WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.920
STEPHEN FRY: Can you think of anything relating to your fingerprints and pineapples?

2
00:00:02.920 --> 00:00:05.500
ALAN DAVIES: Well, they get - they get - they're quite spiky.

3
00:00:05.500 --> 00:00:07.080
STEPHEN FRY: They are spiky, that's true...

4
00:00:07.400 --> 00:00:10.000
TOM SCOTT: I was watching QI one evening

5
00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:12.780
when Stephen Fry said something that really caught my attention.

11
00:00:12.780 --> 00:00:14.020
[laughter from audience]

7
00:00:14.020 --> 00:00:16.400
STEPHEN FRY: It has an enzyme which is called bromelain

8
00:00:16.400 --> 00:00:21.200
and bromelain actually erases and destroys the fingerprints of people who work with pineapples.

9
00:00:21.200 --> 00:00:24.740
It was used as a plot point in an episode of Hawaii Five-0, would you believe?

10
00:00:25.240 --> 00:00:12.780
VIC REEVES: So if I left my fingers in a tin of pineapple rings overnight...

11
00:00:12.780 --> 00:00:14.020
[laughter from audience]

12
00:00:30.800 --> 00:00:32.460
I could become a master criminal by morning.

13
00:00:33.300 --> 00:00:34.860
STEPHEN FRY: It's perfectly possible!

14
00:00:34.860 --> 00:00:39.460
TOM SCOTT: So, I went to my local supermarket and bought a pineapple and four pints of milk.

15
00:00:39.460 --> 00:00:43.040
The milk wasn't anything to do with the experiment, I'd just run out of milk.

16
00:00:45.940 --> 00:00:47.780
My plan was simple.

17
00:00:48.180 --> 00:00:52.040
According to what I've read, most of the bromelain is in the stem.

18
00:00:52.040 --> 00:00:57.940
So I'm going to cut off the top, slice off the spiny bit on the outside, and put the rest of it in here

19
00:00:57.940 --> 00:01:01.840
and grind it into a kind of a paste that I can put on my fingers.

20
00:01:03.140 --> 00:01:04.560
Bloody terrible knife.

21
00:01:05.020 --> 00:01:09.360
It was a bloody terrible knife; never buy Tesco value knives.

22
00:01:15.120 --> 00:01:17.520
The pineapple goo wasn't particularly appealing.

23
00:01:17.520 --> 00:01:19.720
That really doesn't look nice.

24
00:01:20.100 --> 00:01:23.400
Twice a day, and I'm gonna dip my fingers into this... goo

25
00:01:23.400 --> 00:01:31.060
and then, after a few minutes of letting it... steep, I am gonna scrub them with this pineapple.

26
00:01:31.060 --> 00:01:35.060
Tentatively, I put my fingers in the goo. It was... unpleasant.

27
00:01:35.060 --> 00:01:37.060
Ewww...

28
00:01:37.060 --> 00:01:42.360
I think it's just my brain making it up, but my skin feels tight

29
00:01:42.360 --> 00:01:44.580
It's starting to sting a little.

30
00:01:44.580 --> 00:01:50.340
After waiting a bit more for the digestion to happen, I scoured my fingers on the pineapple for a good fifteen minutes

31
00:01:50.340 --> 00:01:53.100
and did the same again the day after. Twice.

32
00:01:53.360 --> 00:01:57.920
Got some sore patches, came up along my fingers last night

33
00:01:57.920 --> 00:02:01.020
but, I think, everything's pretty much okay.

34
00:02:01.020 --> 00:02:06.540
So, I'm going to put them in the pineapple again, watch some TV, and see what happens.

35
00:02:06.540 --> 00:02:08.780
That's actually really nice. It's been in the fridge

36
00:02:10.580 --> 00:02:17.860
Okay, it's been half an hour, I'm gonna try scouring. I'm not really looking forward to this because last time was a little painful.

37
00:02:17.860 --> 00:02:22.880
I've switched to using a dish scourer because the pineapple outer bit doesn't keep that well in the fridge

38
00:02:23.340 --> 00:02:26.240
So, let's give this a try.

39
00:02:26.560 --> 00:02:28.240
It hurt.

40
00:02:32.080 --> 00:02:37.300
Twenty minutes later, just finished, washed my hands, and for the first time I'm starting to think

41
00:02:37.300 --> 00:02:39.800
this may actually, really, not be a good idea.

42
00:02:39.800 --> 00:02:44.180
My fingertips were permanently red. I'd taken off the first layers of my skin

43
00:02:44.180 --> 00:02:46.440
roughly equivalent to first-degree burns.

44
00:02:46.440 --> 00:02:49.360
I'm honestly in... quite a lot of pain.

45
00:02:49.360 --> 00:02:55.240
It's making me slightly irritable as well; it's making me annoyed. I've spilled pasta all over the place

46
00:02:55.240 --> 00:02:58.900
I'm swearing and cursing, and I'm not normally that bad.

47
00:02:59.340 --> 00:03:03.980
And they're stinging pretty much constantly, like I've been hit by a pile of nettles.

48
00:03:03.980 --> 00:03:10.200
And that's from just holding them in midair. If I actually touch anything, like press a key on a keyboard, or...

49
00:03:10.200 --> 00:03:16.680
or do anything, it sends a real shot of pain through. So I've think I've too much too fast.

50
00:03:16.680 --> 00:03:20.760
I'm going to scrub once a day from now on, but when I'm going to bed so it's got time to heal overnight

51
00:03:20.760 --> 00:03:24.160
and so I'm not completely messed up for the whole day.

52
00:03:24.160 --> 00:03:28.060
On day eight, I had a new pineapple, and things seemed a bit better.

53
00:03:28.060 --> 00:03:32.500
So far, they're just... cracked, really cracked.

54
00:03:32.500 --> 00:03:34.500
Hopefully, it's gonna be okay.

55
00:03:38.700 --> 00:03:40.700
Still a bloody terrible knife.

56
00:03:40.920 --> 00:03:47.600
But then, things took a turn for the worse. At four A.M., on day thirteen, I gingerly set up my camera.

57
00:03:47.700 --> 00:03:51.520
There's someone holding a lighter to every one of my fingers.

58
00:03:53.060 --> 00:04:01.820
If I touch anything, or if the sheets on the bed rub against my fingers, it wakes me up again.

59
00:04:05.980 --> 00:04:09.540
I... I... I need sleep.

60
00:04:09.540 --> 00:04:14.420
The next day, I met someone who told me about a man who had tried to remove his fingerprints before me.

61
00:04:14.420 --> 00:04:17.680
And, at last, I decided to stop.

62
00:04:17.680 --> 00:04:23.540
John Dillinger, seen here in an FBI file photo, was a bank robber during the Great Depression.

63
00:04:23.540 --> 00:04:29.620
In a 1935 article from the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, professor Harold Cummins,

64
00:04:29.640 --> 00:04:35.600
the father of modern fingerprint science, describes how Dillinger, "applied acid to his fingertips"

65
00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:39.680
It didn't work. It mutilated him and no doubt caused him tremendous pain

66
00:04:39.680 --> 00:04:43.080
but the fingerprints weren't badly damaged; they just healed.

67
00:04:43.080 --> 00:04:50.140
It turns out that, to actually destroy your fingerprints, you have to go down to the depth of about one millimeter.

68
00:04:50.140 --> 00:04:52.420
That's deep enough that you'd need a skin graft.

69
00:04:52.420 --> 00:04:56.340
So, fingerprints can't be removed with pineapple.

70
00:04:56.840 --> 00:04:59.700
There's only one way to actually do it.

71
00:04:59.700 --> 00:05:03.300
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! AH!

72
00:05:03.300 --> 00:05:06.220
No, I'm just kidding, that's not actually hot.