"Hello, hello, hello, and welcome." "Welcome to another happy half hour at the pub quiz from hell." "I'm mine host, of course, and here's your round." "A small dry white one." "A large one." "Is this your Carr sir?" "And of course, I'll be having my usual." "Welcome to the Four Bells, gentlemen." "John goes:" "Jimmy goes:" "Phill goes:" "And Alan goes:" "Ah, very good." "Oh, yes." "Now would you do, or what should you do, if a bird knocks over your dominoes?" "This actually happened." " Oh, you know this?" " Yeah." " Tell." "A bird flew in and knocked over some dominoes!" "It was, er..." "I think it was in Holland, and there were about twenty thousand of them." "You're abs—..." "That is fantastic." "There were twenty three thousand, and it was in Holland, absolutely right." "It was one little house sparrow flew into the Frisian Conference Centre" " Went like that." " in Leeuwarden." "And he knocked..." "It would have been more, because they were going for a world record." "It was Domino Day 2005." "And they were going for five million, but he knocked over only twenty three thousand because they'd left gaps." "You can't imagine that the Dutch would have been bothered, though." ""Oh, sure a bird has knocked over our dominoes, never mind." "Let us go to the Anne Frank Museum."" "Well, in fact, what they did is, they called for one Duke Faunabeheer, who came in with a net and tried to trap the bird, because they were terrified it was still in the building;" "it was going to knock over more." "And bizarrely, "Faunabeheer" means "animal manager" in Dutch." ""Fauna" is fauna and "beheer" means a manager." "Anyway, er, he tried and tried and tried, and then he shot it." "And he was fined two hundred Euros for the crime of killing a member of an endangered species, the house sparrow." "I've had some bird problems recently." "I..." "I have..." "Pigeons have suddenly decided to live on my balcony in great quantities, with nests and feathers and shit everywhere." "It was like Jackson Pollock had been doing it all." "And I went to see somebody about it and he said, "Oh, you know what you need?" "You need a kestrel."" "And also at the time, John was hosting a massive domino party, so... kestrel on the arm." " "Fly, my pretty."" " You could pull it off though, couldn't you?" " A kestrel?" "I mean I'm sure he'd love it, but..." " Oh, ho ho ho." ""You, you're barred!"" "Well, amazingly, the Dutch Animal Rights people got very, very upset about the death of this one sparrow, and this year they are actually opening a special house sparrow display, and the stuffed dead sparrow will star." " Is that up against the Anne Frank house?" " It is." "Because I don't think it's as bad." "That's a more plausible image of the Nazis creeping into Anne Frank's house and she knocks the dominoes over... and suddenly the... up in the loft." ""Vot is happening?" "Let's go to the loft, I hear a domino."" "These Nazis." "Funny accent." "I know." "I've never met any;" "I've only ever seen 'Allo 'Allo!" ", so I've not got a lot to base it on." "Er, we can move on." "Anyone fancy a game of "arrers", while we're in the pub?" "On the oche, then:" "What begins with "D" and is something you always see the players doing in darts matches?" " Johnny." " Er, dangly wrist." " Dangly wrist?" " The... the great darts player always before they wobble their stomach, they... they..." "they do this with their wrist..." "I'm sorry." "It's an unfortunate." "What kind of pubs have you been playing darts in?" " "Oh, hello."" " Yes." "They're very nice if that happens." "You can't do that..." "No, Jimmy, no." "It's 2006!" "We can't be doing "hello ducky," can we?" "Is there some word that they use that means "throwing the dart"?" " Or is it "darting"?" " Well, what you've done is you've cleverly avoided our trap, which was "drinking"." "Because that's what they don't do." "It's actually against the rules of competition darts to drink during a game of darts." "When they first televised it, they would drink quite a lot while they were playing." "Then the game fell into decline and it was that fell whore, Comedy, that was responsible." "Darting." ""You join us during the final stages of this truly titanic struggle between Dai Fat-Belly-Gut-Bucket, and the English champion Tommy Even-Fatter-Belly Belcher." "And it's game on." "And it's a good start." "Double vodka." "Single pint." "Another double vodka." " One hundred milligrams!" " One hundred milligrams."" "This was such a problem, this sketch, apparently, for the public perception of darts, that it fell into decline and became regarded as the slobby game for drunkards" "You know in Holland, they play it in schools." "Well, they have the great Raymond Van Barneveld, who's won the darts many times." "I remember the commentator saying, "He's quite a man, he is." "In his spare time he studies the universe."" " Who's the famous darts commentator, do you remember?" " Sid Waddell." " Sid Waddell." " Who has a double first at history, something like that?" "He certainly read history at Cambridge University, and has said some famous and extraordinary things in his time." ""There's only one word for that: magic darts."" ""That's the greatest comeback since Lazarus," is one." ""Alexander the Great conquered the world at thirty-three." "Eric Bristow is only thirty-two."" "Absolutely." "He actually was slightly more poetic." ""When Alexander of Macedon was thirty-three, he cried salt tears that there were no more worlds to conquer." "Eric Bristow is only twenty-seven!"" "And then you have the rather odd one:" ""He's as happy as a penguin in a microwave."" "But there are other things you're not allowed to do in darts." "You're not allowed to wear a hat." "Unless you are...?" " Yes?" " A bishop." " You're in..." "You're in a rightish kind of area;" "it's a religious reason." " Sikh." ""A Sikh" is the right answer." " Help yourself to a point or two." " But is a Sikh a hat?" " A Sikh isn't a hat; he's a..." " I know it isn't, but..." " No, but is a turban a hat?" " I can see you've been trying to wear Sikhs, haven't you?" "The least..." "Read more about this, er, phenomenon in the book" ""The Man Who Turned an Eastern Religion Into a Hat."." " Er, no, a turban isn't a hat, officially, I suppose; not really a hat." " No." "It's a headjoy of one kind or another." "Now, what do these people have in common?" "Oscar Wilde." "Ernest Hemingway." "Picasso." "Van Gogh." "Toulouse Lautrec." "Degas." "Manet." "Strindberg." "Baudelaire." "Rimbaud." "Verlaine." "Kylie Minogue." " Go on with you." " Darts fans!" "It's..." "It's possible." "A lot of these people collected in one place." " Is it something to do with Paris?" "Houses in Paris?" "I dunno." " It's associated with Paris in a particular epoch." "The whole bohemian world of Paris artists." "I..." "I take your point, but the Minogue is throwing us a little." "Yes." "Nicole Kidman looked a bit like her in Moulin Rouge!" " She was in Moulin Rouge!" ", though, Kylie." " Was she?" "Oh, how embarrassing." "Yes, she played a sort of symbolic role." " She was the windmill." " No." " What does "moulin rouge" mean?" " Red windmill." "It means "red windmill", moulin rouge." "And she played something green." "The Green Fairy." "Does that help you?" " What is the Green Fairy?" " Absinthe!" " Absinthe, take a point or two." " Oh, there we are." "Yeah." "La fee verte is the French nickname for absinthe." " What do we know about absinthe, anyway?" " It drives you completely crackers, and that's why most of the great French symbolist poets went barking on it." "Yes, and a lot of the artists, and that's a Toulouse Lautrec with the green glass in the foreground, there." "I had some in a bar in Manchester, and they made it over a hot spoon." " Yes, they do it over a hot spoon with sugar, melting sugar, don't they?" " Yeah." "And it was trannie night." "But do you know what makes it..." "And I enjoyed it much more after the absinthe than before." "As..." "What was it Ernest Dowson said?" ""Absinthe makes the tart grow fonder."" "It does make you go a little bit flighty and a bit giddy." "It does, and do you know what the ingredient is that makes it do that?" " Heroin!" " No, it's not heroin." "Is it mint?" "Probably the mint is very fresh and it sort of clears the sinuses and you go fucking mental." "It's a..." "It's a plant, whose Latin name is artemisia, but it's better known by the good biblical name of wormwood." "And the word "vermouth" is the same cognate." ""Verm", being as in "vermicelli", being a worm." " Worm." " Well, obviously, yes." "Erm, and so, erm, it was in the eighteenth century that a man called Doctor Ordinaire, rather bizarrely, first patented a drink using aniseed, then this thing... and copper sulphate is a colour, which is not very good for you, to make it even greener." "And he had a cousin who really made a fortune on it, until it was banned by the French in 1915." "I wonder if you can guess the cousin's name." "It's a very famous name amongst drinks in France," " Pernot." " "Pernot" is the right answer." " But what happened is they banned it in 1915..." " Yeah." "and then in 1926, after applying vigorously, Monsieur Ricard, and Monsieur Pernot, and the other, er, makers of what had been the dangerous absinthe said," ""Can we make it, but this time without the wormwood and just make an aniseed spirituous liquor?"" "and they said, "Oh, all right." And that is now the staple that we drink" " in Parisian cafes and whatnot." " Pastis." "Pastis." "So yes, that's your absinthe." "It was banned in Belgium first in 1905 and then in Switzerland in 1912, but when was it banned in Britain?" " 1897" " No." " I don't think it ever..." "Has it ever been banned?" " You're getting points all the way along the line, Mr Davies." "It's quite right." "Never been banned in Britain." " I just thnk people didn't really like it." " Always been legal." "No, it never caught on." "Are you familiar with the phrase the "Great Binge"?" "My fortieth birthday." "It's a term cultural and social historians give to the period 1870 to 1914." "Absinthe was sweeping Europe." "Your fizzy drink had cocaine in it;" "your throat pastels had heroin in them;" "there's morphine available as a gel." "All of them from the local corner shop." " Sorry, go back to the throat pastels." " Yes." " That sounds fantastic." " Yes." ""I've got a little bit of a tickle." "Have you?"" " "Have some heroin!" - "Done."" "Harrods." "Let me tell you about Harrods." "They had a... a kit which they described as "a welcome present for friends at the front", to be sent to soldiers in the trenches, containing cocaine, morphine, syringes, and needles." "Of course, the... the famous thing about heroin is the fact it's a brand name, isn't it?" "Well done." "I was going to ask that very question." "Do you know who held it?" "It was the..." "Heroin Company." "No." "It was Bayer's, spelled B-A-Y-E-R, who also patented aspirin." "I mean, in 1898, there were a quarter of a million heroin addicts in the USA, which is twice as many per head of population as there are now." "So, I mean, it really was the "Great Binge"." "Animals tests had "proven" heroin to be "one hundred percent non-addictive"." "Er, the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal wrote in 1900," ""It possesses many advantages over morphine." "It's not hypnotic and there's no danger of acquiring a habit."" "Absinthe, anyway, absinthe..." "Painted by Picasso, Degas," "Manet, and Toulouse Lautrec;" "copiously consumed by all the rest;" "except for Kylie Minogue, who as you pointed out, played the character Absinthe, or The Green Fairy, in the film Moulin Rouge!" "Now, what's a Vomit Comet?" "Is it a new alcoholic snooker player?" " No, it isn't." " Or is it a branch of electrical retailers in Slough?" "Very good." "And thank you." "It you..." "If you don't feel very well in space and you throw up out of the window." "You started so well." "And then..." "And then you suggested the idea of a window that you could open in a space capsule and..." "Well, I'm assuming..." "I'm assuming there'd be an air lock." "Or maybe you'd just have your own helmet and then vomit out of it." " It's a plane that they train astronauts in." " You're absolutely right, Phill Jupitus, help yourself to some points." "They go up, and they float about, and they throw up and they bring them down again" " Exactly right." "It's a..." " covered in their own business." "It's..." "Exactly right." "Well done." "It's a... a military-spec 707 and it does parabola flights;" " it does about thirty or forty in... in a... in a mission." " They..." "They shot about twenty minutes of footage for Apollo 13 in it, but they could only do it in sixty-second chunks, because that's as much as you're allowed to be weightless" " before they have to bring you back down." " You're absolutely right." " It's actually even less than sixty seconds." " Yeah?" " Yeah, it's about forty seconds." "It must be padded." "Well, you don't need it to be, because you don't really hit it with any force when you're weightless." "But I guess..." "Well, I imagine when you stop being weightless..." " It..." "It comes back slowly." " ...is your problem." " You go from..." " And it's also covered in sick." " You go from zero g..." "Interesting point from a personal point of view:" "If you weigh a lot, are you more weightless?" "We have the very interesting physical question of the difference between "mass" and "weight"." "Weight is a phenomenon that doesn't exist, except by virtue of gravity, because we live in one g." "Tell that to society, Fry!" "Yeah." "Fatness, on the other hand, is a completely different issue, and it doesn't alter..." "I have..." "I can do that!" "It doesn't alter whether you're weightless or not." "So if we went into space in a spaceship, quite a large spaceship, and you had a mouse and an elephant..." "They would both weigh the same, because they would both weigh zero." " Would they both become weightless at the same time?" " Yeah." "Or would the mouse lift off quicker and then taunt the elephant?" "Well, anyway, you're absolutely right about the Vomit Comet." "And it was used to train astronauts in weightlessness, 'cause about a third of them would get incredibly sick, about a third moderately, and a third not at all." "But supposedly it was the anxiety rather than the actual experience that made them sick." "So, what do you know about the "Great Stink"?" " Johnny.?" " In 1858..." " Yes?" " Parliament in this country was trying to be held and the smell of crap, coming from the Thames was so appalling," " that they tried to get 'round it by hanging curtains dipped in lime" " That's right." "but it was still "pretty terrible, as you can imagine"." "And, erm, so then they had to turn to the man, whose descendants eventually invented Big Brother," " Bazalgette." " The "Great Stink" was in 1858." " Yeah." " I'd like to have been in Parliament that day." "Wouldn't it have been great?" " Yes." ""And I put it to the Honourable Member that he who smelt it... dealt it."" "What?" "Oh, no." "Oh, dear." "And of course there was no sewage system in 1858 to speak of." "They used the underground rivers the fleets and so on and the turds built up." "There had been three huge cholera epidemics." "One percent of all the population of London had been killed in cholera, I mean..." "Is cholera a smelly thing?" "No, but it goes where smell is, and that's the point." "At the time, everybody believed, even the most senior doctors believed, that disease was spread by smell." " I still think that." " Well, indeed, a lot of people do, because so often where there is something terrible like typhoid or cholera, there is also an awful smell, 'cause let's face it, these are faecally-bourn diseases," " and it's when shit gets into water and people drink the water that they get typhoid or cholera." " Oh, really." "People smell it... and of course they had no microscopic evidence of the fact that there were parasites or bacilli or germs of any kind, so they naturally thought, "This is causing a terrible smell." "So to get rid of the smell, we will have sewers that take everything away underground,"" "which is the greatest sewage system that had ever been built, in London, miles, thousands of miles of drains." "The embankment was built: there, in front of us, and next to this studio." "Putney Bridge, and many other bridges, and huge pumping stations;" "vast areas of London." "It was the biggest civil engineering job ever undertaken by this man Joseph Bazalgette, whose great great-grandson, oddly enough, now runs Endemol and is busy pumping shit back into our homes, but, erm, that's another matter, erm..." "So anyway, we've had the "Great Binge", the "Great Stink";" "what's the Great Drink, specifically in "Burnley, Lancashire"?" "Rohypnol and Coke?" "Whoo!" "So that's Slough and Burnley off the list." "Erm..." "Is it Yorkshireman's blood?" "Whippet piss?" "It is a really, really bizarre answer." "If you don't know this, you'll be astonished." "This place drinks more of this particular drink than anywhere else in the world, but it's not a British drink." "It's because of..." "The East Lancashire Regiment in the Second World War was stationed in a particular part of the world where they developed a taste for this drink and they brought it back home to Burnley." "It's a liqueur." " Is it?" " Is it Caruso?" " It's not Caruso." " Cointreau." " It's not Cointreau." " Is it Baileys?" " It's not..." "No..." " They love a Baileys." " They..." "I think that's slappers in Chigwell really, and this is a... erm..." " How very dare you?" " Oh, I'm sorry, you're from Chigwell!" "I'm sorry." "I do apologise." "No, the Burnley Miners' Working Men's Club gets through a third of the number of bottles sold in the entire country." " Just the Working Mens' Blub." " Kahlua?" "It's not Kahlua." "It's..." "It's..." "It's sort of rather more sophisticated, really." " Chartreuse." " It's..." "That's the right area." "It's..." "It's a..." " Strega." " No, Chartreuse is brewed by monks, and this is brewed by monks, too." " Any offers, anyone?" " Benedictine." "Benedictine, from the audience, is the right answer!" "A Benedictine." "There it is." "Isn't that extraordinary?" "And it's genuinely true. "Burnley" drinks more than any other place in the world." "They did seem to be drinking pints with froth." "Yeah, it was... it was a latte Benedictine." ""Oh, we've got a Body Shop in The Parade now, you know." "Oh, yes."" ""I'll have a Benedicticcato!"" "Now what did Dora do, er, with invisible ink and binoculars?" " "Are we dealing with the Defence of the Realm Act?"" " You are." " "DORA", in this instance, is the Defence of the Realm Act." " Right, so..." "And what did the Defence of the Realm Act do with invisible ink and binoculars?" " Did it ban them?" " It banned them." "I think you share the points." "Very good." "Absolutely right." "The thing about banning invisible ink, is..." " difficult to follow through with that, isn't it?" " You've put your finger on a problem, absolutely." "1915, the year that the French banned absinthe, was the year of DORA." "But what did it introduce, which is rather fitting to our theme here this evening?" " Oh, the licencing laws." " Licencing laws, yeah." " The licence..." "You're doing well;" "points piling up there with you," "Phill Jupitus." "Absolutely right." "Introduced licencing hours." "Why?" " Shift workers." " Yes." " Yeah, to get more productivity out of the workers." "In the Second World War, they..." "they had to get Veronica Lake to get a hair cut, because the ladies who had to work in the factories while the chaps were away getting blown to bits" " were mimicking her hair cut and getting caught in the machinery." " Ooh." "Nasty." " You know, she used to have her hair over one eye like that." " She did, that wonderful blonde wave that... rippling..." "She was very fit." "She was well-fitted." "Well, partly the wob eye." "It was down to the eye, but... but anyway, all the girls thought, "Oh, I'd like to be like Veronica Lake,"" "so they had their hair like that, and then they'd lean over and go..." "You're in danger of that happening to yourself, Alan, I have to say." "That's one of the reasons why I don't work in a munitions factory!" "It's all beginning to make sense!" "Yes, they also brought in British Summer Time with DORA." "They came up with summer." "That's brilliant." ""They came up with summer!" And..." " I thought we weren't doing that." " That..." "That was different!" "Bonfires, fireworks, flagpoles, campanology..." " they were all banned." " Campanology?" " Bell ringing." " Oh, I thought it was that again." "Hang on, there's no need to try and arouse us during this!" "So that was DORA." "It's an interesting example of how governments use emergency measures permanently to undermine civil liberties." "Thank God that kind of thing doesn't happen here any more." "And now it must be time..." "It is time, ladies and gentlemen, for our late night lock-in that we call General Ignorance." "So fingers on buzzers, please." "What's a vomitorium for?" " Yes, Johnny?" " It's a..." "In..." "In a theatre," " there's shafts coming up onto the stage..." " Oh, he's too goodl He's too good." "You're quite right, yes." "Is it not the room where they test Ginsters pasties?" "I can't believe I didn't get that right." "Is it London's least successful tourist destination?" "It's just next to the planetarium." ""The Vomitorium." Very good." "No, it is indeed the exits in certain theatres." "Chichester theatre... the Sheffield Crucible, and of course, the Colosseum in Rome" " had the most famous." " Yeah." "But, mistakenly, people think it's a room that Romans set aside for vomiting after eating too heavily, and that's erroneous; it's just not true." "Aldous Huxley probably compounded the felony in 1923 when he wrote about them as having these rooms called vomitoria, but the Oxford Dictionary is very harsh on him." "Now, what's the single largest man-made structure on the face of the planet?" "Blue whale." "It's usually a good one to get a..." "No." "Not a blue whale." "Man-made structure." "Holland." "I mean, in many ways Holland is man-made, isn't it?" "Well, a lot of it is, the side bit." "The polderlands and so on; it's not a single structure, though, is it?" "Really." "What about a really, really, really deep drill?" "You know, when they drill about three miles down." "That would be big, but..." "but it's quite narrow, really." " Yay?" " An extended Great Wall of China." "Oh, there you are." "Great Wall of China." " I've got an interesting fact about that." " Yes, go on." "Longest wall in the world; not one cash point." "Is it in the... the Middle East?" " No, amazingly, I'll tell you where it is is:" "Staten Island." " Staten Island?" "I bet there's a Fathers For Justice bloke at the top, isn't there?" "If there is, in common with much of our theme of this evening, he will be holding his nose." " Is it a landfill?" " It's a landfill, absolutely right!" "It's a landfill on Staten Island called the "Fresh Kills"." " That's a small part of it." "It covers..." " Do you know, it doesn't get the tourists it deserves." "It was closed in 2001; the residents were beginning not to enjoy it very much." "Er..." "The residents?" "Quite." "The residents on Staten Island, I should say, rather than the landfill." "They..." "They found it completely impossible to play dominoes on." "Too many birds." "But in 2001, its peak was twenty-five metres higher than the top of the Statue of Liberty." "It was re-opened in order to deal with the debris of the twin towers, and then closed again." "Not really filling the land if it's piled on top of it, is it?" "Well, no, at the moment they're in..." "they're in the business of making it a..." " a parkland and wildlife facility." " Of course." "Of course." "It's going to be like that episode of The Simpsons where it all leaked and kind of bursts out." "Do you remember?" " They tried to hammer it down." " Don't they give off quite a lot of power, landfills?" "Because the..." "lots of methane gas comes up, and they burn it, and it works as a power source." "And there's much methane trapped in old ones that they're very worried about." "They sometimes have landfill explosions, don't they?" "Which I think they should keep." "They should turn it into land for ramblers and then let them take their chances." "It's sort of natural selection." "Anyway, what should you not drink if you're dehydrated?" " Jimmy Carr?" " Jacob's Crackers." "You could blend them up with a little flower top." "Ooh, refreshing." " What..." "What liquids shouldn't you drink?" " Seawater." ""Seawater" is the right answer, yes." "Anything else?" " You shouldn't drink seawater?" " Yeah." "Booze, mustn't drink booze." "Sorry." "No, er, we've got a rather cross expert, the dietician here from St George's Hospital, London," " Chief Dietician Catherine Collins." "She says..." " Can I get that name again?" "Yeah, absolutely." "She'd love to see you." "Erm, "What people need to remember is that fluid is a general item and doesn't refer solely to water." "Tea, coffee, squash, and milk for children are perfectly good fluid replacers." "A lot of nonsense is spoken about water being the best way to hydrate."" " Sorry, "tea... tea, coffee" for children?" " Yeah!" " She's a dietician, is she?" " "Tea, coffee, squash, and milk for children"." "And yes, apparently, a... a bit of beer's fine." "And coffee would be fine." " People think, "Oh, it must be water;" "I can't have coffee 'cause it's a slight diuretic with caffeine in it"." " Yes." "but you lose far less than you get from the actual liquid in the coffee." "But what effect does alcohol have on your brain cells, anybody?" "It makes me go mental." "What it certainly doesn't do, which you might have said," " was "destroy or kill them"." " Right." "But it doesn't; there's no evidence at all." "Studies of alcoholics and non-alcoholics" " show the same number of brain cells." " Virtually everything else does kill your brain cells, doesn't it?" "Soap operas." "What are the beer goggles?" "What is the Latin term?" " Beer goggles?" " Yeah." " What are they?" " When you've got the beer goggles on, it's when you really fancy someone who normally you wouldn't fancy." "So you would refer to someone as a "seven-pinter"." "Stephen doesn't have beer goggles;" "he has Madeira pince-nez!" "I imagine, with Stephen, it would be..." ""Oh, you're a cracker!" "More Madeira?" "A small sherry?"" "A sherry monocle." ""Oh, you've got the sherry monocle in."" "You're all rotters and I hate you!" "Anyway, er, I think it must be time to settle up." "Last of all on this melancholy evening..." "We won't say last, we'll call you the designated loser." " Erm, it's Phill, with minus fifteen, ladies and gentlemen." " Oh." "But you did well!" " In third place, with minus three, John Sessions." " In second place, with plus two milligrams, is Jimmy Carr, ladies and gentlemen." " Oh, thanks." "Two." "What can this mean?" "It can only mean that tonight's runaway winner, with ten points, is Alan Davies!" "Wo-ow!" "Oh." "I'm so proud of you." "Cheers." "That is a fantastic result." "And with that bombshell, it's time for me to leave this "D for Drinks" edition." "with a little advice from Rodney D-d-d-d-dangerfield." "Don't do it." "He said, "I drink too much." "The last time I gave a urine sample, it had an olive in it." See you next week." "Bye-bye."