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This is the Technical Difficulties. We are playing Citation Needed.
I've got an almost-randomly selected article
from everybody's favourite reliable source of knowledge, Wikipedia,
and these folks can't see it.
Every fact they get right is a point, and a ding [DING],
and there is a special prize for particularly good answers, which is...
And today we are talking about Stefania Follini.
Of course! Stefania Follini of the Wiltshire Follinis,
if I'm not too mistaken.
Definitely not the Wiltshire Follinis!
Oh, bollocks. I'm out then!
Right!
Broad guess at which country we're insulting today: Italy!
Yup! Correct! [DING] Have a point.
Wahey!
Hold-a onto your pasta pizza lasagna!
Oh, here we go...
All right. Sports person?
No, not at all. Interior designer, actually...
From Italy?!
But that's not what she's famous for.
She's not famous for anything she did, chaps.
This is going to be a tough one.
She's not famous for interior design. She had...
Did she drive an Italian car?
No. She, erm... she had an experiment on herself.
Another head.
just playing 'Smoke On The Water' over and over again, [Laughter]
Don't think medical surgery had got that...
The world's first two-headed — you know, that one there, the other one just about here.
It's about 1989. Medical science definitely hadn't gotten that far.
Was she trying to work out what would happen
if you wore the same pair of jeans for three years?
Whoa.
Now...
You're wrong. You're obviously massively wrong.
But it is a kind of — it's a self-imposed...
thing that went on for a hundred and thirty days.
Lived in a hot-air balloon!
Oh. Lived somewhere, yes.
— In a hot air balloon. — Under the sea.
Down where it's wetter. Down where it's better!
[Sings] Under the sea!
Not quite. You're very close here.
Underground.
Yes! In a cave, in fact. [DING]
For why?
Interior design purposes?
No... an experiment about circadian rhythms.
— You get a point, by the way, just there. — Ah, thanks.
Not just a niche in some rock — we're talking, absolute proper underground...
— Yup. — A cavern then, rather than a cave.
'Mites-go-up, 'tites-go-down kind of cave.
Yes. She actually has the women's world record for longest cave isolation.
Was it presented by Norris McWhirter, that certificate?
Old school reference!
Thank you!
I'm reasonably sure I've heard or read somewhere before,
that in darkness,
the circadian rhythm of a human is about twenty-three hours.
Apparently, it actually drifted towards, first of all, a twenty-eight-hour day,
then a forty-eight-hour one.
But you're absolutely right, have a point [DING]
for it being away from twenty-four hours.
Does that mean we'd do more in the dark?
Is that what you're saying?
Away from any reference, away from the sun coming up over here,
setting over there. Away from that...
our bodies generally go for 25, 26, 27, 28 hours.
I am so surprised that a business hasn't set up underground
just to get longer days out of people.
I think that's basically the Amazon warehouses.
— Wahey! — Hmm.
Does that proportion...
Does that mean you might get, I don't know, a three-hour dinner break?
Actually no — forty-eight hours, it'd be double, wouldn't it?
Yeah. Well, no, it wouldn't. You'd just work twenty-four more hours.
I can't see them adding an extra...
No, but your dinner break would have to be longer, wouldn't it?
That depends. I mean, you're the union man here.
I *am* the union man, thank you very much!
[Singing] 'He is the union man, he comes from far away...'
'He can play—' No he can't, he's on strike.
just playing 'Smoke On The Water' over and over again, [Laughter]
And he can negotiate, I think you'll find.
So, obviously she was down in the cave with no external light,
no clocks, no anything like that.
Wait a minute. She's an interior designer.
— Yes. — She's going to have clocks.
And cushions, and tables and things like this as well, isn't she?
Throws.
Throws!
What do you think she did take down with her?
A chaise longue.
It's —
Something with big flappy cuffs.
It's describing them here as 'her only companions'.
MDF.
So anything that would keep her spirits up during isolation.
— Cats. — Paint.
White spirit.
Desert Island Discs.
White spirit?! [Laughter]
'This is a far superior drink to meths!'
Erm, not quite what... did you say 'cats'?
Yes.
Not quite right. In fact, you wouldn't want them down there.
Moles!
Ants.
— [Laughing] I can't take ants with me! — Dog.
You're going the wrong way down the cartoon food chain.
— A duck! — Oh, okay. Mice.
Mice. Thank you, point. [DING]
'Two "friendly mice" named Giuseppe and Nicoletta'.
We are in Italy, naturally.
Er, no we're not. Do you want to take a guess where it was?
France.
Austria.
Switzerland.
Wrong continent.
— Why the...? Sorry, are there... — South America then.
They've got their own f***ing caves!
Are there no f***ing caves in Europe?
But this was partly organised by NASA.
— Ooh. — 'Merica!
Hang on! Why did NASA come to an interior designer and say,
'Do you want to live in a cave in... wherever for a year?'
Look, they wanted to use the cave later on,
they needed somebody to fit it out, and they wanted it done for free.
Can you imagine that? 'Well, er, now you've been down here...
'I just wonder, while you're in, could you, er...
'just zhoosh the place up a bit while you're in?
'I mean, you know, a couple of throws...'
'The feng shui is not quite right.'
'It's not quite — the qi is off...'
'I think we need some of the walls painting, definitely.'
She actually decorated the cave 'with cutouts made from cardboard'.
...of people? Tell me it was of people. [Laughter]
Er... it doesn't say.
It was like a cutout of Bill Clinton.
No, it's like that bit from Bugsy Malone,
where they've got one bolted to a little minature railway road so it looks like —
— Isn't that Home Alone? — Home Alone.
— And Bugsy Malone as well. — Really!
Yeah, it is both.
When Fat Sam's gang has all been 'killed',
they set up a load of cardboard cutouts...
Maybe the train thing's Home Alone, but...
What else did she take down with her?
Skateboard.
Not really all that good on a cave floor.
Well, yeah, but something to learn.
Fifteen pounds of LSD.
'Herbal substances'.
— Food. — Yeah, fair point actually.
Well okay, yes, there was food down there, but as companions.
It's actually not that different from what I'd expect someone in 2014 to...
The voice of Morgan Freeman.
No, the only way she could communicate was through one of these.
Morgan Freeman.
A bat.
— Just a computer, was what I was looking for. — Sign interpreter.
Where! In when?
1989. So it was just a text terminal that talked to the folks at Nasa.
Bear in mind that Nasa's backing this up.
So she's getting light, then, from the screen.
Oh no, it didn't say without light. It's without natural light.
— Yeah. — What are the units here?
— Yeah. — Oh! Sorry, I thought she was in the dark!
No, no!
No, no, she'd just got no outside datum to tell when it's day and night.
Oh! But wouldn't the lights turning on and off give you an idea?
No, she's in control of that.
Ohh.
She doesn't know when nighttime is.
Yeah. She can exist as she normally would,
but that then settles down into twenty-eight hours.
This is where the perseverance that you'd need to do the thing
wouldn't pay off for me. I'd just keep a clock going,
and just turn the lights off at the right time.
Well, that's the thing. She wasn't allowed them.
The computer wouldn't have had a clock.
It would just be a terminal back and forth to tell... to communicate with people.
Wouldn't you, right, at least on April the first,
have taken the opportunity to really s*** her up
via that computer terminal?
If she can't see the outside world,
I'd have just typed the word 'HELP' repeatedly,
with 'THEY HAVE DONE IT.'
'OH GOD THEY HAVE DONE IT' — repeatedly.
Er. No.
— '89, yeah, that'd be a bit harsh. — Yeah.
Yeah, but I wouldn't say who 'they' were and what they'd done.
It's five years too late, really.
It would turn out all they'd done is block the toilet
in the gents' first floor loo.
She lost a lot of weight while she was in there,
because obviously her rhythms have spread out,
so she's taking meals less often, she lost weight.
She actually came out on May the 22nd, 1989.
Is the next question going to be, what day did she think it was?
Yeah. In fact, you can have a point for correctly guessing
— ...what I was about to ask there. [DING] — Nice.
She went in on January 13th, came out May the 22nd.
— And she thought it was the middle of March? — And she thought every day was two days?
— Something like that, yeah. — [DING] D'you know what...
March the 15th. Exactly the middle of March.
I would have pretended it was later.
Oh, he's claiming his biscuit right now.
— Get in there. — That's mine, this is mine...
The room, by the way — do you want to guess what its size is,
and what it was made of?
Because they actually built a room down in the cave.
— Hang on! — Plasterboard.
I'm rewinding from my admiration.
I thought she was in a pitch-black dark cave, tripping over things...
Dripping things like moss and...
Yeah. Suddenly they've built her a bijou residence down there.
It's hardly a bijou residence.
— Tent. — Chipboard.
It's a 20-by-12-foot acrylic glass room.
— Glass? — Glass?!
Acrylic glass, yeah.
Why?
Okay, so she can still see out to the cave,
but she's constricted in movement? Eugh!
Yeah.
Yeee.
Is that the kind of thing they only give them when they go to Mars?
That, I think, was one of the reasons, yeah.
It was an experiment on circadian rhythms,
on how you can survive with no external cues.
But you're trapped in a box that you can see out of,
just to black, which is...
Oh my God, that's horrib... actually, now I see.
The bubble idea, that's even worse.
I thought she might have had a Portakabin or something.
Stefania Follini has the women's world record.
There is a men's world record for complete isolation,
which is again taken...
Was it the Russians in that thing that's happened recently,
that was three hundred-odd days?
That wasn't underground chamber isloation.
They were still kind of locked in a room.
I'm not going to make a joke at all —
I'm going to say something like the Chilean miners?
Er, no. It's an Italian sociologist and caver
called Maurizio Montalbini.
Who just wanted a really long holiday doing his hobby.
Yeah.
'Er, it's a... study. Yeah! Can I get this paid for?'
Fair point, actually.
The interior designer's cave wasn't her natural environment.
But a caver would like to be in a cave.
Sociologist and caver?
'Hmmm... how can I get this comped?'
That's actually an entire year.
He entered on December the 6th, 1992,
got out December the 5th, 1993.
After she'd done it, then. He was going for the proper record.
Yeah. He broke all records...
thinking it was June the 6th.
So he'd, again, had about double the time that he thought he'd actually...
Wow, that's a lot more than spinning out
to a twenty-eight-hour rhythm, isn't it?
Yeah. Well, they said with her as well,
it became a forty-eight-hour rhythm.
Yeah, twenty-eight to forty-eight. Wow.
Just quoting what it says here — I'm not sure what this means:
'...his immune defence system fell from a level of 23 to 0'.
— NO! — Dun dun dunnn!
Not zero!! Zero's the worst number!
So presumably there's not a lot living down there,
so it's not fighting stuff off all the time.
There are no units given in this at all.
This is basically a maths teacher's...
Resistons... seses.
All we know is, whatever it is,
if something drops to zero, that's bad.
So above the cave, for Stefania Follini,
there was a trailer.
For what film?
Just on a loop, endlessly. She went insane.
When they announced the end of the experiment to her,
you know, they sent down the message saying, 'It's okay, you can come out,'
What do you think she sent back?
And this may be a translation from the Italian
or it may be the original.
'F*** off?' Question mark.
'I've just got the place looking how I want it!'
You know what? Point. [DING]
It was actually 'Are you really serious?'
But you're absolutely right, it was a question mark in disbelief.
So I'm giving you the point for that one.
Yeah!
I also like the newspaper article.
I'm now looking at the original here that it references.
What happened to her immediately after she came out?
What were the scientists doing to her?
— Poking. — Probing!
Point! [DING]
— Poking? — Yup. Who said 'poking' first?
— One of us. — Er... one of us, yeah.
— I'm going to give you both points. — Hahey!
'[P]oked with needles and tagged with electrodes'.
Bzzt. Bzzt.
And then given some vouchers and told to 'enjoy herself'.
'Here's one free McDonald's —
'oh no, your immune system's dropped, hasn't it.'
'Don't eat it!'
What's surprising me here is,
now I'm looking this up, I've just made a connection here...
because there's the article from the Daily News in 1989:
Experiment coordinator?
Maurizio Montalbini.
just playing 'Smoke On The Water' over and over again, [Laughter]
Ooh! Ooh!
I'll put my tinfoil hat on for that one, thank you very much.
The guy who later went on to break the record again,
was the experiment coordinator.
Presumably because he is the world's expert
on staying in a cave for a long time.
On staying in a hole, yeah.
He learned all he needed to know and then used it against her.
He was like, 'F*** doing it first.'
'It could kill me! Let some other f***er do it.'
While she's down there, all the time he's just sat there,
rubbing his hands and going, 'SOON.'
I just like the idea that he just went...
'Right, I need to do this experiment prior to mine...
'What profession to choose?
'Who will be hardiest against these hardships?'
[Together] 'Interior designers!'
You're actually, with the whole rubbing hands...
'Miss Follini', it says,
'heard a human voice other than her own' for the first time.
'Stefania, I am your God, talking to you.'
— Whoaa! — Dude had issues!
Of all the things he could have said!
He'd be laying in bed going, 'What do I say? What do I say?'
'What do I say? Argh!'
'I know! "This is your God talking to you!"'
I like the idea that he hired James Mason just to make sure it sounded right.
The last thing, then, is a quote from a news article about this.
'She dismisses concern that her contribution to science was an ordeal.'
What did she say it was instead?
'It was all right, really.'
— Time to think. — Cheap holiday.
You know, I'm going to give Gary the point on that.
'It was a very simple thing.' [DING]
Urgh. Yeah. Yes it is.
Oh, I like her. Her answers to questions are good.
I assume she was allowed books.
Yes.
Well, the books that she took in.
And a guitar.
Oh God.
I knew there'd be a guitar.
That's a fair point, though. You are going to Mars,
there's what, five, six of you or something?
You're getting on there, you strap yourself into the capsule...
There's going to be that one dickhole,
just playing 'Smoke On The Water' over and over again, [Laughter]
— on a s***ty twenty-quid acoustic guitar. — [Groans]
And he's got it slung over the back of his space suit:
'Hey guys, I brought this along!'
Oh, f***. 'Kumbaya' for the rest of eternity.
There was a moment when I was a fresher,
that someone directly above me, in the room above me
was playing 'Smoke On The Water' and just trying to learn it.
I just remember, 'Dun — dun — dunnn...'
After about five minutes of this, I just hear:
Door slams — stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp...
Door opens.
Clunk! [Electrical buzzing]
He pulls the plug out.
Door slams — stomp, stomp...
Not a word said.
Either that or someone gets in the space capsule with a guitar,
or hauls in an accordion or something.
[Tuneless noise]
'I think we've got room for this, don't you?'
[hums] 'Captain Pugwash!'
A harmonica. Just one of the sunsets, lying there going,
[Western harmonica]
I love the idea that she's not down there with some acoustic thing,
that she's got, like a two-hundred-watt Fender stack,
and a Gibson SG,
mirror hat, just rockin' out in this cave.
[à la Metallica] 'Master! Master!'
Yeaaaah!
To be fair, there are astronauts on the ISS —
I mean, Chris Hadfield was one — who took their guitar up with them.
On space musician facts, though...
Neil Armstrong took a theremin to the Moon, didn't he?
— Did he?! — Did he?
I have *never* heard that before.
Yeah, I think he took a theremin with him.
'Screw this, guys. It's not gonna sound spacey enough without it!'
All: [Theremin sounds] Woo-oo!
Yeah, but the way you play a theremin, can you imagine?
You're in the capsule, and Neil Armstrong's like...
Woooo-ooooo!
That's not strictly true, but I can tell you
that we have an article here called 'Music Out of the Moon'.
A cassette tape of that was taken...
Oh. Fair enough.
...by Neil Armstrong, to the moon, and he played it back to them
Oh thanks, Neil. Brilliant.
Just that bloke, when you're trying to drive,
you know, really concentrate, and someone puts their friggin' CD on.
That's him with his theremin music, innit.
'Brought this! Woooooo!' ...for his Moon landing moment.
All right. At the end of the show, congratulations Gary —
DAAAAH! YES! YESSS!
...you win this one.
GET IN THERE!
So excited, his hood came off!
I'm kind of disappointed that...
...kind of disappointed that he's not wearing a parka,
so he can sort of put it over his head like Batman.
YES!
BOOM!
That's what we play the game for!
ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?
You win a trip to the edge of the atmosphere
with the host of the '90s game show Small Talk.
Oh, really!
It's Ronnie Corbett Low Earth Orbit.
So do enjoy that. In the meantime...
— That's been Matt Gray... — Bye-bye!
That's been Gary Brannan...
That's been Chris Joel.
I have been Tom Scott. We'll see you next time.
Thanks for watching!
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