QI (2003) s07e13 Episode Script
Gothic
WOLF HOWLS MOURNFUL BELL TOLLS WIND WHISTLES A WOMAN SCREAMS CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello.
Good evening and welcome.
Welcome to the QI Gothic special.
It is a dark and stormy night and four contestants are sat in my cave.
The ghostly Jimmy Carr! APPLAUSE The gruesome Jack Dee! APPLAUSE The ghoulish Sue Perkins.
APPLAUSE And the gibbering Alan Davies! APPLAUSE So let's hear, if we may, your bloodcurdling buzzers.
So Jack goes SHARP "PSYCHO" MUSIC Jimmy goes THUD! THUD! THUD! "Here's Jimmy!" A WOMAN SCREAMS Sue goes "Aaaaow!" And Alan goes Arsenal 0, Norwich City 4.
I can dream! Wake up! Here's something Gothic that starts with a G.
What would you call it? Gargoyle.
I'll go.
I think you were first! HOOTER It's not a gargoyle.
It is.
No, it isn't.
Well, it is.
That is a gargoyle.
No, a gargoyle is a special, particular thing.
It's not a gargoyle because you can't pour milk out of it.
Well, milk is perhaps an unusual use of a gargoyle, but Isn't that what the little jugs are? Oh, yes.
But it's a water spout.
That's a gargoyle.
It's a draining implement for guttering.
It's from the French "gargouille", meaning throat.
Same root as our word gargle.
So what was the thing before? Grotesque! A grotesque! Help yourself to a handful of points.
Thank you.
A grotesque, not a gargoyle.
It's useful to know It would have been useful to know two minutes ago.
Now it will never come up again.
You'll be walking your best girl along the park near the cathedral My best girl! And your second-best girl's at home! Water pouring out of her mouth.
Anyway, the point is gargoyles spout water.
Ones that don't are grotesques.
What is Gothic about the Goths? "Aaaaow!" Er, the Goths were an ancient German tribe who wore crushed velvet and very thin drainpipe trousers.
And spat in shopping centres.
And Goths carry on that tradition to this day.
A rampaging army of horny-headed warriors? Yes.
And you should have some points because, oddly enough, people think Goths were German, but they were originally Scandiwegian.
Glaswegian Scandinavians?! Norwegian Scandinavians.
They sound dangerous.
They came from Scandinavia and defeated the Vandals Who hung around bus shelters.
Exactly.
So you are, oddly enough, the most Gothic of the Goths.
Gothic has been used to mean all kind of things.
What kind of things? Cathedrals.
Why are they called Gothic? Is it anything that isn't classic? Yes, it was an insult.
In Renaissance Italy, they called them Gothic to mean barbarian.
They were conceived to be the people who destroyed Rome and civilisation.
Gothic was a huge insult.
What else was called Gothic? Literature.
That's where you get Gothic as the macabre.
Yes, and the sort of Byronesque sort of anti-hero, maybe.
Yeah.
Bad monks and women who always fainted and slightly lezzed it up.
Yes.
They did a bit! What other forms of Gothic are there? Carpenter Gothic? Carpenter? An interesting phase in their recording career.
She was quite skinny and had the mascara.
It looked good.
No.
Carpenter Gothic? Was it a death-obsessed Geppetto? Oh, that's American Gothic! That's right.
By? I thought it was Norman Rockwell.
Grant somebody.
Grant Wood.
That is the actual building there, in Eldon, Iowa.
Looks better in the painting, really.
Dilapidated.
How have they got Gothic from that? From that pointed ecclesiastical star window.
It's a Gothic arch.
It's a bit of a lame effort.
Considering the trouble we went to over here.
Americans think they can put a window like that in and call it Gothic.
Lazy Gothic.
Half-arsed Gothic.
Couldn't be bothered Gothic.
It's just so it fits under the roof, really, isn't it? Yes.
APPLAUSE Wasn't the guy in that painting his dentist? Absolutely right.
It was Grant Wood's dentist.
Points for Sue Perkins.
APPLAUSE And the woman? Is it Gail from Corrie? I'm sure that's her.
Gail from Corrie.
Helen Worth.
Nice woman.
She looks exactly like the character she plays.
Very talented.
There is an incredible similarity.
So there are lots of things we call Gothic.
And the young people who go about in black eyeliner and stuff.
I like the fact that the Goths sacked Rome only after being nagged by their mums for a fortnight.
"Oh, do we have to? It's rubbish.
" I like Goths.
They're emotional and soulful.
If they're emotional, they're Emos.
Aren't they? I love an Emo.
I was a Goth for a while.
Were you? I was asked to leave.
I was just too miserable.
"You're a bit of a downer.
" I was an emu for a while.
Aww.
When did the hand come out? What is the difference between an Emo and a Goth? One's a flightless bird.
And one's The other one is a horny-headed vandal.
You know you've got Fields of the Nephilim and Sisters of Mercy, then My Bloody Valentine and Death Cab For Cutie? It's different.
What? LAUGHTER It's like being on a show with your dad.
"You don't get it.
I hate you.
" No, they say that Emos want to kill themselves and Goths want to kill everyone else.
I think Goths have just decided to bring together all the things parents hate and fear most and put it all into one look.
The pasty face, horrible dyed hair, punk clothing and rubbish music Ohhh(!) .
.
And too much cider.
Ohhh(!) I wanted to paint my bedroom black.
What's the urge there? That seems to be very common.
What colour do you want it? "Black.
All of it.
Ceiling's black.
" Were you allowed to do that? No.
I got some wallpaper from Fads, right? And after I'd had it put up, I was quite pleased with it.
And I was watching Coronation Street.
This is 1982, I think.
And Mike Baldwin was on at home with a glass of wine, flirting.
And I realised he had exactly the same wallpaper as me.
Ahh! And I felt really unwell then.
I've got the same taste as Mike Baldwin! The point is there are many things we call Gothic.
Just about the only thing they have in common is no connection to Goths.
But who painted this picture? "Aaaaow!" Yes? Van "Goff".
HOOTER We're after I'm going to go Van Goth.
HOOTER Wha?! Van "Go"! Van Go? HOOTER "Here's Jimmy!" Cezanne.
LAUGHTER At least you don't lose points for that.
Van Ho.
Closer Van Heugh.
What? Van Heugh.
Now, listen.
We can help you out with that name.
Jolly close, Jack.
Were you aware there's a Dutch version of QI? Yes.
Would you like to see the presenter? Not really.
He will tell us how the name is pronounced.
Pretty good.
Sho shexy.
Come on! The correct Dutch pronunciation is Vincent Van "Hoch".
But, please, don't try this at home.
There you are.
What would he know? He wears more make-up than you, Stephen! You ought to be polite.
He's in the audience.
Arthur Japin, there he is! Hello! Thank you.
THEY SPEAK IN DUTCH Excellent to see you.
Very good.
How is QI? Is it a success in Dutchland? Yes, people love it.
Good.
Do you have a regular person ever week? I do.
He's called Thomas van Luyn.
Is he a bit? Is he? What's he like? LAUGHTER How can we put this delicately? He is a bit like Alan.
He's sharp, funny, clever We have to be kind to them.
Yes.
See that behind Van Gogh? It's very similar to Mike Baldwin's wallpaper.
It's really uncanny.
You had taste after all.
I also should say Arthur is a very, very, very brilliant novelist.
That's Arthur Japin, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much.
Are we talking about Van Hoch now? Yeah, go on.
He gave his ear to a girl, didn't he? To a prostitute.
Well, yes.
I was wondering if that was a very primitive bugging device.
He thought she was cheating and he went, "I'll leave that.
" Like that John Sayles film Brother From Another Planet.
A guy lands - he's an alien - but he just looks like a black guy from Harlem.
So he goes and lives there and gets a job fixing fruit machines.
He can take his eye out and leave it and still see.
Much as I have done there.
I don't know why I've shut my eye! Thanks to our friends on the Dutch version of QI, we were able to give you the correct pronunciation.
Sounds like an outbreak of pneumonia in a frog pond, but speaking of infectious issue, Alan, you're a zombie.
You bite Jimmy.
Jimmy, you're now a zombie.
You bite Jack.
Jack bites Mel and so on.
Sue.
What? Sue.
LAUGHTER Gosh.
Stephen, 10 points now if you know her name.
It's that warm, personal touch that you get on this show.
I am so Get the conveyor belt! Come on! I am so ashamed! Oh, Sue! No-one noticed, Hugh.
Oh So I've just been bitten and been called the wrong name! I'm sorry, Sue.
So sorry.
The point is the reciprocation.
You've all been turned into zombies.
How long would it take for the whole planet to be turned into a zombie? 6.
8 billion people.
I reckon it would take about How are they travelling? Justuugh! That is like holding a tea tray on a cruise ship.
That is Oh, years.
I think it's a trick question.
You're a vegetarian.
You wouldn't bite me.
You'd have a salad.
I wouldn't consume you, but I would be prepared to kill you and turn you into one of me! And we'll all live in windmills and solve crime! Well I look like the character.
LAUGHTER You do, actually! Whereas Mel looks nothing like herself.
You don't, Mel.
You look like the other one! I know.
Zombies? Yeah.
It multiplies out? It's exponential growth.
That's the point.
6.
8 billion.
Not bad.
38 days.
38 days.
For a full infection rate? Do you know what this progression is called? A geometrical progression.
As opposed to arithmetic.
But if it was really happening, you wouldn't care what it was called.
You'd just bloody run.
So don't zombies actually exist in Haiti? I read - probably nonsense - that they get venom from a puffer fish Yes.
.
.
And they appear dead, like in a coma, and then they wake up like real zombies and that's where it's from.
You're very right.
Really? An ethno-botanist called Wade Davis in the '80s discovered - it's his theory - that the puffer fish poison was being used to create a zombie trance, a death-like trance.
Going back to Alan zombieing, due to the power of exponential growth, it would take just over a month for everyone in the world to be like Alan.
I'd love to see that day.
I really would.
Now, where's this fish going? A massive cat! It's got "decoy" written all over it.
LAUGHTER A bird.
We're in Ghana.
Accra, in fact.
Can you see a line along the fish? The lid! Cockpit.
It's a mini sub.
What? Cockpit.
I thought you said coffin.
It's not! It's a coffin.
In Accra, there's a tradition Buried in a fish with a painted face?! Whatever you like.
It can be a mobile phone, a Bible is common.
Was he cremated or grilled? LAUGHTER Could you have a floating one with a domed top? You can have an aeroplane.
Or a car.
That's wrong.
Do you think? It's just one final chance to be a bloody nuisance to everyone.
"I want to be buried in a 15-foot fish.
" "Oh, do you? Great(!)" I like the big shoe! "You were a pain when you were alive and now you're even worse.
" What about the red hot chilli pepper in the background? And a giant shoe! "I'd like to be buried in a pair of Oxfords.
A pair, mind!" They cost 400, you know.
A year's wages.
What a waste of money.
A year's wages? You're not going to need it once you're gone.
True.
Jack, you're angry at this.
It's made me cross, that.
Shouldn't there be fun in death? If you can't be convenient when you're dead, then you know You might as well forget about it.
It's quite a recent tradition.
I'd imagine it is! They've got better things to spend their money on, like food! What's the best way to ensure that your family never forgets you after you're gone? Haunting.
Yeah.
If he insists on being buried in an exact replica of your house that they have to pay for and therefore sell the house they live in to You're still angry, aren't you? .
.
Finance it.
Yeah.
Being stuffed.
Well, yes, being stuffed.
Preserved in some way.
There's a very extreme example Leaning on the mantelpiece.
With a pipe.
Just slightly in front of the television, so they can't see it.
There was an artist called Hananuma Masakichi.
Yeah.
Have you heard of him? He's bloody good.
He's excellent.
In the 1880s he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and knew he would die, so he made a statue of himself so life-like that when he stood next to it, people couldn't tell which was which, apparently.
He hand-crafted glass eyes, then bored tiny individual holes for every pore of his body, then took the hairs from every pore of his body and put them into the other pores.
He pulled out all his own fingernails and put them in like that.
His toenails and his teeth.
Obviously, this is a replica, because it's quite shiny and not anything like a real person.
Imagine if he did all that and someone went, "It doesn't look that much like you.
" You're left with Bald.
No teeth, no nails.
Imagine if he'd taken his eyes out at an early stage and realised what a stupid mistake that was.
"Oh, damn!" It found its way, the original, to Robert Ripley's Odditorium in Los Angeles, but unfortunately, it was injured in an earthquake in '96 and it's currently awaiting restoration.
There are other things.
What about letting your family see you disintegrate, see you in your coffin, have a camera? Have a camera in your coffin? A webcam.
There is a Seattle-based company called SeeMeRot.
com.
I'm not making it up.
No! They have a light and you can watch your loved one basically rot.
There you go.
Can I When you say The only problem I've got with that is "loved one".
Their slogan "Being dead and buried doesn't mean you can't have friends over.
" Imagine if you were watching the webcam, watching and watching and watching, then suddenly it went You would be so freaked out by that, wouldn't you? They used to bury people and sometimes they would be scratching on the coffin lid, because they were in a coma and then they woke up.
Nowadays, they should just give you a mobile.
That does happen.
A lot of people are afraid of being buried alive.
I'm quite afraid of it.
Now you mention it! What I mean is, they have a real It doesn't bother me! They're obsessed by it.
Yeah, whatever, bring it on! I'd prefer it not to happen, but I don't think about it.
There are people who really think about it and plan against it.
Now, perhaps the most macabre posthumous gift was that Japanese chap there, Hananuma Masakichi, which he constructed entirely out of his own body parts.
In the 1960s, two-thirds, right, two-thirds of the Americans who accidentally lost a limb, of all Americans, two-thirds of them, came from one town in Florida.
Why? Well, because that enormous thing dropped on their limbs.
The enormous doughnut from outer space took their legs.
Is it because it cost an arm and a leg to live there? No, there's more.
I'm here all week.
It was all men, funnily enough.
I don't think any of them were women.
Is it the town where they put the diabetic clinic next to the doughnut shop? Oh, my God What? It happens.
It does.
Is it the town where the helicopter pad was next to the taxi rank? Oh! No.
An unnatural amount of Sharks.
Not sharks.
This is self-harm we're talking about.
Oh, amputee wannabes.
I think I've made that sound disrespectful.
# Amputee Wannabes # It's new on ITV-2.
You are going to love it.
I'll present it.
Welcome to Amputee Wannabe! No, it's not that form of dysmorphia.
It's self-harm for another reason.
To avoid the draft, is it? No, but it is for gain.
Oh, insurance.
Insurance is right.
When you said avoid the "draft", I thought a cardigan would have been an easier way.
My legs are freezing! Hack 'em off! Really You put your jumper on, then wrap your arms round your neck.
They did.
It's a bit chilly.
They sawed them off.
It just became a fever of it.
More than 50 occurrences in a town of a population of 500.
Most limbs were shot off with hunting rifles.
Triggers pulled unexpectedly as victims climbed fences, guns misfiring.
These were the claims.
All the mishaps involved men.
Somehow they'd always shoot off the parts they seemed to need least.
Your left hand.
Yeah.
"A foot while protecting chickens.
" "Lost a hand while trying to shoot a hawk.
" "A man lost two limbs in an accident involving a rifle and a tractor.
" The time has come to see what skeletons are lurking in our closet of general ignorance, so skeletal finger bones on buzzers, please.
After the Vietnam War, who was buried in the tomb of the Unknown Soldier? We don't know.
All of them were anonymous deliberately.
KLAXON SOUNDS The whole nature of this show will mean the Unknown Soldier wasn't a soldier, they knew him, and he wasn't dead.
He wasn't dead.
Yeah, the Unknown Soldier was actually buried in a replica of a large red chilli.
Was he an unknown soldier when he was still alive as well? He kept turning up and everyone said, "How are you doing?" "Who's that?" "I don't know.
" He seems keen to join in.
"I don't know who he is.
" "What happened to that unknown soldier?" "He died.
Let's bury him.
" After the Vietnam War, there was an unknown soldier buried, but a family thought they heard that the Unknown Soldier had died in a helicopter crash.
They thought their son had died in the same crash, so in the 1990s, they persuaded the US government to do a DNA test on the Unknown Soldier and it was indeed their son, so the remains were returned.
It's unlikely there'll be another unknown soldier as all American and British soldiers are DNA-profiled, so they will always be known.
That's a happy ending, isn't it(?) But the original Unknown Soldier, do you know the first time it was done? After World War One? Yes.
It was done in 1920 in France and Britain.
In Britain, there were four unknown soldiers and a general pointed at one body and that became The Unknown Soldier, who was honoured with a state funeral in Westminster Abbey, entombed with a medieval crusader's sword in the presence of a guard made up of 100 VCs.
The guests of honour were 100 women, each of whom had lost her husband and all her sons in the war.
That is sobering.
Wow! An amazing ceremony.
The Cenotaph is a memorial to the Unknown Soldier, isn't it? Yes.
It was designed by Lutyens, wasn't it? Yes.
I think you must have points.
I hope so.
To make up for your large collection of negative points.
That's a very funny round, I think(!) It'll be interesting to see if we can pick it up from there.
It was quite interesting, if not quite funny.
It was amazing, the story of that service.
Anyway, moving on Where does the saying "saved by the bell" come from? SHARP "PSYCHO" MUSIC I know what's going to happen now.
I'm going to get the klaxon for this.
Is it a boxing reference? Yes! Well done.
APPLAUSE We thought Is this where the bell's going to go off? Don't do it.
He's going to lead you It's going back to being buried alive.
No KLAXON SOUNDS How can you get it wrong after he's got it right? That's extraordinary! Only Alan You were saved by the bell.
He got it right.
You couldn't say the stupid thing and went there anyway! I find it quite interesting.
I thought that was the true one.
People do think that.
You had a bell tied to your toe and if you were buried alive, you'd start kicking.
There have been people who have been so afraid of premature burial.
There was an old film of a man who was so afraid of being buried alive that he equipped his tomb with these different emergency things, but when he came round, it had all rotted and the string for the bell had corroded.
There's an Edgar Allan Poe story called The Premature Burial.
It'll never be that premature.
Maybe five days max.
It's premature enough for most of us.
What can you tell me about Mozart's burial? 'Here's Jimmy!' Did they play Angels by Robbie Williams? Was it Bohemian Rhapsody? They do have a top ten of the play-off tunes that people choose for going into Do you know what one of the most popular is? Countdown.
No! As they go in THEY SING "COUNTDOWN" THEME Contrary to popular belief, it was not a pauper's funeral.
Only the aristocracy had tombs and vaults in those days.
His funeral cost quite a lot of money - 8 guilders and 56 kreuzer.
To hire the orchestra.
That was all paid for by Guten Tag, which was their version of Hello magazine.
They covered it very tastefully.
It was really nicely done.
In Mozart's lifetime, he had a pet starling whom he buried in 1784.
Its whistling inspired the principal theme of the last movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto K453.
BIRD WHISTLING That's the starling, obviously.
ORCHESTRAL MUSIC That's the Piano Concerto.
Mozart wasn't buried in a pauper's grave.
He had the same kind of funeral as everybody else in Vienna.
Finally, it's time for the scores.
Andoh! Oh, my goodness me! Well, I'm sorry to say that in last place with minus 28, it's Jimmy Carr! APPLAUSE A little better with minus 26, Sue Perkins! APPLAUSE But there's no question about it, tonight's winners, tied on minus 17, it's Alan and Jack! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE So before the show breathes its last, I've just got time to thank Jimmy, Jack, Sue and Alan.
I leave you with this boo-boo from baseball great Yogi Berra.
"Always go to other people's funerals," he said, "otherwise, they won't come to yours.
" Good night!
Good evening and welcome.
Welcome to the QI Gothic special.
It is a dark and stormy night and four contestants are sat in my cave.
The ghostly Jimmy Carr! APPLAUSE The gruesome Jack Dee! APPLAUSE The ghoulish Sue Perkins.
APPLAUSE And the gibbering Alan Davies! APPLAUSE So let's hear, if we may, your bloodcurdling buzzers.
So Jack goes SHARP "PSYCHO" MUSIC Jimmy goes THUD! THUD! THUD! "Here's Jimmy!" A WOMAN SCREAMS Sue goes "Aaaaow!" And Alan goes Arsenal 0, Norwich City 4.
I can dream! Wake up! Here's something Gothic that starts with a G.
What would you call it? Gargoyle.
I'll go.
I think you were first! HOOTER It's not a gargoyle.
It is.
No, it isn't.
Well, it is.
That is a gargoyle.
No, a gargoyle is a special, particular thing.
It's not a gargoyle because you can't pour milk out of it.
Well, milk is perhaps an unusual use of a gargoyle, but Isn't that what the little jugs are? Oh, yes.
But it's a water spout.
That's a gargoyle.
It's a draining implement for guttering.
It's from the French "gargouille", meaning throat.
Same root as our word gargle.
So what was the thing before? Grotesque! A grotesque! Help yourself to a handful of points.
Thank you.
A grotesque, not a gargoyle.
It's useful to know It would have been useful to know two minutes ago.
Now it will never come up again.
You'll be walking your best girl along the park near the cathedral My best girl! And your second-best girl's at home! Water pouring out of her mouth.
Anyway, the point is gargoyles spout water.
Ones that don't are grotesques.
What is Gothic about the Goths? "Aaaaow!" Er, the Goths were an ancient German tribe who wore crushed velvet and very thin drainpipe trousers.
And spat in shopping centres.
And Goths carry on that tradition to this day.
A rampaging army of horny-headed warriors? Yes.
And you should have some points because, oddly enough, people think Goths were German, but they were originally Scandiwegian.
Glaswegian Scandinavians?! Norwegian Scandinavians.
They sound dangerous.
They came from Scandinavia and defeated the Vandals Who hung around bus shelters.
Exactly.
So you are, oddly enough, the most Gothic of the Goths.
Gothic has been used to mean all kind of things.
What kind of things? Cathedrals.
Why are they called Gothic? Is it anything that isn't classic? Yes, it was an insult.
In Renaissance Italy, they called them Gothic to mean barbarian.
They were conceived to be the people who destroyed Rome and civilisation.
Gothic was a huge insult.
What else was called Gothic? Literature.
That's where you get Gothic as the macabre.
Yes, and the sort of Byronesque sort of anti-hero, maybe.
Yeah.
Bad monks and women who always fainted and slightly lezzed it up.
Yes.
They did a bit! What other forms of Gothic are there? Carpenter Gothic? Carpenter? An interesting phase in their recording career.
She was quite skinny and had the mascara.
It looked good.
No.
Carpenter Gothic? Was it a death-obsessed Geppetto? Oh, that's American Gothic! That's right.
By? I thought it was Norman Rockwell.
Grant somebody.
Grant Wood.
That is the actual building there, in Eldon, Iowa.
Looks better in the painting, really.
Dilapidated.
How have they got Gothic from that? From that pointed ecclesiastical star window.
It's a Gothic arch.
It's a bit of a lame effort.
Considering the trouble we went to over here.
Americans think they can put a window like that in and call it Gothic.
Lazy Gothic.
Half-arsed Gothic.
Couldn't be bothered Gothic.
It's just so it fits under the roof, really, isn't it? Yes.
APPLAUSE Wasn't the guy in that painting his dentist? Absolutely right.
It was Grant Wood's dentist.
Points for Sue Perkins.
APPLAUSE And the woman? Is it Gail from Corrie? I'm sure that's her.
Gail from Corrie.
Helen Worth.
Nice woman.
She looks exactly like the character she plays.
Very talented.
There is an incredible similarity.
So there are lots of things we call Gothic.
And the young people who go about in black eyeliner and stuff.
I like the fact that the Goths sacked Rome only after being nagged by their mums for a fortnight.
"Oh, do we have to? It's rubbish.
" I like Goths.
They're emotional and soulful.
If they're emotional, they're Emos.
Aren't they? I love an Emo.
I was a Goth for a while.
Were you? I was asked to leave.
I was just too miserable.
"You're a bit of a downer.
" I was an emu for a while.
Aww.
When did the hand come out? What is the difference between an Emo and a Goth? One's a flightless bird.
And one's The other one is a horny-headed vandal.
You know you've got Fields of the Nephilim and Sisters of Mercy, then My Bloody Valentine and Death Cab For Cutie? It's different.
What? LAUGHTER It's like being on a show with your dad.
"You don't get it.
I hate you.
" No, they say that Emos want to kill themselves and Goths want to kill everyone else.
I think Goths have just decided to bring together all the things parents hate and fear most and put it all into one look.
The pasty face, horrible dyed hair, punk clothing and rubbish music Ohhh(!) .
.
And too much cider.
Ohhh(!) I wanted to paint my bedroom black.
What's the urge there? That seems to be very common.
What colour do you want it? "Black.
All of it.
Ceiling's black.
" Were you allowed to do that? No.
I got some wallpaper from Fads, right? And after I'd had it put up, I was quite pleased with it.
And I was watching Coronation Street.
This is 1982, I think.
And Mike Baldwin was on at home with a glass of wine, flirting.
And I realised he had exactly the same wallpaper as me.
Ahh! And I felt really unwell then.
I've got the same taste as Mike Baldwin! The point is there are many things we call Gothic.
Just about the only thing they have in common is no connection to Goths.
But who painted this picture? "Aaaaow!" Yes? Van "Goff".
HOOTER We're after I'm going to go Van Goth.
HOOTER Wha?! Van "Go"! Van Go? HOOTER "Here's Jimmy!" Cezanne.
LAUGHTER At least you don't lose points for that.
Van Ho.
Closer Van Heugh.
What? Van Heugh.
Now, listen.
We can help you out with that name.
Jolly close, Jack.
Were you aware there's a Dutch version of QI? Yes.
Would you like to see the presenter? Not really.
He will tell us how the name is pronounced.
Pretty good.
Sho shexy.
Come on! The correct Dutch pronunciation is Vincent Van "Hoch".
But, please, don't try this at home.
There you are.
What would he know? He wears more make-up than you, Stephen! You ought to be polite.
He's in the audience.
Arthur Japin, there he is! Hello! Thank you.
THEY SPEAK IN DUTCH Excellent to see you.
Very good.
How is QI? Is it a success in Dutchland? Yes, people love it.
Good.
Do you have a regular person ever week? I do.
He's called Thomas van Luyn.
Is he a bit? Is he? What's he like? LAUGHTER How can we put this delicately? He is a bit like Alan.
He's sharp, funny, clever We have to be kind to them.
Yes.
See that behind Van Gogh? It's very similar to Mike Baldwin's wallpaper.
It's really uncanny.
You had taste after all.
I also should say Arthur is a very, very, very brilliant novelist.
That's Arthur Japin, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much.
Are we talking about Van Hoch now? Yeah, go on.
He gave his ear to a girl, didn't he? To a prostitute.
Well, yes.
I was wondering if that was a very primitive bugging device.
He thought she was cheating and he went, "I'll leave that.
" Like that John Sayles film Brother From Another Planet.
A guy lands - he's an alien - but he just looks like a black guy from Harlem.
So he goes and lives there and gets a job fixing fruit machines.
He can take his eye out and leave it and still see.
Much as I have done there.
I don't know why I've shut my eye! Thanks to our friends on the Dutch version of QI, we were able to give you the correct pronunciation.
Sounds like an outbreak of pneumonia in a frog pond, but speaking of infectious issue, Alan, you're a zombie.
You bite Jimmy.
Jimmy, you're now a zombie.
You bite Jack.
Jack bites Mel and so on.
Sue.
What? Sue.
LAUGHTER Gosh.
Stephen, 10 points now if you know her name.
It's that warm, personal touch that you get on this show.
I am so Get the conveyor belt! Come on! I am so ashamed! Oh, Sue! No-one noticed, Hugh.
Oh So I've just been bitten and been called the wrong name! I'm sorry, Sue.
So sorry.
The point is the reciprocation.
You've all been turned into zombies.
How long would it take for the whole planet to be turned into a zombie? 6.
8 billion people.
I reckon it would take about How are they travelling? Justuugh! That is like holding a tea tray on a cruise ship.
That is Oh, years.
I think it's a trick question.
You're a vegetarian.
You wouldn't bite me.
You'd have a salad.
I wouldn't consume you, but I would be prepared to kill you and turn you into one of me! And we'll all live in windmills and solve crime! Well I look like the character.
LAUGHTER You do, actually! Whereas Mel looks nothing like herself.
You don't, Mel.
You look like the other one! I know.
Zombies? Yeah.
It multiplies out? It's exponential growth.
That's the point.
6.
8 billion.
Not bad.
38 days.
38 days.
For a full infection rate? Do you know what this progression is called? A geometrical progression.
As opposed to arithmetic.
But if it was really happening, you wouldn't care what it was called.
You'd just bloody run.
So don't zombies actually exist in Haiti? I read - probably nonsense - that they get venom from a puffer fish Yes.
.
.
And they appear dead, like in a coma, and then they wake up like real zombies and that's where it's from.
You're very right.
Really? An ethno-botanist called Wade Davis in the '80s discovered - it's his theory - that the puffer fish poison was being used to create a zombie trance, a death-like trance.
Going back to Alan zombieing, due to the power of exponential growth, it would take just over a month for everyone in the world to be like Alan.
I'd love to see that day.
I really would.
Now, where's this fish going? A massive cat! It's got "decoy" written all over it.
LAUGHTER A bird.
We're in Ghana.
Accra, in fact.
Can you see a line along the fish? The lid! Cockpit.
It's a mini sub.
What? Cockpit.
I thought you said coffin.
It's not! It's a coffin.
In Accra, there's a tradition Buried in a fish with a painted face?! Whatever you like.
It can be a mobile phone, a Bible is common.
Was he cremated or grilled? LAUGHTER Could you have a floating one with a domed top? You can have an aeroplane.
Or a car.
That's wrong.
Do you think? It's just one final chance to be a bloody nuisance to everyone.
"I want to be buried in a 15-foot fish.
" "Oh, do you? Great(!)" I like the big shoe! "You were a pain when you were alive and now you're even worse.
" What about the red hot chilli pepper in the background? And a giant shoe! "I'd like to be buried in a pair of Oxfords.
A pair, mind!" They cost 400, you know.
A year's wages.
What a waste of money.
A year's wages? You're not going to need it once you're gone.
True.
Jack, you're angry at this.
It's made me cross, that.
Shouldn't there be fun in death? If you can't be convenient when you're dead, then you know You might as well forget about it.
It's quite a recent tradition.
I'd imagine it is! They've got better things to spend their money on, like food! What's the best way to ensure that your family never forgets you after you're gone? Haunting.
Yeah.
If he insists on being buried in an exact replica of your house that they have to pay for and therefore sell the house they live in to You're still angry, aren't you? .
.
Finance it.
Yeah.
Being stuffed.
Well, yes, being stuffed.
Preserved in some way.
There's a very extreme example Leaning on the mantelpiece.
With a pipe.
Just slightly in front of the television, so they can't see it.
There was an artist called Hananuma Masakichi.
Yeah.
Have you heard of him? He's bloody good.
He's excellent.
In the 1880s he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and knew he would die, so he made a statue of himself so life-like that when he stood next to it, people couldn't tell which was which, apparently.
He hand-crafted glass eyes, then bored tiny individual holes for every pore of his body, then took the hairs from every pore of his body and put them into the other pores.
He pulled out all his own fingernails and put them in like that.
His toenails and his teeth.
Obviously, this is a replica, because it's quite shiny and not anything like a real person.
Imagine if he did all that and someone went, "It doesn't look that much like you.
" You're left with Bald.
No teeth, no nails.
Imagine if he'd taken his eyes out at an early stage and realised what a stupid mistake that was.
"Oh, damn!" It found its way, the original, to Robert Ripley's Odditorium in Los Angeles, but unfortunately, it was injured in an earthquake in '96 and it's currently awaiting restoration.
There are other things.
What about letting your family see you disintegrate, see you in your coffin, have a camera? Have a camera in your coffin? A webcam.
There is a Seattle-based company called SeeMeRot.
com.
I'm not making it up.
No! They have a light and you can watch your loved one basically rot.
There you go.
Can I When you say The only problem I've got with that is "loved one".
Their slogan "Being dead and buried doesn't mean you can't have friends over.
" Imagine if you were watching the webcam, watching and watching and watching, then suddenly it went You would be so freaked out by that, wouldn't you? They used to bury people and sometimes they would be scratching on the coffin lid, because they were in a coma and then they woke up.
Nowadays, they should just give you a mobile.
That does happen.
A lot of people are afraid of being buried alive.
I'm quite afraid of it.
Now you mention it! What I mean is, they have a real It doesn't bother me! They're obsessed by it.
Yeah, whatever, bring it on! I'd prefer it not to happen, but I don't think about it.
There are people who really think about it and plan against it.
Now, perhaps the most macabre posthumous gift was that Japanese chap there, Hananuma Masakichi, which he constructed entirely out of his own body parts.
In the 1960s, two-thirds, right, two-thirds of the Americans who accidentally lost a limb, of all Americans, two-thirds of them, came from one town in Florida.
Why? Well, because that enormous thing dropped on their limbs.
The enormous doughnut from outer space took their legs.
Is it because it cost an arm and a leg to live there? No, there's more.
I'm here all week.
It was all men, funnily enough.
I don't think any of them were women.
Is it the town where they put the diabetic clinic next to the doughnut shop? Oh, my God What? It happens.
It does.
Is it the town where the helicopter pad was next to the taxi rank? Oh! No.
An unnatural amount of Sharks.
Not sharks.
This is self-harm we're talking about.
Oh, amputee wannabes.
I think I've made that sound disrespectful.
# Amputee Wannabes # It's new on ITV-2.
You are going to love it.
I'll present it.
Welcome to Amputee Wannabe! No, it's not that form of dysmorphia.
It's self-harm for another reason.
To avoid the draft, is it? No, but it is for gain.
Oh, insurance.
Insurance is right.
When you said avoid the "draft", I thought a cardigan would have been an easier way.
My legs are freezing! Hack 'em off! Really You put your jumper on, then wrap your arms round your neck.
They did.
It's a bit chilly.
They sawed them off.
It just became a fever of it.
More than 50 occurrences in a town of a population of 500.
Most limbs were shot off with hunting rifles.
Triggers pulled unexpectedly as victims climbed fences, guns misfiring.
These were the claims.
All the mishaps involved men.
Somehow they'd always shoot off the parts they seemed to need least.
Your left hand.
Yeah.
"A foot while protecting chickens.
" "Lost a hand while trying to shoot a hawk.
" "A man lost two limbs in an accident involving a rifle and a tractor.
" The time has come to see what skeletons are lurking in our closet of general ignorance, so skeletal finger bones on buzzers, please.
After the Vietnam War, who was buried in the tomb of the Unknown Soldier? We don't know.
All of them were anonymous deliberately.
KLAXON SOUNDS The whole nature of this show will mean the Unknown Soldier wasn't a soldier, they knew him, and he wasn't dead.
He wasn't dead.
Yeah, the Unknown Soldier was actually buried in a replica of a large red chilli.
Was he an unknown soldier when he was still alive as well? He kept turning up and everyone said, "How are you doing?" "Who's that?" "I don't know.
" He seems keen to join in.
"I don't know who he is.
" "What happened to that unknown soldier?" "He died.
Let's bury him.
" After the Vietnam War, there was an unknown soldier buried, but a family thought they heard that the Unknown Soldier had died in a helicopter crash.
They thought their son had died in the same crash, so in the 1990s, they persuaded the US government to do a DNA test on the Unknown Soldier and it was indeed their son, so the remains were returned.
It's unlikely there'll be another unknown soldier as all American and British soldiers are DNA-profiled, so they will always be known.
That's a happy ending, isn't it(?) But the original Unknown Soldier, do you know the first time it was done? After World War One? Yes.
It was done in 1920 in France and Britain.
In Britain, there were four unknown soldiers and a general pointed at one body and that became The Unknown Soldier, who was honoured with a state funeral in Westminster Abbey, entombed with a medieval crusader's sword in the presence of a guard made up of 100 VCs.
The guests of honour were 100 women, each of whom had lost her husband and all her sons in the war.
That is sobering.
Wow! An amazing ceremony.
The Cenotaph is a memorial to the Unknown Soldier, isn't it? Yes.
It was designed by Lutyens, wasn't it? Yes.
I think you must have points.
I hope so.
To make up for your large collection of negative points.
That's a very funny round, I think(!) It'll be interesting to see if we can pick it up from there.
It was quite interesting, if not quite funny.
It was amazing, the story of that service.
Anyway, moving on Where does the saying "saved by the bell" come from? SHARP "PSYCHO" MUSIC I know what's going to happen now.
I'm going to get the klaxon for this.
Is it a boxing reference? Yes! Well done.
APPLAUSE We thought Is this where the bell's going to go off? Don't do it.
He's going to lead you It's going back to being buried alive.
No KLAXON SOUNDS How can you get it wrong after he's got it right? That's extraordinary! Only Alan You were saved by the bell.
He got it right.
You couldn't say the stupid thing and went there anyway! I find it quite interesting.
I thought that was the true one.
People do think that.
You had a bell tied to your toe and if you were buried alive, you'd start kicking.
There have been people who have been so afraid of premature burial.
There was an old film of a man who was so afraid of being buried alive that he equipped his tomb with these different emergency things, but when he came round, it had all rotted and the string for the bell had corroded.
There's an Edgar Allan Poe story called The Premature Burial.
It'll never be that premature.
Maybe five days max.
It's premature enough for most of us.
What can you tell me about Mozart's burial? 'Here's Jimmy!' Did they play Angels by Robbie Williams? Was it Bohemian Rhapsody? They do have a top ten of the play-off tunes that people choose for going into Do you know what one of the most popular is? Countdown.
No! As they go in THEY SING "COUNTDOWN" THEME Contrary to popular belief, it was not a pauper's funeral.
Only the aristocracy had tombs and vaults in those days.
His funeral cost quite a lot of money - 8 guilders and 56 kreuzer.
To hire the orchestra.
That was all paid for by Guten Tag, which was their version of Hello magazine.
They covered it very tastefully.
It was really nicely done.
In Mozart's lifetime, he had a pet starling whom he buried in 1784.
Its whistling inspired the principal theme of the last movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto K453.
BIRD WHISTLING That's the starling, obviously.
ORCHESTRAL MUSIC That's the Piano Concerto.
Mozart wasn't buried in a pauper's grave.
He had the same kind of funeral as everybody else in Vienna.
Finally, it's time for the scores.
Andoh! Oh, my goodness me! Well, I'm sorry to say that in last place with minus 28, it's Jimmy Carr! APPLAUSE A little better with minus 26, Sue Perkins! APPLAUSE But there's no question about it, tonight's winners, tied on minus 17, it's Alan and Jack! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE So before the show breathes its last, I've just got time to thank Jimmy, Jack, Sue and Alan.
I leave you with this boo-boo from baseball great Yogi Berra.
"Always go to other people's funerals," he said, "otherwise, they won't come to yours.
" Good night!