TRANSCRIPT

Stephen
Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. Good evening, and welcome . . . welcome to the QI Gothic special. It’s a dark and stormy night, and four contestants are sat in my cave: The ghostly Jimmy Carr . . . the gruesome Jack Dee . . . the ghoulish Sue Perkins . . . and the gibbering Alan Davies. So, let’s . . . let's hear, if we may, your blood-curdling buzzers. So, Jack goes:

Jack
[presses buzzer, which plays the Psycho screeching strings effect]

Stephen
Jimmy goes:

Jimmy
[presses buzzer, which plays sounds that mimic a scene from The Shining – a wooden door being chopped by an axe, a Carsonesque ‘Here’s Jimmy!' and a woman's scream]

Stephen
Ah-ha . . . Sue goes:

Sue
[presses buzzer, which plays the Wilhelm scream]

Stephen
And Alan goes:

Alan
[wearing a Viking outfit with helmet, presses buzzer, which announces the scores, ‘Arsenal, nil. Norwich City, three.’]

Stephen
That’s a dream.

Alan
What a nightmare.

Stephen
Well, now. Here’s something Gothic that starts with a G.

Viewscreens: a photo of a stone grotesque perched on top of the Notre Dame, looking over Paris city lights.

Stephen
What would you call it?

Jimmy
Oh, is that the . . . [presses buzzer, which plays a Carsonesque ‘Here's Jimmy!' and a woman’s scream]

Sue
Oh, it’s a gargoyle!

Stephen
[points at Sue] Oh! I think you were first, there. 

 Forfeit: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the word ‘GARGOYLE’.

Stephen
It’s not a gargoyle. Yeah.

Jimmy
Er, it is.

Stephen
No, it isn’t.

Jimmy
Well, it is though. [points to the screen behind] The picture up there, that is a gargoyle.

Stephen
No! No, a gargoyle is a special thing. It’s a particular thing. What’s special about the gargoyle?

Jack
It’s not a gargoyle ‘cause you can’t pour milk out of it.

Stephen
There you are! Well, milk is perhaps an unusual use of a gargoyle, but . . .

Jack
It . . . Isn’t that what the little jugs are . . . [makes a pouring motion].

Stephen
Oh, yes! They are. But it’s a water spout.

Jack
That’s water is it?

Viewscreens: two grotesques for comparison, the right one having a spout that spews out water.

Stephen
Yeah. Okay, that’s a gargoyle. It’s a draining implement. It’s for guttering. Water comes out of gargoyles. It’s from the French gargouille, meaning ‘throat,’ at the same root as our word ‘gargle.’ [growls with a uvular trill]

Jimmy
So what was the thing before?

Sue
Oh, is it a grotesque?

Stephen
It also begins with a . . . It’s a grotesque!

Sue
Grotesque.

Stephen
Take . . . Help yourself to a handful of points.

Sue
Thank you.

Stephen
Very good. It’s a grotesque, not a gargoyle. Hey, it’s as simple as that. It’s useful to know that there is . . .

Jimmy
You say it’s useful to know. I think it would have been useful to know about two minutes ago. Now, never gonna come up again.

Stephen
Yes it is. You’ll be walking your best girl along a park near the cathedral, and she’ll say, ‘Ooh!’

Jimmy
[in old fashion] My best girl!

Sue
[in old fashion] [shakes her pen] Your second best girl’s at home.

Alan
Water pouring out of the mouth.

Sue
Yeah. [opens her mouth wide like a gargoyle]

Stephen
Anyway, the point is, gargoyles spout water. The ones that don’t are just grotesques. Now, what is Gothic about the Goths?

Viewscreens: four longhaired and umbrellaed goths clad in black.

Sue
[presses buzzer, which plays the Wilhelm scream]

Stephen
Yes?

Sue
Er, the Goths were an ancient German tribe, I think, who wore crushed velvet and very, very thin drainpipe trousers and spat in shopping centres. And goths have carried on that tradition to this day.

Alan
They were a rampaging army of horny-headed warriors.

Stephen
Yes! And, actually, [to Sue] you should have points because, oddly enough . . .

Viewscreens: a heroic Gothic battle scene painted in watercolour and ink.

Stephen
. . . people think of Goths as German, but they were originally Scandiwegian. And [to Alan] you look Scandiwegian – well, you know, from that area.

Sue
Glaswegian-Scandinavians?

Stephen
Norwegian-Scandinavians.

Jimmy
They sound dangerous.

Sue
They’re hardened.

Stephen
They came from Scandinavia, and they defeated the Vandals, who were a group of Germans – that is where we get our word ‘vandal’ from.

Alan
Hanging around bus shelters.

Stephen
Yeah, exactly. And so, I think – [to Alan] – you are, oddly enough, the most Gothic of the goths, because the point is Gothic has been used to mean all kinds of things. What kinds of things can you think of that are applied to ‘Gothic’?

Jack
Cathedrals.

Stephen
Cathedrals? Why are they called Gothic?

Jimmy
Is it anything that isn’t classic?

Viewscreens: the exterior flying buttresses around the apse of Notre Dame de Paris.

Stephen
Yes, it was an insult – is the point. In renaissance Italy, they called them ‘Gothic’ to mean ‘barbarian’, because they were conceived to be the people who destroyed Rome and, therefore, destroyed civilisation, so ‘Gothic’ was a huge insult. So, there was Gothic architecture, and what else was called Gothic . . .

Sue
Gothic literature?

Viewscreens: photos of the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral and of the rose window and ribbed vaults of a church interior.

Stephen
. . . Gothic literature. That’s when you start to get ‘Gothic’ in terms of the macabre, isn’t it?

Sue
Yes, and, sort of, Byronesque, sort of, antihero, maybe.

Stephen
Yeah.

Sue
The bad monks, and women who always fainted and slightly lezzed it up.

Stephen
Yes, a little bit.

Jimmy
Bad monks is a great idea for a book.

Jack
We’ve done that.

Stephen
Monk Lewis . . .

Jack
The Da Vinci Code was that.

Stephen
Oh, yeah . . .

Jimmy
They should have called it that, Bad Monks. I’d go and see that.

Jack
Bad, bad albino.

Jimmy
[70's B-movie impersonation] It’s a film about some bad monks. These monks are turn nasty.

Alan
[his head, still with the viking helmet] This thing is now stuck to my head.

Stephen
Yeah, I would take . . . do take it off.

Alan
Thank you. [removes helmet, squeezing out his hair]

Sue
Oh.

Stephen
And what other forms of ‘Gothic’ are there. Does Carpenter Gothic mean anything to you?

Jimmy
Carpenter Gothic?

Stephen
Carpenter Gothic.

Jimmy
It was an interesting phase in their recording career, where . . . where . . . she was quite skinny anyway, and she had the mascara. So, yeah. It looked good.

Stephen
No. Carpenter Gothic?

Sue
Was it a death-obsessed Geppetto? Oh!

Viewscreens: a printout of Grant Wood’s American Gothic held against the backdrop of the Dibble House, the setting of the painting.

Stephen
Ah!

Sue
That’s American Gothic, isn’t it?

Stephen
That’s right. By?

Sue
Now, I thought it Norman Rockwell, but it isn’t.

Stephen
No, it’s not Rock. . .

Sue
It’s Grant Somebody.

Stephen
Grant is right. It’s Grant Wood. Grant Wood, his name was.

Alan
Grant Wood?

Sue
Sounds like a porn star.

Stephen
And that . . . It is rather . . .

Alan
[heraldically] I grant wood! Thank you. Whoa! [flails his hands around as if from an enormous erection]

Stephen
And that is the actual building, there, in Eldon, Iowa.

Alan
Looks better in the painting, really. Isn’t it?

Stephen
Yes, a little dilapidated.

Jack
How did the got ‘Gothic’ from that? What was Gothic about it?

Stephen
That pointed ecclesiastical star window. It’s a . . . it’s a Gothic arch.

Jack
It’s a bit of a lame effort, isn’t it, considering the trouble we went to over here.

Stephen
I know.

Jack
Americans say they can put a window like that and then call it Gothic. Nope. Lazy Gothic, they should have called it.

Sue
Half-arsed Gothic.

Jack
Couldn’t-be-bothered-to-do-it-properly Gothic.

Alan
Just so it fits under the roof, really. Isn’t it?

Stephen
Yes.

Alan
[imitating the builders] ‘So, now, what are you going to do with the window?’ ‘I don’t know. We better bend it in.’ [nods vigorously] ‘Tell them it’s Gothic.’

Sue
Wasn’t that guy in the painting his dentist?

Stephen
You’re absolutely right. It was Grant Wood’s dentist. Points for Sue Perkins, that was pretty damn good, damn good. And the woman?

Jimmy
Is it Gail from Corrie? [nods with conviction] Pretty sure that’s her.

Stephen
Gail from Corrie?

Alan
Helen Worth.

Stephen
Helen Worth, very nice woman.

Alan
She looks exactly like the character she plays.

Stephen
Hang on!

Alan
Very talented.

Sue
There is an incredible sobriety.

Stephen
That’s very good. Anyway, so there are lots of things we call ‘Gothic’. And, of course, there are the young people who go about in black eyeliner and . . . stuff.

Jimmy
Well, I like the fact that it makes me think that the Goths sacked Rome, only after being nagged by their mum for a fortnight. [imitating a goth teenager] ‘Ugh, do we have to? Ugh, rubbish.’

Stephen
They are, erm. Goths, I like goths. I have to say I like . . .

Sue
You know, emotional and soulful.

Stephen
Ah! Now, if they’re emotional, they’re actually . . . ?

Jimmy
Emos.

Sue
Ah!

Stephen
They’re emos, aren’t they?

Jimmy
I don’t get those two mixed up. [cautiously] Oh!

Stephen
Emos!

Sue
I love an emo.

Jack
I was a goth for a while.

Stephen
Were you?

Jack
I was asked to leave ‘cause I was just too miserable. ‘You’re a bit of a downer, do you notice that? Go find your own thing!’

Sue
You’re bringing them down.

Stephen
Bringing the goths down.

Alan
I was emu for a while.

Stephen
Aww.

Sue
When did the hand come out?

Jack
What is the difference between an emo and a goth? I’ve . . . I’ve missed that . . .

Alan
One is a flightless bird . . .

Sue
One’s a marauding killer . . .

Alan
. . . and the other one’s a horny-headed bandit.

Jimmy
[to Jack] Then you’ve got, like, Fields of the Nephilim and Sisters of Mercy, and then you’ve got, like, I don’t know, My Bloody Valentine and Death Cab for Cutie. It’s, like, different.

Jack
[confused] What?

Jimmy
It’s like being on a show with your dad. [imitating a goth teenager] ‘Oh-ugh, you don’t get it. I hate you.’

Stephen
That’s what we’re aiming for. No, they say that, erm, emos want to kill themselves, and goths want to kill everyone else.

Jack
I think goths are just – they’ve decided to bring together all the things that parents hate and fear most –

Stephen
Yes.

Jack
– and just put it all into one look, you know, with a pasty face and horrible dyed hair and punk clothing and rubbish music and –

Jimmy
[imitating a goth teenager, annoyed and slouching arms on the table] ‘Oh-ugh! Ugh!’

Jack
– too much cider.

Alan
I wanted to paint my bedroom black when I was a teenager. What’s the urge there? That, sort of, seems to be very common. ‘What colour do you want your room?’ [imitating his younger self] ‘Black. All of it. Totally black. The ceiling black; all of it.’

Jack
Were you allowed to do that, Alan, with your room?

Alan
No.

Jack
You weren’t?

Alan
I got some wallpaper from FADS, right, and after I had it put up, I was quite pleased with it. And I was watching Coronation Street – this is 1982, I think – and then Mike Baldwin was on, at home, with a glass of wine, flirting with someone with slightly boofy hair, and I realised, as I looked . . .

Jack
Could’ve been me. Yeah, let’s face it.

Alan
. . . as I looked behind him, he had exactly the same wallpaper as me.

Stephen
[gasps]

Alan
And I felt really unwell then. My . . . I’ve got the same taste as Mike Baldwin!

Stephen
A very lowering thought.

Sue
Fad.

Alan
But then I settled on that as a role model.

Stephen
Yes, see . . . my bedroom, I just, I . . . [his hands switch from one place to another] Hyacinth Bucket, my bedroom, Hyacinth Bucket, my bedroom – identical. Yeah.

Jimmy
I have the idea that goths are a little bit like vampires. They so want to be vampires, and they’re sort of a bit the same. Like, they can’t go out during the day, or –

Stephen
Mm-hmm.

Jimmy
– in . . . in summer, they just sort of melt.

Stephen
And the whiteface. Alice Cooper? Was he an early . . . I mean it’s almost a goth look, isn’t it?

Alan
Looks pretty goth-y to me.

Sue
Yeah, he looks, yeah, goth-ish.

Stephen
Yeah, he counts. Robert Smith of The Cure, does he count as goth?

Jimmy
Aw! Well he defines it, doesn’t he?

Alan
I would call that as pretty goth.

Sue
Siouxsie Sioux.

Stephen
Siouxsie Sioux, indeed. [points at Sue] You look the quite Siouxsie Sioux.

Sue
That’s very sweet of you, but we both know I’ve got a ridiculous pair of glasses on top. [removes glasses] You see, that was quite goth. [puts on glasses] That is, er, librarian goth.

Stephen
It’s a new movement!

Alan
You’re going to get goths meeting in libraries.

Jimmy
I don’t know about librarian, I . . . maybe, supply teacher.

Sue
You think?

Stephen
Supply, supply teacher goth.

Jimmy
Oh, just over the glasses? Oh-ho-ho . . .

Sue
[Biro on lips] Slightly licking the pencil?

Jack
Yeah.

Sue
Oh, that’s coquettish. I’m too old for that. Erm . . . Don’t know what happened there.

Stephen
Well the point is there were many things that we call ‘Gothic’, and just about the only thing they have in common is that they are completely unconnected to the Goths. But who painted this picture? 

 Viewscreens: Van Gogh’s fourth iteration of Sunflowers.

Sue
[presses buzzer, which plays the Wilhelm scream]

Stephen
Yes?

Sue
Van Goff. 

Forfeit: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words ‘VAN GOFF’.

Stephen
Oh! It’s . . . We’re after . . . I was – 

Jimmy
Whoa. I’m gonna go, Van Goth.

Stephen
Mmm . . . 

Forfeit: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words ‘VAN GOTH’.

Jimmy
What the . . . ?

Sue
Van GO!

Jack
Van Go.

Stephen
Van Go?

Sue
Van Go. 

Forfeit: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words ‘VAN GO’.

Stephen
Oh, yeah!

Sue
[screams in frustration]

Jimmy
Oh, oh! [presses buzzer, which plays a Carsonesque ‘Here's Jimmy!’ and a woman’s scream] Cézanne . . . Was that . . . ?

Stephen
At least you don’t lose points for that for some extraordinary reason.

Jack
Van Ho.

Stephen
Nng, closer but we . . .

Jack
Van Hokh!

Stephen
What? Oh, better.

Jack
Van Hokh.

Sue
Van Hoekh!

Stephen
Now listen. Ah, we actually . . . we can help you out with how that name – you came jolly close, Jack. [to Alan] Were you aware there’s a Dutch version of QI?

Jimmy
Yeah!

Alan
Er, yes.

Stephen
And would you like to see the presenter, who they . . .

Alan
Not really.

Sue
[Dutch accent] They will certainly gonna hate this.

Stephen
[points to screen behind Alan] There he is. And he’s going to tell us how the name is pronounced.

Jimmy
[Dutch accent] Ah, yeah. It’s gonna be pretty good.

Sue
[Dutch accent] So, so, sexy, this.

Stephen
He is Arthur Japin. Yeah. [Dutch accent] Come on!

Viewscreens: a video of Arthur Japin, the presenter of the Dutch version of QI.

Sue
[Dutch accent] That’s good. Come on, show me. 

Arthur
[on viewscreen] The correct Dutch pronunciation is Vincent Van ‘Khokh.’ But please, don’t try this at home. [the video freezes to a still]

Stephen
There you are!

Sue
I like him.

Jack
Yeah, well, what would he know?

Sue
Wen Khokh!

Alan
He wears more makeup than you, Stephen.

Stephen
I think you ought to be quite polite 'cause he’s actually in the audience. [points toward the audience]

Alan
Hawkh!

Stephen
Arthur Japin, there he is!

Alan
Oh!

Stephen
Hurray! Hello. Thank you. Arthur, hoe gaat het met jou . . . 

Arthur
[in the audience] Het gaat goed, Stephen.

Stephen
. . . mopje? Ja, goed? 

Arthur
Dankjewel, ja.

Stephen
Goed. Da. . . Goed. Excellent to see you. Very good. How is QI – is it a success in Dutchland? 

Arthur
Yes, people love it.

Stephen
Oh, good! And do you have a regular person who sits next to you every week? 

Arthur
I do. He’s called Thomas van Luyn.

Stephen
Van Luyn, [delicately] is he, erm, is he a bit, what’s he . . . is he, erm, is he, er . . . What’s he like?

Viewscreens: Van Gogh’s Self Portrait, September 1889.
Arthur
How can we put this delicately? Erm, he is a bit like Alan.

Stephen
He’s sharp, he’s funny, he’s clever . . . 

Arthur
Yes, we have to be kind to them.

Stephen
. . . and we have to be kind to them, yes. 

Arthur
Yes.

Alan
[pointing at screen] See that, behind Van ‘Khokh’ . . .

Jimmy
[Dutch accent] It’s probably good.

Stephen
Yeah, very good.

Alan
. . . is very similar to Mike Baldwin’s wallpaper. It’s really uncanny. Suits a little nicer.

Stephen
So, you had taste after all.

Alan
After all.

Stephen
I also should say Arthur Japin is a very, very, very brilliant novelist. [waves at Arthur] Dankuwel, Arthur!

Alan
Dankjewel, Stephen.

Stephen
Thank you. Bye-bye. So it’s Arthur Japin, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much.

Jimmy
Are we talking about Van . . . Gogh . . .

Sue
Hawkhe!

Stephen
Van Gogh.

Jimmy
. . . now?

Stephen
Yep. Go on.

Jimmy
‘Cause he gave his ear to a girl, didn’t he?

Stephen
[with reservations] Mmm . . .

Jack
Prostitute called Rachel.

Sue
To a prostitute.

Stephen
Well, though . . . [to Sue] yes. I mean that is the story.

Jimmy
I was wondering if that’s a very primitive bugging device? He thought he was cheating, and he went – [mischievously] – ‘Right, I’m gonna see. [pretends to place his removable ear on the table] I’ll leave that in the room.’ [pretends to creep away]

Alan
There’ that John Sayles film – have you seen it? – called Brother from Another Planet. It’s a really, really good film . . .

Stephen
Yeah?

Alan
. . .about a guy who lands – he’s an alien, but he just looks like a black guy from Harlem. So, he goes and lives in Harlem, gets a job fixing fruit machines. And what he can do, he can take his eye out [with accompanying motion, one eye closed] and leave it, and then he can still see.

Stephen
Ooh!

Alan
[one eye still closed] Much as I have done there.

Stephen
Yes.

Alan
I don’t know why I’ve shut my eye to tell the rest of this story.

Sue
Do you think Van Gogh was eavesdropping, using his own ear, which he had severed . . .

Jack
Oh, yeah.

Jimmy
What, he was leaving that in another place?

Alan
. . . almost certainly!

Sue
. . . almost certainly.

Stephen
Yeah. There is now a theory, of course, that he was cut off by Gauguin in a fight, isn’t there?

Sue
Yeah.

Viewscreens: Gauguin’s Self Portrait with Palette.

Jimmy
Oh, it’s not pronounced ‘Go-gan’.

Stephen
He-ey!

Jimmy
Nooo.

Stephen
Got two ‘g’s in there, isn’t it?

Sue
Hoo-khawn!

Stephen
Oh, yeah.

Alan
He looks like he’d have your ear off in a second.

Stephen
But of course he was a bit unfortunate, Van Gogh, in his reactions to things. There was a girl he was in love with back in Holland. And he went around to see the parent who denied him access. He put his hand in the flame of a candle and kept it there. [with accompanying gesture]

Jack
That would’ve really . . .

Stephen
‘As long as I keep it there . . . She can see me for as long as I keep my hand – I’ll keep burning it.’ And the father just blew the candle out and said ‘Go away!’ 

Thanks to our friends from the Dutch version of QI, we were able to give you the correct pronunciation of Van Gogh, the great man’s name. Sounds like an outbreak of pneumonia in a frog pond, but . . . Speaking of these kinds of infectious issue . . . Alan, you’re a zombie. You bite Jimmy.

Viewscreens: a black screen that is eventually filled by a swarm of bloodied zombie Alans, appearing one by one as Stephen declares someone having been bitten.

Stephen
Jimmy, you’re now a zombie. You bite Jack. Jack bites – [points to Sue] – Mel, and so on.

Alan
Sue.

Sue
[looks away from Stephen in apparent shock]

Stephen
What?

Alan
Sue.

Stephen
[buries face in hands] Yes, oh!

Alan
Come on, you! Get with the programme.

Jimmy
Stephen. Stephen. Ten points, ten points now, Stephen, if you know her name.

Sue
It’s that . . . It’s that warm, personal touch that you get when you come on this show.

Stephen
I’m so . . .

Sue
[with a swirling motion] ‘Get in the conveyor belt. Come on!’

Stephen
I’m so ashamed. I’m so, I’m so . . .

Alan
[barking] No one noticed you!

Stephen
Oh, dear.

Sue
Sorry, I’ve just been bitten and been called the wrong name.

Stephen
I’m sorry, Sue. I’m so sorry. Yes, you’ve been . . . The point is – there you are. The reciprocation has gone on: You’ve all been turned into zombies. What I want to know is how long it would take for the whole planet – everyone in the world – to be turned into a zombie?

Sue
Fifteen minutes.

Stephen
That’s 6.8 billion people.

Sue
I reckon it would take ‘bout, f– . . . How are they travelling? Just in that – [imitates a slow-walking zombie] – ‘Uhh.’

Stephen
Well, the trouble, yep . . . That is the problem.

Sue
That is really like holding a tea tray on a cruise ship. That is, erm, oh, years. Millennia, maybe.

Jimmy
I think it’s a . . . I think it’s a trick question, because he's – [to Alan] – you’re a vegetarian, and you wouldn’t bite me, I don’t think. You’d have a salad.

Alan
I wouldn’t consume you, but I would be prepared to kill you and turn you into one of me! Muhahahaha!

Jimmy
[sinister accent] And then we will all live in windmills and solve crime!

Stephen
Well . . .

Alan
I look like the character . . .

Stephen
You do, actually!

Alan
. . . but not actually . . .

Jimmy
. . . whereas Mel looks nothing like herself!

Sue
[sways her head]

Stephen
You don’t, Mel, I have to say.

Sue
No, I just have a lot of makeup.

Jimmy
You look like the other one, if anything!

Sue
I know. The other one. Can’t remember her name.

Stephen
[to Jimmy] Yeah, go on.

Jimmy
Z . . . Zombies.

Stephen
Yeah.

Alan
One, two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two . . .

Jimmy
Aren’t they . . . Wouldn’t they have . . . I don’t know how long it would take . . .

Sue
Sixty-four . . .

Alan
But they’re all biting one . . . It wouldn’t take long.

Jack
So it multiplies out . . .

Stephen
It’s an exponential growth. That’s the point.

Jack
Yes.

Stephen
Although it’s 6.8 billion . . .

Alan
One hour.

Sue
Three days.

Jimmy
Isn’t that that great thing they did – the Chinese Emperor – did something with a chessboard . . .

Stephen
Yes. No, yeah.

Alan
Three hours.

Jimmy
He did a thing with a chessboard where some guy said to him, ‘You pay me one grain of rice for the first day, and two for the second day, and then four, and then eight.’ The guy said, ‘No problem at all. That doesn’t sound like very much at all.’ And then by the end of the chessboard, it’s all the rice in the world.

Stephen
It’s more than all the rice in the world. It is way more than all the rice in the world. It’s a staggering amount. [makes a grid in the air] It’s sixty-four squares: it’s eight-by-eight. I’ll tell you how many it is. I’m gonna have to read it because it’s not the kind of number you can easily memorise. [reading from card] It’s 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains, which is what the whole world could possibly produce in eighty years if all arable land was converted.

Jimmy
So if that’s sixty four, I reckon, I don’t know . . . er . . . Thirty days. Four weeks.

Stephen
Not bad. Thirty-eight days, essentially.

Jimmy
Thirty-eight days?

Sue
Thirty-eight days for a full infection rate?

Stephen
Do you know what this kind of progression is called when things like that . . . ? It’s called a geometrical progression, as opposed to an arithmetic progression.

Jack
But if it was really happening in real life, you wouldn’t care what it was called. You’d just bloody run, wouldn’t you?

Sue
Yeah.

Jimmy
The zombie thing . . .

Stephen
Yeah, tell me about it.

Jimmy
I think "zombie" is a Haitian word.

Stephen
N . . . You’re wrong.

Jimmy
Oh.

Stephen
But it’s associated with Haiti.

Jimmy
I think it’s voodoo, isn’t it?

Stephen
Yes, but voodoo originated in . . . ?

Jimmy
Haiti.

Stephen
No.

Sue
Croydon.

Alan
Whitby!

Stephen
What is Haiti? It’s a Caribbean island, peopled by . . .

Jack
Is it African . . . Is it . . . African thing?

Jimmy
Oh, so African . . .

Stephen
African. They’re West African.

Jimmy
So zombies – don’t zombies actually exist in Haiti? I read some . . . probably nonsense, but there they get the venom from a pufferfish. And they give it to people, and it makes them kind of appear like, ‘Oh, I think he’s dead,’ ‘cause they kinda go into a bit of a coma. And then they wake up, and they’re pretty susceptible, and they’re like real zombies. And that’s where the zombie thing comes from.

Stephen
You’re . . . You’re very right.

Jimmy
Really?

Stephen
There was an ethnobotanist called Wade Davis, in the eighties, who discovered, what he thought – it’s his theory; it’s not universally accepted – that the pufferfish poison was being used to create a sort of zombie trance, a death-like trance, yeah. But it comes from nzumbe, the West African word.

Well the point is, er, going back to the idea of Alan zombie-ing due to the power of exponential growth, it would take just over a month for everyone in the world to be like Alan. I think that’s worth doing. I’d love to see that day. I really would.

Now where’s this fish – we were talking about pufferfish – where’s this fish going?

Viewscreens: four African men crossing a street and carrying together a large box made to resemble a red snapper.

Jimmy
A massive cat.

Alan
It’s got ‘decoy’ written all over it.

Sue
Yes.

Alan
A bird.

Stephen
We’re in Ghana – Accra, in fact. Can you see a line along the fish? Can you see what’s in . . .

Alan
Yeah, that’s the lid.

Sue
That’s the cockpit.

Alan
That’s where the guy gets in, who powers . . . It’s a little mini sub.

Stephen
[to Sue] What did you say?

Sue
Cockpit.

Stephen
Oh, I thought you said coffin.

Jack
It’s not!

Sue
No!

Stephen
That’s a coffin.

Sue
Somebody wanted to . . . ?

Stephen
In Accra, there’s a tradition of . . .

Alan
You get buried in a thing with a painted face on the front?

Stephen
Whatever you like! It can be a mobile phone. It can be a bible – it’s very common.

Alan
Was he cremated or grilled?

Stephen
Wa-hey!

Viewscreens: an assortment of Ghanian coffins designed to resemble different objects.

Alan
Couldn’t you have a floating one with a dome top, so just your head’s bobbing on the water? [with accompanying gesture]

Stephen
You can have an aeroplane. You can have a car. Yeah, you can have . . .

Sue
Oh, that’s wrong.

Stephen
Do you think?

Sue
Well, I suppose you . . .

Jack
It’s just one final chance to be a bloody nuisance to everyone, isn’t it? "I want to be buried in a fifteen-foot fish." "Oh, do you? Great."

Sue
[pointing to screen opposite] Look, there's a big shoe? I like the big shoe.

Jack
"That’s gonna be easy to achieve. You’ve always been a pain when you were alive. Now you’re dead, you’re even worse."

Alan
[refers to a coffin on screen] What about the red hot chilli pepper in the background? [pointing to the coffin shaped like a black brogue] Oh, dear God, that shoe up the back! That’s . . .

Sue
Brogue is good.

Jimmy
Do you think I can . . . ?

Alan
[impersonating a demanding customer] I’d like to be buried in a pair of oxfords – a pair, mind.

Stephen
They cost four-hundred dollars, you know, at least, and that could be a year’s wages in Ghana.

Jack
What a waste of money.

Jimmy
A year’s wages? Well, you’re not gonna need it once you’re gone.

Stephen
No, that’s true. But you’re clearly not taken by it, Jack. You’re angry at this idea.

Jack
It’s made me cross, that, you know.

Stephen
Don’t you think there should be fun in death?

Jack
If you can’t be convenient when you’re dead, then, you know, you might as well forget about it.

Stephen
It’s actually quite a recent tradition. It’s only about fifty years old.

Jack
I should imagine it is. They’ve had better things to spend their money on, like food!

Stephen
Oh, Lord. Anyway . . .

Alan
Tiny little fish on the back shelf, right up the top, there. Is that it because you put your cat in, or something?

Stephen
Oh, dear. It’s a rather sad thought. Maybe it’s just a model to suggest – I don’t like to think otherwise.

Jimmy
How quickly does he knock these up? I’m just thinking – when do they . . . ? ‘Cause that must be quite depressing.

Stephen
Well, it’s a lot of work.

Jimmy
‘Cause they give to you and go, "There’s good news and bad news. The bad news is, you’re not gonna make it. Here’s a brochure! Pick your favourite."

Stephen
Absolutely.

Jimmy
I was once in a graveyard with my little brother, just walking through it. And he sort . . .

Sue
You can’t begin a story, "I once in a grave . . ."

Jimmy
Well, walking through a graveyard.

Sue
Quite nonchalant.

Jimmy
Yeah. And, you know the kinda old gravestones with the little curly bits at the top? [drawing in the air the figure of a ‘head and shoulders’ headstone]

Stephen
Yes.

Jimmy
And he thought that that’s where chefs were buried.

Stephen
Oh! Oh, well, funnily enough, you know . . . We’re going to a question now about graveyards, I think. If you saw a graveyard like this, what would it tell you?

Viewscreens: several gravestones with a statue atop a pillar in the back-ground. A broken column sits on top of the second gravestone to the left.

Jimmy
That signifies . . .

Stephen
Yes, it does.

Sue
Decapitation.

Jimmy
That . . . [looks at Sue]

Stephen
No.

Jimmy
Er, he . . .

Alan
Looks a bit old and derelict and disused, and they’re not using it anymore.

Stephen
No. It’s brand new like that. A column . . .

Alan
It’s deliberately built like that?

Stephen
Yeah.

Jack
Cut in half?

Sue
Was it that distressed look that Kirstie Allsopp keeps going on about on, er . . . ?

Jimmy
Is it like died young or something?

Stephen
Yes! Life cut short. It’s a symbol of life being cut short.

Jimmy
I always thought they were just . . .

Stephen
Nope. It’s deliberate. There’s a lot of symbology going on in graveyards.

Jimmy
I bet people have fixed those.

Stephen
Oh, that might be true.

Jimmy
I bet local councils have been in there and gone, "Well this needs redoing. It’s distressed!"

Stephen
That might be true. That’s a horrible thought, isn’t it? Erm . . .

Sue
So it's an untimely death. That’s like a lightning strike through . . .

Stephen
Yeah. A life cut short – literally that it’s . . .

Jimmy
There must be an age at which they die, the way they went, "Ah, shit. That’s fair enough. That’ll do."

Stephen
Other . . . There’s a broken chain, which symbolises . . . ?

Viewscreens: a headstone engraved with images of a segment of a chain, a flag, and a pair of tassels.

Sue
Messy divorce?

Stephen
Y’well, a loss in the family, it seems.

Sue
Goths?

Jack
Er, actually . . .

Jimmy
A loss in the family? Well, everyone’s death is a loss in the family.

Stephen
N’yeah . . . [puffs his cheeks] Apples? Apples?

Jack
Er, apples, you said . . .

Jimmy
A greengrocer?

Stephen
Sin.

Jack
Sin.

Stephen
They represent sin.

Alan
Oh, yeah.

Sue
Oh!

Jack
Sin. We all said sin.

Sue
Fallen women would have apples.

Stephen
Fallen women might have an apple. Why would scientists be interested in lichening, particularly in graveyards, on tombstones?

Viewscreens: three lightly lichened gravestones.

Sue
It’s a pollen, erm, pollution indicator, isn’t it? All that moss?

Stephen
Very good. You’re absolutely right. And why is it particularly useful in graveyards? It absorbs pollutants like heavy metals: cadmium, and things like that.

Jimmy
Is it ‘cause it’s . . .

Alan
Well, you’ve got the dates on the gravestones.

Stephen
Very good. That’s one reason, exactly.

Alan
You know how much of it there is.

Stephen
Yep. And also they tend not to spray graveyards with chemicals. It’s considered disrespectful to spray them with, erm, you know, pesticides. So that’s good on the grave. Well done, everybody. 

What’s the best way to ensure that your family never forgets you after you’re gone?

Viewscreens: Mussini’s 1828 painting, Francis I at the Deathbed of Leo-nardo Da Vinci.

Jimmy
Oh!

Alan
Haunting.

Stephen
Haunting is a good way, yeah.

Jimmy
Oh!

Jack
He insists on being buried in an exact replica of your house –

Stephen
Yes.

Jack
– that they have to pay for and, therefore, sell the house they live in to –

Stephen
You’re still angry, aren’t you?

Jack
– finance it. Yeah.

Alan
Being stuffed!

Stephen
Well, yes, being stuffed. Now . . .

Alan
Preserved in some way.

Stephen
There’s a very extreme example of that.

Alan
[posturing like a statue] Leaning on the mantelpiece.

Sue
[with accompanying gesture] With a pipe.

Alan
Just slightly in front of the television so they can’t see it. Just one, one arm. [imitating the family ducking for the television] Jesus.

Stephen
There was an artist called Hananucha Masakichi.

Alan
[nods] Oh, yeah.

Stephen
Have you heard of him?

Alan
Mm-hmm.

Jimmy
He’s bloody good.

Sue
He’s excellent.

Stephen
He’s Japanese, and in the mid-1880s, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and knew he was going to die, so he made a statue of himself, so lifelike and so realistic, when he stood next to him, people couldn’t tell which was which, apparently. He handcrafted glass eyes and then bored tiny individual holes for every pore of his body, and then took the hairs from every pore of his own body and put them into the other pores. He pulled out all his own fingernails and put them in like that, yep. His toenails and his teeth, all right?

Viewscreens: an image of the replica of Masakichi’s wax sculpture standing behind Jimmy.

Stephen
Now obviously this is a replica, because it’s quite shiny and obviously not anything like a real person.

Jimmy
[in chills] Ugh!

Sue
Can you imagine if he’s done all that and someone had gone, "Yeah, actually it doesn’t look that much like you." And you’re left – [talks in anguish without teeth or hair] – like that. Bald.

Stephen
Ha! Got no teeth, no nails.

Sue
Yeah. [shrivels up her hands]

Jack
He pulled his own teeth out while he was still alive?

Stephen
He wanted it to be absolutely real. It’s not . . .

Jimmy
But surely . . . Who was it for?

Sue
Gunther von Hagens.

Stephen
His girlfriend and the family.

Jack
Imagine he had done it taking his eyes out at an early stage and realised what a stupid mistake it was. "Oh, damn!"

Stephen
But, it found its way, the original, to Robert Ripley’s, erm, Odditorium in Los Angeles, but unfortunately –

Sue
Oh.

Alan
Not what he had in mind.

Stephen
– it was injured in an earthquake in ’96, and it’s currently awaiting restoration. There is a replica in London’s Odditorium. I didn’t know we had an Odditorium, but apparently we do.

Jimmy
We do, on Piccadilly Circus.

Stephen
Yeah, yeah.

Jack
[points to sculpture] Where did they get this one from, then?

Stephen
No, this is the one from the Odditorium. There are other things you can do, though.

Viewscreens: a headstone with the words ‘In Memory Of’ in blackletter adorned with round hand loops.

Stephen
You can be turned into compost. What happens is you’re dipped in liquid nitrogen and then vibrated – liquid nitrogen makes you so brittle. Of course, you just turn into a sort of dust.

Sue
Vibrated?

Jimmy
Yeah, and if that . . .

Stephen
Yeah, ‘cause it smashes into dust.

Sue
That’s a sales pitch, isn’t it?

Jimmy
And if that doesn’t kill you . . .

Stephen
Then, they use a magnet to get rid of mercury and other metals, which can then go into the making of something, if you wanted to, or into an ordinary recycling thing, so they just make a car, or whatever it is, or bits of a car, obviously. And then you’ve got about twenty-five to thirty kil-ograms left over, which gets put into a coffin made of maize or potato starch. And you’re then buried, and you rot into the earth, and you’re biodegraded in about six months, twelve months, something like that.

Sue
But to even . . .

Jimmy
It’s weird how the world has changed, isn’t it? ‘Cause it used to be people wanted to leave a mark on the world.

Stephen
Mmm.

Jimmy
That was the whole purpose of a kind of great life. "I’m gonna leave a mark. People will know I was here." And now, exactly the opposite. "I’d like no one to have known. I won’t leave a mess."

Sue
And now you can be a grow bag.

Stephen
Yeah, absolutely.

Jimmy
"You won’t know I’ve been here."

Stephen
Yeah.

Sue
Yeah. A human grow bag.

Alan
[points at an imaginary plot of soil] "That’s your uncle, Jimmy, there!"

Sue
That tomato sticking out of him.

Stephen
What about . . . what . . . ?

Alan
"I’ve done pak choi, this year, on him."

Jimmy
I’d be very happy.

Stephen
What about letting off how many see you . . . see you disintegrate – see you – in your coffin? Have a camera . . .

Jack
You watch it . . . ?

Jimmy
Have a camera in your coffin?

Stephen
A webcam, yeah.

Sue
No!

Stephen
There is a Seattle-based company called seemerot.com.

Alan
[laughs aloud in revulsion]

Sue
Oh! No!

Stephen
I’m not making it up! I’m not making it up – and they have a light, and they have a webc– . . . and you can watch your loved one basically rot.

Jack
[slams fist on table in laughter]

Stephen
There you go!

Jimmy
When you say . . . The only problem I’ve got with that is "loved one".

Stephen
Their slogan: "Being dead and buried doesn’t mean you can’t have friends over."

Jack
But it’s buried underneath . . . Imagine if you watched in the webcam, just watching, watching and watching, and suddenly it went [wipes nose with hand]. You would be so freaked out by that, wouldn’t you?

Alan
Remember they used to bury people, and sometimes there would be scratching on the coffin lid and all that?

Stephen
There were, yeah.

Alan
Because they weren’t – they were in a coma, and they woke up. Nowadays, they should just give you a mobile.

Stephen
Yes! I think there are . . . That does happen. People do. There are a lot of people who are really afraid of being buried alive.

Alan
I’m . . . I’m quite afraid of it, now you mention it.

Jimmy
How are . . . ?

Stephen
Honestly, what I mean is, they have a real . . . I mean they’re . . .

Alan
"‘T don’t bother me!"

Stephen
. . . They’re obsessed by it. Honestly . . .

Jimmy
Honestly, it would be like . . .

Alan
[taunting] "Yeah, whatever. Bring it on!"

Stephen
I’d prefer it not to happen, but I – I have to say I don’t think about it, but . . .

Sue
But, see, you have a mobile.

Stephen
There are people who really think about it and plan against it, in that sense.

Jimmy
I get frustrated enough if I can’t get a signal if I’m in a hotel. I mean, that would be . . . "Aww . . . !"

Alan
But you’d be annoyed if your battery had run out.

Sue
Six feet under – you’ve got no chance.

Jimmy
‘Cause also you’ve made that call, but only after checking your emails. "I’d better get out of this coffin. I’ll just check if I’ve got . . . Aw, the battery is gone."

Stephen
Mmm . . . Now, perhaps the most macabre posthumous gift, as I say, was that Japanese chap there, Hananucha Masakichi, which he constructed entirely out of his own body parts. 

But tell me about the vampire squid from hell. What do you know about that?

Viewscreens: tunnelling through a vortex of fire.

Stephen
What’s scary about it?

Jack
Is that it going through your digestive system and the havoc it wreaks?

Stephen
It does look a bit like what it is.

Jack
‘Cause I have had meal like that in Spain.

Jimmy
When you say it’s from hell, is it actually quite nice and it didn’t fit in in hell, so it came back?

Stephen
It’s name is Vampyroteuthis infernalis. It has the biggest eyes of any animal relative to its head. If it . . . An equivalent in a human, it would be at the eyes of a foot wide.

Viewscreens: a vampire squid, swimming in the dark.

Jimmy
It would be Natalie Imbruglia.

Stephen
And there, there . . . Yeah, if you like. And there one is. They’re rather ugly, I have to say. They’re not the prettiest things.

Jimmy
I think she’s all right.

Stephen
You like that, do you? Oh! There it is.

Alan
My god, that’s h-hideous.

Stephen
It sort of looks like an organ of some kind, doesn’t it?

Sue
Yes.

Stephen
It’s rather the . . .

Jack
It’s doing an impression of a baked potato at the moment.

Stephen
Yeah.

Alan
And they live in the dark so they don’t . . .

Viewscreens: a photo of a vampire squid displaying its eyes and a wiry sensory filament.

Stephen
They live really deep. There are the big eyes, as you can see.

Sue
Oh, yes!

Stephen
There’s a tendril that comes out, which it u– . . .

Sue
Bet that’s off-putting.

Stephen
They are so deep. They’re so deep that their defence is not ink, which would be no good ‘cause the water is so dark down there. It’s jets of bioluminescent little, countless, bright blue orbs that dazzle anyone who tries to attack them, and then, in the dazzle, they escape.

Jimmy
Their defence is to dazzle?

Stephen
Yeah.

Jimmy
[with glitzy expression, wades out glamourously with jazz hands]

Stephen
Not . . .

Jimmy
Ta-da! [waves with jazz hands]

Sue
It’s the John Barrowman of deep sea . . . of deep sea animals.

Alan
"Yeah, get back or I will show you my teeth!" [displays teeth] "Ahh!" [screams in hor-ror]

Stephen
Anyway, despite his name, the vampire squid from hell is a docile creature, floats through the ocean, releasing a kind of firework display from its arms when threatened. 

What’s the toughest way, though, to become a mummy?

Viewscreens: a still from the 1944 film The Mummy’s Ghost of the mum-my Kharis, played by Lon Chaney, Jr., carrying the female lead Amina, played by Ramsay Ames.

Sue
Well . . .

Jimmy
I’ll take it.

Sue
Yeah.

Jimmy
[presses buzzer, which plays a Carsonesque ‘Here’s Jimmy!’ and a woman’s scream] Reverse cowgirl? 

 The audience erupts in laughter and applause.

Stephen
I . . . Now, they understand that. You’re gonna have to explain it to me? What is the reverse cowgirl?

Sue
Shall I do a drawing?

Jimmy
I’m gonna need a volunteer from the audience.

Sue
[to Stephen] If you were having sex with me, and . . .

Stephen
Yeah.

Alan
Or Mel.

Sue
Or Mel. Say you’re having sex with Mel –

Stephen
Yeah.

Sue
– and you’re lying down –

Stephen
Yes.

Sue
– on your back –

Stephen
Yeah.

Sue
– and Mel is . . . I can’t use her name in that, sorry. She’s –

Stephen
Jordan.

Sue
– sitting on top of you, but looking away. Reverse cowgirl.

Stephen
Oh!

Jimmy
I find they’re much happier without looking away from me.

Stephen
[absentmindedly] Really?

Sue
That, however, is, er . . .

Alan
Especially if make them stare out the window. It’s like a budgie.

Stephen
Wow! And that’s what . . .

Jimmy
She could be reading a book or watching telly. She could do what she likes.

Alan
If she could see the telly or outdoors, she doesn't mind.

Stephen
Wonderful!

Sue
Yeah. It’s catch-up time for women, basically.

Stephen
So, she’s doing sudoku or whatever.

Sue
Yeah, it’s whatever you need to do. You just . . .

Stephen
Yes. They’re . . . [to Jimmy] You were thinking of making babies, aren’t you? That sort of mummy, I realise now as well. I, erm . . . yeah. Can you turn yourself into a mummy? That’s the point. Is it, is it . . . ?

Sue
Probably.

Stephen
Yeah, you could, couldn’t you?

Sue
You could probably wrap yourself up in . . .

Alan
Mummify yourself?

Jimmy
Well, haven’t you gotta take your liver out through your nose, you see. That’s what they used to do –

Sue
For ages.

Jimmy
– is that they used to take the organs out through the mouth and nose.

Stephen
Well, the brain, they would take out through the nose. They’d agitate it with hooks so that it turned into a liquid mush, and then . . . [pulls imaginary strings out of his nose]

Sue
[in disgust] Oh!

Alan
Worse than being buried alive? Or . . .

Jimmy
Then . . . And then after that they would kill them.

Stephen
Yeah, wha . . . But, the Sokushinbutsu were members of an obscure Buddhist sect who, erm –

Viewscreens: a mummified Sokushinbutsu monk enshrined behind glass in a temple in Yamagata, Japan.
– in Japan, used to practice the rather macabre idea of self mummification. This is what they’d do – it’s quite complicated, it’s really interesting; see if you would do this: For a thousand days, right, a priest would eat nuts and seeds while taking part in vigorous physical activities, so they had no body fat. He’d then only eat bark and roots for another thousand days and then drink a poisonous tea made from the sap of the Urushi tree that caused him to vomit and lose bodily fluids. Then, he would lock himself into a tiny stone tomb with an air tube and a bell, and he’d sit in the lotus position and every day ring his bell to show that he was alive. And when the bell stopped, the tube was removed, and the tomb was sealed. And then other monks in the temple waited for another thousand days and then opened the tomb. And if the monk had succeeded in preserving his body in his death, he would be considered to have achieved the state of a truly enlightened buddha. If it happened . . .

Alan
Who made up that game?

Stephen
Buddhists.

Jimmy
You know I had . . . Have you . . . ?

Sue
Bug-eyed.

Jack
It’s a terrible a photo of him. If I was gonna go through all that trouble, I’d have a decent photo taken of me. And it . . .

Stephen
I like this, ‘cause, I mean, a lot of people get away with thinking the Buddha is like the sane religion. "Buddhas, you know, Buddhists are, er, normal and decent." But even Buddhism has wierdery beyond belief, really, I’m afraid.

Jack
They don’t do it like that anymore, obviously, do they?

Stephen
No, it’s now an illegal form of suicide.

Jack
They have a webcam there. They don’t . . . They don’t . . . You don’t need it.

Jimmy
As a . . . As a form of suicide, though, I think that should be promoted because, you know, if you jump off something high and land, it’s all over very quickly. You’ve not been able to think it through. With that, you can sort of change your mind. You’d go, "Do you know what? I fancy a drink."

Stephen
That’s true, you can.

Jimmy
After about nine hundred days, you’d go, "Aw! A pizza wouldn’t go amiss."

Jack
But if you open it after a thousand days, and he hasn’t turned into a mummy, would you say, "You see? I told you he had a Twix."

Stephen
Anyway, yes. Members of an obscure Buddhist sect in Japan went through an extremely rigorous process of self-mummification until the practice was stopped in the nineteenth century. 

In the 1960’s, two-thirds, right, two-thirds –

Viewscreens: the cover photo at a beach from a 1950’s postcard, featuring eight bikini clad women whose feet are hidden under a large life ring which reads ‘Greetings from Florida.’

Stephen
– of the Americans who accidentally lost a limb – of all Americans, two–thirds of them came from one town in Florida. Why?

Sue
Well, because that enormous thing dropped on their limbs. It’s . . . The enormous doughnut from outer space took their legs.

Jack
Is it ‘cause it cost an arm and a leg to live there?

Stephen
[in a schoolmaster’s tone] Wa-hay! Now, shush, because . . . Now . . .

Jack
Oop, there’s more!

Stephen
No. [imitating a paid comic] "I’m here all week."

No, it’s, erm – actually it was all men, oddly enough, I think. I don’t think any of them were women.

Sue
Sounds . . .

Alan
They wouldn’t let them in.

Jimmy
Is it the town where they put the diabetic clinic next to the doughnut shop? 

Stephen and the audience cringe.

Jimmy
What!? It happens!

Stephen
Yes, it does.

Jimmy
Is it, is it the town where the town where the helicopter pad was next to the taxi rank? [raises arm as if hailing a cab, then winces when the arm is supposedly severed]

Sue
An unnatural amount of . . .

Alan
Sharks!

Stephen
Not sharks, no.

Sue
Okay.

Stephen
This is self-harm we’re talking about.

Sue
Oh! Amputee, er, wannabes, I think. I think I’ve made that sound disrespectful.

Alan
[waves hands in song] "Amputee . . ."

Sue
[joins in] " . . .wannabes!"

Alan
[continues dancing]

Jimmy
Is it like a . . . It’s new on ITV2, you are gonna love it. I’ll present it.

Stephen
I don’t . . .

Sue
Yeah. [imitating an American television announcer] "Welcome to Amputee Wannabe." So, erm . . .

Stephen
No. It’s not that form of dysmorphia. It’s self-harm for another reason.

Jimmy
I think . . .

Jack
Er, it’s to avoid, er, the draft, is it?

Stephen
No, but it is for gain.

Jack
Oh . . .

Jimmy
[presses buzzer, which plays a Carsonesque ‘Here’s Jimmy!’ and a wom-an’s scream] Insurance!

Jack
[with Jimmy] Insurance.

Stephen
"Insurance" is the right answer. Insurance, it is. It’s for ins– . . .

Sue
[to Jack] When you said "avoid the draft", I thought, "Won’t . . . a cardigan would have been an easier way?"

Alan
That’s what I thought!

Stephen
Aww . . .

Alan
Blimey.

Jimmy
"My legs are freezing!" "Hack ‘em off!"

Stephen
Ooh!

Sue
Is that really . . . ? Just wrap up!

Alan
"I want you to put your jumper on and then wrap the arms around your neck!"

Sue
Yeah! [makes a squeaking noise, pretends to saw off her arm, then waves her hand in disapproval]

Stephen
But they did do a lot . . . They sawed them off.

Alan
[rubs his right arm] "It’s a bit chilly." [pretends to chop his arm off, then nods in satisfaction]

Stephen
It was just . . . became a fever of it. More than fifty occurrences with a town of a population of five hundred. Most of the limbs were shot off at close range with hunting rifles. Triggers pulled unexpectedly as victims climbed fences, guns misfiring – these were the claims they made. All the mishaps involved maim, yeah. Somehow they would always shoot off the parts they seemed to need least, said the insurance claims investigators.

Alan
Your left hand.

Stephen
Yeah, your left hand at work, a man . . . his foot while protecting chickens, lost a hammer while trying to shoot a hawk. A man who lost two limbs in an accident involving a rifle and a tractor.

Jimmy
I can sort of, you know . . .

Stephen
Er, but now the time has come to see what skeleton are lurking in our closet of General Ignorance.

Viewscreens: QI logo.

Stephen
So, skeletal finger bones on buzzers, if you please. [points at screens] What does this tell you?

Viewscreens: an electrocardiograph monitor that beeps with a heartbeat.

Jack
[presses buzzer, which plays the Psycho screeching strings effect] It’s your heartbeat, isn’t it?

Viewscreens: a flatlined electrocardiograph monitor signalled by a prolonged tone.

Stephen
Ah, but this . . .

Jack
Ah, it says you’re dead.

Stephen
Oh! 

Forfeit: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words "YOU’RE DEAD".

Stephen
Jackie-poo. Jackie, baby. You’ve fallen into another trap. No! It’s flatlining, it’s called, as you probably know –

Jack
[nods] Yes, yes.

Stephen
– and in films it tends to mean you’re dead, but in real life if you died, you wouldn’t get that –

Jack
So what are they panicked when that comes up?

Stephen
Well, because it tells you that . . . in real life, that would announce . . .

Alan
It’s about . . .

Stephen
If you tripped on a cable and pulled it out . . .

Jimmy
[points at Jack] But, hey! Well, he could be right then ‘cause someone could have died. They tripped on the cable . . .

Stephen
Well, yeah. Yeah, but it doesn’t tell you that they’re dead. It tells you the cable’s missing. Then, you would find out . . . Similarly defibrillators [raises and lowers a pair of imaginary pad-dles] – you use like that – what do you use those for?

Viewscreens: a masked and scrubbed surgeon handling a defibrillator under a surgical light.

Jack
Er, to start the heart up again when it stops? Or . . .

Jimmy
Oh, I use them for making paninis.

Stephen
Ah! Very good.

Sue
Get . . . Get their paddles, didn’t they, to get their heart working again.

Stephen
It’s for an arrhythmia, to get it in . . . [makes circular motions over chest] It’s not to start a heart that’s stopped, although, again in movies, that’s what it’s used for.

Jack
It’s no wonder I failed my finals, really.

Stephen
It’s probably as well for the world, though. Anyway, if an ECG monitor goes completely flat, it probably means that somebody’s tripped over the cable. 

After the Vietnam War, who was buried in the tomb of the unknown warrior, or so-and-so?

Viewscreens: tombstones at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Sue
[presses buzzer, which plays the Wilhelm scream] We don’t know. I think all of them are un . . . anonymous, deliberately. 

Forfeit: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words ‘NOBODY KNOWS’.

Alan
What?

Jimmy
What?

Stephen
No.

Jimmy
Sure . . . Surely the whole nature of this show will mean that the unknown soldier . . . [counts with his fingers] It’ll be – he wasn’t a soldier, they knew him, and he wasn’t dead.

Sue
He wasn’t dead.

Jimmy
That’s fine.

Sue
Yeah, the unknown soldier was actually buried in a replica of a large red chilli somewhere in Ghana.

Stephen
No, ac . . .

Jack
Was he an unknown soldier when he was still alive as well? Where he would just . . . he kept turning up, and no one seems to . . . "How’s it going? How are you doing?" . . . "Who is that?" "I dunno."

Stephen
Seems keen to join in.

Jack
"I dunno who he is." . . . "What happened to that unknown soldier?" "He died." "Aw, let’s bury him."

Stephen
No, what happened in the case of the Vietnam War was that there was an unknown soldier buried there, but there was a particular family who thought they heard that the unknown –

Viewscreens: the tomb of The Unknown of Vietnam at Arlington Cemetery.

Stephen
– soldier had died in a helicopter crash, but they thought their own son had died in the same helicopter crash. And so, in the 1990’s they persuaded the American government to do a DNA test on the unknown soldier, and it was indeed their son. So, the remains were returned, so since then, it’s been empty. It’s unlikely there’ll be another ‘unknown soldier’ ‘cause all American soldiers certainly are DNA profiled and the British ones, too, so that, er, they will always be known.

Jack
That’s a . . . That’s a happy ending, isn’t it?

Stephen
Yeah. Ha! Is it? I forgot. But, the original unknown soldier, do you know when this was, the first time it was done?

Jimmy
Was it after the First World War?

Stephen
It was after the First World War. When it was done . . .

Viewscreens: The Cenotaph by Lutyens in Whitehall, London.

Sue
The 1920s?

Stephen
The year 1920, simultaneously in France and Britain. In Britain, there were four unknown sol-diers. And . . . And a general pointed at one body, and that became the Unknown Soldier, who was honoured – it’s rather wonderful, this – with a state funeral in Westminster Abbey with full military honours, entombed with a medieval crusader sword from The Royal Collection in the presence of a guard made up of a hundred VCs. And the guests of honour were a hundred women, each of whom had lost her husband and all her sons in the war.

Jack
Oh.

Jimmy
That is amazing, isn’t it? Wow.

Stephen
An amazing ceremony.

Jack
And The Cenotaph is actually a memorial to the unknown soldier, isn’t it?

Stephen
Yes, it is. That’s right.

Jack
That’s what it is.

Stephen
So . . . I mean, it is a kind of way . . .

Jack
Is it designed by Lutyens, wasn’t that?

Stephen
Yes I . . . Yes, very good. I think you must have points. I think so.

Jack
I hope so.

Stephen
Make up for the rather large –

Jack
Large.

Stephen
– collection of negative points you’ve been building up.

Jack
That’s a very funny round, I think.

Stephen
Well, no . . . It was . . .

Sue
We should see if we can pick it up from there.

Stephen
Great. But anyway it was quite interesting, if not quite funny, and, I think, worth it. I mean, it’s just amazing, I thought that story, that service. 

Anyway, er, moving on. Where does the saying "saved by the bell" come from?

Viewscreens: a swinging bell ringing silently.

Jack
[presses buzzer, which plays the Psycho screeching strings effect]

Stephen
Yay.

Jack
Oh, no. I know what’s gonna happen now. It’s gonna be . . . I’m gonna get the klaxon for this. Is it boxing . . . Is it a boxing reference?

Stephen
[leans forward] Yes!

Jack
. . . Oh.

Stephen
Yay! We thought, erm . . . It is, I tell you . . .

Alan
Can I say, is it . . . Is this where the bell’s gonna go off?

Sue
[whispers] Don’t do it.

Alan
They tied . . .

Sue
Don’t do it. It’s gonna lead you . . . You must have had . . .

Alan
Because it’s going back to being buried alive?

Sue
[whispers] No. 

Forfeit: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the words "BURIED ALIVE".

Stephen
Whoa!

Sue
Ah!

Jimmy
How can you get it wrong after – [points at Jack] – he’s got it right!? That’s extraordinary.

Stephen
Only Alan! Only Alan.

Alan
Well, I was . . .

Jimmy
You were literally saved by the bell! He buzzed in and got it right. You couldn’t say the stupid thing, and you went there anyway! You are amazing!

Alan
I find it quite interesting, though.

Stephen
It is interesting.

Alan
But I thought that was the true one.

Stephen
No, a lot of people do think that, and it is not true.

Alan
You had a bell tied on a string to your toe, or something, and if you’re buried alive, you’d start kicking and – [ringing an imaginary bell] "ding, ding, ding".

Stephen
There have been people who have been so afraid, as we were saying, of premature burial . . .

Jack
There was a film, wasn’t there, of someone . . . An old film of a man who was so afraid of being buried alive that he equipped his tomb with all these –

Stephen
That’s fant . . .

Jack
– emergency things. But of course when he came round, it had all rotted, and all the string for the bell had corroded, and . . .

Stephen
[groans] Oh . . . There’s an Edgar Allen Poe story called The Premature Burial . . .

Viewscreens: three copies of a wooden coffin with an engraved plate, and a withering rose and some dirt on top.

Jack
Ah.

Jimmy
Never gonna be that premature, though, is it? Maybe five days, max.

Stephen
That’s true enough. Premature enough for most of us.

What can you tell me about Mozart’s burial, though?

Viewscreens: a portrait of Mozart framed behind a funeral wreath.

Jimmy
Ooh! [presses buzzer, which plays a Carsonesque ‘Here’s Jimmy!’ and a woman’s scream] Did they play Angels by Robbie Williams?

Stephen
Do you . . . No.

Jimmy
Was it Bohemian Rhapsody? Was it a cult classic?

Stephen
Do you know . . . Do you know, they do have a top ten of the playoff tunes that people choose for going into their . . . And do you know what one of the most popular is?

Sue
Erm . . .

Stephen
Countdown.

Sue
No!

Stephen
That’s where you go in and [snapping, hums the Countdown theme].

Jimmy
[hums the Countdown theme]

Stephen
Honestly, [hums the Countdown theme] as they get . . .

Sue
[mimics the Countdown theme]

Alan
[mimics the Countdown theme]

Stephen
Yeah, that’s the most . . .

Jimmy
There’s a quite interesting fact about this. One of the most popular ones, ‘cause it’s one of the most popular songs –

Alan
I enjoy . . . yeah.

Jimmy
– is Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. And the next track on their "Best of", if you bring the CD of the "Best of" to play, is Another One Bites the Dust.

Stephen
Oh-ho! Very good. That’s very pleasing.

Jimmy
[presses an imaginary button] You’ve gotta be really quite quick.

Stephen
Yes, you have. You can’t do it.

Alan
It’s a better choice anyway, isn’t it?

Stephen
It is much better. Much better.

Jimmy
Well, this is a terrible way to hear that he’s dead.

Stephen
You’re right. But contrary to common and popular belief, it was not a pauper’s funeral he had at all. Only the aristocracy had tombs and vaults in those days. In fact, his funeral cost quite a lot of money. It cost, er, eight guilders and fifty-six kreuzers for all the . . .

Sue
And the orchestra they had to hire.

Jimmy
I heard that was all – that was all paid for by Guten Tag!, which was their version of Hello! Magazine. They covered it very tastefully. It was very . . . really nicely done.

Stephen
But in Mozart’s own lifetime, he had a pet starling –

Sue
Starling?

Stephen
– whom he buried – a starling – in 1784. And its whistling inspired the principal theme of the last movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto K. 453, which you can hear.

The whistling chirps of the Common Starling is played over the speakers.

Stephen
Well, that’s the starling, obviously. 

Third movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 is played over the speakers.

Sue
Oh, it sounds like he’s lying to us.

Stephen
Piano concerto.

Sue
[whistles a birdsong]

Jimmy
Was that . . . ?

Stephen
No, Mozart wasn’t buried in a pauper’s grave. He had the same kind of funeral as everybody else in Vienna at the time. And finally – finally – it’s time for the scores. And, er, ho, ho!

Viewscreens: three dimly lit candles.

Stephen
Oh my . . . Oh my goodness, me. Well, I’m sorry to say that in last place with minus twenty-eight, it’s Jimmy Carr! A little better, with minus twenty-six, it's Sue Perkins! But, there’s no question about it: tonight’s winner – tied on minus seventeen, it’s Alan and Jack!

Alan
Thank you, thank you. 

QI theme is played over the speakers.

Stephen
Ah. So, before the show breathes its last, I’ve just got enough time to thank Jimmy, Jack, Sue, and Alan, and I leave you with the following boo-boo from baseball great Yogi Berra. "You should always go to other people’s funerals," he said. "Otherwise, they won’t come to yours." Thank you, and good night.

Episode Notes

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. I am led to believe, from the convincing objections brought forth, at times with a wrath, on Twit-ter by architecture cognoscenti who watched this episode, that the elves may have confused the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, a Modernist concoction displayed colloquially known as ‘Paddy's Wigwam’ and displayed on the QI viewscreen with examples of Gothic construction, with the Liverpool (Anglican) Cathedral, which is closer to a paragon of a Gothic church. It just goes to show that elves are human as well.

Windmills. Jimmy is referring to the series Jonathan Creek, which stars Alan Davies, in which the titular character lives in a windmill and helps solve perplexing crimes.

Kirstie Allsopp. Sue alludes to Allsopp’s frequent suggestion on Channel 4’s Location, Location, Location.

Geometrical progression. A geometric progression, surely. This progression is succeeded by the further multiplication to the original term by a fixed quantity known as the common ratio. An arithmetic progression is succeeded by the further addition of a common difference to the original term. The ‘wheat and chessboard problem’, described by Jimmy on this episode, demonstrates the huge and rapid growth attained by a geometric progression with 1 as the first term and 2 as the common ratio in the addition of 64 terms. The ‘problem’ is also, as Stephen pointed out rightly, an example of the power of exponential growth, where the 2 is the base and the starting value of the exponent is 0.

Hananucha Masakichi. Hananuma – not Hananucha – Masakichi’s wooden figure of himself was said to have perplexed his audience when he and his sculpture posed in tandem on exhibit.

seemerot.com. Since the broadcast of the episode, the site has now been redirected to omgbitches.com. But if you weren’t repulsed towards the various ads sensationalising on nude breasts, you would have seen what a sham the site truly was. I wonder if the particular elf who discovered the site had to interfere with a filter that the production company or the BBC may or may not have had in place. To offer this fact to the other elves in the full knowledge of the nature of the site seems to be as sensational as the pornography advertisement that adorned the site.

The site has been discussed at length in forums at qi.com, snopes.com, democraticunder-ground.com and others, and the general consensus seems to be that an enterprise purported to stream live the rotting of human corpses was never in business. In any case, the site seems to demonstrate the hopefully rare flaws in the elves’ ability to check their facts.

Hello! Magazine. Jimmy refers to the premium Hello! pays to get the scoop on celebrity wedding photos.

K.453. Mozart’s Piano Concerto 17 can either be referred to as K. 453 or KV 453. Both are chronologi-cally categorised under the Köchel-Verzeichnis catalogue, devised by Ludwig von Köchel in 1862.

Countdown. This is not the first time Stephen has alluded to this alleged fact. On the QI continent of the blogosphere, Mark Ewing writes a QIbble which showcases his ina-bility to find evidence for Stephen’s apparently ‘self-source fact.’ However, he does present a plausible explanation, that Stephen simply mistook the theme to the longstanding Channel 4 pro-gramme for the triumphant 1986 hit The Final Countdown, which I find it to be triumphant enough, more so than the jolly ticks, tocks and beeps of the Countdown theme, to may well have been the number one choice to be played at a funeral.