"(applause)" "Hello and welcome to QI, where fools rush in and angels suddenly remember they have a prior engagement." "Tonight I'm delighted to welcome four people who make the three wise monkeys look like they might have been a better bet, quite honestly." "They are Rich Hall, Julia Morris," " Peter Serafinowicz and Alan Davies." " (applause)" "And unlike the aforementioned monkeys, all our contestants are willing and able to make a noise." " Rich goes..." " (doorbell) ...Julia goes..." " (train toots) ...Peter goes..." " (express train whistles) ...and Alan goes..." " (elephant trumpets)" "And I go like a belt-fed mortar." "Now, the rules are simple." "Points are given and points are taken away." "They're taken away for answers that are both obvious and wrong, and they're given not so much for being correct as for being interesting." "Their level of interestingness is impartially determined by a demographically selected customer-service focus consultancy," "Broken down by age and sex, i.e. Me." "Because there is no one more broken down by age and sex." "So, aviation, ladies and gentlemen." "In the words of John F Kennedy:" ""All men can fly, but, sadly, only in one direction."" "For those of you who are nervous of flying, here's something quite interesting." "Nobody really understands why aircraft stay up in the air." "There are five leading rival theories of aerodynamics, none of which precisely agrees with any other." "Fortunately, it doesn't really matter." "Automatic control systems on modern airliners are so sophisticated, it's said that by the year 2010, today's flight deck crew of three will be replaced by a single human pilot and a dog." "The job of the pilot will be to feed the dog." "The dog is there to bite the pilot if he tries to touch anything." "Fingers on the buzzers, please, to start this round on air travel." "So, who invented the aeroplane?" "(doorbell)" " It's Orville and Wilbur Wright." " Oh!" " I'm sorry to say..." " (alarm bells)" "I'm very sorry to say that that is the wrong answer." " (Peter) Is it the Wrong brothers?" " It's not the Wrong brothers." "Very good." "Thank you very much indeed." "No." "John Stringfellow of Chard in Somerset successfully flew the first engine-powered aeroplane in 1848." "It was a model aeroplane, but it went quite a long way." "The Wright brothers, from your lovely country of the United States of so on, they... they flew for less than 12 seconds - a journey that actually would have covered less than half the wingspan of a Boeing jumbo jet, Orville and Wilbur." "What about the hot-air balloon?" "Hot-air balloon, I think, is usually ceded to the Montgolfier brothers, isn't it?" " I'd think that would be before the plane." " It was." "It was in the 18th century, I believe." "Didn't the Chinese invent the hot-air balloon in six..." "Stop harping on about the Wrong brothers." "The Chinese invented a lot of things." "We may come to some of the Chinese inventions later." " (Alan) Darts." " Darts." " Football." " And, of course, china." " It sounds odd, but it's true." " Ceramics." "What struck me about your statement was that he was from a place called Chard." " (Stephen) Mm." "Chard." " Yeah." "That sounds like the kind of town you'd want to get away from in a plane." "Yes." "Yes, he did run away and he moved to the village of Badly Burned in Dorset." "Let's hear it for good old Stringfellow, then." "So, the next question is why would anyone have:" ""Mad, bad, fat, sad old git" on their luggage?" " Who wants to answer that?" "Yeah." " (doorbell)" " They would have a very dodgy travel agent." " A rude travel agent." "Who would have been trying to get them from Madrid via Baden-Baden." "Oh, so we've got MAD, BAD..." "Well, I have to give you five there for getting the thrust of it, because the answer is that they are all airport luggage codes." "Which means they would have recently, in fact, have visited Madrid, which is MAD," "Bossier City, Louisiana, which is BAD." "You're a Louisianan, aren't you?" " It's called Bossier City." " I beg its appalling and insignificant pardon." "They all talk like... (drawling) "Yeah, that's..." "Mm-hm, Bossier City, yeah."" ""Oh, yeah, that right." "Mm-hm." It's Cajun." "It's a very Cajun city." "It's hard to imagine someone from Bossier City becoming a professor of fine arts." " Oh, no." "You wouldn't see that." " Because it is an odd thing, but, I mean, if you wanted to talk about, you know, Watteau or Corbiere, or something... (drawling) Water." "Yeah, we could talk about water." "There are certain accents where you wouldn't believe someone, would you?" "You know:" "(drawling) "I think he was a fabulous painter." "His use of light was amazing."" "You know, you just wouldn't sort of buy it, would you?" "No, you wouldn't." "It's hard to have any credibility in the South, unless you do anything other than play a washboard with spoons." " Which is an art in itself." " (Stephen) Absolutely." "So we've got Fresno, California, is FAT, for some strange reason." " And Safford, Arizona, is SAD." "S-A-D." " (Julia) Aw." "(Stephen) Old Town, Maine, is OLD." "And Geita, Tanzania, is GIT." "There are almost 19,500 airports around the world, and every single one of them has one of these three-letter luggage appellations." "So the short code for Butler, Missouri, for example, is BUM." "Sioux City is SUX, and I hesitate to mention Fukuoka in Japan, but, well, I can mention it, because it's not what you think." "It's actually FUK." "Julia, what are Madonna's plans for the prettiest airport in the world?" "Oh, my God!" "The story is she goes to the airport, which is exciting in itself, and then she meets a baggage handler, and so she's the wealthy one, he's the poor one." "He thinks she's a bit cross." "She's just a bit grumpy the whole time." "Something happens and the airport is closed, and then they're just stranded together, like in the baggage section." "Then she falls in love with him and becomes his slave, then she decides she wants to redecorate the airport and make it the prettiest airport in the world." "And then it went straight to video, because Guy directed it." "But it's gonna be a lot of fun." "Guy, who, in his own way, I suppose, could be called a baggage handler." " Very much so." " (laughter and applause)" "Well, no." "I'll tell you the answer then." "She's about to buy it and shut it down." "Compton Abbas Airfield in Dorset." "It's high on the rolling grasslands of Cranborne Chase, an area of outstanding natural beauty, and it's Madonna's weekend place." "It'd be disturbing her view of shooting those birds and stuff that they shoot on weekends." "I think it's the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows," "I think, is putting her off her stroke." "We know what her..." "we know what her airline would be called." " "Like A Virgin Airways", wouldn't it?" " Oh!" "Sorry." "I'm just showing off that I've heard of a pop song and I'm very excited about it." "Good, so, moving on." "The largest aircraft carrier in the world is the USS Abraham Lincoln." "It has a deck area of four and a half acres, and is the world's largest vehicle of any kind." "What is the name of the world's smallest aircraft carrier?" " (doorbell)" " Oh, yes?" "Is it called the HMS?" "No." "Thank you." "You're trying to get your own back." "There's nothing clever about large aircraft carriers." "Nothing clever at all." "If you..." "Americans make things that are very, very big." "Which nation makes things that are very very small?" " Japanesie!" " Japanese, right." "Japanese." "Thank you, yes." "Japanese." "I apologise to everybody Japanese watching." " Any thoughts?" "It's..." " A bonsai carrier?" "(Stephen) It's sort of..." "If you like." "Tiny, tiny little bonsai carrier." "(Julia speaks Japanese)" "Well, that's got to be worth five points." "Can you tell us what that means?" "I said my name is Julia and I used to live on the northern island of Japan, called Hokkaido." " Very good indeed." "Very good." " I know." "Good milk." "Really good milk cos they've got really good grass up on the northern island of Japan." " The cows are getting no credit there at all." " I know." ""We're doing all the work here." "No, look, it's the grass." "Oh, please!"" " "Really, as if I'm not involved." - (Stephen) There's a little bit more to it." "But I always understood that the Japanese..." "One of the things they found most repulsive about us was that we smelt of dairy products." "Yeah." "We thought they smelt of fish and they thought we smelt of sour milk and sort of..." "We don't smell it in each other because we're so used to the smell of fermented curds." " Yeah, now I can see what you mean." " (Stephen) Yes, you see." "The smallest aircraft carrier in the world is actually the Mitsubishi Shogun, as it's known in this country." "Around the rest of the world it's the Pajero, except in Spain, where pajero means one who fiddles with himself for sexual pleasure." " He looks like a pajero in the seat up there." " (Stephen) He does." "Even as we speak, he's..." "He's going, "This joystick is incredibly close to my genitalia"." " (Stephen) Oh, dear." " (laughter)" " (Stephen) And..." " He'll never get out of there, will he?" "They'll have to get some butter in." "Then we'll have the last laugh." "He will smell of dairy products." "It doesn't float, but it has a twin engine." "It's a one-man, well, what they call a Cri-Cri stunt aircraft, and it can take off from its specially adapted roof by catapult." "It was first demonstrated by Tim Senior of the British - thank you " "AeroSuperBatics team in 1997." " "Superbatics"!" " (Stephen) Superbatics, yes." " Superbatics." "Better than any other batics." " (Stephen) Better than normal batics." "(Julia) Oh, yeah!" "(makes aeroplane noises)" "Now, lastly, was it a good idea for airlines to ban smoking?" " Yeah, it probably was." " (Stephen) Why would you say that?" "You know, it..." " They stunk up the place." " (Stephen) No, that's not true." "I suppose if you looked at it on paper, no." "They probably would be doing better financially if they hadn't banned smoking." "No, that's not true neither." "Well, what the (beep) do I know?" "I don't even know who invented the plane!" "I don't even know why you're talking to me." "I have nipples, Steve." "Can you milk me?" "Was it a bad idea?" "The question is, it was almost certainly a bad idea." "It was a lousy idea in fact, cos when smoking was allowed, the cabin air was completely replaced with fresh air every three minutes, and now the airlines save money." "They save up to 6% of their fuel bills" " using a mixture of fresh and recycled air." " And SARS." "Yeah, using under half the amount of fresh air needed for comfort, increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the cabin, causing dizziness and nausea and allowing viruses to thrive." "Passengers think that because they can't smell smoke, the air is fresher." "This is not so." "Apart from anything else, it has dramatically increased the number of air-rage incidents." "One of the earliest incidents of air rage involved a passenger in first class, probably trying to take his mind off cigarettes by drinking too much." "He was refused another drink, and so he decided to lodge his displeasure and shat on top of the food trolley." "So this is why I was a little sharp with you, Rich, because on a financial level they've actually made money." "So in that sense you might say, if you're a shareholder, it's a good idea." "But it's a bad idea because the health of the passengers suffers enormously as a result." "So let people smoke." "The air gets scrubbed much better, people are in a better mood all round, and everything is..." "Then your taste buds are shot so you can actually eat shit for food." "(Julia) You can." "So with all that in mind, I would urge you to follow this advice from Hermione Gingold on the subject of airline meals." ""Anything that's white is sweet, anything that's brown is meat, anything that's grey, don't eat." There we are." "(laughter and applause)" "QI makes the modest claim that even the dullest things can be quite interesting if looked at in the right way." "We take this challenge seriously enough to dedicate the next round to the apparently tedious subject of Alans." "And not only dull, but quite possibly obsolete." "Alan was the eighth most popular male name in England in 1944, but crashed..." "It crashed out of the top hundred four years ago and shows no sign of returning." "Is it because people have realised it's an anagram of "anal"?" "So, Alan, I should ask you, where do most of the world's Alans hang out?" "Live." " Where is Alan the most popular name?" " (Stephen) If you like, yes." "(Peter) A-land." " Yes." " Very good." " (Alan) A-land..." " That's worth five of somebody's points." "...called Alan." "I bought a CD the other day by someone called Alana Davis." " (Stephen) Oh, really?" " Just cos it looked a bit like my name." " Isn't that pathetic?" " There's Alanis Morissette, isn't there?" " I bought that as well." " Did you buy that one as well?" "Alan is Morris, ette." "Morris-ette, the tiny dancer." "Little hankies." "I would think..." ""Alan" means "rock"" "in Celtic mythology." " Very good." " And I think it's somewhere like Scotland." "Or Wales or Ireland or England." "No." "You would think that." "I'll give you..." "I'll give you some points for knowing Alan is a Breton Celtic word for a pebble or rock." " That is generally assumed to be true." " Rock, not a pebble." "Well..." " Possibly a boulder." "But not a pebble." " In my book of... in my book of meanings of dull Christian names, it says Alan." "It says Stephen means..." "Well, I think you'll find that when they invented the name Alan, it was a boulder, and over time, it might have worn down." "Perhaps now it's a little pebble." "But a beautiful pebble that would skim really well across a flat surface." "I'll tell you the answer." "You do get your points though, I think, for knowing that Alan means rock or pebble." "You'll actually find most of them not in any Celtic country, but on the Russian border, in the northern Caucasus mountains, where the Alan tribe have lived since being driven there by the Huns in the 4th century." " The Alans..." " That was a bad weekend." "We still talk about that." " Alan Coren, Alan Bennett and Alan Parsons." " All of us." "We get together." "We conference call." "And if someone mentions the Huns, quite often there's a lull in the conversation and we have to gather ourselves." "Of course, the Alans were master horsemen who introduced the idea of chivalry to Europe and may have inspired the stories of King Arthur and his knights." "The great Pliny the Elder, however, takes..." "Pliny the Elder, who I know is a source of constant mental nourishment to you, Alan." "He takes a very..." "a very different view, firmly telling us that Alans are a race of bastard degenerates." "(applause)" " He doesn't know anything at all." " (Stephen) No." " Is he the Roman one?" " But I have to come clean myself." "If Alans are going to be attacked, I will be in the queue being herded onto the trains too because my father is an Alan." " Is he?" " So there's a little bit of Alan in me." " Is there any Alan in you?" " No, no." "Do you want some?" "My name means..." "It's Rich." "(Stephen) It means wealthy, opulent, with money, plutocratic." " No." " (Stephen) Doesn't Rich mean that?" " No." "No, it doesn't at all, Steve." " OK." "It means aquarium gravel." " My name, Peter, means rock." " (Stephen) It certainly does." "The rock upon which the church of our Lord and Saviour was built." " (Alan) How can all these names mean rock?" " (laughter)" "When human beings first arose, there wasn't much to name things after." "There was big rock, little rock, middle rock, pebble, grit." "So, but this is quite interesting, I think, and I think this is right, but you know you were saying Alan means rock or pebble, and there are two other words I can think of that mean that - that mean pebble " "calculus, I think, means literally pebble." " And pessary as well, I think, means pebble." " Who are you that you know that?" " Well, calculus is..." "Yes, because..." " Calculus is adding with pebbles." "Yes." "They used pebbles on abacuses and in ways of counting, black and white pebbles." "See, we're only 200 years old in my country." "We missed out on a lot of that stuff." "I did mention that they were also described by Pliny as a race of bastard degenerates, and Edgar Allan Poe, well, he's an example really." "He married his 13-year-old cousin, he indulged in drinking sprees that make Liam Gallagher look like Ned Flanders, and he died literally in a gutter in Baltimore in 1849." "Yet, he was also, of course, like so many Alans, a truly prophetic genius." "Two years before he died, he wrote a long prose poem called "Eureka", which anticipated one of the great discoveries of the 20th century by 80 years." "What was it?" "He married his 13-year-old cousin and he lived a life of drinking." " (Stephen) Yeah." " So he predicted Jerry Lee Lewis's career." "(laughter and applause)" " (Alan) He foresaw it in a prose poem." " (Stephen) He foresaw it in a poem." "Called "Great Balls of Fire", or, "Goodness Gracious"." " Stick to "Great Balls of Fire"." "That's what..." " A meteor." " His theory..." " (Alan) Cigarettes." " What's the theory?" "The theory?" " (Julia) Relativity." " The big bang." " (Stephen) The big bang." "Thank you." " I'll give you a point." "Well done." " (applause)" "Edgar Allan Poe believed that all matter had once been concentrated into a single particle which then expanded to fill space - a theory not accepted by science until 1931." ""Eureka", his prose poem, goes on to predict the general theory of relativity, parallel universes, and the structure of the atom." "Pretty good going for a poem that doesn't even rhyme." "You know the word rhyme?" "There's no word that actually rhymes with the word rhyme." " (Alan) Lime." " (Julia) Time." "Apart from those two." " Slime." " Three." " Grime." " (Rich) Orange." "You know, if I was a Cajun man, I'd say, "Orange and dorange"." "(Stephen) What would they mean by dorange?" " Door hinge." " Door hinge!" "(laughter)" "(applause)" "Definitely two points for you." "Now, young girls and the expanding universe are also famous obsessions of Allen Stewart Konigsberg." " Or better known as Woody Allen." " Woody Allen." "Yes, Woody Allen." "Well done." "Half a point for knowing Woody Allen's real name." " (Alan) A tiny fragment of a point." " (Stephen) Yeah, a fragment." "A pebble." "A little pebble." "An Alan of a point." "But Woody Allen is by no means the Alan with the worst reputation in Hollywood." "Who is, Rich, would you say?" "The Alan with the worst reputation in Hollywood." "It's Alan "Big Al" Allinson, who was so taken by his Celtic Breton background that he killed a lot of people with rocks." "No." "Would it help if I told you his name?" " (Peter) I think I know what it is." " Yeah?" " Is it Alan Smithee?" " Yes!" "Oh!" "Ten points to you." " Well done." "Absolutely right." "Very good." " What's he done?" "(Stephen) Peter, explain." "Well, I think this is what it is." "When a director directs a film, and, like, say if the studio interfere and they re-edit it and the director disowns the film, they can choose to put Alan Smithee instead of their real name." " Absolutely right." "Absolutely right." "Yes." " (applause)" "Alan Smithee is the name used when directors disown a film, either because they've lost control of the final cut, or it's simply too awful to admit to." "Smithee's oeuvre include such classics as Hobgoblins II," "Boggy Creek III, Hellraiser IV and, most famously, Dune, where he codirected with David Lynch." "So, very well done." "How did you know about that?" "You just knew?" "I..." "Well, Tony Kaye did that - tried to do that." " (Stephen) With American History X." " Yeah." "And I never saw American History X because I didn't see any of the first nine, you know, so..." "Oh, you literate fellow." "Now, The Boy on a Dolphin isn't a Smithee film," " but it did star the very short matinee idol..." " (elephant trumpets)" " Alan Ladd." " (Stephen) Yes." "Another half point to take you up to a full one point for your two splendid intrusions." " Sophia Loren was in it." "I've actually seen it." " Very good." "And what can you tell me about the making of the film that's quite interesting?" "(laughter)" " There's no actual dolphins or boys." " (Stephen) No, it's..." "He's really short." "Stands on a box." "Or she..." "They had to dig a trench for her." "Five to you." "She had to stand and walk about in a trench." "The interesting thing about Alan Ladd was he was only, like, four foot three, but it was all his legs that were short." "Like, his trunk was normal." " Sat down, he was taller than most people." " Is that true?" "Good heavens." "But when he stood, yeah, they had to put him on a little apple crate." "I never know with you." "That's what's so worrying." " No, it's absolutely true." " (laughter)" "Alan Ladd was to recall working with Sophia Loren in Boy on a Dolphin, that "Working with her was like being bombarded by watermelons"." " Ha!" " (Stephen) Exactly." "Thank you." "For the sake of our audience who hadn't quite got that image, thank you for it." "As Woody Allen - Mr Konigsberg - once pointed out:" ""Sex between a man and a woman can be wonderful, provided you get between the right man and the right woman"." "Now, lastly on the subject of Alans, what would you do with a pair of Alans?" "Australians should know this because it's one of the particular ways of speaking" "Australia shares with Britain, or particularly with London." " Alan Whickers." " Alan Whickers." "Knickers." "There you are." "Oh, we haven't heard that one, cos we call them Reg Grundies - undies." "Oh, there you are, you see." "Perfect." "Here's a quite interesting thing about rhyming slang." "I heard someone in a London market talking and saying, "I'm not Listerine." And I said to him, "What do you mean, Listerine?"" "And Listerine is an example of a sort of..." "a rhyming slang that's moved on one, because an American in rhyming slang is often called a septic, short for septic tank." "Yank." "Which you've probably heard." "So if you don't like Americans, you are antiseptic." "And if you're antiseptic, you're Listerine." " (Julia) Oh, I like it!" " (Stephen) See?" "Listerine." "There you are." "So, in the same way, while we're on the subject, you can have a rubber Gregory." " (Julia) I love it." " Do you know what it is?" "A peck." "Gregory Peck?" "Rubber neck." "That would work as a rubber neck." "It's a cheque that bounces." "A Gregory Peck is a cheque and so if your cheque bounces - in other words, returned by the bank - it's a rubber... (Cockney accent) "He gave me a rubber Gregory."" "Do you like my earthy street London accent there?" " He sounds like such an idiot." " Yeah." "There we are, ladies and gentlemen." "In the right hands, even a meaningless two-syllable name can be made as frisky as a gay ferret in a pink blender." "I leave you with one last Alan." "Alan Bennett, who when asked if he was gay, replied wearily:" "(as Alan Bennett) "That's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water"." "(laughter and applause)" "Our final round, ladies and gentlemen, as ever, is a dazzlingly dispiriting display of general ignorance." "Fingers hovering over your mushroomoid-style buzzers now, please, and let's see if we can give Alan a run for his money." "So, question one, who was the first man to circumnavigate the globe?" "(doorbell)" " Magellan." " Magellan!" " Oh, dear!" "Oh!" " (alarm bells)" " What have I done?" " Magellan is the howler, I'm afraid." "I'm sorry." " What do you mean, no?" "Ring him." " No, he wasn't." "He wasn't the first." "Magellan was killed in the Philippines halfway round." "He never finished." "He never finished." "His ship was the first to." "The laurels go to his second in command, the almost completely unknown J S Elcano, aka Juan Sebastian del Cano." "I don't suppose they'll rename the Magellan Straits the del Cano Straits, but nonetheless, it's good to help out people who've been deprived by history." "So, what was the nationality of the inventor of the helicopter?" " British." " (Stephen) British, you think?" "No, not correct." " (express train whistles)" " Italian?" "Oh!" "Italian, he said!" "Oh, we thought you might say that." "No." "You were thinking of Leonardo da Vinci, weren't you?" "No, you see." "The answer is this." "Actually he was Chinese." "The first known helicopter was a popular toy called the bamboo dragonfly which could fly 25 feet up into the air and dates back to at least the fourth century AD, therefore more than 1,000 years before the idea occurred to Leonardo da Vinci in 1480." "(Alan) But who actually did make a helicopter first?" "Not a silly bamboo thing, a proper helicopter." "You know, going... (makes whirring sounds) Running across." "Pilot." "Helicopter just means a spiral, a screw-wing." "Helixopter." "A real one with an engine that takes off on tyres." "I think the nation that really lays claim to inventing the first modern helicopter in the sense that we would use it is in fact the French." "Now, next question." "What do you get if you suck your pencil for a long time?" " Lead poisoning." " (Stephen) She's done it!" " (alarm bells)" " Can you believe it?" "Can you believe these people?" "No, there is no chance on God's or any other earth we know of of getting lead poisoning." " (Alan) You mean Sir was lying?" " No, there is no lead in a pencil." "It's called lead." "It has no Pb in it, no element of lead whatsoever." "It's pure graphite." "Since the invention of the pencil, they've been made of graphite, which is the pure crystalline form of carbon and will do you no harm." " Why the lead thing?" "It's not lead?" " (Stephen) It's not lead." "It never has been, never will be." "It's graphite." "That's why they're not very heavy when you pick 'em up." " (Stephen) Exactly." " You might say they're more HB than Pb." " (Stephen) Yeah!" " (Julia) Oh!" "It's time for the final scores." "Let me give them to you." "Oh, dear." "I'm afraid in fourth place it's Peter with minus five." " Minus five!" " (Stephen) Oh, lordy Lord." "In third place it's Rich with three points." "In second place, Julia with nine, but way out in front it's Alan with 23 quite interesting points." "(applause)" "Well, that about knocks it on the head for QI." "It only remains for me to thank our four wise monkeys, Rich, Julia, Peter and Alan, and to close with this thoroughly positive and quite interesting thought from yet another great British Alan, the boxer Alan Minter, who reassures us:" ""Sure, there have been injuries and deaths in boxing, but none of them serious." Good night." "(applause)"