"APPLAUSE AND CHEERING where this week our food for thought is food." "Surfing on a smorgasbord of succulence ce soir is our delicious panel." "David Mitchell!" "APPLAUSE" "Rich Hall!" "APPLAUSE" "Jimmy Carr!" "APPLAUSE" "Alan Davies!" "APPLAUSE" "We're sitting comfortably." "Let's ring for service." "David goes..." "TINKLING BELL" "Jimmy goes..." "REVERBERATING GONG" "Rich goes..." "CHURCH BELL TOLLS" "Alan goes..." "TICKING..." "ALARM BELL..." "EXPLOSION I've had a tongue down your..." "I've put a tongue..." "You will find a tongue." "I've put a tongue." "Is there a tongue under there?" "Is this what you were referring to?" "Yes!" "That is what's known as a tongue map." "I'd like you to fill in the areas of the tongue that are responsible for which flavours." "There's a certain number of flavours that the tongue can detect." "So each area is a different area of taste? you wouldn't be able to taste certain stuff?" "That's the theory of a tongue map." "But there are only five things that a tongue can detect." "How does the food know where to go?" "let's have a question." "What kind of animal can you eat without killing it?" "CHURCH BELL Rich?" "unintentionally. yeah." "they pick them out of the water with tiny pink crabs on 'em and they're considered a delicacy." "They're alive when you swallow 'em." "but you don't kill the animal." "except it's still running around?" "Is that what you're saying?" "no." "But it stays in you and sets up a community." "Is it what they put in Yakult?" "Yes!" "They witter on about that." "Bifidus digestivum." "L-casei immunitas." "you know these things." "I'm impressed." "I spend a lot of time watching TV." "Listening to the new made-up science is entertaining!" "Do you want to buy a tiny pot of off milk?" ""Yes!" It's such a good deal." ""Just try it for nine weeks." "we're in the money." "Do ladies sit around discussing bloating a lot?" "It happens in the adverts. have they tried farting like a docker?" "Cos it works remarkably well for me!" "I believe." "They bloat differently?" "I believe so." "They also talk increasingly on TV about being constipated." "That's..." "The standard of female conversation is plummeting!" "That's true!" "What happened to the little ladies who were so refined?" "you're probably right about bacteria which would possibly pass through and not be killed." "But this is actually a delicacy." "I'm inclined to give the point to Rich because he's accidentally right..." "As usual!" "..and wrong as well. of Florida." "Tapeworm!" "it's a type of crab." "It's a stone crab." "Right." "Stone crab tours are very popular." "There is a stone crab. and throw the crab back in and it takes a year for its claws to grow back." "very popular but particularly in Florida." "wandering about?" "I mean..." "He keeps himself to himself." "The crab is dismayed when it loses its claws. "Now I can't get any work done!" "All that stuff." "I'm trying to rearrange the sea-bed and it'll be a year before I can do anything!" "I'll just have to lay up." "It's almost like they're fruit-bearing animals." "That's pretty similar to that." "Exactly." "An apple tree has its apples taken off and next year it grows more apples." "So maybe they're trees." "Just seafoody trees that can walk around." "there are certain tribesmen in the Masai Mara in Kenya actually." "Then they bind up the wound so they don't kill the cow." "But that practice is dying out." "So they think cattle have two drinks." "You can have one or the other or a mixture of the two." "Fantastic. stone crabs it is." "They're returned to the sea alive and their claws have been taken off." "They grow another though it's never as good as the first one." "what can you usefully teach an oyster?" "TINKLING BELL" "Yes?" "Is it not to get its hopes up?" "Aw!" "Is it to expect lemon juice and death?" "Don't put up a struggle." "It'll never work." "make lemonade." Cheer it on." "you're seconds away from death." "Cos you're not like that kind of crab." "there's not much an oyster can do." "Teach it to blend into parties and make it look like it was invited." "Who invited the oysters?" "True." "No-one says that." "Teach them to do impressions." "They do a good one of a whelk." "They do." "Teach it rudimentary percussion. "I can do that." "You're very close." "oysters will stay fresh so long as they're closed." "But they live their lives opening and closing their shells to let nutrients in which they filter." "So the thing is to teach them to keep their mouths closed for long periods of time." "You do that?" "the French did." "The French simply hit them with metal rods which makes them close." "They'd do that for longer and longer and they'd learn cos they know they'll get hit all the time." "don't they? some a foot long." "But they couldn't transport them across the States because they'd go off cos they had their things open." "There was no ice around." "So they would move them up the bank at each tide so they had more and more time in the air and that would teach them to have their mouths closed for longer." "So they'd learn to have their mouths closed for longer and longer until they were closed long enough to sell them without making people ill." "There we are." "That's your oyster." "how did the Mounties use fruit machines to get their man?" "is this a friend of yours?" "I'm sorry?" "Fruit machine!" "That guy's a fruit machine!" "it wasn't a one-armed bandit." "It'll be something to do with actual fruit. went for." "the Mountie uniform is quite..."fruity". the Royal Canadian Mounted Police." "there." "So they have no unmounted police?" "Well..." "I don't know..." "It must be difficult on raids of small flats." "Ow!" "My head!" "David." "A mess." "Imagine trying to chase a heroin addict up a small staircase on a horse!" "Ridiculous." "The heroin addicts would know to head for the small staircase!" "JIMMY:" "Like trying to police a country with Daleks!" "the Daleks can get everywhere." "are you saying that you think disabled access is a Dalek conspiracy?" "that is exactly what I'm saying!" "we come back to this fruit machine. they were worried in a lot of Western countries about civil servants." "There'd been scandals about civil servants being blackmailed." "For what reason?" "being gay." "the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were trying to find out the homosexuals in the civil service." "So that they could not be honey-trapped by Soviet spies." "anyway." "So is one of these gay?" "Never Mind The Buzzcocks." "Number three!" "Was this before the RAF invented "Gaydar"?" "Yes! showed people pictures of nude men and women and measured their pupil dilation and their perspiration. they were sacked." "That was their job over with." "They were deemed to be homosexual and they were out of a job." "The system was thrown out by any civil servants who fancy horses! I can't reach down to the fruit machine." "Damn these horses!" "by something called..." "Dancing On Ice!" "Do you like "Dancing On Ice"?" "Is this a trick question?" "I do." "You're out." "It's to die for!" "It's a plethysmograph." "A plethysmograph is an instrument - there's a male version and a female version because they want to catch lesbians as well - so the male version measures the tumescence of the male member when certain images are played and for women it's a sort of dildo that measures lubrication." "I wouldn't mind doing that!" "What?" "!" "I just... so much is coming out here." "the testing..." "You'd like to do that?" "doesn't it?" "Lovely (!" ")" "I'm just saying." "It'd be a giggle." "When was this?" "When did they invent that?" "Surprisingly recently." "It was used up until the '80s." "'80s?" "!" "Surely it was legal and above-board in the 1980s?" ""We'll double-check. had actually invented it in order to do the precise opposite." "It was to catch out people who claimed they were gay to use it as exemption for serving in the Czech army." "you have a choice of venues for dinner tonight." "Russia or France." "Describe the difference between Russian and French service." "BELL TOLLS" "In France they give you lots of vaguely obstetric instruments to dismantle things like frogs' legs and snails." "Special cutlery." "All the stuff you'd have your back yard fumigated for." ""Here's a turnip." "you're going to Siberia." "Do you know what the Russian national dish is?" "No?" "Empty." "It's not my fault!" "I think I know the answer to this." "Go on?" "Almost all service now is what you'd call Russian service." "one after another. but French service was everything coming at once." "Like a kind of buffet." "That is an absolutely perfect answer." "have a handful of points." "And of course there's the tapas principle in lots of Middle-Eastern and Mediterranean cooking." "right up until the 19th century all the courses would come in one big go." "You'd help yourself to everything." "And then the Russian ambassador to Napoleon's court" "We've had this brilliant idea in Russia." "Let's eat one course and then another. and it caught on." "Then the Americans improved on it by making it able for you to drive through in a car!" "And get it in a bag from a 16-year-old..." "They did indeed. ..with shingles!" "I have to call you my teacher's pet and you get a special fanfare instead of a forfeit." "Brilliant." "FANFARE Teacher's Pet." "I don't feel that cool!" "but you do get points." "that's important." "Escoffier was the man who introduced this into private homes restaurants." "What do you know about him?" "Ask David!" "He started frogs' legs." "Right." "I know that cos I heard it on David's radio show." "you... I did a page on Escoffier." "um..." "This could be a good bit!" "First name?" "Auguste." "Brilliant." "and he..." "Died in?" "I don't know!" "A terrible house fire!" "19..." "He died in 1935." "He lived a long time. 62 years he was a chef." "He founded the Ritz in Paris and the Carlton in London and was the chef at the Savoy." "Brilliant." "What's his most famous dish?" "He invented Peach Melba for Dame Nellie Melba." "Dame Nellie Melba." "Also apparently invented Melba toast for her as well cos she was dieting in between Peach Melbas!" "And who was Nellie Melba?" "She was an opera singer." "And what was her real name?" "Mitchell." "Yes!" "Very good!" "I think..." "I'm so impressed." "..her father was David Mitchell." "Get out!" "Do you know..." "Do you know..." "APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH" "I am truly impressed." "It's not a set-up." "You are tumescent!" "I know you are!" "Where's the fruit machine now?" "Talking about..." "Nude facts!" "Oh!" "Again..." "Can I make you a double teacher's pet?" "Yes!" "I'm gonna give you another fanfare because that was extraordinary." "FANFARE" "but Stephen's pupils are ten times bigger!" "aroused by people who are passionate about interesting facts." "to Western Europe meals were served all at once and eaten in whatever order you fancied." "Let's have a look at your tasting maps." "What have we got here?" "We'll start with Jimmy." "What have you got?" "You taste failure there and success at the back." "The bitter taste of resentment." "Bitter at the back?" "sweet... which is MSG?" "Yes." "But they didn't discover it until 1911 or something?" "mushroomy..." "I love it. ..slightly savoury." "salt..." "Sour." "MSG." "Bitter." "Yes." "Is that it?" "Five." "What's Gordon Ramsay wittering on about if that's it?" "On the tongue." "There's a rainbow of things in the olfactory bulb in the nose." "That's where all flavours can be detected." "But the tongue is only for those five." "Rich?" "Guilt." "Remorse..." "Can you taste guilt?" "Crabby." "um..." "Be sick." "Cos it does make you be sick." "on the tip of your tongue." "Very good!" "Very good!" "Excellent." "Alan?" "sour and sweet and then I ran out of ideas." "I had savoury." "I didn't think it was right." "Umami is savoury." "Then I had one left so I just put jam in!" "Jam! the whole tongue map idea is actually nonsense." "Thank you." "Throw your tongue over your shoulder." "JIMMY:" "If I could do that... for a start!" "I'd be a happy man!" "She wouldn't let me leave the house!" "Because you could lick your shoulder blade?" "yes." "We detect those five primary flavours all over the tongue and not in that..." "That used to be held to be the tongue map." "it's still in a lot of text books." "But it is absolutely not true. the piece de generale ignorance." "Elbows off the tables and fingers on the buzzers." "Name a poisonous snake." "GONG" "Yes?" "Piers Morgan." "Jimmy!" "Poison is not the same as venom." "It can't be." "Because there are load of poisonous snakes." "You sounded so like Jonathan Creek just then!" "You suddenly hit it with the pen." "It was so right." "Got it!" "I've got the answer!" "In a locked room... we haven't name one yet." "I'm not going to." "They're all gonna be up there." "I refuse!" "You're so right." "We were hoping you'd say cobra and..." "He said it!" "..rattlesnake..." "And all those things." "But "poisonous" does not apply to them." "it makes you very ill or kills you." "Venom goes..." "Venom is injected into your blood. like a poison fruit or berry. becomes poisonous by eating toxic toads." "you'll die." "Or there's the Thamnophis sirtalis..." "Of course!" "..which is the common garter snake." "Stephen..." "Yeah?" "What are you talking about?" "LAUGHTER an orange-bellied rough-skinned newt." "what shouldn't you eat before bedtime?" "it's a trap!" "Us?" "!" "TINKLING BELL Cheese!" "KLAXON it's been debunked." "In 2005." "Apparently it gives you good dreams." "But the study was instituted by the British Cheese Board!" "They may have an axe to grind!" "Are you suggesting corruption?" "Cheese Board?" "!" "I think they're aware of the joke." "They say there's an amino acid in cheese as there is in milk and all dairy products called Tryptophan which gives you peace and joy and tranquillity and helps you sleep." "that's Temazepam!" "Temazepam!" "But Tryptophan is a natural one." ""Let them eat cheese." "Let them eat cake"?" "That French woman" " Dawn French." "Very good." "Let them eat brioche"!" "Who did?" "I'm not saying it!" "But I'm asking you." "I need to know!" "Ooh!" "Was it Mr Kipling?" "KLAXON" "Jimmy!" "Marie..." "Osmond." "Marie Osmond?" "Kirsten Dunst. the worst film ever made since Revolution with Al Pacino." "Did it involve cakes?" "Four people." "A Marie Antoinette film." "Yes." "So did you say what?" "Who said it?" "What you said." "Marie Antoinette." "Why do you keep saying Marie Antoinette?" "KLAXON" "Because I wanted that to happen!" "she was quoting it." "as every schoolboy knows." "The phrase was seen in print in 1760 and Jean-Jacques Rousseau claims to have seen it in 1740." "So this whole idea that it was Marie Antoinette is not true." "You want to hear the whole conversation." "either." "Oh." "This is a problem." "Yes! "I'll talk to the ministers about it and see what we can do." "They're probably..." "That may well be it." "The accusation that one grand lady or another committed this gaffe was in circulation at least 15 years before Marie Antoinette was born." "what makes up more than 70% of the internet?" "Ooh!" "isn't it?" "Of what?" "Of gentlemen's special interest literature." "KLAXON I didn't say that!" "I think we know what you're talking about!" "If you're gonna be like that..." "It's quite surprising." "They did a survey on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union which they thought prohibitive of personal liberty and they discovered that less than 1% of the internet is pornography. in fact up to 89% is spam." "Simple as that." "whatever that is." "I get loads of 'em." "Most are from my girlfriend." "It's the ones from my mum that really hurt." "A recent study has established that the World Wide Web is less than 1% pornography good news if you're looking for pills or want to increase your extremities." "as it were." "garcon." "Let's look at the scores." "It's pretty unsurprising to those who've been paying attention that our runaway winner with a full ten points is David Mitchell." "Hoorah!" "Well done to David with ten and it's medium with minus two to Rich Hall." "Minus two?" "And it's a very rare third place for Alan Davies with minus 12!" "it's Jimmy Carr with minus 46!" "David and Alan and to leave you with the reproving words of our Dame Nellie Melba on being presented with a gelatine-based pudding which had not been allowed to set properly." "and one of them's jelly." Goodnight!" "Subtitles by Moira Diamond Red Bee Media - 2009"