21x10 - Upsadaisy

[bunniefuu]

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello, and welcome to QI,

where tonight is unplugged,
unsystemic, and upsadaisy.

First up,
the upmarket Emmanuel Sonubi.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Second up,
the uplifting Holly Walsh.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Third up,
the uproarious Justin Moorhouse.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Oh, I love it, I love it.

And up yours, it's Alan Davies.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Thank you.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
BECOMES MORE RAUCOUS

Right, let's see what buzzers
they have up their sleeves.

Emmanuel goes...

# Movin' on up

# Time to break free

# Nothing can stop me... #

True.
Holly goes...

# Uptown girl

# She's been living in
her uptown world... #

Justin goes...

# Uptown funk you up

# Uptown funk you up... #

And Alan goes...

# Never gonna give you up

# Never gonna let you down

# Never gonna run around
and desert you... #

Right, let's tee things up
with question number one.

Why can't the Pope
put his own umbrella up?

Has he not got opposable thumbs?

He can't do his shoelaces.

No. He's inept.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, the answer is
because he's dead.

What a way to break it to us.
I know.

So there is a symbolic red
and gold striped umbrella

that is associated with his office,
and it's called the umbraculum.

It goes on display in the Vatican
after the Pope dies,

or abdicates,
and before the next Pope is elected.

So it's a tradition that goes back
to at least the 13th century.

So the Pope used to have an
umbrella to shield himself actually

from the sun, and it represents
sort of protection and authority.

And in the period between Popes,
it's meant to be

a sort of reassuring sign
of continuity or stability.

I'm not an umbrella person myself.

I don't use them.
I think a hood does the job.

I'm not... I don't...
I find them creepy and annoying.

I've never heard anybody
take a strong stand

and say, "I'm not
in favour of umbrellas."

I'm the wrong height for umbrellas.
They take out my eyes.

You must similarly have
the same problem.

What are you suggesting?

We are both short-arses,
that's what I'm saying. Wow! Wow.

What about the see-through one
that comes right down over you

and you can see out? They're good.

Oh, that's good.
I like the one you wear as a hat.

Yes. With the little umbrella.

He could have one of those.
Yes, he could have one of those.

Or you could have a hat.

Have a quick look at this.
I want to know what unusual uses

did these people have
for their umbrellas.

Did Sarkozy have his just
to measure things?

"It's about an umbrella."
"It's this big."

Why might Sarkozy have
an umbrella, do you think?

Is it so he appears
the same height as his wife?

Oh, is she much taller? Much taller,
and she wears heels as well.

She doesn't make any concessions.
Wow.

Is that her on the right?

No, he has a Kevlar-coated umbrella.

Does he? Carried by a member
of his security team.

What's Kevlar?

Bulletproof material.
Bulletproof material.

I mean, I don't know!

Apparently whenever he visits
particularly high-rise

housing estates, he gets
lots of things thrown at him...

..and the Kevlar was
designed to repel knifes.

Puts his umbrella up
with all this shit coming down.

Who else? Let's have
a look at the list of people.

We had Queen Victoria.
Queen Victoria.

Did she use it as a contraceptive?

Did she have an umbrella
in case she started laughing,

and she put it up and goes,
"No-one knows."

So it's not all that
dissimilar to Sarkozy.

She had an armoured parasol.

It's thought that Prince Albert
designed it for her.

There was an assassination attempt
in May, 1842.

It failed, and she and Albert were
so determined to catch this person,

a young man called John Francis,

they went out on exactly
the same route the next night.

And indeed, he did try again
and was caught.

And he was sentenced to be hung and
then they thought, "What's worse?"

And they sent him to Australia.

The umbrella is amazing.

So it's made of green silk and
it has close-linked chain-mail.

It would have been impossible
to hold it up for very long,

incredibly heavy,
about three and a half pounds,

but it's still in
the royal collection.

My Elves made me one. Look.

What do you think? Ooh! I know.

Let's throw stuff at her.

See how good it is. See,
I thought you were going to win,

but now it's not looking so good.

I love it. I think it's very good.
It has no chain-mail, unfortunately.

Who else is on the list?
What about the woman there?

Who is that?

She is Marguerite Vigny,
better known as Miss Sanderson.

She was the finest swordswoman
in Edwardian England.

She developed
an umbrella-based martial art.

Oh! Yes.

"The womanly art of parasol
self-defence."

Do you know that's not
the first martial art

developed by a woman
for self-defence?

Wing Chun is actually the name
of the lady that came up with

that whole style that
Bruce Lee then adopted.

And it was taught as a dance, and it
was based on speed over power,

and that's why it's so effective.

AUDIENCE: Oooh!

LAUGHTER

So she was married to
a self-defence expert called

Pierre Vigny, and she used
his techniques, and she used

her parasol, sort of a combination
of a rapier and a short spear.

There's a marvellous thing

described in the Idler magazine
in 1908, that in extreme cases,

her parasol could be used as "an
instrument of t*rture to seriously

"disarrange the ordinary sequence
of the attacker's features."

But I think you DO do that,
though, as a woman,

if you're walking back,
or anyone, really,

but if you're walking back and
it's late, you do sort of think,

"What am I going to use
on my person to save myself?"

But you're the fool that
doesn't carry an umbrella!

I'm the one in the hood.
What are you going to say?

"Step back, I've got a woolly hat!"

"I'll take my hood down
in a minute."

"Follow me home,
I've got one in the drawer."

Apparently the trick,
if somebody att*cks you, is to go,

"We know each other.

"You went...
Your sister went to my school."

Is that right? Yeah.

And then for a minute it, they go,
"Do we know each other?"

"I haven't got a sister." Yeah.

All right, your mum,
there you go, try that. YOUR mum!

What about the military man?

He was a Major
in the Second World w*r.

His first name is Allison.

Not enough boys called Allison,
don't you think?

Hmm. Not enough people
generally called Allison.

I mean, in many ways,
be a good name for all of us.

Be confusing, though, wouldn't it?

And the winner tonight is Allison.

I like that.

Major Allison Digby Tatham-Warner.

Well, that's not so good, is it?
No.

Anyway, he carried
an umbrella at all times.

"Titty-Warner, it's a bright
sunny day!"

"Call me Allison, sir."

There was a German armoured car
coming towards him,

and you know they have
a sort of slit in them

so they can see where they're going?
He... Yeah, umbrella.

Through the slit? Mm! Yeah.

Oh!

No, he jabbed the driver.
"Titty-Warner! Again!

"Die, Allison!"

He's a pretty cool guy, actually.

He got captured by the Germans
and, in those days,

the fly buttons on their uniform,
if you took two of the buttons off,

they were metal, you could put
one on top of the other and one of

the buttons had a little arrow on it
and it became an emergency compass.

And he escaped back...
Oh, it's like Q in Bond, isn't it?

I know. I mean, to be fair, so does
a penis in the right direction,

but there you go.
What, a penis can act as a compass?

Well, it points you somewhere,
doesn't it?

I mean, for a man...
For a man who's...

No, I'm sorry, I just need a minute.
I just need a minute.

Do you know? There was one time
in the Peak District,

if I'd have known that, I'd have
saved myself a lot of trouble.

It's either north or south,
really, Hol.

I'm so sorry, Emmanuel.

But mine's slightly to the west.
North By Northwest. Yes.

For a man whose USP
is carrying an umbrella,

why didn't he get himself
photographed with his umbrella?

It was stuck in the German's eye,
wasn't it? Yeah.

And the last person is...?
Who is that?

Is that Wellington?

Yeah. It's the Duke of Wellington.

He would definitely have had
a matching umbrella for the boot.

Yeah, he would. No.

Oh. So he was very irritated.

Allison, Major Allison,
would have very much annoyed him.

He was very irritated by
the number of British soldiers

who carried umbrellas into battle.

Did you say that?
No, I just hate umbrellas.

No, I mean,
it was clearly a big problem,

cos he set out standing orders
during the Waterloo campaign that

said, "Umbrellas will not be opened
in the presence of the enemy."

To be fair, if you're
worried about the rain

while you're being shot at,
you've got some issues.

Well, the truth of it is,
darling, the British won partly

because it was so muddy and
we're rather good at it. That is...

What's the best way to juggle
more than one child?

By their feet.

Their heads are top-heavy,
so you need...

Yeah.

You won't get a proper grip
if you hold it by its head,

you've got to get ankles
and then it's much easier.

So, completely without meaning to,

you have given entirely
the correct answer.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Thank you.

So there is a circus act
known as "doing a Risley"

and it basically involves
you lie on your back

and you juggle two small children
with your feet.

And it is named after a man
called Richard Risley Carlisle,

he was an 1840s American acrobat,

and he popularised this technique
with two six-year-old apprentices,

which I think would be
against the law today. Yeah!

And he was known often
as Professor Risley.

First person in the world
to sell ice cream in Japan.

I don't know why that's interesting,
but he was a curious guy.

But this is a circus act.

It's foot juggling,
sometimes called antipodists,

and they lie on their back
and they juggle boys.

This is somebody juggling
with their feet.

That looks like it's going wrong.

Yeah. Yeah.

I've got to say, like, it sounds
impressive when we speak about it,

but at some point someone did that
first and definitely got it wrong.

So, basically, someone kicked
a six-year-old across a room

and then thought, "Do you know
what? If I kick him higher,

"I could probably catch him."
That's what's happened there.

Well, the boys would curl up into
a very tight ball and be tossed...

Of course they did,
they were terrified!

If you kicked me across the room,
I would curl up into a ball.

Peel them apart.

"Just give me one ankle,
I want one ankle!"

They do it on Britain's Got Talent
every weekend.

Some kid's being thrown
40 foot in the air.

Amanda Holden's face nearly moves.

Risley did the first, in 1844,
the very first documented

backward somersault feet to feet,
so the boy started on his feet

and did a complete somersault
and landed back on his feet.

I mean, it's quite impressive.

Do you not...? Quite impressive.

It's less juggling
and more sort of keepie-uppie.

Yes, it is kind of a keepie-uppie,
but it's really, really old,

so in the British Museum,
there is a sixth-century carving

of a Mesopotamian foot juggler.

And probably the longest history
of foot juggling is in Mexico.

The Aztecs had a juggling ritual
called xocuahpatollin,

"the game with timber on the feet."

And they used to lie on their backs

and spin a large thing of wood
on their feet.

And it was so extraordinary
that the Spanish conquistador

Hernan Cortes, in 1528, he came back
from Mexico to Europe with a troupe

of Aztec foot jugglers, because
he just wanted to show everybody.

Them wooden foot jugglers,
though, that went to Spain,

they were just a splinter group.

GROANING

I mean, I'm just going to...
Deep respect.

I mean, really. Deep, deep respect.

What is wrong with you people?

Splinter group is excellent.

Yeah.

Emmanuel, can you juggle, darling?

We've got some juggling balls
down there. Are you able to juggle?

No. Alan, can you juggle?

Yes, I can juggle, yes.
Yeah, go on, give it a go.

Oh! Oh!

CHEERING

Do you know what these are called?
No.

They're called thuds, because that's
the sound they make when it fails.

Yeah. Yours very good, darling.

Yeah. Did you have
a lonely childhood?

No, I just didn't lose my virginity
till my 20s, so... Oh, right.

I didn't lose my virginity
for a long time as well,

but I was playing with a different
set of balls for a long time.

Oh, the thuds, the little thuds.

The thuds, yeah.

Time to move on.
Little thuds and a broom handle.

Balls away, please, and I mean
that in every sense of the...

Now, what looks like one elephant

and weighs as much
as 100 elephants?

Is it someone on this panel?

Is it 100 small elephants?

So, the clue is in the picture.
I want you to look

behind the elephants, what do you
see behind the elephants?

The sky, the earth. Sky, the sky.
What's in the sky? Clouds.

Clouds. It's clouds.

There is a wonderful man
called Gavin Pretor-Pinney

and he founded
the Cloud Appreciation Society.

Don't you love that? No. No.
What? He needs friends.

Don't you like clouds?

My favourite cloud is an inversion.

Those ones that, you know...
See? No-one!

LAUGHTER

One person went... One bloke.
It's all it takes to start a club.

"Oh, it's going to go
somewhere filthy."

"Oh, he's going to be filthy now,
ho-ho."

Are you... Have you never
lay on the beach just looking up

and saying to your mate, "Oh, look,
that looks like a witch," or...?

Yes. Yeah, that's a beautiful game.
Surely.

Anyway, people sometimes
photographed the particular cloud

that they liked, and the guy from
the Cloud Appreciation Society,

Gavin, noticed that there were more
photographs of clouds

that looked like elephants
than any other animal.

If you'd not said elephant
before that came on,

I'd have said that looks like a dog.

Or that looks like a wash brush,
or... Yeah, you're right.

You've just said elephant and now
I'm going to see an elephant. Yeah.

He's obsessed with clouds
and elephants.

I think he's a drug addict.

Yeah. That could be anything.

There is a fact that there are
more clouds this shape,

whether or not we do or do not
think that they look like elephants.

Cumulus clouds form
in thermal updrafts.

So, this is when water droplets
collect around an upward current

of air and they accumulate outward.

And some people
think it is like a trunk,

but it is the shape of many,
many cumulus clouds.

So whether you see elephants in them
or not, that's the reason for it.

And it may be why ancient Hindus,
for example,

believed that cumulus clouds
were created by elephants.

In the legend there
is a sky god called Indra

who rides a giant white elephant,
"the elephant of the clouds".

And after the dry season,

the theory is that the elephant
uses the trunk to draw water

from the underworld into the cloud
so that Indra can make rain again.

1514, the King of Portugal gave
a white elephant to Pope Leo X

and it paraded through
the streets of Rome. I love this,

it trumpeted three times and then
sprayed the Pope with water.

That's why he got an umbrella.
Yeah, imagine.

That is a funny-looking passenger.

"How long have I got to be up here?"
"How long is this going to take?"

"Do you know I can't get down?"

It kind of looks like...you. Yeah.

That'll be an ancestor of mine.

That genuinely looks like my mum
in my wedding photos...

I feel really sorry
for this elephant.

It was called Hanno
and it became constipated in 1516

and they gave it
a suppository of gold

which almost certainly k*lled him.

AUDIENCE: Aw...
I know, right?

What a way to go.
A suppository of gold? Yes.

I think they were trying,
it's the Pope's elephant,

they were trying to treat it
really well.

Oh, no, just give it some prunes.

And if you ever wanted an example
of where things have gone too far.

Yeah. When the Pope,

the leader of the richest religion
in the world, with the largest,

poorest congregation, is sticking
gold up an elephant's arse.

That was given to him
by the King of Portugal!

APPLAUSE

They're not using their
wealth wisely, are they?

You've gone too far.

Now, what happens if you are
under orders against the USSR

and take unintentional uppers?

So taking dr*gs in the army?
Yes. Why might you do that?

Is this if you didn't want
to go to w*r and you took...

You decided to take dr*gs
so you would...

No, so it was dr*gs that were
given on purpose. I mean,

serious dr*gs. And we're talking
about methamphetamine dr*gs

that were seriously... Didn't
they do that in Vietnam, though?

Er, well... Were they all on speed?

Yes, there was an awful lot
of people on speed,

but so too were there people
on speed in the Second World w*r.

One of things you've got to do

is you've got to keep
your soldiers going.

So methamphetamine was a common
thing to give to the troops.

But there was this one guy,
a Finnish soldier called

Aimo Koivunen, and it was 1944,
the Finns were fighting the Russians

in the Arctic and he was fleeing the
Russians, and he simply couldn't...

Oh, he's definitely on it, isn't he?
He does look like he's on speed.

If that... Woo-hoo-hoo!

If that was video, his jaw
is going up and down, isn't he?

That is literally what he's
sniffed around him, so...

He hasn't slept for a week! No.
Oh, no, it was much worse than that,

because what happened was,

he was given charge of his troop's
entire supply of methamphetamine.

Which is, for anybody who doesn't
know, is very, very strong speed.

And he didn't approve of it.
He had spoken out against it,

but he suddenly realised that
he was not going to keep up

unless he took some. Now, you
have to imagine it's very cold,

he's got a pill bottle
he's trying to open

and he's got heavy mittens
and he didn't want anybody to see

he was taking it, because he had
spoken out so forcefully against it.

So he put the pill bottle
to his mouth to conceal it

and downed 30 pills...

GASPING

Yes, of methamphetamine.

And at first it was fanta...
Felt like a new man.

At first, skied better than he'd
ever skied in his entire life.

Uphill! Yeah.

LAUGHTER

It was phenomenal.

But it didn't take long
before he was hallucinating,

he was raving, the rest
of his troop... He was raving!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

# w*r! Huh! Yeah!

# What is it good for? #

Didn't finish, obviously.

He was the only Finnish
that had never finished.

GROANING

Oh, again, groan.

LAUGHTER

This is like an anxiety
dream for you. It is, isn't it?

Anyway, he tried all sorts...
In the end he found himself alone,

he'd got no amm*nit*on,

he didn't really know what
the hell was going on.

He skied straight into
the camp of the Russians,

thinking they were allies,
and they were so surprised

they just moved their snow boots
to let him get through.

He fought an imaginary wolverine.
He discovered...

What a Saturday night, eh, Hol?

He discovered an abandoned cabin
and decided to start a fire,

but he started it
in the middle of the room

and gradually
the whole cabin was on fire.

He stepped on a mine that
blew up his foot. At one point,

he k*lled a jay, a bird,
that he k*lled with his ski pole

and ate it raw. By the time they
found him and got him to hospital,

he weighed 6.5 stone
and his heart rate

was 200 beats per minute

and he'd been gone for
two weeks and skied 400km.

LAUGHTER

I think... In a circle. To him it
just felt like one night, though.

Yeah. Didn't it, yeah?

But what was the upper of choice
for the first undertakings

under down under? What? I know.

LAUGHTER

Where's under down under?
Antarctica?

Antarctica, indeed.
You get a point, very good.

She's his favourite. Yeah.

He's good.

I really like him. I know you do.

I mean, I don't have favourites,
but at the moment...

Both Scott and Shackleton's
missions to Antarctica,

they took cocaine pills. Actually,
it was a thing called Forced March

and it was a mix of cocaine
and caffeine, which may have

contributed to the heart failures
that k*lled Scott and his team.

I mean, the main contributor,
I'm going to go with cold

and their starvation diet.

So they were on a diet...
Yeah, feet falling off.

Yeah, feet falling off is not good.
They had... Their what?

Feet fell off. Frostbite, darling.
Frostbite. Frostbite.

Bits of them fell off. Off?
Yeah. Off off?

If you get frostbite,
you will lose...

Your toes fall off, bits of you
fall... No, but like a foot? Yeah.

They were eating 4,000 calories
a day and it still wasn't enough.

It was about half
of what they needed, so...

What, cos they were so cold or so
high? Because it was so, so cold.

And they used cocaine drops in
their eyes to stop snow-blindness.

Cocaine drops in their eyes?
Cocaine drops! Hmm. What the...?

Used to give cocaine throat
lozenges to children. Did they?

Great way to keep them quiet.
Can I ask a question?

In all honesty,
wouldn't you give them

to people in w*r nowadays,
like if there is an upside to it

that it gives you energy
and keeps you going,

why don't they administer it?
Give them ecstasy.

You're right,
that's how to undo a w*r.

Yeah, "Put your g*ns down,
let's have a hug."

Should have just given Hitler
some hash browns.

Calmed him right down.

What is a hash...? Is that
not like a potato? What is the...?

A lovely, lovely...
hash cake is what I mean.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

That is the most
middle-class exchange about...

The thought of him being down the
caff going, "They're not working."

LAUGHTER

I just imagine somebody flicking
through the channels in ten years

when it's repeated and,
"If they'd just given Hitler

"hash browns, everything
would've been all right."

"I like them in a breakfast,
he's right, yeah." Oh, dear.

Giving Pol Pot a fried slice. Yeah.

Would have calmed him right down.

Now let's step things up a notch
with a round of General Ignorance.

What part of a pig does
pork butt come from?

# Uptown funk... #
Yes?

Its cheek.

Oooh. Oooh.

Not its bum?

KLAXON, LAUGHTER

As much as I think you're
a good-looking man,

with those three arseholes
behind you, it's really...

You really blend in.

LAUGHTER

We're really getting it
on this side, aren't we?

So it's an Americanism.
I've got here, this is actually,

this is lovely. This is from
Sydney, Australia, and I love this.

It's got it kind of laid out,
the pig here.

But we're talking about an American,
the Americans call it a pig butt,

where is it on the pig?
It's not in the bum.

They say when you look at
a pig's bum, like a magic eye,

if you stare at it for very long,

then you get in a lot of trouble.

LAUGHTER

Is it the tail? Is it?
No. So let's have a look.

My family worked
in a sausage factory,

the bacon sausage factory
near where I lived. Wow.

But they used to say about
this place that the pig comes in

and they use everything
on the pig except the squeak.

Ah, you see,
they use everything, that means.

Everything.
See what they've done there? Hmm.

Nothing, there's no waste.
No waste at all.

What do they do with the bum holes?

Do you know those things
that you put tea towels in? Yeah.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Let's take a look at the American
way of dividing up the pig.

I'm going to use... Oh, no,
here you are, use the brolly.

I'm going to use my umbrella
as my pointer today.

Why would they put the butt there,
though? Yes, so this is the thing.

So what it is,
it's sort of rectangular.

Apparently, it's really good
for pulled pork, this bit. Yeah.

And they thought it looked
a bit like the butt of a g*n.

So that is the reason.
It is based on the butt of a g*n.

And does anybody know
the difference between ham and pork?

Anybody at all? Is ham cured?
So pork is any...

You should know this if you come
from a sausage-making family,

you should know the reason.
We didn't own the company.

No, fair enough. So pork is
any bit that comes from a pig.

Any bit at all. The ham is most
specifically the pig's hind leg.

So can you see, it says
where it says leg ham on there.

And in fact the word ham
originally meant back of the knee,

which is why we still say hamstring.

We still talk about that
we've pulled a hamstring. Oh.

There is a Spanish ham-making
company called Cinco Jotas

and they employ
six professional pork-sniffers.

Mm-hm. And their
head sniffer is a woman

called Cristina Sanchez Blanco,

and she says she has such
a good sense of smell

that if her husband buys her
a present, he has to wrap it

in four layers of paper or
she knows immediately what it is.

Why does he keep buying her ham?

LAUGHTER

Yeah, that...

Use your imagination! Yeah. "Oh, let
me guess, it's another Peperami."

"Yes, it's another Peperami."

Right. How many roses
can you see in this image?

One?

KLAXON

Hurray.

# Uptown funk... #

I'm going to say they're all roses.
Four. Oh, that's a good...

KLAXON, LAUGHTER

OK.

# Give you up... #

Sorry, were you going to say none?
No.

KLAXON

# Moving on up... #

Three. Correct.

ALAN SHRIEKS, APPLAUSE

How can we get all three? Why?!

There are three roses
in this picture

and it's not the flower, OK?

Apples, apricots, blackberries,
cherries, nectarines,

peaches, pears, plums, quinces,
raspberries,

strawberries are all members
of the rose family.

The fourth item is called lisianthus

and it's a flower that looks
like a rose, but it isn't.

The flower that we call a rose
is in a wider rose family

and it's a highly edible
group of plants.

There are 150 members of the rosa
genus and they're all good to eat.

Well, time's up, folks,
which brings us up to the scores.

And up on top, fully in the lead,

with a full five points
and this week's winner,

it's Holly. What?!

APPLAUSE

I'm amazed.

I'm amazed.

Up next, making his debut, in...

LAUGHTER

650 people just saw
the worst high five.

We can never look at
each other in the eye again.

In second place, with a very
creditable minus two,

it's Emmanuel.

APPLAUSE

Under them, in third place
with minus six,

it's Justin.

APPLAUSE

Minus six.

11 behind.

And on his uppers down at the
bottom, with minus 32, Alan!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

It's thanks to Emmanuel, Holly,
Justin and Alan.

And I'll wrap things up
with this somewhat uppity review

by Groucho Marx.

"I didn't like the play, but I saw
it under unfavourable circumstances.

"The curtains were up." Goodnight.

CHEERING