A Dead Duck of a Show

Last night was the first show of this year's annual Ig Nobel Prizes tour of Europe. It played to a packed lecture hall at Imperial College, London - a capacity audience of around 800 - and was gloriously funny from start to finish.

After an intro by Professor Sue Gibson, Ig Nobels creator, Marc Abrahams opened the show with a brief explanation of the prizes and a run-down of the most recent award winners. They included a team from Japan, China and the UK who got the award for 'assessing the effect of listening to opera, on heart transplant patients who are mice'. When the Ig Nobel Prizes ceremony was held at Harvard University last Autumn, several members of the team flew over from Japan to collect the award. Two were dressed as mice.

Another 2013 winner was a paper by a Dutch, British, Canadian collaboration which detailed two related discoveries: First, that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up; and second, that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again. however, was the Ig Nobel Prize for Public Health, awarded to a team from Thailand, for the medical techniques described in their report 'Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam'; techniques which they recommend except in cases where the amputated penis had been partially eaten by a duck.

The next part of the show involved the aforementioned Sue Gibson, me and several of my colleagues from QI doing 'dramatic readings' of papers submitted to the Ig Nobels. What this entailed was us selecting  a paper from a pile, scanning it for a few minutes and then going up on stage to read it out to the audience. After two minutes, a bell sounded for us to stop and we then had to take questions from the audience ... which were clever, funny and which we were completely unable to answer.

Here are the readers: Top  - Andrew Hunter Murray (with audience member who asked such a blinding question she was invited on stage), Anna Ptaszynsky, James Harkin. Middle - Dan Schreiber, Jack Burke, Molly Oldfield. Bottom - Sue Gibson, Anne Miller and me.

Then came a talk by former Ig Nobel Prize winner Dr Mason Porter on the mathematical modelling of bipolar disorder which, I have to say, may as well have been in Swahili. But it was hugely entertaining and the questions from maths experts in the audience were just as deliciously incomprehensible.

 As is traditional, the penultimate part of the Ig Nobels show is a reading from the works of William Topaz McGonagall, considered the worst poet of all time. And once again we were treated to a reading by Professor Andrew George, ex of Imperial College, and now Vice Principal of Brunel University.

The grand finale of this year's show was a mini opera, brand new and specially written for the Ig Nobels by composer Daniel Gillingwater. It was performed by soprano Sarah Redmond, with the cast of Andrew Walker, Dylan Suddaby, Katie Parsons and Marika Vissor, and music by the Edge Quartet with Shaun Thompson on clarinet. And Dutch biologist Dr Kees Moeliker on duck call. The piece was called ... The Homosexual Necrophiliac Duck Opera.

No, really.

It was introduced by Kees himself who told the story of how a dead duck and the award of an Ig Nobel changed his life. What he did, in effect, was give us a repeat of his brilliant TED talk, which you can watch here:



The opera was wonderfully funny and, thanks to the wonders of YouTube, you can watch it here on this blog. We did make better, closer recordings and we're going to try to edit them all together to make a definitive version. When that happens, I'll post it here. But here's a pretty good version to be going along with. Oh, and before you watch the opera, do download a copy of Kees' original paper. It's the libretto for the whole 15 minute piece and if you read it in conjunction, the whole thing will make a lot more sense! You can get it here.



When the idea of the opera was first mooted, Kees asked the composer about the creation and scope of his work. Daniel replied: 'I have set it for solo high voice, in this premiere performed by Sarah Redmond (playing your role, as witness and first [and only author]). The gender difference need not be an issue as you are an elegant and willowy specimen, much like Sarah. The scoring also includes clarinet quintet, and a vocal chorus of four – soprano, alto, tenor and bass punctuating the section beginning ‘Rather startled, I watched …’ which is the final vivace section of a pseudo Mozartian aria. The two male singers will also be portraying the mallard ducks in question, through the medium of contemporary dance. A tasteful re-enactment of the duck display, mixing flowing, poetic body movements and extreme sexual violence.' It was at that moment that Kees decided that he wanted to be a part of this great work and therefore offered himself as duck call performer, despite a complete lack of formal training.

The first night of the Ig Nobels was tremendous fun as always, helped along by a spirited audience who enjoyed it immensely. Roll on next year.

I leave you with a pseudo-'selfie' of Kees, Marc, Daniel, Sarah and about half the cast at the aftershow party. We may not get a million tweets on Twitter but I couldn't resist the photo opportunity.

Maybe the show is coming your way? The full schedule of the European tour is here.

All photos: Stevyn Colgan

101 People to Meet before You (or They) Die - Live Pilot

Around this time last year, Dan Schreiber and I wrote and broadcast a pilot for a show called 101 People to Meet before You (or They) Die on London's Resonance FM. The idea behind the show is to make a kind of 'anti-chat show' because most chat shows, while entertaining, are almost always about well-known celebrities who usually have a book/film/event to plug. Meanwhile, we are surrounded by truly amazing people who have done extraordinary things ... and we'd never know it. So, wouldn't it be great to put some of them under the spotlight?

For the radio show, Dan interviewed Charles Brewer- Carias (above), a Venezuelan 'discoverer' who has identified hundreds of new species - including possibly the oldest living organisms on the planet. He also found the world's largest quartzite cave and has maybe located the semi-legendary lost 'City of Gold' - El Dorado. Incidentally, he was also the 'model' for the baddie, Charles Muntz, in Pixar's film Up. The show was fun to do but there were problems with it. Firstly, timing - it was way too long. The problem is that these people are so damned interesting! Secondly, the show needed visuals because you just didn't get a sense of how amazing his adventures were without seeing the landscapes and the creatures he spoke about (you can hear the show here with a slide show of appropriate images to accompany it - It's so much better with pictures). Thirdly, it really needed an audience.

So, last night, we ran a live pilot with an audience of around 130 people at the Conway Hall in Holborn, London. Our guests this time were Marc Abrahams, the man behind the Ig Nobel Prizes, and Dr Jan Bondeson, consultant rheumatologist by day, Fortean researcher and author by night. The show was curated by Dan and began with a talk by Marc on the history of the Ig Nobels (and a demonstration of the physics involved in walking and carrying a cup of coffee), followed by a talk by Jan on the history of 'amazing talking dogs'. Both were very funny and hugely informative.

 

 

The second half of the show - after a beer and comfort break - started with unfeasibly tall magician Pete Heat entertaining the crowds with tricks involving a loaf of bread, a flip chart and some ghastly pink Y Fronts. You can watch a nice little interview with him here on Youtube.

Then we kicked off into the 'anti-chat show' part of the evening with Dan, Marc and Jan discussing such unlikely subjects as a bra that can turn into a pair of breathing masks (ably demonstrated by a member of the audience), safety coffins to avoid premature burial, patents for machines that use centrifugal force to 'help' deliver babies, bosom serpents, giving Viagra to hamsters to cure jet lag, and 'The London Monster', a madman who frequented the capital a century before Jack the Ripper and whose modus operandi involved stabbing women in the buttocks.

The show was great fun, the audience laughed in all the right places and it was a pretty good live pilot. It had some issues, most notably some horrible timing problems that made the show significantly longer than we'd intended. But that's the point of a pilot - to find out what works and what doesn't work before unleashing it upon the wider public. I look forward to helping iron out the kinks before the next one.

One extra bonus for me was meeting Maria Boyle, a long-time friend on Twitter (@twistedlilkitty) from Ireland who I hadn't met before in 'meatspace'. She's a microbiologist by day and a stand-up comedian by night but she's also an amazingly funny cartoonist (you can see her range of cards here or follow her as @twisteddoodles on Twitter). I couldn't resist challenging her to create something  on the spot and she came up trumps, firstly with a great gag about Rolf, Germany's most famous talking dog, and then about Dr Elena Bodnar's 'emergency bra' gas mask design.

Aren't they great?

You can also read Live Skeptic's Storify account of the evening here.

The Ig Nobel Prizes at the IET

Last, but not least, there are the Ig Nobel awards. These come with little cash, but much cachet, and reward those research projects that 'first make people laugh, and then make them think'" - Nature

Last night I took part in the Ig Nobel Prizes events at London's Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). As always, it was a sterling event hosted by the Ig Nobel's founder, Marc Abrahams. Here he is organising the timekeepers for the event (each speaker had only five minutes and was prompted to be punctual by a bell ringing once a minute).

The event kicked off with Dr Siobhan Abeyesinghe talking about her research into poultry cognition or 'Do hens have friends?'

We then heard from my QI and Museum of Curiosity colleague, Dan Schreiber. Dan talked about research for TV and radio shows and some of the strange pathways it has taken us down, including the search for Shackleton's newspaper advert and the curious world of academic warfare.

Dr Charlotte Burn from the Royal Veterinary College then told us all about her research into canine tail chasing; particularly the problem of us humans finding it endearing when, for many dogs, it may actually be an indicator of a medical of psychological problem. The bottom line is - if your dog does it a lot, talk to a vet.

Final speaker of the night was the never less than entertaining Professor Chris McManus who took us into the wonderful world of scrotal asymmetry. Thankfully without a practical demonstration.

The evening ended, as all Ig Nobels do, with a spirited group reading (led by me) of some wretched poetry. Tonight, as we were surrounded by engineers, it was perfectly fitting for us all to recite William Topaz McGonagall's epic Tay Bridge Disaster, probably the only poem ever to rhyme 'buttresses' with 'confesses'.

A fantastic evening - can't wait for the next one. And the good news for you? You can watch the entire hour (and a bit) long show here. Free!

And if you want to hear some REALLY bad poetry, you can watch this 12 minute long podcast that I did last year:

Improbable Oxford

I took part in another Ig Nobel Improbable Event on Friday at the University of Oxford's Collaborative Applied Mathematical Institute. Great speakers, lovely audience and some of the funniest questions I've ever been asked.

The way these events work is that, after an intro, Marc Abrahams - creator and emcee of the annual Ig Nobel Prizes - selects a time keeper and someone to make a noise every 30 seconds. The participants then get up on stage, one by one, and read a two minute extract from a real scientific paper ... that they've only just seen for the first time.

The timekeepers alert you when 30 seconds, 1 minute and 1 minute 30 seconds have passed before gonging you off stage at 2 minutes. What then follows is a question and answer session where the audience can ask the reader questions about the subject of the paper. What makes it funny is that (a) the papers are inherently odd and hilarious anyway and (b) the reader knows only marginally more about the paper than the audience does. It's great fun.

The readers at this event were ... mathematician Dr Mason Porter, science writers and broadcasters Rita Carter and Brian Clegg, Professor Alain Goriely (director of CAMI), Dr Thomas Woolley (one of the bods behind Dara O'Briain's School of Hard Sums)   ...

 

 

... some fat old ex-cop and writer, Mark Lynas (author of Six Degrees), a lady whose name I don't have, I'm afraid, as she wasn't on my original list of speakers (But I think was called Xena (?) and works for a charity to do with palm oil), and a REAL rocket scientist and turbomachine engineer, Dr Thomas Povey ...

 

 

... and then came a spirited demonstration of a centrifugal force-assisted birthing device by ferociously bearded biochemist Faraz Alam ...

 

 

 ... and ended with a hilarious slideshow from comedian and writer Helen Keen and the inevitable bad poetry reading with Marc.

 

Another great fun event. I look forward to the next.

The World's Most Improbable Event

Yesterday afternoon I took part in The World's Most Improbable Event at the Conway Hall in London. The event was part of the book launch and tour for Marc Abrahams' new book This is Improbable. Here's Marc explaining it:



But it was also a great excuse to meet up with some wonderful people and to read some extraordinary 'science that makes you laugh, then think'. Contained among the research papers we all read from were such subjects as skipping in undergraduates, the palatability of tadpoles, the effect on sleepers of sonic booms, mosquito attraction to Limburger cheese (and cheesy feet) and emergency bras. These were all real papers that had won an Ig Nobel Prize. Here's Stephen Fry and an Ig Nobel laureate explaining the 'Igs' on Series 9 of QI:



Marc began by explaining the Ig Nobels and by selecting two members of the audience to be timekeeper and gong person; they would ensure that none of us speakers went over two minutes ...

Then on came the speakers, one by one ...

 

Neuroscientist, author and Guardian columnist Mo Costandi ...

 

 

Alom Shaha, physics teacher and author of the Young Atheist's Handbook ...

 

 

Head of media relations at the Natural History Museum, Chloe Kembery ...

 

 

Neil Denny of the Little Atoms podcast ...

 

 

Comedian and writer/presenter of Radio 4's It is Rocket Science! Helen Keen ...

 

 

James Harkin, head of research at QI ...

 

 

Dr Alice Bell, Guardian columnist and science communicator ...

 

 

Some fat old ex-cop ...

 

 

Marine Biologist and Naked Scientist Dr Helen Scales ...

 

 

Astronomer and writer Dr Stu Clark ...

 

 

The elder statesman of science journalists Tim Radford ...

 

 

Writer, speaker and podcaster Helen Zaltzman ... 

 

 

Co-creator of The Museum of Curiosity and comedian Dan Schreiber ...

 

 

Comedian and contributor to the Atheists' Guide to Christmas, Nick Doody ...

 

Comedy science songstress Helen Arney ...

 

... and biologist, writer and broadcaster Dr Aarathi Prasad.

 

Marc then wrapped up the day with the now traditional spirited audience reading of some horrible poetry by William McGonagal.

 

 

A very funny show that I was proud to be a part of. And now it's on the move with shows in Edinburgh (2nd October, The Jam House), Cambridge (3rd October, Mill Lane Lecture Rooms), Bristol (October 4th, @Bristol) and Oxford (October 5th, Mathematical Institute, 24-29 St Giles St). There will be different readers, of course, but it will be just as entertaining as the London event.

 

And buy Marc's book!