QI (2003) s10e09 Episode Script

This programme contains some strong language.
APPLAUSE Goo-oo-oo-oo-ood evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, and welcome, welcome to an episode of QI that is all about jeopardy.
Joining me to fight crime, fear and disorder tonight, Wonder Woman, Julia Zemiro.
Yes.
A Super Girl, Sue Perkins.
A Boy Wonder, Ross Noble.
And our own Danger Mouse, Alan Davies.
So, buzzers, please.
Julia goes PSYCHO STABBING THEME Oh, that's jeopardy.
And Sue goes JAWS THEME Ooh.
SHE PRESSES IT AGAIN Yeah.
Definitely worth doing twice.
Ross goes DRAMATIC SURPRISE MUSIC And Alan goes VEHICLE REVERSE WARNING LAUGHTER Well, they are quite dangerous, vehicles, yeah, good choice.
Yes, absolutely.
Well, we must be vigilant, because danger stalks us from the moment we wake up to the moment we retire.
How far can you go on a cup of Joe? Hmm? - Cup of Joe being an Americanism for? - Java coffee? - Coffee? - Coffee, a cup of coffee, yeah.
- I thought it was an insane cat.
That you could actually ride on the back of Joe.
- That is a caffeine-crazed cat, yes.
- That's a flat white too many - for that little kitty.
- It is rather, isn't it? How far you can actually go in terms of energy? - Is that what you? - It's actually it's more literal than that.
If you're carrying a cup of coffee, how far can you go before you spill it? This is all down to a science.
What is the science of - the movement of liquids called? Do you know? - Wobble-ology.
Fluid - .
.
dynamics.
- Yes.
- It's a whole science.
- Of course.
- Oh, fluid dynamics! It's a whole science and a most important one and much has been discovered as a result of fluid dynamics.
It is a very useful and fruitful area of discovery.
One of the things they've discovered is that the average human stepping pace happens to cause an oscillation, which means that between seven and ten steps, you are going to spill the coffee.
You will set up a series of wave movements that means the furthest you can go is probably about ten steps before you will definitely have spilled some coffee.
This is the Mrs Overall effect.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
They suggest a flexible container as a sloshing absorber, with a series of annular ring baffles.
So they're suggesting the Annular ring baffles! That's a character in The Hobbit, surely.
Mr Ring Baffles.
That sounds like space.
I'll tell you what, the amount of times my annular has been baffled.
- Oh, dear.
I'm always down the hospital.
- Baffle your ring sir? Yeah.
- It's a bit of a tautology, because annular means ring-like anyway.
- Yes.
- So it's a bit silly.
- Annular ring baffle? You used to take the baffle out of your exhaust pipe to make it - louder when I was a teenager.
- Baffling is sound muffling, but it's also absorbing waves and that's essentially the same thing.
Because if you're muffling sound, you're absorbing the waves.
So if you put a baffle in your anus, that'll make you have quiet farts.
LAUGHTER An arse silencer.
I suppose so.
I suppose it would.
Until pressure builds up to such a stage - And then you're potentially lethal.
- You could have someone's eye out in the aisle at Waitrose, which you wouldn't want.
- No.
- But there have been more obviously useful Baffle your ring, sir? There have been more useful applications for this business of whole this whole resonance business of building up frequencies that cause oscillations that can be dangerous.
And have you seen Albert Bridge in London? There's a sign leading from Chelsea.
There it is.
It's a famous sign, it's a rather beautiful one, "All troops must break step when marching over this bridge.
" - Why would that be? - Something to do with an oscillation.
Yeah, exactly.
If you're marching in rhythm, "Chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk," you might set up a resonance that would cause the bridge to collapse.
That's why Michael Flatley can never get north of the Thames.
LAUGHTER That's a true, it's a true reason.
He's furious.
He's always wanted to go to Madame Tussauds.
Right now he's at the Elephant and Castle going, "I can't believe it, I want to go and see the Queen "and I just can't get over there.
" "It's a bleedin' nightmare" Shocking state of affairs.
And the fact that Good, well, I think we've LAUGHTER Now, what's smaller than the moon and keeps moving the sea around? Smaller than the moon.
Is it a seal on caffeine? No.
Is it one of our other moons? No, it's not a moon of any kind, it's not a celestial body.
- It's a marine creature.
- Like a big whale? Yes? This better be the blue whale.
It so is not the blue whale.
Is it an animal that lives in the sea that moves the sea with its mass? Yes, ultimately, with its combined mass, not its individual mass.
Is it plankton? PSYCHO STABBING THEME Many many many fish, like a school of, a school of Fish.
No, it actually accounts for forty percent of the biomass of the ocean.
Algae.
- No, it's amazingly not.
- Cola tins.
- But it's not a fish.
No.
We call it a fish, but it isn't a fish.
No.
- Jellyfish.
- Jellyfish is the right answer.
- Ah, genius right here.
It's quite extraordinary.
Now, it used to be believed that a jellyfish propelled itself by squirting water out of the back, as it were, by jet propulsion, but it's been discovered by the scientists at Caltech that it's actually slightly more complex.
And what these jellyfish do is, they essentially cause an enormous amount of the water at the top, which is oxygen rich, to go down to the bottom, and a lot of the water at the bottom, which is full of nutrients, to go to the top.
And they keep the circulation of the water extremely healthy.
And they might contribute a trillion watts of energy, which is easily as much as wind or tidal pull.
And they also mix the cold with the deep warm water at the surface.
I've got one I put in the bath - so I don't have to do that.
- Yeah, that would do it.
Just chuck it in the end Yeah.
My God! "Up your end, get back up your end, I don't want stinging.
" So they're like the mixer tap of the ocean.
It's a very good way of putting it.
But they can be malign as well - it so happened in 1982 that a ship had in its bilge water a particular one called the Mnemiopsis leidyi, which is a comb jelly, from North America, and they arrived and had no local predator.
In less then a decade, the population had reached a biomass of one billion tonnes in the Black Sea, which is where they were.
And one billion tonnes is ten times the weight of all the fish we catch every year around the world.
And it destroyed everything.
Fortunately, then an another carnivorous jellyfish arrived, and it only eats the Mnemiopsis and so it ate them all, and once it had eaten them all, the balance was restored and fish returned.
Just one of these things turned up? - No, a few in the bilge water of a ship.
- And it ate the lot.
No, enough to breed, but my God did they breed.
Isn't that extraordinary, those just little jellyfish that look so kind of light and nothingness are forty percent of the biomass of the ocean.
I think that's quite interesting.
How many jellyfish are there here? - In that picture? - Yeah.
What, is it one with a very flamboyant hat on? KLAXON - Oh! - Ah, dear.
Sorry, where are the words "with a flamboyant hat on"? It was the one that was enough.
But it is a flamboyant hat.
The flamboyant hat gives it its name.
Portuguese Conquistadors wore hats like that.
They didn't have many in Croydon.
They didn't, no.
But Is it a Man O' War? A Portuguese Man O' War is what it is, but it's not I'll give you a clue that it's not a jellyfish.
And it isn't even a single creature.
A Portuguese Man O' War is not one animal.
It's a colony of animals.
- Oh, God.
- Aaah.
- That operate together as one, with incredible - Like the Borg.
- Yes, we are Borg, exactly.
We are Borg.
We are jellyfish.
Why isn't it called the Men O' War then? I know, because originally people didn't understand that and so they called it the Portuguese Man O' War, it looked like a Portuguese helmet on the top.
The inflatable bladder along the top is one creature, which provides buoyancy, and works as a sail.
The tentacles are separate and carry the coiled, spring-loaded harpoons, which have the most incredible speed.
They explode in 700 billionths of a second, which is the fastest known animal mechanism on earth.
And very painful.
And there are other creatures that make part of this colony.
Gastrozooids, which digest the food, and gonozooids, which are the gonads, the sexual reproduction part of it.
- They're separate? - They are.
The stomach floats along and then you've got the gonads behind.
- Yeah.
- So the stomach's looking for its bollocks, essentially.
It's called a Siphonophore, that kind of a creature, and because they drift passively, they collect in vast herds of thousands or so.
And that's why the appearance of one is enough to clear an Australian beach, as you probably know, because one tends to mean there are going to be lots.
And the sting is very painful.
Ten thousand Australians a year, on average, receive a Portuguese Man O' War sting.
Not pleasant.
- Toughens you up though.
- Exactly.
I mean, that's life, isn't it? One day it'll toughen you up enough to win a test match against us.
AUDIENCE GASPS AND APPLAUDS - Sorry.
Come on.
- Yeah, that's it.
How many times in history have I been in a position to be able to say that? Not many.
- Oh, I know, and I enjoyed it, so much.
- Exactly.
A Man O' War can hurt you, but not kill you.
But what is Australia's deadliest creature, in fact? PSYCHO STABBING THEME Rupert Murdoch.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE - After Rupert Murdoch.
- So sorry about that.
And the fact he came here.
Yeah, sorry.
Yeah.
Excluding a member of the human race, which I'm not sure whether that does or not, but anyway.
Is it the spiders, the funnel web, the red back? KLAXON It's not that.
Spiders.
- It's going to be something on the road.
- It's the box jellyfish.
KLAXON It's not, that is a nasty creature.
- But they stop your heart.
- Is it people? - Is it rabbits? Is it rabbits running in front of utes, - or some sort of some sort of - You're right that most of the deaths caused by animals in Australia are caused on the road.
- The animal that is most responsible - Crocodile? (DRAMATIC) Is it man? The most deadly of all the creatures? DRAMATIC SURPRISE MUSIC - Snakes.
- Shark.
- No.
KLAXON - I was not born there.
- Is it the domestic cat? It's not the domestic cat, though in the year under, the sample year we're taking, one human being in Australia was killed by a cat that year.
But 128 A cunning plan, executed skilfully and quietly.
- Yeah.
- It's the road, the road's involved.
- Often the road is involved.
- Are the people in a car at the time? - Sometimes yes, but - Oh, a kite, is it the But sometimes they're on the animal involved.
- They're on the animal.
- Horses? - Oh, horse.
It's a horse, yes.
- A horse, more people are killed by horses than - Really? - Oh, ho! - Oh, it's a very angry horse there.
That is a very angry horse.
- He needs a dental hygiene appointment ASAP.
- It does.
Yeah, because they fall off and break their neck or indeed they cause car crashes, and so on.
And horses kill three times more than the ones you've mentioned.
We lived in Australia, my wife bought a horse and she was desperate to try and get me to ride, right.
She said, "I've bought a horse, it's docile, you'll be fine.
" - They never are.
- Well, no, actually the problem was it was too docile.
What happened was it ended up being studied by Melbourne University because, yeah, because it was one of the few horses that was medically got narcolepsy.
So I swear to God, no It's one of the rare cases of a narcoleptic horse.
So she buys this horse and she says She couldn't work out why every time, when she was grooming it, it would get heavier and it would just LAUGHTER "Oh, oh, eh, woah!" Like that.
And so she couldn't groom it, because it would fall on her.
So she says to me, "It's fine, the horse is narcoleptic, get on it.
" And so I got on it, in full motorbike gear, because I wasn't taking any chances, and I sat on this horse and it started to just, and you know normally you kick a horse to make it go.
This one, you kicked it and it would go, "What? Eh?" Like that, to wake it up.
And sometimes it would fall asleep against the electric fence.
So it would go, it would go like that, "Ha, hey, ha, ho, ho!" It's like Jack Douglas from the Carry On Films.
Yeah.
It was amazing, narcoleptic horse.
- Oh, well, that's my kind of horse, frankly.
- Yeah.
But it is the horse that turns out to be the deadliest animal, How would you defend yourself against this beast? - Oi! - Oh.
- What the hell is that? - Yeah.
- What is it, Stephen? I can't - It's a dinosaur.
- Yeah.
It's a dinosaur called Fruitadens haagororum.
- It's a weird looking dinosaur.
- It is a weird looking one.
It's a friendly looking one, strangely.
Well, if you ignore the massive great spear it's got for a tail.
- That is pretty big.
- It's got a lovely fringe though.
- It's got a mohawk.
- It's actually feathered, in fact.
- Oh, feathered fringe.
- And it has front fangs upwards, very unusual.
- Front fangs and a feathered fringe? - Front fangs and a feathered fringe.
Are you Ronnie Barker? The surprising thing about it, I suppose, is that we have this view of dinosaurs, which is largely to do with their size.
The way to deal with that would be just to squash it with your foot, because it's tiny.
It's absolutely it's basically about four inches tall.
It's the smallest dinosaur we know about.
Tiny-winy little dinosaur.
Absolutely, four inches, that's it.
- So was it a herbivore? An omnivore? Aaah.
- Aah.
Paris Hilton would have that in a flash.
Yeah, exactly.
It's about the size of a Chihuahua.
A tiny Chihuahua.
It ate plants and worms and some people think frogs, possibly.
It lived in the late Jurassic period, a hundred and fifty million years ago, dodging between the legs of all the Allosauruses and Brachiosauruses.
It's called "Fruitadens" because the first fossilised remains of one were found in Fruita, which you may remember is a town in Colorado, which gave the world Mike the Headless Chicken, who was a hero of a QI episode some years ago.
Oh yes, Mike the Headless Chicken.
- Though it's a bit of a coincidence.
- He lived for years.
So it's probably a scavenger.
It was the dinosaur equivalent of a rat, probably.
But no dinosaur was bigger than what? What is the biggest living creature that has ever existed on the planet? The T-Rex? Or that giant tall one there.
No, I said no dinosaur was ever bigger than the biggest living - Oh, I see.
- The whale.
- The blue whale, it was your chance with the blue whale, Alan! AUDIENCE SYMPATHISES The blue whale is bigger than any dinosaur.
I know.
Ooh.
Bummeroony.
I'm so sorry.
But there still are very small reptiles, I've been to Madagascar and had one, a brookesia chameleon, a pygmy chameleon, and I've had one right on my finger and you can see that.
They are absolutely, they are perfect, perfect chameleons.
Was it tasty? Aaah.
Here's a question, if you ate a chameleon It was just the most beautiful thing.
Went for a night walk in the woods and came across it.
Obviously incredibly easy to miss.
And they sit there quite happily on your finger.
They are perfect chameleons, their eyes do the thing of swivelling in all directions.
Now, which fairground ride is most dangerous - the Wall of Death, the Wheel of Death, the Death Slide or the Euthanasia Coaster? Well, I'd go for the latter, but that's just, - I've been on a Wall of Death.
- Yes, what is a Wall of Death? That's the bike where you go up and there's a - What keeps you, what keeps you from falling? - Sticky tape.
LAUGHTER It's a lot of fun, my dad detached his retina.
- Woah, seriously? - Yeah.
- No! - Yeah, on the What, before he got on, he went, "Right, here we go, hey!" My sister went on one of those, right, at the Cramlington Carnival and as it was going around, there was a kid next to her with a goldfish in a bag and it exploded.
- Ah.
- Oh, no! But the trouble is, he couldn't do anything about it, she couldn't do anything about it, so they're on there like that, "Wey hey!" and it went, "Boof!" like that.
And the two of them just sort of go, "Woah!" like that.
As it slowed down, "Blurgh," and then, yeah.
Poor little goldfish.
The Wall of Death was first seen in Coney Island in 1915.
There have been a few reported accidents but no fatalities, - and we can add to that list, two detached retinae.
- Yeah.
The Wheel of Death is slightly harder to describe, a circus apparatus double rotation thing.
The Death Slide is really better known as a zip wire.
But you are right that in theory the most deadly of them all is the Euthanasia Coaster.
It's a project of an art student in London called Julijonas Urbonas, a Lithuanian PHD student.
It exists as a 1:500 scale model, and you can see there, the idea is that the ride would last three minutes.
A two minute ascent to the very, very top, it's 1,600 foot.
- Oh, God! - So very, very high.
You then have a minute's 223mph plunge down into those rolls like that, during which you're pulling ten G's, and that would kill the rider through what's called cerebral hypoxia, in other words, deprivation of oxygen to the brain.
- Have Chessington World of Adventure bought it? - No, they haven't.
He believes his design offers a humane and meaningful death.
I don't know quite why it's meaningful.
- Die like a screaming clown.
- That would be amazing, - because you could actually build a chapel at the end.
- Yes.
- And the family could just sit there.
- Absolutely.
And then the best thing of all is, after the funeral, you get a picture of your loved one, like that.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE - On a handy key ring.
- Have it on mugs, anything you want.
Well, he believes that the ascent offers the chance for reflection and the riders can still pull out once they've reached the top.
If not, death is painless, quick and apparently euphoric.
Though how they know, I don't know.
There's one in Auckland, one of those ball things that you sit in and you have the bungee straps and they fire you up the top.
- Oh, my goodness.
- But they make you wear like one of those surgical mask things.
And I said, why are they wearing the surgical masks? And apparently, because it's right next to an office building, people are trying to work and you hear, "Arrrgh!" Like this.
And it was putting them off.
So now it's kind of, "Wargh.
" So some bloke's going, "Well, our predicted sales over the next" "Waaargh!" Vomit on the windows.
I'm always fascinated why people love that feeling.
I mean, roller coasters when I was a kid, it was like, "Argh," and that was it.
But now they're so extreme.
- Yeah.
They really are.
- I don't get the kind of exhilaration of it.
No.
I've bungee jumped and that was so exciting, I immediately had to do it again, I absolutely loved it.
What about the guy who made his own bungee jump? That was stupid.
- I think he won a Darwin Award.
- Oh, dear.
He made his own bungee jump with a rope.
LAUGHTER AND DISBELIEF So, just hung himself.
Well, no, it took his foot off.
AUDIENCE GASPS When the rope went taut, his foot came off.
- That's just horrific.
- That's what the Darwin Awards are all about.
Yeah, it certainly is.
What isn't a blue whale, but floats around in the sea and weighs as much as a blue whale? Is it an elephant on holiday? An elephant doesn't weigh as much as a blue whale.
- No, it's really - A ship? - No.
- Submarine.
No, it's something that the blue whale consumes.
- A massive lilo.
- Plankton.
The blue whale can consume its own weight in? - Plankton.
- Well, actually in water.
It dives all the way down and then dives up again with its mouth open and it swells, and swells, and swells.
And it literally can take on 90 tonnes of water.
Quite a staggering sum.
Got to love a blue whale.
- That's right, we do love them.
- That's one thirsty mother.
They can actually take in something their size.
Not to swallow, as you know, because, - as we've discussed - The grapefruit issue.
A grapefruit is the biggest thing they can get down their gullet.
But they get this gigantic amount of water inside them.
Really amazing.
And they go really deep and no one's been able to go deep enough to find out what they do until very recently.
- Just gossiping.
- Just gossiping.
That's right.
"Ooh, kaa.
" "Really?" Having quizzes in which people say, "Is the answer Alan Davies?" Yeah.
The water in a blue whale's mouth weighs as much as a blue whale does.
Why shouldn't you mess with the maxillofacial death pyramid? Is it cos it's got the word "death" in it? That is a hint, the maxillofacial death pyramid.
- Call it the fun pyramid.
- Maxillofacial means? Maxillofacial is who you go to see when you get a broken cheekbone.
- Yeah, exactly.
it is the maxillary area, the jaw.
- It's the top jaw.
But it's, the maxillary, the pyramid is actually sort of there, from the bridge of the nose down through It's like a facial Bermuda Triangle.
There it is, yeah, yeah.
And it's basically about blood flow from the brain down, if you've got little infections and things, it goes down through there and then gets sorted out by the immune system.
What can happen if you pick your nose and your spots and things, is you can get bacteria in it that sort of block it and force it all the way back up into the brain.
Meningitis is an example of that, and syphilis indeed is.
- From picking your nose?! - Not from picking your nose - Good God!! - Yeah, that's how you get syphilis.
It does, it slightly depends on what you're picking it with! LAUGHTER That's how you explain it to the wife.
"No, I was just picking my nose, love.
Must have spread.
" Yeah.
That's something to tell the children.
Well, there you are.
Now, making hydrogen with nails and drain cleaner would be a very jolly jape indeed, don't you think? - Yes, I think so.
- So, let's try it.
To prove that it's hydrogen, I'm going to have to set fire it.
And I'm going to set fire to it on my own hand, first of all I'm going to have a basin of water, I'm going to put here, to dip my hand in, to wet it so I don't burn myself too badly.
And then I have my really Oh, hello.
Made a mistake, sorry, man in my ear furious with me.
"What are you fucking doing?! Put the water down! "Do this properly or you will die, do you understand?!" - No - "Start again, for fuck's sake!" LAUGHTER He was much gentler, very sweet.
So, anyway.
I've been told to tell you not to try this at home.
- Try it in someone else's home.
- Yeah.
The fire exits are there, and there.
What I've got here is I've got some ordinary green coloured washing-up liquid.
We're not allowed to mention it's Fairy.
Its name.
And I've got a little chemical lab, I don't know what you call - this little - Flask.
- Flask, I think is the word.
Oh, this is like going on a picnic with Heston Blumenthal.
LAUGHTER It's got some nails in it and I'm going to add a few more, a little bit of zinc.
And I've got here, this is the hydrochloric acid, very strong.
When are you going to put on the safety goggles, Stephen? Now, cos I'm about to open the bottle of acid.
"Put the fucking safety goggles on!" Not only that, but I've also got, I've also got a - I've also got a mask.
Here we go.
- What about us?! Sorry, can I just ask, you're putting on safety goggles? - Yeah! - You're putting on a mask.
What's the story here? Yeah, you're fine, you're expendable.
I may have the mask upside down.
"Got the fucking mask upside down!" Right, OK.
I've got the goggles, I've got this.
Now what I'm going to do, all right, is I'm going to pour this acid.
Jesus, onto some nails?! - Into the nails, that's right.
- Why? The zinc and the hydrochloric acid will react.
- Has he been drinking? - Yeah.
He's been drinking that.
Oh, there we go.
And that's, that's going to produce quite a lot.
- It's going towards me! - It's blowing our way! I now have to put this, I have to put this cork in it.
- Geez! - If I put the cork in it tight enough, it will come out of here, and I put this in here and it will bubble up.
Right, that's important.
- If you say so.
- The bubbles are made of hydrogen.
And the only way to prove it is to grasp the bubbles, I'm going to wet my hand now, to be safer.
And grasp these bubbles.
What the hell is that? It looks like a sex cactus.
And I'm going to go Oh, God! APPLAUSE AND CHEERING Really exciting.
Really exciting.
We can try that again.
Oh, yeah.
- Let's get even more bubbles.
- That is great.
Stephen's goggles are so steamed up, he's completely blind! - Oh, come on, oh, work, lighter.
- Anyone got a light? Oh the lighter's stopped working.
APPLAUSE Let's try it again, one more.
Wet your hand again, you didn't wet it.
- You didn't wet the hand.
- Come on.
Bloody lighter! - Expelliarmus! - Oh.
Oh there we go.
- We'll take that off now.
- Wow! - I've made hydrogen, ladies and gentlemen.
- Wow.
APPLAUSE - Wow.
- How very exciting.
- Pretty exciting.
Let's cover that.
"Put the lid on the acid!" There we are.
We can let all the hydrogen disappear.
And our wonderful science elf said, he said, he's so scientific, he said, "And don't touch that because it's exothermic.
" - It just means it's hot.
- Hot, it's hot.
- Had to say "exothermic.
" - That's a smell, that's quite the - Can you smell? - Pretty whiffy.
- Yes.
- Pretty eggy whiffy.
Well, a bit of hydrogen sulphide probably in there, that might kill you, of course.
But let's hope not.
Let's hope at least you survive until we get to the scores.
Well, I have to say, sadly, in last place Is it that bad? It's down wind.
Well, especially now I know it's potentially fatal.
Yes, it is! No, it's not hydrogen sulphide.
It's just hydrogen.
So, I'm afraid in last place, but it's a very creditable last place, and only just, with minus 16, is Julia Zemiro.
Oh! APPLAUSE Thank you.
And through some extraordinary good fortune, avoiding final place, third place with minus 14, Alan Davies.
- Thank you very much.
- Highly respectable.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING And, my goodness, it's tight at the top, with minus seven, in second place, Ross Noble.
APPLAUSE So, that can only mean that our winner, with a magnificent minus six, is Sue Perkins.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING So, it's goodnight from Sue, Ross, Julia, Alan and me.
Now, you come back soon now, you hear? Do that thing and be lovely to each other.
Goodnight.