Ora".

"Holy Ursula, pray for us".

What we do know, these bones suggest
more than 11, not as many as 11,000.

And there was a Roman cemetery there
once, so these could just be

the bones of Romans and, I'm sorry to
tell you, not virgins at all.

We just don't know.

- Won't bother going there, then.

- Now, how do these frogs get around?

We are looking at four pictures of
little tiny frogs.

The tiger-legged monkey frog, the
red-banded rubber-banded frog,

the Senegal running frog and the
bumblebee toad.
- Jumping?

- KLAXON BLARES

- Jumping's wrong, then.

- Jumping is wrong.
- Swimming, walking, that sort of
thing.

- Which one of those do you want to go
with?

- "That sort of thing."
- Swimming.

- Ah...
- Walking.
- Yes!

Some frogs prefer to walk, rather than
to hop.
- Oh.

- And these are examples of such
frogs.

So tell me, what's the difference
between a toad and a frog?

- The name.

- All toads are frogs, but not all
frogs are toads.

- Is this something to do with where
they live in the water,

or something?
- It's most likely a toad if it's got
very dry skin,

it's warty, spends a lot of time out
of the pond, it's got short legs.

I mean, I think I would make an
excellent toad.

- Well, I think I got it right there.

- OK, I'm going to give you a point.

- Finally.

- APPLAUSE

- You don't need a point, cos when you
die,

half a million people are going to
come and look at you.

- Yeah.
- Ah.

- Anyway, in theory all of these frogs
that are up on the screen

could hop, but they choose to creep
about like cats stalking their prey.

These four frogs don't have anything
to do with each other,

but they have all independently
evolved...

- Well, they do, they're frogs.

- But they live in completely
different parts of the world

and they've all evolved,
independently, symmetrical front

and hind legs, making it easier to
walk.

And because they live in grassland
habitats, what we think is,

it's easier to lie low if you are
walking.

- A Lilo?
- Jumping is too...

- I'd love to see a little frog on a
Lilo, a little c*ck.

- This is the cutest thing ever,

it's so small, it's called a toadlet.

AUDIENCE COOS

Yeah. It's about the size of
my...thumbnail.

- Oh, I thought you were going to say
something else!

- The cl*t Hero is always working.

- It's tiny, it's an absolutely
miniature little thing.

- Well, that's what I've heard!

- APPLAUSE

Tiny, tiny, very bright orange, very,
very bright orange.

ALAN LAUGHS

- And it's very hard to find.

It really is.

- I mean, smaller than a bumblebee.

Here's the thing,

can I just explain two things about it
that make it so cute.

So, first of all, its inner ear has
not developed,

so there's two things about that, it
can't balance.

So it can jump but it can't land.

And the second thing is, because the
ears are not properly developed,

it can't hear, and yet it cries out,
OK?

It cries out and the others can't hear
it.

- Awwww!
- It jumps but it can't land and then
it goes "argh"

and nobody does anything.

It doesn't matter if it cries out, a
predator might find it,

because it's one of the most poisonous
creatures on the planet.

But we have some footage of a pumpkin
toadlet attempting to jump.

Oh!
- Oh!

- Oh, no!

- Oh, Chris, it was really bad.

Oh!

It landed on its head and then it
cartwheeled.

- Yeah.
- Oooh!

- Yeah, here we go, and jumping...
- Oh, he's going over!

He can't, it's sort of stiff and when
they land,

they kind of cartwheel.

- And there's the last one going off,
and...

- Oh, right on his face! Ow!

- And all the time, if it's going
"aaargh", people are going...

- How can crows get away with falling
off roofs

and we say they're snow-boarding,
whereas frogs, we don't go,

"Do you know there's frogs that can
cartwheel?"

- It did look a bit like gymnastics.

- That is honestly, I go to adult
gymnastics...

Well, I've been barred now, but...

..that is what I look like.
- Are you sure it was adult
gymnastics?

- But isn't that one of the cutest
things?

- Yeah.
- It is amazing.
- Toadly-winks.

Er...

May your jokes never land like a
pumpkin toadlet.

We've come to this episode's untimely
end,

but first let's deal with the
unresolved issue of the scores.

So, our winner, who's definitely
understood the assignment,

with a full eight points, is Chris.

- Hey!

- CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

- I've never won before!

- In second, with an undeniably
close...

Well, not that close, one point, it's
Lou.

- Oh!

- Yes!

- In third place, with a slightly
underwhelming minus five, Tom.

- Stop it!

Minus five.

- And coming undone, with just minus


CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

That's it for this week's episode of
QI.

Thanks to Chris, Tom, Lou and of
course Alan.

And I leave you with this unrelated
utterance about relations,

by George Burns.

"Happiness is having a large, loving,
caring, close-knit family

"in another city."

Goodnight.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE