I feel like it cut off too soon, like they were just getting started. QI has lots of long, rambling conversations, so I think longer clips or full episodes would be better.
I love British television. In the states, this might be a topic discussed on NPR or something, but never on tv. There's a Taskmaster episode where a significant part of the task is composed of a pile-up of double negatives. They called Susie Dent from Countdown just to make sure they got the answer correct.
The guy beside Alan is Gyles Brandreth, he appears fairly frequently and is a regular on the BBc radio show Just A Minute ( which Jodie will love and there are multiple seasons of it on youtube, I can't reccomend she listen to that enough. ) He's an ex-Member of Parliment, where he was renowned for filibusting. He claims to be related to almost everutone of any historical interest, or so at least it seems. If you can find more of his appearances I think you will enjoy them. I good place to start would be "What's So Un-British About A Roundabout? | QI"
They also did two weeks of JaM. on tv to mark its (fiftieth?) anniversary . Lovely to see Nicholas and the regulars and some of the distractions they use to put each other off .
There are three certainties in life. Death, taxes, and at any given point in time Gyles is in the middle of an anecdote he started at least 3 hours ago.
This whole episode was great. Somehow I really identify with Gyles. I also information dump on people, continually get cut-off and ignored but happily keep on information dumping at people whenever I get the chance.
According to t'internet - "Generally, ain't is seen as an informal word that, while widely used in everyday conversation, is avoided in formal writing or speech. The first-recorded usage occurred in the 1700s. In 1695 an't was used as a contraction of "am not", in William Congreve's play Love for Love. The word's original form is amn't, a direct contraction of am and not that can still be heard in Scotland and Ireland today" - amn't is also in quite common usage in Yorkshire & Lancashire, I have used it myself.
That "amn't" is an interesting contraction, because the M-N-T combination makes it quite a mouthful. Is there a stop before the T, like in "isn't", or how is it pronounced?
English is so confusing when it comes to yes and no questions because you (re: English speakers) have two different systems: One where the answer to the question "Would you mind me butting in?" is "No, not at all. (go ahead and sit down)" and the other is "Yes, come and sit down." I might be giving a bad example here because I come from a language where we only use system one, but the essence is that English speakers sometimes prefer to give a positive response when they agree with the sentiment of the questions asked and give a negative response when they disagree. This gets tricky because both "yes" and "not at all" (said with the right tone of voice) have positive connotations, so sometimes you can use both as the same answer, even though they seem like they would be opposites. Another example: "Don't you like chocolate?" "Yes." (Yes contradicts the negative of the question -> "I do like chocolate") "No, I do like chocolate." (Responder disagrees with the assumption of the question and states what they think) I think this one is closer to a real-world example.
The point both Alan and Victoria were making is that the question essentially boils down to "do you want points or not?," which is not, strictly speaking, a yes or no question. Yes is the colloquial way most people would respond to it, but grammatically that doesn't answer the question, because you're simultaneously saying "yes, i want points" OR "yes, i don't." This is better illustrated if you swap the factors out for something more tangible... do you want fries or onion rings?... yes... it doesn't work. You're just saying you want fries OR onion rings. Which i suppose means that yes is still the correct answer whether you want points or not because there is no other option but i don't think that's what they were going for.
Yes. I don't understand how this could be so overlooked in this segment. The number of negatives doesn't matter, it wasn't a yes or no question anyway. "Do you want this or that?" "Yes." No. That makes no sense at all.
This is the trouble with short clips , it did seem to end quickly and perhaps the subject came up again even if not continued immediately . A really good panel on this one Gyles always has something to say , and a few relatives tucked away on almost any subject .
My understanding is that the writers of grammar guides in the 18th century decided to apply the 'no double negatives' rule that existed in Latin to English, and the rule stuck.
If you have ever been to east London you will realise we do have double negatives in abundance, sometimes triple! My wife is from there and I lived there a number of years (long enough that over time I, a northerner ended up with a cockney accent, using cockney verbage and cockney rhyming slang - which I already had used before up north, as for the last 70 years or so, rhyming slang isn't just restricted to London anymore) and it would confuse me every day when I first moved down there. I wouldn't know if I was expected to do something or it do something half the time. But about a year in I had gotten the hang of things. Within two years everyone thought I was a born and bred cockney - but my trouble and strife didn't like that because she fell in love with me as a northerner so a year or two later she made us all move up north for me to claim my northern-ness back. And within a year I did. It's weird because I didn't purposely gain cockney powers, it just occured naturally. The funniest part of all this was my 5 year old daughter who had an east London,!Essex accent (as we lived on the border of London and Essex) after we moved to my hometown of Scunthorpe on the Wednesday, we got settled over the weekend and she started school on Monday, she came home that Monday afternoon with a perfect Scunthorpe accent. She had visited here a few times over the years but that was the first day she had interacted with a big group of kids in this area and it rubbed off on her really quickly. As an adult she moved back to Essex for a few years for college, regaining a slight Essex accent then returning to North Lincolnshire area and having her own kids her accent is a mix of Scunthorpe, Grimsby where she lives now, which is the next big town to Scunthorpe that has a very similar accent but not exactly same, and still have some of her Essex/London accent using certain words. And even weirder is, her own two children aged 3 and 5, who have never lived in London or Essex, they have a slight london-centric twang to their voices, just from picking up on their mother's vocal tones when speaking. I am pleased to say I regained my natural accent and have been cockney free for 20 years this year, (luckily I had never gained a cockney walk!) The other thing with my wife is she IS a genuine cockney lived her life first in the east-end then in Essex on the border with the east-end, but had neither a cockney nor an Essex accent. You can tell she's from London but she is quite a soft spoken, mildly London vocal tones to her voice (that have softened even more after 20 years living up north) but not really having an accent you can place specifically other than as being from somewhere within the general London area. Whereas, our son, who spent his first 8 years living in Essex, the next 10 Ihn Scunthorpe and the rest of the time until now, in Dagenham, Essex, sounds like he has swallowed Danny Dyer, Phil Mitchell, Michael Caine and Micky Flanagan and a cockney dictionary, (which does exist as a legitimate publication, I myself contributed to its entries) And from when he first learned to talk, up until now, his accent never changed once. It's as if it was set in stone when he was born.unlike his sister, who's accent changed overnight, his accent never changed, never softened, not one different bit of inflection to his voice from day one. He would still use words like "ain't" to mean "isn't", "hasn't", "aren't" or "haven't" whereas the local equivalent in Scunthorpe would be "in't" "han't" or "an't", which to anyone else not hearing attuned to those accents may be dumbfounded, but if you live their you pick up on it. You get the cadence and also you learn by context. Also, you saying that "ain't" isn't a word. For your information, Ain't IS a word. It isn't laziness, it has evolved every bit as legitimately as any other word in use. You need to remember ALL words are made up. Snobbishness about words like ain't , innit and other colloquialisms because they are not the "Queens (or now Kings) English" blows my mind. Just because you might not use it in your own vocabulary doesn't mean it isn't used widely by another subset of humans. In Britain, in the north east where the Geordies live, almost all of the words they use are almost alien to the rest of Britain, even people 20 miles away struggle to understand some of the vocabulary, but they are still speaking a subset of English but you wouldn't say they were lazy for talking how they do, it's just how their local vocabulary has evolved, taking on various influences over the years. If the words being used are understood then it isn't lazy. If someone says "I ain't picking that bag up" and you don't understand what that person is saying, then YOU are the lazy one for not understanding what 99% of English speakers would understand. Language is fluid. It evolves. Are we, the whole English speaking world lazy for speaking the English we do now, because you would only have to go back a few hundred years for the English speakers of that time to have trouble understanding what we are saying. No language is static and nor should it be. Our great great great grandkids will be speaking in words almost unintelligible to us but it will still be English. Jesus, I have nephews and nieces that speak in what sounds like alien languages to me (and I'm only in my 40s) but it's just modern kid speak. When we were younger, the words we used as kids were different to the words, phrases and general vocab our parents used in the 50s and 60s. It's a constant cycle, rather than look at such words and abbreviations as being lazy, look at it as inventive and even necessary.
And relax... I do agree with you though. Language is entirely fluid. If you decide to start calling tables snurgleblots and if everyone around you is aware of this then it's just as valid to call it a snurgleblot as it is to call it a table.
@@davidmannion7333 exactly! I just don't like it when someone tries to correct someone on a word not being "proper" just because they don't like or use that particular word themselves. Like I said, every word was, once upon a time, made up by somebody. I think Shakespeare was credited with creating a very large proportion of the English language in his writing. Nobody told him to stop talking rubbish or accuse him of being lazy, to my knowledge! Quite the opposite infact.
There was a task in Taskmaster, in the season Victoria Coren Mitchell was on, which was about this very thing. The task was to either press, or not press a button, but it was formulated with several negations. I don't not discourage you to not avoid not watching it.
I was a bit surprised by your comment about "mouse voiced" students. Having worked in the teaching environment. I found a reaction like that would intimidate the student, this would result in the student not taking part in future. I found the quiet students did better in examinations. There is a saying that one marble in an empty tin makes the most noise.
You’re taking this way too seriously. I teach 9 and 10 year olds. I spend all year building a rapport with them. I expect all my students to speak and respond so we can hear them. It’s a very common expectation. I don’t make fun of any of my students. Nor do I do anything to make them feel uncomfortable. If that ever does happen I apologize to them. That’s where building rapport is important. So you know how far you can joke with a kid.
The first 2 nots are a double and the 3rd is seperate The Mitchell lass, forgot her first name, is massively inteligent. She persents a show on tele... wow... proper hard, proper mental. It hurts my head, so Jodie, dont try it, ive seen how terrible you are at countdown. 😮 Love from North East England ❤ I added a comment which you likely didn't have time to see, so I'll reiterate it now Being so awful at countdown, have any of your students seen it and if they have are they making your life a misery. In the UK pupils live for opportunities to torture teachers. EVERY student would know and they'd make sure next year's knew and make it a tradition. So... are you being persected... as you should be, being that pants at anything demands ridicule Genuine love, and sympathy if you are being tortured, from the PITYAKKA people ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
Do you not not points, or not? In effect is two separate questions, which when breaking down the double negative becomes a single question i.e Do you want points or not? The answer to which is yes....simples.
It's a strange one, because isn't is is not, doesn't is does not, don't is do not, etc... in the case of ain't the first portion doesn't mean anything alone. Ai not? The best fit for that idiom would be _"if it isn't broken, don't try to fix it"_ but I guess that doesn't quite roll off the tongue the same way.
Is ain’t supposed to be “isn’t” or “I’m not”. The idiom uses it as isn’t but people often say “I ain’t…” meaning “I am not…” I get wanting a word for a contraction of “I am not” which we don’t have already (but do we need a contraction for 7 letters? (or 5 if you use “I’m”)) but we already have “isn’t” for “is not”
Double Negative is like when Americans say 'I didn't do nothing'. What they mean is they 'didn't do anything'. If they 'didn't' do 'nothing' , then what they're really saying is 'I did something'. No offence, but Americans have butchered English lol. ( I could care less, when really it's 'I COULDN'T care less', is another example, just not of the double negative. Sorry for waffling lol.
![American reacts to Posts That Prove American's Think That Only They Exist [part 2]](/img/n.gif)
I feel like it cut off too soon, like they were just getting started. QI has lots of long, rambling conversations, so I think longer clips or full episodes would be better.
One can almost never get enough of QI.
I love British television. In the states, this might be a topic discussed on NPR or something, but never on tv.
There's a Taskmaster episode where a significant part of the task is composed of a pile-up of double negatives.
They called Susie Dent from Countdown just to make sure they got the answer correct.
The guy beside Alan is Gyles Brandreth, he appears fairly frequently and is a regular on the BBc radio show Just A Minute ( which Jodie will love and there are multiple seasons of it on youtube, I can't reccomend she listen to that enough. ) He's an ex-Member of Parliment, where he was renowned for filibusting. He claims to be related to almost everutone of any historical interest, or so at least it seems. If you can find more of his appearances I think you will enjoy them. I good place to start would be "What's So Un-British About A Roundabout? | QI"
Also he has a podcast with Susie Dent, Something Rhymes with Purple. Perfection for anyone who likes words and their origins.
They also did two weeks of JaM. on tv to mark its (fiftieth?) anniversary . Lovely to see Nicholas and the regulars and some of the distractions they use to put each other off .
@@DavidSmith-cx8dgThe Owl and the Pussycat subject was hilarious.
There are three certainties in life. Death, taxes, and at any given point in time Gyles is in the middle of an anecdote he started at least 3 hours ago.
@@SpudgunStreamsI love Gyles. Couldn’t stand him when I was growing up though. Now I could (and do) listen to him for hours ☺️
This whole episode was great. Somehow I really identify with Gyles. I also information dump on people, continually get cut-off and ignored but happily keep on information dumping at people whenever I get the chance.
According to t'internet - "Generally, ain't is seen as an informal word that, while widely used in everyday conversation, is avoided in formal writing or speech. The first-recorded usage occurred in the 1700s. In 1695 an't was used as a contraction of "am not", in William Congreve's play Love for Love. The word's original form is amn't, a direct contraction of am and not that can still be heard in Scotland and Ireland today" - amn't is also in quite common usage in Yorkshire & Lancashire, I have used it myself.
That "amn't" is an interesting contraction, because the M-N-T combination makes it quite a mouthful. Is there a stop before the T, like in "isn't", or how is it pronounced?
@@blechtic Me, I pronounce it as all one word - I suppose sort of phonetically it might be spelt "amunt"
English is so confusing when it comes to yes and no questions because you (re: English speakers) have two different systems: One where the answer to the question "Would you mind me butting in?" is "No, not at all. (go ahead and sit down)" and the other is "Yes, come and sit down."
I might be giving a bad example here because I come from a language where we only use system one, but the essence is that English speakers sometimes prefer to give a positive response when they agree with the sentiment of the questions asked and give a negative response when they disagree. This gets tricky because both "yes" and "not at all" (said with the right tone of voice) have positive connotations, so sometimes you can use both as the same answer, even though they seem like they would be opposites.
Another example:
"Don't you like chocolate?"
"Yes." (Yes contradicts the negative of the question -> "I do like chocolate")
"No, I do like chocolate." (Responder disagrees with the assumption of the question and states what they think)
I think this one is closer to a real-world example.
Guys, thank you! I now have come to understand the American education system.
My teacher once said, that there is no example of where a double positive creates a negative….I said “yeah right!”
Channeling Sidney Morgenbesser, eh?
@@blechtic I guess I must be. I also didn’t say “hey, look at this humorous comment that I made up myself”
The point both Alan and Victoria were making is that the question essentially boils down to "do you want points or not?," which is not, strictly speaking, a yes or no question. Yes is the colloquial way most people would respond to it, but grammatically that doesn't answer the question, because you're simultaneously saying "yes, i want points" OR "yes, i don't." This is better illustrated if you swap the factors out for something more tangible... do you want fries or onion rings?... yes... it doesn't work. You're just saying you want fries OR onion rings. Which i suppose means that yes is still the correct answer whether you want points or not because there is no other option but i don't think that's what they were going for.
Yes. I don't understand how this could be so overlooked in this segment. The number of negatives doesn't matter, it wasn't a yes or no question anyway. "Do you want this or that?" "Yes." No. That makes no sense at all.
This is the trouble with short clips , it did seem to end quickly and perhaps the subject came up again even if not continued immediately . A really good panel on this one Gyles always has something to say , and a few relatives tucked away on almost any subject .
Robin Williams was 41 in Mrs. Doubtfire, Sandi Toksvig is now 65, so yeah she would have been older than Mrs Doubtfire when she did this, just saying.
Steven Pinker talks about double negatives in his excellent book "The Language Instinct".
I haven't read it.
There weren't 3 negatives. There was a proposition, with 2 negatives & an alternative expressed in the negative.
My understanding is that the writers of grammar guides in the 18th century decided to apply the 'no double negatives' rule that existed in Latin to English, and the rule stuck.
If you have ever been to east London you will realise we do have double negatives in abundance, sometimes triple!
My wife is from there and I lived there a number of years (long enough that over time I, a northerner ended up with a cockney accent, using cockney verbage and cockney rhyming slang - which I already had used before up north, as for the last 70 years or so, rhyming slang isn't just restricted to London anymore) and it would confuse me every day when I first moved down there. I wouldn't know if I was expected to do something or it do something half the time. But about a year in I had gotten the hang of things. Within two years everyone thought I was a born and bred cockney - but my trouble and strife didn't like that because she fell in love with me as a northerner so a year or two later she made us all move up north for me to claim my northern-ness back. And within a year I did. It's weird because I didn't purposely gain cockney powers, it just occured naturally. The funniest part of all this was my 5 year old daughter who had an east London,!Essex accent (as we lived on the border of London and Essex) after we moved to my hometown of Scunthorpe on the Wednesday, we got settled over the weekend and she started school on Monday, she came home that Monday afternoon with a perfect Scunthorpe accent. She had visited here a few times over the years but that was the first day she had interacted with a big group of kids in this area and it rubbed off on her really quickly.
As an adult she moved back to Essex for a few years for college, regaining a slight Essex accent then returning to North Lincolnshire area and having her own kids her accent is a mix of Scunthorpe, Grimsby where she lives now, which is the next big town to Scunthorpe that has a very similar accent but not exactly same, and still have some of her Essex/London accent using certain words.
And even weirder is, her own two children aged 3 and 5, who have never lived in London or Essex, they have a slight london-centric twang to their voices, just from picking up on their mother's vocal tones when speaking. I am pleased to say I regained my natural accent and have been cockney free for 20 years this year, (luckily I had never gained a cockney walk!)
The other thing with my wife is she IS a genuine cockney lived her life first in the east-end then in Essex on the border with the east-end, but had neither a cockney nor an Essex accent. You can tell she's from London but she is quite a soft spoken, mildly London vocal tones to her voice (that have softened even more after 20 years living up north) but not really having an accent you can place specifically other than as being from somewhere within the general London area.
Whereas, our son, who spent his first 8 years living in Essex, the next 10 Ihn Scunthorpe and the rest of the time until now, in Dagenham, Essex, sounds like he has swallowed Danny Dyer, Phil Mitchell, Michael Caine and Micky Flanagan and a cockney dictionary, (which does exist as a legitimate publication, I myself contributed to its entries) And from when he first learned to talk, up until now, his accent never changed once. It's as if it was set in stone when he was born.unlike his sister, who's accent changed overnight, his accent never changed, never softened, not one different bit of inflection to his voice from day one. He would still use words like "ain't" to mean "isn't", "hasn't", "aren't" or "haven't" whereas the local equivalent in Scunthorpe would be "in't" "han't" or "an't", which to anyone else not hearing attuned to those accents may be dumbfounded, but if you live their you pick up on it. You get the cadence and also you learn by context.
Also, you saying that "ain't" isn't a word. For your information, Ain't IS a word. It isn't laziness, it has evolved every bit as legitimately as any other word in use. You need to remember ALL words are made up. Snobbishness about words like ain't , innit and other colloquialisms because they are not the "Queens (or now Kings) English" blows my mind.
Just because you might not use it in your own vocabulary doesn't mean it isn't used widely by another subset of humans. In Britain, in the north east where the Geordies live, almost all of the words they use are almost alien to the rest of Britain, even people 20 miles away struggle to understand some of the vocabulary, but they are still speaking a subset of English but you wouldn't say they were lazy for talking how they do, it's just how their local vocabulary has evolved, taking on various influences over the years.
If the words being used are understood then it isn't lazy. If someone says "I ain't picking that bag up" and you don't understand what that person is saying, then YOU are the lazy one for not understanding what 99% of English speakers would understand.
Language is fluid. It evolves. Are we, the whole English speaking world lazy for speaking the English we do now, because you would only have to go back a few hundred years for the English speakers of that time to have trouble understanding what we are saying.
No language is static and nor should it be. Our great great great grandkids will be speaking in words almost unintelligible to us but it will still be English. Jesus, I have nephews and nieces that speak in what sounds like alien languages to me (and I'm only in my 40s) but it's just modern kid speak. When we were younger, the words we used as kids were different to the words, phrases and general vocab our parents used in the 50s and 60s. It's a constant cycle, rather than look at such words and abbreviations as being lazy, look at it as inventive and even necessary.
And relax... I do agree with you though. Language is entirely fluid. If you decide to start calling tables snurgleblots and if everyone around you is aware of this then it's just as valid to call it a snurgleblot as it is to call it a table.
@@davidmannion7333 exactly!
I just don't like it when someone tries to correct someone on a word not being "proper" just because they don't like or use that particular word themselves. Like I said, every word was, once upon a time, made up by somebody. I think Shakespeare was credited with creating a very large proportion of the English language in his writing. Nobody told him to stop talking rubbish or accuse him of being lazy, to my knowledge! Quite the opposite infact.
😴😴😴😴😴😴
That is a cockney accent.
I love Gyles, he's brilliant
I normally love you two, but to be honest, I’m going off you after this non-sensical diatribe. ! lol
There was a task in Taskmaster, in the season Victoria Coren Mitchell was on, which was about this very thing. The task was to either press, or not press a button, but it was formulated with several negations. I don't not discourage you to not avoid not watching it.
One too many "nots", discourage is negative too!
@@MrNikolidas That depends on what you think I meant to say, but there are effectively 6 negations, counting discourage and avoid.
@@GriexxtI hyper-focused on the nots, fair play.
I was a bit surprised by your comment about "mouse voiced" students. Having worked in the teaching environment. I found a reaction like that would intimidate the student, this would result in the student not taking part in future. I found the quiet students did better in examinations. There is a saying that one marble in an empty tin makes the most noise.
You’re taking this way too seriously. I teach 9 and 10 year olds. I spend all year building a rapport with them. I expect all my students to speak and respond so we can hear them. It’s a very common expectation. I don’t make fun of any of my students. Nor do I do anything to make them feel uncomfortable. If that ever does happen I apologize to them. That’s where building rapport is important. So you know how far you can joke with a kid.
The first 2 nots are a double and the 3rd is seperate
The Mitchell lass, forgot her first name, is massively inteligent. She persents a show on tele... wow... proper hard, proper mental. It hurts my head, so Jodie, dont try it, ive seen how terrible you are at countdown. 😮
Love from North East England ❤
I added a comment which you likely didn't have time to see, so I'll reiterate it now
Being so awful at countdown, have any of your students seen it and if they have are they making your life a misery. In the UK pupils live for opportunities to torture teachers. EVERY student would know and they'd make sure next year's knew and make it a tradition.
So... are you being persected... as you should be, being that pants at anything demands ridicule
Genuine love, and sympathy if you are being tortured, from the PITYAKKA people ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
Do you not not points, or not? In effect is two separate questions, which when breaking down the double negative becomes a single question i.e Do you want points or not? The answer to which is yes....simples.
She said "Alan, don't you not want some points or not?"
This is one time when you be forgiven go back to the question
See who out of two of you right , I like Victoria answer
The irony of a grown man dressed like a Nine year old boy commenting about a woman’s appearance.
😂
Just FYI, 'Ain't' is a word. Used in the idiom 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' for example. It appears in dictionaries.
It's a strange one, because isn't is is not, doesn't is does not, don't is do not, etc... in the case of ain't the first portion doesn't mean anything alone. Ai not? The best fit for that idiom would be _"if it isn't broken, don't try to fix it"_ but I guess that doesn't quite roll off the tongue the same way.
Is ain’t supposed to be “isn’t” or “I’m not”. The idiom uses it as isn’t but people often say “I ain’t…” meaning “I am not…”
I get wanting a word for a contraction of “I am not” which we don’t have already (but do we need a contraction for 7 letters? (or 5 if you use “I’m”)) but we already have “isn’t” for “is not”
surely Ain't is an informal contraction of 3rd person present: am not, is not, are not, has not, or have not🙂 or is it not, not
The English language has 470,000 words, the Korean language has 1,100,373 words, the Turkish - 616,767, the Swedish - 600,000, and so on...
I don't want to not comment that this isn't not, not your best reaction.
'Wee bit distracted'. !!!
yeah, but no, but yeah, but no, but yeah but as a Catherine Tate character would say lol
I am married to Mrs Doubtfire (100% true).
Watch it again but with the captions turned on.
Please check out, press the buzzer when the Sun goes below the horizon.
The more you talked the more i was confused 😂
It's no wonder English is such a difficult 2nd language for people.
I like sandy. She's very intelligent and very funny. But I miss Stephen fry. The dude could read a menu and I'd listen.
Ain't is short for am not.
Ain’t is a word, bro
.I didn't know oxymoron is it's self an oxymoron.
Victoria Coren Mitchell is a babe! And a pretty mean pro poker player
she is Danish not English
Seriously, who gives a Flying Flick. 😂
The anwser is I don't care
That is a cockney accent!!!!
React to RCB alan Walker song from the RCB fans
Double Negative is like when Americans say 'I didn't do nothing'. What they mean is they 'didn't do anything'. If they 'didn't' do 'nothing' , then what they're really saying is 'I did something'. No offence, but Americans have butchered English lol. ( I could care less, when really it's 'I COULDN'T care less', is another example, just not of the double negative. Sorry for waffling lol.
Sandi Toksvig, the host is 65 years old so could be in Mrs Doubtfire's age bracket.