QI (2003) s01e04 Episode Script
Atoms
(applause) Hello.
Hello and welcome to QI, The quiz that rhymes with Stephen Fry.
Now let's meet the members of our happy band, Al Davies, Howie Goodall, Jez Hardy and Jo Brand.
Now, the rules are simple.
I'm a pimple.
No, that's enough rhyming.
The rules are a cinch, in fact.
The questions are not.
As almost no one ever gets one right, I award points for being interesting and penalties for being pathetically obvious.
Each member of the panel is provided with an attention-seeking device.
- Jeremy goes - (gunshot/duck quacks) - (Stephen) Howard goes - (Flamenco-style guitar flourish) - (Stephen) Jo goes - (cheesy keyboard chime) - (Stephen) Alan goes - (bell) Ãashier number four, please.
Very good.
Right, I'm going straight on to the first question, which is in fact very easy, so fingers on those mushroomoid buzzers, please.
What is the main ingredient of air? (bell) Ãashier number four, please.
- (Stephen) Alan? - Oxygen.
- Oh, Alan! So early on.
- (alarm bells) No.
No, no, no.
Not true, I'm afraid.
- I'm afraid you get a bit of a forfeit.
- (keyboard chime) - Yes? - Is it nitrogen? Nitrogen is the right answer.
Well done, absolutely right.
Sorry.
I have to warn you that if you had said "carbon dioxide", you would have lost 3,000 points, because there is so little carbon dioxide in the air.
- Because the trees eat it all.
- (Stephen) Sort of, yes, that's right.
The trees do, they get rid of carbon dioxide.
But if you're in a lift with someone, after a while (Stephen) Methane.
Sorry.
I was just second-guessing you there.
No, but after a while there won't be enough air in the lift and that will be carbon dioxide - the cause of death would be.
- So always take a tree into a lift with you.
- Yes.
And then you can hide as well, move around the lift unseen.
Entertain yourself.
It should be a fruit tree, so there'd be some food as well as something to get rid of the carbon dioxide.
And you can make a shelter to shield you from the burning light and possibly a canoe to escape.
In the event of flooding.
But, no, this is absolutely right.
Nitrogen is 78% of air.
Less than 21% of air is oxygen, and only three hundredths of 1% of the air is carbon dioxide.
But nitrogen is lethal.
If you breathe - (Stephen) It's not really.
nitrogen only, you would die.
- Yes, because you need oxygen, don't you? - Yes.
I've been scuba diving and if you get nitrogen narcosis, it means you get bubbles of nitrogen in your veins.
- Yes.
- That's called "the bends".
And people think the bends is because you go a bit like that.
But, actually, you get stuck in odd positions.
Your body can't move properly cos it's full of nitrogen.
No, that's when the wind changes.
When the wind changes when you're swinging on your chair and running with scissors at the same time.
We're going to move from air.
We're going to move from air to areas.
- What is the most boring place in Britain? - (keyboard chime) (Stephen) Jo? Is it the Big Brother house? (laughter/applause) Very good.
I'm feeling rather good about Big Brother at the moment, not that I've seen any of it, but my agent got a call yesterday.
Now, I don't know what this means, and they wondered if One of the They had to blow the dust off the phone straight away.
(Stephen) What are they called? Thank you.
"Mr Fry's agent.
" Thank you! Now, what are they called in Big Brother? Inmates.
- Housemates.
- Housemates, housemates.
- (Alan) Primates.
- One of the They're allowed to have a book, which may be a new - They are allowed to have a book.
- No, they're not.
- They are.
- They can't read.
They're not.
One of the housemates has asked for one of my books.
Isn't that exciting? - I feel touched by celebrity.
- You know, the coffee table's a bit wonky.
I remember watching the first series, the thing I really looked forward to was day eight, because (Geordie accent) "day eight" is a wonderful sound, isn't it? Bless him.
Newcastle, I believe.
Right.
Newcastle is far from being the most boring place in Britain.
It certainly is not.
Thank you for dragging us back to the question.
Is this gonna be something like there's been an actual survey of amenities "Survey" is a very good word to stick to, actually, because I'm talking technically the most boring place.
- You mean flattest.
- Not exactly flattest.
- (Jeremy) Argos.
- No.
Most Greek islands are very pleasant.
What's wrong with Argos? Next.
Next is a very good catalogue.
It gives you a chance to see what the clothes would look like if attractive people wore them.
Very good.
Howard, I believe you were trying to buzz.
Is this just moving up here on Alan's idea, but is this a place on the 0rdnance Survey where there are no signs of any kind? Ten points.
Ten points.
Absolutely right.
- Salisbury Plain.
- No, it's not Salisbury Plain.
(applause) Sorry, Howard.
I jumped in on your round of applause.
I have a slight mind to take five points away from you, suggesting that Salisbury Plain is the most It has probably the most important 0rdnance Survey reference in all of the United Kingdom, Stonehenge, for God's sake! - Which is quite an interesting place.
- (Stephen) It certainly is.
My uncle stood on a land mine on Salisbury Plain.
- (Stephen) During manoeuvres? - During National Service.
- Yes, because the army use it a lot for - It really really really hurt, but he didn't lose a foot.
If the manufacturers had known it would hurt, they'd have come up with a safety version.
It was much much worse than, for example, stepping on a drawing pin, which really really really hurts, much worse than that.
- A paper cut is the worst thing.
- (Stephen) Lemon on a paper cut.
Paper cut, because people say, "Oh, there's nothing worse than a paper cut.
" "Not a sword, not a chain saw, nothing.
" "Nothing worse than a summer cold.
Syphilis, grenade up the bum, nothing.
" - Fair point.
- East Anglia.
- No.
- Almost a featureless environment.
No.
As an East Anglian, I refute that with every fibre of my being.
The answer is No, you can't refute.
That's bad grammar, that, Stephen.
To refute, you have to provide evidence.
You mean "rebut".
- No, I mean repudiate.
- Fair enough.
(Stephen) But a good point.
Very good point.
If you weren't showing off, you could have said "reject".
Yes.
You're absolutely right, though it's not bad grammar, just bad semantics.
- Yeah, whatever.
- Yeah.
But, no, I stand hideously corrected and shamed.
A field outside 0usefleet near Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire.
There's absolutely nothing in it, apart from part of an electricity pylon and some overhead cabling.
On the 1:50,000 scale Ordnance Survey map, it's the blankest square kilometre in the country.
Is it not in East Anglia? Well, all right, it's north.
I think it is the north, Lincolnshire.
There's a terrifyingly large moorhen up in the top right bit.
Charles Dickens, on the other hand, would not agree.
He'd have voted for Chelmsford.
He stayed there once and described it as: "The dullest and most stupid spot on the face of the earth".
And Charles Dickens should know, because he actually invented the word "boredom".
Did you know that? Isn't that interesting? In Bleak House in 1852.
A little quite-interesting ripple just ran round the audience then.
From one author to another.
What did Barbara Cartland do in 1983 which involved a sofa and a hot-water bottle? (guitar) Do you know she was buried in a cardboard coffin, underneath an oak tree in the grounds of her house? I didn't.
Five points for being quite interesting.
You're getting more interesting.
The oak tree was planted by Elizabeth I.
And the mourners at her funeral took away were given a leaf of the oak tree as a remembrance.
Gosh.
Very good.
Your five points stands.
I'm not going to increase it, but that is very good.
Why cardboard? So it would perish? So it would melt into the, I presume, to melt into the earth sod.
That's because they weren't entirely sure she was dead.
For the last 50 or 60 years it was a bone of contention among most people.
Wasn't 1983 She broke a record in one year for writing the largest number of books.
That had ever been written by anybody in a single year.
You know, 30-something.
- Not far, I'll certainly give you - 40, 28, 35.
I'll give three points, before you give me every number in the universe.
- She actually wrote 23.
- (Alan) 23, I meant to say.
Book of Records, in one year, using only - I had that written down.
from the hours of one to half past one.
In 78 years she produced over 600 books.
- Has anyone in the audience ever read one? - (woman) No.
Does anyone know anyone who's ever read one? Has anyone ever seen one? Now, you probably in hospitals is a place where you do see them, isn't it? - Psychiatric hospitals.
- (Stephen) Psychiatric hospitals.
She did say, after she'd written all these, she said, "I'll keep going till my face falls off.
" A face, incidentally, that reminded Clive James of two crows that had crash-landed into the white cliffs of Dover.
Now, what's 15 miles away from everybody and smells of geraniums? - (gunshot/duck quacks) - Yes? It would be an out-of-town warehouse shop called World of Geraniums.
"No" is the answer to that, because - Is it 15 miles from everyone? - (Stephen) From everyone.
- It must be straight up.
- (Stephen) Good.
- (Jo) Or down.
- Or towards the Earth's core itself.
Is it like, you're never more than 15 miles from a geranium, like eight feet from a rat? It's not quite that.
You're never more than - It's a very odd thing.
- Space smells like a geranium? Mustard gas smells like geraniums.
Not mustard Mustard gas, hence the name, smells faintly of mustard, I think you'll find.
It's a very famous gas, but which is most famous for forming a layer in our atmosphere.
- The ozone layer.
- It is indeed ozone.
I don't give you any points, because that was too easy.
0zone is Well, having said it was a famous layer, come on, as a gas.
There we are, look, there's the ionosphere.
There's the mesosphere, stratosphere, and the ozone layer, wedged in between the stratosphere and the mesosphere.
- It smells of geraniums? - And it does smell faintly of geraniums.
- Now, I put it to you - (Stephen) Yeah.
that were you to go into the ozone layer and sniff, you would die.
You would not have enough time to say, "It just smells a bit like" (choking noise) Someone goes, "What's it smell like?" (choking noise) Well, now, ozone is a poisonous form of oxygen, but without it the sun's ultraviolet rays would kill all land animals and plants.
Ozone is blue and smells faintly of geraniums.
One of my favourite layers of the atmosphere is called the Heaviside layer.
Heaviside layer.
- Is it a bit on the heavy side? - Well, no, oddly enough, it isn't.
It's named after someone called Heaviside, a rather marvellous, self-taught physicist.
But it sounds like it should be.
Self-taught sounds like he writes it on the blackboard, runs round, sits and jots it down.
What resembles a half-melted rubber bulldog? This was a description by the film critic John Simon, of a - Is it Walter Matthau? - It is Walter Matthau! Five points.
Well done.
- How did I get that? - (Stephen) Very good.
- I love Walter Matthau.
- Top work.
What are atoms mostly made of? Well, they're made of they are not mostly they are just made of the thing that they are, in that they are not combined with other atoms.
They are alone.
Therefore they are just an atom.
It's not exactly a trick question, but they're mostly made of nothing, by a very long way.
Even the atom of stone or diamond is more nothing than it is anything solid.
It's like a tiny, really small little piece of nothing.
Does it have protons and electrons, or is that a molecule? You're right.
Protons and neutrons in the middle, which is the nucleus, and the electron, which whizzes round.
- I remember that from physics.
- Yeah.
An atom, in fact, is much emptier, relatively speaking, than the whole solar system.
Ernest Rutherford, the first man to describe the inside of an atom, likened it to a few flies in a cathedral.
That's what those particles are inside the atom.
The simplest element is hydrogen.
It has a nucleus of just one proton, around which orbits a single electron.
Now, if the proton were the size of a drawing pin yeah, yeah the electron would be the size of a pinhead and it would be one kilometre away.
But if I were to put a pineapple on my head, I'd look like Carmen Miranda, but I don't.
I don't think you've quite entered into the spirit of it.
Well, they're really hard to divide up into more than one part.
Yes, because the word means that, it means "no cut".
- Can't split.
- A-tom, yes.
I think it's tomia, is the Greek for a "cut", as in appendec-tomy, to cut the appendix and so on.
And the English word "tmesis", which as far as know is the only English word that begins with the letters "tm".
T-m-e-s-i-s, which is rather wonderful, which is when you cut a word in half by putting another word inside, like saying, abso-bloomin'-lutely, or sen (bleep) sational, or something.
- Or Scunthorpe.
- Or Scunthorpe, thank you very much.
(applause) Now, what's the difference between a hydrogen atom and a grand piano? - (gunshot/duck) - (guitar) - Jeremy got there first.
- Well, size.
- Shape.
- Yes, you're right.
It's a foolish question.
Possibly Iraq did have the capability of splitting a grand piano.
(applause) Very very good.
Very good indeed.
Five points.
That's very good.
Yes, but, Howard, the musician? Hydrogen was identified by an eccentric man called Cavendish, who was a reclusive nutter, basically, who did lots of very good scientific things in a room - Brother of the Duke of Devonshire.
- Was he? He was certainly a toff and he had a lot of money, so he spent his whole life living in this house doing experiments.
And he lived in Great Marlborough Street in Soho.
If you walk from Great Marlborough Street to Jermyn Street, it takes about three minutes.
And he identified hydrogen in about 1770, something like that.
In 1770, the world's first grand piano was made by a man called Americus Backers, who had his studio in Jermyn Street at exactly the same time.
My connection is they probably met at the same coffee shop.
You've got to have five points for that.
That's superb.
Superb stuff.
I love it.
Peculiar man.
And how odd to have an English aristocrat who is also peculiar.
I expect Howard will get it if I tell you that there are 89 frequencies to a hydrogen atom.
- Well, there are 88 keys on a piano.
- 88 frequencies, if you discount harmonics.
Although not on an imperial grand, there are more than 88 keys on an imperial grand.
- Are there? - Yes.
That, unfortunately, looks like an imperial grand, in which case it has four extra notes.
Well, in fact, it still is beaten by the hydrogen atom.
Late breaking news in my ear is that there are over 100 frequencies to a hydrogen atom.
So that was a bit of a knotty run, so we'll have a nice easy one.
- How many wives did Henry VIII have? - (all buzz at once) - Six.
- Oh, Alan, Alan, Alan.
(Alan) The six wives of Henry VIII.
Just because other people have made the mistake, it's no excuse for you to make it too.
He had six wives! He had major, major commitment problems, didn't he? I imagine every time he said, "Oh, it's not you, it's me.
" Then I suppose they had a trial separation - a brief trial and a very major separation.
Yes, of head from shoulders, exactly right.
It must have been difficult for the new woman in his life each time, cos she'd say, "0h, I don't know.
Everywhere I look, I just see her face" cos it's on a pole.
- (chime) - Yes? Can I say something interesting about Henry VIII? When he died and his body was moved from Greenwich up to wherever it went, Selfridges or somewhere - Maybe Westminster Abbey.
We'll check.
- Maybe Westminster Abbey.
Possibly Kentucky Fried Chicken, I don't know.
But his guts were so rotten, and it was such a hot day, that his stomach exploded.
- (Stephen) 0h, what a nasty thought.
- Isn't that a nice image? He was syphilitic and he was huge and he was a mess of a man.
- He sounds bloody gorgeous, doesn't he? - Well, as a young man, he was.
He was considered one of the most attractive men in all of Renaissance Europe.
I prefer syphilitic and bloated, myself.
- Yes, he did get a bit bloated.
- Cos at least they're easy.
No, yes, it's an interesting fact, this.
The real answer is three or four.
Henry's fourth marriage to Anne of Cleves was annulled on two grounds.
It was never consummated, and she was already betrothed to Francis, duke of Lorraine.
This was correct in law at the time and all parties agreed that no legal marriage had ever taken place.
That leaves five wives.
The Pope declared Henry's second marriage to Anne Boleyn void, because Henry was still married to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.
The king himself, as head of the Church of England, declared that his first marriage was invalid, on the correct legal ground that a man could not marry his brother's wife.
And Catherine of Aragon had been married to his brother Arthur.
Did he or did he not have six weddings? Yes, he did, but that wasn't the question I asked.
And did he say, "This is my wife"? Six different people.
Six different mothers-in-law, all said of him, "He is my bloated, syphilitic son-in-law.
" He said he'd never been married because he'd never had a wife because his first wife What about all the families saying, "Yes, you did.
We were there"? They heard the speeches.
They'd wake up in the morning dead, wouldn't they? But there was no legal spousal status.
That's the point we're trying to make.
How many toast racks did he have? That's the way.
Count the toast racks and you'll find out.
- Can I ask a question about that painting? - Yes.
Is it all wrong in perspective? It looks 2-D to me.
All Holbein's pictures are a bit flat.
He did one of Martin Luther and it's very flat.
- It looks like a pancake or an omelette.
- He could do perspective tricks.
He did a marvellous one which you have to see from below.
Oh, yeah, that's what he said after he'd bollocksed it up.
"You have to see it from below.
" Holbein's really made It's elongated skulls and things, and then when you move underneath it, the foreshortening effect of being under it, it becomes exactly the right proportion.
Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Good Lord, you are extraordinary! How do you know these things? - It took four years.
- Yeah? Which is the same length of time it takes to paint the Forth bridge in Scotland.
Oh, there you are.
You're struggling towards being interesting there.
I may have to give you two points.
There's a wonderful line in that film, The Agony and the Ecstasy, which is where Charlton Heston plays Michelangelo and Rex Harrison plays Charlton Heston plays Michelangelo? The effete Italian homosexual? - That's the one.
- Played by the president of the gun club? - He was an athletic Italian homosexual.
- I thought he was a wussy one.
He may well have preferred man-on-man action.
That doesn't mean he was Julian Clary.
He could have been butch, like me.
When I say "wussy one", I don't mean he was gay.
I mean he was a bit of a I thought da Vinci - You've got it the other way round.
- I thought da Vinci was the hard case.
No, no.
Michelangelo was an animal.
- He was physically strong - Michelangelo never washed.
He stank.
beard and - Alan Yentob said this.
But he preferred to take it up the Gary Glitter.
There we are.
Now, depending on whether you believe the pope or indeed the king, or both of them together, Henry VIII therefore had either four wives or three.
Now, what English word rhymes with silver? (guitar) Is this one of the ones like "orange", where there is no rhyme for it? - Oh.
- (alarm bells) You kind of said that, didn't you? No.
A lot of people think, like orange, that there is no rhyme for silver.
There is.
- Bilver.
- Chilver.
Yes! Chilver! Well done.
- Well done for working through sounds.
- I don't know what it means.
Chilver? A chilver is a ewe lamb.
- A me lamb? - (Alan) It's a lady lamb.
- A me lamb? A you lamb? - A female lamb.
A ewe.
- Oh, ewe lamb.
You.
- You.
You.
Where do all the diamonds come from in the world? - South Africa.
- Oh, no! He's done it again! - Oh, bless his heart! - (alarm bells) Oh, no, no.
No, all the diamonds in the world come from volcanoes.
All diamonds are formed under immense heat and pressure hundreds of kilometres beneath the Earth, and are brought to the surface in volcanic eruptions.
- 20 countries produce diamonds.
- Japan.
South Africa is only the fifth largest producer after Australia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Botswana and Russia.
Russia.
That's exactly what I said! You did.
Well done you.
Now, here's a quite interesting thing.
Diamonds are made of pure carbon and so is graphite - the stuff that pencils are made from, the lead of a pencil - but with the carbon atoms arranged slightly differently, so slightly differently that diamond is the hardest known substance on Earth, with a score of ten on the Mohs hardness scale, but graphite is one of the softest "Mohs hardness", like, as in Mo Better Blues.
No, as in M-o-h.
The name of the fellow who gave us this hardness scale.
Diamonds score ten and graphite scores very very low, 1.
2, or something like that.
What about Audley Harrison? He is well 'ard.
Now, what's invisible and travels at 38 miles an hour? - (bell) Ãashier number four, please.
- (gunshot/duck quacks) I'm think it's Is it the air that we expel from our nasal passages? It isn't that, I'm sorry to say.
- 38 miles an hour and it's invisible? - (Stephen) Yes.
It's got to be a ghost on a moped or a Stealth Skoda or a Virgin train.
(Stephen) Oh, very good.
No.
Is it a wind, like, you know, the sirocco or the mistral, or something like that? One of those winds.
It's not one of those.
This often travels a great deal faster, but it has been recorded as travelling at 38 miles an hour.
You could overtake it freewheeling on a bicycle.
- (Alan) A fart.
- No.
It usually goes much much faster.
I mean, really fast.
- How fast is a fart, though, do you think? - Well, no, please.
Let's not, no.
Well, no, because they've measured how fast your sneeze is.
They've measured maximum speeds No one's ever measured how fast we expel gas.
Do you wonder why? You're working in laboratory conditions all day, there's Bunsen burners around.
You could fart and someone could be on the other side of the lab with a stopwatch.
And they could go (sniffs) "Yes, it's here.
" (laughter/applause) - (Stephen) Can I drag this - "38 miles an hour, I estimate.
" Can I drag this above the level of They Think This Is All Over, or whatever it is? Is it a tidal wave? A tsunami? No.
Even faster.
What's the fastest thing you can think of? - Light.
- Light is the right answer.
- Is it? - Absolutely right.
- Light usually, as you probably know - 186,000 miles a second.
Very good.
I'll give you a few points.
- Wait a minute.
Someone slowed it down.
- (Stephen) Do you remember how? So they could get into bed before the light went out.
(laughter/applause) That's the only reason there is physics.
(Stephen) Top work.
No, you're quite right.
They put a laser light through, I don't know, ice, glass, something like that frosty.
Much colder than that.
Much much colder.
- Fridge.
- No.
Really cold.
- (Jo) Igloo.
- Frozen vodka.
- So much colder than that.
- (Jeremy) Blackpool.
You're all doing well.
No.
Astoundingly, light is, first, invisible.
You can't see it, only what bumps into it, or it bumps into.
If you could see it, you wouldn't be able to see anything else.
It's often said that the speed of light is constant, but it isn't, only in a vacuum, when it is 186,000 miles a second.
In any other medium, the speed of light varies considerably, as a matter of fact.
Through diamonds, for example, it goes less than half as fast, 80,000 miles to the second.
- Is that because it's going, "Whoooh"? - (Stephen) Yeah, exactly.
"This is the hardest thing.
" But the slowest it's ever been recorded at is through sodium at minus 270 degrees, where it travels at 38 miles per hour.
Now, fingers on buzzers, please, for a chance of an enormous last-minute bonus for that final question, which is on animals.
Complete the phrase: A chameleon changes colour to match its? (bell) Ãashier number four, please.
Environment.
Oh, that counts as "background".
I'm afraid that's got to be considered hugely wrong.
Hugely wrong.
I'm afraid you've fallen for it again.
No, it doesn't.
- It doesn't.
It never has, it never will.
- (guitar) Temperature? Yes, we'll give you a couple for temperature.
Car? That's background or environment, isn't it, to match anything else around it.
It doesn't change colour to match anything.
It changes colour according to mood, mood, temperature, or emotion, fear, for example, and so on like that.
But they are changing to the colour of the branch they're hanging on, don't they? - That is the fallacy.
- Do they know that? Has anyone told them? Shouldn't they be told? "I don't know what you're doing that for.
We can see you.
" "I happen to be in a slightly dodgy mood.
That's all this is about.
" "I'm not trying to look like this leaf.
" It used to be thought of chameleons, in fact, if you were to, say, 100 years ago, if you asked someone for the well-known fact about chameleons, they'd say that they live on air, which was assumed to be because they move so little and can very rarely be seen to be breathing.
And the other thing about chameleons is their eyes can swivel independently.
- Do they know that? - I'm sure they do.
Or do they just think the planet's just going Right, it only leaves for me, therefore, ladies and gentlemen, to give you the final scores.
And they are quite interesting.
I fear that in last place is Alan with minus 24 points.
In third place, Jeremy with seven.
Second is Howard with 13.
But in the lead, rousingly, is Jo with 36 points.
- Oh, my word! - (applause) (Stephen) That's about it for QI this week.
There's just time for me to thank Howard, Jeremy, Jo and Alan, and to say something quite interesting, concerning an interesting property of graphite, taken from the agony column of the Daily Mirror.
"Dear Marge, I noted in your column a few weeks ago the pros and cons of women going without a bra.
" "A few weeks ago I saw a small item in the paper which may help to settle the matter.
" "It is said that if a woman is not certain whether or not she should go braless, she should place a pencil under her bosom.
" "If the pencil stays there, she should wear a bra.
" "I would sign my name to this letter, but my wife still has my pencil.
" Good night.
Hello and welcome to QI, The quiz that rhymes with Stephen Fry.
Now let's meet the members of our happy band, Al Davies, Howie Goodall, Jez Hardy and Jo Brand.
Now, the rules are simple.
I'm a pimple.
No, that's enough rhyming.
The rules are a cinch, in fact.
The questions are not.
As almost no one ever gets one right, I award points for being interesting and penalties for being pathetically obvious.
Each member of the panel is provided with an attention-seeking device.
- Jeremy goes - (gunshot/duck quacks) - (Stephen) Howard goes - (Flamenco-style guitar flourish) - (Stephen) Jo goes - (cheesy keyboard chime) - (Stephen) Alan goes - (bell) Ãashier number four, please.
Very good.
Right, I'm going straight on to the first question, which is in fact very easy, so fingers on those mushroomoid buzzers, please.
What is the main ingredient of air? (bell) Ãashier number four, please.
- (Stephen) Alan? - Oxygen.
- Oh, Alan! So early on.
- (alarm bells) No.
No, no, no.
Not true, I'm afraid.
- I'm afraid you get a bit of a forfeit.
- (keyboard chime) - Yes? - Is it nitrogen? Nitrogen is the right answer.
Well done, absolutely right.
Sorry.
I have to warn you that if you had said "carbon dioxide", you would have lost 3,000 points, because there is so little carbon dioxide in the air.
- Because the trees eat it all.
- (Stephen) Sort of, yes, that's right.
The trees do, they get rid of carbon dioxide.
But if you're in a lift with someone, after a while (Stephen) Methane.
Sorry.
I was just second-guessing you there.
No, but after a while there won't be enough air in the lift and that will be carbon dioxide - the cause of death would be.
- So always take a tree into a lift with you.
- Yes.
And then you can hide as well, move around the lift unseen.
Entertain yourself.
It should be a fruit tree, so there'd be some food as well as something to get rid of the carbon dioxide.
And you can make a shelter to shield you from the burning light and possibly a canoe to escape.
In the event of flooding.
But, no, this is absolutely right.
Nitrogen is 78% of air.
Less than 21% of air is oxygen, and only three hundredths of 1% of the air is carbon dioxide.
But nitrogen is lethal.
If you breathe - (Stephen) It's not really.
nitrogen only, you would die.
- Yes, because you need oxygen, don't you? - Yes.
I've been scuba diving and if you get nitrogen narcosis, it means you get bubbles of nitrogen in your veins.
- Yes.
- That's called "the bends".
And people think the bends is because you go a bit like that.
But, actually, you get stuck in odd positions.
Your body can't move properly cos it's full of nitrogen.
No, that's when the wind changes.
When the wind changes when you're swinging on your chair and running with scissors at the same time.
We're going to move from air.
We're going to move from air to areas.
- What is the most boring place in Britain? - (keyboard chime) (Stephen) Jo? Is it the Big Brother house? (laughter/applause) Very good.
I'm feeling rather good about Big Brother at the moment, not that I've seen any of it, but my agent got a call yesterday.
Now, I don't know what this means, and they wondered if One of the They had to blow the dust off the phone straight away.
(Stephen) What are they called? Thank you.
"Mr Fry's agent.
" Thank you! Now, what are they called in Big Brother? Inmates.
- Housemates.
- Housemates, housemates.
- (Alan) Primates.
- One of the They're allowed to have a book, which may be a new - They are allowed to have a book.
- No, they're not.
- They are.
- They can't read.
They're not.
One of the housemates has asked for one of my books.
Isn't that exciting? - I feel touched by celebrity.
- You know, the coffee table's a bit wonky.
I remember watching the first series, the thing I really looked forward to was day eight, because (Geordie accent) "day eight" is a wonderful sound, isn't it? Bless him.
Newcastle, I believe.
Right.
Newcastle is far from being the most boring place in Britain.
It certainly is not.
Thank you for dragging us back to the question.
Is this gonna be something like there's been an actual survey of amenities "Survey" is a very good word to stick to, actually, because I'm talking technically the most boring place.
- You mean flattest.
- Not exactly flattest.
- (Jeremy) Argos.
- No.
Most Greek islands are very pleasant.
What's wrong with Argos? Next.
Next is a very good catalogue.
It gives you a chance to see what the clothes would look like if attractive people wore them.
Very good.
Howard, I believe you were trying to buzz.
Is this just moving up here on Alan's idea, but is this a place on the 0rdnance Survey where there are no signs of any kind? Ten points.
Ten points.
Absolutely right.
- Salisbury Plain.
- No, it's not Salisbury Plain.
(applause) Sorry, Howard.
I jumped in on your round of applause.
I have a slight mind to take five points away from you, suggesting that Salisbury Plain is the most It has probably the most important 0rdnance Survey reference in all of the United Kingdom, Stonehenge, for God's sake! - Which is quite an interesting place.
- (Stephen) It certainly is.
My uncle stood on a land mine on Salisbury Plain.
- (Stephen) During manoeuvres? - During National Service.
- Yes, because the army use it a lot for - It really really really hurt, but he didn't lose a foot.
If the manufacturers had known it would hurt, they'd have come up with a safety version.
It was much much worse than, for example, stepping on a drawing pin, which really really really hurts, much worse than that.
- A paper cut is the worst thing.
- (Stephen) Lemon on a paper cut.
Paper cut, because people say, "Oh, there's nothing worse than a paper cut.
" "Not a sword, not a chain saw, nothing.
" "Nothing worse than a summer cold.
Syphilis, grenade up the bum, nothing.
" - Fair point.
- East Anglia.
- No.
- Almost a featureless environment.
No.
As an East Anglian, I refute that with every fibre of my being.
The answer is No, you can't refute.
That's bad grammar, that, Stephen.
To refute, you have to provide evidence.
You mean "rebut".
- No, I mean repudiate.
- Fair enough.
(Stephen) But a good point.
Very good point.
If you weren't showing off, you could have said "reject".
Yes.
You're absolutely right, though it's not bad grammar, just bad semantics.
- Yeah, whatever.
- Yeah.
But, no, I stand hideously corrected and shamed.
A field outside 0usefleet near Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire.
There's absolutely nothing in it, apart from part of an electricity pylon and some overhead cabling.
On the 1:50,000 scale Ordnance Survey map, it's the blankest square kilometre in the country.
Is it not in East Anglia? Well, all right, it's north.
I think it is the north, Lincolnshire.
There's a terrifyingly large moorhen up in the top right bit.
Charles Dickens, on the other hand, would not agree.
He'd have voted for Chelmsford.
He stayed there once and described it as: "The dullest and most stupid spot on the face of the earth".
And Charles Dickens should know, because he actually invented the word "boredom".
Did you know that? Isn't that interesting? In Bleak House in 1852.
A little quite-interesting ripple just ran round the audience then.
From one author to another.
What did Barbara Cartland do in 1983 which involved a sofa and a hot-water bottle? (guitar) Do you know she was buried in a cardboard coffin, underneath an oak tree in the grounds of her house? I didn't.
Five points for being quite interesting.
You're getting more interesting.
The oak tree was planted by Elizabeth I.
And the mourners at her funeral took away were given a leaf of the oak tree as a remembrance.
Gosh.
Very good.
Your five points stands.
I'm not going to increase it, but that is very good.
Why cardboard? So it would perish? So it would melt into the, I presume, to melt into the earth sod.
That's because they weren't entirely sure she was dead.
For the last 50 or 60 years it was a bone of contention among most people.
Wasn't 1983 She broke a record in one year for writing the largest number of books.
That had ever been written by anybody in a single year.
You know, 30-something.
- Not far, I'll certainly give you - 40, 28, 35.
I'll give three points, before you give me every number in the universe.
- She actually wrote 23.
- (Alan) 23, I meant to say.
Book of Records, in one year, using only - I had that written down.
from the hours of one to half past one.
In 78 years she produced over 600 books.
- Has anyone in the audience ever read one? - (woman) No.
Does anyone know anyone who's ever read one? Has anyone ever seen one? Now, you probably in hospitals is a place where you do see them, isn't it? - Psychiatric hospitals.
- (Stephen) Psychiatric hospitals.
She did say, after she'd written all these, she said, "I'll keep going till my face falls off.
" A face, incidentally, that reminded Clive James of two crows that had crash-landed into the white cliffs of Dover.
Now, what's 15 miles away from everybody and smells of geraniums? - (gunshot/duck quacks) - Yes? It would be an out-of-town warehouse shop called World of Geraniums.
"No" is the answer to that, because - Is it 15 miles from everyone? - (Stephen) From everyone.
- It must be straight up.
- (Stephen) Good.
- (Jo) Or down.
- Or towards the Earth's core itself.
Is it like, you're never more than 15 miles from a geranium, like eight feet from a rat? It's not quite that.
You're never more than - It's a very odd thing.
- Space smells like a geranium? Mustard gas smells like geraniums.
Not mustard Mustard gas, hence the name, smells faintly of mustard, I think you'll find.
It's a very famous gas, but which is most famous for forming a layer in our atmosphere.
- The ozone layer.
- It is indeed ozone.
I don't give you any points, because that was too easy.
0zone is Well, having said it was a famous layer, come on, as a gas.
There we are, look, there's the ionosphere.
There's the mesosphere, stratosphere, and the ozone layer, wedged in between the stratosphere and the mesosphere.
- It smells of geraniums? - And it does smell faintly of geraniums.
- Now, I put it to you - (Stephen) Yeah.
that were you to go into the ozone layer and sniff, you would die.
You would not have enough time to say, "It just smells a bit like" (choking noise) Someone goes, "What's it smell like?" (choking noise) Well, now, ozone is a poisonous form of oxygen, but without it the sun's ultraviolet rays would kill all land animals and plants.
Ozone is blue and smells faintly of geraniums.
One of my favourite layers of the atmosphere is called the Heaviside layer.
Heaviside layer.
- Is it a bit on the heavy side? - Well, no, oddly enough, it isn't.
It's named after someone called Heaviside, a rather marvellous, self-taught physicist.
But it sounds like it should be.
Self-taught sounds like he writes it on the blackboard, runs round, sits and jots it down.
What resembles a half-melted rubber bulldog? This was a description by the film critic John Simon, of a - Is it Walter Matthau? - It is Walter Matthau! Five points.
Well done.
- How did I get that? - (Stephen) Very good.
- I love Walter Matthau.
- Top work.
What are atoms mostly made of? Well, they're made of they are not mostly they are just made of the thing that they are, in that they are not combined with other atoms.
They are alone.
Therefore they are just an atom.
It's not exactly a trick question, but they're mostly made of nothing, by a very long way.
Even the atom of stone or diamond is more nothing than it is anything solid.
It's like a tiny, really small little piece of nothing.
Does it have protons and electrons, or is that a molecule? You're right.
Protons and neutrons in the middle, which is the nucleus, and the electron, which whizzes round.
- I remember that from physics.
- Yeah.
An atom, in fact, is much emptier, relatively speaking, than the whole solar system.
Ernest Rutherford, the first man to describe the inside of an atom, likened it to a few flies in a cathedral.
That's what those particles are inside the atom.
The simplest element is hydrogen.
It has a nucleus of just one proton, around which orbits a single electron.
Now, if the proton were the size of a drawing pin yeah, yeah the electron would be the size of a pinhead and it would be one kilometre away.
But if I were to put a pineapple on my head, I'd look like Carmen Miranda, but I don't.
I don't think you've quite entered into the spirit of it.
Well, they're really hard to divide up into more than one part.
Yes, because the word means that, it means "no cut".
- Can't split.
- A-tom, yes.
I think it's tomia, is the Greek for a "cut", as in appendec-tomy, to cut the appendix and so on.
And the English word "tmesis", which as far as know is the only English word that begins with the letters "tm".
T-m-e-s-i-s, which is rather wonderful, which is when you cut a word in half by putting another word inside, like saying, abso-bloomin'-lutely, or sen (bleep) sational, or something.
- Or Scunthorpe.
- Or Scunthorpe, thank you very much.
(applause) Now, what's the difference between a hydrogen atom and a grand piano? - (gunshot/duck) - (guitar) - Jeremy got there first.
- Well, size.
- Shape.
- Yes, you're right.
It's a foolish question.
Possibly Iraq did have the capability of splitting a grand piano.
(applause) Very very good.
Very good indeed.
Five points.
That's very good.
Yes, but, Howard, the musician? Hydrogen was identified by an eccentric man called Cavendish, who was a reclusive nutter, basically, who did lots of very good scientific things in a room - Brother of the Duke of Devonshire.
- Was he? He was certainly a toff and he had a lot of money, so he spent his whole life living in this house doing experiments.
And he lived in Great Marlborough Street in Soho.
If you walk from Great Marlborough Street to Jermyn Street, it takes about three minutes.
And he identified hydrogen in about 1770, something like that.
In 1770, the world's first grand piano was made by a man called Americus Backers, who had his studio in Jermyn Street at exactly the same time.
My connection is they probably met at the same coffee shop.
You've got to have five points for that.
That's superb.
Superb stuff.
I love it.
Peculiar man.
And how odd to have an English aristocrat who is also peculiar.
I expect Howard will get it if I tell you that there are 89 frequencies to a hydrogen atom.
- Well, there are 88 keys on a piano.
- 88 frequencies, if you discount harmonics.
Although not on an imperial grand, there are more than 88 keys on an imperial grand.
- Are there? - Yes.
That, unfortunately, looks like an imperial grand, in which case it has four extra notes.
Well, in fact, it still is beaten by the hydrogen atom.
Late breaking news in my ear is that there are over 100 frequencies to a hydrogen atom.
So that was a bit of a knotty run, so we'll have a nice easy one.
- How many wives did Henry VIII have? - (all buzz at once) - Six.
- Oh, Alan, Alan, Alan.
(Alan) The six wives of Henry VIII.
Just because other people have made the mistake, it's no excuse for you to make it too.
He had six wives! He had major, major commitment problems, didn't he? I imagine every time he said, "Oh, it's not you, it's me.
" Then I suppose they had a trial separation - a brief trial and a very major separation.
Yes, of head from shoulders, exactly right.
It must have been difficult for the new woman in his life each time, cos she'd say, "0h, I don't know.
Everywhere I look, I just see her face" cos it's on a pole.
- (chime) - Yes? Can I say something interesting about Henry VIII? When he died and his body was moved from Greenwich up to wherever it went, Selfridges or somewhere - Maybe Westminster Abbey.
We'll check.
- Maybe Westminster Abbey.
Possibly Kentucky Fried Chicken, I don't know.
But his guts were so rotten, and it was such a hot day, that his stomach exploded.
- (Stephen) 0h, what a nasty thought.
- Isn't that a nice image? He was syphilitic and he was huge and he was a mess of a man.
- He sounds bloody gorgeous, doesn't he? - Well, as a young man, he was.
He was considered one of the most attractive men in all of Renaissance Europe.
I prefer syphilitic and bloated, myself.
- Yes, he did get a bit bloated.
- Cos at least they're easy.
No, yes, it's an interesting fact, this.
The real answer is three or four.
Henry's fourth marriage to Anne of Cleves was annulled on two grounds.
It was never consummated, and she was already betrothed to Francis, duke of Lorraine.
This was correct in law at the time and all parties agreed that no legal marriage had ever taken place.
That leaves five wives.
The Pope declared Henry's second marriage to Anne Boleyn void, because Henry was still married to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.
The king himself, as head of the Church of England, declared that his first marriage was invalid, on the correct legal ground that a man could not marry his brother's wife.
And Catherine of Aragon had been married to his brother Arthur.
Did he or did he not have six weddings? Yes, he did, but that wasn't the question I asked.
And did he say, "This is my wife"? Six different people.
Six different mothers-in-law, all said of him, "He is my bloated, syphilitic son-in-law.
" He said he'd never been married because he'd never had a wife because his first wife What about all the families saying, "Yes, you did.
We were there"? They heard the speeches.
They'd wake up in the morning dead, wouldn't they? But there was no legal spousal status.
That's the point we're trying to make.
How many toast racks did he have? That's the way.
Count the toast racks and you'll find out.
- Can I ask a question about that painting? - Yes.
Is it all wrong in perspective? It looks 2-D to me.
All Holbein's pictures are a bit flat.
He did one of Martin Luther and it's very flat.
- It looks like a pancake or an omelette.
- He could do perspective tricks.
He did a marvellous one which you have to see from below.
Oh, yeah, that's what he said after he'd bollocksed it up.
"You have to see it from below.
" Holbein's really made It's elongated skulls and things, and then when you move underneath it, the foreshortening effect of being under it, it becomes exactly the right proportion.
Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Good Lord, you are extraordinary! How do you know these things? - It took four years.
- Yeah? Which is the same length of time it takes to paint the Forth bridge in Scotland.
Oh, there you are.
You're struggling towards being interesting there.
I may have to give you two points.
There's a wonderful line in that film, The Agony and the Ecstasy, which is where Charlton Heston plays Michelangelo and Rex Harrison plays Charlton Heston plays Michelangelo? The effete Italian homosexual? - That's the one.
- Played by the president of the gun club? - He was an athletic Italian homosexual.
- I thought he was a wussy one.
He may well have preferred man-on-man action.
That doesn't mean he was Julian Clary.
He could have been butch, like me.
When I say "wussy one", I don't mean he was gay.
I mean he was a bit of a I thought da Vinci - You've got it the other way round.
- I thought da Vinci was the hard case.
No, no.
Michelangelo was an animal.
- He was physically strong - Michelangelo never washed.
He stank.
beard and - Alan Yentob said this.
But he preferred to take it up the Gary Glitter.
There we are.
Now, depending on whether you believe the pope or indeed the king, or both of them together, Henry VIII therefore had either four wives or three.
Now, what English word rhymes with silver? (guitar) Is this one of the ones like "orange", where there is no rhyme for it? - Oh.
- (alarm bells) You kind of said that, didn't you? No.
A lot of people think, like orange, that there is no rhyme for silver.
There is.
- Bilver.
- Chilver.
Yes! Chilver! Well done.
- Well done for working through sounds.
- I don't know what it means.
Chilver? A chilver is a ewe lamb.
- A me lamb? - (Alan) It's a lady lamb.
- A me lamb? A you lamb? - A female lamb.
A ewe.
- Oh, ewe lamb.
You.
- You.
You.
Where do all the diamonds come from in the world? - South Africa.
- Oh, no! He's done it again! - Oh, bless his heart! - (alarm bells) Oh, no, no.
No, all the diamonds in the world come from volcanoes.
All diamonds are formed under immense heat and pressure hundreds of kilometres beneath the Earth, and are brought to the surface in volcanic eruptions.
- 20 countries produce diamonds.
- Japan.
South Africa is only the fifth largest producer after Australia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Botswana and Russia.
Russia.
That's exactly what I said! You did.
Well done you.
Now, here's a quite interesting thing.
Diamonds are made of pure carbon and so is graphite - the stuff that pencils are made from, the lead of a pencil - but with the carbon atoms arranged slightly differently, so slightly differently that diamond is the hardest known substance on Earth, with a score of ten on the Mohs hardness scale, but graphite is one of the softest "Mohs hardness", like, as in Mo Better Blues.
No, as in M-o-h.
The name of the fellow who gave us this hardness scale.
Diamonds score ten and graphite scores very very low, 1.
2, or something like that.
What about Audley Harrison? He is well 'ard.
Now, what's invisible and travels at 38 miles an hour? - (bell) Ãashier number four, please.
- (gunshot/duck quacks) I'm think it's Is it the air that we expel from our nasal passages? It isn't that, I'm sorry to say.
- 38 miles an hour and it's invisible? - (Stephen) Yes.
It's got to be a ghost on a moped or a Stealth Skoda or a Virgin train.
(Stephen) Oh, very good.
No.
Is it a wind, like, you know, the sirocco or the mistral, or something like that? One of those winds.
It's not one of those.
This often travels a great deal faster, but it has been recorded as travelling at 38 miles an hour.
You could overtake it freewheeling on a bicycle.
- (Alan) A fart.
- No.
It usually goes much much faster.
I mean, really fast.
- How fast is a fart, though, do you think? - Well, no, please.
Let's not, no.
Well, no, because they've measured how fast your sneeze is.
They've measured maximum speeds No one's ever measured how fast we expel gas.
Do you wonder why? You're working in laboratory conditions all day, there's Bunsen burners around.
You could fart and someone could be on the other side of the lab with a stopwatch.
And they could go (sniffs) "Yes, it's here.
" (laughter/applause) - (Stephen) Can I drag this - "38 miles an hour, I estimate.
" Can I drag this above the level of They Think This Is All Over, or whatever it is? Is it a tidal wave? A tsunami? No.
Even faster.
What's the fastest thing you can think of? - Light.
- Light is the right answer.
- Is it? - Absolutely right.
- Light usually, as you probably know - 186,000 miles a second.
Very good.
I'll give you a few points.
- Wait a minute.
Someone slowed it down.
- (Stephen) Do you remember how? So they could get into bed before the light went out.
(laughter/applause) That's the only reason there is physics.
(Stephen) Top work.
No, you're quite right.
They put a laser light through, I don't know, ice, glass, something like that frosty.
Much colder than that.
Much much colder.
- Fridge.
- No.
Really cold.
- (Jo) Igloo.
- Frozen vodka.
- So much colder than that.
- (Jeremy) Blackpool.
You're all doing well.
No.
Astoundingly, light is, first, invisible.
You can't see it, only what bumps into it, or it bumps into.
If you could see it, you wouldn't be able to see anything else.
It's often said that the speed of light is constant, but it isn't, only in a vacuum, when it is 186,000 miles a second.
In any other medium, the speed of light varies considerably, as a matter of fact.
Through diamonds, for example, it goes less than half as fast, 80,000 miles to the second.
- Is that because it's going, "Whoooh"? - (Stephen) Yeah, exactly.
"This is the hardest thing.
" But the slowest it's ever been recorded at is through sodium at minus 270 degrees, where it travels at 38 miles per hour.
Now, fingers on buzzers, please, for a chance of an enormous last-minute bonus for that final question, which is on animals.
Complete the phrase: A chameleon changes colour to match its? (bell) Ãashier number four, please.
Environment.
Oh, that counts as "background".
I'm afraid that's got to be considered hugely wrong.
Hugely wrong.
I'm afraid you've fallen for it again.
No, it doesn't.
- It doesn't.
It never has, it never will.
- (guitar) Temperature? Yes, we'll give you a couple for temperature.
Car? That's background or environment, isn't it, to match anything else around it.
It doesn't change colour to match anything.
It changes colour according to mood, mood, temperature, or emotion, fear, for example, and so on like that.
But they are changing to the colour of the branch they're hanging on, don't they? - That is the fallacy.
- Do they know that? Has anyone told them? Shouldn't they be told? "I don't know what you're doing that for.
We can see you.
" "I happen to be in a slightly dodgy mood.
That's all this is about.
" "I'm not trying to look like this leaf.
" It used to be thought of chameleons, in fact, if you were to, say, 100 years ago, if you asked someone for the well-known fact about chameleons, they'd say that they live on air, which was assumed to be because they move so little and can very rarely be seen to be breathing.
And the other thing about chameleons is their eyes can swivel independently.
- Do they know that? - I'm sure they do.
Or do they just think the planet's just going Right, it only leaves for me, therefore, ladies and gentlemen, to give you the final scores.
And they are quite interesting.
I fear that in last place is Alan with minus 24 points.
In third place, Jeremy with seven.
Second is Howard with 13.
But in the lead, rousingly, is Jo with 36 points.
- Oh, my word! - (applause) (Stephen) That's about it for QI this week.
There's just time for me to thank Howard, Jeremy, Jo and Alan, and to say something quite interesting, concerning an interesting property of graphite, taken from the agony column of the Daily Mirror.
"Dear Marge, I noted in your column a few weeks ago the pros and cons of women going without a bra.
" "A few weeks ago I saw a small item in the paper which may help to settle the matter.
" "It is said that if a woman is not certain whether or not she should go braless, she should place a pencil under her bosom.
" "If the pencil stays there, she should wear a bra.
" "I would sign my name to this letter, but my wife still has my pencil.
" Good night.