"APPLAUSE" "CHEERING AND WHISTLING" "Ahoy, ahoy, ahoy, ahoy, ahoy and ho-ho-ho, me hearties." "Welcome aboard the good ship QI, where tonight, 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" "..and the sweet F in sweet FA, Alan Davies." "CHEERING AND APPLAUSE" "But before we slip anchor and catch the tide matelots, let me inspect your bell buttons." "So Charlie goes..." "MUSIC:" "Theme from Blue Peter" " Andy goes..." " MUSIC:" "Theme from Captain Pugwash" "Rob goes... ♪ Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside. ♪" "And Alan goes..." "SPLASHING" " 'What is it, lad?" " He followed in the water!" "'" "For your convenience tonight, if you have anything nautical or nice to tell me, you can catch my eye as well as using your buzzer by waving your international maritime flag, which you should have somewhere under your desks." "There you go." "Charlie, 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." "It's like, "My other ship is a destroyer."" "Oh!" "Very good." "It actually means "You can feel your way past me."" " That's its meaning there." " That's not a proper nautical term, surely!" "It is." "It's, "The way is off my ship, you may feel your way past me."" "Andy, yours is a Z. Z" " Zulu." "It actually means, "I require a tug"." "So come and see me in my cabin!" "I'll see what I can do." "No, I think I won't be needing that." "And, yours, Rob, there." "It's actually J" " Juliet." "And it means, "I'm on fire."" " How strangely apt!" " So you can come to my cabin as well." "It has a second meaning, which is, "I'm leaking."" "So, Alan, yours is..." "Coming up behind?" "No." "It's D" " Delta." "It actually means, "Keep clear of me, I'm manoeuvring with difficulty"." "Well, mine is U" " Uniform." "It means, "You're running into danger."" " That's a good one, isn't it?" " We did News Quiz, the radio show, with a signer quite a few times." "You were mentioning topical characters and it's amazing how quickly they come up with, like, 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." " Oh, wonderful!" " It was brilliant." " In America, the American Sign Language is slightly different." "R is, you just crook your finger like an R. And so Ronald Reagan" " was like that." "Two Rs." " That makes sense, cos a lot of girls that I've been out with - my name's Rob, of course - they've made that sign to me." "I'm sure they haven't." "I can't believe it." "Now, can you guess what these flags mean and what the letters stand for?" "A, B, C, D, E..." "It's O, actually." "It means "overboard"." " Oh, right." " Not just to generally express interest in something another ship has said." ""Oh!"" "They say something and you go..." "Also, if someone's fallen overboard, 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!"" "And the next one is..." "I think that's actually N, which means "no"." "So that after the one before is, "Oh, no!"" "Absolutely!" ""I've spilt something on these trousers." "Oh, no!"" "You've got a third one." "That's a pyramid reflected in a lake." "Oh, it's a rather sweet one." "It's F, actually, and it means "I'm disabled, communicate with me."" "That's a rather patronising view of the disabled." "That they have to have a flag to be communicated with." "I was going to speak to him but the little fella didn't have a flag, so I didn't bother." " They only wave a flag if they want you to talk to them." " Oh, Lord!" "Is there a flag we can use to say, "Does he take sugar?"" "Right, while we're all at sea, 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" " and jetsam has actually been thrown off by someone." " Yes, correct.- Jetsam has been jettisoned." "Did you really work that out?" "From "jeter", the French for "throw."" "Well, yes." "Some of us paid attention at school, 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." "Lagan is cargo that is lying at the bottom of the ocean, sometimes marked by a buoy, 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." "So they're the four classes of wreckage, according to the 1995 Act which covers these things." "Now, from flotsam to fan clubs." "You'll remember that famous double act, Batman and Robin." "What did the Boy Wonder use to sign his autographs?" "♪ .." "Beside the seaside... ♪" "Well, that Boy Wonder, from the television series, was played by Burt Ward." "Ironically, he was Bruce Wayne's young ward, Dick, wasn't he?" "Dick Grayson." "And he went on to a career in pornography." "So I'm wondering therefore, if this is a novelty question and if he signed it with his..." " He used to see a young lady and say, "Quick, 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 to thousands of women, using what he called "bat sperm"" "to sign his name." "Was it actually bat sperm?" "LAUGHTER" "Which is another degree of awfulness, isn't it?" "A fiendish plan." "Hundreds of bats." "Come on!" "He called it the ultimate autograph." "And apparently, Batman watched." "AUDIENCE GROANS" " According to his book." " Which part of the proceedings?" ""Can I watch, Burt?"" ""Sure, Adam!"" "How many times would you want to watch something like that?" " I can see a certain kind of morbid fascination." " Can you?" "!" "Well, 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." "So someone comes up to him in the street and says," ""Could I have your autograph?" and before you know it," ""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." "To the average man in the street, the idea of watching another person having sex is a bit odd, but within the world of show business, present company excluded, you do hear stories of that sort of thing going on, 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!" "Oh, dear." "Dear me." "Can my sister Dolly watch?" "In 1968, they cancelled Batman and he found it hard to get work again, sadly." "So his life..." "I think how that should read is, "He then found work getting hard."" "You're a very bad man." "I'd just like to say, I've got his autograph." "My word, you should be very, very proud!" "Anyway, according to his autobiography, that's what he did." "Anyway, where would you find the world's biggest flasher?" " Is it going to be about a lighthouse?" " Well, oddly enough, 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." " Right, is it the Statue of Liberty?" "Is that a lighthouse?" " No!" "There's not a light at the top of the Statue of Liberty?" "Like a lot of tall structures, it has to have a flashing light on top for aircraft." "Don't look so contemptuous, Rob!" "Well, Big Ben." "Is that a lighthouse?" " She's got a torch." " There's a light up there, yeah." "I mean, I've got a light on my top floor but it's not a lighthouse." "Is it Big Ben, then?" "You're leading the poor boy astray, 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..." " Phosphorescence." " They call it bioluminescence, yes." "Glow-worms and fireflies, but under the water, 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." " There it is." " The day nurse squid?" " No, 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." " It's pretty impressive, isn't it?" " Where is it?" "You're all to behave." ""Bios", meaning living, 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." " At night, all the ugly fish come out." " Of course." " It's really interesting." " You don't need to be pretty." "You go to the Red Sea and in the day, the fish are beautiful, colourful fish and then at night, 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!"" "And then you shine a light and them and they go, "No!" ""Don't look at me!" "Don't look at me!"" "That's the answer to the greatest flasher amongst the animals is that North Pacific Dana octopus fish." "But in nature also, and it's an extraordinary effect that takes place in Venezuela..." "For 10 hours a night, up to 280 times an hour for 180 days of the year, the mouth of the Catatumbo river in Venezuela..." "What's so extraordinary about this phenomenon, is that it is the greatest source of ozone, we think, on earth." "It actually helps mend the ozone layer." "It gives off an enormous amount of ozone," " all this electrical storm activity." " Is it a tourist attraction?" " People do go to see it." " The kind of thing where you book for two weeks, 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." " He had someone stuffed with chestnuts." " Oh, that's horrible." "No, this is a pope we're talking about." "His Holiness the Pope actually had prostitutes, naked prostitutes." "He would throw the chestnuts on the floor" " and they would grovel after them, picking them up." " Oh, because he was a pope." "He wouldn't stuff people with chestnuts, he was a pope!" "I thought it was going to be something salacious." "Why can't we have popes like that again now?" " They may be like that." " Yeah, maybe they are." "We don't know." "There was one, Formosus, 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..." ""What have you got to say to that?" "As I thought, nothing."" "When they could get a word in, someone standing behind it like a ventriloquist would say that he denied the charges." " Anyway, he was then condemned..." " To death!" "His three fingers he used to do papal blessings with were cut off his skeleton." "Did the man behind go, "Ow!" "Ow!"" ""Oh!" "Not my fingers!" "Argh!"" "And he was condemned to be reburied in a common grave." "But then..." ""No, not the common grave!" "No!"" ""Put my arm back in the box!"" ""Get back in the box!" "No, get me out the box!"" "But Stephen, who had done this to him, he was deposed, 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?" "Innocent, exactly." "That's a TV series, probably." "Pope Trial." " It's a long-running West End show." " Pope Idol." "Even as I say that, there's a Channel 4 executive out there going," ""D'you know what...?"" "I can see Ray Winstone as a corrupt pope. "Oi, you, slag." ""Chestnuts on the floor." "Forage!"" "APPLAUSE" "Anyway, the Borgia Pope celebrated the feast of the chestnuts with an evening of prostitute-racing in the Vatican." "Now, lastly, once again to F for Forfeit." "It's general ignorance, so fingers on those buzzers, if you please." "Name the inventor of rugby football." "'He followed in the water!" "'" "Er, it was invented at Rugby School when a boy picked the ball up and ran with it." "Mmm, yeah..." "Except it wasn't, oddly enough." " But I thought you might know his name." " William Webb Ellis.- Oh, 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." "Yes, the odd thing is that they have this little memorial saying that with a fine disregard for the rules of the game as played, he first picked up the ball and ran, 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." "There were lots of ball-handling games like that, so no-one really believes it." "The story was first told three years after Webb Ellis died." "And in the original Football Association rules," " you were allowed to catch the ball." " I believe you were." "Can we see the picture again that was up before it?" "You look at that and you think, "My God, prison life gets easier..."" "I love those old Victorian team photos." "The lounging about, casually." "Quite often, there's someone lying down." "When did those team photos stop?" "Was it something to do with the war?" "Suddenly, it's all in lines." "Rigid lines, hands on knees." "But all the Victorian ones are great." "They're absolutely loungey." "Sometimes, they're just draped over one another." "When did it change?" "You'd think, if anything, 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." "If you absolutely had to, which one would you?" "Oh, I'm not going to give that away." "Which one would you first?" " You're so bad." " Your stamina is..." "All right, let's move on." "Yes, William Webb Ellis died unaware of his apocryphal role in sporting history, 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?" "No." "In the British Secret Service, an agent is an informant to what Bond was, an intelligence officer." "Do you know how he got the job, 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." "And he walked away and they said he walked like a panther, which when you think about it, 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." ""Look at him, he's doing it again." "Sean, please get up!"" ""There are no chestnuts down there, Sean, baby."" "He does have a fabulously lithe walk." "What's the difference between your walk and your gait?" "Is it the same thing?" "Not exactly, is it?" "The gait is the sort of... picture, the angle, 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." "You know who's got the funniest walk, I think, it's Liam Gallagher." "He's got that walk that you do, 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." "But he still does it and he's what, about 47 now?" "Well, 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." "There you are." "You see, the security services..." "Still enjoying it." "One more." "He's virtually arseless, isn't he, 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." "Someone was saying, "Oh, Deadwood's very good."" "And someone said, "No bum."" "He must have..." "Mechanically, he must have something." "He has got an anus." "I'm sure he's got an anus." "Oh, all right." " No buttocks." "It's fascinating." "Flat!" " That's a nightmare for a dresser." "They have to staple his trousers to him." "He'd have to have a little dresser going behind him in all his scenes, 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." " And you had an answer, too?" " Eight." "KLAXON BLARES" " Would there be a maximum?" " Yes, have you never tried it?" " Strangely not." "Try it." "Here's some." "Pass one along to the boy next to you!" "Come on, 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 can't do seven, I'm out at six." "That's that particular piece of paper, 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." "What it shows is, if you feed the various variables into it..." "W is width, T is thickness of paper, 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." ""Damn you all!" Oh, I've got a text." "You want T to be a low number so, if I'd finished, thickness low, length long." "And she demonstrated this by using a long sheet of lavatory paper, in fact, which was very thin and she managed to fold it 12 times." "And finally, what does it mean when the Union flag is flying over Buckingham Palace?" "Yes?" "I'm going to regret this." "It means the Queen's home, come and have a cup of tea." " That's what it means." " No, it does not mean the Queen's home." "It means, it means, the Queen is about to get home... ..put the electric blanket on." "Don't they fly the Royal Standard when the Queen is home?" "When the Queen is home, they fly the Royal Standard." "Since 1997, when the Queen is not home, they fly the Union flag." "♪ .." "Beside the seaside... ♪" " It was Princess Diana." " The Queen was in Balmoral, being played by Helen Mirren at the time, if you remember." "And what happened was, 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." "It was such a mess, the whole thing, that they then decided, all right, in future, just in case the sovereign is not at home, instead of there being a bare flagpole, we'll have the Union flag so that then when someone dies" "that the nation decides it's very fond of, 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." "Which was, she was out at Sandringham, I think, or Balmoral, out on the moors" " with her Land Rover and a stag..." " That was a great scene, that." "Well, it was a great scene, but she says, "Oh, shoo!"" "She's a member of the royal family." "She'd have blown it to bits." "They should have dubbed on Philip going, "Keep it there!"" ""It's talking to Betty." "Come on!"" "He called her Cabbage in the film, 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 after swimming the Channel, he took his mum with him and the Queen came along and then Prince Philip, and the Queen said, "You swam the Channel, didn't you?"" "He said, "Yes, ma'am."" ""But that's not all you do, is it?"" "And he said, "No, I'm in a comedy show." "Oh, very good."" "Then off she went." "Then Prince Philip came and he said to David's mum," ""Are there any more nutters in your family?"" "Good." "Anyway, 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." "And so, 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." "Oh, my word." "My goodnessy wordington." "Tonight, our Jolly Roger, with eight points, is Charlie Higson!" "APPLAUSE" "And, well, pretty shipshape with -8, it's Rob Brydon!" "APPLAUSE" "But sailing rather close to the wind with -15 points, Andy Hamilton!" "APPLAUSE" "And finally, walking the plank with a report card that's all Fs, Alan with -19!" "APPLAUSE AND CHEERING" "So all that remains for me is to thank Andy, Rob, Charlie and Alan and as we lower the QI flag, we raise a glass to curiosity, for as Dorothy Parker once said, "The cure for boredom is curiosity." ""There is no cure for curiosity."" "And as Steven Wright added, "Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while, I was a suspect." Good night." "APPLAUSE" "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "Email subtitling@bbc.co.uk"