08x09 - House and Home

[bunniefuu]

APPLAUSE

Good evening.

Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello.

Hello, and how do you do?

We'll be staying in tonight,
ladies and gentlemen,

for a quite interesting look
at house and home.

So, let's see who's "in da house,"
as my father likes to say.

We have, very much at home,
Danny Baker!

Thank you.

APPLAUSE

And hitting a home run,
Eddie Izzard.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And a beautifully streamlined
homing pigeon, Bill Bailey.

APPLAUSE

And late with his homework again,
my homeboy, Alan Davies.

APPLAUSE

Well, should my house guests
need to attract my attention

they'll need to ring my chimes.
Danny goes...

SCHOOL BELL RINGS

And Eddie goes...

DOOR BELL RINGS

And Bill goes...

BELLS RING A TUNE

And Alan goes...

KNOCKING
'Hello? Only me!'

LAUGHTER

So, eyes down, please,
for a full house.

Now here's a lovely,
homely picture of a modern family.

But of course they're all
rather concerned

about their ecological footprint.

Now how can they
legally reduce it the most?

What is the biggest thing
they can do? Stop breathing.

Stop, er, breathing.

Yes, and defecating.

DOOR BELL RINGS

Are we using these?
No, we never use them.

It's sort of... Come in! Hello!

What just happened? Stop pooing.

If they don't poo or pee ever...

They would die.

I mean legally, and if you like,
biologically viably.

Oh, right. Biologically viably?

Yeah, and legally.
I mean, it's not... How many more...

Go vegetarian. ..little things are
you going to add on to this question?

Well... OK, I'll trigger the screen.
Go on.

Don't drive, car. O-o-oh, no.

Yes! That is not the biggest way
they could help the environment,

that particular family.

Insulating your home. That would
be reasonable, but getting
rid of the car would be better.

I know. Eat the dog!
RINGS BELL

Yes!

Yes!

Or get rid of the dog.

The dog is by far and away
the most ecologically...

Never turns the lights off,
leaves the telly on all night.

LAUGHTER

Keeping a dog is the equivalent
to two Toyota Land cruisers.

What? Yeah, right. No!

Yes, everyone in the audience
is going, "what?"

There's a simple reason. I'm getting
rid of both of my Land Cruisers.

And that is the meat it eats.

It's that simple. Oh, yeah.

It seems a unfair to put it
on the dog. I eat meat.

Yes, but you can't get rid of a
human being without being ill*gal.

That's why I said legally.
You can get rid of a dog.

It may be unkind, but that's
the point of the question.

Can you do it? Oh, you could
just have it put down.

Yeah, legally, not ethically.

Not ethically, no.
Definitely not ethically.

But it was there to surprise you.
It is a shock.

Even a cat, one cat,
one little cat,

is the equivalent
to a Volkswagen Golf.

And I'm including
the manufacture of the car

as well as the use of the car.

Wow. So, Stephen, just on a
purely technical point... Yes.

I've got four dogs, right.

Oh!

You're k*lling us all!

k*ll your dogs, will you!?
I can hardly breathe!

The planet's warming!

I want to know, what kind of fleet
of vehicles I can now own.

I'm really keen to know.

Eight Land Cruisers. Yes!

You could have a lot of Land
Cruisers.

You'd be like Mad Max.
You could go across deserts.

If you had a bison you could
have a Chieftain tank.

If they ate veg is it better? They
are just born to eat meat, I fear.

Well our dogs eat rice. They will
eat it, but not without meat.

They'll eat it grudgingly.
You leave out a Battenburg and
that'll disappear instantly.

They had a whole tin of Quality
Street, one Christmas, and they took
all the wrappers off. Unbelievable.

Yeah, they unwrapped the sweets,
the Alsatians.

Did they look through the cellophane
and go, "It's all yellow!"

That's how we caught them.
They had cellophane over their eyes
like that, "wow, man."

A little bit of green
foil under their claws.

Yes. The thing is, I've got four
dogs, two cats, birds, fish, rabbit,

guinea pig - I could probably
get like a jet or something.

You probably are using
the equivalent of a jet.
It's quite serious.

Really? I can give you the figures.

It takes 43 square metres of land to
generate one kilogram of chicken,

much more for other meats.

But only 13 per kilo
of cereal, you see?

So someone worked out how much it
took, and it's two Land Cruisers per

dog, much more for German shepherds,
for example, which eat a lot more.

If you kept two hamsters,

that's the same energy footprint
as a plasma television.

LAUGHTER

And unfortunately, no, hamsters
going round on a wheel will not
power the plasma television.

Is this some kind of Dr Dolittle
death list you're reading from?

How many pets have you got to
get rid of to get a speedboat?

They're not green shield stamps,
you know!

That's what they are in my mind, now.

Nectar points!

One dolphin.

Oh, don't. Bless the dolphins.

The ecological footprint is a
measure of the amount of land needed

to regenerate consumed resources
and deal with the resultant waste.

Current figures calculated
by the United Nations

are that we are using 1.4 times
more than the planet can restore.

The thing is... Yes?
We evolved from this planet,

we are of this planet,
we live on this planet,

so can't we do what we like?
Yeah, absolutely.

We are victims of our
own evolution. I happen to have
come in at this point.

Now I have to turn the lights out
and I can't see where I'm going
when I go to bed.

But we appear to be
the first creatures

to have evolved to have
a knowledge of what we're doing.

Consciousness, that's what we've got.
That's where we went wrong.

We also k*ll each other in huge
quantities, that's a good thing.

Maybe we should
big ourselves up sometimes.

Last year thousands of people were
k*lled in wars, thousands of people.
That's right.

That's the ecological paw print, and
it's a bit of a shocker for us all.

But having children is even more
disastrous than having dogs.

Unless they start wars.

Unless they start wars.

But as long as it's k*lling Nazis
then we're kind of cool with that.

And Hitler had a dog.
He did, and he k*lled it!

If you're going to have a w*r,
use animals as weapons
and that'll get rid of a few.

If you've got a mortar, chuck a few
guinea-pigs down a mortar, phoom!

That's half a plasma screen already.
Exactly. Yeah, brilliant.

Yes, but the one thing about
evolution, evolution has never
developed an animal with a wheel.

And you would have thought by now,

because they must
have seen the car or the bike by now,

but evolution, if it's going
anywhere, no animal has a wheel.

The paw's better than the wheel.
A what? A paw.

It's much better than a wheel.

The Daleks proved this,
Daleks couldn't go upstairs.

Now they fly!
We invented the wheel then

after the wheel we had to invent the
road and the railway line and things
to put the wheel on. That's true.

Had nature given us roads,
then a wheel might well have
been a good evolution.

Where we're going,
we don't need roads.

How come some fish fly
and we don't?

Yeah. So...

What about a Blu-ray player?
What are they, a mouse or something?

I think a Blu-ray player would
probably be a gerbil. Gerbil, right.

A gecko would be an iPad.
Nice! Oh, yes!

The most ecological would be
the worm, because the worm eats us.

And you cut it in two
and you've got four. No, two.

That's a conjoined worm, of course.
You cut two in two you get four.

You're doing wonderfully,
thank you all very much.

So there you are, yes,
a medium-sized dog has a bigger

ecological footprint than a large
car, so draw your own conclusions.

Many things can influence
the value of the house,

but what instantly reduces the value
of a house in America by a third?

OJ Simpson lived there.

A third. Third. Third.

LAUGHTER

Third...

Is it a tornado cutting
it in...two thirds?

LAUGHTER

Two thirds of it is on one
side of the San Andreas fault...

I may say, what it is, is nonsense,
but it's the kind of a nonsense

that Americans, unfortunately,
seem to believe in.

Whether or not it's near to
a drive-in? Portal to hell?

Well, kind of.
It's buried on a graveyard? Haunted!

Haunted is the right answer.
Haunted.

Obviously it won't be
haunted because...

There's no such thing as ghosts.

Exactly. But, the point is
the stigma of haunting is enough.

If it's merely mentioned
or that people seem to believe

there are ghosts there,
then it will reduce...

Have they told you about
the haunting?

They told you about the ghost?
There should be ghosts everywhere.

There should be
dinosaur ghosts, cows ghosts,
sheep ghosts, worm ghosts...

Yeah, dinosaur ghosts,
that's a brilliant idea!

There should
be stromatolites ghosts...

Exactly. The most plausible thing
I ever heard on the ghost front

is the idea it can be
the atmospheric thing like

a lightning bolt, it's because of
a peculiarity and a magnetic force.

These people are unaware they're
ghosts and that's why

they appear to walk through doors
because as far as they're concerned,
the door isn't there...

and I can kind of buy that!
I can buy that brains
are affected by magnetic fields

and there are certain circumstances
where it's common for people to feel

chill and dread and to
hallucinate and indeed to die

and this is quite common...
Yeah, what a night that was.

That's carbon monoxide poisoning.

Oh! From gas boilers and so on
and it causes all those symptoms.

As for dead people coming back...

There should be dead cows.
I so agree with you!

The Meatpacking District
in New York.

Yeah, why do you draw the line?
Suddenly it's only human beings.

Because if you pass a field
and you see a cow,

you don't say, "That's a ghost!"

If you saw one
in your house, you would.

Yeah, but cows aren't
going to be in the house.

They are because... Houses are built
on all kinds of pieces of land.

I'm not advocating for
the Ghost Party over here, but...

I love the idea of a Ghost Party.
Woooh!

The other parties
are just scaremongering.

Very good.

First appearance of the pipe.

The pipe in high-definition
for the first time.

What happened to pipes?

That's where they went.
I love pipes.

Would you like to meet
the last ever winner of
the pipe-smoker of the year?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes!

How do you do!

I answered no!
You're a pipe-smoker?

The first QI was about to start
and I was asked to some press for it

and I left the house
to go to this interview

and I realised I had no cigarettes -

in those days I was a smoker -
and I just saw a pipe

and some tobacco
and I put it in my pocket.

You saw a pipe just
lying there in the street?

No, in my house! Two days after
the Independent article opened,

I was asked if I would be
the pipe-smoker of the year!

Did you accept?

I said, yeah. Absolutely!

APPLAUSE

It confers a kind of respectability,
I think. Trustworthiness.

I never think you can truly give
directions without a pipe
and that's why I envy you, Bill.

Really! Could you tell me
where the station is?

What you do, you go down there...

HE MUMBLES

And recognising a friend! Ah! Ah!

Great prop for that.

Ah!

Now a good haunting

can knock a third off the value
of an American house.

Describe the arrangements for
moving house in the fourth largest
island in South America.

The fourth...?
Largest island in South America.

Look at your tats. I've got
them covered up at the moment.

I can tell you the third largest.
They just get it in a van and go.

What the hell is the fourth largest?

Its name is Chiloe.

That helps. What?

There are the people of Chiloe.
It's off the coast of Chile.

Obviously they'll
get a yak first. Two yaks.

Actually they called it a yunta,
which is like a team of cattle.

The point is, when they move house,
they literally move house.

If they have a haunting,
if there's a bad spirit,

rather than just leave the house
and build a house somewhere else,

they move the house thinking
that the spirit will stay behind
and I think we've got VT

of them moving house. Here they go.

That's the yunta, and they've got
logs and there it goes.

That's cos there's a ghost inside?

What if the ghost can travel with
them? Apparently the ghost doesn't.

The ghost goes, "I'm still here!"

Apparently it doesn't.

The ghost gets left
behind going, "What happened?"

Do cows have any idea
where they're going?

Or are all the houses
just at one end of the field?

Possibly.

That is an adventure movie,
isn't it? That just looks fantastic.

It's Fitzcarraldo writ small.

I think it's Die Hard with a cow.

Or the guy in the window's going, "I
want to stay here!" The person at
the door's going, "What the hell?

"I just came down because
there was a rumbling."

It's quite a sight.

Apparently tourists come
from Chile to watch it.

The ceremony is called the Minga.

They have a great feast called
the curanto and they dance a waltz.

Now, when the inhabitants
of Chiloe Island

have unwanted supernatural house
guests, they get their neighbours

to pull the house with their cattle
and the spirit is left behind.

Even a ghost might turn its nose up
at this property, however.

Who on earth would live
in a house like this?

Is it the British space programme?

LAUGHTER

That's so sweet! We'll just build
our way up there.

As you can see, just opening up
like a telescope.

We'll get there eventually.

DANNY: People who make
wedding cakes.

Oh!

KLAXON SOUNDS

We predicted that one, I'm afraid.

It's deliberately unpleasant.

What, living there?

To look at.

Oh, erm, it's so someone...
A bad neighbour? Kind of.

It's a class of building known as
a spite building,

spite house.

It's built to annoy
your neighbours deliberately,
or your local authority.

Deliberately to absolutely madden.

It looks all right.
I know, it looks OK.

This is in Gaylordsville,
Connecticut.

LAUGHTER
Yes.

MOCKING: "Yes."
Hmm, yes...

LAUGHTER

It was built in 1964
by a Polish immigrant...

He was annoyed because the state
had taken away a young girl
he had adopted.

Yes. You're right to give me
that look.

And he was so upset that he build
this ugly... It doesn't look ugly,
that's the thing.

Apart from the front door being up
in the air...

I've seen worse.
Looks like a lighthouse.

It's an eyesore in the idyllic
countryside to remind the world -
and there's a plaque on it -

"She was kidnapped away from freedom
to the Godlessness of Hitlerism."

Oh, it was Hitlerism.

Hitlerism is the way he put it.

He regarded the state
as being fascistic...

So he built it himself? He built it
himself, yeah. I'd like to live in
the top bit!

It's sweet. I think it's appealing.

It's like what Granddad in
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang lived in.

LAUGHTER

Yes, I'm not too keen on Flat D...

I suppose over here we're used to it
because of our follies.

We have follies but there's
one in California
called the Alameda Spite House.

That's actually built -
it's a shallow house built in front
of the house behind it,

to block out its light.

Haha!
LAUGHTER

So that really is spiteful.
EDDIE: Yeah, wow.

And people live in that or...? What
happened was the city of Alameda

took most of Charles Froling -
who built the house. They took most
of his land to build a street,

a kind of compulsory purchase.
He only had this ten-foot strip

so he built that house
and it's still occupied.

The neighbour behind was on the side
of the city council,

which is why he built it.

Blocking out all the light? And then
in Boston, there's one called
the Skinny House.

That's very narrow and the house
next to it, there was a plot of land
left to two brothers,

and one of them was away and the
brother left behind built a huge
house on the land,

leaving a tiny strip for his
brother, thinking, "Ha-ha, I've got
the whole lot while he was away."

The brother built on the remaining
bit that thin house to ruin
his brother's life.

LAUGHTER

Anyway, you've got spite houses.
There are also spite fences
and spite walls, for example.

So you can get some nasty things
happening amongst neighbours,

like this for example.

LAUGHTER

This householder built a house...
She taken a very dim view of that!

She's not happy.

She built her house right on the
borderline of someone else's land

and that person said, "When you open
your window, you're trespassing."

When that window opened. So they
built a wall right on their part so
she couldn't even open the window.

LAUGHTER

I just love... That is a studied face
of utter contempt.

You won't be surprised to know,
Bill, that's in the West Country.

Erm... Are you implying something?

Feelings run deep...

WEST COUNTRY ACCENT:
Oh, that'll sort 'er!

LAUGHTER

That is how they build them
in the West Country.

ACCENT: Oi! I think we built this
a bit close to the wall, Fred...

Move it back a bit!

They told me they'd be transparent
bricks...

Poor thing.

It's easy, just leaned them on the
wall, seemed to go all right...
Oh, you want to open it outside?

Oh, right, well...

Oh, from London, are you?

LAUGHTER

Ooh, bit of fresh air, is it?

In China, they're called
nail houses, in fact.

We've got a picture of a nail house
- pretty extreme.

That's a development all around
and they've kept their own land,
as you can see.

When an amoeba splits up,
who gets the house?

Who gets the house?

Yes. I thought the whole idea was
if they split, they get two houses.
In some sort of perfect world of...

Do you know what sort of houses
amoebas build?

They are single-celled.

Part of the amazing nature of all
living creatures is that even
incredibly simple ones like amoeba,

you don't get much simpler,

can actually build
a protective house.

They assemble grains of sand
and they make that.

It protects them. Even to the
spikes. Those spikes are deliberate.

Isn't it incredible?

Is that just loads of grains of sand
they pull around them?

Yeah, each one is about the size of
a full-stop in an average newspaper.
Tiny. Wow.

We've never heard that before.

No. That is actually
quite interesting.

Hooray! We've made it. Finally.

APPLAUSE

What is most interesting about it
is that the other amoeba
has got a camera!

LAUGHTER

You're right. That maybe is more
astonishing even than the house.

No, what happens is the amoeba goes
along as a single-celled organism

and the odd bit of sand, it absorbs
and saves up,

and some it uses to build
this house.

When it's time to split,
it takes away the house and
the half it leaves behind

has got all the building materials
left, so it can build its own house.
So that's how they split it.

Why have we never heard of that?

I don't know, I suppose, really...
They never mention that at all.

It's a conspiracy to keep this
information from us.

Estate agents come along...

This desirable piece of sand...
In this increasingly popular part.

But in terms of human splits and
houses, in 2003 there was a
Manhattan doctor

who was who was so determined that
his wife shouldn't get the house
that he felt he had earned,

that he blew it up
with himself in it.

That's a gesture, isn't it?

But the really nice man,
what a prince this guy is,

New York surgeon, Richard Batista.

BILL: Oh, yeah...

His lovely wife,
she had kidney disease
and he donated one of his kidneys.

A few years later, they divorced
and he demanded it back.

Being a real gent, he said he'd
take 1.5 million instead.

But you'll be happy to know that
the court ruled it was a gift,
and therefore non-refundable.

DANNY: A gift!

"What have you got me?
It's a kidney!"

Do you know what happens, couples in
America who split up, do you know
what happens

when they have a dog? How the courts
decide who gets the animal.

They take it outside and
see which one it runs to.

Yes, a calling competition.

They're careful about it,
the animal is boarded overnight
with a third party,

so they're not trained to
come to them in special new ways.

And there's a vet on hand,
because people have cheated

by rubbing their hands in sausage
meat and things like that,

to attract the animal.
"Come to me!" Putting a massive
electromagnet in the dog.

LAUGHTER

HE HUMS MECHANICALLY

There is a vet on hand to
see fair play. Somehow
you feel a movie in this.

ALAN: Starring Jennifer Aniston.
The one the animal comes to...

Matthew McConaughey, perhaps!

What kinds of divorce have been
available for the last 10-12 years?

New kinds of divorce? Totally new
kind in the history of the planet.

What, you mean divorce...
A kind that was never available...
Animal divorces?

No, they've always been possible.
This has technically never been
possibly till now.

g*y divorces?

No, virtual.

I'm talking about online. Talking
about Second Life, for example.

A Cornish couple, we're
in the West Country again,

David Pollard. I know David Pollard.

LAUGHTER

Just you be careful what you say!

He did my windows! So watch it!

They met online and married in
the world of Second Life,

then they married for real.

But then they subsequently got
divorced, also for real,

when Amy's online
avatar, "Laura Skye",

caught David's online
avatar, "Dave Barmy",

canoodling with another avatar.

Right? It wasn't real...
Do people actually do this?

Yes. This was a piece of bad luck
for David's avatar, because he'd
previously resisted

the blandishments of
an online private detective,
hired by Amy's avatar,

to operate a honey-trap.

Go figure.

They don't deserve broadband,
these people, do they?

If it was dial-up they
wouldn't move very quickly.

So they hired an avatar private
eye... Yeah, she wanted to trap him
to prove he'd been unfaithful.

All avatars? Yeah.

So in real life they were having
sex, while... Or just sitting
at a computer, presumably.

It's a bit strange...
These aren't the blue avatars out
the film, are they?

No, no!

An avatar is... An online presence.

You can set yourself up as a private
detective in this online world?
You can do anything.

Could they have not hired an online
assassin to k*ll everyone?

We come on to this, now...

This is...this is an RPG,
a role-playing game,
called MapleStory...

An RPG is surely a
rocket propelled grenade?

It's also a role-playing game.
I'm sorry.

A Japanese piano...
That's right, I'm not inviting you
on any mercenary missions!

LAUGHTER

"Right, launch the RPG!

"You wear that!

"You're Spanish."

"You're useless!"

A Japanese piano teacher was
arrested in 2008 after murdering
her virtual husband

inside a role-playing game

after his avatar divorced her avatar
without telling her.

She hacked into the game, deleted
the avatar that she'd spent a year
training to battle monsters,

and the last time online, she was
looking at the possibility of a
five-year stretch in real jail.

Why? For k*lling an avatar.

Because an avatar is a
valuable commodity, especially in
the far east,

in South Korea and Japan.

People spend years giving them
qualities, values, alternative bank
accounts and everything.

And if you k*ll it or hack into it
or do anything or steal from it,

it's considered genuine theft,

in those countries.
That's mental, isn't it?

Does anyone do this? I'm afraid
they do. Do you do this?
I do so not do it.

I'm going to go into it
and I'm going to be you.

Is it not a virtual
court case or something?

No, that's the point, it's real,
you can really be arrested for...

Prison for five years? Yeah.
For something that didn't exist.

But it has value, because they can
be traded, like a baseball card,
like a Ming teapot,

anything, it has actual value.
Real value. Unless your phone
is not working. Yeah, exactly.

But there are plenty of things
that only have value with
the right conditions.

Like what?

A concert ticket.

If the concert is cancelled it is no
longer worth anything,

but it could be worth a huge amount
right up to the moment that

the singer gets ill or something,
things have timelines.

A time-sensitive thing.

Things can be time sensitive,
or in the case of a virtual thing,

electric current sensitive,
but that's not too big a push.

Right, I see.

LAUGHTER

You took me serious,
as if I believe in them!

I was just making the point.

Do they do anything else with their
lives? Do they have jobs and stuff?

I don't think so, no.
Do they have ghosts?

They might well do. Avatar ghosts,
who aren't really there but scare
the pants off you.

Like the new Tron.

Are there religions and things?
Who are these people? Are they
on Directory Enquiries?

Is this what they do when
they're not answering the phone?

"118... Yeah, I dunno, yeah."

"I've hired a monster!"

It's particularly popular
in the far east.

Who knows why? There must be
cultural reasons. Right.

To us, with our normal lives, going
to cricket matches... Why do that,

when you can watch EastEnders?
Exactly.

So, when... Yeah, we're
going back to that amoeba,

when Difflugia Coronata, this
particular amoeba, gets too big for
its little house,

it divides it in half.

One half gets the house, the other
half gets the building materials it
collected to build the new one.

Amoebi make their houses
out of grains of sand,

but what kind of person
builds a house out of straw?

Not a...pig.

Damn you.

Damn you for the "not" word. A pig!

KLAXON

You just wanted to be spanked.
I just wanted to hear the sound.

I've been making it myself
watching - "wooohoooh!"

Like some demented child.

What kind of a person would
build a house out of straw?

A straw person would live in a straw
house, for example, a scarecrow.

When they weren't
working out in the field.

Somewhere you could only get
straw to make a house out of?

Yeah. Does it have to be a person?
Not a bird?

The fact is it's an incredibly
good building material for houses.

There's almost nothing not
to find remarkable about it.

I was astonished by this.
It's more fire-resistant
than conventional buildings.

You'd think it was
a fire hazard but in fact the straw
is so compacted, it just won't burn.

There's no air in it.

It's structurally sound and strong,
it's resistant to earthquakes,
inhospitable to insects

and rodents, more so than wood,
so particularly in America where

houses are wood-framed,
it's fantastically useful.

Clean straw has no allergy issue.

It's relatively cheap, it's
a below zero carbon rating.

Can be locally grown, excellent
insulation and sound proofing

compared to conventional buildings,
it's biodegradable

at the end of the building's life,
it's easy to work with,

necessary skills are
easier to learn than bricklaying.

Sounds great until it rains.

No because that one on the
right is that straw house.

It's not left straw like that.
You can clad it and plaster it.

Clapboard and everything else.

You would never know it was
a straw house.
You'd need a metal roof.

Yeah, the whole thing isn't made of
straw but it's straw where otherwise
you'd be using concrete or wood.

Why are we just learning this?

I know!
It was a 19th-century Nebraskan
invention, a baled straw buildings.

In Nebraska, they have huge
grasslands and you'd start when
it's the nearest material to you.

There aren't that many
trees and things for wood.

So how big can the structures get?

As big as any. You know...
The sky's the limit.

Big question - can
a wolf blow it down?

It'll huff and it'll puff and I
think it will fail to blow it down.

If a wolf came back and saw that...
"Ha-ha! Oh..."

The wolf would be going,
"this is not supposed to happen!

"I've got a brick one to come yet!"

The wolf would be going,
"I love what you've done here."

The early Nebraskan settlers
even tried them with ba*ls
of tumbleweed compressed.

And it blew away?

There was a house built of hay,
it was a schoolhouse in Nebraska.

It was eaten by a herd of cows.

That was bad, but they
wouldn't eat straw.

This information
throws everything into chaos.

A man of straw is supposed to be
weak and now we're learning it's
right up there with concrete.

Now the pigs have got
a panic room anyway...

Straw is cheap, strong, warm
and fire and earthquake resistant,

making it an excellent
choice of building material.

Now, the Queen is coming for tea.

What should you do
with your lavatory seat?

Cover it with money!

EDDIE: Wear it round your neck
with pride.

No. There is a rumour, an
urban legend, a nonsense, a fallacy,

that you have to get a new
lavatory seat for the Queen's visit.

Superglue it.

Put clingfilm over the bowl.
See if she complains!

I don't know why that pleases
me so much, but it really does.

There was a rumour -
but it's a nonsense -

that she carried her own calfskin
one around, a calfskin lavatory
seat. Wow.

But apparently Prince Charles
did have his own.

He was given one as a present
and he liked it so he used to
carry it around.

Charlie's got his own seat
and he goes around with it?

No, he was given it and he used
to take it around as a joke.

As a joke? All right!

I mean, the people who deal
with royalty, they do say...
HE MUTTERS

And they would have
bolted it on in a trice.

Probably.
No-one would take the joke.

"We've made nine of them."

I don't know how that
works in the toilet but...

People powering the toilet.

Jet-powered toilets. Yes.

A royal flush.

You can be sucked out of
a jet toilet.

You can get wedged in
and create a vacuum.

Then the whole plane
sucks in on itself.

Like Oddjob...

Goldfinger himself goes out of
the window. But not out of the loo.

ALAN IMITATES FLUSH

Isn't it funny how you just have to
press the button and then you think,

I'll have to press it again
because it didn't, and then woah!

Stand well back. You don't leave
your tie dangling over. Waah!

What is that statistic?
I'm not sure you have it to hand,

people who are impaled by frozen
spears of urine from overhead...
I'm not sure those are...

When you find them, they're just
dead and it looks like
they've wee'd themselves.

The perfect crime! The perfect crime.
If you're accurate enough it's the
perfect m*rder!

"Someone's wee'd on their head,
how cruel. To do that
to a dead person."

They've managed to sh*t
themselves in their brain, as well.

Oh, stop!

Right, moving on!

"How do they do that?"

According to Buckingham Palace, the
idea that the Queen requires a new
lavatory seat is a complete myth.

Though you might want to run
a damp cloth over the old one.

Homing in now
on General Ignorance.

Fingers on buzzers, please.

When did sl*very become a
criminal offence in England?

It was one of these odd little
New Labour laws, in about 1996,
'97, '98.

What an odd law, to outlaw sl*very.

It's political correctness gone mad!

I'm going to be odd and say it was a
bit late. Yes, that's exactly right.

It was 1807 when the sl*ve trade was
ended, and then finally, in 1834,

it was ill*gal anywhere in the
British Empire to own a sl*ve.

It has never been ill*gal to have a
sl*ve in England until April 2010.

I'm saying I could have had you
as a sl*ve. Legally.

You mean this series
I'm finally free? Yes!

APPLAUSE

Absolutely.

You know what?

I'll be one of those sl*ves that
just goes back to the master.
"I don't know what to do now.

"Can I work for you anyway, please?"

There are now estimated to be 27
million people held essentially in
bondage, in sl*very, on this planet.

But the show will be over
soon and you can go. Yeah.

More than there ever were in the
days of cotton picking and so on.


In the world? Yeah. That is
the estimate. It's a pretty grim
problem, still, sl*very.

The point is it was never ill*gal
in England because it was never
recognised as a state of being.

I wish I had known that!

There were laws against
kidnapping and abduction,
and false imprisonment,

and sexual trafficking and all
that we might associate,

though it was not ill*gal for one
human to own another human,
which it now is.

This isn't one of those laws where
they thought, "That needs clearing
up. It's a loose end from history."

It kind of was. In 1967,
there were a number of obsolete
crimes that were taken care of.

Barratry had been ill*gal right up
until 1967, which is
vexatious lawsuits.

Vexatious? What they call
a vexatious litigate,
someone who just keeps coming.

Dorothy Squires. Yes. The singer,
towards the end of her life
when she did have a mania,

but she was probably the last person
to be done for vexatious...

But if you kept prosecuting someone
for it, you'd be prosecuted...
Yourself. Yeah.

Anyway, there's scolding.

Scolding was a crime
in 1966, but not in 1967.

With hot water, you mean?
No, not scalding. Scolding.
Scolding! "You!

"What time of the night do
you call this, Eddie Izzard?"


Give you a good scolding.

And that was ill*gal?
That was ill*gal.

And now it's legal?
Eavesdropping was ill*gal.

Challenging someone to a fight
was also ill*gal until 1967.

What about going round a
roundabout more than three times?

That certainly wouldn't have
been a medieval law, would it?

Well, I don't know.
If you had a horse and cart
and a couple of hours spare.

On the medieval roundabout.
The medieval roundabout.
Yes. Anyway. There you are.

Due to a quirk of English law,
it only became an offence

to keep a sl*ve in the year 2010,
so you just missed your chance.

Who lives in the tiniest
houses in Europe?

DING-DONG
German. Belgians. French. Italians.
Whoa.

Slovenia? Slovenia?

Whoa, interesting. No.

Greece, Turkey. Albania. Albania.

No. Lithuania. England.

Ireland. Czech Republic. Wales.

Well..

Wales? Well...
Pygmies. Anglesey. The Welsh?

Brittany... Britain!

Britain.

Great Britain. Great Britain?

Britain, UK. We got that easy!
Our country. Where we live. Us?
Yes. We have.

We have? We have, in Britain.
We have the smallest by quite a way.

It's rather embarrassing. Easily
the pokiest accommodation in Europe.

Yeah. In terms of overall floor
space, that's where we live.

Isn't that tragic?
Compared to America.

Yeah. We have a miserly


We're quite crammed together,
aren't we? We are.

But even given that, our houses
are jolly titchy, it seems.

Until you told us we weren't
that bothered. But now...

Where does the phrase, "There isn't
room to swing a cat" come from?
Cat o' nine tails?

Cat o' nine tails?

No, it's not, oddly enough.
You'd think it was.

It's the kind of thing people think.

It's when they used to flog people
with an actual cat. No, literally,

it means what it says.

It's just a kind of common
folk expression meaning
to swing a cat round.

But the first use of
cat o' nine tails was 1695 in
the English language.

And at least 40 years earlier
than that there are references to
not being able to swing a cat.

It's so disappointing
when you find that out.

I think it's good. Meeeeow!

LAUGHTER

The whole nine yards? The whole nine
yards? No. Alan's doing cat stuff.

It's an American sports thing, isn't
it? How would you swing it, though?

There's that way, but there's also
that way, up and down.

LAUGHTER
Round and round.

I think it's by the tail,
definitely, whatever.

Do you do it in a big loopy swing,
or do you get some speed up?

It'd be nice to find a room
where there was enough room
to swing a cat. Just. Just.

The cat's close and you just go,
"Ah!"

By a whisker!

By a whisker. Literally.

The whole nine yards, I believe,
is not a sporting thing, it's
America and the B52s going

over n*zi Germany, and they shot
the whole nine yards of b*ll*ts.

Oh, right, it's a nine-yard...
It's ten yards in American football.

Everyone thought it was something
to do with American football.

Nice. If that's true,
there will be points in it.

I think that's quite interesting.
Yes, I'm excited.

So, yes, it turns out the British
build the meanest houses in Europe.

Why don't any bleaches claim
to k*ll 100% of all germs?

They'd get sued if you
found a living germ left?

KLAXON

No, it's not that.

It's because they don't k*ll...

They probably do k*ll 100%
of all germs, it's just
almost impossible to prove.

What's left behind,
we just don't have the technology to
inspect whether or not there

are any germs left. The fact is,
certainly you can prove 99.999%
of germs are k*lled by bleach.

When you wipe up
afterwards, you put more germs
back in. You often do.

Because everyone pees on their
hands and then goes and gets mints.

Looking like that when they do.

I save time.
I just take the mints in the loo.

Those are those things in the urinal,
you can't eat them.
I thought they were mints.

Good! So, no bleach claims to k*ll
some microbial remnants

left after the standard test
are just too small to measure.

They come pretty close, though.
And so we end our weary journey
homewards and it's time to look

at the house of cards that
represents our scoring system.

Home and dry, in the lead, with an
astonishing plus three, Bill Bailey!

APPLAUSE

Very well-played.

Just about keeping the home fires
burning with minus 16, Eddie Izzard!

I'm second? Second? Second.

I'm second. Minus 16.

And with home in sight
at minus 17, Danny Baker!

Pipped me by a minus point.
Minus one.

It's a terrible shock,
but finally, home alone
with minus 19, Alan Davies!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

THEME TUNE PLAYS

That's all for this homely edition
of QI,

so it's good night from Eddie,
Danny, Bill and Alan and myself.

And now it's time to bolt the door,
drink up your cocoa, and then off

to bed with the lot of you, but not
before I snuggle down with this
thought from a recent survey.


kissed their wife goodbye.

Today, 88% of men when they
leave their wife,

have to kiss
their house goodbye. Good night.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd