Original subtitles

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Good evening...

...and welcome to QI,

where, tonight, we're trundling along on trains, trams and tractors

to territories beginning with T.

Let's meet my fellow travellers...

An intrepid adventurer, Cariad Lloyd.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

A fearless circumnavigator, Jamie MacDonald.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Thank you very much.

BALDLY going where no man has gone before,

Tom Allen.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And still putting his trainers on, it's Alan Davies!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Right, time to come and blow your horns. Tom goes...

SHIP'S HORN HONKS

I do beg your pardon.

Quite butch. Very butch, wasn't it?

Well, all the nice boys like a sailor.

Cariad goes...

NOVELTY HORN PLAYS MELODY

And Jamie goes...

BAGPIPES DRONE

BAGPIPES PLAY: Scotland The Brave

I was just coping with being in London.

And Alan goes...

MUSIC: Horny '98 by Mousse T vs Hot 'n' Juicy

I think that's great.

That's my funeral song, actually. I want that played at my funeral.

It might surprise you that I like a big horn, so...

...I have decided this week to have one as well.

HORN PLAYS LA CUCARACHA

Isn't that great? Right, question one...

Can you tell me everything you know about the Tour de France?

Yes, Cariad.

Yellow jerseys. That's everything I know about the Tour de France.

Jamie, there's a picture of a man in a yellow jersey,

so that's... She's just said what she knows.

I think I probably get it out now that I can't see

in case everyone thinks you're being really patronising.

I knew that before the picture. Did you?

I have actually been suffered by my late father

to be forced to watch the Tour de France.

He was, like, a triathlete and was training for an Iron man

and was very into watching other men

do the thing that he liked doing at the weekend.

Tom?

I've tried a lot of things, but I've never tried "athlon".

Oh! RAUCOUS LAUGHTER

I read Lance Armstrong's book and, from that book,

which is really, really interesting,

I found out all about the Tour de France

and it being a cycling race around France,

but I'm suspicious of you and your question.

There might be another Tour de France that we don't know.

Well, no. We are talking about the Tour de France.

They had a stage in Essex.

Around Epping Forest.

AUDIENCE CHEERS

Forest! They're cheering for the forest.

I've never had a cheer before! No.

The message has slipped through the net.

The interesting thing about Lance Armstrong is that,

in the list of Tour winners,

the most common name is...?

Lance?

No, the answer is...

JAMIE: Jeff. Jeff! I like that.

The answer's nobody,

because after the revelation of Lance Armstrong's doping,

seven successive races were declared to be officially without a winner.

So the person who's most won the Tour de France is nobody.

He was also married to Sheryl Crow

and I think that's really interesting.

They were definitely an item.

I thought they were married. They might have been.

When your predecessor in that chair, Sandi... Yes.

...Mr Fry, was asked to appear on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?,

he snubbed my advances to be his partner... Oh!

...and he asked Nigel la Lawson.

Well, why wouldn't you? Yeah.

And then the question came up, "Who is Lance Armstrong's girlfriend?”,

and I was sitting at home going, "That'll be Sheryl Crow."

I know about Sheryl Crow.

I've had a crush on her since 1994. Yes, beautiful.

She's stunning!

And they didn't get it, and he went out on about 1,200 quid.

I laughed and laughed.

So does anybody know how the Tour began?

Ready, steady, go.

I'm going to give you an initial point.

I thought that was very, very good.

So, it began... It's not a tour, though, is it? It's not a tour.

So, why is it called...? It is a tour, in that they...

They're not stopping to go, "Look, there's the Eiffel Tower.

"There's the Champs..." No.

They're not doing any sort of touring. No.

Imagine going on a bicycle tour of a city

and then everybody else is, like, trying to elbow you out the way,

everybody's on drugs. It's a nightmare!

But the interesting thing is,

it began as an argument between two newspapers.

So, in 1894, France was absolutely convulsed

by something called the Dreyfus Affair.

Does anybody remember the Dreyfus Affair?

The one where the guy was sent off to an island in exile? Yes.

I do know that, yeah. Yes, absolutely.

So, Alfred Dreyfus was a Jewish army captain.

He was accused of spying

and it absolutely divided French society.

There were those who thought that he was a traitor

and those who thought he was a victim of anti-Semitism,

and, weirdly, it started the Tour de France.

So, there was a cycling magazine called Le Velo,

which is The Bicycle,

and the editor, Pierre Giffard, was very pro-Dreyfus.

That's him there.

And one of its major backers, Albert de Dion,

he was actually arrested

for demonstrating against Dreyfus's pardoning,

and De Dion pulled his advertising

and set about establishing a rival newspaper called L'Auto -

The Car.

So, the new magazine was edited by a man called Henri Desgrange,

and as a publicity stunt for the new magazine -

bearing in mind this is a magazine called The Car -

he decided to start a gruelling 19-day bicycle race.

LAUGHTER

This was in 1903, and it absolutely worked.

Le Velo folded as a publication in the next year.

It's an incredible race.

You can see it goes all around France.

I think we have a picture of the very first winner.

There he is - Maurice Garin.

He looks absolutely knackered. LAUGHTER

He's actually the one in the polo neck.

Would you call that a polo neck, not a roll neck, Sandi? Oh, sorry.

It's very difficult to know what a polo neck is and a polo shirt.

Yes. I get very confused. And nothing to do with polo.

It's got a hole in it. Yeah. Yes, exactly.

Thank you, Jamie. Thank you very much.

In 1910, they decided to make the race even harder

than bicycling all the way around France,

and the Tour went up into the high mountains for the first time -

the 2,100m Col du Tourmalet,

which is down in the Pyrenees in the south there.

Do they stop for luncheon?

Well, there was a writer called Alphonse Steines,

and he wanted to do a recce to make sure that it was safe to do this.

So, he got stuck in the snow. He abandoned his car,

he fell into a ravine, he nearly died of hypothermia,

was found by a search party at 3am,

and he sent a telegram back to the editor that read,

"Tourmalet crossed. Very good road. Perfectly passable.”

And that's the attitude we need!

Has anybody ever been on a racing bicycle? I have not.

Oh, yeah. Yeah? Have you never been on one?

Darling, have you seen the height of them?

My wife and I did a triathlon.

I've been on a racing tandem round the Chris Hoy Velodrome

and that... Oh, wow! I've never shat myself so much in my life.

The guy said, "What you'll notice about this bike is,

"there's no brakes."

"Oh!"

And we started going,

and you're going about 30mph within about five seconds.

It was horrible! Then the back wheel bounced and...

Well, that'll be all the shit everywhere.

Does anybody know the name of the first Briton

to win the Tour de France?

BAGPIPES PLAY

Yes?

Is it Bradley Wiggins?

KLAXON BLARES, GROANING

First klaxon of the evening. It is not Bradley Wiggins.

Any more for any more?

I'm going to give you a clue. It's a great feminist fact.

HORN HONKS Yes?

Ooh! Is it Emmeline Pankhurst?

It was a woman called Millie Robinson

who won the Women's Tour in 1955.

She was the first British person to do so.

She was a van driver from the Isle of Man,

in case you're curious. Oh, well, that's cheating, isn't it? Yeah.

"Millie's up ahead, isn't she?" Beep-beep!

FRENCH ACCENT: "We cannot catch Millie!"

Do you think that's why nobody took it seriously?

Cos it was an uneven race? Well, yeah, in France,

if women did it and then a British person won,

I imagine they were like, "We're never doing this again."

Well, the event organiser did not help.

He was called Jean Leulliot and he wrote...

FRENCH ACCENT: .."I will never organise this race again.

"Women are different from men. They talk too much in the peloton.

"It's not normal. In addition, once the racing is over,

"they do not rest as they should,

"but fatigue their legs by going shopping.”

And then he went on to appear in 'Allo 'Allo! Yeah, exactly.

OK, Alan, which of your skills is also on view

on the Tour de France every year?

My skills? Your particular skills.

My particular skills. Yeah.

You have a pad and pen in front of you.

What do you tend to draw in there?

Oh, a cock and balls. Yeah, there you go.

LAUGHTER

Thank you, row two.

They just want, "Ha-ha! Cock and balls!"

That's true for me - Epping Forest, cock and balls.

Oh, you've given me a dud pen, so I can't draw.

Look, it happens to all men. It's not a big deal.

They have a small team of effaceurs - erasers -

to camouflage phallic graffiti along the route.

It is a long-standing tradition

that spectators paint the names of their favourite riders on the track.

Unfortunately, it's 3,500 km,

so there's an awful lot of unwanted graffiti,

so painters drive ahead of the cyclists

and turn what they call "le sexe" into butterflies and owls.

Giant faces. That's what I've been trying to draw all these years.

I'm just not very good at owls.

All French butterflies have one eye. Yes. It's weird.

Now we know what the ladies were talking about in the peloton.

What I love is, they drive two hours ahead of the race

and then they have to drive back

because people are behind putting more penises...

So, the Tour de France has a special team of workmen

whose job is to hide the tools.

What use is a tandem in love or in war?

Is it...?

SHIP'S HORN HONKS

llYeS?ll

"Tom!" Whenever I walk into a room, that's the sound.

"Tom!" That'll help me out very much.

"Oh, there's Tom." Ah, yes. "Hello!"

Yes. We should all... I just walked into the room.

SHIP'S HORN HONKS "Nice to see you."

Hang on. I'm just going to do mine. Let me see.

HORN PLAYS LA CUCARACHA

"It's Sandi - we've got a party.”

What use is a tandem in love or, indeed, in war?

I imagine they're a great source of arguments, aren't they,

a tandem, if you're on it with a couple?

Jamie, you did a tandem. Yeah, I mean, we did.

Once we got on the road, when we did the tandem, me and my wife,

we wobbled a bit and she went, "Shit! Shit! Stop, stop, stop!"

And I put my foot down and she went, "Shit! Shit! Stop! Stop!"

Does not mean stop.

So, yeah, it can turn love into war.

It was actually used in war.

The Boer War was the very first conflict

where tandems were commonly used.

The Royal Australian Cycle Corps had a war cycle,

so it was a double tandem, so two tandems bolted together.

This is actually a tricycle.

But it could be fitted with a Maxim machine gun down the middle

and the wheels were adapted so it could also go on the railway tracks.

And then it doubled as an ambulance -

you could take the gun off and put a stretcher on in place.

And they were also used to generate electricity,

particularly in the First World War.

They used a static tandem bike attached to a dynamo,

and then you could power,

for example, a radio station might be a good thing.

But in the late 19th century,

these two-person bikes, and cycling in general,

became incredibly popular with young people.

Now, this one... There they are, young people.

What we've got, Jamie, is we've got a man and a woman

on a two-person tricycle, which was known as a sociable,

followed by a woman on a bicycle by herself

who looks very grumpy. But there were opportunities

for young people to go on a tandem and be followed by a chaperone,

so this was a chance to do some flirtation,

if you like. It must be quite difficult to be flirtatious

when you're going along in a tandem.

"There's another cock on the ground.”

That's one way to get the girl, isn't it?

There was actually a Chaperone Cyclists' Association

formed in 1896 and used to supply - I like this -

spinsters over 30 to accompany young ladies on their bicycles.

What do you call a tandem with three riders?

A tridem? Triandem?

What does "tandem" mean? Anybody know?

Two. Two on a bike.

No, it just means the riders are sitting one in front of another.

Oh! So, a tandem with three seats is still a tandem. Tandem!

So, "tandem" comes from Latin

and it means length, really, or at length.

There used to be a thing where horses would be one behind the other

and they would have been in tandem.

So, there, we have a carriage with one horse in front of the other.

That's tandem.

Tandem cycling was an Olympic event from 1908 in London

until Munich in 1972.

I have to say, there were some athletes who treated it

as a bit of a joke. At Helsinki in 1952,

there were two Australian athletes

called Lionel Cox and Russell Mockridge,

and they decided to compete,

despite never having ridden on a tandem bike until the week before.

And they borrowed a bicycle from the British team

and promptly won gold in the...

Wow!

...2,000m event.

If you want to take up professional tandem cycling,

you'll have to get in line.

GROANING

What was the toughest obstacle faced by the first train

to go all the way around the world?

Is it ticketing?

Cos it's technically both a return and a single.

Actually, it was a guy - a guy called George Francis Train.

He was an American entrepreneur.

In 1870, he circumnavigated the world.

He is the person who inspired Jules Verne to write Phileas Fogg.

And his name was George Francis Train? Train, I know.

Yeah. What are the chances? Yeah. It's a fantastic trip.

It took a long time, going round, partly because he was arrested

and held in Lyon Bastille for 13 days.

Did he give it a bad review on TripAdvisor? Yes, terrible.

So, what kind of transport did George Train introduce to Britain?

Introduced a mode of transport

to Britain that we'd never seen before? Yeah.

Paragliding.

Funicular. Funicular! Did I get it?

I like just that word... No.

Sorry. Train ran Britain's very first successful tram...

Oh, of course! ..system. Oh, tram! How did he describe it?

"It's like a train..."

Yeah, little bit like a train. "..but it goes on the road.”

"What do you call it?" "A...tram?"

So, his first tram was in Birkenhead,

and what I love about this...

He was... He obviously thought big, George.

He invited all of the crowned heads of Europe

to come to Birkenhead to help open the tram.

Unbelievably, not one of them turned up. Aw!

I know. "Oh, no! King of Spain hasn't turned up.”

"The Princess of Sweden said yes, but I think it's a maybe."

He then set up a line from Marble Arch to Bayswater in London.

Very popular, except with wealthy residents

who had to cross the line to get to Hyde Park.

They could not tolerate these new vehicles

hogging a fixed section of the road

on rails sticking up above the road surface

and proving an obstacle to carriages.

It's also not very far, is it, Marble Arch to Bayswater? I know.

"We're off! We're here."

He was arrested for - and I love this -

breaking and injuring the Uxbridge Road.

He's actually a wonderful character. He's wonderfully eccentric.

He used to like to shake hands with himself. What? He was...

"How are you doing?" Is that a euphemism, Sandi?

It's a long journey, a long time on his own.

"What are you doing in there?" "I'm shaking hands with myself!

"Get out of my tram!"

"There's no such thing as a tram, you dirty bastard!"

"I've just invented it!

"I'm going to Bayswater!"

"It's only up the road!" "Leave me alone!

"I was nearly finished until you came! Arrgh!"

Train was arrested again in the United States.

He was described... Quite rightly so! Yes!

He was declared a lunatic for supporting Victoria...

It was because... Seems a bit harsh.

Well, he was a supporter of the women's suffrage movement,

and there was a suffragist called Victoria Woodhull,

who was the very first woman to run for President back in 1872,

and he was arrested cos he was a lunatic for supporting her.

But he wasn't in favour of all women.

He was outraged by another woman who's a sort of QI favourite,

which is Nellie Bly. Anybody know anything about Nellie Bly?

Alan, can you remember anything about Nellie Bly?

No, I can't remember. She... In one ear and out the other.

Wasn't she an elephant?

She was a writer and,

as a stunt for the New York World newspaper in 1889,

she went round the world in 72 days,

and Train responded immediately by making two much quicker journeys

cos he couldn't bear it that somebody else had done it,

he was no longer the guy.

There's a guy called James Holman. He was an explorer, and in 1832,

he became the very first blind person

to circumnavigate the globe.

He lost his sight in the Navy, aged 25. So, he left,

he attended medical school,

and he spent the next 40 years travelling.

I mean, it's a fantastic story.

He was imprisoned in Siberia as a spy.

He had a river named after him in Equatorial Guinea.

He published five volumes of memoirs.

And I love this - he claimed he could tell a person's social status

by the sound of their footsteps.

See, this is what they told him. He had no idea where he went. No.

He sailed up and down Loch Lomond for five years

while they put different spices under his nose.

"That's you in China now." "Oh!

"I'll write a book about this.

"It's magic. Now I'm going to become a doctor. Ah!"

What do you think happens in a tram-driving competition?

BUZZER HONKS Yes?

Somebody wins. Yeah. Yeah.

Not what I was expecting, but that is correct, yeah.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Well done!

Yeah. So, there's an annual competition called

the European Tramdriver Championships.

You have to do, for example, different disciplines -

stopping within 20cm of a cone without hitting it... Ooh, tough!

...accelerating to exactly 30km/h without a speedometer,

braking by eye to get as close as possible

to a marked spot on the ground, but my favourite, which is, I think,

the most crowd-friendly event,

tram tenpin bowling.

Drivers have to shunt massive bowling balls

towards skittles to knock them down,

but without hitting the skittles themselves with the tram.

Wow. I always feel like our trams are a bit apologetic, aren't they?

They should have a louder horn,

considering they are going along normal roads,

so you don't expect to see a train there.

Now they just go... FALLING TONE: .."Meh."

They're, like, a bit ashamed they're not a bus or a Tube.

Yeah, they're like... They're like, "Sorry. Sorry."

FALLING TONE: "Meh."

When trams were introduced in the United States,

there was an anxiety that passengers might be hit by a tram.

There was a suggestion they should put a sofa

on the front of the tram to...

...to scoop people up out of the way.

Very good idea. I think it's a marvellous idea.

That's how someone died in Coronation Street.

Who remembers? Someone really famous got hit by a tram. Who was it?

Alan Bradley. No, it was...

Yeah. He was evil, as Rita Fairclough's boyfriend.

Yes, Rita's boyfriend. Thank you. Yes, yeah.

Got hit by a tram in Blackpool. He deserved to die.

He did, and it was satisfying. He was awful to Rita. Wasn't he?

JAMIE: She was with Mavis. Oh, yeah, there was Mavis.

Oh, yeah. But wasn't there a Coronation...? Oh, shut up!

I was also... I was going to say about Judy Garland, as well.

Oh, now you're talking!

Oh, and she was in Coronation Street.

She went out with, erm, Ken. Ken! Everyone went out with Ken.

She was married to Ken just before Deirdre.

No, erm, Judy Garland sang about being...

She called it a trolley.

# Bang, bang, bang went the trolley... #

Yeah, lovely. # Ding, ding, ding goes the bell

# Bing, bing, bing goes my heart biogs

# From the moment I saw him, I fell. #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I love that song! But that song - all that's happening is

she's just trying to pick up some bloke on the tram.

Yeah, but she goes to the end of the line and...

Yeah, well, we've all done that, Sandi.

Sometimes, I forget to buy a ticket.

Was she not just terrified on the sofa at the front?

What I've read about that song is she's just telling people...

Like, the whole tram, she's just telling them all about this man,

and they're just like, "Yeah, tell me more,"

which, if you do that on the Tube, does not happen.

George Train travelled the world in 80 days.

What a marvellous piece of nominative determinism.

Why, if he'd been called

George Rail Replacement Bus Service...

...he might never have made it.

Now, George Train travelled by tram,

but what kind of tractor can't move anything

heavier than an ant?

Is it a tractor beam?

It is a tractor beam. No way!

But it can move the Millennium Falcon.

Do you think it is just a matter of science fiction?

The Millennium Falcon? No, not...

Since we mentioned the ant... Can it move a Dec, as well?

GROANING

It can only move Ant, not Dec.

So, we are talking about tractor beams,

so those are devices that move objects

using a beam of energy.

Now, up until fairly recently,

they were confined to the realms of science fiction,

but Professor Bruce Drink water and his team at Bristol University

have made one.

It consists of hundreds of tiny little loudspeakers.

They generate sounds that are louder than a jet engine,

but they are too high-pitched

for the human ear to be able to detect it.

And these sound waves, they surround an object,

holding it in place, basically in a sort of invisible cage.

An actual tractor beam? Well, let's find out.

Please welcome Professor Bruce Drink water.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Right, Bruce, tell me what you are holding in your hand.

Well, this is the tractor beam.

I mean, it looks like a piece of wood with a bit of wire on it.

Yes, it's a low-cost, battery-powered version.

You can make it at home if you want. Amazing.

So, you've got, in this box here, little tiny polystyrene balls.

Yeah, polystyrene balls.

So, if you'd just pick one up for us... Oh, right.

...and then just drop it down, we can see it just drops, right?

And the idea is that you're going to use the tractor beam

to make this hover in the air, is that right?

It is indeed, yes. OK. Is it on? It's not.

I'll switch it on. I mean, I can't tell. I have absolutely no idea.

Can you hear it now? No.

Whoa-oh!

LAUGHTER

So, inside, there are lots and lots of tiny little speakers.

Is that right? Exactly. They're all outputting ultrasound,

so that's... You can't hear it, hopefully.

What could hear it? Bats, dogs and cats.

Right. So, the theory is that

you're going to pick up one of these polystyrene balls

and make it hover in the air. Exactly.

So, as you said, there's a sound field in there

with a little quiet region surrounded by a very loud region,

and so I'm going to try

to put the little object in the quiet region.

You've just got to find the exact spot for it.

There we go. Oh! AUDIENCE: Ooh!

That is extraordinary.

APPLAUSE

So, like a magic trick, I want to know

there's no wires or anything that I can't see.

Can you show me? Right. Well, this is a wire loop.

Yeah. And, hopefully, we can...

whoa! Wow.

So, what...? Witch! Witch! That is extraordinary.

So, what's holding it in place?

It's the sound itself making a very, very careful pattern,

which is sort of a bit like...

Where the particle is, it's like noise cancellation,

so there's no sound. And then, around it, it's very loud.

So, we've sort of sculpted a sound field around the particle.

So, I think of a tractor beam as drawing it towards,

but it seems to be pushing it away.

It might look like it's pushing it away,

but the real proof of a tractor beam is

it's got to be able to pull something,

and that will mean that it beats gravity.

So, if I turn this over, hopefully, you can see it's beating gravity.

And if I press this button here... Yeah.

...it will pull the particle up.

No! AUDIENCE: Ooh!

Oops! Oh, there, it dropped.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

So, what are the practical extrapolations from this?

Could you make a giant one, for example?

You could make a giant one and that might be able

to replace robots, you know, to make tiny things.

All your electronics are getting smaller,

so you want tools to be able to handle those.

You can also make smaller versions of this

that can move really, really small things,

like cells and micro particles... OK. ..viruses, potentially.

So, you're looking at something under a microscope

that you can't manipulate,

but you might be able to with a tractor beam?

Yeah, exactly. So, at the moment,

using a microscope is a one-way process -

you look at something, but you can't really interact with it very easily.

But with sound waves, like this, all shrunk down into the microscope,

you could. And you can move things, prod things,

and you can even assemble them together,

potentially to form the starting point

for new tissue to grow, like new muscles.

It's mind-blowing. How much to make one of those for yourself?

This? The parts are about £100.

Wow! That's amazing.

We could club together and make one of those. Yeah.

Professor Drink water! Thank you, Bruce. Thank you.

CHEERING

Right, let's venture a little further afield on our travels.

Where would you go to find the most leaning tower in the world?

Go for it, Cariad. Pisa.

KLAXON BLARES

Not Pisa? Not Pisa, I'm guessing.

Do you know, years ago, I was in Florence,

and I went to the train information place

and I said, "I would like to get the next train to Pisa, please."

And the man said, "The next train is at 11.05."

I said, "But it's 12.05 now." He went, "Ah, you missed it."

Is it the ones in...? Is it Malaysia?

Is it those Petronas Towers?

Is it something like there's something built in,

so if there's a cyclone, it'll bend like a frickin' palm tree,

but you don't have to shit yourself cos it'll spring right back up?

You're talking about a building that was specifically built...

The most deliberately inclined structure in the world

is the Montreal Tower.

It is 165m high and it sits at a 45-degree angle.

Ah! Yeah. Anyone else feel like they wanted to vomit when they saw that?

The thing about it is, in a way, it's sort of cheating, isn't it?

Because it was deliberate.

I like the ones that are supposed to be straight.

There's one in Shanghai called the Huzhu Pagoda

that leans the most. It's about seven degrees.

So, if you think off..

The Tower of Pisa is about four degrees. This is seven.

It was built in 1709.

Tilted over - I like this - when they set off some firecrackers

and it burnt down its wooden supports.

Pisa isn't even the most leaning tower in Europe.

That's the church tower of Suurhusen in Germany...

GASPING ..which is at least five.

So, again... Not as photogenic as Pisa.

No. That car in front of it

really doesn't set it off in the same way.

So, Pisa's tower originally leaned the other way.

Construction was started in 1173,

and after just five years and three storeys,

it started tilting north.

What is that man doing?

It looks like he's grabbing some boobs.

It's those things where you take a photo

and it looks as though you're holding the tower up.

Yes, but even I know you don't grab a tower like that.

So, it started leaning straight away

because the ground they built it on was too soft to hold the weight,

and they started putting tapered blocks in

and they kept doing that for 200 years

and it no longer tilted north.

It tilted south instead.

I've been up it. It's only got a little railing.

There's nothing to protect you!

I thought there'd be a bit more to it. Yeah.

And once you get near the top...

People surely would be falling, but they don't fall out.

I mean, it is famous for leaning. It is.

So, you think, "You've had your warning."”

But you do find yourself going,

"This is really leaning over, isn't it?"

You couldn't fall off the top and go,

"Oh, I had no idea!"

"Who said this is dangerous?”

The late, great Barry Cryer - I remember I said to him once,

"How did you know, when you were writing for The Russ Abbot Show,

"that you'd got a great idea for a piece of comedy?"

He said, "It was nine o'clock on a Monday morning

"and we were sitting there and somebody said,

" 'Russ Abbott opens a restaurant in the Leaning Tower of Pisa

" 'and tries to serve from the dessert trolley.' "

He said, "9.10, we all went for a beer."

The Tower is now stabilised.

It was stabilised in 2008 with cables

and 600 tonnes of lead counterweights and so on.

They had a competition, didn't they, for ideas? Mm.

And people submitted ideas of a huge statue of a person...

Yes, holding it up. ..holding it up.

Surely, that person would also start to lean.

Big Ben leans, too. Did you know that? I didn't know that.

Strictly speaking, called the Elizabeth Tower.

Due to subsidence,

engineers estimate it'll fall over in about 1,000 years.

Oh! Yeah. That'll be exciting, won't it, when that happens?

I wonder what time it'll be when it happens.

It'll probably be a dong of the bell that sends it over the edge.

Yeah, probably. Dong...!

For this one, the clue is in the question, OK?

So, I need you to listen very, very carefully.

What can be used to deliver the post in Tonga?

The clue's in the question. A delivery van? What CAN be used?

Yeah! A can!

Or a bee! What about a bee? Could it be bees?

Can be? Can be?

Pretty good.

The answer is... Electricity? A watt of electricity? It is...

The answer is a can. I'm just going to stop you.

It's a can.

Anybody know anything about Tonga?

Where is it? What is it? Anything at all?

It's in the Pacific. It's an island.

JAMIE: Loads of islands, isn't it? Yeah, it's about 170 islands.

Yeah. It's a Polynesian monarchy.

So, for about 100 years,

the people in the northernmost island of Niuafo'ou -

my apologies if I don't get that right -

sent and received mail via tin cans retrieved from the sea...

Wow. ..by swimming postman.

Niuafo'ou is a volcanic rim island, so it lacks a natural harbour.

It doesn't have any beaches. Impossible to dock a ship.

So, when the postal system began, which was in 1882,

passing ships used to throw overboard

buoyant biscuit tins, kerosene tins, that sort of thing,

filled with letters,

and they'd put a flag on it attached for visibility.

And the strongest swimmers in the island would swim out

to retrieve the cans and then use a long stick

to pass outgoing letters up to the ship's deck.

Who are they from, though, the letters?

They've never been anywhere. "Who are these bloody letters from?

"Can you stop sending us these letters? We don't know who you are.”

It's mostly tax demands. Yeah!

I'd have written to them with some plans

for the building of a jetty.

To be fair, they don't have it any more.

They now have an airfield.

That's quite tricky with that circular runway they have. Yeah.

Just keep going round and round and round.

Might be all right taking off, but landing would be very difficult.

What do you think they did after one postman was attacked by a shark?

They got two postmen.

Yeah, one to distract. Yeah, one to, "He's that way!

"Quick, quick!" They started using canoes.

What, they hadn't thought of that before? I know!

They invented the post before they invented boats.

There's some fascinating bits of Tongan oral history.

So, in the 12th century, a piece of wood was briefly named king.

So, there's a guy called King Talatama

and he had died without any heirs, and his brother -

I hope I'm going to say this right - Talaiha'apepe

was the obvious next monarch,

but there was no precedent for brothers inheriting the throne

and it was thought to be a bad omen

for the father-son bloodline to be broken.

So, Talaiha'apepe named a wooden block

as the previous king's son,

and, consequently, the wooden block became the king.

The wooden block was given a wife to marry,

and the wife and the wooden block adopted the brother...

...and thus he became the next king.

They really took the idea of the family tree to heart.

What begins with T and is a rubbish place to go for a drink?

Toilet. Tonga.

Yeah, both Tonga and toilet. Rubbish place to go for a drink.

The clue's in the question.

Rubbish place - the tip. Yes! Oh!

So, in 2019, there was a pop-up cocktail bar called Gome Pit,

and it opened in a Tokyo trash treatment centre,

called Musashino Clean Center.

So, you could sit there and you could have nibbles

and have a drink and look through at a giant mechanical claw.

Every now and then, there'd be a body part.

GROANING AND LAUGHTER In a film, there would be...

You'd be having a drink and there'd be your Auntie Jean.

Don't you think that's, like, quite good, in terms of

how much rubbish we use and how much waste we're accumulating?

That's exactly the point of it.

And while you're contemplating the end of the world,

you can have some nice sushi. Why not? Have a Martini.

Ooh, I love a Martini wherever I am, so the tip is as good as anywhere.

But imagine trying to get a mattress out the back of your car pissed.

Did you know this? 15% of Tokyo Bay -

so that's about 250 square kilometres -

is reclaimed land. Yes, I knew that.

So, it was waste from construction projects.

The project started in 1592.

It was dirt displaced from a moat

dug around the big castle - Edo Castle. Oh, wow.

And then they carried on -

20th-century domestic waste - to fill it up.

And, ironically, almost all of Tokyo's waste-processing facilities

are built on land reclaimed using domestic waste.

There's an artificial island off Tokyo Bay

called Yumenoshima - Dream Island -

and it was built using domestic waste.

I think they inserted it between layers of clay

and, originally, they were going to put an airport there,

but, eventually, it just became landfill.

Looks a bit like Heathrow there.

It was the setting for the archery and water polo events

in the 2020 Olympics, so it did actually work out in the end.

Imagine trying to find your arrows in there.

In Copenhagen, we have a waste-to-energy plant

and it converts the town's rubbish into heating and electrical power,

which is already fantastic,

but the outside is both an artificial ski slope,

a hiking trail, and the world's tallest artificial climbing wall.

It's known as CopenHill or Amager Bakke,

and I have skied down the waste processing... Whoa!

It's the weirdest thing because you go up

and you can see, through the glass thing,

all of the waste being processed.

And, meanwhile, you've got your ski boots on,

and then you get to the top and you come down on your skis.

It's absolutely amazing.

Any other skiers? Any other skiers?

I've been skiing, yeah. I went with school.

And then, at the end of it we all got a certificate,

and I was the first one to go up and get my certificate.

I didn't know that the French might give you

a different greeting when you get a certificate.

So, the lady skier went towards me and I didn't really...

She was trying to give me a kiss on both cheeks, a la European,

and so I kissed her on the lips in front of my whole school.

Now, after all that travel, it's time to get back to the hotel,

but not before a late-night stroll down the unnerving alley

of general ignorance, so fingers on buzzers, please.

Which country has its bagpipe culture

protected by UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage List?

I'll give you a clue - it begins with S.

BAGPIPES PLAY Yes?

Had to. But I do think it's Spain.

Oh!

Well, why would you say Spain?

Because I met a Spanish person and they bored me to shit about it.

"Bagpipes aren't originated in your country.

"They're originated in our country.” So, I think it's Spain.

I'm going to give you two points for that.

They are, in fact, played all over the world,

and have been for centuries, but when I was looking for

the UNESCO Cultural Intangible, it is bagpiping culture in Slovakia.

It was added to the list in 2015.

It's a fantastic list. It was started in 2008.

It basically safeguards cultural practices

and raises awareness about them.

And Slovakian bagpiping has been very, very important

in the folk culture from at least the 18th century,

and it was deemed in need of safeguarding.

Milan Rusko, who's the secretary of the Slovak Bagpipers Guild,

he says that Slovak bagpipes have a very pleasant sound,

as opposed to the aggressive, strong and noisy sound

of Scottish bagpipes.

What's wrong with that? BAGPIPES PLAY

LAUGHTER

I don't know what he meant!

I'd like to introduce that Slovakian to that Spaniard. Yeah!

They'll have a great time.

It's a fantastic list. There's beer culture in Belgium.

You think, "Oh, no, fair enough." I like this one -

practices and expressions of joking relationships in Niger.

So, what it is - there's two communities

and they don't always get on.

What they'll do is they'll find a person in each community

to represent them, and then they basically take the piss

out of each other to stop everybody fighting.

I just think it's a great...

Isn't that a round on RuPaul's Drag Race?

I was just about to say!

There's Mongolian coaxing ritual for camels, which...

Come on! Come on!

Now, having gone through all of those different

intangible cultural things, can you name any of the items

on the UK's Intangible Cultural Heritage List?

BUZZER HONKS Yes, Cariad? Moaning.

Talking about the weather.

Maybe getting drunk in a civic high street.

KLAXON BLARES Oh!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Wow. So, our Irish neighbours have three entries.

The French have 23.

The UK has zero.

Oh, no! Course we do! Nothing worth preserving.

Oh! But people who think we should say that the UK has been very good

at looking after its buildings,

but not good at the intangible cultural stuff,

so things like - I don't know - Morris dancing, cheese-rolling,

that kind of thing. Do you know what? Bothered?

No, we don't have anything.

Where was Dracula prince of?

SHIP'S HORN HONKS

Transylvania. Yes! KLAXON BLARES

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Yeah, baby!

No! No! The darkness!

KLAXON BLARES

So, the real-life Dracula was Vlad Ill - Draculea.

He lived 1431-'76.

He was Vlad the Impaler, basically. Oh! Oh! Yes.

So named because...

He liked to impale? He impaled? ..he loved impaling.

He was born in Transylvania, but he was, in fact,

the prince of the neighbouring province of Wallachia.

Doesn't have the same ring about it, does it? No, it doesn't.

"Welcome to Wallachia."

They do Mexican street food, don't they? Yeah, they do.

He impaled thousands of people in his lifetime.

I went to a torture museum in Spain

and they had an impaling thing and they could impale you.

So, it went up through your back and out your shoulder and... Oh!

But you were alive. Oh, that's horrid, isn't it? Yeah.

Did they also have bagpipes?

There is a supposed link with Transylvania, Tom.

So, there's a castle. He definitely didn't live there, Vlad I,

but they make kind of a big deal out of it.

It's called Bran Castle, but it's because Bram Stoker,

who wrote Dracula, he once saw a drawing of Bran Castle in a book,

and that is what he based the home of Dracula on.

The actual castle that Vlad Ill lived in

is about 150 miles away and is now a ruin.

You'd go, wouldn't you? You'd go,

maybe buy a key ring... Absolutely. ..a fridge magnet,

maybe some olive sticks.

In 2021, so during the pandemic,

the castle offered itself up as a site

for people to get free doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.

IMITATES DRACULA: "Come in!

"I will vaccinate you!

"Haven't you pushed that in a bit far?!"

The doctors wore fake fangs.

Oh! That's amazing!

And then, if you were vaccinated, you got free access to their...

They have an exhibition of medieval torture implements.

I mean, and why not?

And so, footsore but happy, we reach our final destination -

the scores.

In equal last place with minus 17,

it's Tom and Alan!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Still in the taxi queue at Terminal 5

with minus 13 is Jamie!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And our traveller triumphant with minus 2, it's Cariad!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Right, that's it for this week's episode of QI.

I'm just going to see if this is still working.

HORN PLAYS LA CUCARACHA

I'm just going to walk down the street doing that.

HORN PLAYS LA CUCARACHA

Thanks to Jamie, Tom, Cariad and Alan,

and I leave you with this traveller's tale from Dennis Norden.

"I was given a parking ticket and said to the policeman,

" 'What do I do with this?' He said, 'Keep it.

" 'If you manage to collect three of them, you get a bicycle." "

Goodnight.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE