QI (2003) s12e13 Episode Script
Lucky Losers
Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening and welcome to QI, the panel show where fortune favours the brains.
Tonight's show is all about Luck and Loss so, without further ado, let's meet our Lucky Losers.
The fortunate Sandi Toksvig.
APPLAUSE The fortuitous Danny Baker.
Thank you.
APPLAUSE The jammy Jeremy Clarkson.
APPLAUSE And Mr Jinx, the Jonah, Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE Now, I'm afraid your buzzers are a bit of a lottery, so Sandi goes DRUM ROLL 'Release the balls.
' Danny goes 'No more bets, please.
' - That sounded like you, didn't it? - Yeah.
- Jeremy goes FRUIT MACHINE JANGLES Literally no idea what that was.
- I think it was a jackpot.
- Yeah.
Now, Alan goes I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me? Now, seeing as being as this is the Lucky Losers show, whoever gets the lowest score wins.
Well done, Alan! LAUGHTER Well done already, congratulations.
So, what you have to do, obviously, is try and collect as many Klaxons as you can.
And that's going to be interesting, we hope.
Quite Interesting.
Fingers on the buzzers, here's your first chance.
What is the oldest you can be on a Club 18-30 holiday? - Danny? - 30.
Very well done.
You see, you've got the idea, there's the Klaxon.
But anyone like to have a go at the right answer? What do you imagine is in fact the right answer? We won't punish you for that.
Surely there's some leeway? Those ladies look a little over 30.
Is it sort of mid twenties? Are they actually Is it the other way? No, it is a little bit older than 30.
- 173.
- 173, that's a very good number.
Is it 31? No, it's 36, rather bizarrely.
Well, the oldest you can leave the country with a Club 18-30 ticket is 35, but you might have your birthday while on the holiday.
Is there not a degree of sadness in your life if you decide to spent your Has that woman on the left just turned 36? "I'm so sorry, I've got to go now.
" Yeah, there you go.
In theory you could celebrate your 36th birthday on a Club 18-30 holiday.
So, what is the youngest you can be to go on an Ooh, he gets those Klaxons, doesn't he? I like to win.
Have another go.
- Well, clearly they are keen on that margin of error.
- Yeah.
There's clearly some margin of error, so it can't surely be the same margin, it can't be six years.
No, it wouldn't be six, that would be awful.
LAUGHTER It's the perfect match.
I'm on the phone to Operation Yewtree as we speak.
- No.
- It can't be much more.
16 or 17.
Oh.
I'm winning now, so therefore I'm losing.
Yeah.
Now, a question especially for Alan to lose points with, in this Lucky Losers show.
Which mammal has the most cells in its body? Blue Whale.
FANFARE I'm afraid CHEERING AND APPLAUSE .
.
it does.
And you get a lot of points for that.
It's the blue whale bonus and you get points, and what do points mean? Prizes.
- Bad surprises.
Yeah.
- Bad what? No, it does indeed have the most cells, cos it's the largest animal.
And the larger the animal, the more the cells.
But you can claw your way back if you could tell me to the nearest trillion, how many cells a human being has.
It's a certain trillion.
- Two.
- Ah, it's a bit more than that.
- It's 30 trillion.
- Is it? - Yeah.
- What if you were a fat blue whale? Then you'd have more.
Well, no, that's a human I'm talking about.
The blue whale would be - Oh, I see.
- So, you would think, because it has more cells, that blue whales would have more cancers, or at least have a greater number of them, because it has so many more cells.
And, in fact, it has fewer than we do, and nobody knows why.
Well, it doesn't smoke.
That's an obvious reason.
There is that.
But it's known as Peto's Paradox.
Do they die of cancer, whales? All mammals can get it.
People who've had cats and dogs will know, it's a very sad thing, - but all animals get cancers, yeah.
- Oh.
So, five points available, five minus points I should say, if you can tell me what species of whale that is there? Blue.
It's not a blue, actually.
We should have offered you a blue, but in fact that is a Is it a sperm? - No, the sperm are the ones with the big, big - Hump.
It's a humpback.
Now, before we continue, I should let you know that, as this is the L series, one of the questions coming up will have a lavatorial theme.
The answer will be wholly lavatorial.
CASH REGISTERS RINGS, TOILET FLUSHES And if it is, you can ask if you can spend your penny, right? - So if there's a lavatory question, I bring that out? - Yeah.
- Right.
And you get extra points.
That's right.
So, anyway, moving on.
Which good cause benefitted from Britain's first lottery? Dale Winton.
Dale Winton's tanning salon.
- I'm sure it did very well.
- There you go.
But, it wasn't Britain's first lottery.
Is it the Bank of England? No, that's a very good point.
That was almost like a lottery, shares were issued to raise money.
- For the army, wasn't it? - Yeah.
It was virtually like a lottery.
- But this one was similarly to raise money for - Building? For a military venture, or at least for a military, perhaps for defence, originally.
The Drake? Yes, it was indeed in 1567 - It was Drake.
- So, yeah, it was - The Armada.
What's that doing in my head? Why is that in my head? I'm very impressed.
It was Queen Elizabeth and her navy, and indeed Drake was one of her leading figures.
- There she is.
- That was a random guess.
She realised that, should King Philip of Spain send a fleet, - which in Spanish is? - Armada? Armada, yes.
I'm genuinely still reeling from the fact that's in my head.
It's really great when that happens, isn't it? No, it's odd.
Makes me feel weird.
And so she thought, to raise money, she'd try and get those who could afford it to buy lottery tickets and the prize would be enormous.
And the money raised would be enormous.
Now, what do you think the average wage was per year? - It can't have been much, can it.
- No, it wasn't much.
- The average annual income in 1600 was about nine pounds.
- Oh.
So tickets were 50 pence, we'd call it now - ten shillings each.
- That's a lot.
- Which is about three week's wages.
- Yeah.
So, only the rich would be able to.
Only the rich would be able to.
The prize on there was £5,000.
£5,000 then, which is millions today.
- You could buy America.
- You could buy a huge estate.
Plus it was paid partly in cash, it was also in gold and silver and fine tapestry and fabrics, and something really extraordinary to encourage sales, and this later cropped up in one of the most popular games in our culture, as something that you could tuck away under the board of the game, for future use.
Monopoly, a "get out of jail free" card.
You got a get out of jail free card.
For anything except murder, serious felonies, treason And parking.
Yeah.
Parking your horse, obviously that was not allowed.
Or piracy, that was one thing.
But everything else was.
Very good, wasn't it? That would sell tickets now, wouldn't it? Yeah, brilliant idea.
So, the good cause in the first national lottery was beating up the Spanish.
What do newsagents sell that makes people suddenly want to vote Tory? Is it going to be the Daily Mail? KLAXON APPLAUSE It makes me want to vote communist, but there you go.
Will you get one for the Daily Telegraph, as well? - You probably might.
- KLAXON Yeah! He's clawing his way back to victory.
No, this is a very odd thing, well, newsagents sell them.
What about the Sun? KLAXON You're on fire.
This is not a newspaper, I will now say, but it's something newsagents sell.
They sell something that makes you want to vote Conservative? Well, it does if things turn out well - after you've bought this particular item.
- OK.
- So, we're really back to the last question.
- Is it a lottery ticket? It's a lottery ticket, if you win the lottery, many Labour voters who won the lottery said that they changed their mind and were now Tory voters.
- So - What a depressing comment on humanity that is.
It is a bit.
Perhaps even more depressing is that the American therapists have a name for the syndrome, which is Sudden Wealth Syndrome, which is presumably what they suffer from whenever they name a syndrome, if they make money by deciding you have a syndrome.
That's a really boring name for it, though.
Couldn't they come up with something else? You'd think so, yeah.
These are the same people who said that if you lose someone you love, they die, and you are still ALAN SNEEZES - Whoa! - Wow! Wow, that was huge! That was so impressive.
- Alan's exploded.
- That was enormous.
The day had to happen.
- That was an explosion.
- That was extraordinary.
Are you all right? There are people in California now looking at their seismographs, going, "Jesus Christ!" - What a thing! - What was that? Is that because I said the word "die?" No, don't do it again! So sorry for interrupting you.
It's fine, it's just it was a revolting thing about psychologists who have basically said that if someone you love dies and you're still inconsolable with grief six months later, that is a mental condition, it's not healthy.
And what's that called? Just six months later dead person syndrome? It's called grieving.
It is perfectly reasonable in fact, yeah.
A syndrome I read of recently is, you know when you come out of the pictures and you sneeze, do you do that? When you go from a dark thing or look at the sun? You get that.
It's got a real fancy name now.
JEREMY: I've never sneezed when walking from the dark.
Is that normal, am I? It's because you don't suffer from it, don't mock people who do.
Presumably you don't go to matinees.
- You go to evening performances.
- Yeah.
So, he comes out and it's dark.
But it's from the dark into the light.
Yeah, it's a syndrome.
It's a real syndrome.
We've got the name in front of me, my elves have been busily hacking away.
It's called autosomal dominant compelling helio-ophthalmic outburst.
There you go.
Look at that.
JEREMY: I want to have him round for dinner.
So, there we are.
APPLAUSE Yeah.
for short it's called ACHOO syndrome.
We're still with lotteries.
This is more astonishing.
I mean, what a coincidence.
In 2001, guess who won the Zimbabwe Banking Corporation's jackpot? No! Mugabe.
It was Robert Mugabe! What are the odds against that? I mean Wow, lucky man.
Yeah.
Lucky, lucky, lucky.
Anyway, less fortunate was Clarence 'Inaction' Jackson.
The name tells it all.
He won, in 1995, 5.
8 million on the Connecticut lottery.
- Didn't get it? - Failed to turn up.
- Didn't pick it up? The collect by date passed and they wouldn't pay out.
He tried to sue and he lost.
Very sad.
And there was a woman in 1980 called Maureen Wilcox who chose the correct winning numbers for both Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Unfortunately, she She was burned as a witch.
No, she played the Massachusetts numbers in Rhode Island ALL GROANING No, no! Oh, no, the odds against that are 30 trillion to one.
Well, quite.
Anyway, yes, lottery winners tend to turn right after collecting their winnings.
Now, this next question is even more incomprehensible than usual, so I thought I'd spice things up by getting you all to wear hats.
Could you pass that to Jeremy? And you can have that, and yours, you will notice, says "Leader".
And you can have the fez.
I have the largest head in the world, it won't And you can have a nice straw boater.
LAUGHTER It's extraordinary.
You do have a large head.
Enormous head.
DANNY: Elmer Fudd.
Look at that! Right, OK, here we go with this question.
What do Amy Freeze and Larry Sprinkle have in common with D Weedon and A J Splatt? Is this some dark part of the internet? It's a real thing, it's not a dark part of the internet, it's a joyous part of real life and They're real people.
Weedon and Splatt are both Australian urologists.
Ah.
In other words they cover splatting and being weed on.
Well, not necessarily being weed on, weeing, sorry.
And Amy Freeze and Larry Sprinkle are American? Chefs.
Antifreeze manufacturers.
- Ice cream.
- Garden sprinkler manufacturers.
Meteorologists, weather forecasters.
So it freezes, you get a sprinkle of rain.
- I don't believe that's their real names.
- It really is.
What is the name for people having jobs that come after their names.
So, if you were a baker, say.
Yes, exactly.
I don't know the I don't know the term.
JEREMY: My dad was a clerk.
- And your dad, exactly, that would do it.
- Yeah.
It's called nominative determinism.
It's called nominative or onomastic determinism, because it's determined by your name.
But I've always been interested by this, because there was a family many years ago and they were called the Gauntletts.
And they christened their son Victor.
I knew Victor, he ran Aston Martin.
Exactly.
He was destined to run Aston Martin, simply because his parents had christened him Victor.
If they'd called him Stan, he would have been a plumber.
You see it all the time, where somebody called Fotherington Major Fortescue, has always got a sandwich shop in Fulham.
Whereas somebody called Ron Twat is a builder from somewhere.
- And very simple names tend to - Yeah.
I know Ron Twat.
Do you? Bloody good builder.
Surely Ron Twat should be a gynaecologist? LAUGHTER APPLAUSE Well, some examples you might know, they're called aptronyms as well, because they are apt-onyms.
- Mark Avery, where would he work? - In an aviary.
Well, no, that's a bit too specific.
- In a zoo.
- Birds, something to do with birds.
He's of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, yes.
Very good.
The poet Wordsworth, when you think about it, he went to Cambridge to read mathematics, and he probably thought, well, I'm called Wordsworth, words, words.
Stephen, why am I wearing this hat? You'll see.
You're the leader, you've got to have a way of indicating your leadership.
And you're the leader.
I did a programme years ago sailing around Britain with John McCarthy, and we had to go and be fitted for life jackets at Crew Saver Life Jackets, and they were fitted, and I promise you, I've still got his card, by a man called Will Drown.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE You see, it's just fantastic.
It's just bliss when that happens.
There you are.
If I told you that two of our biggest fans are called Joyce Baker and Amanda Pastry, what do you think you might have handed out to you? - Is it cake? - Well, it's not cake actually, it's biscuits.
So you can help yourself.
You have to eat them all.
Well, it's nice, but mildly disappointing.
Yeah, you've got to eat them.
- This is all part of the experiment.
- Do we have to eat them? - Yeah.
The third one has to go, and Alan's taken the third one, - and that's the important thing.
- What? Because he's got the word leader on it, this happens in experiment after experiment with human beings, if you tell someone they're the leader, and you give them three of something, an odd number, with an even number of people, the leader always takes.
Well, it's a bit like my father once went out for tea with somebody and two cakes were delivered, one was very small, one was very large.
And the chap just leant over and took the large one.
And my dad said, "If that had been me and I went first, "I would have taken the smaller one.
" And he said, "Well you've got it anyway, so what are you complaining about?" - That's so logical.
- It is.
- That's brilliant.
But I think boys and girls have a very different way of doing this.
I was once at a party and they were handing out things on this slate, they seem to do nowadays, with canapes, don't they? And there were two small canapes on this piece of slate, and there were three of us.
And all three of us went, "No, that's very kind, thank you," and as we were saying it, a man walked past, picked up one canape, put it on top of the other and ate them both.
Excellent.
So, he ate the other one not just cos he's Alan Davies But because he's got "leader" and he felt like somehow it was just put into his brain that he was the leader and he would have that.
- It's not behavioural - Sorry, Jeremy.
Behavioural science is I was looking forward to that biscuit.
Hand in your plates.
It doesn't help that I forgot I'd got "leader" on my hat.
- Oh, you forgot you were the leader, that really doesn't help.
- Yes, no.
I'll eat those as well, if you like.
Right, so, skimming on.
What did lucky old Edward VII use this for? Oh, I say! - I say lucky, I mean, it's an extraordinary contrivance.
- Oh, God! What do we know about it this? - Ah, ah.
- No, quite wrong.
He didn't poo on yellow silk.
- You thought it lifted up into a commode.
- A commode, yes.
- Is it sexual, some kind of? - It was sexual, yeah.
It's sexual and I'm not going to say it on television, frankly, - I'll just be in trouble.
- Well, no, you won't.
I mean, it's - Well, I will a bit.
- Yeah.
For what I've got in mind, if I said that LAUGHTER I'll accept that then.
I guess a young lady sits on the top bit and he's not He's elsewhere.
Well, this is what we find hard to work out.
The Chabanais was a maison de passe in Paris - a brothel, as we would say - and he had this constructed for him, it was called the siege d'amour, the seat of love.
And the idea was that he could service, pleasure, - have his way with two prostitutes at the same time.
- Oh.
How this worked I'm not quite, I say at the same time, I mean that With his extra penis.
It does make you worry.
The King's penis.
Behold.
Two birthdays, two penises.
It's got stirrups at the top, so there's clearly It has got stirrups.
Her legs could go, or his Is this why Queen Victoria didn't talk to him? - I think it might well be.
- "What have you got there now, dear?" "Ah, Your Majesty.
" Dirty Bertie, as he was known, quite rightly.
His name was Bertie.
Do you know that wonderful story, - he had a long-standing affair with Lillie Langtry.
- Yes.
Probably it's not true at all, but it is said that he was very cross with her one day and he said, "I've spent enough on you to build a battleship.
" And she said "You've spent enough in me to float one.
" LAUGHTER AND GROANS Whoa! Now, what's the worst thing you can do with a gympie-gympie? Gympie-gympie? Remove her leaf? Well, that would Yeah, she would be upset.
It's wipe your bottom.
You've missed your Spend A Penny chance.
Does it make it poisonous or do something dreadful to you? I think poison is It's kind of poison, but it's sort of worse than that.
Is it full of bugs that crawl up your bum? Imagine a stinging nettle turned up to the absolutely unbearable max.
Why would you wipe your bottom with it? Well, because it looks a bit like a leaf that would be safe to.
- Oh, a dock leaf type thing.
- Yeah, a dock leafy sort of thing.
It's from Queensland and it has one of the most vicious stings in nature.
A brush against it feels apparently like being burnt with hot acid and electrocuted at the same time.
According to one account, a soldier in the bush in the Second World War was caught short and picked the wrong leaf - and found himself in so much pain that he shot himself.
- No! - AUDIENCE GASPS - Exactly.
That is a serious I mean, just the agony of it.
One of the first mentions is from 1866, a surveyor reported that his pack horse was stung, got mad and died within two hours.
Les Moore, a scientific officer with the Queensland government was stung across the face, ended up looking like Mr Potato Head, apparently.
I still think it can't be as bad as the toilet paper we had at boarding school.
I know what you mean.
Izal and Bronco.
I used to write home to my mother on it, airmail letters, that's how bad it was.
- Yes, it was crispy tissue.
- Is that that shiny stuff? Nothing would stick to it, it was like grease paper.
You'd think, "I've definitely had a poo, but there's no evidence.
" LAUGHTER It wouldn't come off on it.
It seemed to serve no purpose.
Shall we move along? Yes.
Let's do that.
So, it was the Spend a Penny round after all.
If you're caught short in the bush, don't use a gympie-gympie, you might end up shooting yourself.
Now, which football team is the worst in the world at losing major trophies? The worst in the world, so it's a team that presumably has never won a game.
- It's not that.
They've won quite a lot of games.
- Oh.
They've even won trophies.
- Have they had the trophies stolen? - But then they've lost them.
They've lost them.
- Aston Villa? - Very good.
Well, there you go.
JEREMY: We're back in Birmingham again now and you're being rude, aren't you? By knowing so much.
How do you know that? He does a sports programme, he's a football lover.
- Yeah.
- Ah.
I must listen.
But in the 1964 FA Cup Final, which was won by? West Ham.
Yes, you can see Bobby Moore there.
Who was their manager? At that point? Er, 1964 Would have been, not Ron.
- It was Ron.
- It was? Ron Greenwood, yeah.
He took it home by Tube, discreetly covering it LAUGHTER .
.
wrapped in a cloth.
That lady, she's got her eye on it.
Well, Ron Greenwood had good reason to be worried and that's the point.
Football trophies do have a history of going missing, and Aston Villa seem to have been more to blame than anyone else.
In 1895, their FA Cup was stolen from the window of a sports shop in Birmingham, and 63 years later, a man called Harry Burge confessed that he had been the man who had stolen it - and he had melted it down and made counterfeit half crown coins.
- Wow! The second major trophy to have been mislaid by Aston Villa - was the European Cup in What year did they? - 1981.
Yes, they mislaid it in '82.
Two members of the - 1982.
- It would have been, yes.
Two members of the team decided to take the cup to a darts match where it disappeared.
And many years later a man called Adrian Reed was identified as the culprit.
He took it to a local police station.
But it didn't end there, cos the police decided to have a football match for it.
So they kept it so that they could brag about being the European Cup winners.
And the FA cup gets damaged so much every year that it has to get repaired every single year because it gets bashed about in the bath.
So, Aston Villa may not have a great record of winning trophies, but they have a rather impressive record of losing them.
Speaking of losers, it's time for the lucky dip that is General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
And don't forget that tonight the lowest scorer will be the winner.
Which day is added to a leap year? Yeah? February 29th.
Yeah, well done, absolutely.
No, it isn't.
Right, well, it is.
I'm standing my ground on this one.
They squeeze into the middle of February and add an extra 24th, so the 24th becomes the 25th, The reason for that is that the Roman calendar was divided into three.
The Kalends, the Nones and the Ides.
And when it came to discovering, which they did, that a year was actually not 365 days but 365 days and a quarter, they added it into one of those calendar series.
Now you may say this is just ridiculous, they added 29, but they didn't, and in fact the proof of this is that in Denmark the day on which a woman is allowed to propose to a man, is the 24th of February, not the 29th.
That's the reason.
Yeah.
There's an extra day in the middle of February that, apart from Denmark, nobody else has noticed it.
Well, the Catholic church did until the 70's, so it was St Matthias's day.
- So, vicars were going, "Ah, it's the secret day today.
" - Yeah.
St Matthias's day was the 24th February, but on leap years it was the 25th.
I was with you, Alan, really.
- But it's good, because he got his extra points.
- He did.
- Yeah, you see, don't forget that.
- Lucky bastard, as it turns out.
So, the day you add for a leap year is actually February 24th.
In which year did World War II begin? - Oh, yes? - 1939.
Well now, there, well done.
Coming up on the rails.
Yes, absolutely.
Overuse of the whip.
I just wanted to make sure it's working.
Yes, it's still winning.
Yeah? - '39? - He just said that.
- I know.
It doesn't work twice.
I was just waiting to hear why it wasn't 1939.
Well, that's a very Anglo-Franco point of view.
Certainly it's when the British and the French joined the war, but before then the Germans had been at war with other countries and the Chinese had been at war with the Japanese.
That was a very global sort of event, it spread out, and of course there were alliances and other such things.
So Britain joined World War II in 1939, but it had been going on since at least 1937 and arguably since 1935.
Now, what is the length of an Olympic swimming pool? It is counted as 50 metres, but it isn't 50 metres.
It's 50 metres.
LAUGHTER According to the, according to the Federation Internationale Natation - de Natation, "of swimming" Oh.
Those bastards.
Olympic swimming pools are over-sized by a centimetre at each end.
Why? So you don't bash your ankles when you do that spin turn thing.
No, it's not that.
What do you need in order to have an Olympic race? A winning tape.
Well, you need a lap counter and you need something that makes sure that the guy has completed the lap, or the girl.
- A sensor.
- The sensor pad.
In each lane you need one of those.
- Which is a centimetre at each end.
- They have to touch it.
What about peeing in the pool? Is that considered a bad thing by Olympic swimmers? Oh, it is bad.
It's very bad, isn't it? Because Pooing is right out, but It does something with the chlorine, it mixes with the chlorine.
Well, Olympic swimmers are perfectly happy to do it - and perfectly happy to admit that they do it.
- No! - Ugh! And Michael Phelps, the greatest Olympian of all time in terms of his medal haul, old bucket-hands himself Old pissy Phelps.
LAUGHTER He says, "Everybody pees in the pool, "it's kind of a normal thing to do for swimmers.
"When you're in the water for two hours, "we don't really get out to pee.
Chlorine kills it.
" Two hours?! What two hour race has he been in? They do actually practice.
Well, the fact is, an Olympic-sized swimming pool is actually two centimetres longer than you think.
And full of piss.
And indeed, almost entirely full of urine.
How old do you have to be to go on a Club 18 Oh, that must mean that we've come to the end of the show.
Let's look at the scores and see who's tonight's lucky loser.
Well, well, well, well, well.
The clear, outright and extraordinary winner, with an amazing minus 23 is Danny Baker! Hurray, thank you.
APPLAUSE Thank you.
Thank you.
Couldn't be more proud.
In second place, with a very, very impressive minus five, Jeremy Clarkson.
Is that good or bad? APPLAUSE The wrong side of the ledger with plus three, Sandi Toksvig.
APPLAUSE But the joker in a pack of 52 cards, yes, plus 52 for Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE The blue whale.
The blue whale was a very bad, bad call.
That's all from Sandi, Danny, Jeremy, Alan and me.
And I leave you with a last word from actor Edmund Gwenn.
When asked if dying was tough, he said, "Yes it's tough, but not as tough as doing comedy.
" Good night.
Tonight's show is all about Luck and Loss so, without further ado, let's meet our Lucky Losers.
The fortunate Sandi Toksvig.
APPLAUSE The fortuitous Danny Baker.
Thank you.
APPLAUSE The jammy Jeremy Clarkson.
APPLAUSE And Mr Jinx, the Jonah, Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE Now, I'm afraid your buzzers are a bit of a lottery, so Sandi goes DRUM ROLL 'Release the balls.
' Danny goes 'No more bets, please.
' - That sounded like you, didn't it? - Yeah.
- Jeremy goes FRUIT MACHINE JANGLES Literally no idea what that was.
- I think it was a jackpot.
- Yeah.
Now, Alan goes I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me? Now, seeing as being as this is the Lucky Losers show, whoever gets the lowest score wins.
Well done, Alan! LAUGHTER Well done already, congratulations.
So, what you have to do, obviously, is try and collect as many Klaxons as you can.
And that's going to be interesting, we hope.
Quite Interesting.
Fingers on the buzzers, here's your first chance.
What is the oldest you can be on a Club 18-30 holiday? - Danny? - 30.
Very well done.
You see, you've got the idea, there's the Klaxon.
But anyone like to have a go at the right answer? What do you imagine is in fact the right answer? We won't punish you for that.
Surely there's some leeway? Those ladies look a little over 30.
Is it sort of mid twenties? Are they actually Is it the other way? No, it is a little bit older than 30.
- 173.
- 173, that's a very good number.
Is it 31? No, it's 36, rather bizarrely.
Well, the oldest you can leave the country with a Club 18-30 ticket is 35, but you might have your birthday while on the holiday.
Is there not a degree of sadness in your life if you decide to spent your Has that woman on the left just turned 36? "I'm so sorry, I've got to go now.
" Yeah, there you go.
In theory you could celebrate your 36th birthday on a Club 18-30 holiday.
So, what is the youngest you can be to go on an Ooh, he gets those Klaxons, doesn't he? I like to win.
Have another go.
- Well, clearly they are keen on that margin of error.
- Yeah.
There's clearly some margin of error, so it can't surely be the same margin, it can't be six years.
No, it wouldn't be six, that would be awful.
LAUGHTER It's the perfect match.
I'm on the phone to Operation Yewtree as we speak.
- No.
- It can't be much more.
16 or 17.
Oh.
I'm winning now, so therefore I'm losing.
Yeah.
Now, a question especially for Alan to lose points with, in this Lucky Losers show.
Which mammal has the most cells in its body? Blue Whale.
FANFARE I'm afraid CHEERING AND APPLAUSE .
.
it does.
And you get a lot of points for that.
It's the blue whale bonus and you get points, and what do points mean? Prizes.
- Bad surprises.
Yeah.
- Bad what? No, it does indeed have the most cells, cos it's the largest animal.
And the larger the animal, the more the cells.
But you can claw your way back if you could tell me to the nearest trillion, how many cells a human being has.
It's a certain trillion.
- Two.
- Ah, it's a bit more than that.
- It's 30 trillion.
- Is it? - Yeah.
- What if you were a fat blue whale? Then you'd have more.
Well, no, that's a human I'm talking about.
The blue whale would be - Oh, I see.
- So, you would think, because it has more cells, that blue whales would have more cancers, or at least have a greater number of them, because it has so many more cells.
And, in fact, it has fewer than we do, and nobody knows why.
Well, it doesn't smoke.
That's an obvious reason.
There is that.
But it's known as Peto's Paradox.
Do they die of cancer, whales? All mammals can get it.
People who've had cats and dogs will know, it's a very sad thing, - but all animals get cancers, yeah.
- Oh.
So, five points available, five minus points I should say, if you can tell me what species of whale that is there? Blue.
It's not a blue, actually.
We should have offered you a blue, but in fact that is a Is it a sperm? - No, the sperm are the ones with the big, big - Hump.
It's a humpback.
Now, before we continue, I should let you know that, as this is the L series, one of the questions coming up will have a lavatorial theme.
The answer will be wholly lavatorial.
CASH REGISTERS RINGS, TOILET FLUSHES And if it is, you can ask if you can spend your penny, right? - So if there's a lavatory question, I bring that out? - Yeah.
- Right.
And you get extra points.
That's right.
So, anyway, moving on.
Which good cause benefitted from Britain's first lottery? Dale Winton.
Dale Winton's tanning salon.
- I'm sure it did very well.
- There you go.
But, it wasn't Britain's first lottery.
Is it the Bank of England? No, that's a very good point.
That was almost like a lottery, shares were issued to raise money.
- For the army, wasn't it? - Yeah.
It was virtually like a lottery.
- But this one was similarly to raise money for - Building? For a military venture, or at least for a military, perhaps for defence, originally.
The Drake? Yes, it was indeed in 1567 - It was Drake.
- So, yeah, it was - The Armada.
What's that doing in my head? Why is that in my head? I'm very impressed.
It was Queen Elizabeth and her navy, and indeed Drake was one of her leading figures.
- There she is.
- That was a random guess.
She realised that, should King Philip of Spain send a fleet, - which in Spanish is? - Armada? Armada, yes.
I'm genuinely still reeling from the fact that's in my head.
It's really great when that happens, isn't it? No, it's odd.
Makes me feel weird.
And so she thought, to raise money, she'd try and get those who could afford it to buy lottery tickets and the prize would be enormous.
And the money raised would be enormous.
Now, what do you think the average wage was per year? - It can't have been much, can it.
- No, it wasn't much.
- The average annual income in 1600 was about nine pounds.
- Oh.
So tickets were 50 pence, we'd call it now - ten shillings each.
- That's a lot.
- Which is about three week's wages.
- Yeah.
So, only the rich would be able to.
Only the rich would be able to.
The prize on there was £5,000.
£5,000 then, which is millions today.
- You could buy America.
- You could buy a huge estate.
Plus it was paid partly in cash, it was also in gold and silver and fine tapestry and fabrics, and something really extraordinary to encourage sales, and this later cropped up in one of the most popular games in our culture, as something that you could tuck away under the board of the game, for future use.
Monopoly, a "get out of jail free" card.
You got a get out of jail free card.
For anything except murder, serious felonies, treason And parking.
Yeah.
Parking your horse, obviously that was not allowed.
Or piracy, that was one thing.
But everything else was.
Very good, wasn't it? That would sell tickets now, wouldn't it? Yeah, brilliant idea.
So, the good cause in the first national lottery was beating up the Spanish.
What do newsagents sell that makes people suddenly want to vote Tory? Is it going to be the Daily Mail? KLAXON APPLAUSE It makes me want to vote communist, but there you go.
Will you get one for the Daily Telegraph, as well? - You probably might.
- KLAXON Yeah! He's clawing his way back to victory.
No, this is a very odd thing, well, newsagents sell them.
What about the Sun? KLAXON You're on fire.
This is not a newspaper, I will now say, but it's something newsagents sell.
They sell something that makes you want to vote Conservative? Well, it does if things turn out well - after you've bought this particular item.
- OK.
- So, we're really back to the last question.
- Is it a lottery ticket? It's a lottery ticket, if you win the lottery, many Labour voters who won the lottery said that they changed their mind and were now Tory voters.
- So - What a depressing comment on humanity that is.
It is a bit.
Perhaps even more depressing is that the American therapists have a name for the syndrome, which is Sudden Wealth Syndrome, which is presumably what they suffer from whenever they name a syndrome, if they make money by deciding you have a syndrome.
That's a really boring name for it, though.
Couldn't they come up with something else? You'd think so, yeah.
These are the same people who said that if you lose someone you love, they die, and you are still ALAN SNEEZES - Whoa! - Wow! Wow, that was huge! That was so impressive.
- Alan's exploded.
- That was enormous.
The day had to happen.
- That was an explosion.
- That was extraordinary.
Are you all right? There are people in California now looking at their seismographs, going, "Jesus Christ!" - What a thing! - What was that? Is that because I said the word "die?" No, don't do it again! So sorry for interrupting you.
It's fine, it's just it was a revolting thing about psychologists who have basically said that if someone you love dies and you're still inconsolable with grief six months later, that is a mental condition, it's not healthy.
And what's that called? Just six months later dead person syndrome? It's called grieving.
It is perfectly reasonable in fact, yeah.
A syndrome I read of recently is, you know when you come out of the pictures and you sneeze, do you do that? When you go from a dark thing or look at the sun? You get that.
It's got a real fancy name now.
JEREMY: I've never sneezed when walking from the dark.
Is that normal, am I? It's because you don't suffer from it, don't mock people who do.
Presumably you don't go to matinees.
- You go to evening performances.
- Yeah.
So, he comes out and it's dark.
But it's from the dark into the light.
Yeah, it's a syndrome.
It's a real syndrome.
We've got the name in front of me, my elves have been busily hacking away.
It's called autosomal dominant compelling helio-ophthalmic outburst.
There you go.
Look at that.
JEREMY: I want to have him round for dinner.
So, there we are.
APPLAUSE Yeah.
for short it's called ACHOO syndrome.
We're still with lotteries.
This is more astonishing.
I mean, what a coincidence.
In 2001, guess who won the Zimbabwe Banking Corporation's jackpot? No! Mugabe.
It was Robert Mugabe! What are the odds against that? I mean Wow, lucky man.
Yeah.
Lucky, lucky, lucky.
Anyway, less fortunate was Clarence 'Inaction' Jackson.
The name tells it all.
He won, in 1995, 5.
8 million on the Connecticut lottery.
- Didn't get it? - Failed to turn up.
- Didn't pick it up? The collect by date passed and they wouldn't pay out.
He tried to sue and he lost.
Very sad.
And there was a woman in 1980 called Maureen Wilcox who chose the correct winning numbers for both Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Unfortunately, she She was burned as a witch.
No, she played the Massachusetts numbers in Rhode Island ALL GROANING No, no! Oh, no, the odds against that are 30 trillion to one.
Well, quite.
Anyway, yes, lottery winners tend to turn right after collecting their winnings.
Now, this next question is even more incomprehensible than usual, so I thought I'd spice things up by getting you all to wear hats.
Could you pass that to Jeremy? And you can have that, and yours, you will notice, says "Leader".
And you can have the fez.
I have the largest head in the world, it won't And you can have a nice straw boater.
LAUGHTER It's extraordinary.
You do have a large head.
Enormous head.
DANNY: Elmer Fudd.
Look at that! Right, OK, here we go with this question.
What do Amy Freeze and Larry Sprinkle have in common with D Weedon and A J Splatt? Is this some dark part of the internet? It's a real thing, it's not a dark part of the internet, it's a joyous part of real life and They're real people.
Weedon and Splatt are both Australian urologists.
Ah.
In other words they cover splatting and being weed on.
Well, not necessarily being weed on, weeing, sorry.
And Amy Freeze and Larry Sprinkle are American? Chefs.
Antifreeze manufacturers.
- Ice cream.
- Garden sprinkler manufacturers.
Meteorologists, weather forecasters.
So it freezes, you get a sprinkle of rain.
- I don't believe that's their real names.
- It really is.
What is the name for people having jobs that come after their names.
So, if you were a baker, say.
Yes, exactly.
I don't know the I don't know the term.
JEREMY: My dad was a clerk.
- And your dad, exactly, that would do it.
- Yeah.
It's called nominative determinism.
It's called nominative or onomastic determinism, because it's determined by your name.
But I've always been interested by this, because there was a family many years ago and they were called the Gauntletts.
And they christened their son Victor.
I knew Victor, he ran Aston Martin.
Exactly.
He was destined to run Aston Martin, simply because his parents had christened him Victor.
If they'd called him Stan, he would have been a plumber.
You see it all the time, where somebody called Fotherington Major Fortescue, has always got a sandwich shop in Fulham.
Whereas somebody called Ron Twat is a builder from somewhere.
- And very simple names tend to - Yeah.
I know Ron Twat.
Do you? Bloody good builder.
Surely Ron Twat should be a gynaecologist? LAUGHTER APPLAUSE Well, some examples you might know, they're called aptronyms as well, because they are apt-onyms.
- Mark Avery, where would he work? - In an aviary.
Well, no, that's a bit too specific.
- In a zoo.
- Birds, something to do with birds.
He's of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, yes.
Very good.
The poet Wordsworth, when you think about it, he went to Cambridge to read mathematics, and he probably thought, well, I'm called Wordsworth, words, words.
Stephen, why am I wearing this hat? You'll see.
You're the leader, you've got to have a way of indicating your leadership.
And you're the leader.
I did a programme years ago sailing around Britain with John McCarthy, and we had to go and be fitted for life jackets at Crew Saver Life Jackets, and they were fitted, and I promise you, I've still got his card, by a man called Will Drown.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE You see, it's just fantastic.
It's just bliss when that happens.
There you are.
If I told you that two of our biggest fans are called Joyce Baker and Amanda Pastry, what do you think you might have handed out to you? - Is it cake? - Well, it's not cake actually, it's biscuits.
So you can help yourself.
You have to eat them all.
Well, it's nice, but mildly disappointing.
Yeah, you've got to eat them.
- This is all part of the experiment.
- Do we have to eat them? - Yeah.
The third one has to go, and Alan's taken the third one, - and that's the important thing.
- What? Because he's got the word leader on it, this happens in experiment after experiment with human beings, if you tell someone they're the leader, and you give them three of something, an odd number, with an even number of people, the leader always takes.
Well, it's a bit like my father once went out for tea with somebody and two cakes were delivered, one was very small, one was very large.
And the chap just leant over and took the large one.
And my dad said, "If that had been me and I went first, "I would have taken the smaller one.
" And he said, "Well you've got it anyway, so what are you complaining about?" - That's so logical.
- It is.
- That's brilliant.
But I think boys and girls have a very different way of doing this.
I was once at a party and they were handing out things on this slate, they seem to do nowadays, with canapes, don't they? And there were two small canapes on this piece of slate, and there were three of us.
And all three of us went, "No, that's very kind, thank you," and as we were saying it, a man walked past, picked up one canape, put it on top of the other and ate them both.
Excellent.
So, he ate the other one not just cos he's Alan Davies But because he's got "leader" and he felt like somehow it was just put into his brain that he was the leader and he would have that.
- It's not behavioural - Sorry, Jeremy.
Behavioural science is I was looking forward to that biscuit.
Hand in your plates.
It doesn't help that I forgot I'd got "leader" on my hat.
- Oh, you forgot you were the leader, that really doesn't help.
- Yes, no.
I'll eat those as well, if you like.
Right, so, skimming on.
What did lucky old Edward VII use this for? Oh, I say! - I say lucky, I mean, it's an extraordinary contrivance.
- Oh, God! What do we know about it this? - Ah, ah.
- No, quite wrong.
He didn't poo on yellow silk.
- You thought it lifted up into a commode.
- A commode, yes.
- Is it sexual, some kind of? - It was sexual, yeah.
It's sexual and I'm not going to say it on television, frankly, - I'll just be in trouble.
- Well, no, you won't.
I mean, it's - Well, I will a bit.
- Yeah.
For what I've got in mind, if I said that LAUGHTER I'll accept that then.
I guess a young lady sits on the top bit and he's not He's elsewhere.
Well, this is what we find hard to work out.
The Chabanais was a maison de passe in Paris - a brothel, as we would say - and he had this constructed for him, it was called the siege d'amour, the seat of love.
And the idea was that he could service, pleasure, - have his way with two prostitutes at the same time.
- Oh.
How this worked I'm not quite, I say at the same time, I mean that With his extra penis.
It does make you worry.
The King's penis.
Behold.
Two birthdays, two penises.
It's got stirrups at the top, so there's clearly It has got stirrups.
Her legs could go, or his Is this why Queen Victoria didn't talk to him? - I think it might well be.
- "What have you got there now, dear?" "Ah, Your Majesty.
" Dirty Bertie, as he was known, quite rightly.
His name was Bertie.
Do you know that wonderful story, - he had a long-standing affair with Lillie Langtry.
- Yes.
Probably it's not true at all, but it is said that he was very cross with her one day and he said, "I've spent enough on you to build a battleship.
" And she said "You've spent enough in me to float one.
" LAUGHTER AND GROANS Whoa! Now, what's the worst thing you can do with a gympie-gympie? Gympie-gympie? Remove her leaf? Well, that would Yeah, she would be upset.
It's wipe your bottom.
You've missed your Spend A Penny chance.
Does it make it poisonous or do something dreadful to you? I think poison is It's kind of poison, but it's sort of worse than that.
Is it full of bugs that crawl up your bum? Imagine a stinging nettle turned up to the absolutely unbearable max.
Why would you wipe your bottom with it? Well, because it looks a bit like a leaf that would be safe to.
- Oh, a dock leaf type thing.
- Yeah, a dock leafy sort of thing.
It's from Queensland and it has one of the most vicious stings in nature.
A brush against it feels apparently like being burnt with hot acid and electrocuted at the same time.
According to one account, a soldier in the bush in the Second World War was caught short and picked the wrong leaf - and found himself in so much pain that he shot himself.
- No! - AUDIENCE GASPS - Exactly.
That is a serious I mean, just the agony of it.
One of the first mentions is from 1866, a surveyor reported that his pack horse was stung, got mad and died within two hours.
Les Moore, a scientific officer with the Queensland government was stung across the face, ended up looking like Mr Potato Head, apparently.
I still think it can't be as bad as the toilet paper we had at boarding school.
I know what you mean.
Izal and Bronco.
I used to write home to my mother on it, airmail letters, that's how bad it was.
- Yes, it was crispy tissue.
- Is that that shiny stuff? Nothing would stick to it, it was like grease paper.
You'd think, "I've definitely had a poo, but there's no evidence.
" LAUGHTER It wouldn't come off on it.
It seemed to serve no purpose.
Shall we move along? Yes.
Let's do that.
So, it was the Spend a Penny round after all.
If you're caught short in the bush, don't use a gympie-gympie, you might end up shooting yourself.
Now, which football team is the worst in the world at losing major trophies? The worst in the world, so it's a team that presumably has never won a game.
- It's not that.
They've won quite a lot of games.
- Oh.
They've even won trophies.
- Have they had the trophies stolen? - But then they've lost them.
They've lost them.
- Aston Villa? - Very good.
Well, there you go.
JEREMY: We're back in Birmingham again now and you're being rude, aren't you? By knowing so much.
How do you know that? He does a sports programme, he's a football lover.
- Yeah.
- Ah.
I must listen.
But in the 1964 FA Cup Final, which was won by? West Ham.
Yes, you can see Bobby Moore there.
Who was their manager? At that point? Er, 1964 Would have been, not Ron.
- It was Ron.
- It was? Ron Greenwood, yeah.
He took it home by Tube, discreetly covering it LAUGHTER .
.
wrapped in a cloth.
That lady, she's got her eye on it.
Well, Ron Greenwood had good reason to be worried and that's the point.
Football trophies do have a history of going missing, and Aston Villa seem to have been more to blame than anyone else.
In 1895, their FA Cup was stolen from the window of a sports shop in Birmingham, and 63 years later, a man called Harry Burge confessed that he had been the man who had stolen it - and he had melted it down and made counterfeit half crown coins.
- Wow! The second major trophy to have been mislaid by Aston Villa - was the European Cup in What year did they? - 1981.
Yes, they mislaid it in '82.
Two members of the - 1982.
- It would have been, yes.
Two members of the team decided to take the cup to a darts match where it disappeared.
And many years later a man called Adrian Reed was identified as the culprit.
He took it to a local police station.
But it didn't end there, cos the police decided to have a football match for it.
So they kept it so that they could brag about being the European Cup winners.
And the FA cup gets damaged so much every year that it has to get repaired every single year because it gets bashed about in the bath.
So, Aston Villa may not have a great record of winning trophies, but they have a rather impressive record of losing them.
Speaking of losers, it's time for the lucky dip that is General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
And don't forget that tonight the lowest scorer will be the winner.
Which day is added to a leap year? Yeah? February 29th.
Yeah, well done, absolutely.
No, it isn't.
Right, well, it is.
I'm standing my ground on this one.
They squeeze into the middle of February and add an extra 24th, so the 24th becomes the 25th, The reason for that is that the Roman calendar was divided into three.
The Kalends, the Nones and the Ides.
And when it came to discovering, which they did, that a year was actually not 365 days but 365 days and a quarter, they added it into one of those calendar series.
Now you may say this is just ridiculous, they added 29, but they didn't, and in fact the proof of this is that in Denmark the day on which a woman is allowed to propose to a man, is the 24th of February, not the 29th.
That's the reason.
Yeah.
There's an extra day in the middle of February that, apart from Denmark, nobody else has noticed it.
Well, the Catholic church did until the 70's, so it was St Matthias's day.
- So, vicars were going, "Ah, it's the secret day today.
" - Yeah.
St Matthias's day was the 24th February, but on leap years it was the 25th.
I was with you, Alan, really.
- But it's good, because he got his extra points.
- He did.
- Yeah, you see, don't forget that.
- Lucky bastard, as it turns out.
So, the day you add for a leap year is actually February 24th.
In which year did World War II begin? - Oh, yes? - 1939.
Well now, there, well done.
Coming up on the rails.
Yes, absolutely.
Overuse of the whip.
I just wanted to make sure it's working.
Yes, it's still winning.
Yeah? - '39? - He just said that.
- I know.
It doesn't work twice.
I was just waiting to hear why it wasn't 1939.
Well, that's a very Anglo-Franco point of view.
Certainly it's when the British and the French joined the war, but before then the Germans had been at war with other countries and the Chinese had been at war with the Japanese.
That was a very global sort of event, it spread out, and of course there were alliances and other such things.
So Britain joined World War II in 1939, but it had been going on since at least 1937 and arguably since 1935.
Now, what is the length of an Olympic swimming pool? It is counted as 50 metres, but it isn't 50 metres.
It's 50 metres.
LAUGHTER According to the, according to the Federation Internationale Natation - de Natation, "of swimming" Oh.
Those bastards.
Olympic swimming pools are over-sized by a centimetre at each end.
Why? So you don't bash your ankles when you do that spin turn thing.
No, it's not that.
What do you need in order to have an Olympic race? A winning tape.
Well, you need a lap counter and you need something that makes sure that the guy has completed the lap, or the girl.
- A sensor.
- The sensor pad.
In each lane you need one of those.
- Which is a centimetre at each end.
- They have to touch it.
What about peeing in the pool? Is that considered a bad thing by Olympic swimmers? Oh, it is bad.
It's very bad, isn't it? Because Pooing is right out, but It does something with the chlorine, it mixes with the chlorine.
Well, Olympic swimmers are perfectly happy to do it - and perfectly happy to admit that they do it.
- No! - Ugh! And Michael Phelps, the greatest Olympian of all time in terms of his medal haul, old bucket-hands himself Old pissy Phelps.
LAUGHTER He says, "Everybody pees in the pool, "it's kind of a normal thing to do for swimmers.
"When you're in the water for two hours, "we don't really get out to pee.
Chlorine kills it.
" Two hours?! What two hour race has he been in? They do actually practice.
Well, the fact is, an Olympic-sized swimming pool is actually two centimetres longer than you think.
And full of piss.
And indeed, almost entirely full of urine.
How old do you have to be to go on a Club 18 Oh, that must mean that we've come to the end of the show.
Let's look at the scores and see who's tonight's lucky loser.
Well, well, well, well, well.
The clear, outright and extraordinary winner, with an amazing minus 23 is Danny Baker! Hurray, thank you.
APPLAUSE Thank you.
Thank you.
Couldn't be more proud.
In second place, with a very, very impressive minus five, Jeremy Clarkson.
Is that good or bad? APPLAUSE The wrong side of the ledger with plus three, Sandi Toksvig.
APPLAUSE But the joker in a pack of 52 cards, yes, plus 52 for Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE The blue whale.
The blue whale was a very bad, bad call.
That's all from Sandi, Danny, Jeremy, Alan and me.
And I leave you with a last word from actor Edmund Gwenn.
When asked if dying was tough, he said, "Yes it's tough, but not as tough as doing comedy.
" Good night.