Hello. Hello! Hello, hello! Hello! Welcome to QI. We bring you a
television first. A quiz show with no answers! Tonight, we depart from
the certainties of every day life to explore the realm of
hypothetical questions, or do we? It is a job for only the finest
minds, by which I mean Johnny Vegas, the possible Sandi Toksvig, and the
increasingly unlikely, Alan Davies. APPLAUSE Now, tonight is the 99th
recording of QI. To celebrate, we have with us the man who thought it
all up in the first place. He can dish it out, but let's see if he
can take it, Mr John Lloyd. APPLAUSE They all have
Let's open our minds now to the possibilities of question one.
What's the best way to weigh your own head? LAUGHTER Any thoughts?
Well, cut it off, obviously! Yes, then someone else could weigh it.
KLAXON that would be the problem. It slightly caught me out and I was
applauding myself. Alan Davies! was applauding myself insincerely.
That is what Soviet leaders do, or chimpanzees! Why would you want to
weigh your own head? It's a boys' thing. Imagine some poor woman
married to a scientist, she's wormed the dog, fed the children,
and her husband goes, "Good news, I have weighed my own head!" LAUGHTER
It may not seem like the most useful thing to do, but it does
employ interesting scientific ideas upon which we all depend. Is it
that thing that David Frost used to tell that joke, "Do you want to
lose 12-pounds of unsightly fat? Cut off your head!" He used to tell
that a lot. What is one of the most famous ancient moments of
scientific discovery? What did he do? Put your head in a bucket.
that right. Join in. I was going to weigh myself, go to the swimming
baths and bob and get people to feed me until I sank. Then come
back out and weigh myself again. That sounds more scientific.
displacement of the water you can tell and the density of your head
is about the same and you get a close approximation. You can put
apples in... You could bob for apples to make it fairer. What did
your head weigh when you tried this? What would you say is the
average weight? The University of Sydney has a department where they
weigh heads. Dunking them in buckets? Is it 12-pounds. It is 4.5
to 5 kilos. 2.2... About 12-pounds. Well done. I will give you a point
for 12-pounds, John. You have negotiated a point. Surely you
should give those points to David Frost?! What if you get a pocket in
your ears? A pocket? The air pocket. Take your fingers out, you won't
hear the answer! LAUGHTER The bones, you have bones that are denser than
water and air pockets that are lighter than water. Together, it
does seem that the head average is about water, so it is a good
displacement test. There is a modern piece of technology that can
do it... Bound to be a laser. scan and they can tell the density
of every part of the brain and the skull and all the rest of it and
tot it all up. My dad's got heavy eyes. Has he now? You weighed his
eyes? Not weighed them. He leans forward. Honestly! He doesn't like
leaning forward because he thinks they are going to come up. Like
those springs you can buy. We got rid of novelty dad. This is mental
dad! My grandfather had two glass eyes and yet he could see, so what
happened was - it is sad, he lost one eye - he was ill - and he had a
glass eye made that was like his perfectly working blue Scandinavian
eye and he had one made that was bloodshot and it was known as
"grandfather's party eye" and when he was going out he would take out
the false blue one and he would put the bloodshot one in and he would
say, "I'm going out and I won't be back until they match!" APPLAUSE
Fantastic. I seem to remember... thought he had two glass eyes like
that! Did he have a hole at the back where somebody put their...
Was your granddad Nooky Bird? you know anything about Sir Francis
Drake? Something to do with bowling? He was in the Navy. Let's
move on from Francis Drake. What do you know about Sir Walter Raleigh?
He invented the bike. His wife carried his head in a velvet bag
after he died. Walter was executed. You can see why John invented the
show. It was on Buzzcocks last week! Was it? Was it a sealed bag,
like a cool box? I don't know. People did keep heads. I bet it was
a few years before anyone wanted to sit next to her at dinner, do you
not think? "Is she going to bring the head?" Very fine. Don't know
how he got there. Like many of the questions tonight, there is no one
correct answer, but dunking a head in the bucket might be a good start.
If that hasn't got you scratching your head, when might you engage in
paradoxical undressing? You are dressing, but you are undressing.
Is it counterintuitive dressing? Taking your clothes off if Jeremy
Clarkson asked you would be... would be silly. It is taking the
clothes off when taking clothes off looks like the worst possible idea
you could have. Is it some mental thing that it does to you. It may
be mental, it may be physical. is very unpleasant! It is. Can we
go back to the previous picture? is one of the peculiar side-effects
of hypothermia, when you are dying of cold. Almost the last thing you
do, very commonly, is take all your clothes off. People think, it is
part of the fact that your blood vessels near your skin tend to give
up and open. It may be that people feel very hot. Because you never
survive once you got to that stage, you can never ask someone why they
did it. I was in freezing water once and I screamed a lot and I was
shocking pink and I felt hot. Maybe I was seconds from death. Maybe you
were. Well, what sort of temperature do you think would
start you on the road to hypothermia, body temperature?
is the temperature in here? LAUGHTER I would say pretty quickly.
Maybe four or five degrees below the normal. 35 degrees Celsius,
bunce your body temperature gets below that. In the coldest cities
in the world, hypothermia is very rare. It is much more common in
Britain where it doesn't get very cold at all. There is a very
remarkable Briton called Louis Pugh. He is able to control his own body
temperature. He is the only person known to science who can do what he
can do. He can swim in cold conditions unlike anybody else and
he is able to raise his body temperature at will. It is
completely startling. He can stop himself shivering. He is incredible.
We contacted him. He said he thought he could do... He is not
coming in here because it is freezing! He said he thought he
could do this because he had trained himself over years and
years to do these endurance swims in incredibly cold waters and his
body saw it coming and prepared for it. Cold water has a bad effect on
a boy. I bet he doesn't fill his swimming trunks! This is not that
unusual. We went on this yoga thing recently and the yoga teacher was
saying these people in India can do this body-raising thing and they
did some scientific tests in the States where they shipped in these
guys, you know, with turbans on, and they put wet towels on them.
They would literally steam the towels dry in a few minutes.
Extraordinary. Can you hire these people? Yeah. A good act. They
would get on Britain's Got Talent. It would have to be good. What can
you do? I can dry this towel! could do patterns on a wet towel -
it's art. The last thing people do when they are freezing to death is
take all their clothes off. Now it is time for a round of quick-fire
hypotheticals. So, all you have to do is tell me the first thing that
comes into your head. Let's say you found a fallen tree in the forest,
right? Obviously, it fell down before you arrived. Did it make a
sound as it fell? Ooh, no. KLAXON No-one is going to say "yes".
you know where this question comes from? It is a famous... Bishop
Barclay. There is no-one to hear a sound... Is there a sound? It
depends what you mean by "sound"? Sound is the vibration of the
eardrum. Yes. Is it? It depends. Part of the definition of "sound"
is there has to be a recipient. There is the thing that makes the
noise and the transmission of the noise and the reception of the
noise. If there is no reception, maybe the noise doesn't exist.
Other things are vibrating, whether that vibration counts as a sound.
There isn't any sound if there is no-one to hear it. The speed of
sound and it is only what happens in the ear, how do you get that
speed between that and the ear? LAUGHTER I'm... Maybe by the time
that tree has fallen, that sound is half-way around the world and
making some more... Are you sure about this? Well, no-one is sure.
That is the point. That is why it is a hypothetical. No-one knows. To
a physicist, they would say the prop gaigs of soundwaves is sound.
Whether or not -- the propogation of soundwaves is sound. I disagree.
You are welcome to. It can only become a soundwave when there is an
ear to receive it. We talked about - did you know light is invisible?
In a dark vacuum, if you shoot a beam of light across the eye balls,
you can't see it. You can only see what the light hits and it is the
same thing. People say that's a stupid answer because the
definition of light is something that goes into your eye and is then
received. We have all kinds of things like
knot ears. Are you saying it is not sound if it registers on a
recording device that is left there without a human, that it is bending
the needle of a recording device? Does the machine not hear?
bishop Barclay... I talked about you, not Bishop Barclay. It is not
as simple as to say "yes" or "no". Go on, son! You've got him. It's a
good question. I thought you said there was no right answer. That is
why it is a good question. There is no right answer. Your "yes" and
your "no" is... Whatever I said... If the tree fell down and there was
no-one there to see it fall, it should still be upright! LAUGHTER
Very true. You are right. Yeah. you keeping well, Alan? Until that
tree fell over... It is a quick- fire hypothetical so we move on. OK.
All right. You are talking to an alien... I can't do quick-fire...
Yes, you can. If it takes a long time, is it still a quick-fire?
Good point. We will find out. APPLAUSE Very good point. You are
talking to an alien in a distant galaxy by radio. How could you
explain which is right and which is left? Breaker-breaker. That would
do it, would it? He would know... It would depend what height mast he
had. It should. LAUGHTER There's got to be alien truckers! It is
fair point. I would tell him what's left and right and if he has a
smoky... Are we looking at any common reference point?
You can't... Can you see Mars? We are on the right of that. LAUGHTER
Can you see the spot on Jupiter? You would have to have something to
reference. There is no explanation without reference to a physical
world that someone can identify. You can't explain it just without
language. That is the point. they visited in a ship, you could
give them a temporary tattoo. could do that, which is why we
framed the question saying tattoos were out. Sorry, I'm a problem
solver by nature. It is good. might not have because we always
draw them in that shape, what if they have got four eyes and eight
arms and they don't have one or two hands? Exactly. They might have
other dimensions... They might have 19 versions of left. Can you
imagine that on a sat-nav?! Left- ish. Why do we always draw them
like that? They might have one eye in the middle of their head.
ones that probed me looked nothing like that! Do you have a thing in
your head where you forget which is left and right? Do you do that?
walk into traffic. Do you have a problem? I don't. If I have to
think, I remember the thumb I used to suck when I was a small child.
That is my right hand. It is like a therapy session this! There was a
wonderful story about Asian captain and he had a silver box and every
time he came into port he would open up the box and put it away.
After many years service, he finally died, his second in command
wanted to have a look at the silver box, it said, "Port-left, starboard
- right." That is brilliant. You can't really find out. A lorry-load
of birds are being weighed on a weighbridge. At some moment all the
birds simultaneously rise off their perches and flap in the air. They
are all alive? Yeah. Does the lorry weigh less when they rise up in the
air? Yes. No. If they are not in contact, no... Is it sealed the
lorry? It has a tailgate, it is locked up. They are inside the
lorry. Wouldn't there be pressure from the air? It is not, they don't,
it weighs the same. It has something to do with, it is very
similar to if you weigh yourself and you go and do a number two and
weigh yourself again you don't lose the weight of the number two.
There we are in a slightly different territory. LAUGHTER You
are right. The answer is not too poo on the scale! Leave the
scales... Are you serious? don't lose it... It weighs the same
and I can't remember the reason why. I know this. They all lift off at
the same time? The fact is, it is a bird, the bird, the lorry system,
they are in the - I know it is weird. Is it sealed? If you are
carrying a bowling ball and you are on the scales and you throw it in
the air... It is something... Because it is sealed, you and the
air have created that weight. Wherever the birds put themselves
in there, it still weighs the same. The interesting question... Don't
pass it off that easily! If it is an open-top lorry and they are all
sitting on a perch and they jump up slightly higher, and then they are
out of the system, they are no longer part of the lorry-bird
system, it would be lighter. Well done, everybody. That was perhaps -
perhaps it is time to move on! Hypothetical problems are the curse
of the practical man. What would happen if a Siamese cat was put in
the fridge? He wouldn't know if it was alive or dead. You are referred
to his cat. I learnt about this on Horizon. You don't know whether it
is alive until you open the door. What is the question? LAUGHTER What
would happen to the cat? It would get cold. What would happen to the
fridge? There would be less milk left. It would eat all the tuna and
milk. Something quite extraordinary would happen. It would turn into an
ordinary cat. Almost. Almost. into a dog. No, no. Nothing that
remarkable. Meow-woof! Let's see what is particular about the
Siamese cat. It's got a white body and a black tail and black ears and
black mouth and black socks. Black extremities. What is particular
about the extremities of any mammal? They are cold. So if you
put the whole animal in a fridge... It goes black. You are absolutely
right. Oh. Its fur has this colourant that keeps it pale in
warm blood heat. Only a small difference in temperature down, it
will lose the weight. When you take it out, will it go back? It would
be trying just for a laugh! I don't like cats very much. I'm sorry. So
many cats, so few recipes! LAUGHTER You could also try it on a
Himalayan rabbit! Please don't try it. No. Do you know about buttered
cat? There is a recipe! You put butter on their paws to stop them...
There is that. This is a paradox. There are two laws. If you have a
piece of buttered toast and drop it, what happens? It falls butter side
down. If you... So if you were to put piece of toast with butter up
and attach it to a cat, right, what would happen? The cat would drop
and it would have to revolve forever! LAUGHTER Because the two
laws would compete and it would be in total balance. Would it work
with margarine? I don't know. The law doesn't state the margarine
falls downwards. What about I Can't Believe It's Not Butter?! What if
it was margarine but the cat believed it was butter? The placebo
effect? Brilliant! You have all got the point. What if cats discovered
this and started to migrate? Where would they go? LAUGHTER I don't
know! It is just a cat with a piece of toast! Let's keep it from them!
So, the point is, if you put a Siamese cat in the fridge for long
enough - and it would have to be a long time, probably weeks - it
would go black. You must not do that. After that voyage through a
land where there are no wrong answers we come to the realm of
general ignorance. Put your fingers on your buzzers. Stop me when you
know what I'm talking about. It is found all around the world. It is
active at night. It is almost totally blind. A bat. KLAXON You
were so right until the last part. Not blind then. Anteater? No.
a mole? A mole is the right answer! I said mole! Did he say mole,
ladies and gentlemen? AUDIENCE: Yes! Sound is just a
thing and it didn't travel! APPLAUSE If you didn't hear me say
it, I didn't say it! You need the points, I suspect. I probably do.
There are 1,100 different species of bat and it is sightless. How
many moles are there in Ireland? None. There are none. Why?
Separation of Ireland from the rest of the place, they never got back
because it was an Ireland. They could tunnel! Oh sweet. Almost
certainly, all photographs of moles that are taken are of dead moles.
They fluff them up... That is terrible. Their eyes are always...
It is like the greeting cards pictures, the cat and the deckchair,
they are all dead! Yes, moles are as blind as bats, bats aren't.
Finally, the ultimate hypothetical question, which came first, the
chicken or the egg? LAUGHTER Chicken. No! KLAXON The egg.
egg is the right answer. There is that wonderful joke, chicken and
egg have made love, the chicken says, "That answers that old
question!" LAUGHTER Anyone who can ask that question hasn't understood
evolution. A chicken evolved from reptiles that laid eggs themselves
so those eggs were coming well before there was a chicken, so it
did indeed come first the egg. What is the longest recorded time for
flight? 16 seconds, something like that. -- 13 seconds, something like
that. It is 13 seconds. Is it really? APPLAUSE That is one of the
oldest internet pieces of trivia I know apart from a duck's quack does
not echo and no-one knows why. we know that isn't true. So, anyway,
birds evolved from egg-laying reptiles so there were definitely
eggs before there were chickens, so we emerge older but not much wiser
at the end of the only quiz show to offer no answers, just more
questions. Had there been answers, let' see who would hypothetically
have won. Our winner tonight with two points is Sandi Toksvig!
APPLAUSE In second place is John Lloyd with minus one. On paper, in