QI

Join Sandi Toksvig for a thoroughly Unsavoury episode of QI, with Gyles Brandreth, Judi Love, Kiri Pritchard-McLean, and Alan Davies.

Topics

- The thing that comes upon you unbidden is a white bear. Harvard psychologist Dan Wegner once came across a line by Dostoyevsky which read: "Try not to think of a polar bear, and you will see the cursed thing comes to mind every single minute." Wegner called this: "the white bear problem" and he spent a lifetime studying it. In 1985, he did an experiment where he told people not to think about a white bear, but if they did they should ring a bell. As Dostoyevsky said, people really did think about it and thus rang the bell at least once a minute. Wegner found out that amongst the few people who can totally suppress thoughts where anorexics and bulimics, and no-one knows why. Wegner thus believed that free will is an illusion, comparing the unconscious mind to a ship's compass, with the needle swinging about, but it is not steering the ship, it is reacting to the way in which the ship goes. Wegner's theory was that we need to think that we have free will or we would never get anything done.

- Tangent: For Gyles, the unbidden thing that comes to him is the need to go to the toilet as a film reaches its end. Gyles says he has solved it by becoming the voiceover for Tena Flex Plus super soft incontinence pad, and as a result he gets free samples. For Judi, her thing is that when she goes swimming she pops out her breasts on purpose underneath the water to see how high they float. For Kiri, it is road rage, leading to Sandi to recall that once when she was driving a guy was really annoying her, so she gave him a piece of her mind. After a pause, the man said: "I really love you, Sandi," and she was incredibly embarrassed.

- Tangent: In February 1985, a Japanese magazine published a letter from a woman called Mariko Aoki, who said that browsing book shops made her want to go to the toilet. As a result of this letter, many more people wrote in saying that they experienced the same thing. It became known as the Mariko Aoki Phenomenon, and it is reported that your bowels relax in bookshops.

- XL: The place where you are if you can't call "you" you is Parliament. In the House of Commons, you don't refer to other MPs as "you". Instead, you talk in the third person so you don't personalise it, and say things such as, "the honourable member". You have to address people though the Speaker rather than directly to another MP, thus you can only refer to the Speaker as "you" in the House of Commons.

- XL Tangent: Judi says you cannot say "you" in a Jamaican household: "Because your mum would probably box you in your mouth, maybe." You would always address someone by their name, and then refer to themselves as, "us", "uno" or "me".[/colour

- [colour=#000080]XL Tangent: When Gyles was running for re-election as an MP, his wife put their house for sale during the election campaign. He lost, only being an MP for one term.

- XL Tangent: Other examples of things you cannot say as an MP in the House of Commons is call people a liar. Dennis Skinner MP once said that half of Tory MPs were liars, to which the Speaker ordered him to withdraw the statement, then Skinner said that half of Tory MPs were not liars. Calling someone a liar is more unparliamentary that actually lying. You also can't call someone a coward, git, guttersnipe, hooligan, stoolpigeon, pipsqueak, a little squirt or a twat. The first time somebody said "twat" in the House of Commons was Conservative MP Bill Cash in 1986, who called Field Marshal Lord Carver: "a boring old twat". The second time "twat" was used was immediately afterwards when an unnamed MP pointed out that Cash had just said the word. You also cannot accuse someone of being drunk, but you can say they are "tired and emotional" or "overwrought". When Gyles was an MP he worked with fellow MP Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, who towards the end of his life was drinking too much. At the time there was not much a majority in parliament, and the Whip's office needed to get Sir Nicholas to vote. However, Sir Nicholas was not capable of walking through the lobbies, so two whips were assigned to stand either side of him, lifted Sir Nicholas up from the bench, held him either by the elbows, and walked him six inches off the ground through the voting lobbies. Another whip was behind knocking Sir Nicholas' legs to make it look like he was walking.

- XL Tangent: In New Zealand, unparliamentary language includes, "His brains could revolve inside a peanut shell for a thousand years without touching the sides", and, "He has the energy of a tired snail returning home from a funeral." You also cannot say hypnotised rabbits, kookaburras, dingoes, poodles, silly old moos, human muck worms, trained seals or ridiculous mice. In India's equivalent of the House of Commons, the Lok Sabha, members cannot call each other a goon, a donkey or a lollipop. A complaint in Canberra's parliament in August 2005 which lead to their House banning from calling members and senators "mate", but it was lifted the next day because it was deemed to be un-Australian. Former Australian PM Bob Hawke referred to the ban as: "pomposity gone mad. I would have thought that 'mate' was the nicest four-letter word I've been called all year."

- XL Tangent: Gyles was advised to have a standard reply when he got abusive mail, writing back saying: "Dear Sir, Some crackpot has written me an abusive letter and put your signature on the bottom. I'm replying to you in case you want to take action against this lunatic." This reply never worked.

- The unsavoury behaviour of English monkeys includes going out in the midday son. Male uakari monkeys from the Amazon, known by the locals as "English monkeys" because their bright red faces make them look like sunburned English tourists, establish dominance by showing themselves in their own urine. It alerts other males to their dominance, and they urinate upwards, landing on their stomach and chest, and rub the urine in with vigorous movements of the forearm. The urine also acts as a kind of hair gel, puffing up their hair. If uakari get malaria, they become paler, so the redder the face , the healthier they are. They can also bite Brazil nuts in half.

- Tangent: When Gyles answers the question he does so by singing "Mad Dogs and Englishman", and continues to sing the song until he is stopped by the klaxon. (Forfeit: That'll do, Gyles)

- XL Tangent: Male capuchin monkeys urinate on their own hands and feet to make themselves sleepy. The monkeys, as well as cappuccino coffee, are both named after Capuchin monks, because they wear hoods of a similar colour. Capuchin monkeys also like onions, and rub them on themselves to make them feel better. Zookeepers will throw onions into capuchin monkey enclosures to calm them down.

- XL:- The button, when pressed, may make you want to wee is your belly button. The belly button is connected to nerve fibres which lead straight to the spinal cord. When they reach the cord, they reach it at the spot where signals are relayed from the bladder and the urethra, which can confuse the brain.

- XL Tangent: There used to be a baby doll where if you pressed the belly button it would "urinate".

- XL Tangent: Scientists at North Carolina's Bellybutton Biodiversity Project took swaps from about 60 people's navels. They found 2,368 different species of bacteria, over half of which they suspected to be new to science. One man's navel contained a bacterium only previously known to exist in Japanese soil, and he had never been to Japan.

- XL Tangent: There used to be people who would put salt in their belly button and then dip food into it while eating. Gyles says people used to, "dip it in and suck it off", which Alan says he has been made to say that phrase on the show for a bet.

- XL Tangent: Dinosaurs had belly buttons. Birds, which descended from dinosaurs, do have a thing akin to a belly button. While in the egg, there is a cord that connects the baby to the yolk sac, and when they hatch, it disconnects and leaves behind a residual scar. The earliest known belly button belongs to a Psittacosaurus, a herbivore that lived about 120 million years ago, first identified in 2022, on fossilised scales of a specimen in China.

- The best use for a 25ft tall rat is to stop people from breaking a strike. Scabby is an inflatable rat, 25ft probably being the biggest, which has been used since 1989 as a mascot on US picket lines. It is used to stop people from crossing picket lines and thus being scabs. It originated at the Illinois branch of the International Union of Operating Engineers, and originally it involved someone wearing a rat costume, but one summer it was too hot to wear the costume, so they went with an inflatable version instead.

- There is a swan that can break your arm. Cyril the Swan, the mascot for Swansea City FC, once got in a fight with Millwall's Zampa the Lion in 2001. Cyril tore of Zampa's head and kicked it into the crowd before shouting: "Don't fuck with the Swans."

- Tangent: Gyles tells an anecdote, but before he starts Sandi asks for a cup of tea as it will take a while to hear. In 1971, Gyles was in a publisher's office which was releasing a novel by Snoopy entitled It Was A Dark And Stormy Night, and Gyles volunteered to be Snoopy for a book tour. For this, Gyles wore a Snoopy costume. The book was launched at the Playboy Club in Park Lane. However, no-one there knew that Snoopy's creator, Charles Schulz, was a born-again Christian, and when he learned of this Gyles was banned from wearing the Snoopy costume for life. The next animal Gyles did was a dinosaur, and he led dinosaur parades throughout the UK, photos of which are quickly found by the Elves.

- Lord Nelson had a unique utensil: a knife/fork combo or knork. In 1797, he lost his arm at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, so had this item made for him, which still exists. It is normally held at the National Maritime Museum, but it is presented on the show by Robert Blyth from the museum. The knork had a knife-blade which was attached to the fork via a side screw. It is inscribed with his initials NB, for Nelson and Bronte (he was Duke of Bronte). While Nelson lost at Santa Cruz, his big victories were still to come, so he ate using it at the Battles of the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar.

- Tangent: Gyles says that having one leg doesn't hold you back. His wife was sitting with two girlfriends of riper years who were talking about the best lover they had. By chance, it happened to be the same person: Al Capp, an American cartoonist who created Li'L Abner. The ladies said he was the best lover because he only had one leg, as all the blood that was in the other leg had now been redirected.

- XL Tangent: The spork was developed to eat terrapins. Turtle soup was hugely popular, especially in the USA, to the point terrapins were in danger of going extinct. They were only saved due to prohibition, because one of the ingredients in turtle soup was sherry, and without the sherry they couldn't eat the soup. On the back of turtles, the lines on the shells make up 52 squares, and these were used by Native Americans as calendars.

General Ignorance

- In the Anglo-Scottish Wars (1296-1346) the people who showed their bare bottoms on the battlefield were the English. According to a 13th century book, Chronicle of Peter Langtoft: "The English soldiers bared their buttocks during the Anglo-Scottish Wars." (Forfeit: The Scots)

- Tangent: Gyles was told by Kenneth Williams that the scene in Carry On Up The Khyber were the Scottish troops lifted their kilts was based on historic fact, but there is actually no evidence to support this.

- Tangent: Alan went to see Scotland play Norway in the 1998 World Cup, where a Scot bared his bottom and another Scot kicked him hard.

- XL Tangent: One of the earliest moonings in history was in 1203, when Western Europeans failed to capture Constantinople, and the Byzantine victors showed their bare buttocks to mock them. The term "mooning" was first used in 1964.

- Tangent: Kiri says that it makes sense that mooning is an English thing because of the Englishman who stuck a flare up his arse during the World Cup, and says he was just honouring his ancestors. Sandi says she does not know about this, to which Kiri says she should Google it, but not on a work computer.

- The panel are asked to name something you should not do with your mouth open. According to Charles Spence, an experimental psychologist at Oxford University who specialises in food, claims that eating with an open mouth makes things taste better. He claims that vigorous chomping releases more volatile organic compounds from food, and is more air is allowed in, the more aromatic compounds go to the back of the nose and makes the food smell more, thus making the taste more intense.

- Tangent: Alan used to have quite long baths, then his mate Keith rang him one day, and he was chatting to him. Then Alan moved, and Keith heard the water. Keith asked if Alan was in the bath, and after finding out he was, Keith hung up. Judi says she talks to people over the phone while showering all the time.

- Tangent: You should not sleep with your mouth open, because it drives out your mouth and removes all the protective saliva, which stops unwanted bacteria from entering you. You should also not bicycle with your mouth open because insects can get into your mouth.

Scores

- Kiri Pritchard-McLean: 6 points
- Alan Davies: 4 points
- Gyles Brandreth: 1 point
- Judi Love: -2 points