TRANSCRIPT

Stephen

Good evening, good evening, good evening, and welcome to QI where tonight, we're gallivanting around the globe with "G" for "Geography". And joining me from the four corners of the earth are: the King of the Jungle, Jimmy Carr . . . the Queen of the Desert, Jo Brand . . . the Prince of Port Talbot, Rob Brydon . . . and the Man in the Moon, Alan Davies.

So, with that in mind, let's hear their global warnings. Jimmy goes:

Jimmy

[presses buzzer, which plays the sound of a thunder clap]

Stephen

Rob goes:

Rob

[presses buzzer, which plays the sound of a ship's foghorn]

Stephen

Jo goes:

Jo

[presses buzzer, which plays the sound of an air raid siren]

Stephen

Alan goes:

Alan

[presses buzzer, which plays a mock shipping forecast]

Stephen

Quite. Now, tell me, what ruins over 300,000 British car journeys each year?

Alan

Radio 1.

Stephen

Very good. Very good . . . 300,000 British car journeys . . . 

Jo

Is it kids in the back going, "Are we nearly there yet?" and you go, "No", and put the hood back on your head . . . 

Jo

Oh, so soon!

Stephen

Oh, I'm sorry, you're barely warmed up.

Alan

The sat nav sending you down onto . . . into a field.

Stephen

Basically, you are right. 300,000 insurance claims for serious road traffic incidents or accidents are put down to sat nav.

Jimmy

We were in the car and my girlfriend genuinely said, "Where would we be without sat nav?" Thanks for that, love, that's very . . . 

Stephen

That's very good. Well, there was a touring acting group whose pink Mercedes van . . . They had to be rescued off the roof of it by helicopter because the sat nav directed them, basically directed them down into a ford. A . . . A stream.

Jo

Yeah but how much of a div would you have to be to actually see it ahead of you and drive into it?

Stephen

Well, it might've been night; they're in the countryside; you go down a lane and the lane turns out to be . . . 

Jimmy

Sometimes they are quite . . . 

Jo

Yeah, but that's no good these days because cars have got headlights.

Stephen

It's a fair point.

Jimmy

She's got a very persuasive voice.

Stephen

She has. I call her my Navigatrix.

Jimmy

I've had an idea. I know this isn't Dragon's Den, it's QI, but I've had an idea –

Stephen

Go on.

Jimmy

 – which is, you get sat nav, yeah? But you print it out into a booklet that you can just flick through.

Rob

What would you call it?

Jimmy

Ah, oh, hmm . . . 

Stephen

Satlas.

Jimmy

A satlas?

Stephen

A satlas.

Rob

What I don't like about sat nav is when it interrupts the radio; you'll be listening to a nice thing on the radio, maybe a play or something, and the voice, of course, cuts over the radio always at a crucial moment. So you'll be getting to the climax of the play, "And I tell you, David, the reason that we never had children is . . . " " . . . Turn left in forty yards."

Jimmy [to Rob]

You do quite a lot of voice-overs, generally . . . 

Rob

Yes, I do.

Jimmy

Have you been asked to do one of the . . . Because you'd be very good. If you did that voice of a little man trapped inside a box . . . 

Stephen

Oh, yes! Do your man who's trapped in a box, or your American radio set that you swallowed.

Rob

Okay, here we go. Ready? [pitches his voice to sound incredibly distant] Where are you? I don't know where you are . . . ! [normal voice] It's a small thing, Stephen.

Stephen

Actually, people who do sat nav voices, you know, John Cleese does one . . . 

Rob

Does he? I thought that was an urban myth.

Stephen

No, no, he does. I . . . 

Alan

You can record it onto your own sat nav.

Stephen

You can also do your own.

Alan

I've done that on ours.

Stephen

Aw.

Alan

I didn't tell my wife. And then we went for a drive and there was me going, "Go left! Go left!"

Stephen

Did you go into a . . . 

Alan

"Come on! Right here!"

Stephen

No wonder there's so many accidents. Apparently the favourite sat nav voices are Nigella Lawson . . . 

Rob

And Joanna Lumley.

Stephen

Well, you'd think Joanna Lumley. The ones I've got are Billy Connolly and Julie Walters is there.

Rob

Billy Connolly?

Stephen

Yeah.

Rob

He's done it?

Stephen [flawless Billy Connolly voice]

"I know!"

The least favourite . . . See if you can have a guess.

Jo

Brian Sewell.

Stephen

You would know Simon Cowell, Cath . . . 

Jimmy

Hitler?

Stephen

I think he'll have kitsch value . . . Catherine Tate . . . 

Rob

Are these impressions of . . . They're not actually . . . Simon Cowell hasn't gone into a studio and recorded, surely?

Jimmy

I suppose all he's got to do is "Left", "Right", "Straight on", and they could . . . They fiddle about with it.

Stephen

Yup, basically they just . . . You do a few, and Baroness Thatcher is there, but, er, there's also a Juli . . . 

Rob

"Right! Right! Right!"

Stephen

[as Julian Clary] There's a Julian Clary pack too – [normal voice] – erm, it's advertised as with "Free Dale Winton voice and alerts".

Jimmy

 "You are passing a wooded area. Park the car."

Stephen

Oh, now . . . Now, then . . . But yeah, there have been several disasters. Perhaps the most extreme one was a Syrian lorry driver transporting luxury cars from Turkey to Gibraltar, who was diverted to the Grimsby area, er, 1600 miles out of his way, because there is a Gibraltar point off Lincolnshire, South Yorkshire. So he just blindly . . . Well, not blindly . . . but he, er, obediently followed it, and was seen trying to drive into the North Sea, and that's when he was stopped. And of course, a lot of villager's lives are ruined by being cut-throughs.

Rob

Friends of mine back in Wales, quite a few of them, have got Welsh . . . It's not a famous voice, but it's a Welsh sat nav, which basically goes, you know . . . 

Stephen

In the Welsh language?

Rob

No no no no, just Welsh attitude, the Welsh approach to life. Or death. [thick Welsh accent] "Turning coming up now in about forty yards, get ready for it" . . . "Getting a bit closer now, get ready, here it comes" . . . "Oh, you plank, you've missed it. Right, do a U-ey, do a U-ey" . . . "Do a . . . No . . . Don't, ah, pull over, attach a hosepipe to the exhaust and just end it all." [normal voice] And that's a very popular one.

Stephen

Well, apparently, driver distraction contributes to a quarter of all accidents, it seems, according to The Royal Society of the Prevention of Accidents, and using a hand-held mobile or a sat nav is about equal, apparently.

So, while we're on the subject of directions, who is to the right of Genghis Khan?

Jimmy

[presses buzzer, which plays the sound of a thunder clap]

Stephen

Yeah?

Jimmy [startled by the noise]

That was quite frightening. Erm, every taxi driver I've ever met? Was this a dinner party, girl, boy, girl, boy, Mrs Khan?

Stephen

Mrs Khan . . . Well, there are five hundred Mrs Khans . . . 

Jimmy

Five hundred?

Stephen

He married five hundred wives.

Jimmy

Ooh, that's a sitcom waiting to be made, isn't it?

Stephen

He had so many children that actually, they recently did a test of central Asian males, and they found that 8% of all central Asian males are related to a common ancestor about a thousand years ago, which may well be Genghis Khan.

Jimmy

So do you think in a thousand years time they'll be talking the same way about Russell Brand?

Stephen

It's highly possible.

Jo

I quite fancy that, being one of five hundred, it means you'd only have to have sex with him every year and a half.

Stephen

That's true, but he might well have chopped your head off afterwards or something; he was rather violent, as you know, and in death he was violent too, in a weird kind of way. Because what we're talking about is, when you say it . . . I literally mean who is on the right . . . 

Alan

Oh, well, you mean buried alongside him?

Stephen

Yeah.

Alan

Is he buried with relatives or with victims?

Stephen

Well, the thing is, in Mongolian tradition, er, when a great ruler like that – and there was no great ruler as great as Genghis Khan obviously – he had to be anonymous. No one could know. So this gave them a real problem. According to Marco Polo, 20,000 people were killed to keep his burial place secret.

All the slaves who excavated the grave were killed by soldiers, and then all the soldiers who killed the slaves were killed – that's how bad it was – until they suddenly realised they were in danger of killing everybody who knew where the grave was, so what they did – this is really peculiar – they realised, right, camels have got long memories. Okay. So what they – this is really unpleasant – a suckling baby camel they killed in front of it's mother by the grave where they were going to bury Genghis Khan, right? And then they took the mother away and they buried the baby camel next to Genghis Khan. So that's who's to the right of Genghis Khan. And every year . . . 

Jimmy

Ah, I was gonna guess that.

Stephen

Every year the camel would remember exactly where the grave was because it knew exactly where its little baby was . . . It's very sad . . . 

Jimmy

That's a lovely story, thanks for that.

Stephen

Then the camel . . . Then the camel died . . . 

Jo

Think I'll tell my daughters that tonight. Get 'em off to sleep. "Here you go girls. I've got a lovely story about a camel."

Stephen

Then the camel died –

Jimmy

Then the camel died . . . ?

Stephen

 – and then no-one knew where he was buried. So that was unfortunate.



Tell me about Mongols, though.

Alan

The Mongol hordes.

Stephen

The Mongol hordes, yeah. Two million people, the Mongol hordes amounted to, but they managed to kill an estimated fifty million of their enemy. Staggeringly savage. And what gave them the advantage? Principally?

Alan

They had lasers.

Stephen

They did have weapons.

Alan

Photon torpedoes.

Rob

They had weapons . . . They had weapons that were ahead of the time.

Stephen

They did. They had bows that were short . . . They weren't huge longbows; they were short, carried them in the saddle, because it was the riding; it was the horses. They introduced horses to . . . 

Jo

They were bloody good at riding, weren't they?

Stephen

They would ride for days . . . 

Jo

They used to jump across.

Stephen

That's right. They wouldn't even go to the loo, I mean, they would go to the loo while jumping from one horse to the other. They stayed in the saddle for day after day, they keep . . . 

Jo

What, in the air, or . . . ?

Stephen

In the air. They keep . . . 

Jo

What if you mis-timed that? That's bad for the horses. "I'm sorry, I've shat on this one."

Jimmy

Would you . . . I'd love to see that. Jumping from horse to horse and doing a little wee; that's a magnificent thing.

Stephen

It is, isn't it? But yeah, it was their horsemanship and their bows and arrows that did it. And just their violence, their desire and happiness at killing people. But they were a great big empire.

Alan

And . . . They're not so angry any more?

Stephen

Mongols? No, they seem rather cheerful.

Alan

I mean, they don't have a reputation now, do they, for hoarding?

Stephen

No, no, they're lovely people. Very charming, very nice.

Jimmy

They don't horde any more; they've got cash in the attic now. All gold.

Stephen

They're very fine.

But anyway, Genghis Khan is buried next to a baby camel, which, er, acted like a sort of thirteenth century sat nav guiding people back to his tomb. Now, how did the tea cup change the course of Chinese history?

Jo

Did they used to have tea just in their hands – [cups her hands] – like that, before?

Stephen

No, they invented it . . . 

Alan

[mimes drinking ferociously hot tea with his hands] 

Stephen

You might almost say . . . 

Alan

[blowing furiously on his hands] Ow . . . Aah. [pretends to drink from his hands] "We're going to have to invent something for this!"

Stephen

They invented it so early that it was a disadvantage. It held back the course of Chinese history.

Jimmy

Oh! When they were building the great wall, was everyone going, "Right! Cuppa?" They'd have to make five thousand cups of tea, and then, well, the day's over: "We got nothing done".

Stephen

They did, unlike the Europeans . . . 

Alan

Is it because they . . . They . . . Now, is it something to do with metal and ceramics, or is it because they invented it and didn't therefore invent other things that would have come before it?

Stephen

Yes. Yeah, that's the point. In our culture, we came to china much later, which we got from them, hence calling it "china" . . . 

Alan

We had bronze and . . . 

Stephen

We also had wine, which they never drank in China, and wine . . . It's the colour; it's very beautiful and we developed a technology for containing wine.

Alan

Glass.

Stephen

Glass. With glass came lens grinding, came telescopes and microscopes, and through spectacles, intellectuals and scientists had an extra twenty years of reading and active life, and further, all the way through to the invention of medical science, flasks, beakers, retorts . . . Because it's chemically neutral, glass, doesn't react to anything that's in it. And the Chinese had no glass made in all of China from the fourteenth century right up to the nineteenth century.

Alan

And no mirrors, either.

Stephen

And therefore no mirrors. So, in fact, just because they were satisfied with the tea cup and didn't bother . . . This incredibly ingenious race who would have otherwise invented so many other things, and did invent so many other things, were . . . the one thing they couldn't do. And electronics used glass for valves and so on.

Rob

The irony is a lot of them prefer coffee.

Stephen

Yeah! Go figure.

Alan

What did they do for a window?

Stephen

They used paper.

Alan

Hah! Paper's rubbish for a window! It gets wet and you can't see through it.

Stephen

And they had dark houses, I mean, that's another thing . . . 

Rob

[chortles] "They had dark houses."

Alan

Dark houses, yeah, because they didn't have light bulbs either; these people are useless. What about lanterns, take the lantern out in the dark . . . 

Stephen

They had Chinese lanterns, like that.

Alan

What . . . Paper lanterns, that's the worst invention yet.

Jo

I reckon they could offer you indoor fireworks, though, couldn't they. We didn't have fireworks.

Stephen

They had the fireworks, yeah.

Alan

But they . . . Obviously, they invented the plastic tub for keeping rice in, centuries ago, and those tinfoil ones with the cardboard lid though.

Stephen

Yes.

Alan

So they were way ahead in some areas.

Stephen

They . . . They clearly were. Anyway, there you are, that's china and glass. The course of Chinese history changed by their preference for tea, which meant they never bothered to develop glass.

Now, where would you find the world's driest lake, the world's smallest mountain range, and the world's wettest desert?

Jo

Are they all in the same place?

Stephen

They are in the same country. It . . . 

Rob

We're looking at America, aren't we?

Stephen

We are in America. You can tell, really; it's a big giveaway.

Rob

We're in the Midwest of America. We are in . . . 

Stephen

Oh. Start on the left of our triptych. Where's that?

Rob

That's Salt Lake Flats? Or apartments . . . 

Stephen

It is. It's the biggest and driest lake in the world, and it is a salt lake, and it's so flat that it's very useful for some things, so useful that it's . . . 

Rob [spoken rapidly]

The land speed record, Anthony Hopkins, world's fastest Indian. "I want to break the world speed record, I'm going to do it in this car, here I go, look at me now, here we go!" [voice morphs into a New Zealand accent] "I'm brave, I'm a brave New Zealander, sometimes my accent's gonna be like that and sometimes it'll be something else altogether, no matter, Anthony Hopkins, moving on, moving on!"

Jimmy

Now what if he was trapped in a box?

Rob
[repeats a sentence using his "man in a box" voice]

Jimmy

Pretty good!

Stephen

Oh, you are wonderful. I can use you as a companion for a walking tour or to be trapped in a lift with any day Rob. Erm, but yes, you're right, and there's a name. The name of that particular lake is given to a famous Triumph motorcycle; does that help you give its name?

Rob

Oh . . . Bonneville.

Stephen

It's Bonneville, yes, Mr Bonnville, Bonneville lake. And it's so flat you can see the curvature of the earth on it. And it's ideal . . . 

Alan

Wow.

Jimmy

So, it's not that flat, then? Curved, literally curved.

Stephen

So, yes, the salt flat is the driest lake.

Jimmy

Why do they call it a lake? Because it's not a lake any more.

Stephen

Well, it's a dried-up lake. Its shape and all its features are dominated by its ex-lakeness.

Rob

Except for the water.

Stephen

Exactly, except for the water, yeah. The Mediterranean was once the biggest dry lake in the world, in the late Miocene era.

Alan

The water came rushing in over the Straits of Gibraltar.

Stephen

Yeah, quite right. Six million years ago.

Alan

I know this because I saw it in the Plymouth Aquarium.

Jimmy

That must have been fabulous for all the, sort of, all the towns around Spain and Portugal that rely on tourism. It must've been a hell of a year. And that just, kind of, came in and they went, "This is fantastic. Finally, these jet skis are going to get an outing."

Stephen

It's true, yeah. Anyway, the Rock of Gibraltar joined North Africa to Spain, crumbled away, and the water from the Atlantic flooded in, and there you were. There was the Mediterranean Sea. And all the fish in the Mediterranean are descended from Atlantic types.

Rob

You mentioned the Rock of Gibraltar. People think of monkeys and the Rock of Gibraltar.

Stephen

They do, yes.

Jimmy

That's your point?

Stephen

Is that it?

Rob

No.

Stephen

No? Right, what else do we know about Barbary apes?

Rob

Nothing. That was it.

Stephen

But the Barbary monkeys, which are called . . . mis-called Barbary apes – they are actually Barbary monkeys – you're quite right about monkeys. Thank you, thank you.

Smallest mountain range was the mid-most of our triptych of photographs.

Jimmy

So where's that?

Stephen

That's not far away. It's . . . 

Jimmy

How is that a mountain? Isn't that a hill?

Stephen

Instead it was . . . Bonneville is in which state?

Jimmy

Utah.

Stephen

Utah is exactly right, yes. And we're moving a little further to . . . What's the capital of California? State capital of California?

Rob

Oh . . . I know what it is, it's where the University is, isn't it? Where he goes in The Graduate, where he goes in the car? Dustin Hoffman drives there to see Elaine . . . 

Stephen

Sacramento. Sacramento.

Rob

[as Dustin Hoffman] "Elaine! Elaine!" [as himself] I'm doing Dustin Hoffman – [as Dustin Hoffman] – "Elaine!"

Stephen [as Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, spoken between the teeth]

"Oh, God. Oh, God, you're trying to seduce me, Mrs Robinson."

Rob

Sorry, Steve, has he had a stroke?

Jimmy

So the smallest mountain range?

Stephen

The smallest mountain range . . . 

Rob

The Hoffman mountains.

Stephen

We were talking . . . Yes, Sacramento is the State capital of California.

Jimmy

How . . . How is that not a hill, then? How . . . What defines a mountain?

Stephen

That's a good question. In the U.S., anything that rises a thousand feet from base to apex is a mountain. In the U.K., the official definition is six hundred metres above sea level, a little less than two thousand feet. In this mountain range, there are 2117 feet; it's only something like ten miles in diameter, the whole range.

Rob

One thinks of that wonderful British film, er, starring that great British actor Hugh Grant: The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain.

Stephen

Oh, yes, that's right. Thank you. And . . . So . . . 

Jimmy

Hang on a second, team, I have a feeling . . . [to Rob] Do you do Hugh Grant?

Rob [as Hugh Grant]

"Ah, gosh, I went up a hill and, er, sort of, came down a . . . came down a bloody mountain, ah, gosh."

Jimmy

"I have a feeling we won't be going, then."

Stephen

Very good, excellent. And moving on, the wettest desert?

Jimmy

The wet . . . The North Sea.

Stephen

Ah ha. You see, now, you have to stick to the definition of a desert.

Alan

Still in America?

Stephen

Still in America.

Jimmy

What's the definition of a desert?

Stephen

A desert is a place –

Alan

 – where there's virtually no rainfall. Is that right?

Stephen

Well, there can . . . There's quite a lot of rainfall here, but there's a moisture deficit. It loses more moisture than it . . . 

Alan

It's kind of got a holy floor.

Stephen

Yeah. It qualifies . . . It is the Sonoran Desert in California.

Jo

Oh.

Stephen

The Western states of the U.S.A. have many mighty unusual features, including the driest lake, the smallest mountain range, and the wettest desert in the world.

Now, in 1851, James Wyld installed a 60-foot high scale model of the Earth in the middle of London, including all the land masses and the seas and the mountains, built to scale. What was the best direction to see it from?

Jo

What about from inside?

Stephen

Yes, is the right answer.

Jo

Yes! [holds fists up in victory]

Jimmy

Oh, is it made of glass?

Stephen

It was a perfect representation of the earth from the inside . . . 

Stephen

It was one of the wonders of the age. It was there in Leicester Square between 1851 and 1862. A visitor said, "I visited it several times and I never met anyone who was not delighted with it or did not find it most instructive." And . . . I don't know if you can see the details there; the top left there, you can probably see Scandinavia and Britain just at the very top left, about, sort of, between ten and eleven o'clock. Yeah?

What's fascinating about it is that it's, obviously you're inside it, so it's like an inverse of how the world really is. And yet, one of the odd things about the way maps and projections are, is that it . . . A globe is an accurate representation of what we think the world is; it's round; but that one, being inside it, is exactly the same. In other words – [demonstrates using a piece of paper] – if you were to take a piece of paper and you were to draw the world and do this – [makes a cylinder] – and look at the piece of paper on a cylinder, you'd say, "Okay, that's kind of like how it is." But it would look identical if you took the same piece of paper – [makes a cylinder with the reverse facing out] – and looked at it when it was concave rather then convex . . . 

Jo

So what happened to it then?

Stephen

Well, sadly, it came down after twelve years; the lease on the ground was expired, whoever owned Leicester Square.

Alan

The lease on the Earth?

Stephen

The lease on . . . The lease on the ground on which it stood.

Rob

The high-rent West End.

Stephen

So it's now the centre of Leicester Square.

Jimmy

It sounds like a brilliant thing to build again.

Stephen

It's . . . Wouldn't it be wonderful? But it's, er, it was very successful. It was there to coincide with the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park but it gave everybody joy and pleasure, as you can see, and they were . . . As in all those drawings, someone pointing like that. But, er, it's a very fine . . . 

Alan

And top hats.

Stephen

And top hats . . . 

Alan

They're all wearing top hats to go inside the earth.

Stephen

Wouldn't that be wonderful? Anyway, there it was, man called Wyld, his Great Globe in Leicester Square and it was an enormous triumph, scale model of the world viewed from the inside.

Let's try something simpler: Where did the Arctic Highlanders get their cutlery from?

Alan

Sheffield, that's where you get your cutlery from.

Stephen

Ah, well, that's just a . . . 

Rob

Ah, from Nordic . . . 

Jo

IKEA.

Jimmy

So, when you say, what was is, Northern . . . 

Stephen

Well, that's the clue. Arctic Highlanders was the . . . 

Jimmy

Do you mean Eskimos?

Stephen

We now call them Inuktitut Polar Eskimos, yeah. A man called Ross, after whom the Ross Sea is named . . . He was the first European to encounter . . . And this particular tribe, Inuktituts, 200 of them he met. It was an extraordinary meeting; they thought they were the only people on the planet. They didn't know there were any other people in the world.

Alan

It's very much like that in Essex.

Stephen

It's rather touching though, isn't it? They saw him; they'd never seen anyone else. But they had . . . cutlery.

Alan

Metal . . . ?

Stephen

Metal cutlery.

Rob

Where did it come from?

Stephen

Where did it come from?

Alan

Aliens.

Stephen

"Aliens" is not a bad answer.

Jimmy

Was it one of the guys that went up there to the North Pole and just left a bunch of stuff and they found it?

Stephen

No, no, this man Ross was the first European ever to go up close to the North Pole. I'm talking a long time ago, look . . . See?

Stephen

We're talking 1818, before anyone had been to the North Pole.

Jimmy

And they had proper knives and . . . ?

Stephen

Pretty proper. They were a mixture of bone and metal.

Jimmy

Was it mail order?

Stephen

They didn't have the technology . . . 

Alan

Did they excavate them or something?

Stephen

They didn't have the technology to smelt metal, to make metal; had no knowledge about iron ore or anything of the kind.

Jimmy

And they thought they were the only people . . . 

Stephen

They thought they were the only people on Earth, so it's a real puzzle, but they had cutlery. It wasn't from a box from Sheffield that had got, sort of, got washed ashore . . . 

Alan

Not from an abandoned Ford Escort.

Stephen

No, it was still 1818, it was just . . . 

Jimmy

Oh, ooh, it is because the North Pole is magnetic? And all the cutlery naturally went . . . You know when you lose a spring? That's where it ends up.

Alan

What about drifting shipwrecks?

Stephen

No. You were closest with aliens.

Jo

Was it meteorites?

Stephen

Meteorites! Jo Brand, points there! Meteorites. They looked like a woman sewing, a tent, and a dog to them, so that's what they knew them as. But, er, they took flakes from the one that they called the woman, metal flakes, and they attached bits of horn and used them as eating implements, as cutlery. Seventy years later, the . . . Who was the first man to get to the North Pole? Supposedly?

Rob

Was it Michael Palin?

Stephen

It wasn't Michael Palin. No.

Jo

Ralph Fiennes? I would've called him "Rafe" Fiennes.

Stephen

No, we're talking about 1818.

Jo

1818? Queen Victoria.

Stephen

A man called Admiral Peary, an American . . . 

Jo

Oh, Peary, I've heard of him.

Stephen

Yes, Peary, there he was . . . He was a rather . . . 

Alan

He was a Yeti.

Stephen

He was a pretty horrific figure, actually, I mean he went to these same people and stole their meteorites, basically, which they'd been taking their cutlery off, and sold them to a museum for $40,000.

Jo

He took some children, didn't he?

Stephen

He took some children; they took six of whom four died of TB instantly. And then one of them survived and was brought up by an American couple, and was then horrified to discover his parents, his father, as a skeleton in the Natural History Museum in New York, on display, and complained, and Peary refused to do anything about it, er, but reluctantly gave him enough money to carry home, and it wasn't until 1993 that the remains of those Inuktituts were sent back to their homeland.

Jimmy

That's horrific.

Stephen

No, it was very grim.

Jimmy

Did he know he was going to see his father or was he just wandering around the museum and went, "I know him!"

Stephen

Yeah.

Jimmy

That's awful.

Stephen

It is. It's a horrible episode in the exploitation of a native peoples, I'm afraid.

Rob

All these things were done, I mean, in the name of, sort of, science but also entertainment, to a degree, as a spectacle.

Stephen

And in the case of Peary, riches and ambition; he was psychotically ambitious.

Stephen

And now most people believe he didn't even get to the North Pole himself, because the story he tells: he would have had to gone at a speed that no one has subsequently ever gone on Arctic exploration.

Jo [pointing at viewscreens]

That's what I look like before I've done my bikini line.

Stephen

That's a great look. It's a lovely look.

Jo

That beard's gone a bit mental as well, hasn't it? It's brilliant.

Stephen

It is. Anyway, Polar Eskimos made metal knives and implements by chopping flakes off three large meteorites that they called "The Tent", "The Dog", and "The Woman".

Jimmy

Cor! Look at Alan's face!

Stephen

– and are found all over the world?

Alan

Not . . . the blue whale.

Stephen

You are right! You weren't falling for that one.

Jimmy

Large, blue . . . ?

Stephen

Large, blue, found all over the world, rare – 

Rob

Have calves.

Stephen

 – have calves –

Rob

Wet bottoms.

Stephen

 – slow moving, wet bottoms.

Jimmy

You've lost me. I thought maybe a Smurf with an aneurism.

Stephen

Well, I mean, that would be "blue whales" if it weren't for the slow-moving, but blue whales are pretty quick; they can go thirty miles an hour.

Jimmy

I . . . Well, I'm just going by the picture, but clouds?

Stephen

No. They're not really blue, to be honest.

Jimmy

They're not blue? The bits in-between are . . . 

Stephen

That's not cloud.

Jimmy

That's sky, isn't it? I knew that, I knew that.

Stephen

We have thought this through, yeah.

Alan

Is it going to be a creature of some sort?

Stephen

No, it's a phenomenonmenonmenon*.

Rob

It's not to do with ice, is it?

Stephen

It is so to do with ice, it hurts.

Rob

Is it a type of iceberg,

Stephen
?

Stephen

Not an iceberg, though, no.

Rob

No, that's right. Erm . . . 

Jo

Is this an ice floe? Even though I don't know what that is.

Stephen

Yes. You do know what an ice floe is.

Jo

Is it kind of big lump . . . 

Alan

A glacier.

Stephen

A glacier is an ice floe, exactly. You can share the point.

Jo

Is it a glacier?

Stephen

Yes! Good!

Jimmy

I'm doing my bit to save those. I've stopped eating the sweets.

Stephen

Very good. They can be enormous; there's one 250 miles long, 60 miles wide, a mile deep. I mean, they're vast.

Rob

Calves? How can they have calves?

Stephen

Well the bits that break off into the sea are known as calves. It's called "calving", when they drop their bits . . . 

Rob

It's a red herring for us, wasn't it?

Stephen

It was, really.

Rob

You see, we automatically thought either something with huge calves or baby calves.

Stephen

Yes, and the wet bottoms.

Rob

Ah, don't get me started.

Stephen

That's when, in warmer climes, there are some which are almost not freezing, when they're at zero degrees centigrade, and they slide down and their bottoms are warmer. The bottom, the underside, that's the bit on the Earth it slides down. And they can go . . . What's the fastest you imagine a glacier is likely to go?

Jimmy

Forty.

Stephen

Forty what?

Jimmy

Forty in a thirty.

Alan

It might go a couple of inches in a year.

Stephen

Well . . . 

Rob

More than . . . I would say more than that.

Alan

Ten feet?

Stephen

Sixty-five feet a day is considered very rapid. But there was one in –

Alan

Two inches was a bit off.

Stephen

– in Pakistan that went seven and a half miles in three months. Which is very fast.

Alan

Must be another word for a glacier there, then . . . 

Stephen

Yes. Well you see, it's a racier glacier, if you like. But amazingly, you get them all around the world, including the tropics.

Rob

Really?

Stephen

"Tropical glaciers? Hello? That's odd." But you do.

Rob

But they're the fruit flavoured ones, aren't they?

Stephen

One on the border of Uganda and Congo. Equatorial really, isn't it?

Alan

High up?

Stephen

Yes, pretty high. Do you find life in glaciers?

Jimmy

Yes, oh, yes.

Stephen

What kind?

Jimmy

Smurfs!

Rob

You would find plankton, er, underneath the glacier, trying to permeate the membrane of the glacier?

Stephen

There's a kind of red algae, and on the red algae there's a creature that lives on the red algae, a kind of worm.

Jimmy

A wiggly worm?

Stephen

An ice worm. A wiggly ice worm, a sort of annelid worm . . . 

Stephen

There's one. Lovely picture.

Alan

What a life.

Stephen

And, yeah, it's an amazing life but in one glacier alone they found more of those worms than there are human beings on the surface of the planet.

Rob

Oh, good Lord. Really? Wow.

Alan

They found a billion; they just kept on looking.

Stephen

Yeah. They kept on looking.

Alan

"Another one! Another one!"

Stephen

"And another one." Absolutely.

Alan [deadpan]

"And another one."

Stephen

Their ideal temperature is about zero. They freeze to death at minus seven, and above five they melt. They are quite like an ice cream in that way.

Jimmy

Is that not delicious?

Stephen

Yeah. Now, in 17 . . . [he pauses, listening to his earpiece]. Why are there no snakes in Ireland?

Jimmy

Sorry?

Stephen

Why are there no snakes in Ireland?

Rob

Oh, I know this, because, er . . . Ah . . . 

Stephen

There's a reason that's related to the question I've been asking.

Rob

Something to do with the ice age and the glaciers?

Stephen

Yeah, there were twenty periods of glaciation in Ireland that would just come . . . I mean, they were withdrawing and coming, withdrawing . . . All these glaciers . . . 

Rob

So there's no, er . . . [pauses as the audience laugh at Stephen's inference].

[to Stephen] Do you realise what you've just said? You really can't help yourself, can you?

Stephen

I just . . . am sorry. But . . . Snakes can't survive . . . 

Jo

Is that why they're all Catholic in Ireland?

Stephen

Snakes can't survive with frozen ground. Anyway, we were talking about glaciers, and they're found all over the world, and they're large and they're blue, and they have calves. But, unlike the surprisingly nippy blue whale, they can't manage much more than about sixty feet a day at top speed.

Now, the U.S.A. claims the legal right to seize territory wherever it might find . . . What?

Rob

Oil.

Jimmy

Is it a street without a Starbucks?

Alan

Would it be . . . Well, is it an American hostage or prisoner or something?

Stephen

No, it's essentially a law which has never been repealed. Er, it's 150 years old, almost.

Jimmy

Is it the Ark of the Covenant?

Stephen

No, no, it's something . . . 

Jimmy

Is this involved in some sort of action film that I would have seen?

Stephen

No, but it is involved in the plot of Dr. No. It's how Doctor No dies in the novel, actually. He's covered in this material, and if it's found on an island that's unclaimed, any American citizen can raise an American flag and claim it.

Jo

Gold.

Stephen

It's a kind of gold. It's as valuable, almost, as gold, in the nineteenth century.

Jo

Silver.

Stephen

Er, no.

Jo

Nickel.

Stephen

No, it's not a metal.

Alan

Copper.

Stephen

It's not a metal.

Jimmy

Tupperware.

Stephen

It's not a plastic. Christ. All right . . . 

Jo

Diamonds.

Stephen

You haven't read Dr. No. . . . Does anyone in the audience know?

Woman in Audience

Guano.

Stephen

"Guano"! They shout and they are right. Points to the audience; you're very . . . 

Jimmy

Guano?

Stephen

Guano.

Jimmy

Is that a delicious drink that'll make you take off?

Stephen

No.

Jimmy

What's guano?

Jo

Bird shit, isn't it?

Stephen

Yes. It's the poo from –

Jo

Do I get points back?

Stephen

 – birds that have eaten a lot of anchovies in Peru.

Jimmy

What?!

Stephen

And it –

Jimmy

Have you gone out of your mind, man?

Stephen

 – was one of the most valuable products in the nineteenth century. It was a fertiliser that was unbelievably rich in nitrates and potassium and all the things that you need to double, treble, quadruple, quintuple the yield from land. So it was immensely valuable and it created many, many millionaires and it was responsible for 75% of Peru's entire economy. And you can imagine it was a pretty horrific thing to mine, to excavate, open-cast mining. Because it dries like concrete. Really, really tough.

So they used to pickaxe and dynamite to get it away and they have huge armies of, essentially, slaves and Chinese and convicts who would be hacking away at this stuff.

Jimmy

Do we still use it now?

Stephen

It's an interesting point; I mean, the anchovy shoals are being used now principally for . . . 

Jimmy

Caesar salad?

Stephen

Sadly, if only they were, then they might survive. But . . . 

Alan

It's perfect for feeding fish farms.

Stephen

For feeding fish farms and for feeding chickens and all kinds of things in China.

Alan

It takes five kilograms of anchovies to one kilogram of salmon meat or fowl meat. Fish, flesh.

Stephen

People buy farmed salmon, thinking that, "Oh, this is sustainable, it's good farm salmon." But instead they're just using up enormous stocks of anchovy.

Since 1856, the USA has claimed the legal right to take possession of islands where they find guano, bird's doings to you and me. The properties of guano were first discovered by the great father of geography, Alexander von Humboldt.

Now, who taught Alexander von Humboldt how to speak the Ature language forty years after the last person who spoke it died?

Jimmy

A confidence trickster.

Jo

A parrot.

Stephen

Yes! Oh, Jo Brand! That is brilliant. You are rocking! You are absolutely rocking. He was in Venezuela, Alexander von Humboldt, and he heard about this tribe that had been eaten by the Caribs, a cannibalistic tribe of the area, and they'd all gone, apparently. But someone said, "No, there is a parrot who still is alive . . . " – parrots can live quite a long time – " . . . and it knows . . . "

Jimmy

How did it talk it's way out of that?

Stephen

It had forty words in the language which von Humboldt wrote down and learned. Of course, we can't know how accurate it was; he was with someone who spoke a related language and they made guesses as to what the forty Ature words might be.

Jo

So, like, "Who's a cheeky boy, then?".

Stephen

He would quite like that because he was gay, Humboldt, funnily enough. As it happens.

Rob

Well, I find that kind of stereotyping rather offensive. If you're saying that all gay people are like "cheeky boys" . . . 

Stephen

No, he might've liked to say . . . [breaks down laughing].

Rob

When are you going to let up with your relentless gay bashing?

Stephen

How many words can a parrot learn, do you know?

Alan

182.

Stephen

That's good and specific. There have been 200, but the odd thing is why they speak at all. Why is it that they do mimic humans?

Rob

It's . . . They have that little thing in the back of their throat that I have where they go . . . [repeats his "man in a box" voice].

Stephen

But the extraordinary thing is, no parrot in the wild has ever been observed mimicking another bird or another animal. So what . . . 

Jo

There are birds in the wild that mimic noises.

Stephen

There are birds that do, yes, Mynah birds and other birds, but parrots don't. They just have their own screech and they're satisfied with that. They don't imitate other birds; they've never been observed to, and that is rather a shock isn't it?

Rob

Do you have the answer? There's a . . . 

Stephen

No, I don't. I literally . . . I'm sorry . . . 

Rob

Oh, you don't?

Stephen

It's a real question. So Humboldt apparently learned Ature from a parrot.

Which leaves us plummeting over the sheer cliff of General Ignorance, so fingers on buzzers for a quick fire round . . . What do Mongolians live in?

Rob

[presses buzzer, which plays the sound of a ship's foghorn]

They're called something like a yakkas or a yolt or a yak . . . 

Jo

Do you mean a "yurt"?

Stephen

Oh . . . 

Rob

Yes, that's the one.

Rob

No, that's not the one.

Jo

Yeah, thanks Rob.

Stephen

No, "yurt" is a Turkish word that Mongolians would not be pleased if you called their "gur" – which is what they call their little tents – a "yurt" at all.

Jo

Well, I won't then.

Stephen

No, indeed, now we know. Er, they don't call them that; it's where they live, and it means "home" in Mongolian, really.

Where in Holland is the Dutch city of Groningen?

Alan

Is it not going to be in Holland. Is it in a . . . 

Stephen

It's not in Holland.

Alan

It's another one of the Netherlands.

Stephen

Yes, you're very smart. There are two provinces called Holland and they're both south of where Groningen is . . . 

Stephen

There, you see?

Jimmy

Sorry, there's two places called Holland?

Stephen

Yeah. The country's called "The Netherlands", and there are two areas of it called "Holland", North Holland and South Holland, in which Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, all the big cities are, but that part there where Groningen is not in Holland; it's in The Netherlands.

Rob

The photo you showed looked like Guilford, didn't it?

Stephen

It did a bit.

Rob

It did, that famous shot of Guilford . . . 

Rob

That could be Britain, couldn't it? So easily . . . If it didn't have a big sign saying "Groningen".

Jimmy

That really was the clue there, I felt.

Stephen

Yeah.

Rob

That's the giveaway.

Stephen

They have a pub there that claims to have been open non-stop for ten years.

Rob

So indeed, it could be Britain.

Stephen

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Alan

Are you suggesting we have more in common with our European neighbours than otherwise?

Rob

I'm suggesting the world is becoming homogenised and indistinct, and I, for one, think that's a bad thing.

Stephen

Hear hear hear! Quite right. Quite right. There you go.

Jimmy

We all think like that. We're all the same.

Stephen

Yes. Groningen is in The Netherlands, but it isn't in Holland, which refers only to the two Western provinces, an eighth of the country's total land mass. Us calling the whole country "Holland" is a bit like them calling Britain "East Anglia". Er . . . Which would be nice, but they don't.

What is quite interesting about Church Flatts Farm in Derbyshire?

Rob

Is it to do with the height above sea level?

Stephen

No, but you're so much in the right area.

Jimmy

Is it the height below sea level?

Jo

Is it not flat and it hasn't got a church there?

Stephen

Well, no, it's not that exactly.

Alan

Is it the highest flat bit?

Stephen

No, but it's the sea . . . Think of the sea . . . You're in Derbyshire . . . 

Rob

Oh, I . . . I . . . I know, I know what it is. It's the furthest . . . It's the point in Britain that is –

Alan

The furthest . . . 

Rob

 – the furthest from the sea. Erm, yes, I've got it, Alan.

Stephen

I won't have you competing for Sir's favours.

Jimmy

Isn't it something like 72 miles? You can't be more than . . . 

Stephen

Exactly, well, 70 miles. Nowhere in Britain is more than 70 miles from the coast, which perhaps makes Church Flatts Farm in Derbyshire the very middle of the country.

Anyway, which language is the Spanish National Anthem sung in?

Jimmy

Well, I'm gonna go for . . . Teally . . . I'm gonna . . . 

[presses buzzer, which plays the sound of a thunder clap]

Is it Spanish?

Stephen

No.

Rob

It's not . . . They speak Catalan, is it? Is it Catalan?

Stephen

Oh . . . 

Alan

Is it Castilian? What was the royal, kind of . . . 

Stephen

Well, that is Spanish, really, isn't it? It still is classic Spanish.

Jimmy

Sorry, Stephen, can you just remind me what was the language that guy was taught, forty years after it died out, by a parrot?

Stephen

It's not that one, no.

Alan

What a fool.

Jimmy

I didn't say anything; don't be aggressive.

Alan

Er, is it . . . Is it instrumental?

Stephen

Yes, is the right answer. It has the words . . . It's very odd. It has one of the oldest tunes from La Marcha Real; it's the only national anthem with no words. The old ones were dropped after the death of Franco in 1975, but then they were inspired by visiting Liverpool fans, listening to You'll Never Walk Alone, which is a song from an American Broadway Musical, bizarrely, called Carousel . . . 

Alan

Hey . . . Hey, hey . . . 

Stephen

I know.

Alan [Liverpool accent]

Don't talk rubbish.

Stephen

It is!

Jimmy [to Alan]

You couldn't look any more Scouse.

Stephen

So the Spanish Olympic Committee held a competition in 2007 to replace the words of their Franco fascist one, but they were withdrawn after five days having fallen foul of several Spanish regions. They criticised the new version, which was called Viva España, unfortunately, for being "too nationalistic".

Jimmy

What . . . For a national anthem?

Stephen

Yeah, for a national anthem, duh, erm . . . But the words were "Long live Spain! Let's all sing together with different voices and only one heart." It doesn't seem that terrible. As opposed to La Marseillaise: "Do you hear in the countryside, the roar of those ferocious soldiers, they come right here into your midst, to slit the throats of your sons and wives." Which is quite aggressive. Or God Save the Queen has the sixth verse; I don't know if you know that . . . ?

Jimmy

Of course I know the sixth verse to God Save the Queen.

Alan

Is that the one where, er . . . 

Stephen [to Jimmy]

Give us, give us.

Jimmy

Well, I have to sing it all the way through . . . 

Alan

Is it all about going up to Scotland and killing everybody?

Stephen

That's the one. "Lord grant that Marshall Wade, may by thy mighty aid, victory bring; May he sedition hush, and like a torrent rush, rebellious Scots to crush, God Save the Queen."

Jimmy

[stands up with his hand on his heart]

Stephen

Hear hear.

Jimmy

Oh, I'm sorry. [sits]

Stephen

One of the oddest ones is back to our old friends, the Dutch. This is the Dutch national anthem, still the Dutch national anthem: "William of Nassau, scion of a Dutch and ancient line," fair enough, "Dedicate undying faith to this land of mine, A prince I am undaunted of Orange ever free, To the King of Spain, I've granted a lifelong loyalty." In the Dutch national anthem they say they've granted a lifelong loyalty to the King of Spain.

Rob

The most deferential national anthem ever heard.

Stephen

It is bizarre, I mean, 350 years ago Holland was part of the Spanish Netherlands, but that's a long time ago.

The Spanish national anthem is the only one which officially has no words. They did try and write some, but they were rejected for being too patriotic. Which brings us to the scores, ladies and gentlemen . . . 

Jimmy

I'm quietly confident.

Stephen

Heaven . . . bless my soul . . . I don't know how this could have happened, but in last place with minus twenty-eight points, it's Rob Brydon . . . And just behind him with minus twenty-one,

Jimmy
Carr . . . 

Jimmy

So sort of a winner, first of the winners . . . 

Stephen

Who can it be, who can it be . . . Who can it be in second place with minus ten, it's Jo Brand . . . And he breasted the tape at the very last minute, an impressive minus seven, Alan Davies! So it only remains for me to thank Rob, Jimmy, Jo, and Alan, to wish you all safe onward journeys, and I leave you with this from Ambrose Bierce. "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography". Good night.