"APPLAUSE" "CHEERING AND WHISTLING" "Well!" "there!" "hello hucksters and hogwash a veritable horde of hornswogglers." "it's Sean Lock." "APPLAUSE Thank you." "Danny Baker." "APPLAUSE David Mitchell." "APPLAUSE" "Alan Davies." "APPLAUSE so see if you can tell me which one of these buzzing calls is not the mating call of a deer." "Sean goes..." "DEEP ROARING NOISE" "Danny goes..." "ROARING" "David goes..." "AGONISED ROARING" "And Alan goes... dear!"" "we've actually hidden..." "Is it Alan's?" "Yes." "right up to my one. there will be one question which is a hoax." "You play your hoax card and you get extra points. but don't have your hoax cards unspent at the end of the game." "I'm not going to tell you." "Can we play them more than once?" "possibly..." "No." "Oh." "I don't think this format has been worked out in enough detail." "that's crucial." "You can't." "I was thinking of being generous but no. that's OK." "hang on." "How many lives do we get?" "then none of us can lose out?" "we all lose points and then it's just done." "LAUGHTER" "I can see I've made a terrible rod for my own back here." "let's see what happens." "shifty looking characters." "What were they up to last night?" "They were up all night making a picnic table." "they're in the studio tonight." "I just thought I'd warn you." "They were winning the Mr Handsome contest." "That's more like it." "Were they harming horses?" "slash horses?" "like slashing horses." "Goats." "They were slashing goats." "No." "Let's..." "Let's assume we wouldn't invite into the studio people who maim animals." "Were they pretending to be gas men and thereby stealing the property of aged people?" "would that help?" "Cathedral stealing." "Grave robbing." "Grave robbing's always..." "They drew something rude on Stonehenge." "well done." "Crop circles." "Absolutely right." "APPLAUSE" "There they are. but what was the crop circle we commissioned them?" "A QI symbol." "A QI crop circle and they did it for us and it's rather impressive." "QI is run by aliens." "Would you like to see it?" "I certainly would." "let's have it." "We went to the expense of having a travelling aerial shot." "MUSIC: "The Ride of the Valkyries" by Wagner." "What do you think of that?" "It's a hoax!" "We did!" "That's real?" "It looks like a Led Zeppelin cover." "it was real. we were contacted by people..." ""Is it real or is it man-made?" "both." "I ask that about sandwiches all the time." "But it's a rather marvellous example of a breed of phenomenon that has been going since when?" "Is the farmer here tonight?" "We recompensed the farmer." "It doesn't actually do much damage." "How many mice were frightened in the making of that?" "We can't tell that." "I bet this is older than we suspect." "yeah." "'70s it began and it got more and more refined." "There was a man called..." "Like Pizza Express." "There were a couple called..." "Yeah." "Doug Bower and Dave Chorley admitted that they'd been responsible for most of the crop circles." "They used to be on the news every summer." "There would be aerial shots and people called cereologists believed these were the work of people from outer space all kinds of nonsense. from where the engine blasts off back into space." "Where are our three here?" "Is that John Lundberg?" "There you are." "There's John." "Can you tell me how you did yours?" "What's the most technological item you need?" "which is a plank of wood and a loop of rope that you put under your foot to flatten the crop so they're very simple techniques and very simple tools." "What about your spaceship?" "What spaceship do you use?" "it's going to take a while." "So how many do you do a year in the season?" "we don't say how many we make but we've made hundreds over the years." "And are there still those who refuse to believe that it's all hoaxers like you?" "Absolutely." "They've been ringing your production office." "thank you very much indeed." "Thank you." "There you are. a couple of coat hangers." "would you believe that they put a man on the moon?" "Who?" "NASA." "I believe so." "yes." "really." "But you probably know that a lot of people don't believe it." "I sort of believe one thing." "Uh-oh!" "Yeah?" "I kind of believe that they might have done some mocked-up fake photographs." "Really?" "Why?" "Because someone convinced me of it..." "Yeah?" "..by talking about the angle of light and the shadows but then I did an advert with Patrick Moore did they land on the moon?" and he looked so annoyed." "He explained how he had helped map the moon for NASA and the landing site was partly his idea he was going to be sick in my eyes." "It..." "They are a rather tired of..." "Buzz Aldrin might have punched you." "Buzz Aldrin punched someone..." "Did he?" "..because he got so tired of these conspiracy arses." "I think it was a television documentary about..." "There have been several." "This photo couldn't possibly have been taken on the moon." "It was obviously taken in a studio." "You've got me started now but there are a lot of conspiracies." "6% of Americans believe that man didn't land on the moon a quarter of our nation." "apparently." "That's so depressing." "The flag." "It's one of the things that I read." "yes." "There it is." "they've starched the flag so they could get a good photograph of it." "They haven't stiffened it." "It's rumpled. which is a vacuum." "it doesn't stop for a long time." "There's no resistance against it." "So they unfurled it and it moved back and forth." "Ah!" "Breeze!" "they would be stupid enough to fake it and allow the take that had the breeze in it to go out. the least you'd expect is a flag moving a bit strangely." "You know what I mean?" "he's not there." "The flag moves a bit strangely..." "I can go with that." "Why isn't one of them holding up a camera?" "The one taking the picture is reflected in the visor of the other and he's not holding a camera." "you see." "Ah." "That's because they didn't put the camera up in front of their visor." "They were mounted." "You couldn't imagine them getting a camera out." "winding it on with gloves..." "I'd like to go to the moon." "Would you?" "I'd love to do that." "You haven't mentioned the clincher." "One was the idea that below the lunar module that landed there was no crater or sense of disturbed dust." "the engines cut off and it hovered down and it very quickly landed. it doesn't send out spears of flame as it descends." "That just didn't happen." "it was designed by geniuses and not people tapping away at the internet who've got to go to work in the morning." "Who do you trust?" "We are in trouble as a species if people refuse to believe in things they couldn't actually do themselves." "So true!" "That's so true." "The other one was the footprints. only caked mud could do that." "But you can do that with flour." "It's very fine ground it coheres. which are now used for bouncing lasers off how far the moon is away from us." "You can make incredibly accurate measurements because of mirrors on the surface of the moon." "Perhaps for me the clinching one is that America's enemy at the time in the space race was the Soviet Union and not once did they suggest that America hadn't done it." "we know this was hoax." Yeah." "for every ill-conceived argument there's an explanation to put our minds at rest." "Now for something closer to home." "How would you make your house the most famous house in Britain?" "That's easy." "Yeah?" "dismember them and bury them in the garden." "That..." "Marry the Queen." "You marry the Queen..." "Yes?" "you're not living in those palaces any more." "Carlisle." "OK." "Those would work." "Those would work." "Some sort of spectacular suicide?" "Mmm..." "I suppose the murdering people would work better." "I was trying to make it sad." "But this is..." "Balloons." "You tie loads of balloons and your house goes... that would be sweet." "This was a bet that took place in 1810 that Hook could make any house he chose the most famous residence in London in one week." "He had a week in which to do it." "He prepared over the week but it all happened in one day." "I've heard of this." "Yeah?" "all kinds of different goods." "000 different tradesmen and services in all the commercial directories all over London." "He ordered chimney sweeps." "there were 12 chimney sweeps arriving." "And then more and more and more and more arrived." "It became absolutely gigantic. haven't we? a dozen pianos arrived." "The governor of the Bank of England turned up to what the fuss was about. and er..." "There it is." "That sign doesn't fit that bit of wall." "It doesn't really. you'd have to read it in portrait..." "It's back to the drawing board." "They've got that all wrong." "Or just chill out about the whole thing." "right." "HE CHUCKLES" "So it's like going on the internet and ordering the lot?" "Yes." "I'll have everything." "Exactly." "was besieged." "So he didn't live there?" "No!" "He chose..." "He just chose this house." "That was the point of the bet. the most famous house in London." "Theodore Hook bet a man called Beasley that he could make 54 Berners Street the most famous house in London." "What conclusion did the great biologist Stephen Jay Gould draw from a lifetime's study of fish?" "Oh." "Yeah?" "They haven't got any legs." "Is that his lifetime's study?" "No." "It wasn't a study of a fish." "they smell." ""They haven't got any legs." "Starfish don't have brains." "It's the Louis Walsh of the aquatic world." "starfish." "to be honest." "I think." "Is a starfish a fish?" "Is a jellyfish a fish?" "Is a cuttlefish a fish?" "Is a seahorse a horse?" "But the starfish... in the world whether it should be down to experts in biology whether things are fish or whether it should be down to menus." "a crayfish comes under fish on a menu..." "He looks like he's reading the sell-by date on that fish." "he's dead now." "he was a palaeontologist and a biologist that they..." "That there is no such thing as a fish." "Fish has no biological meaning." "There is just..." "So I'm absolutely right." "Go with menus." "is it?" "It often comes in the same bit and separate from puddings." "Things that live in the sea." "Fish and pudding are different." "How can something not be something?" "Something can't be not be not something." "then something has to be that something so it has to be a fish if there is the idea of fish in the first place." "I swear there's a philosophy lecturer somewhere who said... we use the word fish." "a camel than it is to a hagfish." "there are lots of things that fly." "a vulture flies and there are flying lizards." "They're not all birds but we call things that swim in the sea fish they have absolutely nothing to do with each other at all. biologist Stephen Jay Gould concluded there was no such thing as a fish." "What did Nostradamus get right?" "The hat." "The hat." "He got the hat right." "The hat's good." "big mistake - the green coat with the brown hat." "It's crazy." "The hat looks cool." "Who is he?" "Have you not heard of Nostradamus?" "I've heard of him." "I've no idea where he lived." "His name was Michel de Nostredame." "He lived from 1503 to 1566." "He was a Provencal apothecary these four-line verses." "Were they deliberately obtuse?" "I'm aware there'll be headlines on it but why were they so obscure?" "He was a mystic and I suppose he..." "Who knows?" "He got drugged up and he just wrote down a four-line verse of whatever he saw." "He was a chemist." "An apothecary." "He had access to all kinds of crazy hooch." "Exactly." "gibberish." "Yes." "And a lot of idiots..." "Because even the people now that's not good value for money because all the things it's predicting won't happen for ages is nonsense." "it's only use is to predict something just after it's happened." "Wow. is he did a fantastic recipe for cherry jam." "He read all the books and one of the books he read was about jams. is still as good as it ever was." "Really?" "demonstrably and repeatedly true." "He also made aphrodisiac jams made of sparrows' brains and all that sort of thing." "But generally speaking his cherry jam..." "Was a triumph." "It's something he got right. he was busy compiling a rather excellent collection of jam recipes." "Now?" "Who's the most famous person to have been beaten..." "Hello?" "Do you think that's a massive hoax?" "Yeah." "Hoax." "JINGLE PLAYS Oh!" "You're wrong." "Oh." "you idiot!" "That was entirely true." "well." "the question had finished." "no." "It was too late." "You stopped me." "So who was the most famous person to be beaten by a machine at chess?" "You get double points if you can name the machine." "Me." "I got beaten by a Hoover." "Is that right?" "Yes." "Somebody left it on and it moved the pieces around and it still beat me." "That's how bad I am at chess." "The key thing in the question is not most famous chess grand master." "It could be Marilyn Monroe or..." "It's not a famous chess player?" "No." "Very well worked out." "There is..." "The Queen." "the great grand master..." "He lost to..." "Deep Blue." "But that wasn't..." "The Queen is the most famous person in the world." "Did she lose to a ZX80?" "This was someone who was more famous than the Queen in his day as it were." "Had a higher rank than queen." "Jesus." "Jesus isn't really a rank." "Jesus." "It's a rank. "I am Jesus."" "though." "that's true." "You can't handle the truth." "Jesus plays chess sounds like an indie band or it will be." "Napoleon." "Napoleon is the right answer." "Do you know what the machine might have been?" "Was it some sort of clever wind-up automaton?" "It was an automaton and it was unbelievably clever." "It was called the Mechanical Turk and the Turk was made of machinery there would be a man inside who was a chess master." "He would manipulate the machinery to make the Turk pick up and move the pieces." "So it was a genuinely astonishing piece of machinery that unfortunately burned in a fire in 1854." "Napoleon rather fancied himself at chess so he was extremely annoyed to be beaten in 19 moves by this machine." "you might like to know." "who was in Paris at the time as ambassador for the newly formed United States." "What was the deal with it?" "They were unaware that there was a grand master inside?" "Yeah." "OK." "They thought it was a machine." "Charles Babbage was beaten by it." "He's the father of computing." "He invented the difference engine. he would never have invented the difference engine." "Exactly." "a remarkable thing." "The Mechanical Turk." "amongst other people." "But enough hoaxes." "It's time for some general ignorance." "if you please." "How can you tell if someone is lying?" "dear! their sphincter..." "If they clench up their sphincter..." "Let's suppose you haven't got a finger on their sphincter..." "DEER BELLOWING" "..and you aren't holding their hand." "Yeah?" "What they've said turns out not to be true." "Yeah." "APPLAUSE" "Yay!" "dear!"" "They work for an estate agent's." "APPLAUSE" "Oh!" "Is there a bitterness behind that?" "it's just an observation." "Is it something physical?" "It is but not tactile." "You can't touch them. they look up left instead of up right or up right instead of up left or something like...?" "CLAXONS HOWL" "I was." "I think I know what it is." "Embrace the claxon." "I'm trying to. er... l-l-l-l..." "Let me..." "T-t-t-t-t-t-t..." "I reckon." "I mean... you are more right than David by a long way." "The point is it's very hard to see if someone's lying. the things that people think are to do with it." "It's all to do with how they're speaking." "Is this why it's easier to tell if someone's lying on the phone than face to face?" "Exactly so. showing them videos of people telling the truth and lying." "They found that people performed no better than chance." "so-called experts - returned the same result." "people are much more accurate." "About 73% accuracy listening to lies." "So the thing to do is shut your eyes." "Is that man going to shoot him?" "It's a very early polygraph." "doesn't it?" "Right. "Name?" "John."" "Wrong." Boom." "Presumably that means it's easier to dupe the deaf than the blind." "it isn't." "That's true." "claims 000 people do have a natural ability to detect lies by actually looking at expressions." "very few people." "He named them the truth wizards and they're able to read micro-expressions that last milliseconds in ways that others aren't." "there you are." "Most people can't tell if you're lying but they'll have a better chance if they focus on your speech." "What's the one thing you know for sure about oranges?" "They're orange." "They're orange?" "CLAXONS GO OFF Oh!" "That's the problem." "in fact. because we shoppers prefer to see an orange skin." "oranges are actually green." "And there you can see how green they are." "Do you know where the word comes from or what the original word was?" "It's naranja." "Naranja." "That's the Spanish for orange." "The original naranja is Sanskrit it loses the N. like a nadder was a snake." "don't they?" "It should be called a nanorange." "Just a norange would do." "A norange?" "yeah." "That'll do it." "Well done." "Should an apple be called a nappie?" "it doesn't work with apple." "for example." "that's just silly." "But er..." "It works with a nadder." "That's now become an adder but is was originally "a nadre." "An adder." "Right." "And an ick name." "it became a nickname but it was originally an ick name." "What's an ick...?" "It became a nickname." "Right." "Sean." "What was it called before?" "Ick name." "an ick name?" "Where does that come from?" "That's not a fruit." "No!" "Arrgh!" "APPLAUSE man." "Heaven help us all." "Oranges are not necessarily orange and there's a good case for saying that they started as greens." "What do swimming pools smell of?" "Hmm." "Children." "Probably true." "dear!" "..is chlorine." "CLAXON SOUNDS Ow!" "I bet they don't even put chlorine in them." "You don't smell the chlorine. the way to get rid of it is to add chlorine." "Chlorine reacting with urine." "Yeah." "Chloramines are formed by sweat and urine and faecal matter and lots of other horrible things in swimming pools added to chlorine." "add chlorine." "I should tell you that not one of you managed to identify the hoax because the idea of the hoax was itself a hoax." "There was no hoax." "GROANING" "APPLAUSE" "This..." "This is an outrage." "This is like the end of Lost." "It's endearing how much it matters to them." "So everything you heard was as true as trousers." "So the winner tonight..." "Wow!" "A-ha!" "The winner tonight with an impressive minus one is Sean Lock." "I won?" "You won." "And..." "You won this discredited show." "is David Mitchell." "APPLAUSE" "Yeah!" "Yeah!" "Danny Baker." "APPLAUSE" "Alan Davies." "Thank you very much." "APPLAUSE AND CHEERING" "Sean and Alan." "I leave you with an observation from Will Rogers." "The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected." "Thank you and goodnight." "APPLAUSE" "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "Email subtitling@bbc.co.uk"