This programme contains some strong language
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Good evening, and welcome to QI
where, tonight, we've gone a bit woo-woo,
because it's all about wooing.
Let's meet our star-crossed lovers -
the lovelorn Rosie Jones...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..the lovesick Maisie Adam...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..the lovestruck Larry Dean...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
..and lord love a duck, it's Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And in case their wooing goes well,
here are their wedding marches.
Rosie goes...
Bridal Chorus
Maisie goes...
Prince Of Denmark's March
Is that meant to turn you on?
No, I think, by the time you're getting married,
that's all behind you.
Larry goes...
A Midsummer Night's Dream Wedding March
And Alan goes...
D-I-V-O-R-C-E by Tammy Wynette
Oh, I like that.
Now, then, my lovebirds,
let's start with the first point of contact.
How would you set about wooing your partner?
Prenup.
LAUGHTER
I am currently single.
I know.
BELATED "AWW"
I know.
I'm beautiful and funny,
and clever,
and very rich.
LAUGHTER
So, I'm now using QI as a dating service.
LAUGHTER
I'm very single.
As I've said, extremely rich.
Call me.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
Are you a good wooer?
I don't think so, to be fair.
I always get told advice from people of what to do.
Like negging is the one, apparently. What?
So, basically, negging is when somebody will pick on
the insecurities of another person and it makes them doubt themselves
and it makes them determined to try and please them.
It's not a nice thing to do but, 95% of the time,
it works when they do it to me.
LAUGHTER
Have you heard of negging? Negging? Yeah.
Just where you're mean to people, isn't it?
I've just got visions of you being bullied at school, and you're going,
"You flirt!"
LAUGHTER
As they push you against the lockers for your lunch money,
you're going. "I think there's a vibe."
OK, so the word that you just used
is the traditional way in which wooing begins.
Bullying?
LAUGHTER
No, it's flirting.
Oh, flirting.
Flirting is the traditional way of beginning,
so what is the first rule of Anti-Flirt Club?
Oh!
Is it,
"Don't talk about Anti-Flirt Club"?
KLAXON
No!
APPLAUSE
What do we think? An Anti-Flirt Club.
It was a genuine thing.
It was in Washington DC.
We're going back a bit now. No winking?
J... Winking. "Winking!"
LAUGHTER
No winking? Oh, thank God. OK. Erm...
LAUGHTER
So, 1923, a woman called Alice Reighly,
she set up an Anti-Flirt Club in Washington DC.
And it's partly to do with
the increase in popularity of cars, right?
So, cars are becoming quite the thing,
and men are doing drive-by flirting.
"Drive-by flirting"?
Drive-by flirting
or auto invitation.
LAUGHTER
I know. And so there were a lot of women and young girls
who were embarrassed by men kind of catcalling to them
from the windows or offering them a lift, and so on.
The first rule of the Anti-Flirt Club was, "Don't flirt.
"Those who flirt in haste
"often repent in leisure."
LAUGHTER
There were all sorts of things.
"Don't use your eyes for ogling,"
which I quite like.
"They were made for worthier purposes."
What's ogling?
Basically means kind of staring at somebody, to ogle at them.
So don't use your eyes to look at them?
I love this, because it's like you and I have learned English
in two different countries.
LAUGHTER
I've learnt negging and you've learnt ogling.
I'd say "oh-gling."
Do you say "oh-gling," not "ogg-ling"?
Yeah. I might be wrong, though.
Let's have a vote.
LAUGHTER
Who says "oh-gling"?
CHEERING
Who says "ogg-ling"?
LOUDER CHEERING
Who didn't know what it meant as well?
LAUGHTER
About 60% "ogg-ling" in here, dirty sods.
LAUGHTER
OK, here's one of my favourites.
"Do not let elderly men with an eye for flirtation
"pat you on the shoulder and take a fatherly interest in you..."
Oh!
"..because they're usually the kind who forget that they are fathers."
It's a good rule.
They've got the money, though.
LAUGHTER
I'm very worried about you.
LAUGHTER
Is it all right if I take you under my wing?
You've got money
so, aye, yeah, sure.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
I like this one.
"Don't fall for the slick dandified cake eater."
Oh! We've all got a type, Sandi.
What do you think that is, a "cake eater"?
Yeah. Is the cake...? Is the cake the...?
A part? A body part, you think? Yeah, the spon... You know...
"Spongy bits"?
LAUGHTER
You're doing three different mimes. You're doing different mimes.
I'm just trying to... LAUGHTER
Just trying to articulate it
whilst remembering that my grandma watches this show.
LAUGHTER
Is it the...? You know, the cake would maybe be a metaphor...?
Fanny! Yeah.
Fanny!
Even grannies have a minge, don't they?
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
I know we don't like to think...
Hands up whose granny's got a minge. No!
What does that word mean?
LAUGHTER
This was her favourite show!
LAUGHTER
So, a cake eater is a person with multiple sex partners, basically.
Oh. Oh!
So, none of that conversation needed to happen.
LAUGHTER
So, the villains of this particular movement, the Anti-Flirt Club,
were the mashers.
Who do you think "mashers" were?
This can't be real.
It's 1923, darling.
What do we think about ma...?
Come on, you're so good with words.
LAUGHTER
Is it about potatoes? Can we rule that out?
Yes, it is about potatoes.
So, it's an...
Yes.
Sorry, Alan's just having a massive wink.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
I was miming a masher
and the disapproval... Sure!
Honestly thought you were telling somebody off while canoeing.
LAUGHTER
OK, so aggressive suitors are mashers.
So, these are men who wanted to make women,
the objects of their attention,
soft and pliable
as you would mash the potato.
Oh. Ew! So, weirdly, you get a point for mentioning potato,
so well done there. That's fantastic.
That got us a point? Yeah. Incredible.
Have they been put up there by a masher?
Our president of this Anti-Flirt Club, Alice Reighly,
we don't really know that much about her
except that she worked as a cashier. She's winking.
Winking.
That's a form of flirtation.
Well, it also may be that she was actually part of a publicity stunt,
is the thing about her.
So, she and another member of the
Anti-Flirt Club both worked for a film company
involved in making a film the year before called
The Flirt.
So... Oh! I know.
What are the chances, eh?
So, it may be the whole thing was a publicity stunt.
I've had a look at this film. Don't bother.
LAUGHTER
So, what I want to know is,
how can you tell that you are being flirted with?
Because I'm handing them the money.
LAUGHTER
They did a study at the University of Kansas,
and only a quarter of straight people in these studies
realised that they were being flirted with -
and women, it was much fewer.
18% of women realised that a man was flirting with them.
But people were very bad at detecting flirting.
And maybe it's...
One of the reasons might be that we all think that the signals
that we are sending out are clearer than they are.
Apparently, if somebody looks at your mouth whilst you're speaking...
Yeah, but apparently that is meant to be a thing of, like,
if you're looking at someone's mouth.
I know. But it's rubbish, isn't it?
Somebody's looking at your mouth and you think,
"Oh, they really fancy me." And eventually you go to the loo
and discover there's a big bit of something just here. Yeah.
I've been told it's a triangle.
Apparently you're supposed to look in one eye,
then the other eye, and then their mouth,
and then keep making your way around the triangle.
Tit, tit, minge.
LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE
I am mortified, Alan.
Granny, go to bed, go to bed, go to bed.
I'm mortified that Alan and I have so much in common. Now...
LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE
Now, some practical wooing tips.
You've each got an object under your desk.
I want you to show me how you would use it to make yourself
either more or less attractive.
I'm going to start with you, Alan. What have you got?
I've got magnetised things.
Magnetised blocks there.
How might you use those?
Well, I would build the ideal home for raising a family in.
I mean, I wouldn't do that on a first date.
I'd build a love nest.
This is feeling like, you know when people go and interview murderers?
Yeah.
LAUGHTER
Oh, look, it flops over.
LAUGHTER
I don't... There's nothing I can think of to do with these
that makes me more attractive...
Or perhaps I am, in fact, perhaps I'm being more attractive
even as we speak.
What do you think, viewers?
CHEERING
Wow!
So Texas A&M University did a study with magnets.
Weirdly, people who played with magnets
said that they felt more attracted to their partners
and more committed, and satisfied in their relationships,
than those who played with ordinary blocks.
I mean, it may be that it makes you think about the metaphorical
magnetic attraction, I don't know.
I mean, it's one study in Texas. What can I tell you?
You can offer someone a segment.
Yeah. Again, it's giving real school shooter vibes.
LAUGHTER
You're not an easy woman to flirt with, Maisie Adam.
Rosie, can we swap?
No! Maisie, you want to put that on your poster.
"Not an easy woman to flirt with." - Alan Davies.
Right, Larry, what have you got, darling? Er, I have...
No, darling, you've picked up the wrong thing.
I think that's literally just tissues.
LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE
I don't know how to say it.
It's between your legs, darling. Just...
LAUGHTER
Let me... These are...
These are wet wipes and these are tissues.
OK.
APPLAUSE
Right, Larry, what have you got there?
I was like, "Oh, fuck, they've got me bang on today."
LAUGHTER
It's just a sign saying,
"Beer, wine, drunk,
"trollied, keg..."
Yeah, so we've got it up behind you,
and these are all words to do with alcohol.
So, lots of studies show that,
after a couple of drinks,
people find each other a little bit more attractive.
But they have beer goggles on.
Beer goggles, weirdly, works better for women than it does for men.
Does it? That's one of those strange things, isn't it? Good tip!
LAUGHTER
Just play with your magnets, Alan.
You don't have to buy them an actual drink.
It's enough to show them a word related to drink.
LAUGHTER No!
Yep. So they took a group of, again, heterosexual men,
the University of Missouri, Columbia,
and they just showed them words like "beer" and "keg" and so on,
"drunk" and so on, for a split second.
And then they asked them to rate photographs of women,
and they always rated them as more attractive
after they'd seen the words.
You know those T-shirts you see,
when people have got, like, a brand of beer on their T-shirt?
So, that would actually make you more attractive in theory,
just because there's a word right there?
Yes, but the thing is there's no tests on gay people at all.
There's no... I know! I don't know why we're doing this whole show,
because, three of us, it's got no relevance. Yeah!
LAUGHTER
"Why have you got Carlsberg written on your pants?"
LAUGHTER
Maisie, what have you got?
I have a face mask.
OK.
To make myself less attractive,
I would wear the face mask wrong,
like this. Oh, that's bad.
That used to do my nut...
Do you remember in the pandemic, and people would just go...?
And sometimes they'd come and talk to you and go, "Just so you know..."
LAUGHTER
Fuck off!
I used to see people who'd cut a hole in them so they could eat.
So Japanese researchers, in 2016,
they coined the term "sanitary mask effect."
So, in Japan, it is quite common to wear a mask...
Yeah. ..at times other than during a pandemic.
And there were quite a lot of women
who didn't want to put their make-up on
because they couldn't be bothered.
So they thought, "I'll just wear a mask," right?
"Because I'll be much more attractive with the mask
"because I haven't bothered with my make-up."
But in fact, the masks make you less
attractive and maybe people are put off.
It's the association with disease or something.
Yeah. Right. Rosie, what have you got, love?
Got some lovely
croissants.
I think they will make you
more attractive.
OK. Why?
Here's what I would do with croissants.
I would go,
"Oh. Have you..."
"Oh. Have you seen my croissant?"
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
And then'd it would be going really well.
Yeah.
No.
Tit, tit, breakfast. Tit, tit, breakfast.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
University of Montpellier in France,
they did a study in 2024.
Eating croissants make you appear less attractive
about two hours later.
I know. So, what they did was they had two groups.
Half the subjects ate food full of refined carbohydrates -
so that's croissants or white bread -
and the other half ate food low in bad carbs.
So they had porridge, or wholemeal bread and so on.
And two hours later, photographs were taken
and the attractiveness was rated,
and the ones who'd had the good stuff were consistently rated
as more attractive than the people who had had the bad carbohydrates.
This is two hours later.
And we think the reason is foods like croissants,
they make your blood sugar spike
and then it plummets and it drains the blood from your skin.
So, a couple of hours after eating croissants,
you know, ironically, you look pasty.
LAUGHTER
Could it not be like, if you eat,
like, something stinky the night before,
if you go out running the day after,
you come back stinking of last night's dinner?
No. I've never... Please don't tell me that's just me!
Please!
Right. For wooing purposes,
let's move on to smell.
What smell does make you more attractive?
Is it sweat?
Yes, it is to do with body odour.
Let's call it that. OK. So...
You mean it's not the great smell of Brut?
KLAXON
APPLAUSE
Good shout. Good shout, backstage. Nicely done.
How about this? Old Spice.
KLAXON
Lynx. Is that one?
KLAXON
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
So, body odour. Right.
They have discovered that single men
have a stronger body odour than men in long-term relationships.
This is a study.
They get 80 men to donate their BO.
How do you think they did that? How do you do donate your...?
Well, any thoughts about how you might do it?
What I need is to study
with 80 men donating their BO.
I'll get them to hand their laundry over.
Yeah, so they wore a T-shirt for the day, and then...
"We'll do your laundry." "Oh, thanks."
So, what they did was they just cut out the armpit,
and they put it in a bottle with a nozzle,
and then they got women to smell...
AUDIENCE GROANS
And what they discovered is the women consistently rated
single men's BO as stronger
than men who had partners.
Why do you think that might be?
Pheromones.
Interestingly, humans don't have pheromones. Mm!
No, we have the receptors for pheromones,
and they're certainly there all through the natural world.
But they've looked and looked and looked,
but we don't have pheromones.
If I catch my wife on a good day
and she allows me to give her a hug in the kitchen...
Oh, yes.
..one of the children will go, "Sex,"
and then another child will go, "Oh, God."
And then the dog will come in from the garden and try to get involved.
LAUGHTER
Probably something to do with...
..exercise,
survival kind of stuff.
Well, it's to do with levels of testosterone.
So, single men have significantly higher testosterone levels
than married men.
And that makes sense, because testosterone enhances the qualities
that are useful for attracting a mate.
So, libido and confidence, and competitiveness, and so on.
And what's interesting is that,
when men go into a partnership,
the testosterone stays at the single level
for about a year before it drops...
What about after 20 years, then?
I mean, you might as well just get slippers.
Oh, I've got slippers.
How many kids have you got, Alan?
Three? Three. Yeah, well, fatherhood causes
a steep decline in testosterone.
No shit.
APPLAUSE
And both men and women
are attracted to the smells of people
who have a better immune system.
And of course, it makes sense,
because that's the person you want to procreate with.
And disease can change your body odour.
So acute diabetes, for example, makes you smell like rotten apples.
Oh! And typhoid smells like baked bread. What smells like baked bread?
Typhoid. Really? Because that's what they tell you to, like...
When you go to house viewings, they tell you to have baked bread.
Don't they? They do.
I'd love to go round some flat and go,
"Stinks of typhoid in here."
That would knock the price down, wouldn't it?
Put you off straight away. Yeah.
Straight in the door. "Typhoid in here." Yeah.
I've...
I've heard that about illnesses
because cerebral palsy
make you smell like
a goddess.
You'll like this, Alan.
One study found that vegetarian men
smell more pleasant to women.
Oh, well, no doubt about that.
Are you sure?
No. But, like, have you ever followed a vegan into the loo?
Oh.
Oh, my God. At uni,
I lived with two vegetarians and two vegans.
I've never smelt stuff like it.
When we used to have house parties,
I demanded that my housemates
had gone to the loo three hours in advance
because I couldn't have that wafting round.
It's funny, I've got a weird thing
that I've noticed,
every single time I've kissed, or whatever,
a vegan or a vegetarian,
they're not good at kissing
and other activities.
It's because they're too weak.
Yeah.
Boo!
Someone's accepted the challenge.
"I want to boo, but... Eurgh-arghh-urgh.
"..I literally can't."
"I want to boo, but I've not had my tofu."
The World's Strongest Man is a vegan.
I'm not having this.
I'm not one,
but this is a load of nonsense, and you know it.
The gladiators used to eat beans.
They were called bean munchers.
Not a euphemism. It's just literal.
Talking of pulling, name three
quite interesting things
that you can pull through a wedding ring.
LAUGHTER
What did you think of then?
She laughed as if to go, "What can't you pull through it?"
Does anybody want to say what the elephant is in the room?
Do you mean a penis?
I don't think I'm going to get a very good score this evening.
Is there not some old tradition thing,
if you put your partner's hair or something on it?
Yes. It's a superstition to do with the wedding ring.
You attach a piece of the mother-to-be's hair,
and you hold it over the belly.
If it goes round in a circle, it's supposed to be a girl.
And if it goes backwards and forwards, it's supposed to be a boy.
And it does do one or the other
cos I did it with all three. Yeah.
And then, when it was going backwards and forwards,
round and round,
and then, which one is it?
Nobody knew.
If you looked online,
some websites said one, some websites said the other.
So, either it was always right or wrong.
What does that mean the baby's doing then?
Like a pinata.
Foetuses, they all have the powers of Derren Brown
and then, when they're born, they lose it.
Oh. So that's about tying the hair on.
I'm looking for things that you pull.
Sorry, I was being Doctor Strange in the Marvel Universe.
Benedict Cumberbatch. You know,
he's a very well-thought-of classical actor
and, suddenly, he's given the most stupid costume,
and he's going like this.
There's nothing there,
they add it all in later.
And he had to do it for months.
Yeah.
And then he laughed all the way to the bank.
Oh, God!
And he went like that
because his cheque was so large.
No. He's lovely. I am going to focus you.
What are we going to pull through a wedding?
My first thought was
food.
So I will go
classic
Wotsit.
Then you go for a French fry.
I don't mean, "How many tiny things will go through a wedding?"
I mean... What do you mean?
Surprising things.
Quite interesting things.
Oh!
A car.
How do you...? I don't know.
Why am I asking what kind of car? No.
It's a weasel. A weasel?!
A weasel can go through a wedding ring.
I've seen a weasel. Have you?
Yes. In the wild. They look like stoats
but there's a little difference.
One's wearing a wedding ring.
So, weasels have the ability
to compress their skull momentarily,
and they can get through very tiny tunnels
in order to catch mice.
Do they do it by the power of thought?
Can I just say, your impression of a weasel
is a lot like your impression of Benedict Cumberbatch.
That did look like Benedict - Doctor Strange on the loo.
With you at the door going, "Get out there!
"The guests are arriving!"
The other things that you could, which are sort of surprising,
a bikini.
So, when the bikini was first invented in 1946,
the inventor, Louis Reard, said that they weren't a proper bikini
unless they were so small you could
pull it through a wedding ring.
You're not supposed to say, "Bikini," are you?
Because it was on the Bikini Atoll
where they did nuclear tests,
and lots and lots of people
became terribly ill as a consequence.
So the very word "bikini"
ought to be associated
with this terrible injustice
and not
sexy lady.
You're supposed to say, "Two-piece."
Can I have a point? Yes.
Woohoo!
APPLAUSE
How has he gone from being able to go,
"Tit, tit, vaj..."
"Bikini, you shouldn't say?"
The other thing is a Shetland shawl.
So traditional Shetland fine lace wool shawls weigh less than 7oz,
and they can also be pulled through a wedding ring. A Shetland shawl.
I know. It's an odd combination of things, isn't it?
It's a bizarre graphic.
It is like the weasel's thinking,
"Will that fit me?"
"I can get through that. Watch this, watch this. I can get through that."
So my apologies if this sounds a bit gross,
but who is the goddess of the manhole?
Oh!
I know this. OK.
Is it Maisie?
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Don't clap that.
I'm not rising to it.
All I ask is that you tell me
when this is going to TX so I can inform my grandmother.
The goddess of the manhole.
Granddaughter of Granny Minge.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Sandy!
She's 93. Sorry.
We're in Roman times.
It's a Roman goddess.
And we are talking about manholes.
It's the Roman goddess of the great sewer,
which was called the Cloaca Maxima.
They have a goddess of a sewer.
Yes, they did.
Bet she's vegan.
Bean muncher.
Venus Cloacina.
So you have to understand that this was the most incredible thing
because it kept the city clean, right?
It was started in 600 BC.
By the time it was finished,
it was 20m wide,
it was over a mile long, and it took all the waste away from the city.
It was considered one of Rome's greatest achievements.
In fact, some of it is still in use today.
The sewer lasted longer than the Empire.
Eventually, she was sort of conflated
with Venus, the goddess of love.
I guess both symbolising purity.
And eventually she became
the goddess who presided over sexual intercourse on the wedding night.
"Presided" over it?
Like, what...?
Sounds judgmental. It does, doesn't it?
It sounds like she's there with a clipboard,
like on your driving test. Yeah.
"You're going to have to retake that, I'm afraid."
Oh, yes.
"You can't reverse round corners."
"It's three minors." No, no, no.
"You didn't understand any of the signals."
But that's it, at the bottom there,
going into the River Tiber,
and you could throw anything
you wanted into the street under Roman law,
because most of it would wash out of the town through the Cloaca Maxima.
It is weird, though.
If you threw something out of an apartment...
So there were some buildings that were like five storeys high,
you had to be very careful not to hit anybody
because they could sue you for inconvenience.
They do that on New Year's Eve.
What? Throw things out the window.
What? In Rome? Yeah, in Rome.
I went there once.
Things come out of windows.
There's a lot of glass thrown.
It is brilliant, but really frightening.
I love the image that this is not Italian tradition,
they just saw you walking down the street.
Anyway, moving on.
How did the big bad wolf get Little Red Riding Hood's attention?
He negged her.
He dressed up, didn't he, as this granny?
And then learnt to speak. OK.
What is the thing that sometimes men do to get a woman's attention?
Dress up as a granny. "Wolf whistle" is what I was going to go for. Oh!
Yeah. Well, it gets its name
from a series of Little Red Riding Hood cartoons.
They were directed by Tex Avery.
That was his nickname.
He was also Fred Avery.
So he was the animator behind all the first
big Looney Tunes successes like
Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and so on.
And in Little Red Walking Hood,
which was the first of these, 1937, the Big Bad Wolf
whistles lecherously at Red Riding Hood in the street.
And then there was a sequel in 1943,
Red Hot Riding Hood.
Oh, no. I'm just going to remind everybody
that cartoons were originally designed
for adults in the movie theatre. Yeah.
They were not intended for children.
And Miss Hood is now a sexy nightclub singer.
This is the follow-up. What? I know, right?
And he wolf-whistles at her,
and then pulls out a machine
that wolf-whistles for him,
and, eventually, he's chased off by
a, frankly, even more sexually voracious grandma.
I don't know why I'm looking at you.
LAUGHTER
Anyway, the wolf-whistle became
a thing that people knew about.
A wolf... Is that the...?
HE WOLF-WHISTLES
Yeah. So wolves actually do that?
No. So...
LAUGHTER
I do like those, like, two sort of milliseconds
after a wolf-whistle
where you dart around to see
if it's, like, someone, like, that's your friend,
so you can be like, "Aw, stop it."
Or a stranger where you go, "Fuck off!"
I don't know how to tell you this, but wolves can't whistle.
They can make lots of noises.
In fact, they can make 11 different noises.
They can yelp and they can whimper,
and they can whine, and that kind of thing.
Think how different we'd see,
like, a full moon
if we just saw wolves going up going...
They can howl. Oh, my goodness.
I mean, I say "howling," it sounds more like singing.
So, some years ago, I was... One of those weird documentaries
..I went with, you know, the wonderful Deborah Meaden...
Oh, yeah. ..who does Dragons Den.
She and I went to a place called Wolf Lodge,
which is about 1,000 miles
north of Oslo, in Norway,
in a place called Tromso.
And you go there, and you stay inside an enclosure
where the wolves are living wild.
It's phenomenally expensive.
We wouldn't have been there
if it wasn't being paid for by somebody else.
And then, during the day, you go out,
and you are with the wild wolves, and you,
in order to greet them, they get you to kneel down.
And then the wolves come and they lick your face.
Oh, no. Anyway, I was fine,
and I was letting them lick my face.
Deborah Meaden, first time she met a wolf,
she let it do tongues. Just going to say.
But more importantly, did she invest in the proposal?
That is, without doubt, the best celebrity gossip I've ever heard.
What is amazing is you can stroke them.
And I put my hand into the fur, and it's like it disappears.
It's the thickest thing I have ever
put my hand in because, of course, it's so effing cold.
But when they start howling,
what happens is one of them begins and then another one joins in.
And for some reason, they don't seem to do the same note.
They do a slightly different tone.
And the range of noises
that they make is done on purpose,
because it shows that the pack is enormous
and that the prey will think,
"Oh, my goodness, they're terrifying."
Let's have a quick look.
CHORUS OF HOWLS
Nah, that's dubbed. Fake.
LAUGHTER
A wolfpack likes a bit of a singsong,
but this wolf-gang is no Mozart.
Oh.
AUDIENCE GROANS
I feel I had you till that moment.
I didn't know if they were groaning
or doing an impression of the wolves.
Er, what's the cheesiest thing you can imagine at a wedding?
The Vengaboys.
Do you mean, like, their song
or the actual Vengaboys at the wedding?
The actual Vengaboys.
What is that? What is that?
Popular music combo.
You know the Vengaboys. You know!
MAISIE HUMS "WE LIKE TO PARTY"
AUDIENCE CLAPS ALONG
You see! Who needs wolves?!
ALAN HOWLS
I feel you've all gone mad!
Is it cheese? Is it actual cheese? It is cheese. Wedding cheese.
Very famous wedding.
Very famous piece of cheese.
Queen Victoria. Queen Victoria is correct.
Go on, Alan!
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
So she married Prince Albert, 1840,
and Somerset farmers gave them a great big round of cheese.
It weighed over 1,000lb...
Oh, my God! ..this piece of cheese.
And it was made from the milk of 780 cows.
You know, you're going to need a lot of crackers.
Yeah. But then the farmers said,
"Could we send it round the country on a publicity tour
"to show what an amazing piece of cheese we've made?"
And then it went all around
the country to fairs and things,
and people prodded and poked it.
And then she didn't want it back because... People had touched it.
People have been touching it. Nobody knows what happened to it.
I would imagine they put it on
the biggest bit of toast that had ever been.
Oh, I do like a melted bit of cheese.
Melted cheese. I've lived on that when I was a student.
I was very constipated.
You'd have fit in perfectly well with my uni flatmates.
When Elizabeth II got married,
the people of Leamington Spa
clubbed together
and got her a washing machine.
A washing machine? Possibly THE richest woman in the world.
Somebody gave her 500 tins of pineapple.
It's... It's really popular now, isn't it,
to have cheese, like, as your cake at weddings?
People do that. I don't really like cake.
I love cheese. I'm allergic to dairy
so, if I eat that, then that extractor fan's
going to have a lot of work that night.
My neighbours will think I'm announcing a new Pope.
LAUGHTER
Charles and Diana's wedding.
They got gifted a ton of peat.
Peat? Peat. Yes. Oh, peat.
Soil. Big lad.
Hello, Pete!
The Crown Prince Haakon of Norway and his fiance
were given a quit smoking course.
As a gift? Yeah.
Prince Carl Philip of Sweden and Sofia Hellqvist -
two-person kayak, an electric guitar
and a nature reserve.
What vibe were they giving off as a couple?
Oh, expensive royal wedding.
The most anybody's ever spent.
Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Princess Salama,
estimated cost $100 million.
Oh! Wooo!
They got married in a 20,000-seater stadium.
The gifts for the bride
were carried on 20 bejewelled camels.
No. No.
King Charles II married Catherine of Braganza in 1662.
Her dowry included £500,000,
which is about £77 million in today's money. What?
As well as - I love this -
Bombay, Tangier, and the right of free trade
with the Portuguese colonies.
That's... That's what you're talking about.
That's a catch, isn't it? That's the stuff.
My wedding was very emotional,
even the cake was in TIERS. Now...
AUDIENCE GROANS
APPLAUSE
We've talked a lot about marriage,
but nothing lasts forever.
What's the upside to being a widow?
Oh!
You don't need to live with a man.
I mean, that's very straightforward, isn't it?
Yes. That's very straightforward.
So there was an advantage sometimes to being a widow.
So, in the 19th century in France,
the only women who could legally own a business were widows.
Oh. So this woman, Barbe Nicole Clicquot,
she took over her husband's wine business.
He passed away in 1810. She was just 27.
And she renamed it Veuve Clicquot,
and Veuve is the French for widow.
Oh! She is the Widow Clicquot,
and she began selling champagne,
and she became one of the very first international businesswomen ever.
And she even managed to get her wines through
the blockades in Imperial Russia
so that champagne could be drunk to celebrate Napoleon's defeat.
That's pretty cool. There's a very interesting connection
between widows and champagne houses.
So Louise Pommery,
she took over Pommery when her husband Alexander died in 1860,
and by 1890 she passed away.
She was the very first French woman
to be given a state funeral,
because she'd done such an amazing job with her business.
The next one is Mathilde Emilie Perrier.
She created Laurent-Perrier
when her husband, Eugene Laurent, died in 1887.
Then we have Camille Orly-Roederer who took over Roederer in 1932.
And then when Jacques Bollinger died in 1941,
his widow - on the right there - Lily Bollinger...
Oh. ..who just looks so happy, she...
Are we looking at a gallery of murderers?
Yes...
This is one of my favourite quotes of all time.
It's by Lily Boulanger - so the one on the right there.
She said, "I drink champagne when I'm happy and when I'm sad.
"Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone.
"When I have company,
"I consider it obligatory.
"I trifle with it if I'm not hungry,
"and drink it when I am.
"Otherwise I never touch it.
"Unless I'm thirsty."
Very good.
Now, fingers on buzzers, please.
It's General Ignorance.
Where does sushi come from?
Bridal Chorus
Boots.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Japan.
KLAXON
Birmingham.
China. The method did spread through China,
but the origins is along the banks of the Mekong River.
So we're talking about what is now Cambodia, Thailand and Laos.
So, seafood would be skinned and it would be gutted,
stuffed with salt and then left to ferment
in a barrel for six months.
And then, in the second century,
the Chinese started to put rice with the fish
because the rice helped to ferment the fish.
So, basically, the rice
became really stinky, and they would throw the rice away.
And then, by the 1500s, they were thinking,
let's keep the rice as well. And that whole process
was called narezushi,
meaning "matured fish"
and it took about a year. About a year.
They did eventually make the process a bit quicker.
And they used rice vinegar, which made it just a few days
instead of it having to be a year.
I've got one sushi question.
Who invented the conveyor belt?
Yes. I love those.
I want one in my house. Yeah.
We've all eaten dinner and thought, "Do you know what?
"I'd like this mixed with baggage reclaim."
LAUGHTER
Now, what's another name for a cardiac arrest?
A Midsummer Night's Dream Wedding March
Yes, darling.
Oh. Heart attack.
KLAXON Oh, Larry.
A myocardial infarction.
What? Wow. OK.
APPLAUSE
Want to know how I know that?
Yeah. Because it's on the warning label
if you buy a packet of Viagra.
Sandi, you can't let him disclose that and it be wrong.
So a cardiac arrest is when a person's heart
stops pumping blood around the body.
And so they basically stop breathing normally.
That can be caused by a heart attack.
OK. But a heart attack is when one of the arteries
in your heart becomes blocked
and if it's left untreated, then the heart tissue will,
it will eventually die.
It's a curious thing. If you get a flu vaccine,
it decreases your risk of having a heart attack by about 25%.
That's extraordinary.
If you take cocaine, it increases the risk
by nearly 24 times within an hour.
So that's a curious thing.
So really, every time you do a line,
just have a flu jab.
Imagine if you directed The Wolf Of Wall Street.
Now, if any of you know cause
or just impediment why these four persons
should not be humiliated by the scores, ye are to declare it.
No, it's too late.
Living happily ever after,
in first place tonight
with two whole points,
Maisie!
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
Thank you.
Always the bridesmaid, in second place with -6,
it's Larry.
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
Getting cold feet with -8, it's Rosie.
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
And left at the altar,
in last place,
with a magnificent -54...
LAUGHTER
..it's Alan.
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
Right. That's it for this episode of QI.
Thanks to Rosie, Larry, Maisie and Alan.
That's the end of the show.
So I'd just like to say to my wife,
I know I'm always working, but I really love you.
See, I've still got it. I've still got it, right.
Goodnight.