Original subtitles

APPLAUSE

Good evening and welcome to QI. Tonight, we are talking

top tips and tools of the trade,

so let's see what's in my tool kit.

It's the razor-sharp Joe Lycett!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

On max power, it's Holly Walsh!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The fully adjustable Bill Bailey!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And nailing jelly to the wall, it's Alan Davis.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Right. Let's hammer those buzzers.

Joe goes...

# If I had a hammer. #

Holly goes...

# I'd hammer in the morning. #

Bill goes...

# I'd hammer in the evening. #

And Alan goes...

# Bob the Builder. #

LAUGHTER

For our first order of business, can anyone tell me,

what's the favourite tool of a lesbian builder?

# Hammer. #

Yes, Joe?

Jeremy Clarks on.

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

Is it a female-to-female hose augmenter?

Wow.

That's a great thought, but, no, it isn't.

I don't know what that is, but it's made me aroused. Yeah.

Is it the man flange?

I don't know what it is, but I'm aroused again.

Can I just show you my tool box?

ALL: Ooh!

That's the most excited I've been with a prop.

So... I think I know!

Is it the special lesbian glue?

LAUGHTER

I think I know that. It's called a Clit Stick.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

I'm writing that one down.

Isn't it not that special glue, No More Males?

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

OK. I will show you.

I'm writing down Clit Stick also.

What's this? OK, so, this...

Oh, it's one of those!

It's a flexible... A lesbian rule.

Yeah, it remembers the shape of whatever you measure.

So, for example, should I wish to measure

this particular watermelon, you do it like that.

Measuring watermelons, classic lesbian.

LAUGHTER

Then I want to measure my own head, I can do that.

Turns out I'm bigger than a watermelon, that kind of thing.

So, it was named after ones used by the Ancient Greek stonemasons

on Lesbos, and it was made with pliable lead,

and it allows you to follow the contours of any moulding.

And Aristotle talked about it.

He mentioned it because it's a metaphor to argue that,

for example, law and justice should be flexible and applied

to specific circumstances.

And today they're not called lesbian rules any more, which I think

is a shame. They're called flexible curve rules. There's no fun in that!

No. Where's the fun in that? Exactly. Bendy. Bendy ladies.

LAUGHTER

Bendy Wendy.

What do you think this is called?

Punishment. Oh, that's a... It's a file.

Is it for getting out of jail? Put it in a cake?

That'd be a hell of a cake, wouldn't it?

It's a very coarse file. It's used for metal work.

Is it a hasp?

No, it's called a flat bastard.

LAUGHTER

Fat... No, a flat...

Can I say...? What a flat bastard, you fat bastard.

Now, Alan, because I've got a very nice tool box and I didn't want you

to be left out, you also have a tool box, if you want to bring

that out. Oh, yes.

Good luck. There we go. OK.

What have you got in there? What do you think that is?

I have got some twigs...

Uh-hm. ..and a walnut, by the look of it...

Aw. ..and that is it.

Oh, that's nice. It's like a squirrel's lunch box.

It is a tool kit.

It is used by a creature in the animal kingdom.

Squirrel.

Weasel. Badger.

Wow.

It has to do with a bird.

It is a cockatoo's cutlery set.

This is extraordinary.

So, in 2021, wild Indonesian Goffin's cockatoos were seen eating

sea mangoes, using sticks whittled into three distinct types of tool.

And this had never been seen before.

They used the sticks to break open the hard stone and then eat

the pulpy material inside. So, the sharpest one pierces

the pit's shell,

the thickest one pries open at the crack, and the medium one

is used as a spoon to dig out the seeds.

It is the first documented case of a tool set use

in a wild non-primate. Well, that's right.

We've got a couple of cockatoos and they use tools like that.

Do you not think it's incredible? It is incredible, yeah.

Could they put up a shelf?

Well, that's the thing.

I'm trying to train them to do that, but at the moment,

it's just for fun, really.

Have you ever given them the correct tools, though? Cos if you took

that home and gave it to them, you might see something magical.

I know. I give them that, they go, "Oh, that's a little bastard.

"That's what I need." So, was it eating a sea mango?

Sea mango, yeah... Don't break that down as a word

cos it gets a bit weird. OK. What?

Semen-go. It's what you shout out at an important moment.

Semen, go!

LAUGHTER

Wait a minute.

What did you say?

You heard me.

Right. Can I keep this afterwards, do you think?

I really like this tool box. I've just seen the sticker on this.

This is a toy.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

OK. Here are some more unusual tools.

I want you to guess what they are for.

Let's start with the middle one. What do you think that is?

Trepanning. Is it?

Oh, it is about going into the body.

So, trepanning was when they used to relieve pressure in the skull

by basically... Drilling into the head. ..drilling into the head,

so we do want to go into the body.

Why might we want to do that?

Is it to scoop out your poison?

When you've got poison inside your... Inside your what?

Your penis. Oh, sorry.

I don't know why I asked what bit he was talking about.

A little umbrella opens. We've all heard of it.

We're all terrified of it. Oh, gosh.

Is it like one of those...

I was going to say cocktail umbrellas, but...

LAUGHTER

There's a fish in the Amazon that does that. Goes up... Swims up

your urethra and its gills open

and it lodges itself in the urethra and you can't urinate.

What does it want?

LAUGHTER

Probably wants to get out.

It just does it out of sheer badness.

Just having a laugh. Yeah.

What's your plan?

I'm safe from predators!

Yeah.

Sometimes you have to, you know, because you can't...

Chop it off? Sometimes.

Yup. When you say sometimes, once.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

It's called the candiru fish. The candiru fish.

Absolutely.

One of the great perils of swimming

in the Amazon. But this is what boys sit around talking about.

I think I would talk about it, if I had a penis.

That would be one of the top things I'd talk about.

I tell you, boys do not sit around talking about their penis.

Penis is never mentioned. No. Unless it's caught in your flies.

Then you can't talk about anything else.

Does it eat you? Once it's there, what's it doing?

It thrives off urine. Oh, OK.

Hanging on, so you can't get me out of here! Yeah.

So, it's like a kind of sort of Oktoberfest for fish.

Yeah, hadn't thought of it like that, but, yeah.

Drink nothing for a week and eventually it gives up and goes,

"Oh, the pub's shut.”

I think there's less singing.

Maybe there is some German...

There's some German singing coming from my genitals!

HE SINGS NONSENSE

What is that?!

Oh, my God! But it would be tiny.

THEY SING SQUEAKILY

LAUGHTER

HE SINGS MATCH OF THE DAY THEME

I'm singing the... Why am I singing the Match Of The Day theme?!

HE PLEADS

Nein! Bitte! Bitte!

ALAN GROWLS

This is not where I thought we were going.

That's not for going into the penis.

That's got nothing to do with the bloody penis!

So, the one in the middle is called the Hirtz compass and it saved

so many lives, particularly in World war I.

A French medical officer called EJ Hirtz and... Ha-ha!

It's quite a good name for a doctor.

"Yes, I'm Dr Hirtz." "Aargh!"

Pinpointing bullets with 2D X-ray is incredibly difficult

and so what you did with these rods is you inserted them directly

into the wound and you were able to work out how deep the projectile

was, what location it was.

And there was one surgeon general who wrote in 1924, "No instrument

"gave as much help as did the compass by its precision

"and accuracy." So, shrapnel remover, is that what that is?

Shrapnel locator. Shrapnel locator. OK.

So, the thing on the right is really interesting. It's a dodecahedron.

It's from the Roman Empire, between the second and fourth

centuries, probably, but there's no known mention of them anywhere

in Latin literature.

The first one was not found until 1739, and then, since then,

115 have been found. They're usually bronze, like this one.

Sometimes they're made of stone. About the size of a golf ball.

Is it genital jewellery?

Because the penis would go through the bottom hole

and then the testicles would rest in the two round ones.

You could fit somebody else's in the other side.

Exactly. Let's party!

Genital docking device. Yeah.

But it's the size of a golf ball. Yes. I mean...

I know what it is. It's a universal genital adaptor.

It's a genital adaptor.

We don't know. It could be a candlestick. It could be a toy.

Kid's toy? Come on. Could be religious, could be magical,

could be astronomical. A weapon. A weapon. Yes, exactly.

A bludgeoning thing would be good.

What about the thing on the left?

What do you think? They look like toothpicks.

I know what they're for.

They're for opening early iPhones, when you need to get

the SIM card out.

They're called Perkins tractors.

Sue Perkins?

Sue Perkins' tractors? No.

There was a guy called Elisha Perkins and he was an American

physician in the 18th century.

And there was a thing, a sort of cure-all electromagnetic quackery.

So, it's a metal thing.

George Washington is said to have owned a pair of them

and they could treat anything from, I don't know, lockjaw to inflamed

eyes or whatever it was, and at first they did seem to work.

So, you put them in a problematic area and there's some interaction

between the skin and the metal and that would allegedly

cure the afflicted.

But there was an English physician called John Haygarth and he showed

that fake wooden ones did it as well,

so maybe it's an early example of the placebo effect.

Now, next question. How does NASA use trampolines?

Is that NASA?! Yeah.

Yeah, this is the prototype.

Do they line them all up when a rocket goes off,

so it spells "000" from space?

Would that it did. That's nice.

Is it for landing?

No, it's a way... It's a training... Training astronauts.

Oh, G-force. Do they get them to eat loads, so it stops them...

Travel sick. It's actually much simpler than you're making it.

It's so that they get used to bouncing... Strong.

Get them strong. Get them strong. Alan gets two points.

Absolutely right. It makes them strong.

APPLAUSE Quite right!

No, no, don't applaud that!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

He doesn't know, he doesn't know that!

It's because of muscle wastage. So, it strengthens leg muscles

without putting too much strain on the joints.

Trampolines are 68% more effective than treadmills at strengthening

muscles, particularly when you've returned from space.

The modern trampoline was invented by an American gymnast

called George Nissen.

He made the prototype out of an old bed frame.

I love this shot. This is him doing a publicity shot in Central Park

with a red kangaroo called Victoria.

And apparently the kangaroo kept kicking him all the way

through the photo shoot.

Of course it did. That's very, very irritating.

Anyway, George Nissen started the very first trampoline

manufacturing firm in 1942 and then he met a guy

called Scott Carpenter.

That's Scott Carpenter there.

He became one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts

and they introduced it into the NASA training programme.

And there's a game called Space ball.

So, at the top of this, where the ball is coming through,

there is a hole. So, the idea is that the guy on the right has to

jump up, put the ball through the hole, like that,

and then the guy on the left, who I think in this instance has got

no chance whatsoever, has then got to jump up and push it through.

And it's apparently the best conditioning exercise

for space travel that there is. Oh! Yeah, it's amazing.

Now, what's a good way to earn bigger tips

if you're waiting tables?

Have you been a waiter? Worked as a caterer.

You worked as a caterer? What were you doing?

Catering.

LAUGHTER

I've done a job delivering cakes and the recipient of the cakes

had moved on from the time that they were being delivered,

so I just had a flat full of cakes.

I just lived off cake for months.

This is a dream? Oh, yeah.

Well, a top tip, apparently, if you want to get a tip,

is to wear something unusual.

Oh. Unusual? Yeah.

So, for example, waitresses with floral hairpins

earned 17% more than people with plain hairpins. Oh!

Would it be that if you were to compliment the diners, you know,

or to sort of... When they were just coming to the end of an anecdote,

as you put the food down, you went...

HE LAUGHS

"An excellent story."

Well, the whole thing about being funny, wearing a funny button

apparently helps, joke cards work as well.

So, French researchers supplied wait staff with jokes for customers

and 42% of those who used them were tipped, compared with 25%

of the staff who didn't. There you go. So, more people will tip you,

if you give them a little bit of a laugh. It's a bit of a laugh.

Laugh, yes. See? I didn't get two points for that.

It was three. Three points for that. Three point. Three points for that.

I'm going to give you...

APPLAUSE No, no, no, don't...

There's also a thing called postural congruence, which is where...

What? So, if you squat at the table and you get your face closer,

apparently that can boost your tips.

What?! Touching customers, but in a, you know...

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

LAUGHTER

I'm going to give him money to make him go away!

Oi! Go away! Let me cut it up for you. Let me cut it up.

I've got a flat bastard! Choo, choo.

Open your mouth! Open your mouth! Here comes the train.

ALAN YELPS

I'm in one of Bill's dreams!

You were going to hit me with a flat bastard.

There's also casual-touch manipulation.

So, basically... Casual-touch manipulation?!

So, don't be unpleasant, don't be weird, but, like, just

very quickly touch somebody on the shoulder or...

That's like, you know, that's proper manipulative.

That is just invading someone's space.

And apparently the best thing to do is...

Brush them on the nipple. ..while you're putting the bill...

There you go.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE That can't be right, surely?!

Ooh, why, thank you.

Time to do that is when you put the check on the table.

That's when to get touchy-touchy? That's the moment... To distract

from the amount, you just touch them at that...

You all right?

There you go, sir.

Service... Is service included? Say that. Is service...?

No, it's not.

LAUGHTER

I'm writing to my lawyer.

Apparently the best people to serve,

if you want to get a very good tip, should be men consuming alcohol

with their meal during a weekend.

Ideally they should be conducting a business discussion

or dining after a sporting event.

Where are you more likely to get a good tip?

My beloved Denmark or South Sudan?

Why would you choose South Sudan?

It must be South Sudan.

Come on. Let's say.. I'm going to go with...

...Denmark. Alan is right.

It's South Sudan. Absolutely right. He should get a klaxon!

He should get a klaxon!

It's South Sudan.

So, there's a really strong correlation

between tipping and bribery.

The more corrupt a country is, the more people will tip.

And according to the Transparency International's 2021

Corruption Perception Index, there's 180 countries rated,

Denmark is the least corrupt and South Sudan is the most corrupt.

Also, I have to say, tipping is very uncommon in Denmark.

It's all included in the bill.

So, how do you show your gratitude for an exceptional waiter?

You say, "That was fine," and then leave.

LAUGHTER

Rubbing them on the nipple.

Tak. Fantastisk.

Yeah. Oh, very good, darling. Thank you.

I've been practising my Dansk. That's very good.

That was impressive. Fantastisk. Fantastisk, yeah. I like it, though.

I always thought it sounds like people who are speaking English

but a little bit drunk, you know? Yeah.

Like, Danish for "thanks for coffee" is...

SLURS: .."tak for kaffe".

That's 50 quid, love, go on.

Tak for kaffe. And then things like,

you know, "I'm going now."

HE SLURS HIS SPEECH

It is. It is like that.

I'm going to the shop now, get us couple bit of cheese.

Do you want bit of cheese?

LAUGHTER

want a bit of coffee?

A bit of coffee. Very good.

We're very chilled. Very chilled.

Now, from tricks to trades, what can you get for a dozen

puffins these days?

Do you mean the bird? I do mean the bird.

One pelican.

Er...

You are heading in the right... Oh, really?!

Six...eagles.

Four owls and a chaffinch.

Come on.

We are absolutely talking about trading animals. Oh.

Zoos and aquariums,

they sometimes trade their creatures.

And when they do, a flock of puffins is worth roughly 800 live mackerel.

Up until the 1970s, western zoos and aquariums legally bought

and sold animals. They gave... Basically, explorers,

they gave them shopping lists - giant turtles to Bengal tigers

or whatever. There was a guy called Carl Hagenbeck.

He was a trader from Hamburg.

There he is with the Bengali tiger.

And so it was terrible and there was an enormous amount of poaching.

And what happened was, in JFK Airport, in one go,

they found 1,867 illegal cheetah pelts,

and that represented one tenth of the world's population at the time.

So, in 1973, the US brought in the Endangered Species Act

and now you have to have permits, if you're going to buy and sell

animals, quite rightly. Feel really bad for wearing one now.

LAUGHTER Yeah, that sparkly cheetah died.

So, there's a loophole and the loophole is barter.

So, all of the zoos and aquariums have had to go cashless.

So, Boston's New England Aquarium, they use as their basic unit

of trade jellyfish.

So, say, for example, you want a fish from another aquarium,

but the other aquarium doesn't want jellyfish,

then what you have to do is make multiple jellyfish exchanges to get

what the other aquarium wants and then exchange that fish

for the one you wanted in the first place.

There's a sort of animal exchange now used by zoos around the world

with a sort of wanted and offering list. That's true.

You have a zoo! Yes, we have a zoo.

Yes, we're the smallest zoo in Britain.

It's just a cat, isn't I? LAUGHTER

Two gerbils... A cat and a couple of cockatoos!

It seems a bit overkill putting

a turnstile and a gift shop in, but...

We started off as a rescue centre for animals and then

it sort of snowballed and, so, yeah, we do exactly that.

You know, we get rescue animals that come in.

We had two giant rabbits for a while and then we swapped them

for some tortoises, looked after them for a bit.

What's the rarest thing you've got?

We've got a couple of rare frogs. Very rare frogs. Tiny.

Tiny little things.

I've got one old cat. What do you want for it?

Two new cats? All right.

I'll see your cat. I'll raise you a couple of chickens.

Bill's chickens are very, very aggressive.

Yes. Are they? Yeah. And he can't go in the garden.

I can't go in the garden. LAUGHTER

They're Malay fighting cocks and the person we got them off...

...the person we got them off, she said, "Well, they were bred for

"fighting in the 1840s, but the aggression's been bred out of them."

No, it hasn't! Not this one. Not the one we've got.

He absolutely hates me.

He hates me with a deep...

LAUGHTER

He's huge. He's, like, this high off the ground,

about the size of a three-year-old,

and as I come out in the garden, you can hear him,

you can see his little eye go...

HE SQUAWKS

...and he'll run at me and then do a double ninja kick.

Terrifying. We had some builders working in the house

and they were... And the cock's hanging out with the builders,

smoking... LAUGHTER

The builders go, "He's coming out now."

HE SQUAWKS

It was like Cato in the Pink Panther.

Not now, Cato!

HE SQUAWKS

Get off! But what is it about chickens?

Apparently, if they fixate on you and they turn, they go bad.

That's it. There's no going back, you know.

And the builders were going, "Old Bill, afraid of a chicken, is he?

"Afraid of a chicken?" And then, he turned on one of the builders.

It was hilarious. I caught the builder one day go,

"Is he there? Is he there?

"Right. I'm going across. I'm going, I'm going."

And he'd just belt across the garden.

Zig-zag, zig-zag.

HE SQUAWKS

He's above you! He's above you!

Why do you keep him? Why don't you just eat him?

We can't...

LAUGHTER

You've got no excuse.

You've got Asda at the end of your road.

You shouldn't be terrorised in your own home.

No, I know, I know. I don't want to be a therapist here,

but I think you've got to have a word.

You mean you think I'm enabling it? Yeah, maybe you're right.

Yeah. You're being henpecked.

GROANING

APPLAUSE

Right. Let's tip our tools back in the tin and open the can of worms

that is General Ignorance.

Fingers on buzzers, please.

Who first discovered America?

# Evening. #

The Vikings.

KLAXON Yes!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

# Fix it... #&#

Christopher Columbus.

KLAXON

Any more? Yes?

Jeremy Clarks on.

KLAXON

They're back in the room!

No. So, none of those.

So, they did a recent study of Native Americans' DNA.

It was done by a Brazilian university. And they found

that the first people of any kind to step foot in America were a group

of about 250 Siberians who migrated there some 15,000 years ago.

And it was connected up? It was connected up.

You're absolutely right. They didn't really migrate then,

they just wandered over. Yes.

That's what migration is! That is what it's called.

That's exactly what it is! Wandering over.

If I get a taxi to bloody Ealing... You're not migrating in a taxi

to Ealing!

Breaking new ground there, are you?

Well, we'll set up here by the river and hope some livestock come by.

So, there used to be a land bridge that connected Siberia to Alaska,

it was called Beringia, and these people lived there

for about 8,000 years. It was quite a big landmass that they lived in.

So, a bit like the sort of steppe grassland that you get in places

like Northern Russia and so on. And almost all Native Americans -

and it doesn't matter whether they're north or south or central -

descended from this founding group, and their descendants

gradually spread all the way down to Argentina, but not by taxi.

You wouldn't get a taxi that far south.

South America?! Not this time of night.

Finally, what does this trap mainly eat?

# Hammer. #

Go.

Jeremy Clarks on.

KLAXON

I was going to say flies.

Flies. Hey! KLAXON

Is it a big multi-headed relation of the Venus fly trap?

No, it is a Venus fly trap, but they don't eat that many flies.

I know that because I bought one for my kids.

Right. And I go round the house collecting up flies, dead flies,

and they never eat them. It's only about 5% of their diet.

They mainly eat ants, spiders, beetles.

Small little mammals. Tiny frogs.

One man fed his plant the crusty flakes of his own diseased skin

from a very bad case of athlete's foot. And the plant ate it.

Oh, don't! I'm hungry.

BILL GROANS

They are fascinating.

The leaves are lined with teeth that lock together,

and it's an airtight seal.

Takes them about a week to digest a meal and they can live

for about 20 years. There's only one place on Earth

where you can find them growing in the wild and it's within 75 miles

of Wilmington in North Carolina. It only grows in North America?

Yes, only place you can find them wild. I've got a carnivorous

plant named after me. It's a pitcher plant.

It's called Nepenthes Bill Bailey

and it eats little worms.

Should you have one of these in a zoo?

Well, we put a little sort of sign around it.

Would you not put it near the chickens?

A challenge for a carnivorous plant!

You need a man trap.

BILL SQUAWKS

Now it's time to see who's tipped towards the top of the scores.

In first place, with their head screwed on right,

with two whole points,

it's Holly!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

In second place, with minus three, it's Alan!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

In third place, with minus 12, it's Bill!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And finishing last, blaming it on their tools, with minus 27,

it's Joe!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

My thanks to Holly, Joe, Bill and Alan. I leave you with this tip

from Rita Rudner. Should you long for the pitter patter of tiny feet,

buy a dog - it's cheaper and you get more feet.

Thank you and goodnight.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE