QI (A series)

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QI Series A
QI Complete Series 1 DVD.jpg
The front cover of the QI Series A DVD, featuring Stephen Fry (right) and Alan Davies (left).
Country of origin United Kingdom
No. of episodes 12 + unbroadcast pilot
Broadcast
Original channel BBC
Original run 11 September 2003 (2003-09-11) – 23 December 2003 (2003-12-23)
Home video release
DVD release date 6 November 2006
Series chronology
← Previous
—		 Next →
Series B

This is a list of episodes of QI, the BBC comedy panel game television show hosted by Stephen Fry and starring Alan Davies.

The first series started on 11 September 2003. Although not mentioned at the time, all of the questions (with the exception of the final "general ignorance" round) were on subjects beginning with "a" (such as "arthropods", "Alans" and "astronomy"). The following six series continued the theme: the second series' subjects all began with "b", and so on.

The dates in the lists are those of the BBC Two broadcasts. The episodes were also broadcast on BBC Four, generally a week earlier (as soon as one episode finished on BBC Two, the next was shown on BBC Four). Aside from Alan Davies and not adding clip shows, there are six guests that have appeared in ten or more episodes (out of 61), they are Jo Brand (18), Rich Hall (16), Phill Jupitus (16), Bill Bailey (15), Sean Lock (14) and Clive Anderson (10). Excluding the Pilot there have been a total of 51 different guest panellists in the four series to date. The fifth series began to air on BBC Two on 21 September 2007.

Disclaimer: Some facts stated during the series have since been found to be incorrect, in some cases due to a mistake and others by becoming outdated. Where possible these entries have been highlighted.

Contents

[edit] Pilot

Never broadcast on television (barring brief excerpts shown as part of The Making of QI documentary in 2011) but released as an extra on the Series A DVD. While the basic format is essentially familiar, there are a few significant differences between this and the show as it became. Not least of these is the more generic set, which doesn't contain the giant video screens behind the panellists (although the lighting does cause it to change colour throughout). Also absent is an electronic buzzer system, meaning the panel have to call attention to themselves with various props such as a squeak toy and a miniature horn. This is also the only episode in which the scores are announced after each round. On the proper show, the scores are only revealed at the end of the episode.

The theme tune on the original tape that was passed to BBC commissioning editors was the Herman's Hermits version of Wonderful World. However, the regular theme tune subsequently composed by Howard Goodall is present on the DVD version after the show's makers were unable to obtain the rights to the song.

Panellists
Topics

[edit] Names

Tangent: The Gibraltarian Minister of Tourism is called Joe Holliday, the Archbishop of Manila is called Cardinal Sin and the name "Dick Brett" means "Thick Plank" in German.
  • Bobo Fing is a language spoken by 10,000 people in Mali. Not to be confused with Bobo (a language of Burkina Faso) or Gogo (spoken by 10 million in Tanzania).
  • King Arthur's lance was called Ron, short for Rongomyniad. His helmet was named Goosewhite, his armour was called Wygar and his war cry was "Clarence!" His sword "Excalibur" isn't actually called "Excalibur, the original name is "Caliburn".
Tangent: Paul Daniels performing a magic trick based on the legend of King Arthur.
  • 'Butter hamlets' are small tropical fish which can be found in 10 different colours.
  • Tim is the 6th most popular name for a baby boy in Germany. In 1992, the French Government relaxed the laws on what French children could be legally christened and the following year, the most popular name for a baby French boy was Kevin. (Forfeit: Adolph — because Stephen's card was spelt like that and Alan who said the answer was thinking "Adolf" as in Adolf Hitler, the penalty was reduced to -8 points)
  • Richard Gere's middle name is Tiffany. (Forfeit: Gerbil)
Tangent: The name for the Director of Planning & Strategic Development at Aberdeen City Council is Peter Cockhead.
Scores
  • Bill - 15
  • Alan - 25
  • Eddie - 31
  • Kit - 35

[edit] History

Tangent: When Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, there were no bathrooms in Buckingham Palace. King George IV had a magnificent marble bath at the Brighton Pavilion, but Victoria had it sawn up into mantelpieces.
  • William Huskisson, the first person killed in a rail accident, had previously escaped death after a horse fell on his head during his honeymoon.
  • The bones from penises of badgers were used by Victorian gentlemen as tie clips. Every primate except man has a penis bone known as the baculum. Badgers are nocturnal and their hair used to be used in the making of shaving brushes.
Tangent: A pig's penis is a spiral-shape (see a photo).
  • Rectal inflation was an old method of blowing tobacco smoke through the rectum as a means to resuscitate the drowned.
  • Victorians who could not afford chimney sweeps would drop a goose down the chimney or make it fly up through the chimney to clean it instead.
Scores
  • Alan - 45
  • Eddie - 46
  • Bill - 68
  • Kit - 80

[edit] Lingo

Tangent: The Finnish word for "bad news" is "Jobinposti". The Dutch word "Nijlpaard" means hippopotamus and "Koksmuts" means a chef's hat.
  • Guessing the meanings of Dutch words.
    • Pronk - Flaunt
    • Sloot - Ditch
    • Kloof - Gap
    • Lonk - To Ogle
    • Oog - Eye
    • Wanklank - A discordant noise
  • "Tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog moesten veel Nederlanders tulpenbollen eten", is Dutch for, "During the Second World War, many Dutch people had to eat tulip bulbs", which is a true fact.
Tangent: If dogs eat toothpaste, they hallucinate. Alan admits he heard this fact from someone from the pub. (Although on episode 9 in Series "B", it is revealed that this fact is true.) Another kind of dog hunts deer by biting off the testicles.
Tangent: In Greece, the word for bread and lavatory seat is the same word, "kolóura".
  • The word "Thespian" means "Awful" in Greek, as in "Awe inspiring." It also means, "Divine".
Tangent: In Denmark, since the Danish word for "King" is "kong", "King Kong" is known as "Kong King". (Correction: Though said by Stephen Fry in the episode and repeated on an episode in Series "B", this is in fact not true. 'King' is 'kong' in Danish insofar as saying 'King Peter' would be 'Kong Peter'. (As a noun 'a king' is 'en konge') The famous giant ape is, in fact, called King Kong, also in Danish.)
Scores
  • Alan - 77
  • Kit - 95
  • Eddie - 96
  • Bill - 107

[edit] General Ignorance

  • The largest mountain in the world is Mauna Loa. Mount Kilimanjaro is higher than Mount Everest because it raises straight out of the African plain, whereas Everest is just one mountain on top of lots in the Himalayas. Also, as Kilimanjaro is on the equator, it is further away from the centre of the Earth as it is an oblate spheroid. (Forfeit: Mount Everest)
  • Black boxes are orange. They were black until 1955, when people realised that they were never able to find them in a wreckage.
  • Dolphins are eaten in Genoa - which is not true anymore. The dish called "Mosciamo" is made of tuna, as dolphins are protected species in Italy for many decades.
  • Scuba diving is illegal off the coast of Greece, mainly because most of the country's antiquities are underwater.
Tangent: In Greece, the word for lifebelt is also "Kolóura".

[edit] A Series (2003)

The first series consists of 12 episodes. Except for the Christmas special, all of them are composed mainly of questions on topics beginning with A. No episode pays specific attention to one theme (again, save for the Christmas special). The titles presented below have been retrospectively applied. Besides the two regulars, Stephen Fry and Alan Davies, series A saw the QI debuts of Clive Anderson, Bill Bailey, Danny Baker, Jo Brand, Gyles Brandreth, Rob Brydon, Jimmy Carr, Dave Gorman, Rich Hall, Jeremy Hardy, Phill Jupitus, Sean Lock, John Sessions and Linda Smith, as well as the only appearances to date of Jackie Clune, Howard Goodall, Richard E. Grant, Hugh Laurie, Julia Morris, Peter Serafinowicz and Meera Syal.

[edit] Episode 1 "Adam"

Broadcast date
  • 11 September 2003 (BBC Two)
Panelists
Buzzers
  • Danny — A klaxon horn
  • John — A repeating-style electric doorbell
  • Hugh — A typical buzzer noise
  • Alan — A baaing sheep
Topics
Tangent: Woody Allen famously said, "How can I believe in God when, just last week, I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?" and Carrie Snow said "If God was a woman, sperm would taste of chocolate."
Tangent: Geneticists believe that every woman has a single common ancestor born 150,000 years ago. Scientists call her "Eve" and every man has a common ancestor called "Adam", but it's also revealed that Adam was born 80,000 years after Eve.
  • Adam's navel and the Archbishop of Canterbury's left ear are both purely decorative. Adam couldn't have had a navel, because he was created, not born, so there would be no umbilical cord. The Archbishop of Canterbury was born deaf in the left ear, so it has no function. The Creation of Adam was painted by Michelangelo, who John informed the panellists was born in 1475 and died in 1564.
Tangent: John then reveals the birth and death dates of Bruckner and Mahler.
Tangent: According to Rita Mae Brown, if Michelangelo was heterosexual, the Sistine Chapel would have been painted basic white and with a roller.
  • God allowed Noah to eat animals, a right he had previously denied to Adam. Previously, they were vegetarians and told by God to just eat fruit and vegetables only. Some theological authorities believe that the "forbidden fruit" that was eaten in the Garden of Eden, which isn't specified in the Bible, is now believed, contrary to popular belief, to be a banana, not an apple.
  • Christopher Plummer once said of Julie Andrews that working with her was like being hit on the head with a Valentine card.
  • Andrew Graham-Dixon discovered that Caravaggio, who died in 1610, accidentally killed Ranuccio Tomassoni on a tennis court... he was merely attempting to cut off his testicles. (Forfeit: New balls, please)
Tangent: Sheep are castrated without breaking the skin of the scrotum.
Tangent: Discussion of Prince Albert's libido and the Prince Albert piercing. Stephen had to tell Prince Charles what a "Prince Albert" was.
  • Finocchio (fennel) is Italian street slang for a homosexual.
  • If a Burmese man said that "your department store is open, even on weekends", it means that your flies are open. This was revealed in Andrew Marshall's writings on Burma in The Trouser People which describe Burmese idioms and quote from the diary of Victorian adventurer Sir George Scott.
Tangent: Burma also means "Be Upstairs Ready My Angel". John gets confused between the acronyms "NOTLOB" & "NORWICH" (Nickers Off Ready When I Come Home).
Tangent: After weeks of being ignored on tour, Clive Morton plucked up the courage to knock on John Gielgud's door. After Gielgud opened it he said "Thank God it's you!, for one dreadful moment, I thought it was going to be that ghastly bore Clive Morton."
  • Edward Woodward has four 'd's in his name to prevent it becoming 'Ewar Woowar'.
Tangent: Kiwifruit use up more than their own weight in aviation fuel getting from New Zealand to Europe.
Tangent: When Sir John Gielgud first heard of the name "Edward Woodward", he thought it sounded like a fart in a bath.
  • Actor John Barrymore regretted not being able to see himself perform on stage. He also famously said "Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock."
Tangent: A drunken Peter O'Toole once went to see a play, having forgotten that he was supposed to be in it.
  • Young Giant Anteaters indulge in 'bluff charging', when they jump up and down like a cat and raise one front foot and hop menacingly side-to-side with all the fury of a clogged drain.
  • Anteaters have sixteen-inch (406 mm) tongues, but have mouths as narrow as a pencil.
Tangent: The average graphite pencil can write for thirty-five miles.
Tangent: Alan's friend at a pub who said to any girl he liked the look of "I've got a nine inch (229 mm) tongue and I can breathe through my ears."
  • A Giant Anteater's claws are sharp enough to eviscerate a human.
  • Dwarf anteaters are the size of squirrels and are a delicacy in parts of South America.
Tangent: In a letter to "The Daily Telegraph", someone suggested that grilled squirrels should have a warning: "May Contain Nuts".
General Ignorance
  • The country with the highest suicide rate is Lithuania (forfeit: Sweden). It has 52 suicides per 100,000, which is more than 13 times higher than the United States and 6½ times higher than Britain.
Tangent: That a ship's captain can marry people and that lemmings jump over cliffs, are both urban myths concocted by the film industry.
  • Caravaggio's real name was Michelangelo. He took the name Caravaggio, because his father, Fermo Merisi, was the chief architect to the Marchese of Caravaggio, Italy. Derek Jarman famously made a film about Caravaggio.
  • The steam engine was invented by Hero of Alexandria, (this is debatable[1]) and was named the aeolipile. The railway was invented seven hundred years earlier by Periander of Corinth. The modern steam engine was invented by Richard Trevithick. When Stephenson's Rocket was introduced, people were concerned that travelling at such high speeds could cause irreparable brain damage, so fences were erected so people wouldn't hallucinate at the "terrible sight".
Tangent: The Romans believed that buggery caused earthquakes.
Tangent: The army was called in to investigate a suspicous package and so they blew it up in a controlled explosion, only to discover that it was a parcel containing leaflets on how to deal with suspicious packages

[edit] Episode 2 "Astronomy"

Broadcast date
  • 18 September 2003 (BBC Two)
Panellists
Buzzers
  • Rich — A clock bonging
  • Jeremy — A cannon firing
  • Bill — A lion growling
  • Alan — A mouse squeaking
Topics
Tangent: The number of people killed by sharks since records began (roughly 2,200) is equal to just five per cent of the number of toilet-related injuries in the United States in 1996. The total number of people injured by toilets was 43,687.
  • Both tigers and weasels make a 'fuff' sound when they attack. Contrary to popular belief, tigers never roar when they attack, they only roar to tell other tigers where they are. They are mainly solitary animals, who only come together when mating.
Tangent: The national animal of Croatia is the weasel.
  • The best way to escape from a polar bear is to remove one's clothing, leaving items of clothing on the ground while backing away. Polar bears can run at 30 mph and have clear fur, but look white, because the fur reflects all light, and thus appears white, not because it reflects the snow, as Alan incorrectly stated.
Tangent: Animals don't follow the line of a finger like humans do. If you point at something, the animal will just look at the end of your finger.
Tangent: Discussion about how most vicious beasts can be subdued by stupid things.
Tangent: Story from The Daily Telegraph about a passing motorist in Dorking, Surrey seeing a horse tied to a post. The horse was tied so close to the post that it couldn't eat the grass below. It was also missing an ear and a back leg. It was also made of wood, because it was an advertisement for a local riding school.
Tangent: According to Douglas Adams' book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, there is a theory that if anyone discovers what the universe is here for, it will be instantly replaced with something more bizarre and inexplicable. Another theory suggests this has already happened.
  • The Earth has two moons (forfeit: one). Cruithne, whose orbit was discovered in 1997, is a 3-mile (4.8 km) asteroid sometimes described as Earth's second moon. Cruithne orbits the Earth every 770 years. The name "Cruithne" has a Celtic derivation.
  • Ninety per cent of the Universe is unaccounted for; it is believed to be made of dark matter, which is invisible. Even the Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees said it was embarrassing that 90% was unaccounted for.
Tangent: Claims that Ikea stores have no windows to decrease customers' awareness of the passage of time.
Tangent: Stephen Hawking's theory that the universe is saddle-shaped.
  • The colour of the Universe is beige. In 2002, after observing the light from over 200,000 galaxies, American scientists described the colour as pale green, rather than black with white bits, as we'd see it. Using the Dulux paint range, the colour was a mixture of Mexican Mint, Jade Cluster and Shangri-La Silk. They then had to admit that they got it wrong and the colour was a taupe–beige colour.
Tangent: Stephen's skin shade is actually called "Gay Whisper".
  • There are eight planets in the Solar System (forfeit: nine). Pluto, discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, does not meet the usual criteria for classification as a planet (although, at the time of broadcast, the International Astronomical Union still considered Pluto to be a planet). If Pluto were defined as a planet by any consistent definition, then all of the asteroids could be counted as planets as well. As of the year 2000, 71,788 were discovered with more discovered every year. Pluto is only twice as big as the biggest asteroid, Ceres, and it's also smaller than seven of the eight planets' moons.
Tangent: William James' exchange with a woman who believed the Earth was balanced on top of a giant turtle.
General Ignorance
  • Krung Thep (forfeit: Bangkok) is the proper name for the capital of Thailand. Krung Thep roughly translates as 'City of Angels', like Los Angeles. The ceremonial full name for Krung Thep is the longest place name in the world. Los Angeles is also an abbreviation. Only ignorant foreigners call Krung Thep, "Bangkok".
  • Brides do not walk down the aisle of a church; they walk down the central passageway. The aisle is down the side of the church.
  • The earliest known soup is made from hippopotamus.
  • No man-made objects (forfeit: Great Wall of China) can be seen from the Moon with the naked eye. Even the continents are hard to make out as well. (Rich asked "Which moon are we talking about?)

[edit] Episode 3 "Aquatic Animals"

Broadcast date
  • 25 September 2003 (BBC Two)
Panellists
Buzzers
  • Meera, Clive, Bill — Three progressively lower-pitched sets of judges' gavels
  • Alan — A bouncing ping-pong ball
Topics
Tangent: John Major's Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clashfern and his apparent meanness with honey.
Tangent: The origin of the word for the "order of bees" (Hymenoptera) means wedding in Ancient Greek.
Tangent: Hans Christian Andersen is ranked less annoying than Clive Anderson on AmIAnnoying.com.
General Ignorance

[edit] Episode 4 "Atoms"

Broadcast date
  • 2 October 2003 (BBC Two)
Panellists
Buzzers
  • Jeremy — A cannon firing, with a duck quacking
  • Howard — A mandolin being strummed
  • Jo — A strange buzzer noise
  • Alan — Call for "Cashier No.4, please"
Topics
  • The main component of air is nitrogen, which accounts for 78% of air. Only just under 21% is oxygen and 3/100ths of 1% is carbon dioxide. (Forfeit: oxygen, Davies said this and lost 10 points. Anyone who said carbon dioxide would have got a forfeit of -3,000 points, although nobody did.)
Tangent: Discussion about nitrogen narcosis, the bends and Alan's scuba diving.
Tangent: Stephen reveals he was touched that one of the Big Brother housemates requested one of his books. Alan suggested that they wanted it because the table was a bit wonky. Stephen also reveals he likes the sound of the narrator when he says "Day Eight", because of his Geordie accent.
Tangent: Charles Dickens despised Chelmsford, describing it as "the dullest and most stupid spot on the face of the Earth." He also invented the word 'boredom'.
Tangent: Tmesis, the art of splitting a word in half and inserting another word inside. Examples given were "abso-blooming-lutely", "sen-fucking-sational" and Jo's suggestion, "S-cunt-horpe".
General Ignorance
Tangent: Hans Holbein the Younger painted various royal portraits. His painting 'The Ambassadors' contains the image of a human skull, which can only be seen properly when viewed from an angle.

[edit] Episode 5 "Advertising"

Broadcast date
  • 9 October 2003 (BBC Two)
Panellists
Buzzers
  • Rich — A ship's foghorn
  • Gyles — A party popper
  • Rob — The melody of Men Of Harlech, a Welsh anthemic tune
  • Alan — The Forfeit alarm (meaning he lost 10 points before the show had even begun!) Changes to quacking
Topics
Tangent: Strand cigarettes' "[You're never alone with a Strand" advertising campaign was a spectacular failure. Rich thought that Hitler smoked, which wasn't true, but he was a vegetarian. (That was proved to be false in Series "E", Episode 7's vodcast.) Queen Victoria smoked when in Scotland, in order to keep the midges away from picnics.
Tangent: The chief architect of the London Eye shares a birthday with Gustave Eiffel (though given the number of iconic landmarks in the world this is scarcely surprising).
  • The Toyota MR2 provoked much amusement in France, as "MR2" in French was pronounced as merde, which is French slang for "shit". The Ford Pinto is equally amusing to Brazilians, as "pinto" is Brazilian slang for a small penis.
  • Irish playwright Brendan Behan was asked to devise an advertising slogan for Guinness. He came up with "Guinness makes you drunk." (Forfeit: "Guinness is good for you") He is credited with creating "Guinness is good for you", that was actually written by Dorothy L. Sayers.
Tangent: Rich attempts to get points by many methods, such as saying "Venus is made completely out of felt" and "Radish is a meat."
Tangent: Alec Guinness allegedly predicted James Dean's death.
Tangent: Discussion of the (legendary) Pope Joan.
  • The Ancient Greeks used blackberries as a cure for piles.
  • Ancient Greeks voted for their leaders until they were invaded by Macedonia in 322 BC. Women didn't get the vote in Greece until 1952.
Tangent: Michael Portillo's exploits as a young Conservative candidate.
General Ignorance
  • A centipede has between 30 and 382 legs. None has ever been found with 100 legs. It always has an odd number of pairs of legs. The only exception to this is one found in 1999, which has 48 pairs of legs, the nearest to 100 that has been discovered so far.
  • In 1994, 35,000 Americans insured themselves against alien abduction.
  • Purple rhymes with 'hirple' and 'curple' (forfeit: nothing). Hirple means to hobble along, a sort of mix between a walk and a crawl. A curple is the strap that goes under the tail of a horse, which is then attached to the saddle to stop riders slipping forwards.

[edit] Episode 6 "Antidotes & Answers"

Broadcast date
  • 16 October 2003 (BBC Two)
Panellists
Buzzers
  • Howard — A typical buzzer noise
  • Danny — A klaxon horn
  • Jo — A repeating-style electric doorbell
  • Alan — A howling wolf, then changes to a baaing sheep
Topics
Tangent: Edith Evans purchased a painting by Renoir, and hung it low down behind a curtain simply because "there was a hook" there.
Tangent: Howard reveals the information about a Bronze Age instrument found in a bog in Denmark. (The instrument in question is a lur.)
Tangent: Discussion of the Schrödinger's cat problem, which Bohr was intricately associated with.
  • Barbara Cartland, when asked whether British class barriers had broken down, replied "Of course they have, or I wouldn't be sitting here talking to someone like you". She also invented the aeroplane-towed glider. She also claimed to be haunted by a ghost of a young girl. Then weirdly, excavators came into her house and found a skeleton of a young woman in the walls of the house.
  • When asked by a priest if he forgave his enemies, the dying Spanish Captain-General Ramón Blanco y Erenas said "I have no enemies, I've had them all shot".
Tangent: Stephen tells about the time he was in a room with Paul Merton & Nicholas Parsons, in which Paul was writing on a piece of paper, in which he revealed he was writing a suicide note and then asked Nicholas to sign it.
Tangent: The Swiss have their own navy despite being a landlocked country. Disney has the 4th largest navy in the world, if you go by boats alone.
Tangent: Switzerland has 4 official languages, but they use Confoederatio Helvetica on their stamps.
  • During the Vietnam War, the US Military prevented wounded soldiers from swallowing their tongues by pinning the tongue to their cheeks. More soldiers committed suicide after Vietnam than died in combat.
  • Costa Rica has no army, it was disbanded in 1949. The constitution now specifically forbids the country from having an army.
Tangent: The French statesman Talleyrand famously said "I'm more afraid of an army of 100 sheep, led by a lion, than of an army of 100 lions led by a sheep."
  • Alsatians are forbidden from serving in the Spanish Army, as they have an IQ of 60: an IQ of 70 is the minimum required.
General Ignorance

[edit] Episode 7 "Arthropods"

Broadcast date
  • 23 October 2003 (BBC Two)
Panellists
Buzzers
  • Jo, Jimmy, Jackie — Call for "Cashier No. 1, 2, 3" respectively
  • Alan — Call about a train delay
Topics
  • Australia was discovered by the Chinese (forfeit: James Cook). When Cook arrived in 1770, he wasn't a captain, he was Lieutenant Cook. He wasn't the first European, as the Dutch had reached it 150 years earlier; he wasn't even the first Englishman, that was William Dampier in 1688.
  • The term Aborigines comes from the Latin meaning "from the origin" and was first used to describe the pre-Roman people. For some unknown reason, the term "Aborigine" has stuck with the Aboriginal Australians, but there are Aboriginal Canadians and you could even call the Native Americans "Aborigines".
Tangent: The scrotum and sperm.
  • The word Kangaroo means horse (forfeit: "I don't know") in the Baagandji language of New South Wales. When Cook's expedition arrived in 1770, the Aboriginal settlers there saw a horse, which they believed was what the English called a kangaroo. There is a story that when the first English settlers arrived, they pointed to a kangaroo and asked "What's that?" The reply was "kanagaroo" (sic), which means "I don't know". That comes from the Guugu Yimithirr language, spoken around Botany Bay and was first heard on Cook's expedition in 1770.
  • Homo sapiens evolved from a common ancestor that hasn't yet been discovered, otherwise known as the "missing link" (forfeit: apes). Before that, they evolved from squirrel-like tree shrews, before that hedgehogs and before that starfish. Apes also evolved from this same ancestor.
Tangent: Jo, Jimmy & Stephen recite bad jungle-related jokes.
Tangent: Stupid answers given in trivia games.
Tangent: The word that takes up the most pages to define in the Oxford English Dictionary is set.
  • The male European earwig has a spare penis. It was discovered by scientists in Tokyo who were looking at two earwigs copulating and they noticed that the male's penis was left in the female, but they then saw the male grow an instant replacement. The male's penis is longer than its body.
Tangent: Alan's story from the Internet about a man with two penises, which leads to Jackie's story about her Australian girlfriend, who when she had a smear test, was told she had two vaginas.
  • The name given to insects with piercing and sucking mouth parts is a bug.
  • The highest number of legs seen on a millipede is 710 (forfeit: 1000) on the South African millipede.
General Ignorance
Tangent: Charles Goodyear with his invention of vulcanised rubber.
Tangent: Stephen's father's pronunciation of Volvic and Volvo.

[edit] Episode 8 "Albania"

Broadcast date
  • 30 October 2003 (BBC Two)
Panellists
Buzzers
Topics
  • Elephants can become drunk by eating fruit which ferments in their stomachs.
  • James Bond's Bradford is a cocktail that is shaken, not stirred. A cocktail with two olives in it is called a "Franklin" after Franklin D. Roosevelt. A cocktail with a cocktail onion on a stick is called the "Gibson". The vesper was invented in Casino Royale, because Bond had to give it a new name, because he put vodka in it, making it strictly not a martini. One of Bond's best sayings from Casino Royale was "To Bond, the best drink of the day, was the drink he had in his head before the first drink of the day." The opening line of the book was "Bond lit his eightieth cigarette of the day."
Tangent: A "blowjob" is a type of cocktail, made with either Drambuie or Bailey's, whipped cream on the top and is served in a shot glass. You are not allowed to use your hands to drink it.
Tangent: Jumping backwards and the legend of the Black Country's Jack Darby.
  • In Albanian, "Vetullushe" means "A goat with brown eyebrows". That is one of 30 different words for eyebrows in the Albanian language, which didn't impress Linda, because Albanian had one word for "very bushy eyebrow", but English has three. The language also has 27 words for moustaches.
Tangent: The philtrum, the groove above the lip.
Tangent: Franklin was not allowed to draft the American constitution, because people thought he might have put jokes in it.
General Ignorance
Tangent: Banana plants walk up to 40 centimetres in a lifetime.

[edit] Episode 9 "Africa"

Broadcast date
  • 6 November 2003 (BBC Two)
Panellists
Buzzers
  • Dave, Jeremy & Jo — Increasingly louder bell noises
  • Alan — A power drill noise
Topics
  • A bongo is a rare type of antelope. They are prized by poachers and there only believed 100 left in the world.
Tangent: Syllogisms, Queen Elizabeth and Kylie Minogue and J.Lo.
Tangent: Before becoming famous Clive James and Sylvester Stallone cleaned out lion cages for a living. Before discovering Uranus from his home in Bath, William Herschel was an oboe player in the Hanoverian Army. Before unifying Italy, Giuseppe Garibaldi was a spaghetti salesman in Uruguay.
Note: This is an error. Alexander The Great was half-Macedonian and half-Epirotian. He had no (known) Albanian ancestry. There are no historical sources that says that Alexander was left-handed, epilectic or that he had a very high pitch voice. Some historians believe that Alexander's height was around 5’7”.
Tangent: There are over 200 types of Common cold, but contrary to popular belief, they aren't caught by standing in the rain, but if your nose is cold, they can develop faster.
Note: It'd be quite interesting if Galileo did discover them in 1672, as he died in 1642!
General Ignorance

[edit] Episode 10 "Alan"

Broadcast date
  • 13 November 2003 (BBC Two)
Panelists
Buzzers
Topics
Tangent: Julia's time working in Hokkaidō, Japan's northern island. The island is known for having good milk due to the grass.
  • It was a bad idea to ban smoking on aeroplanes, due to companies saving money by using both fresh and recycled air, which increases the threat from viruses.
  • Stephen incorrectly attributes the quotation "Anything that's white is sweet. Anything that's brown is meat. Anything that's grey, don't eat" to actress Hermione Gingold. The actual author is Stephen Sondheim, and the quotation is from his lyric for "What Do We Do? We Fly", from the musical Do I Hear a Waltz?
  • The Alans are a tribe of people who live on the Russian border, since the Huns drove them there in the 4th century. "Alan" means "Rock" or "Pebble", as does "Peter". Alan and Stephen argue as to whether his "Alan" is either a rock or a pebble. Calculus and pessary also mean "rock" or "pebble".
Tangent: Stephen's father is called Alan.
Tangent: Peter tries to prove that nothing rhymes with "rhyme", but he missed out on lime, time and slime. Rich jokes that "orange" rhymes with "dorange," or door hinge in a Cajun accent.
Tangent: The Australian version is Reg Grundy's, undies. Listerine was an example of rhyming slang that has moved on one. If you are "Listerine", then you are an antiseptic, and septic is rhyming slang for American (Septic tank, yank).
General Ignorance

[edit] Episode 11 "Arts"

Broadcast date
  • 20 November 2003 (BBC Two)
Panellists
Buzzers
Topics
  • Pigeons do not like going to the movies, because they see the world ten times faster than humans. To them, a film is a slow slide show.
Tangent: It cost £105,000 to clean the pigeon crap from Trafalgar Square.
  • It was once believed that a pigeon's arse could be used to suck out the poison from an adder's bite. Pigeons are the only birds that can suck.
  • The ant (forfeit: human) has the largest brain in comparison to its body size. There are 8,000 species of ant.
Tangent: Alan's problem with an ant infestation in his house.
  • Soldier ants were used in Ancient India as stitches after operations.
  • In Thailand, red ants are poured into open wounds, and they secrete an acid which acts as a pain killer and an antiseptic.
  • A greasy butcher, a hog snout and Gene Pitney are all kinds of apple.
  • Apples and a game played with headless goats both originated from Kazakhstan. It never says in the Bible, what the fruit eaten in the Garden of Eden was, but it is just assumed to be an apple.
  • Both Ulysses S. Grant and John Prescott were charged for speeding. Lord Prescott was banned from driving for 21 days in 2001 after being caught doing more than 100mph on the M1, where he was fined £200. He had previously acquired nine penalty points on his driving licence. His best excuse that he came up with was that he didn't want his constituents to catch cold waiting for him. "Three Buggy" Grant received a speeding ticket on his horse and buggy in Washington, D.C. in 1869 and was fined £20. He had to persuade the officer that he was guilty. They both also won unusual prizes. Grant won a prize for taming a pony in a circus. The Prescott family came second a competition searching for, "The most typical family in Britain", in Brighton in 1951, but he should have won because the winning family was discovered to be distantly related to the organiser of the competition.
General Ignorance
Tangent: Louis Daguerre asked a woman to take her top off to demonstrate his prototype camera.
Tangent: Alexander Graham Bell believed that one day every town in America would have a telephone.
Tangent: Bill's dad was taken around a computer in the West Country and the owner claimed that in the future, there would be eight of them.

[edit] Episode 12 "Advent" (Christmas Special)

Broadcast date
  • 23 December 2003 (BBC Two)
Panellists
Buzzers
  • Phill — A typical Christmas jingly bell
  • John — A collection of large bells rung in a festive manner
  • Sean — A noise to indicate festive starlight
  • Alan — Car horns in traffic
Theme
  • The general theme of all the questions was Christmas, with the panellists asked to draw a Christmas tree. Alan Davies drew a traditional childlike portrayal of a Christmas tree – a triangular style tree showing (incorrectly) that the branches point downwards.
Topics
Tangent: Sami (the people who originally herded the reindeer) means "plebs" in Ancient Swedish.
  • Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and all of Santa's other reindeer must be either female or castrated, because male reindeer lose their antlers during winter.
  • In "days of yore" Yorkshiremen would gather around their beehives during Christmas because they believed that the bees would start humming at midnight (the time of Christ's birth), even when the calendars changed.
  • In 1657, mince pies were banned by Oliver Cromwell because they symbolised Catholicism.
  • From 1840 to the end of World War II, the German village of Lauscha in Thuringia provided the world with baubles, with 95% of US houses. Contrary to what Stephen Fry said, Lauscher is not near Nuremberg but more than 100 km north (likewise, Neuschwanstein Castle depicted on the wall screen is 250 km south) and it does not mean "eavesdropper" in German (which would be "Lauscher").
  • In 1908, US insurance companies tried to ban the placing of live candles on Christmas trees, mainly because a fire from a Christmas tree that caught fire on a Santa's beard destroyed a Chicago hospital in 1895.
Tangent: Insurance companies and their avoidance of paying out.
Tangent: The Chinese dish "Three Squeak".
Tangent: John Gielgud once advised a young West End actor not to pause during a performance, because when he paused he heard someone in the audience say "Oh, you hideous beast, you've just come all over my umbrella!.
General Ignorance

[edit] DVD Extras

In the DVD (released late 2006), there were some extra features which contained some quite interesting facts. The order in which they were put on the disk is the order in which they were recorded in 2003.

[edit] Episode 1

No Extras

[edit] Episode 2

  • An adder's bite is generally no more dangerous than a wasp. No-one in Britain has died of an adder's bite since 1977, when a 5-year-old girl died.
Tangent: Stephen's inability to read out passages in a different tense.
Tangent: Using the correct tense when using none/not one.
Tangent: Stephen makes a mistake while reading out the final scores, by giving Alan 30 points, rather than -30 points.

[edit] Episode 3

[edit] Episode 4

  • William Shakespeare invented the phrase, "Vanish into thin air". Hamlet contains the clichés, "It's cruel to be kind", "To the manor born", "To thine own self be true" and "Neither a borrower nor a lender be".

[edit] Episode 5

Tangent: Two-thirds of the world's lawyers live in the United States, American children get US$64 billion of pocket money per year, there are 15,000 practising vampires in America, most of them living in Seattle, 10,113 virgins insured themselves from giving birth to the Messiah at the millennium and Americans are twice as likely to die from liposuction than in a car crash.

[edit] Episode 6

Tangent: The word Hello was created by a competition in the New York Times, as the word used to answer a telephone call, instead of Ahoy!

[edit] Episode 7

Tangent: The fable of Athena and Arachne and how the word arachnid came into existence.

[edit] Episode 8

No Extras

[edit] Episode 9

No Extras

[edit] Episode 10

[edit] Episode 11

  • The country that consumes the most apples per head is Turkey, with 36 kg per head of population. The United Kingdom is the lowest in Europe at only 10 kg per head.
Tangent: The banana is the most traded item in the supermarket. The UK eats the most bananas per head of population anywhere in the world.
Tangent: Stephen fluffs an explanation, blurting out 'piss and arse and wank!' Alan suggests it could be used as a trailer for the show.

[edit] Episode 12

  • Genghis Khan never fought the Sami (the inhabitants of Lapland), because they always hid from him, because he was so brutal.
  • The opening for the show had to be re-shot — leading Alan to go into a hissy fit at the amount of rubbish strewn around as a result of the crackers. This led to a delay, which in turn led to banter about Easter, Pancake Day and Yom Kippur QI specials (since the show is filmed in the summer and shown in the autumn) - and when Stephen launched into his opening monologue, he fluffed it anyway.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Vitruvius described an aeolipile-like device in his treatise De architectura, a century before Hero, and didn't claim to be the inventor.
  2. ^ "Label Fable", snopes.com

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