"APPLAUSE" "CHEERS AND WHISTLES" "O-o-oh... where four mighty heroes will confront the forces of ignorance in a show about Greeks and gods." "Limbering up in the gymnasium of thought we have tonight a handsome Adonis in Clive Anderson." "CHEERS AND APPLAUSE" "Rich Hall!" "CHEERS AND APPLAUSE" "Phill Jupitus." "CHEERS AND APPLAUSE" "Alan Davies." "CHEERS AND APPLAUSE" "Their buzzers are all Greece-y!" "Clive goes..." "STATELY ORCHESTRAL MUSIC" "You'll recognise that as the Greek national anthem." "Rich goes..." "MUSIC: "Zorba The Greek" "Phill goes..." "TRADITIONAL GREEK FOLK TUNE" "And Alan goes... greased lightning!" "# here's my first question." "You're a wealthy Athenian and you're invited to sponsor a battleship." "How do you get out of it?" "Out of the ship?" "Out of the sponsor-ship." "How do you get out of sponsoring this expensive business?" "I see." "did you...?" "Not if you were Rich." "Have you ever funded the Greek navy?" "I've never funded the Greek navy." "it's that I should've." "didn't you?" "Yeah." "did you have to? they made the richest Athenian citizens pay for it." "You got an accountant to explain how to put your money in a rowing boat." "Put it off-shore." "Off-shore!" "Yes!" "The great thing about Greece was it was a true democracy in an extraordinary way." "If your property was worth 70 times more than the average wage" ""You have to pay for our navy." "and appear together in court." "You had to offer to swap all your property with the guy you thought was richer." "Stephen!" "So the Greek military tactics were based loosely on Swap Shop?" "LAUGHTER Multi-Coloured Swapus Shopus." "Yes." "then?" "not necessarily Greek." "I guess people had sponsored things before." "But the "ship" bit of words...?" "The "ship"?" "Yeah." ""Sponsorship". "Championship"?" "That's Germanic." "Yeah." "Just curious." "You're very good on words." "I like to check." "There's the extraordinary thing of how the F became P." "Pfennig became penny." "Pfeffer became pepper." "All the German Fs became Ps." "It happened so much so in Arabic that all the Ps disappeared." "They're all Fs." "Sharip became Sharif." "One of the interesting byways..." "I use the word "interesting" obviously wrongly!" "LAUGHTER I am quite interested." "This is just for ME!" "Thank you! invented the subject of linguistics and they traced the great fricative shift." "you might say." "How did we get here?" "LAUGHTER unless you could find a richer person." "And you tested if they were richer than you by offering to swap your fortunes in court." "You're spending the weekend with your grandmother." "Which would she prefer?" "A Roman orgy or a Greek symposium?" "but let's assume..." "Symposium is a fun thing." "A symposium?" "It's a drinking thing." "which is now used to mean a seminar..." "Yeah. ..people talking about intellectual things..." "Are you saying that "orgy" didn't mean anything to do with sex?" "but..." "It was also stuff for kids." "in an orgy." "It wasn't just adults." "No..." "Petting zoo..." "LAUGHTER Anyway..." "The perhaps surprising thing is that a Roman orgy tended not to be a particularly wild sexual feast." "the extravagance of the display. so it looked as if it was still in the ocean - a food party." "you brought it up again?" "The vomitorium? where the people are vomited out." "Especially if you've just seen Mama Mia." "I always expect to lose points when I say anything I THINK I know." "They made themselves sick in order that they could carry on eating." "Did they really do that?" "People definitely did that in pubs when I was growing up." "Throw up in order to drink more?" "Go outside." "Be sick on the pavement." "go straight back to the bar." "The tactical chunder is very..." "LAUGHTER" "Totally." "I feel terrible." "I'm going to have to have a tactical chunder!" "I suppose." "12 quids' worth of bitter in the gutter!" "Rich is looking bemused." "No." "I've seen it." "I believe you." "I've tried to do it myself but it doesn't work the same." "So it really depends on what your granny is into." "The point is that orgies were not as debauched as symposia." "What should you do if you see a Spartan with a new hairdo?" "but it's a start." "Collar and cuffs aren't matching!" "LAUGHTER are they?" "A handily placed scabbard!" "Just move that." "Give him a wide berth?" "Do they have their hair cut before combat?" "I'm going to have to give you all those points." "That is exactly right." "APPLAUSE the Persians made a mistake." "One of their spies who'd gone to the Spartan camp" "They're a load of nancy boys." "I've seen them doing their hair." "You going anywhere?" "Into battle." "Who are you against?" "The Persians?" "They're a nasty lot!" "Over at Thermopylae?" "Ooh!" "I wouldn't tell anybody." "What the Persians didn't know was that when the Spartans did their hair they were prepared to die." "They were preparing their bodies for mortal combat." "Who's going to notice your haircut with your junk hanging out?" "Never heard it called "junk" before!" "Put on some pants before you go into battle!" "Fighting pants." "Yeah." "Your best fighting pants." "camp." "those 300 Spartans were accompanied by 700 Thespians." "Really?" ""Let's do the show HERE!" LAUGHTER" "It Ain't Half Hot Mum." ""Lovely boy!" "Lovely boy!" "what is you?" and all that." "Gunner Graham!"" "Was there stereotyping?" ""Those Spartans are like that." "Or were they genuinely run on different lines?" "the Spartans and Athenians went to war. logic and politics." "They were a war-like race." "It's like as if the Klingons beat the Vulcans in Star Trek." "Awful!" "It would be." "That's what Star Trek is kind of based on." "Stephen!" "I know." "Can you imag such a thing?" "Or the Daleks." "Yeah." "Yeah." "A warrior people." "Or Britain beating France!" "Yes." "Do you know the word "laconic"?" "I dunno." "Is it from Star Trek?" "Do you know what "laconic" means?" "RICH:" "I do." "Kind of means... taking your time." "Taking your time..." "Before you answer. the Athenians they sent a messenger to Sparta." "we will not spare your children." "We will destroy your civilisation." "We will spare no-one." "The Spartans sent one word reply." "Yeah. "Bovvered?" No." "LAUGHTER" "Similar..." "APPLAUSE but it was better." "It was simply the first word of the message. "If." Ah!" "the Spartan reply." "If we beat you..." "Yeah." "If." "If you see a Spartan with a new hairstyle run as fast as you can." "the last thing a Spartan soldier did before a fight was get a new do." "What's the proper thing to wear to the gym?" "please!" "that's disturbing." "Look at your tiny arms!" "isn't it?" "LAUGHTER" "I remember that day!" "LAUGHTER we had fun that day!" "Didn't we just?" "I like to be left alone at the gym." "I wear Speedos and brown wing tips." "Right." "Not a stitch." "The point is not a stitch." "Gymnos is the Greek for "naked"." ""a naked place"." "Now that's Britain's Got Talent!" "LAUGHTER didn't they?" "Yes." "Quite hard to be the high hurdle champion." "Terrible if your tackle WAS the reason you didn't get the high jump." "no." "His knackers just caught the bar!" "Another man let down by his tackle! a pouch in which your penis is held in an upright position and tied in a bow." "For Christmas!" "LAUGHTER doing sporting activities?" "I guess." "he'd pull the string!" "There are other things with the root "gymnos" meaning "naked"." "the dances performed by naked boys at public festivals." "LAUGHTER There is..." "To gymnologise is to debate whilst naked." "Let's gymnologise!" "WHOOPING FROM AUDIENCE audience." "LAUGHTER" "I didn't mean it!" "There we are." "A lot of nudity in Greece." "They began as places for the middle classes to train for battle." "There they are." "That's an affectionate form of wrestling!" "Mud wrestling." "It's rather sweet." "but mostly Greco." "obviously." "I presume they're playing a slowy." "LAUGHTER" "The gymnasium..." "# Loving you" "# Is easy cos you're... # as Clive pointed out." "The famous ones were the Academy and the Lyceum." "and from which we get "academy"." "It's a night club in the N1 Centre." "It was named after a Greek hero." "Academae." "Lyceum is where the Joe Loss Band played." "It was." "is from the same root." "So many common words come from things like that." "Gymnasium is an academy." "The Odeon was a cinema in Ancient Greece." "It should be!" "Do you know what its origin is?" "I've no idea." "Audience?" "OscarDeutsch." "the founder." "OD were his initials." "Odeon." "Well done." "Round of applause." "APPLAUSE" "What happens in this game if someone in this audience wins?" "They take their clothes off and parade all around here." "though they liked to wear a bit of support." "Name the event in which Baron de Coubertin won his Olympic medal." "Who was Baron de Coubertin?" "The one who reinvented the Olympics?" "the father of the modern Olympic movement." "An event that he was the only person who did it." "he did it anonymously." "That's why he's wearing a false moustache." "How many events can you enter anonymously?" "I suppose." "Exactly." "So something when you're hidden." "You don't need to be seen." "A race between pantomime horses." "He was the winning horse!" "It's not as absurd as it sounds." "There were some really odd events." "You're completely hidden?" "Well...?" "Tunnelling." "Olympic tunnelling." "aren't you?" "Ah." "The Olympic Games was wider." "Essay writing or poem composing." "Poem is the answer." "He won the gold medal for poetry." "Shut up!" "Oh!" "You think THAT's weird?" "All the way up to 1948 there was town planning in the Olympics." "LAUGHTER Won by a Milton Keynes!" "you imagine." "There were all kinds of artistic categories." "painting..." "Sculpture! "And look at him go!" "The young Greek!" "The young Greek's mallet is flying! in the 1948 engravings and etchings event." "CLIVE:" "Fantastic!" "He was a Briton called John Copley." "a farmer's wife." "It was the poodle clipping event." "She trimmed 17 poodles in two hours." "She got a gold medal for it." "I'm sure she did." "17 in two hours!" "That's impressive even to me." "Do you know the reason they stopped doing the sculpture and painting?" "Something to do with the drugs and the sex testing." "The reason they stopped was because they felt that it compromised the idea of amateurism." "The artists were artists for the rest of the year." "held down other jobs." "Moving on..." "Who knows what Olympic gold medals are made of?" "Probably...partially..." "CLIVE:" "We've been on this programme!" "ALL SPEAK TOGETHER" "I would suggest..." "LAUGHTER They're made of gold." "bless you!" "KLAXON BLARES" "APPLAUSE" "I think they might have another one in there." "Chocolate!" "Ah!" "KLAXON BLARES" "Thank you so much." "APPLAUSE" "How did you know? I can always melt that down as a pension" and it's not..." "It's still made of a precious metal." "But it says gold!" "Must be gold." "There is a small amount of gold." "It has to be at least 92.5% silver." "I'm determined to get an Olympic gold medal and I get to sue them." "The last ones made of gold were in 1912." "You think bronze...?" "Should be made out of lead." "Whoever's third...!" "LAUGHTER" "Clive!" "Have you seen them?" "They're huge medallions." "If they made them tiny." "Not as big as Jim'll Fix It." ""Well done." "You won the 100 metres." "jewellery." "Jewellery!" "LAUGHTER So they're silver medals?" "six grams of gold." "Imagine they were 18-carat gold." "How much would each one cost?" "18-carats...?" "Six grams of 18-carat gold?" "No." "Imagine the whole thing was still made of 18-carat gold." "At the current rate or the rate that gold was sold off by the Prime Minister ten years ago?" "please." "Not that!" "000. 1.5 million is a small proportion to reward your medallists with real gold." "why would you bite a gold coin?" "To check it's real." "What would it tell you?" "If it was...not real." "you can bite right through." "It's the same texture as chocolate." "That's why they're often confused." "LAUGHTER" "RICH:" "If it's malleable..." "Real gold should or should not leave a toothmark?" "Real." "It would leave a toothmark." "like a sovereign." "It should give." "There should be some give in a gold coin." "I thought that." "you'd slightly spoil it." "but it's the reverse." "it's false." "Gold coins were always a mixture of other metals that hardened it." "Fake ones used lead and they did leave an impress." "So you were testing to see that it wasn't lead." "it wasn't gold. you would die." "LAUGHTER" "You'd certainly be ill." "There's no lead in pencils." "Very true." "Well done." "APPLAUSE if it was compressed." "000 tonnes of gold has ever been mined in all human history." "The large proportion of that in the last 50 years." "the amount of gold." "Nixon pulled the gold standard." "For you." "There's nothing to back the money any more." "Yeah." "This is why the island of Yap has the best standard of currency." "the QI." "Big stone." "You put it on your frontyard." "Everybody knows how much money you have." "Brilliant." "20 people to mug you." "LAUGHTER That's a good system." "Coke machines are eight storeys high!" "Everything was perfect." "They'd move the stones to the next frontyard. 20-feet high counterfeit." "Ruined the economy." "Polystyrenestones?" "Where's the island of Yap?" "It's in Micronesia." "How did you test whether it's a real stone or counterfeit?" "it was a real stone?" "I'd love to see the bureau de change at the airport." "counterfeit gold coins were made with a high lead content." "it was likely that they were fake." "Which of you comes closest to a perfect ideal of a Greek body?" "Phill!" "Thanks." "I shaved it myself." "I think my helmet's too small for me." "Phill..." "As for that thing on my head!" "I want you to show me your helmet." "I happen to know Phill has got a helmet that you can show me." "Wow!" "That is fan..." "Do you want to show the camera now?" "Look at that." "He's got a helmet tattoo." "That is a Greek helmet." "Can you see that?" "Rather fine." "You've got a Greek helmet tattoo. bizarrely." "We're talking about the Greek ideal." "We all think of a "Greek god"!" "But what is a Greek ideal?" "It seems it's all based on the wrist." "according to this Greek proportion ideal." "the longest of anyone." "There is a thing about wrists that I won't go into." "yours is an eight-inch wrist." "Say that again!" "You've only got a 23-inch thigh." "Your thighs are too small." "My thighs are fabulous!" "I know they're fabulous!" "exactly what it should be." "It should be twice the circumference of your wrist." "have seven-inch wrists." "You should have a 17-inch bicep as well." "Alan." "LAUGHTER the one closest to a Greek ideal is Clive Anderson." "Thank you very much." "CHEERS AND APPLAUSE" "The only one with one of your lineaments being perfectly Greek who has a perfect Greek neck." "I feel that the reputation of the Greeks has gone down in the course of this programme!" "more solid." "A big fat old neck!" "Maybe." "There was a man called Eugene Sandow" " I don't know how he pronounced it." "the first of the famous bodybuilders." "Charles Atlas and Arnold Schwarzenegger." "He had a very nasty accident earlier in life." "trying to lift that column. before protein whey powders and anabolic steroids." "kind of invented the modern bodybuilding cult." "He used to have great displays in London..." "As it were!" "Women were invited to touch him and they had smelling salts on hand cos they would faint - they'd never touched people with those muscles." "cos it simply had never been witnessed." "He was the first one with a scientific approach towards building muscles." "and he had a r-r-ripped body!" "Excellent." "you can work out your Grecian ideal used by bodybuilders." "what does this formula prove?" "I know this!" "LAUGHTER um... a proof by reason alone of something reason alone cannot prove." "Proof of God." "Yes!" "Very good." "Points." "I thought I recognised it!" "APPLAUSE" "The proof was made by one of the great logicians of the 20th century." "sadly." "Friend of Einstein's." "Einstein said he only ever went to work because he enjoyed the walk back so much with this man." "his name was." "He didn't publish it." "He didn't want people to think he believed in God." "He was merely demonstrating how symbolic logic can be used." "I was in a film with people who played Einstein and Godel." "Lou Jacobi played Godel." "Remember that film?" "IQ." "Yeah." "RICH:" "With Walter Matthau?" "Yeah." "betting on the horses?" "Yeah." "Walter." "Great man!" "as if he still had a coathanger in." "He used to..." "Hold my hand." "Let go of my hand!" "Will you let go of my hand?" "Jesus Christ!" "He used to tell me horses to bet on." ""I've lost 50 on the Saratoga." "You told me to." "You idiot!" "you've got to bet on." "You fool!" "terrific." "Why did he starve himself to death?" "I have a formula right here." "B + L + T..." "LAUGHTER" "..means that you don't starve to death." "Yay!" "APPLAUSE If only he had known that!" "Proof of a sandwich." "The sad reason was because he was slightly loopy." "He had paranoid fantasies of being poisoned." "so he didn't eat." "Cos she was eating all this poison over the years." "though he wasn't convinced by the conclusion." "but how could sewage be used to create alien life?" "sewage?" "To create alien life?" "or our sewage." "Our astronauts jettisoned their doings into space." "Yes." "orbiting the Earth." "There's a film of human faeces on most space junk." "like with a dog?" "but a lot is simply jettisoned." "Toilets Of The Gods. was descended from poo from another civilisation." "We're descended from poo?" ""We may have arisen from dumped sewage." This is Arthur C Crap's opinion? due to astronauts' sloppy sanitation." "You now have space debris lawyers." "Do you?" "Yeah." "They specialise in space junk." "Why do you think they'd be needed?" "In case someone's junk hits someone else's junk?" "Yeah." "You put up a 300 million satellite." "it can absolutely destroy it." "Neil Armstrong's number two from 1969!" "Exactly!" "The reason they keep going up to the Hubble is to wipe off the lens?" "That may be the case." "They're not telling us." "Did they spend millions of pounds to go with a squeegee and go...?" "I think..." "Why not leave a bloke up there with some Wet Wipes?" "Cos he'd be producing more rubbish." "He taps on your window." "Pound." "LAUGHTER" "I didn't ask you to do it so I'm not giving you any money!" "People who put the wipers on to try and stop." "only they have rockets to take them up there?" "not really." "LAUGHTER" "It's an extraordinary thought." "Reasonably extraordinary." "Extraordinary enough for our purposes." "not Astonishing." "Good." "Human waste could be the start of life on other planets." "Arthur C Clarke suggested we could have developed from alien sewage." "Brace yourselves as we rashly prise open the Pandora's Box so fingers please on buttons." "You've just seen a meteorite crash down on Earth." "Why should you not touch it with your bare hands?" "it's greased lightning!" "#" "Too hot?" "N-n-no!" "Not too hot." "KLAXON BLARES" "Too cold." "Too cold." "Oddly enough." "It's minus 240 to 270 Celsius when it's in space. so you might get frostbite." "Like a baked Alaska?" "No." "It's really cold inside AND outside." "All those poos in space are all frozen solid." "They would be." "Yes." "there they are!" "LAUGHTER 000 meteorites larger than 20 grams" "000!" "It's quite a lot." "Most of them are lost...?" "At sea." "At sea." "More have been found on which continent than any other?" "Australia." "No." "Antarctica." "Antarctica." "homing instinct." "Bit tough on the penguins." "How many deaths have been recorded by meteorites?" "Ask the penguins!" "That's why they stand up." "Less of a surface area." "Don't touch that." "It's freezing." "Don't be ridiculous." "None reported." "A dog was reportedly killed by one in Egypt in 1911." "No humans." "A boy was hit but not seriously injured in Uganda in '92." "and not seriously injured?" "What are they made of?" "it killed the dog." That's a back-lit meteorite." "as you see." "That poor person is welded to it by the cold." "It's been allowed to chambre." "It's now equalised its temperature with Earth." "A chambred meteorite!" "Best served at room temperature." "Always serve your meteorite at room temperature." "I think so." "what happens the instant you get sucked into a vacuum?" "You die!" "it's greased lightning!" "You die instantly from asphyxiation." "KLAXON BLARES" "Alan." "If a human being were to be inside a vacuum you wouldn't die instantly." "You wouldn't last long." "It wouldn't be any worse than being in Belgium or Watford?" "CLIVE:" "How long do we get in this vacuum?" "Depends how much air you'd breathed in before." "I'm basing an answer on something in a science fiction film!" "You exhale." "minutes?" "Hours?" "Minutes." "You can't survive hours without air." "projectile vomit and urinate." "Just like an astronaut!" "I bet they've done it with small mammals in labs." "I fear they probably have..." ""Let's put a cat in there!" I'm afraid that's how we know." "Experiments with animals..." ""Brilliant!" "You can survive with no long-term problems for a couple of minutes." "What would you do with that time?" "The first sensation is the moisture in your tongue boiling." "Loss of taste may continue for days." "They have had accidents involving humans." "Like having a very strong curry?" "Tongue boils then all your innards fall out." "Very similar to a vindaloo." "A vacuum-loo." "Yeah." "It's pretty unpleasant." "if you see one of those." "Avoid it!" "What an idiot he was!" "LAUGHTER Bless." "Experiments and accidents have shown that people can survive in a vacuum for a couple of minutes." "Which country has weekly news broadcasts in Latin?" "have... eh?" "Yes." "KLAXON BLARES" "It's going well tonight." "we don't." "Channel 5 do them in pig Latin for a laugh." "the eadlines-hay." "the ime minister-pray..." "LAUGHTER" "A five-minute Latin news bulletin once a week at 1.55 in the afternoon every Friday." "On local radio in Helsinki..." "Finland!" "Thank you." "Finland." "Why do they do that? Hang on a minute." "That sounds familiar." "Latin aliens!" ""We stopped speaking that years ago when we left that god-awful planet." "Is it educational?" "Not particularly." "Radio Bremen in Germany carries four minutes of news per month in Latin." "as far as we know." "More people outside Finland understand Latin than Finnish." "which doesn't make much sense." "has recorded several albums in Latin including Elvis covers." "What is Nunc Hic Aut Nunquam?" "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" "No." "# Nunc hic aut nunquam # RICH:" "It's Now Or Never." "Cor Ligneum?" "Jailhouse Rock." "LAUGHTER" "Wooden Heart." "Thank you." "Wooden heart." "Very good." "And Tenere Me Ama." "Tender." "Love Me Tender." "Love Me Tender." "There you are." "Rich." "Rich." "You can be as rough as you like!" "LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE" "Excellent." "You and me are gonna have a symposium!" "as does Bremen." "What are you most likely to see thrown at the end of a Greek meal?" "Plates." "Oh!" "KLAXON BLARES for health and safety reasons." "one didn't." "Camden." "plate throwing or not?" "You sit in the quiet one and about half ten you could hear them kick off." "fantastic!" "Get through a new set every night." "They're mainly seconds." "I think you're right." "Not the best." "it tends to be..." "CLIVE:" "Rice." "you can't be sued." "Women." "LAUGHTER" "I don't know where to begin with that one!" "obviously." "The seconds." "Bless you." "Heaven bless this child." "Women come from miles to be thrown around a restaurant." "Even the women were smashed." "Is it confetti or rice...?" "Flowers." "Phill." "I bet the old Greek men hate that. but looked like a proper blue plaque they have in London." "when Greece won the European Championship..." "Angelos or something." "..ran naked down the New North Road." Fabulous!" "Returning to traditions of Ancient Greece!" "Completes our circle!" "Gymnossed down the New North Road." "That's very pleasing." "due to health and safety gone MAD they make less mess." "the scores." "But we should do this the Athenian way." "LAUGHTER We should offer Alan the chance..." "I can say that Alan is coming last." "It's one of my best features." "LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE" "You mean when you're bringing up the rear?" "Very Greek!" "Who would you like to swap with?" "The audience." "That's very good." "LAUGHTER" "The audience are doing rather well." "They haven't had any forfeits." "I'll allow you to swap if you will tell me what it was that got the audience their ten points." "no help!" "Argh!" "Of course you do." "it was the thing about the..." "No." "LAUGHTER" "I'm going to be really upset tonight." "LAUGHTER four... zero." "three." "ALL:" "Oscar Deutsch." "Oscar Deutsch." "The Odeon." "I'm afraid you have to keep your score." "Clive Anderson with three points." "CHEERS AND APPLAUSE" "Rich Hall." "APPLAUSE" "Phill Jupitus." "APPLAUSE" "Alan Davies." "WHISTLES AND APPLAUSE" "The real winner is the audience with their Oscar Deutsch ten points." "Alan and me." "there's a story of a Greek and an Italian having an argument over who had the superior culture." ""We have the Parthenon." ""We have the Colosseum." "We gave birth to advanced mathematics." "says the Italian." ""But we built the Roman Empire." "he says." ""But we thought of having it with women." Good night." "LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE" "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd"