"APPLAUSE" "CHEERING AND WHISTLING ahoy me hearties. we're scouring the oceans of interestingness in search of flotsam in a programme that's more or less a rag-bag of bits and pieces beginning with F." "And helping me separate the facts from fiction and the flim from flam are the effortless Charlie Higson..." "APPLAUSE AND CHEERING" "..the effervescent Andy Hamilton..." "CHEERING AND APPLAUSE" "..the ineffable Rob Brydon..." "CHEERING AND WHISTLING" "Alan Davies." "CHEERING AND APPLAUSE let me inspect your bell buttons." "So Charlie goes..." "MUSIC:" "Theme from Blue Peter" "Andy goes..." "MUSIC:" "Theme from Captain Pugwash" "Rob goes..." "I do like to be beside the seaside. #" "And Alan goes..." "SPLASHING lad?" "He followed in the water!" "'" "if you have anything nautical or nice you can catch my eye which you should have somewhere under your desks." "yours is R." "R" " Romeo in the MCC colours there." "That means..." "It looks like..." "I think it's a kind of nautical bumper sticker." ""My other ship is a destroyer." "Oh!" "Very good." "It actually means "You can feel your way past me." "surely!" "It is." "you may feel your way past me." "yours is a Z. Z" " Zulu." ""I require a tug"." "So come and see me in my cabin!" "I'll see what I can do." "I think I won't be needing that." "there." "I'm on fire." "How strangely apt!" "So you can come to my cabin as well." "I'm leaking." "yours is..." "Coming up behind?" "No." "It's D" " Delta." "I'm manoeuvring with difficulty"." "You're running into danger. with a signer quite a few times." "You were mentioning topical characters" "Prince Charles is that." "And we were doing material about Bill Clinton and I waited to see what the signer would do and he just did his zip. the American Sign Language is slightly different." "you just crook your finger like an R. And so Ronald Reagan" "cos a lot of girls that I've been out with - of course - they've made that sign to me." "I'm sure they haven't." "I can't believe it." "can you guess what these flags mean and what the letters stand for?" "E... actually." "It means "overboard"." "right." "Not just to generally express interest in something another ship has said." ""Oh!" "They say something and you go... is there really time to put a flag up and..." "There's a bit of a lack of urgency." "Going through the flag box. "God!" "I can never find the one I want." "He's drowned by now!" "Overboard!" "which means "no"." "no!" "Absolutely!" "no!" "You've got a third one." "That's a pyramid reflected in a lake." "it's a rather sweet one." "communicate with me." "That's a rather patronising view of the disabled." "That they have to have a flag to be communicated with." "so I didn't bother." "Lord!" "Does he take sugar? what's the difference between flotsam and jetsam?" "One floats and one sinks." "No." "One is spelt with a J." "There are four kinds of wreckage." "Flotsam is something that's fallen off a ship because it's got wrecked or something correct." "Jetsam has been jettisoned." "Did you really work that out?" "the French for "throw." "Alan." "Not that one again." "That seems to be the root of all my problems." "Just wasn't interested." "I can also tell you that lagan is what's on the bottom of the sea." "You're right and there's only one more." "There's a fourth one?" "There is a fourth one. which can be reclaimed." "But there's another one which lies at the bottom of the ocean which no one has any hope of reclaiming and that's derelict. according to the 1995 Act which covers these things." "from flotsam to fan clubs." "Batman and Robin." "What did the Boy Wonder use to sign his autographs?" "# .." "Beside the seaside... # was played by Burt Ward." "wasn't he?" "Dick Grayson." "And he went on to a career in pornography." "if this is a novelty question and if he signed it with his... to the Bat Pole." Wa-hey!" "He wrote an autobiography called something like A Life In Tights and it was basically just sex." "Sex on every page." "Very good." "He wrote an autobiography called Boy Wonder" " My Life In Tights." "And he revealed in that that he did send autographs using what he called "bat sperm to sign his name." "Was it actually bat sperm?" "LAUGHTER isn't it?" "A fiendish plan." "Hundreds of bats." "Come on!" "Batman watched." "AUDIENCE GROANS" "According to his book." "Which part of the proceedings?" "Burt?" "Adam!" "How many times would you want to watch something like that?" "I can see a certain kind of morbid fascination." "Can you?" "!" "yes." "LAUGHTER" "I'm just getting a message." "I rather misunderstood about Burt and his bat sperm." "It turns out he didn't actually write his name in the sperm." "It was his euphemism for shagging them." "He gave them the ultimate autograph by shagging them." "I prefer the original explanation." "Whoa!" "Hang on!" "Would you mind if Alan Davies watched?" "So that's what Adam West was watching." "He was watching him having sex?" "That goes on a lot in show business. don't you?" "Dad's Army were famous for it." "Stop it!" "Stop it!" "How dare you! "We're doomed!" "They don't like it up 'em!" "dear." "Dear me." "Can my sister Dolly watch?" "sadly." "So his life..." ""He then found work getting hard." "You're a very bad man." "I've got his autograph." "very proud!" "that's what he did." "where would you find the world's biggest flasher?" "one of the answers is about something that is called a lighthouse but isn't a lighthouse." "The other one is the biggest flasher in nature." "is it the Statue of Liberty?" "Is that a lighthouse?" "No!" "There's not a light at the top of the Statue of Liberty?" "it has to have a flashing light" "Rob!" "Big Ben." "Is that a lighthouse?" "yeah." "I've got a light on my top floor but it's not a lighthouse." "then?" "no." "There's an organic one." "There's an animal that is probably the..." "Electric eel?" "But you're in the right ballpark." "Those fish that they have in Finding Nemo." "It dangles a light in front." "It's certainly a fish that uses what is known as... yes. 90% of marine creatures give off light." "Is it a squid?" "It is a squid." "It's a seven-foot squid." "It's called the Dana squid." "It's an amazing creature." "not day nurse." "Dana octopus squid." "Which you can take without being drowsy." "It's the non-drowsy formulation of the North Pacific" "Dana octopus squid and it's really bright." "It dazzles and disorients its prey with its light." "Does it need to do that if it's seven-foot long?" "It's just an added weapon in its arsenal." "isn't it?" "Where is it?" "You're all to behave." "and "lumin" is Latin for light." "So it's bioluminescent." "There are all kinds of jellyfish and things that wander round." "Very beautiful." "You're a diver." "You've probably seen some." "all the ugly fish come out." "Of course." "It's really interesting." "You don't need to be pretty. colourful fish they're all bug-eyed and they limp around." "Most of them are poisonous and they've got spines on and you're not allowed to touch them." "They all kind of look at you like that. "I'm a night fish!" "No!" "Don't look at me!" "Don't look at me!" "That's the answer to the greatest flasher amongst the animals and it's an extraordinary effect that takes place in Venezuela... up to 280 times an hour the mouth of the Catatumbo river in Venezuela... is that it is" "on earth." "It actually helps mend the ozone layer. all this electrical storm activity." "Is it a tourist attraction?" "there'd be nothing." "Should have been here last week." "Oh!" "180 days a year is almost exactly half of the year." "So the chances are good." "I think I might go there." "It looks well worth it." "I'll report back." "I'll go now." "Let us press on now to feasts." "How did the Borgia Pope Alexander VI celebrate the feast of the chestnuts?" "There is Alessandro VI." "that's horrible." "this is a pope we're talking about." "naked prostitutes." "He would throw the chestnuts on the floor because he was a pope." "he was a pope!" "I thought it was going to be something salacious." "Why can't we have popes like that again now?" "maybe they are." "We don't know." "who made such an enemy of his successor that - his successor was Stephen VI as Pope - he had him dug up and put on trial." "His body was put on trial." "And he spent most of the trial yelling at the corpse and someone behind it had to move the... nothing." "someone standing behind it like a ventriloquist would say that he denied the charges." "he was then condemned..." "To death!" "His three fingers he used to do papal blessings with were cut off his skeleton." "Ow!" "Ow!" "Oh!" "Not my fingers!" "Argh!" "And he was condemned to be reburied in a common grave." "But then... not the common grave!" "No!" "Put my arm back in the box!" "get me out the box! imprisoned and then strangled." "And then another pope called John IX brought Formosus back." "His body had been rescued from the common grave." "He was reburied as a pope again." "So it was all well." "Was he found innocent?" "exactly." "probably." "Pope Trial." "It's a long-running West End show." "Pope Idol." "D'you know what...?" "slag." "Chestnuts on the floor." "Forage!" "APPLAUSE the Borgia Pope celebrated the feast of the chestnuts with an evening of prostitute-racing in the Vatican." "once again to F for Forfeit." "if you please." "Name the inventor of rugby football." "'He followed in the water!" "' it was invented at Rugby School when a boy picked the ball up and ran with it." "yeah... oddly enough." "thank you!" "That was like a Captain Oates job." "You sacrificed yourself." "You threw yourself on the grenade." "The Rugby World Cup is named after him." "The Webb Ellis Cup." "the odd thing is that they have this little memorial as if they'd all been playing football." "But football wasn't codified till after they're claiming this rugby game happened." "Rugby is an older game." "so no-one really believes it." "The story was first told three years after Webb Ellis died. you were allowed to catch the ball." "I believe you were." "Can we see the picture again that was up before it?" "prison life gets easier... casually." "there's someone lying down." "When did those team photos stop?" "Was it something to do with the war?" "it's all in lines." "hands on knees." "But all the Victorian ones are great." "They're absolutely loungey." "they're just draped over one another." "When did it change?" "they would have been more rigid." "They would have been more likely to be nicely in rows and all together and less so as the years have gone on." "which one would you?" "I'm not going to give that away." "Which one would you first?" "You're so bad." "Your stamina is... let's move on." "William Webb Ellis died unaware although the modern game certainly does have its roots in the 19th century public school system." "From Rugby to Eton." "What was James Bond's job?" "He was a secret agent." "Argh!" "Is that what you wanted to hear?" "an agent is an informant an intelligence officer." "Sean Connery?" "He went for the audition and he walked away and the producers watched him out of the window..." "And Fleming was present." "I was about to say that." "Ian Fleming was present. would be on all fours and would make him look like a ruddy lunatic." "Not the sort of man you want botching up the schedule on an expensive film." "please get up!" "baby." "He does have a fabulously lithe walk." "What's the difference between your walk and your gait?" "Is it the same thing?" "is it?" "The gait is the sort of... it's the signature of your walk." "You can recognise someone by their gait." "Can your gait be when you're stood still?" "I recognise her by her gait." "it's Liam Gallagher." "you know when you're 17 and you're out with your mates and you do that." "Maybe you don't." "But I remember doing it slightly." "about 47 now?" "Mick Jagger still does his strut or whatever you want to call it." "I imagine that he grew up in a house with very narrow doorways." "Noel Gallagher's house was all French windows." "They've had it all knocked through." "But Mick had a lot of those funny little half-opening doors." "the security services..." "Still enjoying it." "One more." "Mick Jagger?" "He has no bottom." "It's really odd." "Apparently someone else who's arseless is Ian McShane." "Is he arseless?" "Told on quite good authority by a costume person." "It came up in conversation." "Deadwood's very good." "No bum." "he must have something." "He has got an anus." "I'm sure he's got an anus." "all right." "No buttocks." "It's fascinating." "Flat!" "That's a nightmare for a dresser." "They have to staple his trousers to him." "just holding them up." "You could put a little pelmet across there and just hang them from there." "Arse pelmet." "The security services actually call their staff "officers"." "Agents are informants who are not members of staff." "Here's an easy one for you." "What's the maximum amount of times you can fold a piece of paper in half?" "Seven." "too?" "Eight." "KLAXON BLARES have you never tried it?" "Strangely not." "Try it." "Here's some." "Pass one along to the boy next to you!" "come on!" "Start folding." "Is it a race?" "Three..." "CHARLIE: 24..." "I'm struggling on six." "They've got some very exciting ideas for TV programmes these days." "Paper Folding Live!" "I'm out at six." "the A4 size." "But an extraordinary thing." "An American schoolchild developed a formula for determining the folding of paper and we have that formula for you." "You can examine it." "She was very impressive." "Her name was Britney Gallivan." "if you feed the various variables into it..." "L is length of paper." "What you need is length and thickness in order to get the right number." "LAUGHTER" "Rob!" "That's them!" "That's the audience!" "You are running into danger!" "That's just going to be snipped out and straight on YouTube." "It's going to be a ringtone." "It'll be everything." "What you need is length and thickness." Hello?" "Damn you all!" "And that'll be for text messages." "I've got a text. length long. which was very thin and she managed to fold it 12 times." "what does it mean when the Union flag is flying over Buckingham Palace?" "Yes?" "I'm going to regret this." "come and have a cup of tea." "it does not mean the Queen's home." "the Queen is about to get home... ..put the electric blanket on." "Don't they fly the Royal Standard when the Queen is home?" "they fly the Royal Standard." "they fly the Union flag." "# .." "Beside the seaside... #" "if you remember." "there was no flag to fly at half-mast." "You couldn't fly the Royal Standard at half-mast because it was against all protocol. we'll have the Union flag so that then when someone dies they can go half-mast with that." "That was a great movie but there was just one moment in that than I didn't believe at all. out on the moors that." "shoo!" "She's a member of the royal family." "She'd have blown it to bits." "Keep it there!" "It's talking to Betty." "Come on!" "rather oddly." "Because she smells like cabbage." "Shame on you!" "Imagine if you looked round and I just wasn't here now." "Good Lord." "When David Walliams met the Queen he took his mum with him and the Queen came along didn't you?" "ma'am." "is it?" "very good." "Are there any more nutters in your family?" "the Queen's flag sergeant hoists the Union flag when the Queen is not in residence at Buckingham Palace." "It's the Royal Standard that flies when the Queen is at home." "we've circumnavigated the QI world and come all the way back to flags." "But let's see who's been flying high with the wind in their sails and who's been flagging behind." "my word." "My goodnessy wordington." "is Charlie Higson!" "APPLAUSE" "it's Rob Brydon!" "APPLAUSE" "Andy Hamilton!" "APPLAUSE walking the plank with a report card" "Alan with -19!" "APPLAUSE AND CHEERING" "Charlie and Alan "The cure for boredom is curiosity." "There is no cure for curiosity." "I was a suspect." Good night." "APPLAUSE" "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "Email subtitling@bbc.co.uk"