07x05 - Groovy

[bunniefuu]

What's up? What's up?
What's up? What's up?

What's up? What's up?

What's up? What's up? It's
the office Christmas party at QI.

And we're ready to get down
with a G for groovy show.

So, let's hang loose.

Boogie-woogie and put a donk
on some awesome anecdotes

and funky facts with tonight's
guests. The well wicked Lee Mack!

The well safe Bill Bailey!

The well cool David Tennant!

And the well I never,
it's Alan Davies.

We were slightly afraid that
you may not have heard enough

Christmas songs in the shops
this week. So, Lee goes...

# It's beginning to look
a lot like Christmas. # Ah.

Bill goes...
# So here it is merry Christmas.#

David goes...

# Last Christmas
I gave you my heart. #

And Alan goes...

JEWISH TRADITIONAL MUSIC

Excellent. Later on we're going
to put the photocopying machine

to some really imaginative use,
but first a bit of bad news.

As it's panto season, we had hoped
to bring you Buttercup, the QI cow.

But I'm afraid she's gone missing.

If you see her,
you will let me know.

Won't you, boys and girls?

AUDIENCE: She's behind you!

Is she?

AUDIENCE: No, the other side!

Ah! Oh, boys and girls,
I wish you'd warned me earlier.

Hello, Buttercup. Great to see you.

What I'd like you to do

is to do a demonstration
for the boys and girls.

Would you go round the front?

Now, what Buttercup is going to do.

AUDIENCE LAUGH

Buttercup does
impressions, all right?

And Buttercup is going
to do an impression.

And you have to try and guess, what
of? Off you go, Buttercup, darling.

# It's beginning to look
a lot like... #

Is it two out of work actors?

Oh! Oh...

Oh, they're stamping
their tiny heels.

There we go and...
Is it the way of walking?

Ah, brilliant! Alan, yes.

Is it the legs not being in
opposition or something?

Yes, cos cows don't walk like that.
So, she's doing an impression of...

A freak.

A cow with an inner ear problem.
Yeah.

Or of an animal that does walk in
that way. Left right, left right.

Oh. A weasel.

Lovely idea, but not a weasel.
There are a couple actually. Rhino?

A tapir? The other one in...
You're in Africa. You're on safari.

Dormouse. Giraffe. Dormouse[!]
Giraffe is the right idea.

Buttercup... Yes,
Buttercup's very proud of herself.

That was a very fine...

It was a very fine
imitation of a giraffe.

Because giraffes and camels
in fact, do that left-right walk.

But cows, like horses...

Would you like to do how
you normally walk, Buttercup?

You see.
DAVID: Seems slightly drunk.

Is that a cow
creeping up on someone?

Now, ladies and gentlemen,
a big thank you to Buttercup!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

CRASH!

BUTTERCUP MOOS

Never ever in the history
of show business

has "don't milk it love",
been more appropriate.

But you're right.
You've got to have points, Alan.

The question was about
the gait of four-legged animals.

Do you know when
it was decided, for example...

There's how a giraffe
actually walks, that's how...

But who was it... Do you know?

Christmas bonuses available,
if you can tell me who the man was

who was responsible for basically
demonstrating to the world,

how horses, for example,
ran, progressed?

Is it to do with cinema,
moving images? Yes.

A French cinematographer?

He was not French. No.
His name was Eadweard Muybridge.

Oh[!] Hey. No! He's very well known.
I bet people in the audience...

You knew didn't you?
AUDIENCE: Yes.

Yes. And these are some of his,
some of his pictures. Lying toads.

His book was Animal Locomotion.
And he demonstrates the difference

between walking,
galloping and trotting in horses.

He not only did horses, he's best
known for how horses galloped,

he also did humans. And he
was no stranger to controversy.

He m*rder*d his love rival
in cold blood. What? Yup.

Did he take photos of that,
as well? He might have done

because he was the first person
in American legal forensic history,

as a m*rder*r, to claim what excuse?

Insanity. Yes!

Points for David Tennant.
Absolutely. Come on! Well done.

Anyway, the point is our lovely
Buttercup, the QI cow,

was giving us
her giraffe impression.

And speaking of giraffes,
what use is a giraffe bicycle?

# It's beginning to look... # Lee.

Sorry, I was thinking
of the hedgehog skateboard.

Different, different thing that,
isn't it? Any thoughts?

I'd like to point out that
on the day I went giraffe riding,

we didn't actually put pram wheels
on the giraffes. No. Fair point.

That has been added in.
You don't want letters. Yeah.

A giraffe that's been
fashioned into a bicycle,

as opposed to a bicycle for a
giraffe? A bicycle with a long neck.

We've been seasonally silly.
Alan is right.

It is, in fact, a big bicycle.
It was called a giraffe bicycle.

It had a little badge on it
saying The Giraffe Bicycle.

And it had a specific function.

But you may know that all bicycles
at the beginning were very big.

There is The Giraffe Bicycle.

That looks lethal. What happens
when you get to the lights?

Oh, there weren't traffic lights
then.

Delivering papers
to giant mailboxes.

You're thinking and that's good.
OK, thank you. For lighting lamps.

Yes, David Tennant.
One point. Thank you.

It's all the time travel he does.
He knows something about every era.

Yeah.

[He's acting.] So...

What? What do you mean?
Don't listen to him. I'm sorry.

Don't tell me...
Don't listen to the bad man.

It's all real, isn't it?
It's a documentary. Exactly.

LAUGHTER

Cybermen are real. Saw one in the
corridor upstairs looking for you.

Mr Tennant! Like that. Can I just
ask a question about that? Yeah.

If they are for lighting lamps,
you'd have to do it on the move.

You must go, whoa!
Otherwise you'll fall over.

You get to the lamp. You lean
against the lamp. You've got a torch

and you raise your lit torch to...
these are gas lamps. And you hold...

Yup. And then when you get
home or back to the depot,

your assistant dismounts you.

[ What if you're leaning on...
Now, don't...

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

We've got a very
Christmassy audience.

If you were leaning on the lamp

and a buck-toothed man with a ukulele
arrived, would there be anything...?

Just lean down
and set light to him.

# Oh, Mr Woo... # Ow!

Burning, ah!

But you could use the post
to swing around

and you could do like
a figure of eight between them all.

That would be brilliant, you've got
a TV show. Giraffe biking on ice.

Celebrity...
Celebrity giraffe biking on ice.

So, the thing is,
early bicycles were all very tall.

What was the first...you know,
the classic sort?

Penny Farthing. Penny Farthing,
known as an ordinary bicycle.

This looks lethal.
It does, doesn't it?

Amazingly the first bicycle
which is the kind we would know,

i.e. with a chain that drove
the back wheel from pedals,

was known as a Dwarf Safety.

And that was considered
a really tiny bike.

It just shows that most bicycles,
for a long time, were like this.

How do they get on those things?
I guess a leany thing and a...

Like horses. I know they used to...
Get out of a first floor window...

get down on to it.

There were novelty big bicycles
and the Clark Brothers

built flood bikes
to go above flood waters.

So you could get around... That's
what I thought that other one was.

That would have been a good guess.
Higher than the Penny Farthing?

I guess it was, yes.
How flooded did it used to get?

Then of course there was
the cross-channel bike.

Which was over a mile
up into the sky.

But there are people
on tall bikes to this day.

Who re-enact, sort of, tourneys,
like jousting. With lances on bikes.

That really does look dangerous.
Yeah, highly. We used do at school.

We used to do Quad Hockey,
like a polo only on bikes.

You use a hockey stick and a ball.

And then you just go round on a...
On quad bikes?

No, not on quad bikes.

In a quadrangle.
In a quadrangle. Yeah.

You played hockey
in a quadrangle? Yeah.

You had a very different sort
of schooling, I can tell right away.

Why? How is that different?

Well, at my school
we use to set fire to cars.

In an octangle.

We just played Quidditch.
Well, there you are.

It was all right,
I suppose...flying.

Giraffe bicycles were a boon
to the weary lamp lighter.

How do you react,
team, to queue bargers?

Oh, very unfavourably.

Very unfavourably. Oh, yah.

Yes, it goes against the very
bedrock of Western society.

Also, the late mergers. You know,
in lanes entering the motorway.

And there's a coned off lane.

And you think, "I'd better
conscientiously merge now."

And some people go right the way
down the end of the thing.

You! You do that!

Curse you, later merger Davies.

To be fair though, Alan
was a part-time ambulance driver.

Do you know in America,

in some states they have when two
lanes have to merge like that,

they go, "Like a zip!".

Cos that's one, one, one, one.

It's rather brilliant
that, isn't it? Yes.

I hate the late mergers
in the bar queue.

Six deep at a bar,
they get on the edges.

I hate when you're at the bar and
someone taps the bloke next to you.

And says, "Get us a couple
of pints will you, mate?"

Or when you're at the bar
and someone leans forward

and they get served first
just cos they're on television.

Yeah, I hate th...

Mr Fry! Go away, scum.

Make way, make way. Enough!

Lord Fry. Just come for a port.

Here, here. On his bicycle
with his hockey stick. Make way.

Make way, I say. Over here, Mr Fry.

Clear the table. Get up, get out!

Can anyone here sing the
Lord's Prayer in Latin? No?

Well, out, all of you!

Throw that man on the fire.

Pater noster, qui es in caelis,
sanctificetur nomen tuum....

It happens I do know it.
You see. I don't know why.

But queue jumping, queue jumping.

It is despicable and you would think
most people react very badly.

If someone were to walk in
and just barge in front of a queue.

But do you know the name...

You're probably familiar
with the experiments done

by a behavioural psychologist
in which members of the public

were given white coats
and asked to inflict pain.

Stanley Milgram is the one
best known for it.

They asked people
to do things that were

against what they
considered to be right.

And yet because
they were told to do it...

And the person doing it
had apparent authority.

But the less well known
experiments were in queues

or lines as he would say.


railway stations, elsewhere.

Betting shops,
you'd think where people would not

be afraid to show their opinion.

And what the experimenters
had to do was enter the queue

between the third
and fourth person in line.

Say in a neutral tone, "Excuse
me I'd like to get in here."

Step into the queue, face forward,
and only leave when admonished

or after one minute,
whichever was sooner.

And on only 10% of occasions,

was the queue jumper
forced to leave the line,

because they were admonished. And in
only 50% did anyone so much as tut.

It's extraordinary. Where was this?

This was in America. In America.
Not in Tunbridge. No.

Not in Tunbridge. No.
Not in Peckham. No.

Very, very high tut ratio.

I'll tell you what annoyed me.
If it's five items or fewer,

then it's five items or fewer.

Don't come in with six
and stand in front.

LEE: But that's confusing...
Do you look in their basket?

You bet I do. And then say
absolutely nothing about it.

Yes. But what if it's three for two?

I'll give you one of those items off.

[ So, you'll give me two?

I'll give you two of those three. ]

But if there's not a special
offer on... And I'm checking.

You're Scottish, I know
you're checking for those offers. Oh.

That was low.
Go on, take him. That was low.

Get your sonic thing out.

In the First World w*r...

Is that it? A biro from WH Smith?!
It's not working. ]

It's not working? Help!

In the First World w*r, they toured
a tank... Boom! ..around Britain.

Boom! LEE: You've knocked
all his hair off, look!

[ Don't wave it around!

[ Easy with that! Whoa!

In the First World w*r,
they toured a tank around Britain.

And it went to all the major
city centres in the country.

And people were encouraged,
to raise money for the w*r,

to chuck any spare change
they had into the tank.

Where did they get most money?
Glasgow! Ah, bless.

Yeah, because they thought
it was a big fruit machine.

Oh!

He's bad.

IN A SCOTTISH ACCENT: "Look, I've won
a soldier, Mummy! I've won a soldier!

"Oh, he's gone again."
One armed bandit, yeah.

"I cannae do this. I cannae..."
"You'll win a prize." "I can do it!"

There's a wee chain around it.
Oh, dear, oh, dear.

Do you like my Scottish accent?
There we are.

That was a SCOTTISH accent?!
[ Yes, it was.

I see.

So, we're more tolerant of queue
jumpers than they deserve.

Now, until 2008 it was legal

to smoke what I'm talking
about in Dutch coffee shops.

But now they've changed
the law. What is it? Yes.

Tobacco. He's clever. He's right.

We thought you might say cannabis,
but you're too smart for us.

No, they don't mind
you smoking that.

They encourage it.

I went to Amsterdam
when I was 19 years old.

And I don't do drugs.
And I'd never done drugs.

And I sat in this cafe
and everyone was smoking.

And, genuinely, I said,
"No, I'm not going to touch that.

"I'll just have a piece of cake."

Aw! Someone said, "You know
what was in that, don't you?"

It's a hash brownie.

But I thought that was the same way
as you have brandy and trifle.

It's not going to get you drunk,
it's just a little jokey thing.

So, I had one. I said, "It's had
no effect. I'll have another one."

So, I ate another one. And then,
two o'clock in the morning,

I accused the taxi driver
of trying to k*ll me.

The point is it leads to
rather bizarre situations.

If you mixed your cannabis
with tobacco in a coffee shop,

you would be fined.

So, you can only have pure.
It's only mixed or...

Not, not since July 2008. No.

Now you have to smoke pure cannabis.
In grass or hashish form, I suppose.

So, you can't get
passive smoking from pure...

It's fantastically carcinogenic,
more carcinogenic than tobacco.

Is it? Yeah. Oh, dear. It's seven
times more or something. Really?

# So here it is Merry... #
Three joints, that's 20 f*gs.

Oh, my goodness! But in the street
if you were to smoke,

you could smoke
tobacco in the street.

But if you were to mix it with
cannabis, you'd be breaking the law.

You don't know whether
to go indoors or out.

DAVID: Magic mushrooms.
Ah, magic mushrooms.

Or a version of magic mushrooms,
as you're talking about drugs.

The fly agaric... Oh, yes.
..which is that sort of...

Like the mushroom
you get in a fairy tale.

Like a big cheese toasty.
It's red with white spots on it.

The fly agaric in Siberia
was eaten by the reindeer.

And so the reindeer would eat this
fly agaric and they'd bounce around.

Off their face. That is where the
legend of flying reindeer came from.

Oh! For your Christmas edition.
That's a Christmassy story.

Thank you, David.
Ah, the drug addled reindeer.

Old Siberia. And then, because
it's highly toxic to humans...

They would collect the urine,
drink it and get a secondary... Buzz.

And then you could drink
the wee of the man that drunk it.

Just a mild sort of...

Lovely buzz.

Just sort of nice feeling.

Eventually it would come down
to a little cube, wouldn't it?

Pop it in your drink.

And it would be like
a little sort of Pro Plus.

Fabulous. We're actually going
to move on to various narcotics

in a moment. But I'm just going
to finish off this smoking business.

Are we? Hooray!

Tell me when smoking bans were
first introduced into Europe.

# It's beginning to look... #

Yes. Three years ago?
Four years ago?

No, it's earlier. Five years?

Earlier. You're thinking...
I'm not an idiot! 10 years ago.

What the hell, 15 years ago!

Try 79 years ago, almost.




Almost 79 years ago, yeah.
You're the one that said it!

"Try 79 years ago." "79 years ago?"
"No, almost 79 years ago."

It's my first time,
cut me some slack.

But you'll find
I corrected myself.

And said, no make it 76 years ago,
but that's all right.

JEWISH TRADITIONAL MUSIC
If only I could rewind.

76 years ago.
Well done, Alan. Very good.

I hate this game. He's experienced.

It was the Nazis. It was the Nazis.
The Nazis banned smoking?!

Yeah, they had very strong anti...

The more I hear about them,
the less I like.

Well, that's the final straw. Up
until this point I'd be prepared...

Oh, I can rationalise
everything else. But that!

Bans on smoking in public places,
smoking advertising,

restrictions on
tobacco rations for women

and linking
tobacco use with lung cancer.

Hitler called tobacco,
the wrath of the Red Indian man

against the white man
for having been given hard liquor.

He suggested that
Nazism might never have worked

if he hadn't given up. It's true,

cos if you do that and
you've got a f*g in your hand,

it's got less impact, hasn't it?

Put your f*g in your mouth...

Maybe that's how that started.
He didn't like smoke.

The first smoking ban
we could find is 1640.

Tsar Michael of Russia
declared smoking a deadly sin.

Smokers were flogged,
had their lips slit.

GROANING

That's strong, whoa! Your lips slit.
Like when you lick an envelope

and you get a paper cut...

Eurgh, that's horrible.

Oh, what about in Jackass when they
did paper cuts between the toes. Oh!

I was kneeling on my seat in
the cinema facing the other way

going, "Tell me when it's stopped!"

I couldn't look at it.

Did you go to see
Jackass at the cinema? Yeah.

I don't mind watching it
late at night

when I've come from the pub.

But I wouldn't go to...
There was a movie.

Jackass the movie is the
funniest film ever made.

I preferred Jackass the novel.
Jackass the ballet, indeed.

Oh, very amusing, yah!

Bam's going to do that
in a trolley, I believe. Oh...

But it was James I of England
and VI of Scotland

who was the first
real anti-smoking tyrant.

He wrote a pamphlet called
the Counterblaste To Tobacco.

In which he damned it and damned it
and double damned it. Really? Why?

For being injurious
to the lungs and everything.

He spotted it wasn't a good thing.

I don't want to pick you up, but you
can't damn it and damn it and double

damn it, can you? You can damn it
and damn it and triple damn it.

Yeah, that was
his mistake, obviously.

Chairman of the Pedantic Society.
I'm vice chairman, actually.

Yes...

Very good.

God bless you, you knew that.

The smoking ban in the Netherlands
means you can smoke cannabis,

but not tobacco in a coffee shop.

And tobacco but not
cannabis on the streets.

So, you can't smoke tobacco
in Dutch coffee shops

or libraries come to that matter.

But do you get a kick out of
book sniffing? Book sniffing?

Yeah. Why would you sniff a book?
Is it a form of glue sniffing,

to get the adhesive?
It's not the adhesive.

When a book ages enough,
what would form around it? Mildew.

Mildew and mould
and general fungal matter.

[ Are mushrooms growing on books?
Yeah, well, fungus.

And one of the fungi that
grows is an hallucinogenic fungus.

And it seems it maybe has been
responsible for affecting

quite a lot of scholars
and antiquarians.

One of the leading
mycologists of Europe actually said,

"The source of inspiration for many
great literary figures may have been

"nothing more than a sniff
of the bouquet of mouldy books."

[ Who's buying books
that look like that?

Well, they'd be in libraries.
All books are rotting.

They rot faster and faster.
There's a problem, because

the paper breaks down into an acid
which makes them rot even faster.

So, we'd have to get
quite close to it?

And you have to do it
for quite a long time. Yeah.

It's a rather unusual
way of reading...

It seems extraordinary.
LEE: I can't help doing that...

If I go to the dentist and there's
a magazine from three years ago,

and I'm having a look through

and they've got those aftershave
things... Those scratch and sniff.

I always have a little.

And if it smells after three years,
it must be a good one.

I always have a problem
that aftershave stops smelling

after three hours. If it's survived
three years, I'll buy it.

Yeah. You can't buy class, can you?

Well, the fact is
it would take a long time

to get truly
high on one of them.

But it is a real fungus
and is truly hallucinogenic.

What is the proper name
for 'shrooms,

the magic mushrooms,
the hallucinogenic ones?

You've mentioned fly agaric,
which is like that one really.

But the magic mushroom...
psilocybin. Silent P...psilocybin.

Interesting experiments
have been done.

Encouraging some to believe that
religious experiences, all told,

are based on some sort of
hallucinogenic experience.

It's an interesting thought.

Isn't there some sort of theory

in America
that there's a religiosity...

There's a kind of a God spot in the
brain. Yes, some have come up...

There's some part of the brain which
induces some sort of spiritual...

Which may be accessed
by magic mushrooms.

Do you know who rediscovered
the magic mushroom?

Albert Hoffman, his name was.
Albert Hoffman, yes.

And he was the first person...
To formalise acid?

Acid... LSD. LSD, yes. LSD.
That was his even more famous thing.

And do you know where
he got LSD from, as it were?

It was a by-product of something,
wasn't it? It was...

Marmite. Yeah, yeah.

Oddly... Oddly not that far off.
Vegemite. Well, no.

I mean a little further than that.

But a kind of bread. Bread would
have a mould which would cause...

The yeast... the yeast of a bap.
It was called ergot.

Ergot, yes. You've heard of that?
Yes, it grows on wheat. Yeah,

and rye. Rye in particular.
And ergot has lysergic acid in it.

It was while looking at this,

that Hoffman absorbed some
though his skin without knowing it

and had these extraordinary
hallucinations. So...

three days later he took
what he thought was a tiny dose

having basically synthesised
the lysergic acid, diethylamide.

And it proved to be


And he had a terrible trip. And
he wrote, "A demon had invaded me.

"It had taken possession
of my body, mind and soul.

"I screamed trying
to free myself from him.

"Sank down again,
helpless on the sofa.

"The substance I'd wanted to
experiment upon had vanquished me.

"I was seized by the
dreadful fear of going insane."

Wasn't it the fact
that he actually...

he was funded by the CIA.
Because the CIA got wind of it.

And they thought
it was some sort of drug

that could enhance performance...
Truth drug, I think. Or truth drug.

It was known as Project MK Ultra.
That's it, yeah.

And basically they were responsible
for the psychedelic movement.

So, the CIA basically
eventually led to Jimi Hendrix.

Yes, essentially. Yeah.
Thank God for the CIA. Indeed.

Without them we wouldn't
have had Purple Haze.

Anyway, old books give off
a mixture of inert gases

and hallucinogenic
fungus spores.

A combination much
beloved of book sniffers.

Now, who is the coolest, grooviest
hippest cat on the show tonight?

David Tennant, I'd have thought.
Yeah. DAVID: I'm going for Bill.

Could be. What do we know
about these words?

They're jazz words.
Ah, many of them are jazz words.

And how old are they?

Since the '20s, '30s, '40s?

Early... no, no. Earlier, Stone Age.

Let's take the word cool.

When did it first mean like
fashionable, do you think?

'60s Beatnik poet era.

Hitler. Hitler. Oddly enough it was
the year Hitler came to power, 1933.

But I don't think
that's quite relevant.

MOCK GERMAN ACCENT: These new
uniforms are cool. 1933.

# So, this is Christmas. #

I joined the n*zi party.
They're cool, daddy-oh.

Bizarrely it was 1933.
And besides, I have no choice.

I burned down the Reichstag. Cool.

Jazz Nazis.

HUMS A JAZZY PHRASE

It was the West Coast School...

[ But jazz Nazis would use both arms.

It was the West Coast School Of
Relaxed Jazz led by Miles Davis.

And his album,
The Birth Of The Cool, is 1957.

Which was the year I was born.

How extraordinary.
So, maybe I am cool.

Groovy. I'd love if you said
all that that as a chat-up line.

"Do you know who the coolest
person in the room is tonight?

"Let me explain.

"In 1933..." Cut to two hours later.

"And that, madam, is why I am cool."

Where's she gone?
"Can I get you another vermouth?"

Don't go.

What about groovy?
When did groovy first arrive?

Groovy? Ploughing.

Ploughing in the 17th Century.

It's got to be from
records, hasn't it?

You're right.
Black jazzers in the 1930s.

In the groove, because the needle
was in the groove of the record.

Exactly, there we are. What about
hip or hep? When did that come?

A hip cat, a hep cat?
Hip or hep? Both words are used.

[ I've never heard hep.
Have you not heard hep?

As in hep hop? You see,
I've read On The Road.

My mother's just had
a hep operation.

Or a hop operation.

Where you just cut your left...

It first came in, in black
American slang in 1904 - hip.

Was it a bit more sexual? ]
They so often are, I'm afraid.

There is a theory that in the groove
is also a sexual reference

to the little shape
of the lady piece. Oh, hello.

And I want you to do that in
your chat-up line, as well.

Come back, I have something
else to tell you, madam.

What about cat,
meaning fellow or chap?

Well,
that's got to come from Top Cat...

[ He was the coolest cat in town.
He WAS the coolest cat. He was.

He always got one over
on Officer Dibble.

It's from the musical Cats.

[ That's not cool!

Give me the year when cat, meaning
fellow, was first spotted. 1920.

Exactly right! To the year.
Brilliant. That was a guess!

All right.

Good.

More points.
Get ready with the year to shout.

Chick for meaning a girl?

Chick? Yeah? Spanish, chica.

Chiquita. Chiquita!

A cigarette? A cigarette.

Oh, that's it.
That's it. Shakespeare.

He said, "All my little chicks."
In one fell swoop. You're right.

In Mac as you... don't say Beth.

What about dude?

Dude meaning a person. The Amish.

When?

When, not who. 1702.

Why, let us build a barn, dude.

Any other thoughts?
LEE: Neanderthal.



Pardon? I beg your pardon?

Foxy.


meaning splendid.

2001. The Salem Witch Trails.

Your favourite year, 1920.


What, meaning...?

I know, these are surprises.

You don't mean in the
"burn her, she's a witch sense"?

Course not. That's much older. They
weren't doing that in the 1920s?!

No, wicked in the sense
of good, cool wicked.

Be awful if you said that in
the 14th century, "I'm wicked."

And they set fire to you.
Yeah, k*ll you.

Much of the youth slang
we associate with the '60s and '70s

is jazz speak from the '30s

or even earlier. Now, polygamy.
Polygamy would be fairly groovy.

If you were Mormons,
how many wives would you have?

# So here it is merry... #

Up to nine. Up to nine? Yes.

ALARM BLARES

That counts as "many" I'm afraid,
Bill. I'm sorry. What? Up to nine?

Nine counts as many!

It's several after nine, yeah.

If a policeman stops you and says,
"Have you been drinking?"

You can't go,
"I've only had up to nine."

"You've had many, haven't you?"

"Not many. I had between
one and nine, officer."

"What do you mean
I can't drive a tractor

"through the shopping centre?
I haven't had many."

"I was just after some shoes."

But as you probably know...

obviously Mormons are associated
with plural marriages.

Joseph Smith, the founder,
had a divine revelation, apparently.

Telling him that he could
have as many wives as he liked.

But they were stopped.
The American government said,

"You can believe what you like,
but you can't do what you like.

"You can believe
you can have many wives,

"but you can't have it in practice.
You can have it as a belief."

Does this mean it happens
but there's just no legal...?

No, it means it doesn't happen
cos they go to prison.

But people live together in groups
of up to nine without actually...

Yeah, they do. This is
the weird thing about polygamy.

We treat it as if it's incest.
But actually, the weird thing is,

if you deceive someone by having a
mistress and a whole family... Yes.

..it's not against the law.
But if you said to two women,

"I love you both. How would it be
if I married both of you?"

And they said, "OK," that would be
breaking the law. Yes.

It's kind of odd.

Or if a woman said that to two men.

It's a tricky time to bring
it up at Christmas though, isn't it?

Well, I just don't see why
it should be quite so ill*gal.

If people willingly enter it.

If it's a deception
it should be wrong.

Should it be capped
at a certain number? Up to nine.

Up to nine.

Ten. Ten? I'm not a slag. No.

You can't actually do it, then?
They don't condone polygamy at all?

No, it's against the law.
The head of the Mormon Church,

just as it was being announced
as ill*gal,

had a convenient divine revelation

telling him that
the practice should stop.

So God just came in
at the last minute. That's good.

Isn't that handy? That is handy.

There are of course the lovely
Osmonds. Aren't they lovely?

Were they all married to each other?

No, they're Mormons.
Oh, right. They're members

of The Church Of Latter-day Saints,
I think they're from. What teeth!

They were rubbish,
weren't they? Were they?

Apart from Jimmy - he was The
Long Haired Lover From Liverpool.

Yeah. Of course,
there was big Graham Osmond.

The one they kept in the attic.

Who had terrible teeth.

He had one massive... Yellow teeth.
..and a claw.

He wrote all the songs...

..by groaning them.
He groaned them into a tin can

that was connected
by a piece of string.

HOWLS: Crazy. Horses.

MUMBLES AND GROANS: Wild horses.

HOWLS: Crazy. Horses.

ALAN MOANS

You're very bad and you know it.

BILL GROANS
What was that?

What was that, Graham?

LEE: Bring me another wife!

Now, calm yourselves down.

LEE: I'm allowed up to nine, Bill
Bailey said! I've only got eight!

[ I'm allowed to have many!

Now, behave. Pull
yourselves together at once.

The Church Of Jesus Christ
Of Latter-day Saints...

[ What a great idea!

That's a great idea for Doctor Who
isn't it? He goes into the attic.

And finds the elderly,
secret brother of The Osmonds.

Aaaah! And that's how they k*ll off
David Tennant. Imagine that!

Raaawrr!

Played by Bill Bailey.

You're sick puppies.
I'm very ashamed of you.

The Church Of Jesus Christ
Of Latter-day Saints,

the Mormons to you and me, has
forbidden polygamy for 120 years.

Which brings us to what
we call General Ignorance.

So, if my Fab Four are ready,
put your fingers on your buzzers.

What are these gentlemen
spelling out in semaphore?

# Last Christmas... #

Help. Oh, you'd think, wouldn't you?

ALARM BLARES

Paul McCartney died
and there's a replacement?

You're not quite there, but...
I am a walrus. No.

# It's beginning to look... #

"We" is George, John is "all",
Paul is "live"

and Ringo is "yellow submarine".

But not in one?
Not in, no. No. Right, OK.

That's the elderly brother
of The Beatles that's not allowed

to be seen.
Oh, don't start.

MOANS: I'm in a yellow submarine!

DAVID: Daydream Believer.
That was the Monkees.

MOANS: Help! I'm in a submarine.

BILL MUMBLES

Oh, I'll write that down.

Ah, that's very good.

As it happened, the photographer
who was commissioned to do the cover

of Help did ask them to do it.
But for some reason nobody

liked the outcome graphically.

Instead they positioned their arms

in a pleasing arrangement. Which
ended up spelling N, U, J, V.

Like so. Which... It probably
meant something to them.

Ah, well no. It gave rise to
the first, as David intimated,

the first of the great
Beatles conspiracy theories.

This was New Unknown
John Vocalist, people said.

For crying out loud.
Isn't it tragic?

Claiming that John had died.
Why do fans ruin the bands?

He'd died and been replaced.
So, John had died.

And they said, "We need
a way of telling the thing."

So, let's get John
back out. Stuff him.

Yes, I know.
Surely a conspiracy theory...

John's in it, he's not dead.

But actually help
would have looked like...

which seems acceptable to me.

There you are. And so it
wasn't Help. It was N, U, J, V.

So, what are the other famous,
if they are, or infamous Beatles...?

Barefoot on the Abbey Road cover.

Barefoot on the Abbey Road
cover is the classic.

And what did that indicate? Dead.

Well, supposedly John is said
to be dressed as a preacher.

Ringo as an undertaker,
George as a grave digger...

Why a grave digger in denim?

..and Paul with a suit,
but no shoes is a corpse.

You might also notice
that he's carrying a cigarette.

But if you were to buy
a modern copy of it,

you would find that had disappeared.

LEE: Where's it gone?

There. Look, it's gone.
Wow. Disappeared.

Was there, it's gone.
Anyway, Robert Freeman

wanted to arrange
The Beatles to spell out Help.

Didn't like the way it looked.
So, they went with N, U, J, V.

What does Puff The Magic Dragon

have in common
with Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds?

# It suddenly looks a lot... #

Lee? Are they both about drugs?

ALARM BLARES

No, they're not.

A lot of people think
they are but neither is.

Do you know Puff The Magic Dragon?
Do you know the song?

# Puff The Magic Dragon
lived by the sea

# And he frolicked in the...

# ..in the land of...
MUMBLES SONG

# Puff the Magic Dragon... #

THEY AIMLESSLY MUMBLE SONG

Very good. That's excellent. Is that
right? Yup. That's the song. Yeah.

It's based on an Ogden Nash rhyme

called The Really-O Truly-O Dragon.

A Cornell student, Leonard Lipton,
gave it to his friend,

Peter Yarrow who wrote the song. And
Peter Yarrow tells us, specifically,

"Even if I'd had the intention
of writing a song about drugs,

"which I may have had at a later
time, I was 20 years old in 1959.

"I was so square, as was everyone
else, drugs had not emerged.

"Puff was a good dragon, would
never have had drugs around him.

"And now you've heard that from
the mouth of the dragon's daddy.

"It is not about drugs."

He thinks he's a dragon's
daddy?! Yeah.

He's not. Well, there is that.

It was going well
until the very end.

Do you know the official story
of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds?

Yeah. Didn't Julian come home from
playgroup with a picture?

They said, "What's this? " He said,
"Lucy in the sky with diamonds."

Brilliant. Absolutely right.
[ He'd written the whole song[?]

Bloke upstairs going, it's my song!

You've stolen my painting.
Get me a pen.

Oh, Christ. No, he'd done...

He'd done a...

Little Julian...

I've got Lucy up here. Oh, God!
Little Julian

had painted
a girl surrounded by stars.

and it was his friend
Lucy in playgroup.

And John said, "What's that then?"
And he said,

"Lucy in the sky with diamonds."
The older brother spoke like that.

And, um... Julian, what's that?

According to an interview with
Lennon, and the other Beatles,

they didn't notice that the initials
spelled out... LSD.

..until after the
record was released. Good.

Now, finally, something seasonal
at last. A man goes to the doctor,

right? "Doctor, Doctor, I can't stop
singing Auld Lang Syne."

So, the Doctor says, "I'll have
to send you to the BURNS unit."

Ah.
Now, what's wrong with that joke?

[ Is it absolutely terrible?

ALARM BLARES

You see.

Any other thoughts?

Well, of course it's not

because Burns' Night
is not on New Year's Eve.

It's on... What is it?
25th January.


you wouldn't be singing

Auld Lang Syne on Burns' Night.
You'd sing it on New Year's Eve.

That's true.
You'd be waiting three weeks.

But most people think that Auld Lang
Syne was written by Rabbie Burns.

Auld Lang wasn't
even written by Burns.

Yay! That's right.

Although a lot of members of the
Burns' Society believe he wrote it.

And say that it's nonsense he
didn't. He himself said he didn't.

He said it was a traditional song
that he wrote down. Really? Yeah.

Auld Lang Syne
first comes up in 1724 we see it.

And that was 35 years
before Burns was born.

It's a very popular song though
in all kinds of places.

Especially in the Far East.

In Japan... Yes, yes.

..it's played daily

to mark closing time in
most large department stores.

So how did Burns sign himself?
What was his name?

What did he call himself? Rabbie.

Not Rabbie funnily enough. Robin.
Robin he did, yes. Robin

and Rab and Robert. But never
Robbie or Rabbie oddly enough.

Even though everyone
calls him Rabbie

or Robbie Burns. There you go.

What does it mean, auld lang syne?

Old, old...remembrance?

Yeah. Kind of old long since.

It means in the old days,
long time ago.

And how do the words go? Anyone who
can give me the lyrics gets points?

# Should auld acquaintance be forgot

ALL: # And never brought to mind

# Should auld acquaintance be forgot

# For the sake of auld lang syne

# For auld lang syne

# Auld lang syne

DAVID ALONE:
# We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet

# For the sake of auld lang syne. #
Oh, yes. Full points. Well done.

There we go.

But all that sex, drugs
and rock'n'roll brings us

to the end of the QI office party.

Before we tell the boss what we
really think of him,

let's see if everyone has scored.
And what they have scored.

Well, bless my blimey.

With -29 points,

I'm afraid our last place
loser tonight is Lee Mack!

CHEERING AND WHOOPING
[Is that good?]

In third place with -6
it's Bill Bailey.

CHEERING AND WHOOPING

Oh, this is getting tense.

First appearance,
second place, -4, David Tennant.

CHEERING AND WHOOPING

Which can only mean

it's not only Christmas,
it's a blue moon!

With +5, Alan Davies is the winner.

+5? Thank you.

CHEERING

So, we are bidding a cool yule
and a gear New Year to you all

From David, Bill, Lee, Alan and me.

And tonight for some reason
I thought I'd leave you

with a joke
about doctors and time travel.

"Doctor, Doctor,
I keep seeing into the future."

"And when did this start?"

"Next Tuesday afternoon."

Good night and happy Christmas.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE