"I do know there's a tribe in China that don't speak at all, they don't talk at all." " They sing to each other." "It's all they do." " Really?" "If you're courting someone and you want to marry them, you have to go and do a singing audition to his or her parents." "They decide whether you've got a good enough voice to marry them." " Pressure." " They're called the Dong." "The Dong?" "Well, there you are." " It's a tribe." " Sing continually?" "They live in two valleys, and they're so cut off that the Chinese government put a phone box in their thing as an amenity for them all, cos no one's got a phone at home, and they said:" ""Everybody's in the street." "Why would they phone?"" "So they gave up with the phone box and they just put chickens in it instead." " Five very useful QI points." " Touching on the phone thing, of course, in different nations they answer it in different ways." "But the word "hello" was never meant as a greeting, it was a result of a New York Times competition." "In the early days, it was "Ahoy-hoy", but people were embarrassed by this, so the New York Times said, "Can we agree upon a word that...?"" "The Bell Telephone Company had a competition to decide which word should be used." " "Hello" was a..." " "Hello" was an expression of surprise." ""Hello, what's this?" It did not mean "Hi there."" " It's a pocket jotter." " Oh, thank you." "Thank you." "And so it was agreed upon that you could answer the phone by saying "Hello."" "For five extra points, can you think of another word invented by a magazine in the 1950s?" "They wanted to find a word for the kind of people who did something which was new in the '50s, and there was no word to describe it." " "Beat generation."" " Did you say "teenager"?" " They live out there." " Aliens?" " Audience?" " They live in camera one, camera two..." " Viewers." " "Viewer" is the word." "Radio Times had a competition." "There was the word "listener" for the radio, but people didn't know whether to call it a "watcher" or a "seer" or a "looker"." "It seems obvious now that it should be "viewer"." " George III's last words are quite interesting." " Go on." ""I think I shall have another of Mr Bellamy's pork pies."" "(laughter)" "Never second-guess the Almighty." "Mr Bellamy came in and said, "Who's had my pie?"" ""You, George." And then there was an awful scene." " (Stephen ) He actually died on the lavatory." " Did he?" " As did Elvis." " Elvis did as well." "Adders are known to be vipers, but they are virtually harmless." "Their sting, or bite, is generally no more dangerous than that of a wasp." "More people die from nut allergies and insect stings every year than are killed by adder bites in a whole century." "The last adder fatality in Britain was a girl of five years old in 1977." "An angry aardvark is a different proposition." "It puts up a fierce defence, standing upright, slashing with its claws, kicking with its legs, executing high-speed forward somersaults - a sort of long-nosed Keanu Reeves." "Then so we return to our opening theme with the horrific tale of animal aggression that was reported in the News of the World." ""Kevin Keegan told me last night after what happened to me, the last..."" "Hello, he didn't tell me that." "I love this." "If it's grammatically incorrect, you actually can't read it out." "It's like the Terminator going, "Zzt, zzt." "Does not compute." "Does not compute."" " I'm so sorry." "Erm..." " (laughter)" "Zzzt! "It's not English!" "It's not English!"" "Perhaps the quotation marks begin somewhere else in this story." "Erm..." " I'll read it, if it's grammatically incorrect." " Right." " (Bill) Change syntax." " OK." "You have 20 seconds to comply." "(imitates gunshot)" "RoboPedant Dude." " (Alan) Grammatical Terminator." " (applause)" " "After what seemed..." " (laughter) ...an age..."" "I'm sorry." "It still doesn't make sense." "I frankly don't see anything embarrassing about asking for a pile-treatment cream." "I'm perfectly prepared..." "Do you find that embarrassing?" " No, I go regularly..." " (laughter) ...and ask for products even though none of them work." "None of them works." "This happens every week, it's quite extraordinary." " I'm very tough on grammar here." " Why is it?" ""None" means "not one"." "Not one of them works." "You can't say "One of them work."" "One of them works, one of them doesn't." "It's like people who say "between you and I", thinking that's grammatical." " Two don't work." "Two of them don't work." " And one doesn't work." "So none works." " It's really not difficult." " None of them work!" "All those batteries on the table, they're all dead." "None of 'em work." "Is incorrect." "Use "none" where you'd use "one"." ""All those batteries on the table, one of them works."" "Or "not one of them works"." ""Not one" is "none"." "None of them works." " I work, you work, he works, she works." " Not one of them works, yes." " Yes, third person singular." " He's from the southern hemisphere." "We mustn't let this become a grammar lesson for our unfortunate Alan." "We love him dearly." " He's pig-ignorant, but he's lovely." " I still don't understand." "It is time for our final scores." "And here they are." "Bill, much as we love you, I'm afraid I have to say you didn't come first, second or third." "What was that, then?" "Jeremy and Rich came second equal." "But in the lead with 30, it's Alan, this week, ladies and gentlemen." "(applause)" " (Alan) I had all those minus scores!" " I can't understand that, either." " Oh, I beg your pardon." " I can feel a stewards' inquiry coming on." "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very sorry, I've made a bit of a mistake." "I think you'll be amused when you find out what it is." "Shall we start again?" "That's it, it's time for the final scores." "And let's see..." "Let's start." "In first equal position, it's Jeremy and Rich with 20 each." "Well done." "There's a play-off, and one of you has to say something really interesting... now!" "Let's leave the audience with the will to live, shall we?" "So, in third place, therefore, it is Bill with five points, but, sadly, trailing a little this week with minus 30 points, Alan." "(applause and whistling)" "Thank you." "About a third of the world's languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea." "The four million or so inhabitants speak more than 700 languages between them." "The official language is English, but most people get by in pidgin English, known as Tok Pisin." "And if I tell you that in Tok Pisin "Prince Charles" is rendered as" ""Number One Piccaninny Belong Mrs Queen,"" "right, and that the pidgin for a male contraceptive is "gummy belong cock," then you will be able to answer this question." "What is the Papua New Guinea pidgin English for "helicopter"?" "Anybody have a thought?" "It's, um, "Sikorsky A10C Night Reconnaissance Craft"." "(laughter)" " Not all pidgin English is gibberish." " (applause)" " (Stephen) Very good." " "Whirly-birdy landee from the sky down."" "It's that sort of thing." "I'll tell you what it is." "A helicopter is "Magimix belong Jesus."" " That is called "Magimix belong Jesus."" " They had the Magimix before the chopper?" " Yes." "That's a weird thought, isn't it?" " Magimix." "When Fry was at school, everyone copied." "(laughter)" "Although he was only at school for two weeks." "That'll do." "Yup." "(laughter)" "Yes." "(Stephen) Right." "Good." "Right." "Good." "Yes, got the answers for you there." "Which US state could Spam be a good advertisement for?" "In fact, I'll accept two US states." " Hawaii." " Hawaii?" "Yes, why do you say that?" "Spam is very popular in Hawaii." "In fact, they have Spam-carving contests." " Absolutely right." " They carve figurines out of Spam." " In Hawaii, it's massively popular." " Is "Spam" a made-up word?" "An acronym?" "I think it stands for "spiced ham", does it not?" "Yes, that's all." "Just "spiced ham"." "There are about 15,000 practising vampires in America today, most of whom live in Seattle." "What are there at least 2,370 of living in Texas?" " (Rich) Assholes." " (applause)" " It is a leopard." " Not a leopard, but that's very close." " Cheetah." " It's even more exciting." " Panther." "Jaguar." " Dog." "Tiger." "Tiger." "Thank you." "We got there, we got there." "Well done." "It's a tiger." "It has the third-largest population of tigers in the world." " (Rob) Tigers?" " Yes." " Not wild?" " No, not wild." "That's the extraordinary thing." "A third of the world's tigers live in Texas." "More than anywhere else except India." "Nearly all are domestic pets." "In the words of Charles Luckman, the trouble with America is that there are far too many wide-open spaces surrounded by teeth." "But that's not the half of it." "Two thirds, ladies and gentlemen, of all the lawyers in the world live in the USA." "American children get 64 billion every year in pocket money." "10,113 American virgins insured themselves against giving birth to the Messiah at the millennium." "Americans are more than twice as likely to die from liposuction than in a car crash." "So, the spotlight of doom now falls on our resident American, Mr Rich Hall, for his specialist subject - the 50 states of America." "Rich, where is the toilet paper capital of the world?" " Flushing, New York." " (Stephen) Good." "It ought to be Flushing." "I think it might be in Washington State, and it might be the Georgia-Pacific Paper Company." "It isn't." "I can give you a hint in that it's a small town of perhaps not much significance, except that it has a very successful football team." " Green Bay, Wisconsin." " Green Bay, Wisconsin is the answer." "(applause)" " There it is." "The famous Packers." " Yes!" "No jokes, please." "The Packers." "The oldest city in the state, home of the Packers." "Toilet paper - lavatory paper, I'd prefer to call it - was invented in 1902 in Green Bay." "But it wasn't until 1935 that they were at last able to advertise it as "splinter-free"." "Absolutely true." "The Neville Museum in Green Bay recently had an exhibition on the history of lavatory paper: "Privy to the Past:" "Inside America's Most Private Room."" "It explained how leaves, newspaper and corncobs were used before lavatory paper, and the prize exhibit was an Ancient Roman communal toilet sponge." "There you are." "Do you know that the roll in the middle is called the "durdur"?" " Really?" "How do you spell that?" " D-u-r-d-u-r." "You take it and you go "Dur-dur-dur-dur-durrrr!"" " Oh, that's lovely!" " (applause)" "Ozone is, in fact, lethal." "Although it is a pure form of oxygen, O3, it is actually poisonous." " You're too high up." " It doesn't only exist in the ozone layer." "You can make it on Earth." "The action of sunlight on oxygen causes the molecules to break up into a threesome, which makes the ozone molecule." "How do you know that?" "Did someone tell you that or do you know that?" "I worked it out for myself." "Of course someone told me." "That's what this programme is about." "He was very, very good at trampolining as a boy, and he used to go very, very, very high." " He was Norfolk champion." " Until the accident." " (Alan) Landed in Suffolk." " It's my business to know these things, Jo." "That's what I'm here to share with you, and I have an army of little helpers who've made sure I'm well briefed, and sometimes I rely on things I've remembered myself." "But in the case of ozone, it is a poisonous gas." "It smells of geraniums, which is mysterious because geraniums are not a form of oxygen." " Geraniums don't smell that strong." "Faintly." " (Stephen) Different types of geranium." "I've never known anyone go..." "(sniffs)... geraniums." "(laughter)" "It's geraniums." "You're probably talking about the geraniums that we see in municipal roundabouts." " I have geraniums in my window box." " Or, indeed, window boxes." "But there are wild geraniums, of course." "The cranesbill." ""Geranium" is from the Greek for a crane - the bird, a crane." "Oddly enough, though, almost all forms of wild geranium are called crane-something or stork-something." "But the two that aren't" " Little Robin and herb Robert - smell of mice." "What do mice smell of?" "Ozone?" "Maybe the ozone smells of mice, rather than any other kind of geranium." "The fact that it smells of geraniums is interesting, I suppose." " Have you ever kept mice, as a child?" " I did have a mouse called Andrew." "But he smelt of shite and sawdust." "That may just have been his house." "There's a nutty smell in the middle of that shite and sawdust that is particularly mouse." "My mouse, Snowball, smelt very much of that." "Should we all be returning our geraniums to the wild, and setting them free in their natural habitat?" ""Run, Tarka, run!"" "All flowers started out wild in some way." "But we had to tame them, cos otherwise they were like triffids, weren't they?" " Big man-eating geraniums." " Yeah." "A voice in my ear has corrected me and said that geranos from geranium is Latin for crane, not Greek," " but I don't believe him, frankly." " (laughter)" " Is the plural of geranium "gerania", then?" " Well, you can if you want to." "I think the language allows us to use plurals of putting an s on the end." "It's our English way." "It's rather dull when people do "stadia" for stadiums, isn't it?" " I don't know." " (Stephen) Do you find it dull?" " Cappuccini." " (Stephen) Yes, exactly." " (Jo) Typewriteri." " Is it refenderum or referenda?" "You decide." "That's interesting cos it's a gerund rather than a noun." "Whether gerunds have plurals is an interesting point." "Or is it?" " No." " (Stephen) I sense that it isn't." "Shakespeare invented the phrase "vanish into thin air"." "And in Hamlet it's got all the modern cliches." " It's got "cruel to be kind"." " Yes. "To the manner born."" ""To the manner born." When Polonius is lecturing Laertes, he says, "To thine own self be true," and, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be,"" "but doesn't say, "It's not what you know, it's who you know,"" " or, "A swan can break your arm."" " Yes, but..." "Oh!" "To be fair to Shakespeare, the most tiring genius who ever drew breath," "Polonius is self-consciously a bore and you're supposed to laugh at him." "People say, "Ah!" "'Neither a borrower nor a lender be.' Shakespeare."" "Well, no, it's not Shakespeare." "He's put it in the mouth of a gibbering idiot." "Shakespeare was generous." "I'm sure he borrowed money and lent it." "The idea that it has the seal of Shakespeare's approval not to lend money," "I think that's creepy and I think it's nasty." "I think it's..." "I can frankly find no bigger insult." "I think it's wholly Daily Mail." "That's what I think." "(applause)" "There are more than a million species of arthropod, so..." " Are we arthropods?" " We are not arthropods, oddly enough." " But I'll tell you what are." " We've got jointed legs." " We have, but we haven't got jointed feet." " I want to be an arthropod." "How can I be an arthropod?" "What else do I need?" "Is it the number of legs?" " It's just the luck of the draw." " It's those joints in..." "We've got one knee." "They have lots." "That's what distinguishes it." " Jointed rather than just one." " (Stephen) Yeah." "Maybe." "But if you want to be an arthropod, you could write off and join an arthropod society." " Was the Queen Mum an arthropod?" " (laughter)" "The Greek spider one is Arachne who was this amazing..." "She was a beautiful woman who could weave beautifully." "She became rather cocky and she said she could even weave a more beautiful tapestry than Athene, the goddess of wisdom and of weaving." "And the gods in Greek mythology hated human boasting more than anything." "Athene came down and said, "Let us both have an equal amount of material."" " "Let us both do a tapestry." So..." " Did someone play the violin ferociously?" " Arachne worked on hers..." " (Jimmy) So the god took a bet?" "Listen, listen, and you'll learn something!" "I can't believe a god went, "Oh, yeah, I'll take that bet."" "That's why the Greek gods are so wonderful, because they're like us." "I bet I could beat our God at chess." "He's not taking the bait." " Capablanca boasted exactly that." " I could take Jesus at swingball." "I'm getting very angry with you now." "These are great stories and you'll learn something." "So Arachne does her beautiful tapestry then Athene does her tapestry and it's infinitely more beautiful, and she punishes Arachne how?" "She says, "You will shrivel into nothing and do nothing but weave for the rest of your days,"" "which is why spiders are called arachnids, as they are, and indeed spiders weave." "We've learned something instead of making a cheap joke about the Greek civilisation upon which everything around us depends, from electricity to clothes to democracy, logic, philosophy and everything we take for granted and that is so dear to us." "Thank you." "(cheering)" "Thank you." "All I'm saying, Stephen, is in swingball it's all about the serve." "Idi Amin, the Ugandan despot, styled himself King of Scotland." "His other titles included Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and the Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular." " True." " I love those." "That's fantastic." "After he seized power in 1971 he destroyed Uganda's economy and was responsible for the murder of 300,000 Ugandans." "He also ate people." "None of this was anticipated by the West, who welcomed him." "The Daily Mirror called him "a thoroughly nice man, as gentle as a lamb"." ""Good luck to you," The Telegraph said." "He dined with Edward Heath and the Queen." "He liked Heath." "He said of Heath, "He is like Hitler, really tough." "I admire him."" " But that's just eating him." " Yes." "(Stephen) Fibrous." "The first apples originated in the primeval apple forests in the foothills of the Tian Shan mountains in Almaty, Kazakhstan's main city." "And it means "father of apples" in the Kazakh language." "Travellers on the great silk routes of central Asia developed a taste for them and spat out their pips." "Apples are the most popular fruit in the world," " grown everywhere except Antarctica." " (Alan) Did you say "spat out"?" "(Stephen) They spat out the pips." "But which nationality, as a matter of interest, do you think eats the most apples?" " Germans." "Dutch." " (Stephen) No." " Belgians." " (Bill) Kazakhstanis." "Not the Kazakhstanis." "Per capita." "The answer is the Chinese in numbers, but per head." "England." "Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France." " Poland, Sweden, Russia." " (Linda) Liechtenstein." "Mexico." "Brazil." "Argentina." "Australia, New Zealand, Fiji." "The country's name is also something you can eat." " Turkey." " Well done." "There we are." "It's Turkey." "For some reason, they consume almost twice as many apples per head as Germany which is the nearest rival, so you came second by saying Germany." "Half their body weight each year." "This is equivalent to the total apple consumption of the United States, despite Turkey having a quarter of the population." "Nobody knows why." " They like Appletise, that's why." "They love it." " There is Turkey, as if to prove me right." "The British, despite having contributed some of the most memorable brands of apple " "Coxes, Bramleys, Slack Ma Girdles and Knobby Russets - we consume fewer apples per head than any country in Europe." " Half as many as the Swedes." " Really?" "Yeah." "Fact." "Absolute fact." "And do you know where I have this from?" "I have this from the published statistics "World Apple Situation"." "Come on, everyone." "Let's start eating more apples." " (Stephen) "Turkey, 36kg."" " Let's beat Turkey." "Come on." "10kg a year is all we can manage." "We've got to eat 36kg a year of apples each." "But we outpace the rest of the world on bananas." "Did you know that a banana is the most traded object in a supermarket?" "Did you know, to get a kiwi fruit out of New Zealand you have to use more than its own weight of aviation fuel?" "Really?" "And to my way of thinking, it's hardly worth it." "I don't like them, do you?" "I find them so uninteresting." " It's very environmentally unsound." " You could just chuck it, couldn't you?" " Someone from Burma..." " But do you know what I really hate?" "Coriander." " Do you really?" " It tastes soapy to me." " It's delicious." "It's the king of herbs." " I think it's a mistake." "Does anyone here?" "You all like coriander." " Do you think it's been washed?" " What is it with me?" " Perhaps you're washing it too thoroughly." " (laughter)" "No, I just..." "I don't know." "And oddly enough, Tom Courtenay agrees with me." "So there." "It's the honey mushroom, of which the largest recorded specimen is..." "Bigger than a redwood tree." "The largest specimen is in the Malheur National Forest." "It covers 2,200 acres..." " One mushroom?" "...and is between two and 8,000 years old." "Most of the vast life forms... (stammers)" "Piss and arse and wank." " Sorry." " (applause)" "That trailer for the series was you going, "Piss and arse and wank."" "He had perfected the telephone by 1871 but couldn't afford to register a patent." "Poor fellow." "When it was being assessed for a patent in the laboratories of Western Union..." " (silly voice) I invented the telephone." " (Stephen) Listen." "Run." "Tell everybody it was me." "No, I know, because he's talking." "I know, it is quite interesting, but he's talking, and no one's gonna learn anything." "I think he's doing sort of Mafia type..." "I'm not sure." " Very Mafia." "Yeah." " Yeah, OK." "Yeah." " (silly voice) It was my idea all along." " (laughter)" "Back in the old country," "I invented the telephone." "This poor man..." " Thank you." " (applause)" "Now, the normally unChristian Genghis Khan said that this army were the only people he would never fight." "Was this in a spirit of goodwill on the part of Genghis Khan?" " He was a hard bloke." " (Stephen) He was very hard." "Nobody's gonna wanna upset Father Christmas, are they?" ""No presents for you."" "It's very far away." "That's one of the main reasons." "Oh, he'd gone all the way up there." "So he got there and looked at them and said, "No way I'm going to chop them to pieces."" "(Stephen) No, they pulled a brilliant trick." "If you face a ferocious marauding warrior who rapes, pillages, kills, takes no prisoners and they are determined to fight you, they did a brilliant thing." " (Alan) Hide." " (Stephen) Yes." "They simply refused to fight." "They have never declared war on anybody." " They just melted away into the tundra." " "If they ring the bell, don't answer it."" "(Stephen) Same technique we use today with Jehovah's Witnesses." "Exactly." " "There's no one in." - (Stephen) Exactly." ""Move." "We'll go to the next town." (whispers) "He's going."" "Very good being of other things." "First you were a caribou, then you were a Mongol horde." " Don't do that to yourself." " What have I done?" "I wasn't doing anything." "Thank you." "We're gonna..." "Just keep your hands above..." "I think keep them up here for the rest of the lesson." "Who's texting?" "Who's texting?" "That's what happens to the schoolmasters now." "We have to do the alternative version when I'm told we're ready." "Is this the beginning of the show?" "But there's shit everywhere." "(Stephen) We're just going to do this a bit tighter." "I've got a Christmas tree on there." "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" "There's a tiny prong for my cracker." "There's no cracker." " (Stephen) We're pretending now..." " Fuck it!" "Fuck it!" "You can imagine what life's like on the set of Jonathan Ñreek, can't you?" "Another hissy fit from our star." " Right, we're ready to go." " (man) From the beginning." " From the beginning, ladies and gentlemen." " What is it now, Easter?" "(Stephen) It's two weeks before Christmas." "Is this the Pancake Day?" "It's a few shopping days..." "weeks before Christmas." " Do you want a drink?" " The Yom Kippur special." "(applause)" "Well, hello and welcome to this special Christmas-shopping-coach-trip and office-lunch edition of QI, which, as tradition dictates, take position..." "Oh, fucking arse!" "Sorry." "So sorry."