18x05 - Rubbish

[bunniefuu]

Good evening, and welcome to,
well, an unusual episode of QI.

First of all, it's a little bit
quiet in here, and that's

during the coronavirus outbreak.

We don't know how that's
all going to turn out,

so for safety's sake, we don't
have 600 people in here

and I can't give a hug, as
I usually do, to the entire crew.

Joining me tonight in a show,
well, it's all about rubbish,

are, kicking up a stink,
Johnny Vegas.

Down in the dump,
it's Bridget Christie.

And there's something fishy
about Holly Walsh.

Just going to put it out there.

And we're not sure what it is,
but we found it

down the back of the fridge -
it's Alan Davies!

And their buzzers actually
serve a purpose, OK?

They're literally repulsive.
They are used to repel something,

and I want you to tell me
what they repel.

So let's start with Johnny.

SNORTING AND BARKING

What do you reckon?
What does it sound like?

An angry boar driven away.
Yes, it's... OK.

But it's got snorting...
It's got snorting, very...

Is that another animal?
Is there more than one animal?
There is more than one animal.

So you get a deer snorting,
OK, followed by a dog barking.

And it is something that the Japan
Railway Technical Research Institute

came up with. They were trying to
prevent collisions with deer.

So they do the deer snorting
to attract the attention of the deer

and then the dog barking
to make them go away.

It was to stop them getting hit by
trains. While they're going along,
they're doing that? Yeah.

Yeah. On the b*llet trains,
at 200mph?

There's a deer going,
"What the hell was that?!"

All they can hear is...

HE BARKS

But who came up with it?
Who went into work and went,
"I've had a hell of an idea"? Yeah.

Just going to put that out there. I
think it's somebody that's had a bit
too much sake, don't you, possibly?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Are you allowed
to drink and drive trains?

What's the deal with that? No.

Oh, right, it was the person
who invented it. Yeah.

Did you think just cos it's on a
track, it's OK to carry on having
alcohol? I was wondering...

It's really not. OK, fine. Yeah.

You could have told me this
two years ago. Anyway...

You're not allowed
to fly planes either.

No, but with the crisis
right now, I'm having a go.

"I want to drive a train!"

OK, I want to drive one of those
big articulated lorries,

you know the ones where you have to
get a ladder to climb up? Have you
ever been to Diggerland? No.

It's incredible! Basically,
it's an entire theme park... Yeah.

..based around JCB diggers. OK.

They let two-year-olds drive them.
And I'm not even joking.

I had to go to court a long time ago
for speeding in my car,

and while I was in the court, there
were two other people up before me,

and they said, "You are charged
with taking a bus."

And I thought they'd bunked
the fare, but what they'd done was

they'd TAKEN a bus.
They'd taken a bus?!

And then they talked in a very
serious, courtly way about the route

they took through the town
and the carnage they wrought.

And they really had to try and stand
there and keep a straight face

when obviously the best night of
their lives was being recounted.

We got drunk, me and my friend,
and climbed under a covered carousel

and slept on the top deck
of, obviously, a miniature bus.

How did you get in it?!
The tiny little opening!

I didn't go up the stairs.
It was so small,

I just climbed on it like Godzilla.

But were you woken by them
testing it in the morning?

The guy was telling us how much
trouble we was in, and you're going,

"For what?" Yeah.
Sleeping on a tiny bus.

And somehow wishing we were bigger.
Call the cops.

But did you get in trouble? No.
We just walked off and left him.

I love that. You have also
taken the bus. Yeah.

Well, why don't you pull the tiny
police car off and follow us?

The best chase ever!

Yeah! "I'm going to get you!"
And then just going round.

Round and round.

Ooh! You could fly away in
the little helicopter. Yeah.

People sleep on roller-coasters
when they're breaking records.

Do they?
I've heard of that. They go,

how many days can you last
on a roller-coaster?

And you're allowed off five minutes
every hour to have a...

No. You should have to do all your
ablutions off the side of it.
That should be part of it.

Well, that's a health and safety
issue. For miles around.

No, girls are not going to stick
their bottoms out over the edge

of a roller-coaster. Well,
we've all done a motorway moony.

We haven't all done a motorway
moony, Holly Walsh! It's just you.

OK, fine. Have you done
a motorway moony?

No. Please say no!

Bridge, back me up here.
You must have...
It was in France. It wasn't here.

Oh, that doesn't count?

You were on your own?
Were you driving?

How does that work?!
I'm a very talented driver.

How did you not notice?
There's no doors or anything.

He was stood on the outside and we
were talking and I thought, oh,
he's been quiet for a while.

He'd fallen to his death!
We had gone quite a long way

and he hadn't yet
taught me how to stop it.

Oh, my God! What happened?
Well, I had to crash into a barn.

You began this story by saying,
"I have many skills,"

I'm not getting the dog woof.

SNORTING AND BARKING

Oh, there it is.

I think, of all the things on it,
the dog woof was the clearest,

if I'm honest. Does it not sound
like there's a car driving away
in the middle of it? Yeah.

a reversing car. No,
it's her farmer jumping off.

Right, let's move on. Bridget,
let's have a listen to yours.

INTENSE BUZZING

That's a swarm. It's a swarm of
bees. Why should we have a sound...?

What would it repel, buzzing bees?
What do you reckon? Wasps. Wasps.

Wasps? g*ng warfare. You think...?

Oh, like the Sharks and the Jets
in West Side Story. Exactly.

I do think it might be not a
human... Yes, it's something huge.

Elephant. Elephants is exactly
right. It's elephants, yeah.

Do the bees go up their trunks?
Yes, that's the problem. Oh!

They can't penetrate the thick
hides, but they can go...

ALAN MAKES BUZZING SOUND

..up the nose, up the arse,
up the mouth. Up the arse?!

I would imagine. But elephants
don't have huge arseholes, do they?

Let's not focus on the arseholes.

ALAN TRUMPETS

Can't they blow them out?

HE EXHALES SHARPLY

HE BUZZES

So, in Kenya and in Tanzania,
some farmers have a problem

with elephants trampling on the
agriculture. They enclose the land
with beehive fences.

So they've got hives dotted
all the way along them

and the elephants try to enter
the fields, it bumps into a wire,

it disturbs the bees and they swarm,

and elephants are so bee-averse
that they make a specific rumbling

sound to warn each other
that bees are in the area. Wow!

Have you ever seen the bees
in that documentary

Or the monkeys when they eat the

fermented fruit and just go...

and a bowl of champagne
is hilarious.

If flies or anything ever fly into
my alcoholic drink... Yeah.

..I always sober them up.
What...?

You drop them in a coffee?
Buy them a pizza?

I don't know why
everyone's laughing.

The humane thing to do.
What do you do?

I just get them
a series of vitamin C...

A Berocca. Dry them out
and give them a backstory.

Holly, let's have
a listen to your one.

LOUD ROCK MUSIC PLAYS

It's your best single, I think.
Thank you.

What would...? I mean, it repels...
Stan at the Comedy Store,

used to be the stage manager there,
he would play Ace of Spades

by Motorhead at the end
of the late show at 2am.

To just get rid of everybody?
Get rid of everyone. Yeah. Just
sort them out. It worked. Mm.

That would... Didn't they play
heavy metal outside
General Noriega's house

It's crickets.

Oh! So there was a tiny community
in Nevada, and the crickets used to

invade this community, a place
called Tuscarora, every year,

destroying the crops and swarming
houses and clogging up the roads

and so on. So in 2006,
they discovered if they played

Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones
at full volume it stopped

the insects in their tracks.

Have they thought of growing
sweetcorn instead?

Do you think the crickets
wouldn't like that?

Good point. Yeah.

Bridget knows some farmers - or
KNEW some farmers until they died.

You knew a farmer,
the one that fell off the tractor.
Was he OK, by the way?

Oh, he was just, like,
waving from two fields away.

Did you hurt yourself when you went
into the barn, or did you come out

Three days,
you couldn't find the brake!

Going round and round
like Father Ted.

No, I thought there was more to life
than working in an office,

so I thought, oh, I'll be...
A farmer? ..a farm hand.

Just drive for three days? No.
That was the job on the second day,

but I'd already had to milk cows
with my hand and...

Did you do the third day
for being a farmer?

Were they like, "There's a haystack,
somewhere in it's a needle,
good luck"?

I've just remembered the worst
thing... There's more?! Yeah.

When I was milking the cow,
they know from your touch

if you're new.
You're in, like, a swimming pool

that doesn't have water in it.
They don't make you swim
and milk them at the same time.

It's just so you're
on the level with their feet

because it was new, and it...
Why were you behind it?!

No, I was underneath it.
Sit to the side! No, but listen,

that's not the worst... That's still
not the worst bit?! The worst bit is

that the farmer made me stand in
the courtyard while he hosed me down
with a hose.

That's abuse. That's what I thought.
I thought, oh, I'm sure...

I'm sure it's all off now.

Alan? Yeah.
What is your buzzer?

Um...

HIGH-PITCHED DRONE

It's like when you're in bed and you
can hear a mosquito in the room.

That is exactly it. Like that.
It is a mosquito alarm.

Does that warn you
there's a mosquito nearby?

Actually, we did it so that you can
hear it here in the studio.

But when it is at the correct level,
it can only be heard

by young people. By young people?!
Yes, only be heard by young people.

I've seen this in one of those
science shows at Edinburgh,

and they go higher frequencies
and they say,

"Sit down if you can't hear it."

So, gradually we all sit down and
then there's a few children left
and then they say,

"Right, sit down." And then the last
one they do, they're not

playing anything and they catch
all the lying little shits.

The bit of the ear that
detects higher frequencies,
so the bone in the inner ear,

is susceptible to wear and tear
and it gets worse as you get older.

So this noise can really only be
heard by very, very young people.
Now, we did it so you could hear it,

Anybody?

BRIDGET: Yes, I can hear it.
Ha!

It's playing now.
Can anybody hear it?

OK. Over in the corner,
we have young Anna.

Can you hear it?
I can hear it, yes.

It's going on a loop at the moment.
And you can hear that?

Yeah, I can absolutely hear that.
Wow! It is the weirdest thing.

It was invented by a guy called
Howard Stapleton in 2005.

He used his children
as test subjects.

Does this stop, like, youths
hanging out outside Burger King?

Yeah, so Burger King, 7-Eleven,
Transport for London have used it.

They also find now that classical
music or folk music is another thing

that makes young people... Well,
I think folk music probably keeps
most people away, doesn't it?

I love folk music.
But we've changed your buzzer
to something a bit better.

Let's see if it makes Anna go away.

MUSIC: Spring
by Antonio Vivaldi

Oh, yeah, she's off, she's leaving.
That's not a cool thing.

At Brixton Station they were playing
classical music but it was to, like,

stop people from getting violent
and aggressive, I guess. Brixton?

I got my teeth knocked out
outside Brixton Tube Station. What?!

It was an angry farmer!
He'd been searching for you!

I came out of the tube and a man
said, "Oh, give us all your money."

And I said, "Oh, I haven't got any."
And then... He punched you? Yes.

I'm glad I've known you
in the better years because before,

it's not gone well for you,
your agricultural years,

your Brixton years... How old were
you when things started to go right?

And how long do you think
that will last?

From repelling sounds to repulsive
tastes. What's brown and sicky?

ALAN: Oh, the taste of vomit?

Well, it is something
that has a chemical in it

that is also in vomit.

It's American chocolate.
It is American chocolate.

You're absolutely right.
So if you buy American chocolate,

it tastes, I don't know, more tangy
and bitter than European chocolate.

Do you know why?
BRIDGET: Yes. Milk.

They use UHT, don't they?
Or dried milk or something.

The chocolate factories in the
United States are further from the
dairy farms than in the UK,

obviously, so you've got to move
the milk for a bit longer,

and so they have a chemical process
which extends the shelf life

and it produces something
called butyric acid.

And that is the same stuff
that you get in Parmesan cheese...

Yes. ..and in vomit.

So even chocolate brands that don't
use that process sometimes

add that acid anyway just to mimic
the taste because Americans have got

used to it. So if you think,
actually, it tastes a bit sicky,

it's because it's the same acid
as in sick.

But the American chocolate has a lot
more sugar in it and it has fewer

cocoa solids.


That's the fat coming to the... You
know when you get chocolate and it
goes white if you leave it too long?

When you find it in the back
of a drawer? Yeah. Yum!

It's the fat comes out of it,
and rises out of it.

I was doing a play once
in the West End,

and this was in 2003, I think,

and an elderly lady came
to see it, I think, four times.

And on the fourth time
she gave me a Kit Kat.

I said, "Oh, that's very kind." And
then the next day I ate the Kit Kat,

it tasted exactly like
an old lady's cupboard...

It's not a euphemism.

And I looked on the sell by date
and it was 1998.

It was a five-year-old Kit Kat.
I mean, it may have been more.
I don't know how long they last.

Couple of years, I imagine. You
think she bought it five years ago
and thought, "I'm saving this"?

She found it in a cupboard and
thought, "I'll give that to that
bloke who's boring me shitless

"every night in that play!"
She saw it and it caught her eye.

She thought, "I know who'll like
that. Alan. I'll have to build up
his trust over a number of years,

"and then I'll be able to give it to
him. And he'll definitely eat it
cos he'll trust me."

But the odour of the old lady's
cupboard was unmistakable.

I think we're being very mean. OK.
You'll be an old lady... Ish.

..soon. We'll all be saying that...
My cupboards will probably smell

like that, but they don't
at the moment. You smell of...

..old lady's...
Cupboard?

I've never been less insulted
in my life.

Hershey's have a history of making
chocolate with a bitter taste.

In the 1930s, they developed
a special bar,

it was for the American military,

and they wanted it to be
deliberately unappealing.
Why do you think they might do that?

Wartime brides.

They made sh*t chocolate
and stockings with holes in them.

Why would they make deliberately
unpleasant chocolate?

Have bromide in it? No,
it's meant as an emergency ration,

so you don't want the soldiers
going, "Oh, lovely chocolate,"

and eating it. I was in CCF at
school and we had... What is that?

Combined Cadet Forces.
I was in that as well.

Which were you? Army.
I was RAF.

But... Did you say that like it was
better?

That's what they were like. You hear
that? That's what the RAF ones

were like. Yeah, they had this thing
called 24-hour ration kit, which we

had to have. We did do, like,
an overnight, you know...

Manoeuvre. Yeah, in, like, Iraq
or something. Chingford Plain,
we did ours.

We did ours at RAF Odiham.
Did you? Yeah.

You did it in the cinema?!
No. Odiham! Oh, sorry.

I thought you said Odeon.
I did too!

What is the RAF...? Can't do night
manoeuvres in the Odeon.

thing and they did exactly that.
It meant you didn't want to eat
the chocolate first.

No, you didn't. It's called a
D ration, it was also known as a
Logan Bar. It was named after the

colonel who first ordered their
manufacture. And so its high-energy
content could withstand

high temperatures but, frankly,
barely any better
than a boiled potato.

Oh, I like boiled potatoes!
A cold boiled potato.

Any temperature. Yeah. No.
Not one that would burn your mouth.

But there it is, look. And in the...

In the Second World w*r they
upgraded it to be poison gas proof

and so they packaged every single
bar in thick heat-sealed cellophane

then they inserted it into a
cardboard carton
that was glued shut.

They covered it in a wax carton.
That was then placed in a master
carton and all of this was put

in a wooden case and nailed shut
and kept with steel strips around it
and it was often thrown away

unopened cos the soldiers
hated it so much.

They used to call it
"Hitler's secret weapon"

because it made them ill.
There's definitely been nights
I would just have eaten it.

It wrought havoc with their teeth
and intestines. I know, but even
then, there's been nights where

I've just been craving chocolate
so badly, I'd have just eaten it.
Just gone for it anyway? Yep.

American chocolate tastes like sick,
but don't worry, it's supposed to.

From rubbish tastes to tasty
rubbish, why did the Romans
put their dinner on the floor?

Is it cos they were thinking,
"What would archaeologists like to
dig up in the future?"

Did they stamp it in cos
they wanted really cheap tiling?

Well, they did kind of stamp it in.

What they did was they decorated
dining room floors

with a mosaic of fake litter.

It's kind of an early humble brag,
if you like.

It's called asarotos oikosor
or "unswept room".

Basically,
the ancient Greeks did it first.

And it's discarded
leftovers of opulent feasts

so that it looks as though
you are incredibly wealthy.

You'd have grapes,
chicken legs and seafood shells

and nuts and olive pits
and all that kind of thing.

That's so weird. That's basically
like their equivalent of, like,

Topps Tiles flooring
was just putting
loads of rubbish on their floor?

If you were rich, so you're saying,

"I'm so rich I could have thrown
all of this stuff on the floor."

It's like the equivalent of getting
gold teeth for no reason.

I've got a gold tooth.
Do you want to see it? Yeah.

Oh, that's very impressive. Wow.

If you had it back there wouldn't
you have a little window
put in there?

So everyone can see it.

When you walk past Cash Converters
is your jaw drawn to it?

Let's go back to Roman rubbish.

I did see a lad in Cash Converters
once, he couldn't have been 15,

and he had a sewing machine
and they went,

"What's your reason for selling it?"
And he went, "Unwanted gift."

Right, we're going to go to Rome.
We've already covered the fact that

Rome's built not on seven hills
but eight. We did that
in a previous series.

But that's not counting
Monte Testaccio

which is a fantastic...
So, look at this hill.

This hill is 150 foot high.
It's in the centre of Rome.

It is actually
an ancient rubbish dump.

Why do you think they dumped it?

Why would you not use it
over and over again? Plague?

No, it would get spoiled if you used
it too often is the problem,

and so they had to get rid of them.

They accumulated
over three centuries.

Earthenware's porous. Yes. So it
can't last forever and it smells.

They're just used one time
and then got rid of.

That was the Roman equivalent
of Starbucks' car park. Yeah.

When they're empty
they weight about 30kg.

When they're full
they weigh more than 100kg.

So somewhat heavier than
the average British adult male.

They didn't actually dump them
in the sense that they didn't
just chuck them there.

There were people in charge. They
were carefully smashed and stacked

and some of them were left whole so
they like pillars cos they didn't
want to have landslides,

and then they would sprinkle
lime on top of them

cos the rancid oil
had a terrible smell.
And it's an astonishing hill.

There's even a restaurant dug into
the side of it, there are caves
dug into the side of it.

But it's 25 million shards. Years
ago I did a film with Roger Law,

that created Spitting Image,
and in one scene I had to smash

£25,000 worth of ceramics
donated by contemporary ceramicists.

They were genuine, they were not
props? No, no, they were all donated
pieces.

But there was a couple, and I'd love
to see what they'd done with them.

Somebody somewhere will have
the most amazing mosaic...

Wouldn't it be fantastic?
..of contemporary ceramics.

Cos it would be like the Gaudi Park
in Barcelona, which is
made of bits and pieces...

So, like, one of them was that
they sent their stamp collection

to two porn stars and they
just had to burn it on camera.

It was like a 40-year
collection of stamps

and that's all he wanted,
that was his fetish.

And I was just thinking, I think
that's my fetish, watching you
smash up some vases.

How does anybody discover that
that's their particular fetish?

Yeah, weird, isn't it?
There's everything on...

I was looking something up
about something...

ALAN: Yes.

If you put two...
Tractor and barn.

I think it was cheese and teeth
or something.

I came back form Thailand where
I had discovered a vegetable

I liked very much
called morning glory

and I thought, I wonder where
you buy that in London?

Well, turns out, all over.
My ex used to...

Well, he asked me to go cross-eyed
just before he ejaculated.

Do you know...?
For a target?

Were you on the phone at the time?
I didn't see him after that.

Well, not if your eyes are like
that.

ALAN: Couldn't see anything!

He just wanted to pretend
he had a twin.

How did he get that fetish?
I don't know, he just went,

"Oh, go cross-eyed will ya, love?"
Like that.

Can you imagine him falling in love
online and meeting a cyclops?

He'd be gutted.

We're talking rubbish and a similar
discovery was made in 1897

by these two rather marvellous
Victorian archaeologists,

Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt.
I mean, how camp do they look?

They're rather marvellous.
David Beckham on the right.

Not remotely cross-eyed, they do
nothing for me. They're great.

They dug into a sand dune about


and they found this astonishing
rubbish dump -

more than half a million
fragments of papyrus

generated by an ancient city
called Oxyrhynchus,

and it's an incredible collection.

The manuscripts date from roughly
the third century BC

through to the Muslim
conquest of Egypt in 640 AD.

All the fragments were taken
to the Ashmolean in Oxford.

I mean, obviously that's the right
place for them. Clearly there.
Culturally appropriate.

But for more than 100 years
they were trying to analyse them

and they managed to
transcribe just 5,000.

And then in 2014 the whole
collection was made digital

and algorithms were used to
cross-reference and so on

and since then more than 200,000
fragments have been translated.

What date were they? From the third
century BC right through to 640 AD.

It was like a library of ancient
manuscripts? It's everything.

There's a third century doctor's
report but there's also literature.

They discovered
an extract from Andromeda,
the lost tragedy by Euripides.

It is the most fabulous
and astonishing collection

but effectively
it was a rubbish dump
and it had all been thrown away.

It does look like an audit and a
third century attempt at shredding.

Yes, "We've done this..."
"Just get rid of it." Yeah.

What's that little square they've
drawn? The three squares.

I don't know. Whether that's
marginalia for the time or...

It's a kitchen, they're looking into
building a side return.

Oh, yes, I can see that. I love it,
I think it's so fascinating. It is.

And what else they can discover
in there cos not even half of it

has been analysed yet.
I think it's amazing.

Now for a question
on recycling material.

Alan, what's the point of
all this blue whale sh*t?

Well, it's unbelievably
important for the entire ocean.

So they don't defecate at depth,
because you wouldn't really, would
you? You'd hang on, wouldn't you?

Get to the surface and do it. Until
you get to the top. Do they do the

really long, stringy ones,
like a goldfish? 40 miles.

Well, this is this is actually
whale poo right here.
This is what it looks like.

Who has taken that photograph?
I do not want to know.
The whale, I presume.

And then Instagrammed it.
"Just had a sh*t."

If you were a dietician,
you'd want a more solid stool.

If I do two days on cider,
that's what I do.

But if I stick to my five a day...

What cider?
A bit more compacted, is it? Yes.

OK. That's what you take from
that sentence? "What cider?"

I once went to a... What cider was
it? ..a swimming pool in Bracknell.

It was basically, like, with all
the flumes and stuff like that.

And me and my brother were in the
tidal wave, going round and round
and round and... A whale shat...

..a turd followed us the whole way.

And they couldn't get us out to get
the turd out so they turned it off.

So you were chased by a turd? Yeah,
but because we were going round,

we were quite small, so we were
in the current and the poo
was coming...

So even when they turned it off
you had to wait for the current

to die down and me and my brother
kept having to basically

Where was the person who had done
the poo? Were they at the top...?

Bracknell Town Centre by then.
Yeah!

Whales need to conserve oxygen,
so they shut down lots of

processes when they are down at
depth, and that includes digestion.

And when they get to the surface,
they release what can only

be described as a faecal plume
of buoyant excrement.

But it is incredibly nutrient-rich.
It's absolutely full of iron.

It's a concentration
ten million times higher
than the surrounding water.

And this acts as fertiliser
of phytoplankton,

between half and 90%
of the Earth's oxygen.

So most of the oxygen that we are
breathing is made by plankton,

and the plankton need whale poo.

BRIDGET: Have we got enough blue
whales?

We don't have enough blue whales.
The IMF has actually put a figure on
them.

And one of the reasons... It's not
just the poo, they accumulate carbon

in their bodies, and when they die
they sink down to the bottom

of the ocean and they take up to


So the IMF did this thing.
They had a look at how much
are they worth to us,

But it's just so interesting
how it works within the ecosystem.

For each bowel movement
they excrete about 200 litres...

They should really put it
in a little bag.

in the ocean. Is there not an
argument, then, to, like, dispose

of human bodies like that?
What, just chuck them in the sea?

Take everyone who's died
out to the Mariana Trench

and just sink them, let them be
eaten by all the, you know,

whatever... Right. ..and then all
the CO2, we just do all that.

I don't know how we would sell this
in the funeral parlour on the corner
of the high street as a plan.

Oh, I'm up for it. OK. Now for
a different kind of repulsion.

I want you to point, please...
I'm going to throw this to you two.

Please can you point to the Earth's
Magnetic North Pole on this globe?

It's bound to be... Tread carefully.

It's not going to be the bit
where you blow it up.

So the Magnetic North Pole. If we're
going to get it wrong go for Wales.

Sounds like a trick.

I tell you what, I'm going
to spin it, you close your eyes,

put your finger on it.
OK, go on, then. You ready?

Hang on. OK, up there. Right?

KLAXON BLARES

Well, now, look,
has it - cos I know it can -

has it flipped? No. It's not
on the bottom? Well, it might be

but it hasn't flipped.

Cos Magnetic North can sometimes
flip and be South for a while.

What we do know is it drifts,
the Magnetic Pole, it drifts.

Her feeling up the thing with the...

Unless she's completely
in the wrong part of the globe.

You are right about drifting
and flipping
but we're not talking about that.

I think it's slightly
off...north...the top of the globe.

OK. As it were. No is the answer.
Slightly off the bottom?

Can we have it back?
So it has flipped? No.

It's that we refer to it as the
wrong thing. If you think about it,

the Earth is basically
one big magnet

and that is why compasses work.
A compass is another magnet

and the Earth and the compasses
are attracted to each other. OK?

Let us imagine that you have got two
magnets. I've got them marked here.

I've got two magnets
marked North and South.

OK, if I take the North bit of this
magnet, which bit of the magnet...

I'm just worried cos your kitchen
cupboards are all flopping open now.

Which bit of the magnet is it going
to be attracted to? The opposite.

It's going to be South,
it's going to be like that

so that the North is
attracted to the South, right?

It's the opposite ends of the magnet
which attract each other.

Oh, it's gone in the rubbish tip!

We'll find that in a million years.
He just threw the world in the bin.

So...just to finish.
Compasses are magnets.

Oh, I get it, yeah.

The very first person to realise
that the Earth had a magnetic field

was Elizabeth I's physician,
a guy called William Gilbert.

He was a 16th century scientist

and at the time people believed
that magnets had souls.

He called it an astral
magnetic mind.

For him it explained
why the Earth rotated.

So the Earth got too hot
when she was in the sun

and then she needed to cool down
and so she rotated.

A bit like a sunbather turning over
when they're too hot.

Or a doner kebab.
Or a doner kebab. Exactly that.

When we talk about explorers
like Scott and Amundsen
going to the Poles,

they depended on the Earth's
magnetic field in order to navigate.

Amazon delivers all the way to the
North Pole? Amundsen. Oh, Amundsen.

But, yes, they would.
Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian.

It was in 1909 and news reached him
that the American Robert Peary

had reached the North Pole and all
of his funding and the loan of his

ship was all tied to him
going to the North Pole
but he didn't want to be second

so while he was at sea he turned
the ship around and sailed south
and he...

What I like is he didn't tell
the crew his plan for over a month

and nobody seemed to notice they
were heading in the wrong direction

and when they started getting
suspicious he said

he was just taking a detour
on the way to the North Pole.

But he did become the very first
person to get to the South Pole.

Right, a question on a different
sort of attraction -
the romantic kind.

What Danish trick gets
English pulses racing?

This is a long time ago.

So, who were the Danes that first
came to the UK?

Invaders in longboats?
Vikings. Vikings.

OK, so we're talking 11th century,
and they seduced English women

using the power of cleanliness.

No! Yes. Soap. They washed? Soap.
They washed.

The great washed
met the great unwashed. Yeah.

So, when they came and, you know,
they invaded and established

the Danelaw, they tended to
come without women.

They married English women,
and this upset the locals very much.

But according to a monk called
John of Wallingford, the Danes

cheated by washing.
This was a new idea.

The Danes made themselves
too acceptable to English women

by their elegant manners
and their care of their person.

they undermined the chastity
of the wives.

Which is a totally different story
to all the r*pe and pillage thing.

Yes. Yeah, no, so there is a theory
that all of that was written down

by Englishmen who'd had their wives
taken, that it was r*pe and pillage,

and there is another theory
that, in fact, they turned up

unbelievably good-looking. They
just rowed across the North Sea...

Had a bath and went on the pull.
Yeah.

I... That guy, I mean,
he could pull me.

He's good-looking, don't you think?
I'd service a man.

You know, if you go,
"What's that stuff you're using?"

It stops me...
That was a very little gesture.

"I would...service the man." You
would almost imperceptibly service

the man. "Just a little bit
under the arms, please.

"Come on. Share and share alike."

But they did, they did wash,
and it was a sort of secret weapon.

So there are some experts
who suggest that we're not much

better than the Vikings,
really, in our washing habits.
They did a study in 2018.

It was the US Center for Hygiene
and Health in Boston, and they claim
that modern-day bath tubs...

I don't know whether you guys
are bathers or showerers.


normal bath as in a rubbish bin.

Apparently, they recommend, if you
are going to take a bath...

Do it in a rubbish bin. Well,
that or shower before and after.

..so now he just swims in the canal.

Oh, sorry, I'm from Guildford,
so I'm struggling here.

Why might a bath be good for you,
even if it's full of bacteria?

I think it... You get lighter in it
and it takes stress off your joints

and it's almost like being in space
but for a shorter period.

It improves your circulation and it
lowers your blood pressure, which is

what you were trying to say,
isn't it, Johnny?

No, I was trying to say
it's like being in space,
but thank you, Sandi.

Well, this is good news for anybody
that doesn't like exercise.

They've done studies, and people
with depression,

it lifts your mood, a bath,
more than physical exercise.

As long as you don't put
a toaster in there, too.

Yeah. Don't do that.

Now, can you get these cans
that you have beside you

ready for recycling, please?

Get them ready to put them in the
recycling. What would you do?

I would normally crush mine.
OK.

KLAXON BLARES

We were told years ago by
Eddie Izzard to crush them.

There was specific machines
to crush them!

So, since then, there are newer
machines which have become
more automated.

So they use the size and the shape
of the object in order

to identify them.
So, if you crush the can,

it might not realise
what it is and it might put

it in the non-recycling pile.

I don't think
a lot of people know that.

We're like an information service.
It really annoys me when the

recycling thing says, "Not currently
recyclable." As though it's like,

"We wish it was, but the science
hasn't kept up." Too much...

"It's not our fault." But also the
thing is, all of the recycling

facilities vary throughout the
country, so you do actually have to

check with your borough.

The one where we are currently
recording, had we crushed them,

we couldn't recycle them. It just
really depends on what the item is.

So, for example, I have here

paper, this receipt for the cans
that we got.

So, which bin should these go in?

I mean, I recycle... Cardboard?

The shiny paper doesn't go in, and
magazines, that doesn't go in

with paper. Why? Because it's got
the coating. Yeah.

About half of all receipts are
non-recyclable. That's bonkers!

That's the responsibility of...
But people don't know this, though,
as well.

Yeah, but I think there should be,
like...

These are the 25 things we recycle,
and these are the things we don't

recycle. It's this, and everything's
like half one thing and half the
other, and I don't know, I'm just...

It's not that I want to give up but
I just feel like they're making
it very difficult.

It is very complicated.

These are printed on thermal paper.
It's the stuff you used to get

in the early fax machines, so it's
coated in a kind of chemical and

they cannot be recycled
because you will release

the chemical into the atmosphere.
It's actually sort of weird stuff.

So, it works... The printing on it

turns black when it's exposed
to heat. That's the way it works.

So it only heats up the parts
that are written on. If you take...

WHIRRING

If I can... Oh!

I mean, I haven't got... Sandi,
Sandi, you haven't asked if it's

going anywhere nice on its
holidays. No, I should do.

Sorry. There, you can see that it
goes completely black if you...

It's the chemicals that are
doing that, so don't recycle those.

But if you are struggling with your
recycling, you're not sure,

put it in your neighbours'
and let them sort it out.

Time for a last rummage
around the bottom of the bag

for the sniff of bin juice
that we call General Ignorance.

Fingers on buzzers, please.

Name the last commercial flight to
fly faster than the speed of sound.

Is it Concorde?

KLAXON BLARES

So, officially, Concorde is the
only supersonic commercial service

that ever existed, but several
flights have since then flown faster

than the speed of sound.

On average, a flight from New York
to London takes six hours.

It's 3,500 nautical miles.

But you get this jet stream
that pushes you along.

So, under normal conditions,
the speed of sound is 760 mph.

But it doesn't cause a sonic boom,
because...? Couldn't afford it.

No, relative to the air that you are
moving in, you are travelling

under the speed of sound.

But if you are on a plane that's
being pushed by the jet stream,

you are travelling, according
to your speed across the ground,
faster than the speed of sound.


running at a perfectly normal speed.

Alan, you've been on the Concorde,
haven't you?

I have been on the Concorde.

JOHNNY GASPS

That's a compliment. Unbelievable.
What? It's a compliment? Yeah.

I didn't say you look like
a Virgin Pendolino.

I said you look like a great piece
of engineering. Like Gru from
the Despicable Me film?

New York to London, the fastest
BA Concorde flight, 1996 -

two hours, 52 minutes
and 59 seconds.

It hit a top speed of 1,350...
They used to fly over...

I used to play cricket in Wandsworth

they'd cleared Cornwall.

Why do you think it's spelled with
an E? Which is the French version.

It is cos it was a medieval plane?
What? Like Olde England. No...

The Olde Plane. Ye Olde Concorde.

The argument about whether to
spell Concorde with an E

caused an absolute
nationalist uproar in Britain

which rather pre-echoed the Brexit
convulsions 50 years later.

That's surprising.
I know! That people thought...

What does Concorde mean in English?
You know, it's peace.

Oh, concord. I thought that was...
Concord.

I thought that was a French word
anyway. Concord!

It is a French word.
It's spelt without an E in English

but it's the way in which
we spelled it caused trouble.

The Tory Government in 1962,
when they made the first agreement,

said, "We'll spell it
Concorde without an E,"

and then Tony Benn came in in 1967
into government and he said,

"Oh, who cares?
We'll spell it with an E."

But it caused an absolute uproar.

Right, look around you and point
to a symbol you can see on the set

that tells you
you can recycle something.

Alan, pick one.

The one right in the middle
of the circle. The one...?

KLAXON BLARES

So, that's a very common symbol.

The interlocking two green arrows.
It doesn't mean packaging

can be recycled or even it has ever
been part of the recycling process.

It means the manufacturer has made
a financial contribution to recovery

and recycling
of packaging in Europe.

But every time I see that,
I chuck it in the recycling. Yeah.

It doesn't mean that.
What about that one?

Yes, the white arrow
pointing to its tail.

That means the product
is widely recycled by 75%

or more of local authorities.
What about that one?

The three folded arrows.

The product is theoretically
recyclable, but there's no guarantee

that your borough will take it.

Definitely you can't assume
that it can go in the recycling.

I mean, it is really complicated.

It should just say,
"This is recyc..."

"Put this in the recycling bin."
"Don't..." Yeah, don't. Exactly.

We produce in the UK over 44,000
metric tonnes of non-recycled waste

every single day.

And if you look at the rubbish
that's on the set around here,

this is the UK average for
the amount produced by one person

per year at home. So, it's about


I mean, this is obviously
just household waste,

this doesn't count as commercial
or industrial waste that we produce

as a by-product of the things
that we buy.

This is my favourite rubbish list.


Envirowaste compiled a list

of the most unusual things that are
discovered in waste in London.

A dead, stuffed cat
dressed in a baby's onesie.

A nude painting
of Albert Einstein.

A shoe box filled with dozens
of mouse skeletons.

A sealed box full of maggots.

A bone of Saint Clement of Rome,
the fourth Pope.

A Super Soaker full of urine.
And a Victorian dildo.

Which brings us to the dirty matter
of the scores, where there's

a definite whiff of corruption.

In first place, with seven points,
it's Holly.

Congratulations.
In second place with four, Johnny!

And with minus four, in third place,
Bridget! Oh!

Alan, fourth place, minus 26!

Well done! Aw!

And it's thanks to Bridget
and Johnny, Holly and Alan.

I leave you with this rubbish remark
from film actor Richard Burton.

"If you're going to make rubbish, be
the best rubbish in it." Goodnight.

The show you've just seen was one
of two episodes of QI which were

recorded without an audience because
of social distancing rules.

If you enjoyed the novelty,
I've got some good news for you -

there's another one next week.

If not, don't worry. Week after
that, we're back to normal.

Either way, we'll see you next time.
Stay safe.