Hello and welcome to QI.
Tonight we are up to our usual tricks and will be treating you
to a show all about tricks and treats.
And joining me are four absolute sweeties.
A proper Smartie - it's Ria Lina.
Getting their Snickers in a twist, it's Eshaan Akbar.
Giving us all a Boost, it's Jimmy Carr.
And always coming up smelling of Roses,
it's Alan Davies.
And their buzzers are four tasty treats.
Ria goes...
# Sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey...#
Eshaan goes...
# Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down...#
Not if you're diabetic.
Which I am.
Oh, are you?
I'm pre-diabetic.
Is there a post-diabetic?
Jimmy goes...
# Yummy, yummy, yummy, I got love in my tummy
# And I feel like I'm loving you. #
And Alan goes...
# Sweet Caroline
# Ba ba ba
# Good times never seemed so good
# So good, so good. #
Let's just do karaoke.
All right. So I suppose the first question today has to be,
trick or treat?
Jimmy? A treat, please.
You want a treat?
Treat. Treat.
Trick. Trick.
OK, you two can have the chocolate cake that's just beside you.
Oh, what?
This is going very well.
Has this show got dumbed down a bit? Because I remember the questions
being a lot more difficult the last time I was on.
Do you guys want a bit of cake, though?
Oh, is there? Fine?
But what I would have liked to have given you
is German chocolate cake.
Oh, no. Do you not like German...
I don't like German chocolate cake.
OK, why don't you like it?
Well, hang on. Let's be clear.
Do we mean chocolate cake from Germany
or German chocolate cake?
See, already you are going to probably get an extra point
because my question is,
where does German chocolate cake come from?
Greggs.
I know the answer to this.
Well, there's a cake in America called German chocolate cake.
And it's from a man called German, not from Germany.
Exactly right.
You get an extra point, that is entirely correct.
I don't know if you've seen the show before.
We could be out of here in 20 minutes.
This is going to be terrific.
You were supposed to say Black Forest.
So there was a guy called Samuel German, and he developed
a product in 1852 of baking chocolate that was already
a little bit sweeter.
So you had to put one less ingredient in your cake.
And this was developed into a thing called German chocolate cake,
and it became hugely successful.
The thing about Samuel German is that he was an English American,
so English, but German, I mean, a bit like the royal family.
Funny name to have, isn't it?
The Germans are coming round.
Oh!
German chocolate cake sounds like the kind of thing you would not
put into Google at work.
That could be something really dreadful.
We couldn't have a German chocolate cake on the show in case one person
in the audience had a nut allergy.
I always thought a nut allergy
was a very good euphemism for lesbian.
What's Sandi like?
You know, she's got a nut allergy.
Can I just say as a hetero woman, you don't have to be a lesbian
to have a nut allergy.
I feel we're dividing into niche tribes straight away.
Germans are coming around - that's a euphemism for something.
But here is something very, very British.
Anybody know what this is?
Is it a dragonfly with an erection?
Wow...
You know, I hadn't seen that, and now that's all I can see. Right?!
Actually... That's it.
Festival Hall. Festival Hall. Festival of Britain.
So it was the Festival of Britain and it was called the Skylon.
It was the centrepiece of the Festival of Britain.
It was 90 metres high... Whoa. Wow.
..and it was kept erect through tension.
I'm sure everybody's been there. Oh.
It was the largest object in the world supported by wires,
and what's really a shame is that they didn't keep it because it was
a remarkable construction, but it was pulled down a year later.
They were going to take it to Scarborough, Morecambe,
even the United States, but it was too expensive.
They sold it to a scrap metal dealer in White City,
probably right near where we are now.
Wood Lane, White City - George Cohen and Sons.
Were people meant to climb up this thing? What was the point of it?
What was the point? It's right at the end, mate.
It's quite a hazard to skydivers
because I imagine you can't see it at all...
Coming down, "Look at that view of the Thames..."
MIMES RIPPING FABRIC
There was a student who wanted to climb up it and hang a pair
of knickers... Of course. ..at the top, at the official opening.
He's called Philip Gordon.
He was a student at the University of London's Air Squadron.
He shimmied up at midnight, dressed as a workman, and his plan was
to jump into the river to escape.
I'm just going to say "90 metres" again to everybody... Wow.
Anyway, bless his heart, he slightly bottled it and hung a scarf
instead of a pair of knickers, because the King was coming.
But he did get up there.
No, he got there... He got up there. ..he couldn't bear to do pants.
Or they were dirty because he bottled it.
Yeah. He got to the top and soiled himself, that's what we've learned.
But hang on - the plan to get down was initially to jump,
and then he thought, "Do you know what?" Yeah...
"I'm just going to shimmy."
That's a good name for you - Shimmy Carr. I like that.
Give us a shimmy. Yeah! Yeah! There we go.
Lots of people didn't like it.
The Sydney Morning Herald called it "phallic flippancy".
I don't think if your phallus looks like that,
you can afford to be flippant. No...
Wonder if they'd be bothered by reviews, would they?
I mean, who's looking at that, going, "Oh, well,
"it wasn't well reviewed, I'll look over here"? Yeah.
Some of it was used for rearmament in the Korean War,
and some of it was made into commemorative letter openers.
Oh, I feel bad for the guy that ended up in the Korean War
with the letter opener. Yeah...!
It's an example of something called "tensegrity".
Tension and integrity.
It's a word coined by the architect, Richard Buckmunster...
Buckmis... Sorry.
Richard Buckminster Fuller... Well said.
I try not to get my Buckminster and my Fuller confused...
You nearly said "buttmuncher" there. and you... Yeah, I know!
Now, for a question about TREAT-ments.
It's time for a round of What's The Treatment, Sandi?
OK! What do we think the treatment is to stop snoring?
Wake up.
APPLAUSE
I just read a book about this! Oh!
A whole book about snoring? Yeah, well, it's called Breathe.
It's quite a good book, and it's about how we developed,
and basically, the whole book says, you've got to breathe
through your nose, so put a bit of tape over your mouth,
stop your snoring. Oh...
Why did you read a whole book about breathing...?
Well, I thought... "You know what?
"Some people stop breathing and then..." Yeah.
So you go... I want to get... This is the basics. Yeah.
You want to nail this stuff. Good.
I've been breathing the whole show.
It is to do with breathing.
Divorce is not the answer. Divorce is one way of doing it.
But you might want to stop your own snoring and train yourself not to.
ALAN: Oh, I do...
Well, I snore a little bit and my girlfriend's got...
She's got noise-cancelling fists.
But you're in the right area, Jimmy, because what we really need to do
is train the muscles of the upper airways to do what's called
circular breathing. OK.
So you need to inhale through
the nose whilst blowing through...
Is that right?
It's that breathing in through the nose, out through the mouth,
in through the nose and out through the mouth
in a continuous circular movement.
The best way is to take up an instrument.
Which instrument might it be? I think trombone, isn't it?
Nope. Anybody, any thoughts? Bagpipes. Xylophone.
Flute. Xyl...?!
Didgeridoo! Harmonica! Didgeridoo!
Oh... It's the didgeridoo. Well done, Alan. Got to get a big...
Yes.
APPLAUSE
And there I am with my didgeridoo!
So, 2006, a group of scientists in Zurich decided,
"Let's stop snoring by trying to get people to play the didgeridoo."
So what they did was they got a group of snorers and they made them
practise the didge, made them practise every day for four months,
and then they had a control group who were told
they were on the waiting list for lessons, OK?
And they were told to do anything except play the didgeridoo.
And those who played the didgeridoo, that does seem to work
to help your snoring because it creates this circular breathing.
Wow. Mm-hm!
Anyway, moving on,
what is this fly doing in this painting?
Oh, the one by the plate? There's also one on her head.
Oh, yes. Talking to the one by the plate? Yeah.
"Come up here." "The food's HERE -
"the food's down here!"
"You can see for miles up here!"
"They'll swat you!"
"They won't... She won't swat herself in the head, will she?"
It's called musca depicta - so "musca", Latin for "fly",
and it was to show how skilful the artist is.
It's a way of saying, "I can paint a fly that is so realistic,
"an observer might just want to kind of..."
Well, clearly not, because that's the world's biggest fly.
So when you see the painting, you think, "There's a fly on it."
Yeah... Exactly. "Oh!" "Oh, oh!" "God...!"
"It's painted on?!"
At the time it was painted, that was thought to be quite a thing,
so it was a fairly new idea, the concept of "trompe-l'oeil",
or "trick of the eye".
That people go in trying to eat the beans.
That - exactly that.
"It's a painting! Oh, my God!"
The very supposed first-ever use of the trompe-l'oeil
was a painting competition in ancient Greece between the artists
Zeuxis and Parrhasius.
And Zeuxis painted some realistic grapes
that, apparently, the birds flew down and tried to take.
And so, Parrhasius then painted a curtain that was so realistic
that Zeuxis himself was fooled and tried to push it to one side.
Do you think ALL of these stories from ancient Greece
are just nonsense?
Yes, let's not do that any more...
I can't believe...
This is so exciting to me.
"Yes, rip it up! Rip it up!" Yes!
"It's nonsense..." It's all nonsense.
"..the bird flew down to the grapes... It did not! It's 2D!
"The bird could've identified that, it's not seeing grapes..."
"The curtains! They're real curtains. Bullshit!
"The curtains are painted!"
And the Greeks they just spread it about, you know, "That happened,"
and we... Thousands of years, we're still going, "Amazing, you know,
"in ancient Greece..."
The single... How've they convinced us of this utter non...?!
I don't know!
A single torn card, I've got rid of the whole of Greek mythology.
Get out. Move that, Alan.
So that... That is amazing.
That was painted in 1658.
That actually does look like a curtain. Isn't that incredible?
In fairness, that is good though, ain't it?
I mean, if the Greeks saw that, they'd shit themselves.
Oh, you don't... You missed it, though. You missed it,
because a bird just flew in, Alan.
The flowers are terrible, the curtain's unbelievable.
Deliberately so, obviously deliberately so.
It makes the curtain look more like a curtain
if the flowers are shit. Can I...?
Sorry, just two seconds, can I have some sellotape?
Have you...?
So, this was painted by a man, wasn't it?
This was painted by Adriaen van der Spelt in 1650.
Cos... Why is it? Why? Because it's not ironed.
No, that's a fair point.
I don't know a lot about him, Adriaen van der Spelt,
I just know that he had a nasty third wife
who drove him to his grave. That's literally all I've got.
What, literally gave him a lift? Yeah.
"Don't worry, you'll be there in a minute." "Where are we going? Agh!"
Cos all she wanted him to do was iron the curtains
and he kept painting them!
Anyway, moving on...
What trickery was this boat involved in?
Is it a boat meant to be...look like something else?
You are absolutely heading in the right direction.
So this is a casemate ironclad boat.
And this is something that fought in the Civil War...
Civil War. American Civil War!
American Civil War! 1860s. 1862. This particular picture.
You get an extra point, Alan. This is rather frightening...
HE GASPS, CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Little bit of good news for you - I read a book about the Civil War.
What did you learn?
The fact that I learned I found interesting was that the youngest
you could be, legally, to be a soldier in the Civil War was nine.
Wow. Because eight-year-old soldiers, that's crazy.
Ridiculous.
The other thing I learnt about, that I thought was interesting,
was the biggest killer in the American Civil War?
Diarrhoea. Yeah. AUDIENCE GROANS
Imagine being shot with that!
But that is true.
That is true, darling, in most of the old conflicts.
So the Boer War - typhoid. It's those things... It's...
It's your illnesses, your stomach-related illnesses
that that kills more, quite often than... Oh, I know...
Same with panel shows.
Apparently, there was...a code of honour in the American Civil War
where you couldn't shoot anyone
if they were shitting.
Which I think is quite a nice thing, which is...
I would've spent the whole of the Civil War going, "Hang on!"
Have you got that the right way round?
"You can't shit if you're shootin',
"you can't shoot if you're shittin'... It's one of those!"
APPLAUSE
So a lot of the battles that took place
between the Confederates in the South and the Unionists in the North
took place on the Mississippi River.
And these boats, these casement ironclads, were brand-new,
they were like a sort of moving fort.
And this boat belonged to the Unionists,
but they had to, for various reasons, they had to abandon it,
and the Confederates tried to salvage it.
So in order to stop them salvaging it, the Unionists built
a completely fake boat.
It was made out of timber and tar and...and a toilet!
It was called the Black Terror.
It flew both the American flag and the skull and crossbones.
It cost $8.63 to construct.
It's about $208 today... $8?!
$8 to construct!
And they even lit a sort of tar fire,
so it looked like engine smoke, and the Confederate salvagers,
they destroyed the original gunboat, the Indianola,
because they thought that the Unionists were coming to get it.
And it made the Unionists cry and cry with laughter.
So they managed to use an entirely fake boat
to get the others to destroy a very valuable one.
There was a little bit of levity in the middle of all that slaughter.
There's another excellent wartime dummy trick.
So in World War I, a horse was killed
in what was called No Man's Land.
And somebody thought, "Ooh, I know, we'll turn it into a lookout."
And under cover of night, French soldiers made a papier mache version
of the horse, and a soldier then went in it
and, apparently,
used his anus as a gun port,
which I think, you know...
That's something I'm definitely going to Google later on.
This is a gun port.
The horse... It's the horse's anus.
Yes, the horse... Yes. Thank God.
Don't always understand everything first time.
But then it rains and...
Is there...? Is this going to be a follow-up story
about the...greatest hero of that war was, of course,
a pantomime horse?
Well, they used papier-mache heads. I think you've got some.
They used to use papier-mache heads on sticks to put up over the trench.
Oh, hang on, look... Oh, no, I have got one, yeah. Look at this.
RIA: Oh! ESHAAN: Oh, gosh.
There wasn't much diversity then, was there?
No, no, it's not wild on diversity. They all...
Ours have found love.
ALAN SINGS: # Yummy, yummy, yummy I got love in my tummy... #
I'm always hungry after a blowjob. Yeah...!
How dare you!
Right.
It's time for another game of What's The Treatment, Sandi?
OK. How do you stop your toe from dropping off?
Oh. Stop cutting your toenails with a Black & Decker?
That's quite a good answer. Put them in the freezer or something?
How would that work? Well...
IN HIGH PITCH: All right, let me explain...!
MOCKING HIGH PITCH: WHAT?!
Now he's got to think of some logic. Yeah, I have...!
So! You put your f...
..your toes in the freezer and as it defrosts,
just before it completely defrosts, put it back in again.
Well, why don't you just put a sock on? Just wear a sock!
Socks can get cold.
What?! What?!
What did you...? What did you think Sandi asked?
There is a condition called dactylolysis spontanea,
or ainhum, which is much easier to say,
and it's a very rare condition where the little toe,
normally on both feet, atrophies and then falls off.
JIMMY GASPS
Well, it actually goes to market.
APPLAUSE
The constrictive ring of tissue forms at the base of the toe,
and that just restricts oxygen.
It can be caused by injury or infection, sometimes happens
with no clear reason at all,
primarily found in males of African descent.
Probably the best thing to do is to cut it off pre-emptively, amputate.
Or just put it in a freezer. Freezer! What then?
So hang on, hang on.
That is a worse answer than your answer, I think.
The best way to stop your toes from falling off is to cut them off
before they get a chance. "Don't give 'em the satisfaction!"
Don't give them the satisfaction.
You cut off your toes first. Apparently...
If you're watching at home, get rid of them all!
Apparently, with this particular condition, it is less painful
to amputate it and you are less likely
to have the wound become infected,
so it is better, in this instance, to cut it off yourself.
Well, I'm looking at the picture, I think he looks fine. Yeah.
Right. I have treated myself to a new pair...
..of glasses, OK?
So a little bit like Clark Kent, I'm going to put them on.
OK. Here is the trick. As soon as I put them on,
who do you think I look like now?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Prue Leith.
Prue Leith is a right answer.
It's somebody badass.
It's a person who has killed more baddies on screen
than any other actor. Oh... I'm going...
I'm going John Wayne.
It's Milla Jovovich! Oh...
Look, do you not think? RIA: Really?
ESHAAN: Yeah, yeah!
THEY TALK VERY EACH OTHER
Uncanny! Uncanny!
She... What are we doing?
What are we doing? What's going on here?
What's going on? Yeah, OK. Do you know who she is? Yes.
She's not even wearing glasses. You know that, right? No, so...
She's the star of The Fifth Element, as well as the Resident Evil series,
and she has killed a shed load of people.
So this is how you fool facial recognition, OK?
In 2016, the researchers at Carnegie Mellon University
found that they could trick facial recognition software into
mistaking their identity by using a pair of colourful glasses. OK?
And they were able to have a middle-aged male researcher
be mistaken by the software
as Milla Jovovich, OK? And this is what the glasses look like...
I think I slept with the wrong person.
If it makes you feel any better, Jimmy, so do they.
APPLAUSE
The way facial recognition software works is it doesn't know
if it's looking for a tiny image in a great big picture
or it's looking for an image that's filling the entire picture.
It's looking for little bits of specifics that then it says,
"Yes, that's that person."
So it looks for a particular shape of an eyebrow,
it looks for a particular shape of a cheekbone.
It is possible to compress all of that information
down into a section of the frame of the glasses.
And what'll happen is the computer will say,
"Oh, I've found the things I'm looking for." Oh!
It'll ignore, entirely, the face that is actually wearing the glasses
because it feels it has already found the person.
You don't have to do that Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible -
where you peel your face off, any more?
You just put on a ridiculous pair of glasses and get in anyway?
So the spectacles could possibly trick facial recognition software
into making them think you're somebody else.
You probably couldn't open Milla's phone or her laptop,
but you could certainly... I can definitely open Romesh's.
APPLAUSE
Now for one final round of What's The Treatment, Sandi?
JAUNTY XYLOPHONE INTRO PLAYS
Love this!
What do you treat by shoving a piece of cloth up your nose
and setting fire to it?
If you're in certain parts of the US, that's how you cure Covid.
APPLAUSE
It's excessive sleeping.
I mean, I have to say, it's an attempted cure. Wha...?!
It... I know. Yeah!
Stay awake because you'll be setting your face on fire!
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah! So... Sleep through this...!
Yeah.
So we're going back a bit - 1738. We're going to France.
There was a woman called Elizabeth Orion
and she started sleeping 18 hours a day
and literally nobody could wake her.
And this went on for years and years and years until she was finally
examined by a guy called Dr Brady, and he wanted to check out
if she was faking it.
So first he shouted really loudly at her.
Then he stuck a pin in her flesh, right through to the bone and so on,
and finally, he took a piece of cloth and he dipped it in alcohol,
set fire to it, and shoved it up her nose.
She slept through the whole thing
and then eventually woke up completely naturally...
I love this - "ate heartily and did some spinning."
Was her nose or face not singed?
Well, I don't really know
because the villagers had done all sorts of things.
They had, at one point, rubbed her back in honey
and laid her in front of a beehive on a hot day.
I mean, really?!
Was there a fraternity? Yeah, why...?!
They just hated her sleeping.
And I don't know what the outcome was.
I love these old cures, though.
There was a 13th century physician called Bernard de Gordon,
and his recommendation for jolting somebody out of a coma
was to hold a squealing pig in their face.
I mean, you could be tempted, couldn't you?
I could see it happening. If that works, brilliant, you're a genius.
If not, you're a doctor with a pig, going home. Yeah! Perfect.
"I didn't manage to wake her, love, but we're having bacon tomorrow."
Yeah. "Lend me a pig." "Wake up and smell the bacon!" Yeah.
CHEERING
Let's now treat ourselves to a round of General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
Which has most body fat -
a human, a pig, a cow, a walrus or an elephant?
Depends who you're talking about, really.
Walrus. Oh...
KLAXON BLARES
Are we talking about as a percentage
or actual quantity of fat? So, proportional to size, OK,
it is the percentage of body fat content.
A human? It is a human. It is absolutely a human.
Most humans have higher body fat than an elephant.
Well, I want to retract that forfeit
because the question wasn't properly worded.
APPLAUSE
Worth a try!
I've had a terrible day.
If you're a professional athlete, it's different. If you're...
What's he called, Ronaldo? Ronaldo. Yeah.
Hungry, hungry Ronaldo, he's called. Yes.
But he's very lean. He's about 7% body fat, so...
He's always in a cryo chamber. Yeah.
Freezing! He's got all his toes. Yeah. It works! Yeah, it works!
Inflammation cannot exist at those temperatures.
That's what I was told. Oh...
OK, erm...
I read a book about it! Yeah!
What they were examining was low fertility in captive elephants,
and they thought it might be something to do with diet
and an obesity issue, but it isn't that.
The animals are perfectly lean. Actually, it's stress.
But humans are sometimes known as the fat primate, so our...
Who's calling us that?
That's one of us! That's one of our own, Sandi.
That's got to... That's definitely not any of them.
The cow didn't say that about us! I won't have it.
One of us has turned on us.
I think it's the bonobos - that's our nearest relative, the bonobos.
The bonobos? "Here they come, the fat primate." Yeah...
"Have a...banana, you fat so-and-so."
What about blue whales? What do you reckon?
There's barely an ounce of fat on them.
They're lean and trim like Usain Bolt.
No, they are fatter than us, way fatter. They're...
They're hugely fat. Very, very fat.
They could fill the dome of St Paul's Cathedral
with the fat of a single whale bleu. This is one of those facts
where you just go, this is weird, but it's quite interesting
anyway - if you took all the fat in a sort of larger blue whale,
it would weigh too much to be legally transported
on British roads.
Which is one of the reasons I don't do it any more. Yeah.
It turns out humans are a lot fatter than most other animals.
More than 150 years ago, which American holiday
had people dressed in scary masks,
giving candy to children and pulling pranks on unsuspecting passers?
Halloween.
KLAXON BLARES
It is now, but it used to be Thanksgiving Masking
and it comes from much older traditions which come from Europe.
"Mumming", you every heard about mumming?
Which is basically going door to door..
That's an internet search I don't want to tell you about.
..asking for food or money sometimes in exchange for a song.
It's a very, very, very old tradition.
Called mumming? Mumming? Yeah, probably named after Momus,
this is back to your Greek mythology, so probably not true.
Probably a lie... He was the persona...
They never even had buckets! No...
Which brings us nicely to the end of our Trick and Treat show.
So let's see who's got a bucket of candy
and who's going to be pelted with eggs.
In last place, falling for every trick in the book with -26,
it's Alan! Oh...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So rude!
In third place with -9, Eshaan!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In second place with a very creditable plus three points,
it's Jimmy. Look at that! Three!
Three! Count 'em! Count 'em.
One for every book I've read.
And our winner, never missed a trick,
it's Milla Jovovich...! No, it's Ria!
And our thanks to Ria, Jimmy, Eshaan and Alan
and I leave you with this trick to live by from WC Fields.
"Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite,
"and furthermore,
"always carry a small snake."
Thank you. Goodnight.