QI (2003) s12e10 Episode Script
Lying
This programme contains some strong language.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Hello! Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening and welcome to QI, which tonight is a tissue of lies.
Let's meet our perfidious panel - the duke of deception, Adam Hills.
The duchess of dissembling, Sara Pascoe.
The marquess of mendacity, Jack Whitehall.
And with his pants on fire, Alan Davies.
Our buzzers this evening are charged with enigmatic mystery.
Adam goes MUSIC: The X-Files Theme Sara goes MUSIC: Tales Of The Unexpected Theme Jack goes MUSIC: The Twilight Zone Theme Alan goes 'I don't believe it!' So, before we start, remember that I have hidden a lavatory inside one of the questions, all right? CASH REGISTER RINGS TOILET FLUSHES Because it's the L series, one of the questions involves a lavatory.
And if you think you've spotted which it is, you wave your penny and spend it.
- Ah.
- You spend your penny.
All right.
Let's start with a lark.
We like to do larks on the L series.
I'm going to show you how your senses can deceive.
So, Alan and Jack, you should each have a rubber hand and a little grey wooden partition.
And Alan will explain and Jack will explain it.
I'm not quite au fait with prosthetics, but I'll give it a crack(!) Hold my hand here.
That's it.
You can stand up, Jack, if you like.
I've forgotten what I'm doing here.
This goes here.
Yeah, like that.
OK.
What you've got here is a perfectly obvious real hand, your right hands, and a perfectly obvious fake hand.
And you've each got a brush.
So, all I want you to do is brush each hand sort of simultaneously, and what you should feel, Adam and Sara Excruciating pain! Jab hard into the hand until they roar! Sara, scream! - We'll come to that.
For the moment, just a gentle rubbing.
- SARA: OK.
- Eventually - This hand will fall off.
Eventually, you will feel in the rubber hand the same sensation you feel in your real hand.
- Which seems extraordinary - Yeah? - .
.
but you will.
- And let me know when you do.
- SARA: OK.
It may not have happened yet.
- Then you will urinate.
- You have to keep going.
- I'm sorry.
- You have to keep going.
- I'm keeping going, I'm keeping going! I am now starting to feel that this is my hand.
That's it, that's what happens.
I'm having trouble distinguishing.
- Are you not, Sara? - No.
- Keep going, Alan.
- ADAM: Oh, that's nice.
- You like? - Yeah.
- So you can feel that in the rubber hand? - Lower.
Definitely.
Lower.
You play your cards right, might get a happy ending with this.
- You're not feeling anything, Sara? - It feels very much like my hand - Oh, it now does feel like your hand? - No, my hand feels like my hand.
- Well, that would do, yes.
- Yeah.
My hand has never felt more like it belongs to me.
- I'm going faster.
- I think that will help.
OK.
OK, I've got it, I've got it! - You've got it.
- I've got it.
I've got it.
Faster is better, keep up the speed.
Right.
It's happening now! It's my hand! It's my hand! - It really does feel like it.
- It's my hand now.
It's bizarre, isn't it? It's genuinely bizarre.
- And now you can get out the other brush.
- What? What? They've got SHE SHRIEKS MUSIC: The Twilight Zone Theme That's amazing, isn't it? It is amazing, because I didn't believe it was going to happen.
That's what's so good - you really didn't believe.
It doesn't matter how much you know your hand is fake, it doesn't matter how much you know it's rubber, the effect works.
You see it, you see that it's a clear fake, but, extraordinary, the brain overrides what it knows with what it feels.
That is to say, the cognitive side.
That's not that he's just next to a slightly mal-co-ordinated man-child with a rubber hammer.
We can show you a replay of Adam's reaction here, because we've actually got it here.
If you watch this, here.
Oh, that shirt is awful.
That isthat is genuine.
It's made all the more extraordinary by the fact, of course you, as is well known, have a prosthetic foot.
I do, I do indeed.
And so you are used to all the cliches there are about prosthesis and about phantom limbs and all the rest of it.
And as you well know, and from war time, the screams of pain people had, once they'd been amputated, in the limbs that no longer existed, they swore that their shins And having itches in them you can't scratch.
I can't imagine anything more agonising than having an itch in something you can't scratch.
I met this guy whoin America, and he was a Vietnam veteran, - and he knew someone who'd lost both legs.
- Yeah.
And he went to see him in hospital and he said, "I still haven't had sex with my wife.
" He said, "Why? Why not?" He said, "Oh, I haven't got any legs now, I feel awkward.
"I don't really, you know" He said, "Well, you should just do it.
" So he really encouraged him to do it.
And then he went back to see him, and he had a big smile on his face.
And he said, "So, did you do the thing?" And he said, "Yeah.
"And with no legs, you can get right on up there.
" Well It's one of the unexpected advantages.
- Talk about every cloud.
- There you go.
I am cutting off my legs this evening.
Oh! Oh, goodness me.
But the point is, the brain has a mental map of the body from birth and even if that map is distorted by an amputation, it takes a lot for the brain to lose its sense of where everything is.
It can be fooled, as the rubber hand showed you.
Now, which room in the house would you keep these in? MUSIC: The X-Files Theme Oh, just push it.
In the library.
ALARM BLARES Adam is about to score points, yes! - Really? - Yeah.
Yeah! Very good.
That's the penny well spent.
And can I just point out, in Australia, that's 2.
50.
Well, if we have a look at the picture again, those are actually English literature books, and this, I'm afraid, is a French chamber pot, or commode if you prefer.
And they liked to shit on us and our literature in one go.
Oh, just when you think they can't do anything else.
When you open the lid, does it go, "Ugh"? "I shit on you.
" Exactly.
"Because I can't beat you in a war, I will poo on your books.
" You open the lid and it goes, "Boy, boy for sale.
" But perhaps the most impressive invention in recent times, - for your lavatorial wants - The helicopter.
Um, well The Gotta Go Briefcase.
It's Japanese, of course.
How much better do you get than that? It's just simply superb.
It's got everything you could possibly want, including a newspaper to leaf through if your easement is taking time.
I've always felt really sad when I leave a toilet, like, "Oh, we've become such good friends.
" I wish I could just pack it up and carry it away(!) - Now I can.
- It's got a generously equipped sealing lid.
You can quietly and discreetly go about your personal business anywhere you please, with a fold-out leather privacy panel, - which tucks away neatly to the side.
- Yeah, it looks like it hides you completely, that panel.
- A small tray with - "What's that suitcase just sitting there?" It's got a small tray with a cup-holder.
- Oh, great, so I don't even have to throw away my drink? - A cup-holder.
That's like Homer Simpson, isn't it? Do you remember that episode where he bought a huge RV? And Marge said, "Oh, Homer!" and he said, "But, Marge, it's got six cup-holders! SIX!" Men like cup-holders.
There's just something so great about them.
- It's got a vanity mirror.
- I like the leather finish.
Yeah, refillable hand-sanitising dispenser.
Maximum weight capacity is 80 kilos.
"Exceeding the recommended weight will void all warranties" get, an elephant to shit in it?! - I know.
- How are you going to get - I weigh less than 80 kilos.
- It does seem extraordinary.
"I really need to get the "I'm going to exceed the limit!" "It may result in rupture of waste tank, "possible bacteria contamination of briefcase contents "and massive stench.
" So you don't want to do that.
I'm assuming you haven't emptied it for a year.
Also, you would have two suitcases in meetings.
Everyone would be like, "Derek, why have you got two suitcases?" If you got it wrong "No reason.
" And then he just hides behind the leather panel.
If you accidentally went, "I've been through the figures and Oops!" Massive stench! Massive stench! - Oh, dear.
- "How did the meeting go?" "Oh, it was going fine until I got the bog out.
" Alternatively, you go the other way.
"Thanks for letting me use your toilet briefcase.
" "Oh, I don't have a toilet briefcase.
" I ought to say that the 80 kilos includes the person sitting on it.
Oh, right.
I would break it, I've a horrible feeling.
That changes everything.
Anyway, that's the Gotta Go Briefcase.
And it's yours, I'm sure, for a very reasonable price.
Now, what's this guy on about? MAN SINGS GIBBERISH OVER RAP MUSIC That was a 1972, rather before its time, piece of rap, by an incredibly famous Italian called Adriano Celentano, who is not known here.
He had a huge hit with this, which is called Prisencolinensinainciusol.
- You can see it written up and that will help you.
- Oh, wow.
Prisencolinensinainciusol in de col men seivuan prisencolinensinainciusol ol rait.
Which is Italian for "Gangnam Style".
Yeah, kind of.
What it is, it's just babble.
- Gibberish.
- It's babble that is supposed to sound like English.
To an Italian, it sounds more or less like English sounds.
There's that famous clip of the person on Malaysia's Got Talent, where they're singing Mariah Carey, Can't Live Without You, which is possibly the greatest song ever recorded, but she's heard it, clearly, through a second party and doesn't know what the lyrics are, so she burst into the chorus and she just goes Ken Lee, Ken Lee Boo dee boo doutchu.
And she thinks it's about a guy called Ken Lee.
Aw Anyway, that was a huge hit in 1972.
Number one in Italy and it was in the top ten in France and in Belgium and the Netherlands.
It's babble that is supposed to sound like English, but in 2011, London-based film-makers Brian and Karl produced a wonderful film called Skwerl, which used a similar technique - the dialogue is actually gibberish but sounds like English.
It's had over seven million viewers and we can show you a bit of it here.
Run VT.
HE TALKS GIBBERISH CUTLERY RATTLES PLATES CRASH SHE GASPS AND SOBS FIZZING You fucking asshole! That wasn't gibberish, but we've got them here tonight, Brian and Karl, thank you very much.
One of the hardest things to do in the world is to talk gibberish without it becoming - Did you actually learn your gibberish? - We did, yeah.
- Yeah.
Did you imagine that there was sense behind it? He thinks she's forgotten his birthday, is that what this? That's one interpretation.
I'm not an actor, but Fiona, who's in the film, is an actress, and so she needed to know what this was about, she needed the intentions.
But I think it was important to kind of have a sort of a sense - behind what we were saying.
- It was a lot like what you were talking about with the Mariah Carey, Ken Lee and stuff.
We sort of had the sentences and then kind of garbled them and kind of wrote down the garble as it came out.
I understood more words in that clip, though, than I did in five series of The Wire.
- ADAM: Are you Australian? - Yeah, I'm Australian.
- Yeah, I thought so.
Because we have a similar thing that we do where we don't use words - AUSTRALIAN ACCENT: Do you think I haven't noticed? - Yeah, exactly.
GASPING: You have another thing you do, which is sound as if you've got heartburn.
For some bizarre reason.
I don't know why that is.
That's how they get the actors on Home And Away to do an emotional scene - they just give them heartburn.
"Steven, the cafe's burntdown again.
" Australians will make enough noises that could be a sentence, but there are no actual words in it.
I'll try it.
RUNNING WORDS TOGETHER: So, OK, are you having a good night? Yeah, right, it's all right, man.
Are you enjoying your time at QI? HE TALKS GIBBERISH There's also I have a similar thing that I can do with posh people.
This gentleman in the front row here with the blue trousers.
HE MUMBLES IN POSH VOICE Anyway, sorry, that's wonderful, Brian and Karl, thank you very much indeed.
Thanks for joining us.
Magnificent.
So, time for some refreshment.
Here we go.
Let's have You pass that there to Sara, if you would, Alan.
There you go.
- There's one for you, Jack.
Pass one to Adam.
- Is this carrot? And I'll have one myself.
And there's one for you, Alan.
Thank you so much.
There you go.
Hmm.
Hmm! - You look as if you - Who grew this? - You've done this before.
- So - You've got to make it upright first.
Oh, right.
Come on.
Will you talk to it? Come here, you.
Oh, you look lovely.
You're so huge(!) I don't think I'm going to be able to manage it.
Oh, there you are, yes Hey-hey! What do you think these were once used for? What were carrots used for, or particularly these ones on sticks? Ones on sticks.
Waving in tiny airplanes? Is it like what Gwyneth Paltrow gives her kids? She probably does, yeah, they probably are.
To see in the dark? ALARM BLARES Seeing in the dark, well, you're in the right era.
When was it said that carrots could help you see in the dark? At night.
In which period of history was it made known to people, this idea, which is not really true? - The Dark Ages.
- Not the Dark Ages.
When did people discover vitamins? SARA: Yeah.
That wasn't until the beginning of the 20th century.
Because vitamin A is the key, it helps your eyes, doesn't it? Vitamin A does help your eyes.
So it must have been around about then.
Well, it was really It It must be so hard being a rabbit.
It really They would never get any talking done.
No, they wouldn't, would they? They'd be, "Sorry, what are you saying?" - "I've got a mouthful of bloody carrot.
" - Good God! The problem was, in the Second World War, there was We would run out of Put it away.
Concentrate, Stephen.
Stop flapping Oh, yes, that's what I need to do.
You look like the world's worst burlesque dancer.
SARA: I've seen worse.
So, in the Second World War, there was a very great shortage of sugar, and there was a big surplus of carrots, and so they put it about that carrots helped you see in the dark.
I bloody love carrots, me.
So they made sort of ice creams, as it were, - out of carrots, to try and make them attractive to children.
- OK.
There is a certain amount of sugar in them.
- They tasted a little sweet, didn't they? - Yeah, it was lovely.
And there was a Group Captain, John Cunningham, who was responsible for very daring night raids over Germany, and they gave it out that what allowed him to do it was the fact that he ate carrots.
In fact, what they were really doing was disguising the fact - that they had on-board aircraft - Rabbits.
- .
.
radar.
They had radar on board.
They didn't want the Germans to know.
The Germans knew we had ground radar, not that we had radar on board airplanes.
So they sold the carrot story to the Germans as well? That was the idea, both to get children to eat their carrots and maybe to get the Germans to believe that it was carrots that allowed our bombers to see over those Wouldn't it have been more beneficial if they'd said the reason our pilots are so good at seeing at night is because they eat slightly undercooked chicken? You should have been working in British Intelligence.
POSH VOICE: "You're just the kind of chap we need, Whitehall.
" Now, how does the "what the hell" effect work? MUSIC: Tales Of The Unexpected Theme - Yes? - This is relevant to people who are dieting or sometimes people who have substance abuse problems and things like that.
So it's when you are being quite strict with yourself.
Stop talking about me for a second, yes.
It's when you're being very strict with yourself and you think you've slipped up in a slight way, so you're really hungry and you have a biscuit when you're on a diet and then you go, "I've ruined the diet now, "I'm going to finish that packet of biscuits and do some crack" Oh, tell me about it.
And they properly leap in and start again tomorrow.
You're so right - you've fallen off the wagon - I've done everything wrong now, I'll get a tattoo - Yeah.
Those people who say, "I was very good yesterday, "I've been good today, so tomorrow - Black Forest gateau for breakfast.
" Yeah, oh.
I mean, that is certainly a "what the hell" effect, there's no question about that.
There is another "what the hell" effect, but yours, I think, counts, unquestionably.
This is used by Dan Ariely and his partners at Duke University in North Carolina.
And what it describes is how, when someone has overcome their initial reluctance to cheat, subsequent dishonest behaviour gets easier.
And he tested this with college students who were solving maths problems for money, and when his back was turned, they could cheat, and the more they saw they got away with it, the more they cheated.
But what was interesting is, the scores were not inflated by a few students, who were cheating a lot, but many students cheating a little.
Cheating, in that sense, is infectious.
You go, "What the hell, I can do it," so you do it.
But animals, interestingly, animals can cheat.
Koko, who is a wonderful gorilla in California, once tore a steel sink off a wall and then used sign language - to tell her handlers that the cat had done it.
- Yes.
A real child-like fib.
"It wasn't me, it was the cat.
" The closer you get to human beings, the more of a liar you become.
And perhaps an even more famous chimp, Nim Chimpsky, about whom a film was made, who has a really developed sign language, she used to duck out of sign language lessons by saying she needed to go to the loo when she didn't.
She'd say, "I have to go for a pee," like that, she'd go off and you'd see her not going for a pee.
Or him, rather.
So animals are capable of deception.
So maybe we should only eat animals that can lie.
Well, lying seems to be a sign of intelligence, I'm glad to say, as an inveterate liar myself.
Ariely, this man who did the work on the "what the hell" effect, he found people who score higher on psychological tests for creativity are more likely to engage in dishonesty.
Anyway, there we are.
We are who we are because we cheat.
The "what the hell" effect describes how, after the first lie, the others just keep coming.
So, now I want you to be thoroughly dishonest by pretending you don't know you're going to get a klaxon, because it's General Ignorance time.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
What are deserts mostly from? - MUSIC: Tales Of The Unexpected Theme - Yes, Sara? - Sand.
- ALARM BLARES - Oh, thank you.
What? What? - You'd think, wouldn't you? - Yeah.
- Not the case.
No.
Only one-third of the world's land surface is desert and only a small proportion of that is sand.
North American deserts are around 2% sand.
No more than that.
There's Monument Valley.
Globally, on average, only 20% of all deserts are sand, a fifth.
The remainder is made of rock, shingle, salt or even snow.
- And camels.
- And camels.
- Yes, camel poo.
- There's lots of cigarettes all over the desert.
The driest desert in the world is? - The Gobi Desert.
- No.
- Any thoughts? - AUDIENCE MEMBER: Antarctica.
There is an argument for saying the Antarctic is a dry desert.
- It doesn't rain there.
- Yeah, it doesn't, but the Atacama is considered the driest land desert.
Some weather stations there have recorded no rain whatsoever, - not one.
- What a boring job, being in that weather station.
The largest desert on Earth is Antarctica, even though much of it is under snow.
But the one area that is the driest, man who shouts a lot, are the McMurdo Dry Valleys.
Is that his Red Indian name? Yeah.
And they consist mostly of They consist Man Who Shout A Lot.
The McMurdo Dry Valleys are so dry that dead animals mummify rather than decay.
So, it seems that if you want to identify a desert, the best way to do so involves looking for the rain, not for sand.
How did the Vikings bury their dead? On a boat.
On fire.
- Oh, on a boat on fire.
- ALARM BLARES Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack.
No.
In the ground? Yeah.
More or less.
I feel a bit sad about how tentative I was about that.
The myth of the burning longboat is very, very recent - 19th century.
In fact, there is one story of Baldur, a god, who was apparently burned like that, the rest of it is pretty much LadyboyLadybird book stuff.
- I love the Ladyboy books.
- Did I say "Ladyboy books"? Ladybird books.
Yes, Vikings sometimes buried their dead in a boat, but always on land.
Which bit of whale did they use to make a whalebone corset? - I'm going to take a punt and say the jaw.
- Not the jaw.
Penis? Not the penis.
Is it not part of a whale? The wishbone.
It is part of the whale.
Not the wish Did you say the wishbone? - That's a huge tug of war.
- So for a corset Is it the ribs? MAN SHOUTS OUT ALARM BLARES Who said the ribs? I did, I said it first.
- Oh, sorry about that, no, not the ribs.
- No worries.
I think Shouty Man had it again.
MAN SHOUTS OUT SARA: That isn't how you get on the show.
This is not that thing with James Corden on Sky 1, thank you very much indeed.
My show.
Oh, yes! Whoops.
- More's the pity.
- The show now four series on.
More's the pity.
I wish it were, The Shouty Show.
- With the drunk cricketer.
- Yeah, that one, exactly.
No, as I think they were shouting, "The baleen.
" - Does that mean anything? - The thing in the mouth.
- Yeah, the sieve in the mouth.
- That sieves the Oh, I see.
There are two types of whale - baleen whale and toothed whale - and the blue whale is an example of a baleen whale there.
The baleen is in fact keratin, the same thing that our hair is made of, our fingernails, or rhinoceros horn is.
So it's wonderfully pliable.
It was the plastic of the 19th century, essentially.
- Right.
- There was a Mr JA Sevey trading out of Boston who offered 54 different whalebone products.
Whips, parasols, umbrellas, fishing rods, canes, hat, divining rods, riding crops, ferrules, brushes, mattress stuffing, back-supporters, suspenders, billiard cushion springs, pen-holders, shoehorns, tongue scrapers and policemen's clubs.
- All possible.
- That is a good Saturday night.
Empty your pockets out.
But real whalebone was used for something else.
It was a cheap substitute for ivory.
And you probably know of the carving that was done on it that sailors used to do, which had a particular name? I do not know of the name of that.
Oh, we'll have to ask Shouty Man again.
- AUDIENCE MEMBER: Scrimshaw! - Scrimshaw is the right answer, yes.
- He's very clever, Shouty Man.
- He is.
- He's a very smart shouty man.
- He's a smart shouty man.
It may be a whole series of organised shouty men, I don't know, but we're very impressed by them.
They may have to get a score at the end, that's what's worrying me.
Yes, scrimshaw isyou know that very carved whalebone effect? It's sometimes done on horns.
I mean, amazing, some of it.
Even a whole desk was once done out of whalebone, because whales are big animals.
Yes, most whalebone was not bone but baleen, the 19th-century equivalent of plastic.
Can you name a blue sea creature? - MUSIC: The Twilight Zone Theme - Alan? Oh.
Yes, Jack? Shouty Man, drop it like it's hot.
Mine! Is he going to fall for our trap? AUDIENCE MEMBER: A blue whale! Is the right answer! Yes, I love this guy! That's the fastest I've ever been on the draw as well.
- That was quick, and still wasn't - I broke my buzzer.
- You did.
'I don't believe it!' You've broken your carrot now.
We thought you might be so afraid you'd say "not the blue whale".
- No, I was pretty sure about that one.
- It is blue.
It's not very blue, but it's blue enough to call blue.
- It's bluer than most things, innit? - It is.
- It's all relative.
The colour spectrum is different under water.
It's quite a common a common qualor It's quite a common colour amongst The gibberish blokes can understand all of that.
- Absolutely.
- SARA: A dory is blue.
There's the blue marlin, which is pretty blue.
- A dory is blue.
- Yes.
The blue starfish you can see is jolly blue.
Blue marlin there.
Blue Man Group.
So the grey whale is pretty grey, the humpback is pretty grey.
The sperm whale is dark grey/black, but the blue whale, as you can see, is jolly blue.
There it is, bottom right.
I see it.
Yeh-hey.
Your favourite whale.
Would we lie to you? Blue whales are blue, pretty much.
Well, that's our last tissue in our box of lies.
It's time for the unvarnished truth with the scores.
And it's pretty bally fascinating.
In last place, with minus Oh, dear.
Minus 19, but with a tremendous performance and a wonderful last rally, Jack Whitehall.
With minus 11, an entirely creditable third place, she knew so much, Sara, Sara Pascoe.
I get all the buzzers, I got two.
I got two.
On minus 8, second place, Alan Davies.
Minus 8, pretty pleased.
And a staggeringly secure first place, - on plus 14, Adam Hills.
- Oh, my goodness.
And tonight, of course, a special award of minus 39 for the shouty man in the audience.
Yes, it only remains for me to thank Adam, Jack, Sara and Alan and leave you with the last words of Spanish Prime Minister General Ramon Maria Narvaez.
"I do not have to forgive my enemies, "I have had them all shot.
" Good night.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Hello! Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening and welcome to QI, which tonight is a tissue of lies.
Let's meet our perfidious panel - the duke of deception, Adam Hills.
The duchess of dissembling, Sara Pascoe.
The marquess of mendacity, Jack Whitehall.
And with his pants on fire, Alan Davies.
Our buzzers this evening are charged with enigmatic mystery.
Adam goes MUSIC: The X-Files Theme Sara goes MUSIC: Tales Of The Unexpected Theme Jack goes MUSIC: The Twilight Zone Theme Alan goes 'I don't believe it!' So, before we start, remember that I have hidden a lavatory inside one of the questions, all right? CASH REGISTER RINGS TOILET FLUSHES Because it's the L series, one of the questions involves a lavatory.
And if you think you've spotted which it is, you wave your penny and spend it.
- Ah.
- You spend your penny.
All right.
Let's start with a lark.
We like to do larks on the L series.
I'm going to show you how your senses can deceive.
So, Alan and Jack, you should each have a rubber hand and a little grey wooden partition.
And Alan will explain and Jack will explain it.
I'm not quite au fait with prosthetics, but I'll give it a crack(!) Hold my hand here.
That's it.
You can stand up, Jack, if you like.
I've forgotten what I'm doing here.
This goes here.
Yeah, like that.
OK.
What you've got here is a perfectly obvious real hand, your right hands, and a perfectly obvious fake hand.
And you've each got a brush.
So, all I want you to do is brush each hand sort of simultaneously, and what you should feel, Adam and Sara Excruciating pain! Jab hard into the hand until they roar! Sara, scream! - We'll come to that.
For the moment, just a gentle rubbing.
- SARA: OK.
- Eventually - This hand will fall off.
Eventually, you will feel in the rubber hand the same sensation you feel in your real hand.
- Which seems extraordinary - Yeah? - .
.
but you will.
- And let me know when you do.
- SARA: OK.
It may not have happened yet.
- Then you will urinate.
- You have to keep going.
- I'm sorry.
- You have to keep going.
- I'm keeping going, I'm keeping going! I am now starting to feel that this is my hand.
That's it, that's what happens.
I'm having trouble distinguishing.
- Are you not, Sara? - No.
- Keep going, Alan.
- ADAM: Oh, that's nice.
- You like? - Yeah.
- So you can feel that in the rubber hand? - Lower.
Definitely.
Lower.
You play your cards right, might get a happy ending with this.
- You're not feeling anything, Sara? - It feels very much like my hand - Oh, it now does feel like your hand? - No, my hand feels like my hand.
- Well, that would do, yes.
- Yeah.
My hand has never felt more like it belongs to me.
- I'm going faster.
- I think that will help.
OK.
OK, I've got it, I've got it! - You've got it.
- I've got it.
I've got it.
Faster is better, keep up the speed.
Right.
It's happening now! It's my hand! It's my hand! - It really does feel like it.
- It's my hand now.
It's bizarre, isn't it? It's genuinely bizarre.
- And now you can get out the other brush.
- What? What? They've got SHE SHRIEKS MUSIC: The Twilight Zone Theme That's amazing, isn't it? It is amazing, because I didn't believe it was going to happen.
That's what's so good - you really didn't believe.
It doesn't matter how much you know your hand is fake, it doesn't matter how much you know it's rubber, the effect works.
You see it, you see that it's a clear fake, but, extraordinary, the brain overrides what it knows with what it feels.
That is to say, the cognitive side.
That's not that he's just next to a slightly mal-co-ordinated man-child with a rubber hammer.
We can show you a replay of Adam's reaction here, because we've actually got it here.
If you watch this, here.
Oh, that shirt is awful.
That isthat is genuine.
It's made all the more extraordinary by the fact, of course you, as is well known, have a prosthetic foot.
I do, I do indeed.
And so you are used to all the cliches there are about prosthesis and about phantom limbs and all the rest of it.
And as you well know, and from war time, the screams of pain people had, once they'd been amputated, in the limbs that no longer existed, they swore that their shins And having itches in them you can't scratch.
I can't imagine anything more agonising than having an itch in something you can't scratch.
I met this guy whoin America, and he was a Vietnam veteran, - and he knew someone who'd lost both legs.
- Yeah.
And he went to see him in hospital and he said, "I still haven't had sex with my wife.
" He said, "Why? Why not?" He said, "Oh, I haven't got any legs now, I feel awkward.
"I don't really, you know" He said, "Well, you should just do it.
" So he really encouraged him to do it.
And then he went back to see him, and he had a big smile on his face.
And he said, "So, did you do the thing?" And he said, "Yeah.
"And with no legs, you can get right on up there.
" Well It's one of the unexpected advantages.
- Talk about every cloud.
- There you go.
I am cutting off my legs this evening.
Oh! Oh, goodness me.
But the point is, the brain has a mental map of the body from birth and even if that map is distorted by an amputation, it takes a lot for the brain to lose its sense of where everything is.
It can be fooled, as the rubber hand showed you.
Now, which room in the house would you keep these in? MUSIC: The X-Files Theme Oh, just push it.
In the library.
ALARM BLARES Adam is about to score points, yes! - Really? - Yeah.
Yeah! Very good.
That's the penny well spent.
And can I just point out, in Australia, that's 2.
50.
Well, if we have a look at the picture again, those are actually English literature books, and this, I'm afraid, is a French chamber pot, or commode if you prefer.
And they liked to shit on us and our literature in one go.
Oh, just when you think they can't do anything else.
When you open the lid, does it go, "Ugh"? "I shit on you.
" Exactly.
"Because I can't beat you in a war, I will poo on your books.
" You open the lid and it goes, "Boy, boy for sale.
" But perhaps the most impressive invention in recent times, - for your lavatorial wants - The helicopter.
Um, well The Gotta Go Briefcase.
It's Japanese, of course.
How much better do you get than that? It's just simply superb.
It's got everything you could possibly want, including a newspaper to leaf through if your easement is taking time.
I've always felt really sad when I leave a toilet, like, "Oh, we've become such good friends.
" I wish I could just pack it up and carry it away(!) - Now I can.
- It's got a generously equipped sealing lid.
You can quietly and discreetly go about your personal business anywhere you please, with a fold-out leather privacy panel, - which tucks away neatly to the side.
- Yeah, it looks like it hides you completely, that panel.
- A small tray with - "What's that suitcase just sitting there?" It's got a small tray with a cup-holder.
- Oh, great, so I don't even have to throw away my drink? - A cup-holder.
That's like Homer Simpson, isn't it? Do you remember that episode where he bought a huge RV? And Marge said, "Oh, Homer!" and he said, "But, Marge, it's got six cup-holders! SIX!" Men like cup-holders.
There's just something so great about them.
- It's got a vanity mirror.
- I like the leather finish.
Yeah, refillable hand-sanitising dispenser.
Maximum weight capacity is 80 kilos.
"Exceeding the recommended weight will void all warranties" get, an elephant to shit in it?! - I know.
- How are you going to get - I weigh less than 80 kilos.
- It does seem extraordinary.
"I really need to get the "I'm going to exceed the limit!" "It may result in rupture of waste tank, "possible bacteria contamination of briefcase contents "and massive stench.
" So you don't want to do that.
I'm assuming you haven't emptied it for a year.
Also, you would have two suitcases in meetings.
Everyone would be like, "Derek, why have you got two suitcases?" If you got it wrong "No reason.
" And then he just hides behind the leather panel.
If you accidentally went, "I've been through the figures and Oops!" Massive stench! Massive stench! - Oh, dear.
- "How did the meeting go?" "Oh, it was going fine until I got the bog out.
" Alternatively, you go the other way.
"Thanks for letting me use your toilet briefcase.
" "Oh, I don't have a toilet briefcase.
" I ought to say that the 80 kilos includes the person sitting on it.
Oh, right.
I would break it, I've a horrible feeling.
That changes everything.
Anyway, that's the Gotta Go Briefcase.
And it's yours, I'm sure, for a very reasonable price.
Now, what's this guy on about? MAN SINGS GIBBERISH OVER RAP MUSIC That was a 1972, rather before its time, piece of rap, by an incredibly famous Italian called Adriano Celentano, who is not known here.
He had a huge hit with this, which is called Prisencolinensinainciusol.
- You can see it written up and that will help you.
- Oh, wow.
Prisencolinensinainciusol in de col men seivuan prisencolinensinainciusol ol rait.
Which is Italian for "Gangnam Style".
Yeah, kind of.
What it is, it's just babble.
- Gibberish.
- It's babble that is supposed to sound like English.
To an Italian, it sounds more or less like English sounds.
There's that famous clip of the person on Malaysia's Got Talent, where they're singing Mariah Carey, Can't Live Without You, which is possibly the greatest song ever recorded, but she's heard it, clearly, through a second party and doesn't know what the lyrics are, so she burst into the chorus and she just goes Ken Lee, Ken Lee Boo dee boo doutchu.
And she thinks it's about a guy called Ken Lee.
Aw Anyway, that was a huge hit in 1972.
Number one in Italy and it was in the top ten in France and in Belgium and the Netherlands.
It's babble that is supposed to sound like English, but in 2011, London-based film-makers Brian and Karl produced a wonderful film called Skwerl, which used a similar technique - the dialogue is actually gibberish but sounds like English.
It's had over seven million viewers and we can show you a bit of it here.
Run VT.
HE TALKS GIBBERISH CUTLERY RATTLES PLATES CRASH SHE GASPS AND SOBS FIZZING You fucking asshole! That wasn't gibberish, but we've got them here tonight, Brian and Karl, thank you very much.
One of the hardest things to do in the world is to talk gibberish without it becoming - Did you actually learn your gibberish? - We did, yeah.
- Yeah.
Did you imagine that there was sense behind it? He thinks she's forgotten his birthday, is that what this? That's one interpretation.
I'm not an actor, but Fiona, who's in the film, is an actress, and so she needed to know what this was about, she needed the intentions.
But I think it was important to kind of have a sort of a sense - behind what we were saying.
- It was a lot like what you were talking about with the Mariah Carey, Ken Lee and stuff.
We sort of had the sentences and then kind of garbled them and kind of wrote down the garble as it came out.
I understood more words in that clip, though, than I did in five series of The Wire.
- ADAM: Are you Australian? - Yeah, I'm Australian.
- Yeah, I thought so.
Because we have a similar thing that we do where we don't use words - AUSTRALIAN ACCENT: Do you think I haven't noticed? - Yeah, exactly.
GASPING: You have another thing you do, which is sound as if you've got heartburn.
For some bizarre reason.
I don't know why that is.
That's how they get the actors on Home And Away to do an emotional scene - they just give them heartburn.
"Steven, the cafe's burntdown again.
" Australians will make enough noises that could be a sentence, but there are no actual words in it.
I'll try it.
RUNNING WORDS TOGETHER: So, OK, are you having a good night? Yeah, right, it's all right, man.
Are you enjoying your time at QI? HE TALKS GIBBERISH There's also I have a similar thing that I can do with posh people.
This gentleman in the front row here with the blue trousers.
HE MUMBLES IN POSH VOICE Anyway, sorry, that's wonderful, Brian and Karl, thank you very much indeed.
Thanks for joining us.
Magnificent.
So, time for some refreshment.
Here we go.
Let's have You pass that there to Sara, if you would, Alan.
There you go.
- There's one for you, Jack.
Pass one to Adam.
- Is this carrot? And I'll have one myself.
And there's one for you, Alan.
Thank you so much.
There you go.
Hmm.
Hmm! - You look as if you - Who grew this? - You've done this before.
- So - You've got to make it upright first.
Oh, right.
Come on.
Will you talk to it? Come here, you.
Oh, you look lovely.
You're so huge(!) I don't think I'm going to be able to manage it.
Oh, there you are, yes Hey-hey! What do you think these were once used for? What were carrots used for, or particularly these ones on sticks? Ones on sticks.
Waving in tiny airplanes? Is it like what Gwyneth Paltrow gives her kids? She probably does, yeah, they probably are.
To see in the dark? ALARM BLARES Seeing in the dark, well, you're in the right era.
When was it said that carrots could help you see in the dark? At night.
In which period of history was it made known to people, this idea, which is not really true? - The Dark Ages.
- Not the Dark Ages.
When did people discover vitamins? SARA: Yeah.
That wasn't until the beginning of the 20th century.
Because vitamin A is the key, it helps your eyes, doesn't it? Vitamin A does help your eyes.
So it must have been around about then.
Well, it was really It It must be so hard being a rabbit.
It really They would never get any talking done.
No, they wouldn't, would they? They'd be, "Sorry, what are you saying?" - "I've got a mouthful of bloody carrot.
" - Good God! The problem was, in the Second World War, there was We would run out of Put it away.
Concentrate, Stephen.
Stop flapping Oh, yes, that's what I need to do.
You look like the world's worst burlesque dancer.
SARA: I've seen worse.
So, in the Second World War, there was a very great shortage of sugar, and there was a big surplus of carrots, and so they put it about that carrots helped you see in the dark.
I bloody love carrots, me.
So they made sort of ice creams, as it were, - out of carrots, to try and make them attractive to children.
- OK.
There is a certain amount of sugar in them.
- They tasted a little sweet, didn't they? - Yeah, it was lovely.
And there was a Group Captain, John Cunningham, who was responsible for very daring night raids over Germany, and they gave it out that what allowed him to do it was the fact that he ate carrots.
In fact, what they were really doing was disguising the fact - that they had on-board aircraft - Rabbits.
- .
.
radar.
They had radar on board.
They didn't want the Germans to know.
The Germans knew we had ground radar, not that we had radar on board airplanes.
So they sold the carrot story to the Germans as well? That was the idea, both to get children to eat their carrots and maybe to get the Germans to believe that it was carrots that allowed our bombers to see over those Wouldn't it have been more beneficial if they'd said the reason our pilots are so good at seeing at night is because they eat slightly undercooked chicken? You should have been working in British Intelligence.
POSH VOICE: "You're just the kind of chap we need, Whitehall.
" Now, how does the "what the hell" effect work? MUSIC: Tales Of The Unexpected Theme - Yes? - This is relevant to people who are dieting or sometimes people who have substance abuse problems and things like that.
So it's when you are being quite strict with yourself.
Stop talking about me for a second, yes.
It's when you're being very strict with yourself and you think you've slipped up in a slight way, so you're really hungry and you have a biscuit when you're on a diet and then you go, "I've ruined the diet now, "I'm going to finish that packet of biscuits and do some crack" Oh, tell me about it.
And they properly leap in and start again tomorrow.
You're so right - you've fallen off the wagon - I've done everything wrong now, I'll get a tattoo - Yeah.
Those people who say, "I was very good yesterday, "I've been good today, so tomorrow - Black Forest gateau for breakfast.
" Yeah, oh.
I mean, that is certainly a "what the hell" effect, there's no question about that.
There is another "what the hell" effect, but yours, I think, counts, unquestionably.
This is used by Dan Ariely and his partners at Duke University in North Carolina.
And what it describes is how, when someone has overcome their initial reluctance to cheat, subsequent dishonest behaviour gets easier.
And he tested this with college students who were solving maths problems for money, and when his back was turned, they could cheat, and the more they saw they got away with it, the more they cheated.
But what was interesting is, the scores were not inflated by a few students, who were cheating a lot, but many students cheating a little.
Cheating, in that sense, is infectious.
You go, "What the hell, I can do it," so you do it.
But animals, interestingly, animals can cheat.
Koko, who is a wonderful gorilla in California, once tore a steel sink off a wall and then used sign language - to tell her handlers that the cat had done it.
- Yes.
A real child-like fib.
"It wasn't me, it was the cat.
" The closer you get to human beings, the more of a liar you become.
And perhaps an even more famous chimp, Nim Chimpsky, about whom a film was made, who has a really developed sign language, she used to duck out of sign language lessons by saying she needed to go to the loo when she didn't.
She'd say, "I have to go for a pee," like that, she'd go off and you'd see her not going for a pee.
Or him, rather.
So animals are capable of deception.
So maybe we should only eat animals that can lie.
Well, lying seems to be a sign of intelligence, I'm glad to say, as an inveterate liar myself.
Ariely, this man who did the work on the "what the hell" effect, he found people who score higher on psychological tests for creativity are more likely to engage in dishonesty.
Anyway, there we are.
We are who we are because we cheat.
The "what the hell" effect describes how, after the first lie, the others just keep coming.
So, now I want you to be thoroughly dishonest by pretending you don't know you're going to get a klaxon, because it's General Ignorance time.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
What are deserts mostly from? - MUSIC: Tales Of The Unexpected Theme - Yes, Sara? - Sand.
- ALARM BLARES - Oh, thank you.
What? What? - You'd think, wouldn't you? - Yeah.
- Not the case.
No.
Only one-third of the world's land surface is desert and only a small proportion of that is sand.
North American deserts are around 2% sand.
No more than that.
There's Monument Valley.
Globally, on average, only 20% of all deserts are sand, a fifth.
The remainder is made of rock, shingle, salt or even snow.
- And camels.
- And camels.
- Yes, camel poo.
- There's lots of cigarettes all over the desert.
The driest desert in the world is? - The Gobi Desert.
- No.
- Any thoughts? - AUDIENCE MEMBER: Antarctica.
There is an argument for saying the Antarctic is a dry desert.
- It doesn't rain there.
- Yeah, it doesn't, but the Atacama is considered the driest land desert.
Some weather stations there have recorded no rain whatsoever, - not one.
- What a boring job, being in that weather station.
The largest desert on Earth is Antarctica, even though much of it is under snow.
But the one area that is the driest, man who shouts a lot, are the McMurdo Dry Valleys.
Is that his Red Indian name? Yeah.
And they consist mostly of They consist Man Who Shout A Lot.
The McMurdo Dry Valleys are so dry that dead animals mummify rather than decay.
So, it seems that if you want to identify a desert, the best way to do so involves looking for the rain, not for sand.
How did the Vikings bury their dead? On a boat.
On fire.
- Oh, on a boat on fire.
- ALARM BLARES Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack.
No.
In the ground? Yeah.
More or less.
I feel a bit sad about how tentative I was about that.
The myth of the burning longboat is very, very recent - 19th century.
In fact, there is one story of Baldur, a god, who was apparently burned like that, the rest of it is pretty much LadyboyLadybird book stuff.
- I love the Ladyboy books.
- Did I say "Ladyboy books"? Ladybird books.
Yes, Vikings sometimes buried their dead in a boat, but always on land.
Which bit of whale did they use to make a whalebone corset? - I'm going to take a punt and say the jaw.
- Not the jaw.
Penis? Not the penis.
Is it not part of a whale? The wishbone.
It is part of the whale.
Not the wish Did you say the wishbone? - That's a huge tug of war.
- So for a corset Is it the ribs? MAN SHOUTS OUT ALARM BLARES Who said the ribs? I did, I said it first.
- Oh, sorry about that, no, not the ribs.
- No worries.
I think Shouty Man had it again.
MAN SHOUTS OUT SARA: That isn't how you get on the show.
This is not that thing with James Corden on Sky 1, thank you very much indeed.
My show.
Oh, yes! Whoops.
- More's the pity.
- The show now four series on.
More's the pity.
I wish it were, The Shouty Show.
- With the drunk cricketer.
- Yeah, that one, exactly.
No, as I think they were shouting, "The baleen.
" - Does that mean anything? - The thing in the mouth.
- Yeah, the sieve in the mouth.
- That sieves the Oh, I see.
There are two types of whale - baleen whale and toothed whale - and the blue whale is an example of a baleen whale there.
The baleen is in fact keratin, the same thing that our hair is made of, our fingernails, or rhinoceros horn is.
So it's wonderfully pliable.
It was the plastic of the 19th century, essentially.
- Right.
- There was a Mr JA Sevey trading out of Boston who offered 54 different whalebone products.
Whips, parasols, umbrellas, fishing rods, canes, hat, divining rods, riding crops, ferrules, brushes, mattress stuffing, back-supporters, suspenders, billiard cushion springs, pen-holders, shoehorns, tongue scrapers and policemen's clubs.
- All possible.
- That is a good Saturday night.
Empty your pockets out.
But real whalebone was used for something else.
It was a cheap substitute for ivory.
And you probably know of the carving that was done on it that sailors used to do, which had a particular name? I do not know of the name of that.
Oh, we'll have to ask Shouty Man again.
- AUDIENCE MEMBER: Scrimshaw! - Scrimshaw is the right answer, yes.
- He's very clever, Shouty Man.
- He is.
- He's a very smart shouty man.
- He's a smart shouty man.
It may be a whole series of organised shouty men, I don't know, but we're very impressed by them.
They may have to get a score at the end, that's what's worrying me.
Yes, scrimshaw isyou know that very carved whalebone effect? It's sometimes done on horns.
I mean, amazing, some of it.
Even a whole desk was once done out of whalebone, because whales are big animals.
Yes, most whalebone was not bone but baleen, the 19th-century equivalent of plastic.
Can you name a blue sea creature? - MUSIC: The Twilight Zone Theme - Alan? Oh.
Yes, Jack? Shouty Man, drop it like it's hot.
Mine! Is he going to fall for our trap? AUDIENCE MEMBER: A blue whale! Is the right answer! Yes, I love this guy! That's the fastest I've ever been on the draw as well.
- That was quick, and still wasn't - I broke my buzzer.
- You did.
'I don't believe it!' You've broken your carrot now.
We thought you might be so afraid you'd say "not the blue whale".
- No, I was pretty sure about that one.
- It is blue.
It's not very blue, but it's blue enough to call blue.
- It's bluer than most things, innit? - It is.
- It's all relative.
The colour spectrum is different under water.
It's quite a common a common qualor It's quite a common colour amongst The gibberish blokes can understand all of that.
- Absolutely.
- SARA: A dory is blue.
There's the blue marlin, which is pretty blue.
- A dory is blue.
- Yes.
The blue starfish you can see is jolly blue.
Blue marlin there.
Blue Man Group.
So the grey whale is pretty grey, the humpback is pretty grey.
The sperm whale is dark grey/black, but the blue whale, as you can see, is jolly blue.
There it is, bottom right.
I see it.
Yeh-hey.
Your favourite whale.
Would we lie to you? Blue whales are blue, pretty much.
Well, that's our last tissue in our box of lies.
It's time for the unvarnished truth with the scores.
And it's pretty bally fascinating.
In last place, with minus Oh, dear.
Minus 19, but with a tremendous performance and a wonderful last rally, Jack Whitehall.
With minus 11, an entirely creditable third place, she knew so much, Sara, Sara Pascoe.
I get all the buzzers, I got two.
I got two.
On minus 8, second place, Alan Davies.
Minus 8, pretty pleased.
And a staggeringly secure first place, - on plus 14, Adam Hills.
- Oh, my goodness.
And tonight, of course, a special award of minus 39 for the shouty man in the audience.
Yes, it only remains for me to thank Adam, Jack, Sara and Alan and leave you with the last words of Spanish Prime Minister General Ramon Maria Narvaez.
"I do not have to forgive my enemies, "I have had them all shot.
" Good night.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE