"Good ... evening,goodevening, and welcome to QI" "Tonight, we're quite interested in "engineering", so, we've come equipped with four of the sharpest tools in the box" "The steely Jimmy Carr" "the power-driven Rob Brydon" "well-oiled Bill Bailey" "spanner in the works, Alan Davies!" "Let's hear your precision-engineered sounds" "Bill goes:" "Jimmy goes:" "And Rob goes:" "And Alan goes:" "Now, although tonight's manly menu mainly means "engineering" matters don't forget our "Elephant in the Room" bonus, boys, will you?" "For predicting the arrival of one or more elephants on the programme." "There it is." "Be ready." "First question!" "Who built Britain's railways?" "Look out, there's ... !" "By the way, I have my own train here." "Look at that." "Isn't that fun?" "I have sweets, which I can load on and deliver to any particularly interesting answers this evening." "So there's an extra incentive." "This is turning into my..." "my perfect house." ""More toast, please!"" "This is like "Wallace and Gromit"." "But you have, first, to address the question of who built our railways." "Richard Branson." "It was not "elephants"..." "Large creatures were trained to have trample down areas of Britain to built very, very flat." "The railway mouse!" "Well, you're right, actually" "You're right, actually, comma," "in saying that railways had to be flat in the days when they were built in Britain, which were the very earliest days, we were the country that invented the steam locomotive and the railway and there weren't powerful enough engines to to go up hills and they had to be flat." "Were they built by the wrong type of builder?" "They were called "navvies", and were mostly Irish and they were an extraordinary example of man muscle." "It took a year to train a navvy." "You fed them on meat and beer." "No Dagenham smiles there;" "very tightly-done trousers" ""A Dagenham smile"?" "The Birmingham-to-London track took five years to build, the equivalent in work of building one and a half great pyramids." "Astonishing." "These people were incredible." "It took a year to train them;" "they lived on beer and meat, and they could out-perform any other manual labourer who" "Farmworkers would be exhausted after a quarter of a day that the navvies could do." "I heard once that the Trans-Siberian railway which was meant to be a straight line" "The Tsar got a ruler, and he said, "Want the railway perfectly straight" "And he got the ruler, and he drew a line like that, but his fingers were over the edge" "And in a couple of places, it did a big, sort of, detour, he went, "Build me that!" "Go away!" "You!"" ""Oh, we better build it like he said."" "So they had to build two great big curves" "That's a lovely thought." "It's a lovely thought." "Sweet!" "Let's get someone on the scene and go straight there now to see what's happening."" "It's absolutely pandemonium" "Have you had your sweet yet?" "No, I haven't had it yet!" "Oh, it stops in the right place." "Can't be a Virgin train, can it?" "Why, for a sweet, and a point." "Why are they called navvies?" ""Navigational engineers."" "I'm so impressed." "They were responsible for digging what were called the internal navigation system, which was the canals" "That's how they first came over;" "for digging canals." "And then when the railway arrived, did all the embankments and the tunnels and the, extraordinary earth movement involved." "Horses were used for taking away the spoil, but everything else was human muscle." "Elephants as well." "Did you realise?" "No elephants" "There were some" "So, London-to-Birmingham was the equivalent of what, one and a half pyramids?" "One and a half great pyramids funny, if we'd put that to a vote." ""Do we need just a half a pyramid?"" ""Yeah, we just thought we needed it."" ""Can we have the top half of the pyramid?"" "It's on stilts." "That's a pyramid, the top half, isn't it?" "It's only if you have the bottom half" "That's why I would choose it." "It's an odd platform." "So just keep slicing the pyramids" "Thank you very much." "Curses!" "the credit may have gone to engineers, of course, like Stephenson and Brunel, but it was thousands of anonymous navvies who did the actual work." "Now, here's a big question." "What happened when the Americans went off the rails?" "Jesus!" "This is during the Carter administration, when they tried to bring in a different form" "Instead of rails." "Because Jimmy Carter was a southern president fried food is very, very popular" "And they were hoping to, in build carriages with holes in the bottom." "People would sit take their trousers down, and after eating a lot of fried food, they would fart it." "And it would rise on a bed of noxious bottom gas." "Behind, people would open balloons, and let the air and it never worked!" "A fool could have predicted it" "But they did have a fool in the management." "For the first time in history." "Can you take the sweet off him?" "Is the question "When did America go off the rails?"" "No, when a locomotive went off the rails in America, what did they do?" "They picked it up put it back on" "It's as simple as that." "Tthey deliberately made their locomotives very small and light." "Those were the days!" "They had no cladding and the passenger had to get out, pick it up, put it back on." "They had the advantage of the potato blight bringing over lots of Irishmen to be their navvies in America as well, at just the right time." "Er, Stephen, they're navigational engineers." "Yes, thank you for that." "Rob." "Thank you." "I don't think you should call them navvies anymore." "Now that we know the the full title." "Micks were, erm taken over to do the deed and they tended to do it in the east coast;" "and who did it in the west?" "The Chinese!" "And they met in the middle when they've completed the entire link across America." "They could lay track particularly from the west;" "a couple of brothers called Casement who devised this system where the track was laid as fast as a man could walk." "Not as fast as, er, Gromit." "He was probably inspired by the Casement brothers" "They would have a train on the existing track" "Somebody would push off the one when it sort of had emptied itself and there would be one behind and they would carry on." "Incredible." "I suspect that they're standing apart for some kind of balance" "Why would you ever stand like that?" "Unless you were five individuals who happen to have bought single tickets." "If you've gone along with four friends on a train, you might stand" "Having a chat." "The women-folk, perhaps, are with them" "You may be right!" "I think it's "top hats off" for that sort of thing." "Why didn't they build a railway at Slough?" "At Slough?" "The town where I grew up?" "Is there no station in Slough?" "There is now, I suspect." "Is there?" "Yes." "But there's no railway." "It's a start." "When the railway was being built through that particular part of Buckinghamshire, they were told they couldn't build a station in Slough." "In fact, the train would disregard it by stopping, and people would get on and off, and they would sell tickets in the pub." "But who was it who said "We won't have a station here"?" "What school is nearby?" "I do know it." "It's Eton." "Eton College, they thought the boys would be tempted to go into London" "There they are." "Bless 'em" "And take drugs." "And visit prostitutes and so on." "That'll be the first thing they do." ""There's a train." "Prostitutes!"" ""I'd like a Prostitute Super-Saver, please!"" ""But this prostitute seems to be a woman."" ""Bloody hell." "That's seriously unfair." "No." "Come on, actually."" ""What am I meant to do with these?"" "There was a travellers' handbook that advised women should put pins in their mouth when trains went into a tunnel so men didn't kiss them." "To protect themselves from unwanted kissing!" "It's very sweet, to think that kissing would be the first thing that men would..." "They come out of the tunnel;" "the bloke's got a pin in his cock." "It's a very direct approach you've got to cause" ""I'll just pop this in her mouth;" "she'll come 'round, I'm sure." "Yeah."" ""It's dark; she won't even know it was me!"" ""Magnet?" "Magnet?" "Anyone, a magnet!"" "So, when 19th century American trains came off the rails, the passengers got out and lifted them back on." "What did Isambard Kingdom Brunel get for eighteen birthdays in a row?" "For the first time ever, simultaneous" "An elephant!" "How annoyed would you be, as well?" ""You got me one of these last year!"" ""Did I?" "Yeah, look!" "How could you miss that?"" "Absolutely slaughtered." "Plastered." "Couldn't remember where he lived." "A, er, socket ... er,socketset ." "Did he get a copy of "A Bridge Over Troubled Water"?" "Jane's Fighting Ships." "Did he get a book by Jeremy Clarkson?" ""If this book was a book it'd be a book!" "That'll do, won't it?"" "A million sold." "What did he do?" "Let's think about what Isambard Kingdom Brunel did." "Engineer." "Tunnels, bridges" "Oh, Meccano!" "Er, no" "Which is the biggest tunnel he..." "The Box Tunnel?" "The Box Tunnel." "And the Box Hill." "Two miles long." "There it is." "Or the opening of it, obviously." "It's huge!" "It created so much earthworks, it was the biggest tunnel in the world at the time he did it" "They built Whales with it." "There are vast holes down there." "They're linked by tunnels." "There are eighty miles of tunnels under there." "But in 1935 and 1940, the military took over, and they built this extraordinary system of underground" "30,000 square feet of office space, with a lift and with an ammunition dump, and a lot of people believe now that it's got an alien spaceship in it and all kinds of other nonsense." "There's a lot of local folklore." "Cause I grew up near the tunnel." "hen you'll know all about this." "You grew up in that tunnel." "That explains a great deal." ""Creature of the Tunnel"" ""Dare ye go in that Box Tunnel!"" "Did they tell you anything about the way Brunel designed it?" "And a special effect that could be got from it once a year." "Does the light shine through it once a year?" "You can have your sweetie." "Yes, on his birthday, which is the 9 of April." "He was born in 1806." "It was his bicentennial of his birth The sun shining through on his birthday." "Our QI field researchers wanted to stand there and check it, but they weren't allowed to by Network Rail." "That is one of the problems!" "It is straight tunnel and the light will shine though but it's full of dust and smoke and other things." "So, to "explosions"." "Where's the best place to be when a nuclear bomb goes off?" ""Downtown Nagasaki"." "What are the chances of that happening again?" "There is a distance, and I'm not sure what that distance is" "You have to be close enough to get some of the radiation, and if you're in the right spot, you will become a superhero." "But, you know, experts are divided on what the distance is and if you get it wrong..." "Hang on." "How about..." "Behind an elephant." "Well, when I say "the best place," if you wanted to watch it" "Know!" "You've gotta have a little bit of card, with a pinhole though it." "And then, you can be as close as you like!" "It actually can't hurt you." "Where did the most nuclear bombs go off in in history?" "South Pacific?" "Well, there were quite a few in the Pacific, but actually, on land." "a thousand between the 1950s and the early '60s." "Nevada." "And in the early '50s when they were practising their techniques and setting off about every three weeks here was a town which was a no-good town at all in the early '50s." "It was of no interest" "Vegas." "Las Vegas." "It's called itself the "up and atom town"." "And it advertised itself as a place to watch nuclear bombs going off." "It's 65 miles away; they thought that was nice and safe;" "they would have poolside parties in the few hotels that were there" "So you're saying the lights of Vegas have got nothing to do with lights?" "That's just an afterglow of people going" ""I don't feel well!"" "Well, over 10,000 people, known as "down-winders", have claimed, and successfully claimed half a billion dollars from the U.S. Government for for the effects of it." "The Japanese emperor Hirohito made a radio announcement after Hiroshima which may be one of the great understatements of all time" "He said, "The war has developed not necessarily to our advantage."" ""Traffic and Travel next."" "Not that much "Travel"." "Fortunately, the American search for amusing new bombs o entertain the public never ceases." "How does the "love bomb" work?" "I turn up.... and I get on with it." "Isn't a love bomb a bottom noise that can be made whilst you're making love?" "You know, sometimes," "And then suddenly, you know the moment's been awkward and you pretend you haven't heard it." "Rob, can I remind you of something?" "Your father is in the audience." "He's probably going "That's my boy!" "You're putting Wales on the map, Robert!"" "With this kind of sophisticated humour." "You're quite right." "It lets off some thing that makes everyone feel loved up." "It's a big ecstasy bomb." "You're sort of right." "In 1994, the Americans worked on the idea of a bomb that would contain an aphrodisiac." "I quote of the plan, here;" "it was declassified two years ago." ""One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."" "The idea was to make troops..." "Is that the best example we could find?" "What have you been putting in my tea, then?" "They would all start loving each other up instead of fighting." "Now, what could you make with an ultrasound rectal probe, a light-emitting tube, bicycle helmets, protective clothing, a huge tub of Vaseline, and a wheelbarrow?" "I could make you the happiest man alive!" "Elephant in the room!" "Is this something to do with a medical examination of an elephant?" "You get the points, yes." "it's how you test pregnancy in elephants." "No, it's how you make pregnancy in elephants." "Well, that's what I meant, yes." "Artificial insemination of elephants" "You need the safety helmet for safety reasons, as you can imagine" "You need the bucket, or wheelbarrow, to collect the elephant droppings." "cause you need to give the elephant an enema first." "Are you making an elephant porn film, or what" "And you do need hours of preparation for this." "A couple of Germans, surprisingly, are the experts in this." "Doctors Thomas Hildebrandt and Frank Goeritz." "There's the doctor now." "They've made twelve baby elephants this way." "When you say "hours of preparation," do you mean "gettin 'er in da mood"?" "Do you take her out to dinner?" "Do you compliment her?" "You only have to compliment her once 'cause she never forgets..." "An ultrasound probe into the elephant's rectum, while feeding a light-emitting tube into what is rather pleasingly called her "vestibule"." "Into the rectum?" "Yeah." "I'm pretty sure that's not how it's done" "No, but you have to do that first." "You have to do that first?" "That's what I've been telling her!" "She won't listen!" "Finally, she'll pay attention now!" "Why not just get a big boy elephant?" "in the circumstances sex is impossible." "Artificial insemination with other animals happens, obviously, and..." "Getting animals to mate in captivity is very difficult." "Especially with each other." "all those exciting objects with luck could make you a baby elephant and they are the tools used by artificial inseminators." "So, the wheel turns full circle and plunges us back into the oily sump of General Ignorance." "So, fingers on buzzers, please." "Where are you most likely to get bitten by a vampire?" "Er, a 19th century novel." "Pinewood Studios." "Very good." "Good answer." "outside your own house." "Where on the body?" "It would have to be some sort of protrusion, where blood gathers, and is easily accessible" "So it's probably the elbow." "What about:" "In a dark tunnel?" "No, but it is a protuberance, as Jimmy pointed out" "Big toe!" "A big toe is the most likely place." "There are a number of misconceptions about vampire bats," "I mean, we're talking about real vampire..." "Who does your picture recently?" "That is a really ugly animal" "That Gary Oldman is a hell of an actor." "He really transforms, doesn't he?" "I mean, among vampire bats, is he regarded as a bit of a looker?" "If Yoda had accepted the dark side..." "I think that's how he would have looked." "That's a very smart looking bat." ""Hello!"" ""Would you mind awfully if I nipped you on the toe?"" ""I'm having a few friends over." "Would you like a liqueur?"" "What did they do?" "How do they ingest their blood?" "I mean, what do they do?" "bite and sniff it up?" "Swallow it." "Lick it?" "Slurp it." "Hide it." "Store it." "Draw it off into..." "Decant it!" "Lay it down for a couple of years." "They go with a syringe." "I mean, they're quite hygienic animals." "Small bit of cotton wool... syringe, and then you get a cup of tea and a biscuit, and that's how you know you've been bitten." "Tiny little plaster on it." "You're right in one sense." "They do an anticoagulant and a painkiller." "So you're unlikely to know you're being bitten." "What they do is they open the skin and the vein and then they lap at it." "Like a cat." "don't want to alarm you, but I think a love bomb may have gone off." "Stephen doesn't need a love bomb to behave like that, you know." "Is it getting hot in here?" "Yes, the most likely place to get bitten by vampire is in the big toe" "And, finally, what's the biggest load of rubbish in the world?" "France." "We got "France"!" "That's a lovely picture of France there, in the back." "I think you can have a sweet for that." "That's sponsored by the British tourist board. "Don't leave;" "it's horrible over there."" "Somewhere in America, probably." "hang on." "There was a thing in the QI book about the biggest load of rubbish in the world" "The biggest man-made thing and it was a rubbish dump in New York." ""Fresh Kills"?" "That is the largest..." "Thanks for taking that bullet, Bill!" "Lord knows I appreciate that!" "I'll set 'em up; you knock 'em over!" "I don't know many rubbish dumps, funnily enough" "There's Wandsworth Tip." "I don't know the biggest one;" "there's a very good one at... good one for the Richmond area" "They have separate stuff for plastics and cardboard and textiles" "That's the one in Wandsworth." "No, no, no." "I did clearly say Richmond." "but you can do all that in Wandsworth as well." "You don't have to go to Richmond" "I'm talking about Richmond!" "What was the original question?" "Well, that is, as you say, that is a very big pile of rubbish." "It's the biggest man-made structure in the world but actually, we're in the Pacific." "We're in the Northern Pacific Gyre." "Come with me into swirling vortex that is the Northern Pacific Gyre." "That's not a photo, is it?" "All of the currents swirl everything tends towards making a maelstrom." "they grab all the driftwood and all the rubbish" "In the old days, rubbish would go there but it would be broken down by micro-organisms, but today, since the invention of plastic" "Plastic doesn't biodegrade, as you probably know." "It photodegrades so it lasts for a very long time" "An area the size of Texas." "I mean, it's colossal." "And for every pound of plankton, there are six pounds of plastic." "I mean, is it just on the surface, or is it ..." "Whereis it ?" "It's on the surface; it gets eaten by the poor animals, you know." "You can find jellyfish with brightly coloured bits of plastic inside." "You think that's remarkable." "At the Richmond tip" "There's a section for fluorescent tubes." "We've got that, in Wandsworth, haven't we?" "And we've got one there that's for fridges" "We've got fridges." "Fridges, tellies, computers everything you want." "Keyboards things you don't need anymore" "Whereabouts is it?" "I wanna check it out." "Not telling!" "We can decide all this later the biggest collection of rubbish in the world is floating in the North Pacific Gyre otherwise known as the Pacific Trash Vortex." "That's kind of grunge band, isn't it?" "speaking of rubbish, it's time for the scores." "And first out of the tunnel with a full eleven points, is Rob Brydon!" "Does that mean..." "Mirabile dictu, in second place, perhaps for the first time ever, with plus four points, Alan Davies!" "And in third place, with minus two, it's Jimmy Carr." "In your face!" "Which means!" "It means that, trailing behind in one of those funny little up-and-down things that you take along on a railway line with minus eighteen points Bill Bailey!" "So, that's all from Jimmy, Rob, Bill, Alan, and me but here's one last question for you at home." "How do you know that God is a civil engineer?" "Because when he designed the human body" "He put the recreation area right next to the sewage outflow." "Good night."