"APPLAUSE" "CHEERING AND WHISTLING" "Oh!" "Good... good evening and welcome to QI for a show that tonight is all about gardening and groceries and it's BOGOF night at QI - four comedians for the price of two." "it's Rob Brydon." "CHEERING AND APPLAUSE it's Dara O'Briain." "CHEERING AND APPLAUSE it's David Mitchell." "CHEERING AND APPLAUSE it's Alan Davies." "CHEERING AND APPLAUSE" "But erm... let's hear your buzzers." "Rob goes..." "TINKLING" "Dara goes..." "TILL KERCHINGS" "David goes..." "SHOP BELL TINGS" "And Alan goes..." "MAN:" "Pound a punnet!" "Pound a punnet!" "go on." "Pound a punnet." "Thank you." "Thank you." "So let's get off to an easy start." "What tools do you need for "do nothing" gardening?" "no... no tools." "You'd think." "It's also called natural gardening or natural farming." "It's an Eastern version of our organic farming that has actually spread around the world." "You have to dig with your hands?" "Or persuade animals to do it for you." "persuade other animals." "So you persuade a fox it doesn't want a den but a rockery?" "in the case..." "You get some fish and they desperately dig a pond before they die." "they use ducks instead of herbicide." "They eat the weeds and the throttly things that kill the rice and they use carp to help purify the water in the paddy fields. to be a gentleman gardener." "Have that or pass it on." "There you are." "And on your side..." "Isn't it exciting to have props?" "actual props." "There you are." "yes." "So who's going to go first?" "Everybody's been given fascinating devices and I've been given a bottle with the top cut off." "of the Rocket fame." "The first locomotive." "And it's to do with the garden?" "It is." "He was a very keen gardener." "that or the train?" "I think..." "I think the train was a bigger hit." "Right." "But he was a keen gentleman gardener." "I bet he was really tedious and wouldn't talk about the train in interviews and would insist on talking about his bloody bottle." "I fear you're right." "It's the work I'm proudest of." "it's just a bit of glass with no top." "ALAN:" "It would protect seeds." "is an important factor." "The sunlight." "Rob." "or refraction." "doesn't matter." "I'm sorry." "hello." "you've found out..." "It's a saw." "It is." "For a gentleman gardener." "It's got a concealed serrated blade." "You won't get this through customs." "You could hijack a plane with one of these." "though." "It'll only go that way." "That's how you start the stroke." "It won't go back again." "Have you ever used a saw?" "Yeah." "I don't think it's designed for exercise books." "too." "David has a point." "It's for the gentleman farmer..." "No!" "I want to saw something now." "I..." "I just want to say..." "These have been lent to us by the Garden Museum..." "It works!" "my God." "APPLAUSE" "I tell you what..." "LAUGHTER" "I really wish they hadn't made this set out of asbestos." "Brilliant." "That is..." "That's a very good invention." "It's for the gentleman who's walking along and he sees an overhanging limb of a tree and decides... no!" "What have I done?" "No!" "I know." "class." "See if you can do that." "My clever psychology." "Let's see if you're clever enough to hide that saw." "that was great fun." "Have you got any more?" "what about yours?" "is missing a piece." "to whom we're very grateful for lending us these incredibly valuable artefacts... a sort of leathern thing around there." "So you hold it like that..." "You hold it as a walking stick you..." "Just a little hoe." "You just hoe." "Yeah." "A little hoe." "Yeah." "Not in the street sense it's used in the United States of America." "naturally." "talking of hoes" " Rob." "hello." "Sorry." "A fly landed on my buzzer and I tried to use my little hoe and..." "My little hoe." "It's a new sort of toy for children." "other than I think it's something to do with light." "It's not bad." "It actually forces a shape." "What sort of shape would something in there be?" "a vegetable?" "It would have to be a straight vegetable." "Is it for cucumbers?" "It's for growing straight cucumbers." "Points." "And I've mended my walking stick." "Yes!" "Points all round for Alan Davies." "APPLAUSE it may well be for cucumbers but that picture is very similar to a spam email that I get sent." "it doesn't work." "what have you got?" "I am guessing that you put a mixture of seeds in of different sizes." "Indeed." "Cos there are holes of different sizes. in the most effete gardening way imaginable." "Yes. that's really top quality gardening you're doing there." "it is." "I'm rather exhausted now." "I may have to go in and have a cocktail." "I've got a fit of the vapours from my gardening." "So do-nothing gardening is small-scale organic farming with minimal inputs." "where's the best place in the world to discover an entirely new species?" "The National Geographic channel." "That... may be." "They're at the forefront." "Do you think you might spot something on the edge of shot that the documentary makers haven't?" "They're going on about that monkey but that's a totally new caterpillar." "where they discover new things all the time?" "ALARM HOOTER" "Kent." "Yes!" "That would do." "your own garden." "Oh! but you would be amazed." "did a very long-term study of her ordinary garden of a suburban house in Leicester." "She discovered 533 species ichneumon wasp - just that family of parasitic wasps. 4 of them were completely new to science." "In a suburban garden." "there will be things." "said that nature is so full and so varied it's the place you most study." "It almost doesn't matter." "I'm sorry." "you'd have to park..." "Park?" "parking." "with all these trees?" "The congestion charge drives up the cost of research." "Nonetheless..." "How did she catch these wasps?" "Did she put a jam jar with jam in it and a little hole they can't get back out of?" "Cos that's what we do in our house." "Do you?" "as do I." "You know when you find a bee and it's crawling on its last legs?" "I rescue them." "You give it honey." "The only thing they eat." "Makes sense when you think about it." "Yeah!" "Yeah!" "No point just talking to it." "Give it honey." "aren't they?" "That's all they eat." "I'm intrigued because I generally give it the sole of my shoe but er... you know." "Not to be harsh but you know... crawling bee?" "What?" "As opposed to rehabilitating it?" "you murderer." "but..." "We depend on bees." "We need the bees." "so in future I should lure the bee back... do I get a syringe of honey?" "A tiny amount?" "leave it with it." "Don't tread on it." "Should be a criminal offence." "You should be arrested." "You should be locked up." "You know where?" "In a hive. makes an absolutely tiny amount of honey overall?" "A minute amount." "It's just that there's lots of them." "So you don't have to give much rehabilitating honey to this bee is making a net loss." "LAUGHTER That's true! suddenly there's no honey at all." "This is more honey than this bee has seen in its life." "apart from anything else." "It's like showing a very tired mason a whole cathedral." "may..." "APPLAUSE" "Well..." "Let's say that you're in between Alan and Dara. kill." "What you can do is you get what I would term too much honey and you see the bee and you pour molten honey..." "No!" "OK." "And then you watch him die a slow..." "I carry on with "No!" "I've now heard you out." "Yes?" "And it's no better." "That's from the both of them." "That's worse than what I did." "I am." "You're getting a kick out of it." "I'm not drowning the bee ironically in honey." "You can't drown bees." "You want some honey?" "How much honey do you want?" "Is this too much honey?" "are you?" "After your lifetime making honey." "thank you for that er... productive debate." "now. to find a new species of plant or animal is in your back garden." "Who finds garden gnomes attractive?" "I do." "And it's lovely..." "It's lovely to get the opportunity to admit it in public." "Good." "Yeah." "look at that..." "ALARM HOOTER" "APPLAUSE" "Rob." "We knew that an Ann Widdecombe gnome would immediately appeal to you." "When did gnomes first arrive in British gardens?" "Do you know?" "actually. who believed that putting ornamental garden gnomes into a garden that was his sad..." "Did he wish to try and kill real gnomes?" "he wanted to commune with them." "Did he want to trap them? but extension of faculty." "Right." "It's lovely being clever when you're mental." "Yes. of which one still exists and there it is - the original garden gnome." "It's been insured for some £1 million." "it seems - and you may think there is a family resemblance to that chap and Doc or one of the other dwarves in Snow White And The Seven Dwarves - and they were based on this idea that German gnomes or dwarves" "had these red caps because they were miners and German miners wore red caps. there were a whole load of gnomes set deep down for divers to look at. so the police took them away. and the police didn't take it away." "Can you imagine why that would be?" "why would they leave it?" "but no." "It's too far for the police divers. so the police couldn't recover them from that depth." "actually." "It is funny." "It somehow is. why would you choose to do it in a place where instead of seeing a coral reef all you can see is manky old gnomes?" "I think the idea was that the lake was incredibly dull it was to make it brighter and more interesting. and they've put an old aeroplane in it and a bus." "in Scapa Flow there's a scuttled German fleet for you to go and investigate." "wasn't it?" "The allies were all arguing about who were to get this fleet and we wanted the fleet because we had the biggest fleet... no-one will get the fleet." "yes." "That was much to the annoyance of Charles de Gaulle but it stopped the Germans getting it." "you don't get many opportunities to sink the French fleet. it's just there!" "I've got to sink it." "it's the French fleet." "We will kick ourselves." "Where was the French fleet when this happened?" "I think it was off the coast of Morocco." "Why not sail it to England?" "as they always will." "then." "Was it not explained to them that the only other option was...?" "The third option was to drown them in honey but we couldn't get... so..." "Yeah." "A black chapter amongst many other black chapters but er... the man who brought garden gnomes to England did so in the hope of attracting real gnomes to his garden." "hate Shakespeare?" "There's a picture of American farmers hating Shakespeare." "Something to do with Shakespeare caused immense trouble for American farming." "It's not Shakespeare's fault at all." "Not some farming practice that's hidden away in the sonnets?" "It was an eccentric drug manufacturer called Eugene Schieffelin." "And he decided that America should contain examples of every bird species named in the works of Shakespeare." "And one particular species didn't exist in America..." "Ah!" "and he introduced 100 to Central Park and there are now estimated something like 200 million of them." "is it?" "No." "ducks..." "Starlings." "Starlings is the right answer." "They don't like them because they eat the seeds? vast flocks." "I was on Brighton pier one time and they have lots of starlings there and it's really amazing to watch." "Yeah." "And someone said that starlings come from hundreds of miles away to join in..." "The flock." "..this coastal flocking." "Yeah." "And they come from as far away as Germany and Poland." "A lot of the Polish ones are coming over here now and taking away the... a lot of the British starlings' jobs." ""Bloody typical." "British starlings - they don't want to work." "will they?" "Typical. enormous flocks." "And are they just having fun or is it a way of eating?" "what they're really doing is presenting an enormous fish that sort of glistens and frightens some predators it confuses and dazzles and they're a lot safer..." "Starlings are basically scared of sharks and a shark may leap up at the West Pier... but when was a starling last killed by a shark?" "It works." "You're absolutely right." "It's 100%... boys." "excellent." "Starlings were brought to America in an attempt to introduce all the birds in Shakespeare to the US." "They're now a major pest." "Which is correct of these?" "It's grocer's apostrophe." "Why does this annoy people?" "They're all right." "Of course they're all conceivably right." "is it that obvious?" "It's a way of asking whether you care about apostrophes." "The grocer's apostrophe is..." "They put them where they shouldn't be." "potato's" and put an apostrophe there or something." "does it?" "It doesn't bother me." "It bothers me." "It bothers some people." "It's not like genocide." "People get incredibly annoyed and they form societies for the protection of the apostrophe. but it's G-R-O-C-E-R and then there's a comma and then the S." "He knew something had to go in there." "He knew something had to go in there but he didn't..." "And it's like..." "It looks like a dead apostrophe." "It looks..." "But this guy had printed the sign." "He'd obviously written it out whatever." "You'd think one of the requirements of being a sign-printing company is having a basic knowledge of where an apostrophe goes." "I'm convinced." "how to spell accommodation." "They must do." "Yes!" "we'll do a sign for your guest house." "Would you like our normal service where we check the spelling?" "We're not going to pay five times as much for you to check the spelling. in the knowledge they'll have to get called back all the sooner when the people realise they've got it wrong. the sign writer knew." "He put it up there wrong knowing he'd get a repeat gig." "can't you?" "There are very few situations in which this is vital." ""Where are the grocers?" "there's only me." "But your sign implied there was more than one." "Exactly." "Exactly." "You're so right." "not just one."" "People have been ridiculing what's called the grocer's apostrophe since the 18th century." "The Oxford Companion To The English Language notes that "there was never a golden age in which the rules for the use of the possessive apostrophe were clear-cut and known understood and followed by most educated people." Never." "abolished the apostrophe." "I read about this." "are there any places in America where they have an apostrophe?" "They have places that are called Something's Creek." "Yeah." "for example." "Only five places in the whole US have an apostrophe. in New England." "Martha's Vineyard." "Martha's Vineyard." "That has an apostrophe and there are four others." "Dave's Vineyard." "Martha's Kitchen..." "Massachusetts." "New Jersey." "as you can see." "Rhode Island." "Arizona." "and those are the only ones. "makes it not look like a place name." Yeah." "It would seem so." "I wouldn't bother with "Carlos Elmer's"." "Joshua View works fine." "Why do you need Carlos Elmer's specific view of Joshua?" "let's have a look at him." "We don't have to take Carlos Elmer's view." "It's a fine view of Joshua." "that's enough apostrophe-ing." "Many people are annoyed by punctuation errors in signs grocers are at the forefront of the evolution of language. without tasting it or opening it up?" "Are some apples deformed into a sort of pear-shaped way?" "There are round pears." "That is a very pear-like one there." "but there are round ones." "Is it that you can't do that twisting thing with an apple?" "I think pear stems do tend to come off more quickly but there is an interesting way and that is..." "Ah!" "Ah!" "Ah!" "One floats and one doesn't." "Which one floats?" "exactly." "This had better work." "I'm going to be so embarrassed if it doesn't." "it's like Brainiac." "it's gone really big." "It floats." "Wow!" "Why is that?" "A pear." "That's a weird looking pear." "Erm..." "How dare you?" "That's wrong." "OK." "Ooh..." "Ah!" "Success." "There you are." "Erm..." "APPLAUSE it seems that the pear is denser." "It's odd." "You think of them as sweeter and lighter they're structurally more dense." "You may try this at home and get a floating pear or a sinking apple." "Don't go to a greengrocer..." "Yes." "Please don't write in." "Write to the British Apostrophe Society." "They'd love to know. yes." "Walk away! it was too far for them." "Invited by a load of strangely dressed dwarves to go pear-bobbing." "I'm going to put this back down." "the oldest variety of apple in England is called a...?" "Cox?" "a Pearmain." "And now it's time for five items or fewer of General Ignorance." "Fingers on buzzers." "What are trees made of?" "SHOP BELL TINGS" "Wood!" "Is the right answer." "well done!" "APPLAUSE" "You were lucky!" "You see?" "And what is wood made of?" "Erm..." "Er..." "Carbon?" "Yes." "And where does the carbon come from?" "The earth." "The earth?" "Yeah." "ALARM SOUNDS Oh!" "is it?" "yeah." "and leaves the carbon so it is made of carbon." "isn't it?" "Good." "What makes Australian spiders so dangerous?" "Stephen." "The fact they're willing to put the man hours in." "Yeah! they'll look for patterns in your behaviour and they'll strike when you least expect it. one'll come and bite you in the bum." "You mean the spider is working with the bee?" "Yes." "bite him." "So is it that they sort of hide in loos?" "not deliberately but the only real danger they seem to threat these days when antivenoms were introduced all round Australia... the redback and the funnel-web." "the way people...? which have been fatal some of them from spiders that have dropped out of sun visors in cars" "Uh!" like that and then crashed." "not their venom." "And so it's time for our guests to reap what they have sown." "I'm going to have a look at the old scoreboard." "my goodnight." "ladies and gentlemen. not since all round here was green fields." "Erm... Dara and David!" "APPLAUSE AND CHEERING" "Congratulations. it's Rob Brydon." "APPLAUSE is Alan Davies." "CHEERING dear." "Alan and me and I leave you with a quotation from Eric Morecambe." "My neighbour asked if he could use my lawnmower so long as he didn't take it out of my garden." "Thank you and goodnight." "APPLAUSE" "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "Email subtitling@bbc.co.uk"