QI

APPLAUSE

Good evening and welcome to QI.

Right, question number one.

Here are some unusual tools.

I want you to guess what they are for.

Let's start with the middle one. What do you think that is?

Trepanning. Is it? Oh, it is about going into the body.

So, trepanning was when they used to relieve pressure on the skull

by basically... Drilling into the head. ..drilling into the head,

so we do want to go into the body.

Why might we want to do that?

Is it to scoop out your poison?

When you've got poison inside your... Inside your what?

Your penis. Oh, sorry.

I don't know why I asked what bit he was talking about.

I had no idea. A little umbrella opens. We've all heard of it.

We're all terrified of it. Oh, gosh, yeah.

Is it like one of those...

I was going to say cocktail umbrellas, but that doesn't seem right in the context.

There's a fish in the Amazon that does that. Goes up your...

It swims up your urethra and its gills open

and it lodges itself in the urethra, and you can't urinate.

What does it want?!

LAUGHTER

Probably wants to get out, once it's in there.

It just does it out of sheer badness.

Just having a laugh. Yeah.

What's your plan?

I'm safe from predators! Yeah.

Sometimes you have to, you know, because you can't...

Chop it off? Sometimes.

No! Yup.

When you say sometimes, once.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

It's called the candiru fish. The candiru fish. Yes.

Does it eat you? Once it's there, what's it doing?

It thrives off urine. Oh, OK.

Mm! Yum, yum, yum!

Hanging on, like this. "You can't get me out of here!" Yeah.

So, it's like a kind of sort of Oktoberfest for fish.

Yeah, hadn't thought of it like that, but, yeah. I suppose it is.

Drink nothing for a week and eventually it gives up and goes,

"Oh, the pub's shut."

I think there's less singing.

Maybe there is some German.

There's some German singing coming from my genitals!

HE SINGS NONSENSE

Oh, my God! But it would be tiny.

THEY SING SQUEAKILY

Whoa!

LAUGHTER

HE SINGS MATCH OF THE DAY THEME

I'm singing the Match Of The ...

Why am I singing the Match Of The Day theme?! Why are you?!

HE PLEADS

Nein! Bitte! Bitte!

BLOWS A RASPBERRY

ALAN GRUNTS

This is not where I thought we were going!

I had a stuffed otter, and... LAUGHTER

It's not a euphemism, calm down.

I was... So I was in Kilkenny and I won some money on a horse

and I got this money, I was walking past this sort of junk shop

and I saw this stuffed otter

and I thought, "Well, hang on, there's a stuffed otter,

"I've got some money - this is a match made in heaven."

So I got this otter and I spent three days just having fun with it

around Kilkenny, you know, playing pranks on people,

that sort of thing. And then I wanted to bring it back -

I was living in London at the time, and I thought, "Are you allowed to

"import animal products, that sort of thing?" Yeah.

So I went to the police station and I walked in with it

under my arm and there was an old Irish policeman sat there like that.

And I said, "I want to take this otter to London."

And he went, "Oh, that'll be nice for him."

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

When I took it back, I got a bin bag and I wrapped it in tape.

So it was sort of in a slight lunging position,

and I...and it wouldn't fit in the overhead locker.

So they put fragile stickers on it and put it in the hold.

So I was waiting at Stansted, and whoever the baggage

handlers were must have had a sense of humour because they put

it on first before any of the other bags, but they stood it up.

So I've stood there at the baggage thing, and this otter just appeared.

Like, it just sort of... Like that.

And then it rolled off,

and then it landed perfectly with its legs in the air, like that.

Have you still got it? No.

What happened to it? It died. He went...

LAUGHTER

He returned to his homeland.

What? Did you return him to the sea?

No. If you must know, Sandi, my house burned down.

I lost everything I own. But let's not mention that.

Is that true? Yeah. Yeah.

LAUGHTER

You know what? I suspect the otter!

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

The thing is, you just tell me things you know that I don't know.

That's how it works. We just knock it backwards and forwards.

Is that what it is? Yeah. Tell me something I don't know. Go on.

I once accidentally kicked a turtle off a roof in Morocco.

There you go. I mean, there's a lot to unpack there, really.

You rarely see a turtle on a roof. I know!

What were you and the turtle doing on the roof?

I didn't know he was there. No. Fair.

And I had very slippy, local, like, Moroccan slippers on.

Yeah? And somebody pinged me a size-five football.

And as I volleyed that... Yeah.

..the turtle's come out from behind that plant pot...

..and the ball and the turtle have gone off the roof.

It was an accident. Pure accident, swear down.

Yeah, what are the chances? Innit? OK.

What happened then? You just went, "Oh, shit. Oh, well."

Did you go down to see if it was all right? Somebody did go and check

if it was all right. And? It weren't all right.

LAUGHTER

But what's so terrible about trousers, historically?

Well, we couldn't wear them for a long time.

You could be arrested for wearing trousers.

It was illegal for women to wear trousers in about 40 cities

in the United States. People were arrested.

They were charged with impersonating a man right up until...

Why would you want to?

Right up until 1923, when the Federal Government

overrode the laws and made it allowable.

Before that, even when serving in the army or mountain climbing,

for example, women had to wear heavy woollen skirts.

Also in Europe, Henriette d'Angeville,

she claimed to be the very first woman to climb Mont Blanc in 1838,

and she did so dressed like that.

Is it cheating to use a ladder to climb a mountain?

They've deliberately taken her a tricky route, haven't they?

Yeah. "You go first, love. We'll come..."

"This is the only way we could do it."

"And why is there a...?" "Could I not have the plank?"

"No, it has to be a ladder."

And it looks like she's going to go along there,

over the next ladder... Yeah.

..and then just bring her back round again.

"Isn't this the ladder we went over before?"

"No, no, you keep going.

"You're doing very well!"

Actually, I shouldn't say it on TV -

she'll kill me - but I know

where all the teaspoons are.

Oh. My mum.

LAUGHTER

Every shop we go in,

she steals the teaspoons.

Oh... I don't know why!

Where are they?

In her drawer!

And she remembers where they're all from.

LAUGHTER

I'll have a teaspoon and she'll be like,

"Milan."

It got to a point where we'd go

in a nice cafe,

and we go, "Don't."

"Don't." And Mum goes...

"I won't!"

And then we'll come out

and she'll be like...

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

What kind of tractor can't move anything

heavier than an ant?

Is it a tractor beam?

It is a tractor beam. No way!

But it can move the Millennium Falcon.

Do you think it is just a matter of science fiction?

The Millennium Falcon? No, not...

So, we are talking about tractor beams,

so those are devices that move objects

using a beam of energy. Now, up until fairly recently,

they were confined to the realms of science fiction,

but Professor Bruce Drinkwater and his team at Bristol University

have made one.

It consists of hundreds of tiny little loudspeakers.

They generate sounds that are louder than a jet engine,

but they are too high-pitched

for the human ear to be able to detect it.

And these sound waves, they surround an object,

holding it in place, basically in a sort of invisible cage.

An actual tractor beam? Well, let's find out.

Please welcome Professor Bruce Drinkwater.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Right, Bruce, tell me what you are holding in your hand.

Well, this is the tractor beam.

I mean, it looks like a piece of wood with a bit of wire on it.

Yes, it's a low-cost, battery-powered version.

You can make it at home if you want. Amazing.

So, you've got, in this box here, little tiny polystyrene balls.

Yeah, polystyrene balls.

So, if you'd just pick one up for us... Oh, right.

..and then just drop it down, we can see it just drops, right?

And the idea is that you're going to use the tractor beam