QI (2003) s03e05 Episode Script
Cat's Eyes
(Applause) Hello, hello, hello, hello.
A very warm welcome to Ql on this chilly autumn evening.
Well as a dog returns to its vomit, and a washed sow goes back to wallowing in the mud, let's meet the team who can't leave well alone.
- Jo Brand.
- (Applause) - Sean Lock.
- Thank you.
- Rich Hall.
- (Applause) - And Alan Davies.
- Thank you.
(Applause) Well, the nights are drawing in, the weather's a disgrace, so tonight each guest has a seasonal buzzer.
Let's hear them.
Sean goes (Nose sniffs) - Rich goes - (Hacking cough) Jo goes (Sneeze) - And Alan goes - (Walrus groans) So Jo, can you smell the fear? - Of course.
- Yeah? - (Jo) Hmm.
- What its smell like? Jeremy Beadle.
The only thing l'm scared of is pine cones.
You know the ones with the little holes in? lf l see a banksia cone on the floor l have to look away, and if there's loads of them, l have to cover my eyes and just run off.
- lt is an extraordinary phobia.
- Yeah.
You could probably smell the fear, but it would be a pine scented fear.
Yes, there might be a lovely pine freshness to it.
- l've got a phobia.
- (Stephen) Go on.
Of axe-wielding psychopaths.
The irrational fears that people have.
But she does live in South London, so yeah.
There's a reason l asked you and not the others.
- Cos you're a lady girl.
- A lady girl? What you're saying is she's a Thai wrestler.
- (Alan) Quite interesting thing.
- Yes, go on.
Lady mosquitoes bite you and suck your blood.
- That's true.
- Male mosquitoes, not quite so dangerous.
- True.
- Point? Well, you've made your point, but you're not going to get one.
Women have been shown to be able to smell fear.
What this Viennese man did, he was called Grammer, he made a lot of women watch films, some of which were horror films, and all of the women had pads under their arms.
Then other women smelt all the pads, and they could identify, without fail, the pads of women who had been frightened.
Are you sure this isn't just some soft porn film? l know you would think that.
l think fear smells like crab salad.
l went to this deli the other day and l said, "Can l have a crab salad sandwich?" And the woman said, "We're all out of crab salad, l'm afraid.
" (Applause) lt seems that animals can smell each other's fear, but not the fear of another species.
The idea that a horse can smell when a man or a woman is afraid is apparently not true.
l had to handle a rabbit recently.
And as, the longer l held it, the smellier it got.
You might have been holding it a little bit too tight.
So, now, our next question.
What did Cat's Eyes Cunningham have for supper? lt's a shot in the dark this, was it chicken fajitas? So close.
ls he the bloke who invented Cat's Eyes? - No.
- Some sort of road kill? No.
That's a good thought.
No, that was Percy Shaw, if you remember, who invented the Cat's Eye.
ls he a blues singer? No, it sounds like a blues singer.
But look at that clean-cut those features, the honest look.
He was a bomber commander in the war.
Not bomber command but fighter.
Ah, so he could see at night.
Yes, hence Cat's Eyes.
So what did he eat? - (Alan) Carrots.
- (Alarm) Oh dear.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
No.
Cunningham did in fact shoot down the very first plane by night in 1940.
Now the reason was, not that he ate carrots, but that he had airborne radar.
A - we wanted the Germans to think we didn't have such a clever weapon, and secondly we wanted children to eat carrots, so we told children that it was very good for your night vision.
lf you only eat carrots, you go yellow.
And l know that, because it happened in an episode of District Nurse.
The District Nerys.
Oh, God bless Nerys Hughes.
Went round to this family and they were all yellow.
Fantastic.
She said, "What did you have for breakfast?" Carrots.
You can guess the rest.
Do you know there's a carrot museum in Belgium? (Rich) l'm not surprised.
ln East Belgium.
Yes, it's in Berlotte, l think, is the name of the little town.
And it's so small you can't actually get into it.
You have to look through a little window and you turn a handle and different carrots parade.
This programme would be dangerously exciting to a Belgian, wouldn't it? A quite interesting point is that children of about two go off vegetables.
- Do you know why? - No, tell me.
Because their taste buds develop and everything tastes very bitter.
And so most vegetables, but not particularly carrots, but things like broccoli, all those green vegetables, they taste slightly bitter, and that's to stop them getting poisoned, eating weird berries and stuff.
- There you are.
- Not funny, never said it was funny.
No, it's interesting.
And for that you are awarded - We get points just for being interesting? - You do, for being quite interesting.
Yes, you see, not as easy as it seems.
You know the, the guy who invented the Phillip's head screw? His hair parted in four different sections.
Excellent.
Now, tell me if you can, team, what makes a sound something like this (Sand dune boom) ls it a bee under a sink? Very good.
l tell you what, you can hear the same thing giving off a different sound.
(Sand dune croak) lt's for mothers and younger sons only.
But see if you can lt's something Marco Polo heard and was astonished by.
- l'll play the first one again.
- (Jo) Kajagoogoo? Here's the first one.
(Sand dune boom) lt's Marco Polo.
l know what it is, it's a sand dune, it's a desert.
Yes! The sand dunes is absolutely right.
Congratulations.
- Very good.
- (Applause) Well done.
Yes, they sounded like the spirits of the desert, dead people, according to Marco Polo.
Like drums, fog horns, trumpets, even a twin-engined jet plane to others.
Well how do they make that grasshoppery noise afterwards? Well, once a dune gets dry, at about 35 degrees, - it has to be, quite precisely, there's this - 36.
You gave a little grin that just gave you away, but it was very impressive.
Yeah, yeah, but it's like 35, 36 sometimes.
Yeah, 35 or 36 degrees, and the dry sand starts to fall when the wind comes from the right direction and the sand underneath begins to oscillate quite violently, and it gives off this low frequency sound.
lt can be heard up to six miles away.
Why is there so much sand there? - Because it's a desert! - But normally sand is by the shore, isn't it? l can get that, that it's worn away, worn away and worn away, to tiny particles.
But in the desert it's just lying around.
And how much would they charge for their sand, if you wanted some? l don't think they'd charge, They'd say, "Yeah, have it.
"And if you can get it home, you can take it, yeah.
" How many grains of sand in the Sahara, do you reckon? - (Sean) Do you reckon? - l lost count, it's quite a few.
l got up to 17 and it's definitely more than that.
Apparently there are more molecules in a glass of water than there are grains of sand in the entire world.
The Gobi toad lives under the desert and every seven years it waits for some rainfall and they all come up to the surface, they mate, and then they go back down again for seven years.
Wow.
l like the way you did that.
"Wow!" Sorry, that is very interesting.
You can certainly have five points for that.
l didn't know anything about Gobi toads.
l said something Stephen didn't know.
There are more things l don't know than there are molecules in a glass of water.
What do you get if you cross a camel with a leopard? A fireside rug you can have a good hump on? - Sorry.
- (Applause) You get sacked from the zoo.
- You might, you might.
- l know something about leopards, which is they don't mind rotten meat.
They catch something, they'll drag it up a tree and they'll leave it there for days.
Yes they do, don't they.
They don't mind eating it if it's all covered in maggots, whereas cheetahs, only fresh.
So a cheetah will catch something and the leopard will go over and nick it off it and then drag it up a tree and not even bother with it.
But eating rotten meat is terrible, it gives you spots.
- (Audience groans) - Oi! Now.
Now then.
- Why can't they mate? - Well, they're different species.
That is almost a definition of what a species is.
We can't mate with gorilla, even though we're very closely related, but these two You mean even if they had intercourse l mean you could literally stick your thingie up the whatnot and The tiny leopard sperm could not penetrate the camel egg? lt could certainly, but it couldn't fertilise it.
There is an animal that used to be called a camelopard.
And it was believed by the ancients, by a man that you love personally with a great passion, called Pliny the Elder.
Yes, Pliny the Elder was one of the first to write about this animal.
The Romans knew of this animal, and they believed that many of the stranger species might be the result of two other species mating.
There were such things as griffins and centaurs, so it was assumed that this animal was the offspring of a camel and a leopard.
Now, look at the camel and then look at the spottiness of the leopard.
What would be spotty with eyelashes and funny lips? Esther Rantzen.
Very good.
Come on, anyone in the audience have a thought? - (Audience) Giraffe.
- Giraffe.
You see.
ls that a giraffe display team? - lt's like they've turned up for a fete.
- (Alan) They're marching.
The weird thing is, you do see giraffes eating off the ground.
Well they bend down for a drink, but it's terribly hard for them.
lt is.
Well, they have enormous hearts, you know, they have twice the blood pressure we do, to get the blood going up.
a minute is pumped through them, at 170 beats a minute on these huge hearts with thick, thick walls.
- And they don't appreciate it, do they? - No.
So there you are.
Centaurs we were talking about, they are horses and men, of course.
So neatly we're going to link from centaurs to centenarians.
What do you automatically get when you're a hundred years old? (Alan) An e-mail from the Queen.
Not quite.
What is it that you get? You're in the right area.
Well you don't though any more, do you, get a telegram.
- You don't get the telegram, no.
- (Jo) A phone call.
lt's a rather dull equivalent of a telegram that replaced it in 1982.
- (Alan) Something sort of more electrical.
- lt's called the telemessage.
- How does that differ from a telegram then? - Well, it's sent in the post.
lt's rather pointless, like a letter, really, printed out.
But, you have to apply for it.
You write to the Anniversary Secretary, Buckingham Palace, the Mall, London SW1A 1AA.
ls it true that you gave Prince Charles, for his wedding present, some coffee made out of weasel shit? Not exactly.
lt was Cambodian weasel vomit coffee.
lt's a coffee that these weasels eat and They eat the beans and from what they excrete - No, vomit.
- Or vomit.
They vomit and the acid in the stomach softens it.
lt's apparently very flavoursome.
l just felt it was something he wouldn't have.
lt seemed a good idea.
He put it in a cupboard at home and there's loads of them.
l wouldn't be surprised, to be honest.
"Fry thinking he's so bloody original.
" We're on the subject of the 100's.
What do you call a Roman who is in charge of a hundred men? - Centurion.
- (Alarm) l'm sorry, l just felt l had to say that.
- You did and you were right.
- l knew l was wrong.
There is no word for a Roman in charge of 100 men.
Strictly speaking, a centurion was in charge of 83 men, didn't you know? ln practice that usually meant between 60 and 80.
There they are.
lt's a very complicated reason, there's all kinds Are those real Romans? That's fantastic.
We did a Blackadder Roman thing for the millennium and we used these sort of people.
The Assistant Director was saying to them, "Ken, isn't it?" He said, "No, it's Marcellus Drusus, please, when l'm in uniform.
" Really, and you had to call him Marcellus Drusus.
And l got him terribly cross by numbering them off i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi.
Anyway.
Staying with the C's of ancient Rome, there were seven Roman Emperors who bore the name Caesar, not counting Julius, who started the whole thing, but wasn't an Emperor.
We all know what he did - he came, he saw, he conquered.
But what did Nero do? - Fiddled while Rome burned.
- (Alarm) - Oh did you say that? - l did.
Oh Jo, he didn't fiddle while Rome burned, no.
He had a concrete swimming hat.
He did rather.
He was very productive, wasn't he, Nero? He built most of Rome, the Rome you see.
Well he rebuilt it after it was burned down, indeed.
Did he have an enormous gold statue of himself built? lncredibly vain and stupid, and people didn't like him? His dying words were, "What an artist dies in me.
" - And he played the - Was there someone in him at the time? "A small faux viste painter has just perished inside my being.
" Anyway, no, of course the fiddle didn't exist in Roman days.
The fiddle was invented, in the 15th Century, something like that.
So he would have played the kithara or something, a sort of lyre like thing.
Was he doing it like a sort of fire engine alarm, like (Mimics siren) Well there's some evidence he did try and put the fire out, actually.
He blamed a small sect of people for the fire, which was a very useful scapegoat.
- The gays.
- No.
Even smaller, slightly less well-dressed and oddly enough, to this day, enemies of the gays.
- lt wasn't the chavvies? - No.
- Even worse than the - (Sean) Coptic's.
Those damned Christians.
Nero, played by Christopher Biggins, of course, in TV's popular l Clavdivs.
But - (Sean) l Chavdivs.
- Yeah.
Some people think he may have even been playing bagpipes when he was watching Christopher Biggins? No, he is actually that size.
- Bagpipes, l'm sorry.
- Yes.
No, l can't be having it.
They have this tuning, "eeeh", and it's odd, the Scots do that when they talk.
(Scottish accent) "Eeeh, l'm not sure.
" lt's very odd that.
So anyway, there we are, there's old Nero.
Whatever he was, he was eventually boo'd off and succeeded by a more popular entertainer, who was called Galbas.
Servius Galbas Caesar Augustus, to be precise.
And he got rid of bagpipe performances and he replaced them with tightrope walking elephants.
Which brings us to our next question.
Lots of ancient armies had elephants.
They were the tanks of the ancient world in many respects, but they weighed twelve tons and they can run at twenty miles per hour.
So how did people catch them in the first place? The truth is that many of these elephants volunteered.
They came from small towns, there was no future, no circus coming through town, so they'd go off and join.
Wouldn't you catch a baby one? With a limp? - l think they tripped them up.
- (Stephen) Nearly.
lt's close to that.
They'd have Ethiopian elephant catchers and they used to run up behind the elephant and then they'd jump up onto its back leg, and hanging onto its tail, they would hack away at the other leg with an axe.
Then the elephant's usual response was to sit on the Ethiopian, so it was a dangerous thing to do.
But the Ethiopian, one feels, deserved it.
They would use that as a breeding animal, rather than a war animal.
Do you know what was supposed to frighten elephants? What they would do is cover pigs in oil - this is not funny - set fire to them, and the pigs would then run after the elephants on fire, and the elephants would be so freaked out by this spectacle of pigs on fire that they would run away.
l wonder how they found that out.
l think they found it out because when a pig squealed, an elephant would rear up and run away, and so they thought, "How do we get pigs to squeal?" - We'll set fire to them.
- Set alight to them! - l know, it's horrible.
- ls that how they first discovered crackling? (Applause) l think you may be right.
We all know that elephants have proverbially lengthy memories, although quite interestingly, according to the Greeks, it used to be camels that never forgot.
What kind of creature has a terrible memory? Short memory? My dad can't remember anything.
l went round to see him the other day and he looked at me like that - l went, "Hi Dad?" - He went, "Oh, right.
" My neighbour's dog doesn't remember when l kick it, because l've done it loads of times and it still comes up to me.
l kick it really hard in the face and (Alan) A gold fish.
- (Alarm) - Oh, not goldfish.
- No, there is - Three second memory.
There is this fallacy that goldfish have a three second memory.
- lt's not a fallacy.
- lt is a fallacy.
They've done tests.
They have.
A man from Plymouth University did wonderful tests.
He said to the goldfish, "What happened on Eastenders last night?" - And he remembered most of it.
- Two things, one, there isn't a Plymouth University, that's made-up.
And two, they can't remember anything.
it's a sweet shop with a copy of the Times in it, isn't it? Dr Phil Gee of the University of Plymouth's - psychological Department - ls he a rapper? He does sound like that, Dr Phil Gee.
He trained them to press levers.
They could even tell the time, because he would have the lever work just for an hour in the day and they would come and press it at the right time to deliver food.
They knew exactly where it was and they would come back to it.
How come they can't tell that the deep sea diver is three times as big as the castle? Not so damn smart.
lt seems they have pretty good memories, and what's more, they're not gold.
Put them back in the wild, they go to brown and other different colours.
That's not true, because l've got two in a pond, they've been there five years, they're still orange, so No, l meant in the wildy, wildy, wildy, but if you, they're in captivity Where's the wildy, wildy wildy? - l'd like to go there.
- lt's a technical term.
(Sean) The Norfolk.
So what can't remember anything then? l bet a koala can't remember much.
Wakes up, "Aah, no".
l bet a pig on fire can't remember much either.
l had a strange experience.
l was in Australia recently and l went to a day out to the zoo and they give you a koala to hold and you have a photograph taken of it.
And koalas are very lazy animals, they don't exactly work-out, do you know what l mean? They haven't got firm buttocks or anything.
And l had one in my hand and it kind of just slipped and before l knew it, l actually had a sort of koala's buttocks, it was actually slipped onto my finger.
And it was horrible, and just sort of slid on.
On the photograph, because they take a photograph of you, you're supposed to hold a koala, and the koala just goes this, he goes The worst thing was, they wanted it back.
And l said, "Can l hold it for a bit longer?" And l was trying to get the finger out.
And l said, "Can l take it away?" The list of charges is beginning to add up, isn't it? Have you heard the joke that's going around the internet about the doctor and all the student doctors? And he's got a corpse there, he's got a cadaver, and he says, "lt's very important that you are completely at ease with the corpse" and he puts his finger up the arse of the corpse, and takes it out.
- Ugh! - He says, you now.
And one after another they all do that.
They all do it and they all finish doing it, the last one.
Then he says, "lt's very important also that you observe carefully what l do.
"l inserted my index finger and sucked my middle finger.
" (Applause) "So try and pay attention in future.
" "C'est non everro a bentro vato.
" Thank you.
All of which brings us back once more to the hellish netherworld that we call General lgnorance.
Jo, have you ever been in bed with a myoclonic jerk? l've had him.
Myopic, that's when you can't see anything, isn't it? ls it myo, something to do with eyes? - Myo is muscles, isn't it? - Yes, Myo from the Greek.
- lt's a muscular - (Jo) Spasm.
lt's kind of a spasm, what do you get when, sometimes when you're falling asleep, do you ever get this? Everyone does, l think.
You feel that dropping feeling, as if you've just fallen.
- Have you ever had that? - Yes.
l think it's the term for my dad, who used to This is all l ever saw of my dad in a chair.
(Snores) - Everyone had it in the audience? - (Audience) Yes.
Everyone has it, it's very odd.
And no one really knows where it comes from.
The theory is, one is that it's descended from when we used to sleep in trees.
lt was a deliberate reflex so that we would grasp things.
- And if you ever did drop, you'd - Oh, that's what that is.
So what's the animal that can't, that can't remember anything? Rich, we have a question for you, just for you.
- ls this a stupid American question? - Continentally speaking, yes.
Which is the largest lake in Canada? - Width or depth? - Not depth.
- (Jo) Can l attempt an answer at this? - (Stephen) Yes.
- Who Cares? - Oh dear.
- Oh, have l got a point? - We were predicting that one.
Yeah, who Cares? There are so many lakes in Canada, more than a million in Manitoba alone, and you can buy a lake and have it named after you.
lt's cos the water doesn't drain away, there's no water table.
You can.
But one's really big, it's bigger than Albania.
ls it one of the Great Lakes, technically Canadian, are they all? No, you've avoided our little trap there actually, which Jo didn't by saying who cares.
lf you'd said one of the Great Lakes, there would have been a big noise, because this lake has to be entirely in Canada.
What's the difference between largest and biggest? Well, in other languages, largest means widest, l suppose, and biggest means just greatest in size.
But largest we now mean to mean biggest.
lt originally meant wide.
Large is wide in French, isn't it? - Right, thanks.
- l mean we are very lucky because we have both Latin and the romance languages, and the Anglo Saxon languages to draw on, so we can say big and large.
- So little and small.
- (Alan) Little and Large.
Little and Large, indeed.
Funnily enough, when you said the deepest lake, the deepest lake is Lake Manitou.
And Lake Manitou is a weird lake, cos it's also got the largest lake island in the world in it.
and that island has got a lake in it, which is the largest lake in an island that's in a lake in the world.
- This just goes on to infinity.
- lt does, doesn't it.
No, the answer is the Great Bear Lake.
None of the five Great Lakes is entirely in Canada you see.
So finally, this is for everyone except Rich, we think you'll know this.
- What are Bott's Dots? - Are they Bott's Dots? No, they're not, those are just dots to give you an idea of what a dot is, l suppose.
lt brings us round full circle to almost our very first question.
lt's not the slight sort of spattering you get if you insert your finger into a koala, is it? - Sorry.
- Cat's Eyes Cunningham and the carrots.
Good, stick with that, Cat's Eyes Cunningham and the carrots, with three C's.
Are they American cat's eyes then? Yes, give the lady a cigar.
Fantastic.
(Applause) They are the Californian version of our cat's eyes.
The American ones break every time you drive over them.
- Yes, why is that? - Cos they're shit.
What is it that's shit about them? They're made out of glass.
No, ours are where it goes back into the ground, it's on a sort of springy thing.
And not only that, very cunningly, so that it doesn't break, but the water will obviously gather there when it rains, and so it washes its little eyes.
Every time you run over it, you're washing its face.
Aah, isn't that nice.
l actually didn't know that, l thought You didn't know what a Bott's Dot was? l thought they were those things on John-Boy, from the Walton's, face.
l thought that's why you were withholding the answer from me.
No, it was a man called Dr Elbert Bott.
- Elbert.
- Elbert Bott.
And he didn't make a fortune, unlike Percy Shaw, because he worked for the Californian State Highways Authority.
So there we are, it must be surely time now ladies and gentlemen, for the final scores, let's have a look at them.
We're going to start with a worthy and proud winner.
He may mutilate animals, but he does know a thing or two, Sean Lock with 12 points.
(Applause) And on second place, with three points, - Rich Hall, ladies and gentlemen.
- (Applause) ln third place, with minus 18 points, - is Alan Davies, not last.
- (Applause) And that means that our runaway loser, with minus 28, is Jo Brand, ladies and gentlemen.
(Applause) Well, that's all we have time for this week.
My thanks to Rich, Sean, Jo and Alan.
And l leave you with a helpful tip from the billionaire John Paul Getty, "My formula for success," he said, "ls rise early, work late and strike oil.
" Good night.
(Applause)
A very warm welcome to Ql on this chilly autumn evening.
Well as a dog returns to its vomit, and a washed sow goes back to wallowing in the mud, let's meet the team who can't leave well alone.
- Jo Brand.
- (Applause) - Sean Lock.
- Thank you.
- Rich Hall.
- (Applause) - And Alan Davies.
- Thank you.
(Applause) Well, the nights are drawing in, the weather's a disgrace, so tonight each guest has a seasonal buzzer.
Let's hear them.
Sean goes (Nose sniffs) - Rich goes - (Hacking cough) Jo goes (Sneeze) - And Alan goes - (Walrus groans) So Jo, can you smell the fear? - Of course.
- Yeah? - (Jo) Hmm.
- What its smell like? Jeremy Beadle.
The only thing l'm scared of is pine cones.
You know the ones with the little holes in? lf l see a banksia cone on the floor l have to look away, and if there's loads of them, l have to cover my eyes and just run off.
- lt is an extraordinary phobia.
- Yeah.
You could probably smell the fear, but it would be a pine scented fear.
Yes, there might be a lovely pine freshness to it.
- l've got a phobia.
- (Stephen) Go on.
Of axe-wielding psychopaths.
The irrational fears that people have.
But she does live in South London, so yeah.
There's a reason l asked you and not the others.
- Cos you're a lady girl.
- A lady girl? What you're saying is she's a Thai wrestler.
- (Alan) Quite interesting thing.
- Yes, go on.
Lady mosquitoes bite you and suck your blood.
- That's true.
- Male mosquitoes, not quite so dangerous.
- True.
- Point? Well, you've made your point, but you're not going to get one.
Women have been shown to be able to smell fear.
What this Viennese man did, he was called Grammer, he made a lot of women watch films, some of which were horror films, and all of the women had pads under their arms.
Then other women smelt all the pads, and they could identify, without fail, the pads of women who had been frightened.
Are you sure this isn't just some soft porn film? l know you would think that.
l think fear smells like crab salad.
l went to this deli the other day and l said, "Can l have a crab salad sandwich?" And the woman said, "We're all out of crab salad, l'm afraid.
" (Applause) lt seems that animals can smell each other's fear, but not the fear of another species.
The idea that a horse can smell when a man or a woman is afraid is apparently not true.
l had to handle a rabbit recently.
And as, the longer l held it, the smellier it got.
You might have been holding it a little bit too tight.
So, now, our next question.
What did Cat's Eyes Cunningham have for supper? lt's a shot in the dark this, was it chicken fajitas? So close.
ls he the bloke who invented Cat's Eyes? - No.
- Some sort of road kill? No.
That's a good thought.
No, that was Percy Shaw, if you remember, who invented the Cat's Eye.
ls he a blues singer? No, it sounds like a blues singer.
But look at that clean-cut those features, the honest look.
He was a bomber commander in the war.
Not bomber command but fighter.
Ah, so he could see at night.
Yes, hence Cat's Eyes.
So what did he eat? - (Alan) Carrots.
- (Alarm) Oh dear.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
No.
Cunningham did in fact shoot down the very first plane by night in 1940.
Now the reason was, not that he ate carrots, but that he had airborne radar.
A - we wanted the Germans to think we didn't have such a clever weapon, and secondly we wanted children to eat carrots, so we told children that it was very good for your night vision.
lf you only eat carrots, you go yellow.
And l know that, because it happened in an episode of District Nurse.
The District Nerys.
Oh, God bless Nerys Hughes.
Went round to this family and they were all yellow.
Fantastic.
She said, "What did you have for breakfast?" Carrots.
You can guess the rest.
Do you know there's a carrot museum in Belgium? (Rich) l'm not surprised.
ln East Belgium.
Yes, it's in Berlotte, l think, is the name of the little town.
And it's so small you can't actually get into it.
You have to look through a little window and you turn a handle and different carrots parade.
This programme would be dangerously exciting to a Belgian, wouldn't it? A quite interesting point is that children of about two go off vegetables.
- Do you know why? - No, tell me.
Because their taste buds develop and everything tastes very bitter.
And so most vegetables, but not particularly carrots, but things like broccoli, all those green vegetables, they taste slightly bitter, and that's to stop them getting poisoned, eating weird berries and stuff.
- There you are.
- Not funny, never said it was funny.
No, it's interesting.
And for that you are awarded - We get points just for being interesting? - You do, for being quite interesting.
Yes, you see, not as easy as it seems.
You know the, the guy who invented the Phillip's head screw? His hair parted in four different sections.
Excellent.
Now, tell me if you can, team, what makes a sound something like this (Sand dune boom) ls it a bee under a sink? Very good.
l tell you what, you can hear the same thing giving off a different sound.
(Sand dune croak) lt's for mothers and younger sons only.
But see if you can lt's something Marco Polo heard and was astonished by.
- l'll play the first one again.
- (Jo) Kajagoogoo? Here's the first one.
(Sand dune boom) lt's Marco Polo.
l know what it is, it's a sand dune, it's a desert.
Yes! The sand dunes is absolutely right.
Congratulations.
- Very good.
- (Applause) Well done.
Yes, they sounded like the spirits of the desert, dead people, according to Marco Polo.
Like drums, fog horns, trumpets, even a twin-engined jet plane to others.
Well how do they make that grasshoppery noise afterwards? Well, once a dune gets dry, at about 35 degrees, - it has to be, quite precisely, there's this - 36.
You gave a little grin that just gave you away, but it was very impressive.
Yeah, yeah, but it's like 35, 36 sometimes.
Yeah, 35 or 36 degrees, and the dry sand starts to fall when the wind comes from the right direction and the sand underneath begins to oscillate quite violently, and it gives off this low frequency sound.
lt can be heard up to six miles away.
Why is there so much sand there? - Because it's a desert! - But normally sand is by the shore, isn't it? l can get that, that it's worn away, worn away and worn away, to tiny particles.
But in the desert it's just lying around.
And how much would they charge for their sand, if you wanted some? l don't think they'd charge, They'd say, "Yeah, have it.
"And if you can get it home, you can take it, yeah.
" How many grains of sand in the Sahara, do you reckon? - (Sean) Do you reckon? - l lost count, it's quite a few.
l got up to 17 and it's definitely more than that.
Apparently there are more molecules in a glass of water than there are grains of sand in the entire world.
The Gobi toad lives under the desert and every seven years it waits for some rainfall and they all come up to the surface, they mate, and then they go back down again for seven years.
Wow.
l like the way you did that.
"Wow!" Sorry, that is very interesting.
You can certainly have five points for that.
l didn't know anything about Gobi toads.
l said something Stephen didn't know.
There are more things l don't know than there are molecules in a glass of water.
What do you get if you cross a camel with a leopard? A fireside rug you can have a good hump on? - Sorry.
- (Applause) You get sacked from the zoo.
- You might, you might.
- l know something about leopards, which is they don't mind rotten meat.
They catch something, they'll drag it up a tree and they'll leave it there for days.
Yes they do, don't they.
They don't mind eating it if it's all covered in maggots, whereas cheetahs, only fresh.
So a cheetah will catch something and the leopard will go over and nick it off it and then drag it up a tree and not even bother with it.
But eating rotten meat is terrible, it gives you spots.
- (Audience groans) - Oi! Now.
Now then.
- Why can't they mate? - Well, they're different species.
That is almost a definition of what a species is.
We can't mate with gorilla, even though we're very closely related, but these two You mean even if they had intercourse l mean you could literally stick your thingie up the whatnot and The tiny leopard sperm could not penetrate the camel egg? lt could certainly, but it couldn't fertilise it.
There is an animal that used to be called a camelopard.
And it was believed by the ancients, by a man that you love personally with a great passion, called Pliny the Elder.
Yes, Pliny the Elder was one of the first to write about this animal.
The Romans knew of this animal, and they believed that many of the stranger species might be the result of two other species mating.
There were such things as griffins and centaurs, so it was assumed that this animal was the offspring of a camel and a leopard.
Now, look at the camel and then look at the spottiness of the leopard.
What would be spotty with eyelashes and funny lips? Esther Rantzen.
Very good.
Come on, anyone in the audience have a thought? - (Audience) Giraffe.
- Giraffe.
You see.
ls that a giraffe display team? - lt's like they've turned up for a fete.
- (Alan) They're marching.
The weird thing is, you do see giraffes eating off the ground.
Well they bend down for a drink, but it's terribly hard for them.
lt is.
Well, they have enormous hearts, you know, they have twice the blood pressure we do, to get the blood going up.
a minute is pumped through them, at 170 beats a minute on these huge hearts with thick, thick walls.
- And they don't appreciate it, do they? - No.
So there you are.
Centaurs we were talking about, they are horses and men, of course.
So neatly we're going to link from centaurs to centenarians.
What do you automatically get when you're a hundred years old? (Alan) An e-mail from the Queen.
Not quite.
What is it that you get? You're in the right area.
Well you don't though any more, do you, get a telegram.
- You don't get the telegram, no.
- (Jo) A phone call.
lt's a rather dull equivalent of a telegram that replaced it in 1982.
- (Alan) Something sort of more electrical.
- lt's called the telemessage.
- How does that differ from a telegram then? - Well, it's sent in the post.
lt's rather pointless, like a letter, really, printed out.
But, you have to apply for it.
You write to the Anniversary Secretary, Buckingham Palace, the Mall, London SW1A 1AA.
ls it true that you gave Prince Charles, for his wedding present, some coffee made out of weasel shit? Not exactly.
lt was Cambodian weasel vomit coffee.
lt's a coffee that these weasels eat and They eat the beans and from what they excrete - No, vomit.
- Or vomit.
They vomit and the acid in the stomach softens it.
lt's apparently very flavoursome.
l just felt it was something he wouldn't have.
lt seemed a good idea.
He put it in a cupboard at home and there's loads of them.
l wouldn't be surprised, to be honest.
"Fry thinking he's so bloody original.
" We're on the subject of the 100's.
What do you call a Roman who is in charge of a hundred men? - Centurion.
- (Alarm) l'm sorry, l just felt l had to say that.
- You did and you were right.
- l knew l was wrong.
There is no word for a Roman in charge of 100 men.
Strictly speaking, a centurion was in charge of 83 men, didn't you know? ln practice that usually meant between 60 and 80.
There they are.
lt's a very complicated reason, there's all kinds Are those real Romans? That's fantastic.
We did a Blackadder Roman thing for the millennium and we used these sort of people.
The Assistant Director was saying to them, "Ken, isn't it?" He said, "No, it's Marcellus Drusus, please, when l'm in uniform.
" Really, and you had to call him Marcellus Drusus.
And l got him terribly cross by numbering them off i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi.
Anyway.
Staying with the C's of ancient Rome, there were seven Roman Emperors who bore the name Caesar, not counting Julius, who started the whole thing, but wasn't an Emperor.
We all know what he did - he came, he saw, he conquered.
But what did Nero do? - Fiddled while Rome burned.
- (Alarm) - Oh did you say that? - l did.
Oh Jo, he didn't fiddle while Rome burned, no.
He had a concrete swimming hat.
He did rather.
He was very productive, wasn't he, Nero? He built most of Rome, the Rome you see.
Well he rebuilt it after it was burned down, indeed.
Did he have an enormous gold statue of himself built? lncredibly vain and stupid, and people didn't like him? His dying words were, "What an artist dies in me.
" - And he played the - Was there someone in him at the time? "A small faux viste painter has just perished inside my being.
" Anyway, no, of course the fiddle didn't exist in Roman days.
The fiddle was invented, in the 15th Century, something like that.
So he would have played the kithara or something, a sort of lyre like thing.
Was he doing it like a sort of fire engine alarm, like (Mimics siren) Well there's some evidence he did try and put the fire out, actually.
He blamed a small sect of people for the fire, which was a very useful scapegoat.
- The gays.
- No.
Even smaller, slightly less well-dressed and oddly enough, to this day, enemies of the gays.
- lt wasn't the chavvies? - No.
- Even worse than the - (Sean) Coptic's.
Those damned Christians.
Nero, played by Christopher Biggins, of course, in TV's popular l Clavdivs.
But - (Sean) l Chavdivs.
- Yeah.
Some people think he may have even been playing bagpipes when he was watching Christopher Biggins? No, he is actually that size.
- Bagpipes, l'm sorry.
- Yes.
No, l can't be having it.
They have this tuning, "eeeh", and it's odd, the Scots do that when they talk.
(Scottish accent) "Eeeh, l'm not sure.
" lt's very odd that.
So anyway, there we are, there's old Nero.
Whatever he was, he was eventually boo'd off and succeeded by a more popular entertainer, who was called Galbas.
Servius Galbas Caesar Augustus, to be precise.
And he got rid of bagpipe performances and he replaced them with tightrope walking elephants.
Which brings us to our next question.
Lots of ancient armies had elephants.
They were the tanks of the ancient world in many respects, but they weighed twelve tons and they can run at twenty miles per hour.
So how did people catch them in the first place? The truth is that many of these elephants volunteered.
They came from small towns, there was no future, no circus coming through town, so they'd go off and join.
Wouldn't you catch a baby one? With a limp? - l think they tripped them up.
- (Stephen) Nearly.
lt's close to that.
They'd have Ethiopian elephant catchers and they used to run up behind the elephant and then they'd jump up onto its back leg, and hanging onto its tail, they would hack away at the other leg with an axe.
Then the elephant's usual response was to sit on the Ethiopian, so it was a dangerous thing to do.
But the Ethiopian, one feels, deserved it.
They would use that as a breeding animal, rather than a war animal.
Do you know what was supposed to frighten elephants? What they would do is cover pigs in oil - this is not funny - set fire to them, and the pigs would then run after the elephants on fire, and the elephants would be so freaked out by this spectacle of pigs on fire that they would run away.
l wonder how they found that out.
l think they found it out because when a pig squealed, an elephant would rear up and run away, and so they thought, "How do we get pigs to squeal?" - We'll set fire to them.
- Set alight to them! - l know, it's horrible.
- ls that how they first discovered crackling? (Applause) l think you may be right.
We all know that elephants have proverbially lengthy memories, although quite interestingly, according to the Greeks, it used to be camels that never forgot.
What kind of creature has a terrible memory? Short memory? My dad can't remember anything.
l went round to see him the other day and he looked at me like that - l went, "Hi Dad?" - He went, "Oh, right.
" My neighbour's dog doesn't remember when l kick it, because l've done it loads of times and it still comes up to me.
l kick it really hard in the face and (Alan) A gold fish.
- (Alarm) - Oh, not goldfish.
- No, there is - Three second memory.
There is this fallacy that goldfish have a three second memory.
- lt's not a fallacy.
- lt is a fallacy.
They've done tests.
They have.
A man from Plymouth University did wonderful tests.
He said to the goldfish, "What happened on Eastenders last night?" - And he remembered most of it.
- Two things, one, there isn't a Plymouth University, that's made-up.
And two, they can't remember anything.
it's a sweet shop with a copy of the Times in it, isn't it? Dr Phil Gee of the University of Plymouth's - psychological Department - ls he a rapper? He does sound like that, Dr Phil Gee.
He trained them to press levers.
They could even tell the time, because he would have the lever work just for an hour in the day and they would come and press it at the right time to deliver food.
They knew exactly where it was and they would come back to it.
How come they can't tell that the deep sea diver is three times as big as the castle? Not so damn smart.
lt seems they have pretty good memories, and what's more, they're not gold.
Put them back in the wild, they go to brown and other different colours.
That's not true, because l've got two in a pond, they've been there five years, they're still orange, so No, l meant in the wildy, wildy, wildy, but if you, they're in captivity Where's the wildy, wildy wildy? - l'd like to go there.
- lt's a technical term.
(Sean) The Norfolk.
So what can't remember anything then? l bet a koala can't remember much.
Wakes up, "Aah, no".
l bet a pig on fire can't remember much either.
l had a strange experience.
l was in Australia recently and l went to a day out to the zoo and they give you a koala to hold and you have a photograph taken of it.
And koalas are very lazy animals, they don't exactly work-out, do you know what l mean? They haven't got firm buttocks or anything.
And l had one in my hand and it kind of just slipped and before l knew it, l actually had a sort of koala's buttocks, it was actually slipped onto my finger.
And it was horrible, and just sort of slid on.
On the photograph, because they take a photograph of you, you're supposed to hold a koala, and the koala just goes this, he goes The worst thing was, they wanted it back.
And l said, "Can l hold it for a bit longer?" And l was trying to get the finger out.
And l said, "Can l take it away?" The list of charges is beginning to add up, isn't it? Have you heard the joke that's going around the internet about the doctor and all the student doctors? And he's got a corpse there, he's got a cadaver, and he says, "lt's very important that you are completely at ease with the corpse" and he puts his finger up the arse of the corpse, and takes it out.
- Ugh! - He says, you now.
And one after another they all do that.
They all do it and they all finish doing it, the last one.
Then he says, "lt's very important also that you observe carefully what l do.
"l inserted my index finger and sucked my middle finger.
" (Applause) "So try and pay attention in future.
" "C'est non everro a bentro vato.
" Thank you.
All of which brings us back once more to the hellish netherworld that we call General lgnorance.
Jo, have you ever been in bed with a myoclonic jerk? l've had him.
Myopic, that's when you can't see anything, isn't it? ls it myo, something to do with eyes? - Myo is muscles, isn't it? - Yes, Myo from the Greek.
- lt's a muscular - (Jo) Spasm.
lt's kind of a spasm, what do you get when, sometimes when you're falling asleep, do you ever get this? Everyone does, l think.
You feel that dropping feeling, as if you've just fallen.
- Have you ever had that? - Yes.
l think it's the term for my dad, who used to This is all l ever saw of my dad in a chair.
(Snores) - Everyone had it in the audience? - (Audience) Yes.
Everyone has it, it's very odd.
And no one really knows where it comes from.
The theory is, one is that it's descended from when we used to sleep in trees.
lt was a deliberate reflex so that we would grasp things.
- And if you ever did drop, you'd - Oh, that's what that is.
So what's the animal that can't, that can't remember anything? Rich, we have a question for you, just for you.
- ls this a stupid American question? - Continentally speaking, yes.
Which is the largest lake in Canada? - Width or depth? - Not depth.
- (Jo) Can l attempt an answer at this? - (Stephen) Yes.
- Who Cares? - Oh dear.
- Oh, have l got a point? - We were predicting that one.
Yeah, who Cares? There are so many lakes in Canada, more than a million in Manitoba alone, and you can buy a lake and have it named after you.
lt's cos the water doesn't drain away, there's no water table.
You can.
But one's really big, it's bigger than Albania.
ls it one of the Great Lakes, technically Canadian, are they all? No, you've avoided our little trap there actually, which Jo didn't by saying who cares.
lf you'd said one of the Great Lakes, there would have been a big noise, because this lake has to be entirely in Canada.
What's the difference between largest and biggest? Well, in other languages, largest means widest, l suppose, and biggest means just greatest in size.
But largest we now mean to mean biggest.
lt originally meant wide.
Large is wide in French, isn't it? - Right, thanks.
- l mean we are very lucky because we have both Latin and the romance languages, and the Anglo Saxon languages to draw on, so we can say big and large.
- So little and small.
- (Alan) Little and Large.
Little and Large, indeed.
Funnily enough, when you said the deepest lake, the deepest lake is Lake Manitou.
And Lake Manitou is a weird lake, cos it's also got the largest lake island in the world in it.
and that island has got a lake in it, which is the largest lake in an island that's in a lake in the world.
- This just goes on to infinity.
- lt does, doesn't it.
No, the answer is the Great Bear Lake.
None of the five Great Lakes is entirely in Canada you see.
So finally, this is for everyone except Rich, we think you'll know this.
- What are Bott's Dots? - Are they Bott's Dots? No, they're not, those are just dots to give you an idea of what a dot is, l suppose.
lt brings us round full circle to almost our very first question.
lt's not the slight sort of spattering you get if you insert your finger into a koala, is it? - Sorry.
- Cat's Eyes Cunningham and the carrots.
Good, stick with that, Cat's Eyes Cunningham and the carrots, with three C's.
Are they American cat's eyes then? Yes, give the lady a cigar.
Fantastic.
(Applause) They are the Californian version of our cat's eyes.
The American ones break every time you drive over them.
- Yes, why is that? - Cos they're shit.
What is it that's shit about them? They're made out of glass.
No, ours are where it goes back into the ground, it's on a sort of springy thing.
And not only that, very cunningly, so that it doesn't break, but the water will obviously gather there when it rains, and so it washes its little eyes.
Every time you run over it, you're washing its face.
Aah, isn't that nice.
l actually didn't know that, l thought You didn't know what a Bott's Dot was? l thought they were those things on John-Boy, from the Walton's, face.
l thought that's why you were withholding the answer from me.
No, it was a man called Dr Elbert Bott.
- Elbert.
- Elbert Bott.
And he didn't make a fortune, unlike Percy Shaw, because he worked for the Californian State Highways Authority.
So there we are, it must be surely time now ladies and gentlemen, for the final scores, let's have a look at them.
We're going to start with a worthy and proud winner.
He may mutilate animals, but he does know a thing or two, Sean Lock with 12 points.
(Applause) And on second place, with three points, - Rich Hall, ladies and gentlemen.
- (Applause) ln third place, with minus 18 points, - is Alan Davies, not last.
- (Applause) And that means that our runaway loser, with minus 28, is Jo Brand, ladies and gentlemen.
(Applause) Well, that's all we have time for this week.
My thanks to Rich, Sean, Jo and Alan.
And l leave you with a helpful tip from the billionaire John Paul Getty, "My formula for success," he said, "ls rise early, work late and strike oil.
" Good night.
(Applause)