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:''Tangent: Nina was taught ventriloquism by [[Ken Campbell]], and he excited her by saying that people tend not to say the first thing that comes into their head but the second, and in a way she could say what she was really thinking using her puppets. Campbell's puppets were given to Nina in his will and Gran used to belong to Campbell.''
:''Tangent: Nina was taught ventriloquism by [[Ken Campbell]], and he excited her by saying that people tend not to say the first thing that comes into their head but the second, and in a way she could say what she was really thinking using her puppets. Campbell's puppets were given to Nina in his will and Gran used to belong to Campbell.''
:''Tangent: The idea of a ventriloquist doll taking over the actual ventriloquist is most famously seen in the film [[Magic (1978 film)|Magic]]. Nina confesses that she sometimes wonders why Gran is not saying her line, despite the fact that Gran cannot really talk.''
:''Tangent: The idea of a ventriloquist doll taking over the actual ventriloquist is most famously seen in the film [[Magic (1978 film)|Magic]]. Nina confesses that she sometimes wonders why Gran is not saying her line, despite the fact that Gran cannot really talk.''
:''Tangent: The actress [[Candice Bergman]] claims that she had an imaginary brother, who was Charlie McCarthy. He was the puppet belonging to [[Edgar Bergman]], Candice's father and the most famous ventriloquist in America.''
:''Tangent: The actress [[Candice Bergen]] claims that she had an imaginary brother, who was Charlie McCarthy. He was the puppet belonging to [[Edgar Bergen]], Candice's father and the most famous ventriloquist in America.''
*[[Edwin Beard Budding]]'s invention affected an army of men with wooden blocks strapped to their feet because it put them out of work. Budding's most famous invention was the [[lawn mower]]. Previously, lawns were cut by scythe men who made sure the grass was level by wearing wooden blocks on their feet and matching the height of grass to the height of the block. Once the lawnmower was invented it put them out of work.
*[[Edwin Beard Budding]]'s invention affected an army of men with wooden blocks strapped to their feet because it put them out of work. Budding's most famous invention was the [[lawn mower]]. Previously, lawns were cut by scythe men who made sure the grass was level by wearing wooden blocks on their feet and matching the height of grass to the height of the block. Once the lawnmower was invented it put them out of work.
:''Tangent: There is a [[British Lawnmower Museum]] in [[Southport]] which has over 300 exhibits, including the lawnmowers belonging to [[Vanessa Feltz]], [[Alan Titchmarsh]], [[Nicholas Parsons]], [[Brian May]], [[Roger McGough]], [[Albert Pierrepoint]], [[Charles, Prince of Wales|Prince Charles]] and [[Diana, Princess of Wales|Princess Diana]].''
:''Tangent: There is a [[British Lawnmower Museum]] in [[Southport]] which has over 300 exhibits, including the lawnmowers belonging to [[Vanessa Feltz]], [[Alan Titchmarsh]], [[Nicholas Parsons]], [[Brian May]], [[Roger McGough]], [[Albert Pierrepoint]], [[Charles, Prince of Wales|Prince Charles]] and [[Diana, Princess of Wales|Princess Diana]].''
*The man who invented the idea of having bacon and eggs for breakfast and the phrase [[Torches of freedom]] was [[Edward Bernays]], who it could be argued to also invented public relations. At the time American breakfasts were very light, but he collected 5,000 doctors and he made testament to the fact that a heartily breakfast was better for you and promoted the idea of having bacon and eggs. This worked and the dish became a staple. The phrase torches of freedom was created by him to promote cigarettes to women.
*The man who invented the idea of having bacon and eggs for breakfast and the phrase [[Torches of Freedom]] was [[Edward Bernays]], who it could be argued to also invented public relations. At the time American breakfasts were very light, but he collected 5,000 doctors and he made testament to the fact that a heartily breakfast was better for you and promoted the idea of having bacon and eggs. This worked and the dish became a staple. The phrase torches of freedom was created by him to promote cigarettes to women.


;General Ignorance:
;General Ignorance:

Revision as of 05:03, 23 June 2012

QI Series I
StarringAlan Davies
Guest panellists
No. of episodes16
Release
Original networkBBC Two
Original release9 September 2011 (2011-09-09)
Season chronology
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Series J

This is a list of episodes of QI, the BBC comedy panel game television programme hosted by Stephen Fry. This series aired on BBC Two, rather than BBC One as it had in recent years. It is the ninth series of QI.

Episodes

A recurring element in this series was the "Nobody Knows" card. In each episode there was one question to which the actual answer is unknown; if a panellist correctly spotted it and played their card, they were awarded a sizeable amount of points. Most of the Nobody Knows bonuses were won by Alan Davies.

Guests who made their first appearance in this series were: John Bishop, Brian Blessed, Nina Conti, Prof. Brian Cox, Dr. Ben Goldacre, Sarah Millican, Al Murray, Frank Skinner and Henning Wehn.

Episode 1 "I-Spy"

Broadcast date
  • 9 September 2011
Recording date
  • 7 June 2011
Panellists
Buzzers
Topics
Tangent: "Order hands to bathe" is an order given in calm waters for all crew to go overboard to swim and bathe.
  • If the subject of a painting is depicted as having a gaze fixed on the viewer, the subject's eyes will always appear to "follow" the viewer—that is, the eyes will always appear to be looking at the viewer, even if the viewer is not in a position that would expected to catch the gaze. Well-known examples of paintings exhibiting this phenomenon include the Mona Lisa and Laughing Cavalier. Similarly, if the gaze is depicted as cast downward, it will always appear this way, even from below.
Tangent: A plastic mask of Einstein's face is rotated before the camera, resulting in a remarkable optical illusion [The Hollow-Face illusion] making it appear convex[disambiguation needed] when it is concave[disambiguation needed]. A five-pound note is also made to cause its image of Queen Elizabeth to appear happy or sad by creating a concave bend between her eyes.
Tangent: Gaze detection has been used to determine that when meeting a person, women will look at the face, whereas men will look at the face and groin—regardless of the gender of the person they're looking at. According to the American Kennel Club, the same is true when meeting a dog. Gaze detection has also been used to determine where are the most valuable locations for product promotion in stores.
  • In addition to tying one's shoes and dealing with rabid dogs, the all-time best-selling Scouting for Boys by Lord Baden-Powell contains entries on dealing with the following remarkable subjects:
    • Suicide: "Where a man has gone so far as to attempt suicide, a Scout should know what to do with him. In a case where the would-be suicide has taken poison, give milk and make him vomit, which is done by tickling the inside of the throat with a finger or a feather. In the case of hanging, cut down the body at once, taking care to support it with one arm while cutting the cord. A Tenderfoot [novice] is sometimes inclined to be timid about handling an insensible man or dead man, or even of seeing blood. Well, he won't be much use till he gets over such nonsense."
    • Slaughtering cattle: "If you're a beginner in slaughtering with a knife, it's sometimes useful to first drop the animal insensible by a heavy blow with a big hammer or the back of a felling axe on top of the head."
    • Stopping a runaway horse: Rather than standing directly in front waving one's arms, as is often believed, one should stand to one side, easing the horse toward a wall.
    • Saving someone who's fallen in front of a train: "If the train is very close, lie flat between the rails. Make the man do the same till the train passes over, while everybody else would be running about screaming and excited and doing nothing."
General Ignorance
  • Nobody Knows: It's not possible to determine the age of a lobster, whose DNA contain a protease enzyme called telomerase which replaces lost DNA during cell division so that cells remain young after each replication. It's not known how large or how old lobster get; the largest lobster ever recorded, caught off the coast of Nova Scotia in 1977, was 3½ feet long. The vast majority of lobster are dark in color, but they are occasionally blue or red. Lobsters detach themselves from their old shells 25 times during the first 5 years of their life in a dangerous procedure which involves pulling out the lining of its own throat, stomach, and anus each time. They also communicate by urinating.
  • Despite its spelling differences, the typical novelty writing in the "Ye Olde Curiositye Shoppe" vein would not, at the time it was widespread, have been pronounced much differently than modern English. Most final e's were silent, and at the time printers simply chose to substitute the 'y' character for the Anglo-Saxon thorn (Þ, þ) character that was previously used in writing—both of which were equivalent in pronunciation to the modern 'th' that ended up being the standard convention. Thus printed 'ye', formerly written 'þe' by hand, was pronounced exactly as current 'the'. Another word incorporating the thorn was the abbreviation 'yt' = that.
  • Crime increased by 57% in London during the Blitz. Looters would sometimes pose as wardens, conning bystanders into helping them move stolen goods. Benefit fraud increased as well; one man claimed for bombing benefits 19 times before he was found out. Ordinary people also participated in black market trading of rationed goods.
Tangent: Alan's grandfather was an ARP warden.
QI XL Extras
Tangent: A 17th-century book for young women carried advice on the marriage bed, by analogy to food. As paraphrased by Sandi: "Of the marriage bed we cannot speak of your husband's appetite, so we will describe it in terms of food. You must feed him whenever he's hungry, and feed him a variety of meals or you will soon find he's eating next door."
  • A jackal will only be friendly if it is rabid. Docility is a symptom of rabies; animals don't always froth at the mouth.
Tangent: When Sandi canoed the Zambezi, her guides brought dogs with them—not as pets, but as a sacrifice in case the canoes were attacked by crocodiles.
General Ignorance

Episode 2 "International"

Broadcast date
  • 16 September 2011
Recording date
  • 11 May 2011
Panellists
Buzzers
Topics
Tangent: Bill gets three points for mentioning the fact that nobody knows how the QI scoring system works.
  • If you were on an aeroplane in which both the pilot and the co-pilot had fallen ill, it would be incredibly difficult for anyone else to land the plane down safely. Simulations have been carried out in the USA with people with civil private pilot licences. In these cases one person could not move the seat that moved them towards the control, another turned the radio off, and another turned off the autopilot and crashed the plane immediately. One of the first problems is getting into the cockpit, which is much more secure these days following 9/11. If the plane was on autopilot you could continue to fly level, and once you began to land people would talk you through the procedure, but there are so many variables that it is really difficult. The chances of an intelligent person landing the aircraft in such a situation are 1 in 10 if it is in autopilot, and 1 in 100 if it is not in autopilot.
Tangent: Jack claims that in his uniform, Stephen looks more like a bursar, getting him confused with a purser.
Tangent: The pilot and co-pilot on a plane always have different meals from each other in case one of the meals makes one of them feel ill. In the case of extra long haul flights there are three pilots instead of two.
Tangent: Autopilot was invented in 1914, during the Paris Air Show. It was an American invention and used a gyroscope.
Tangent: The shortest commercial flight in the world is in the Orkney Islands, from Westray and Westray Papa. It usually takes two minutes, but the shortest it has ever taken is 58 seconds. The distance is shorter than the runaway of Edinburgh Airport.
  • In the state of Madhya Pradesh policemen are paid 30 rupees more for growing a moustache. They believe that policeman with moustaches are less intimidating, get on better with the local community and are more respected by the public.
Tangent: In the British Army between 1860 and 1914 it was a regulation that every soldier had to have a moustache. If you shaved it off, you could be imprisoned. Stephen then puts on a fake General Melchett-style moustache to show what kinds of things people used to protect their moustaches. These included cups and spoons to prevent your moustache from getting wet when drinking or eating soup, as well as a cover to prevent your moustache from messing up while you slept. The world's longest moustache is 14 feet long. The man who has it has made a living from it, appearing in the film Octopussy.
  • Mussolini wanted Italians to eat risotto to make them big and strong. He had a national propaganda day devoted to risotto, and wanted Italians to stop eating pasta. The Italians resisted this, but he did have the support of the Futurists, an art movement akin to the Dadaists. One, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, said pasta made Italians lethargic, pessimistic and sentimental.
  • The international head of state who snubbed Jesse Owens after his triumph at the 1936 Berlin Olympics was the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Owens claimed in his autobiography: "When I passed the Chancellor, he arose, waved his hand at me and I waved back at him. Hitler didn't snub me; it was FDR who snubbed me. The President didn't even send me a telegram. When I came back to my native country, I couldn't ride at the front of the bus, I had to go to the back door, I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I certainly wasn't invited the White House to shake hands with the President either. Owens won four gold medals at the Games. (Forfeit: Hitler)
Tangent: During the discussion about Hitler, a picture is shown of senior Nazi figures at the Berlin Olympics saluting to the crowd. Alan then notices that the figure on the far right of the picture looks like he is sticking his hand up to his nose as a sort of silly rude gesture. They then realise that the man doing it is Hermann Göring. David jokingly says that everyone in the picture is in the far right.
Tangent: Sammy Davis Jr. could not go through the front door of the hotels in Las Vegas where he was performing.
  • Nobody Knows: Nobody knows where the water in the North Two Ocean Creek in Wyoming flows. Water on one side of it will flow into the Pacific Ocean and on the other side will flow into the Atlantic. However, no-one knows where the water goes when it lands in the creek itself. Alan gets the bonus.
General Ignorance
  • The world's largest pyramid is Cholula, which is an Aztec pyramid. Although it is not as tall and has a flat top, it has a bigger cubic capacity of 4.3 cubic kilometres, as opposed to the Cheops' 3.36 cubic kilometres. (Forfeit: The one in the middle)
  • The First World War was first named as such in 1918. Lt. Col. Charles à Court Repington wrote in his diary on 19th September 1918 that he met with a Major Johnstone of Harvard University to discuss what the war should be called. Rejected names included The War and The German War. Then Repington suggested The World War, and they mutually agreed to call it The First World War. It had also been known as "The Great War", but before that the other Great War was the Napoleonic War. (Forfeit: 1939; After the Second World War; During the Second World War)
QI XL Extras
Tangent: The man who does the scoring for QI is called Colin. He works for Lumina, a company which also works for Pointless and Eggheads.
Tangent: There are 400,000 people in the air at any given time.
Tangent: The only Action Man toy with a beard was the adventurer, which was in the Navy. The Navy is the only branch of the armed forces in which you can have a beard.
Tangent: No-one working at Disney is allowed to have facial hair. Some years ago, an angry email was sent by Disney's HR department to their employees saying that anyone who described Disney as Mousewitz would be fired. Within half an hour the employees started calling Disney Duckau.
  • Out of a Vickers machine gun, a tomato and a jellyfish, the jellyfish is the odd one out because it is the only one not improved by adding urine. The idea that jellyfish stings can be cured with the use of urine is an urban myth. Human urine is a very good fertilizer for growing tomatoes. The Vickers machine gun would often overheat so it was cooled using a water-cooled jacket. The water is poured from the top and collected in a jerry can at the bottom so it can be used again. However, in places where there was very little water, urine was used to keep them cool. The International Brigade often used the phrase Pass the piss.
  • In 1953, Italy's biggest export was accordions. They mostly came from the town of Castelfidardo, which still makes them. (Forfeit: Urine; Pasta)
Tangent: Stephen talks about a restaurant in Berlin which is completely dark and you are served by blind people. As you cannot see the food you use other senses to enhance your experience. Stephen says that he often likes to torture his mother when he goes to restaurants by refusing to tell his mother what he wants.
  • The Italians have rules about what sort of sauce goes with what sort of pasta. A stronger sauce would go with shell-shaped pasta to contain it. Hollow pasta is usually given a tomato like sauce because it runs through the tube and fills it.
Tangent: Stephen admits that he loves spaghetti hoops on toast.
General Ignorance
  • The country with the fattest people in the world is Nauru. Out of a population of around 10,000 97% of men and 93% of women are obese or overweight. The people are offended at being called obese and claim that they are a stocky people.
  • The colonel-in-chiefs of the Royal Dragoons and the First King's Dragoons Guards failed to turn up for duty at the start of the First World War because they were leading the German forces. Kaiser Wilhelm was colonel-in-chief of the Royal Dragoons and Franz Joseph Habsburg was colonel-in-chief of the First King's Dragoons Guards.
  • The stiff arm salute as used by the Nazis was originally used by the Olympic movement until 1936 and by American school children taking the Oath of Allegiance until it was dropped following the rise of Hitler. The idea that it was first used by the Romans has no evidence to support it. This idea was however used by French classical artists such as David who believed they did. (Forfeit: Romans)

Episode 3 "Imbroglio"

Broadcast date
  • 23 September 2011
Recording date
  • 17 May 2011
Panellists
  • Alan Davies (–21 points)
  • John Bishop (Joint winner with 4 points) 1st appearance
  • Sean Lock (–14 points) 25th appearance
  • Frank Skinner (Joint winner with 4 points) 1st appearance
Buzzers
  • John: A buzzing fly
  • Frank: A yapping dog
  • Sean: A crying infant
  • Alan: The forfeit alarm; "Wrong again!" shows on the screen
Topics
  • The French for innuendo is double entente or double sens. Double entendre is an example of a French phrase which the French do not use but the English do.(Forfeit: Double entendre)
Tangent: Frank had a friend who read somewhere that if you slept upside-down you would become more intelligent because the blood would flow to your brain. Frank became obsessed with the idea that he would have a wet dream and die.
Tangent: The Greeks have a phrase which is, Katatraya stayeftika which means, Who gives a shit?, but translates literally as, There is trouble in the gypsy village.
  • The songs I'm Leaning on a Lamppost and When I'm Cleaning Windows were not written by George Formby, but his wife and manager Beryl insisted that he was credited as a co-creator so that he could get royalties. Many of Formby's songs were ridden with innuendo.
  • How Ironic is That?: A series of situations are given and the panel are asked how ironic they are and why. There are various kinds of irony. These include verbal irony, which include phrases like, "As clear as mud"; comic irony, like the famous line in the Peter Sellers film Dr. Strangelove, "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room"; dramatic irony, in which the audience knows what is going to happen but the characters do not; and Socratic irony in which you are pretending to be dumber than you really are. Examples given are:

- John Kendrick, an American sea captain, pulled into Honolulu Harbor in 1794 and was killed by the cannon that was fired to salute him - is comedic irony. - Clement Vallandigham, an Ohio lawyer, died in 1871 while defending a man who was accused of murder during a barroom brawl. In order to show the jury how his pistol might have gone off accidentally, Vallandigham took a gun, put it in his pocket and re-enacted how the event may have occurred. During the re-enactment he fired the pistol, shot himself and died of his wounds. The defendant was acquitted before Vallandigham passed away - an example of situational irony. - Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford's Theatre while John F. Kennedy was shot in a Ford Lincoln - not ironic, just a coincidence. - In 1989 convicted murderer Michael Godwin had his sentenced reduced from death to life imprisonment, after waiting five years to go to the electric chair. He died after being accidentally electrocuted by sitting naked on his steel lavatory seat. He was trying to fix his TV set and bit into a wire - is ironic.

Tangent: Frank quotes an example of dramatic irony from Richard III: Dive, thoughts, down to my soul. Here Clarence comes.
Tangent: Stephen argues that the TV series Columbo is the greatest ever made. Frank once had an argument with David Baddiel about the series. The actor who played Columbo, Peter Falk, had only one eye. Frank and David debated whether or not Columbo's fake eye was playing a real eye or not.
  • Stephen shows the panel a nut and asks what is inside it. The answer is Brazil nuts. Brazil nut trees cannot be cultivated, so only wild trees give nuts. Brazil nuts have a complicated system of reproduction. They can only be pollinated by a particular bee, and the bee will only be able to pollinate it if there is a particular orchid in the area. The Brazil nut also has a unique feature, in that it is the only nut that can be transmitted sexually. If a man makes love with someone the nut could pass onto the partner they inseminated, so if he has eaten nuts and then makes love to someone with a nut allergy, he might provoke their allergy.
  • Nobody Knows: No-one knows why in a packet of mixed nuts the Brazil nuts always rise to the top. Alan gets the bonus.
  • Nobody Knows: The signal bars on your phone mean nothing. Different networks use different frequencies. No-one gets the bonus.
General Ignorance
  • An inflatable anchor is used when you wish to anchor in sand. Liquid is inflated into the anchor and it lodges into the sand.
  • The animals which Richard I had three of on his shirt were leopards. At the time they were not aware of the difference between lions and leopards.
Tangent: The song Three Lions has appeared in the charts in 1996, 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2010. The song also got into the top ten in Germany. After the Germans won Euro 96 they felt that they won the song as well. John claims that this is ironic.
Tangent: It costs £4,255 to get a coat of arms. Sir Christopher Frayling, former Chairman of the Arts Council, has as his motto: Perge Scellus Diem Perficias, which means, Go ahead, punk, make my day.
  • The only animal in the world whose taxonomical name is exactly the same as its common name is the boa constrictor. The scientific name for a gorilla is gorilla gorilla and is not the same as it is repeated twice. Several plants also have the exact same common and taxonomical names such as aloe vera. (Forfeit: Gorilla)
  • Bananas grow pointing upwards, not downwards as we usually see the in shops. Bananas are faintly radioactive, luckily the isotope in bananas is present in our bodies and is harmless. The half-life of the radioactive element of a banana is 1.25 billion years.
QI XL Extras
Tangent: A friend told Frank that in China, a Chinese burn was a form of torture. John was also told the same thing when he was at school.
Tangent: Frank's favourite George Formby double entendre is I wonder who's under her balcony now, who's kissing my girl. Does he kiss her on the nose or underneath the archway where the Sweet William grows?
Tangent: Frank went to George Formby's grave, which is a massive great white stone with a big face on it, with the words George Formby on it. However, he realised that this was actually the grave of Formby's father, George Formby, Sr., who was himself a huge music hall star. Formby Jr. is only mentioned at the bottom of it.
Tangent: George Formby's wife Beryl was hugely jealous of any woman who got close too George and would insist on any woman getting remotely close to George should be sacked. George used to claim that Beryl would only give him 5 shillings worth of pocket money a week, but his brother claimed that this was a trick so that he would not have to pay for drinks in a pub.
Tangent: The British tradition of innuendo and double entendre does not appear to exist in other nations. Many have phallic ideas but are usually depressing, such as Ibsen's play The Master Builder's in which a man tries to build a huge skyscraper.
Tangent: Another example of an innuendo ridden show was Round the Horne, which used gay Polari slang to push the boundaries even further, especially with the camp characters Julian and Sandy, played by Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick.
  • Stephen gets both the panel and the studio audience to shout out their favourite colour at the same time, and then gets the panel to ask what the favourite colour of the panel member sitting next to them was. The problem is that it is very difficult to listen to someone else talking when you yourself are also talking. Alan though managed to get the colour that Sean shouted.
Tangent: John used to do similar courses during his normal working life before he became a comic. He did training days, and at times he thought it might help, but then they would get everyone to draw a random drawing for seemingly no reason.
  • An interrobang is a punctuation mark which is a mixture of a question mark and an exclamation mark (‽), but is normally represented by the two marks following one after the other.Other marks included the sarcastrophe, which uses the caret accent around the word or phrase ^like so^.
Tangent: Frank thinks that on a keyboard the colon should have greater importance than the semicolon.
  • The panel are shown a picture of a sheep which has been sheered and is now wearing a woolly jumper - is ironic.
Tangent: Sean once saw an advert for a meat supplier which read Caring for pork, from farm to fork.
General Ignorance
  • The country which produces the most Brazil nuts is Bolivia. (Forfeit: Brazil)

Episode 4 "Indecision"

Broadcast date
  • 30 September 2011
Recording date
  • 14 June 2011
Panellists
  • Alan Davies (–14 points)
  • Jimmy Carr (–1 point) 19th appearance
  • Rich Hall (–2 points) 23rd appearance
  • Phill Jupitus (Winner with 10 points) 25th appearance
  • The Audience (4 points)
Buzzers
  • Jimmy: A GPS voice saying, "Turn right. Turn right."
  • Phill: A GPS voice saying, "Turn left. Turn left."
  • Rich: A GPS voice saying, "Turn around. Turn around."
  • Alan: A policeman saying, "Excuse me, sir, is this your vehicle? Are you sure? Would you blow into this bag, please?"
Topics
  • John Lenahan, exposed the secret of Find the Lady on an episode of Des Lynam's How Do They Do That?. The panel are given some fake money and are shown the trick, betting on the outcome. When Stephen collects up the money lost, a man runs onto the set and steals it.
  • Just about everyone expected Spanish Inquisition because you were given 30 days notice to prepare your case. It was set up in 1478 under the rule of Ferdinand and Isabella in order to find Jews who the Spanish believed had not truly converted to Christianity. You had to be Christian to stay in the country.
Tangent: The Roman Empire did not really fall as such. It just changed and became Roman Catholic Church.
  • Given the choice the next best thing to having a Nobel Prize winner in the audience would be to have an Ig Nobel Prize winner. This is the award given to serious yet bizarre academic research. Stephen then reveals that they do have Ig Nobel Prize winner in the audience: Prof. Chris McManus, who won the Prize for his paper Scrotal Asymmetry in Man and In Ancient Sculpture, which was published in the journal Nature. McManus showed that most men have their right testicle higher than the left. In Ancient and Renaissance sculpture the left lower testicle is bigger, but actually it is the bigger testicle which is the higher one so they got the sculpture wrong.
Tangent: American comic Denis Leary jokingly said that he would kill to have the Nobel Peace Prize.
  • If you have big decision to make in 40 minutes time the best thing you can do now to make sure you make the right choice is drink lots of water, because you are at your best at making decisions when urinating. You also make better decisions when you are angry.
  • The big decision that the driver of the No. 78 London bus had to make in December 1952 was jump over Tower Bridge. There was a mistake with the warning sign when Albert Gunton was on the bridge and he realised the bascule was already rising, so he made a snap decision, accelerated, jumped the gap, and managed to land safely on the lower, second bascule. No-one was injured and Gunton was awarded £10.
  • The problem with identity parades is that they are not always reliable. Today the police use a system called VIPER. To demonstrate how unreliable some identity parades are, Stephen organises a Never Mind the Buzzcocks style parade in which the panel have to identify the man who stole Stephen's fake money earlier on.
General Ignorance
  • The first person to go around the world in 80 days was American investigative journalist Nellie Bly. She worked for The World, the newspaper owned by Joseph Pulitzer. After the publication of the novel Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne in 1890, Pulitzer decided to see if such a trip was possible. Bly insisted that she should do the trip otherwise she would leave the paper. Pulitzer agreed and Bly completed the journey in 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes, from New York to New York.(Forfeit: Michael Palin)
  • You can tell if a chick is male or female by doing a slight squeeze and feeling for the differences in the ridges and bumps in the cloaca tract. In 1927 at the World Poultry Congress in Ottawa it was announced that the Japanese had discovered how to sex chicks. The discovery reduced the cost of eggs worldwide overnight. At the Zen-Nippon Chick Sexing School the students were taught in such a vigorous way that only between 5-10% of students got accreditation, but when you passed you were paid very well. The best chicken sexers can work through 1,200 chicks an hour. (Forfeit: Nobody knows)
Tangent: Stephen once did a corporate gig for Phillips Small Appliances.
Tangent: In Norfolk there was a team of Vietnamese turkey sexers working for Bernard Matthews.
  • The Moon, like the Sun, rises slightly in the east and sets slightly in the west. (Forfeit: Which moon?; The opposite)
  • Nobody Knows: If you are shown a picture of some mussels and asked how many different species were shown you could not say, because you cannot tell the difference just by looking. You have to use the genome. Jimmy gets the bonus.
QI XL Extras
Tangent: The shill is the person who is in on the Find the Lady scam and "wins" money in front of the crowd.
Tangent: Alan visited a Museum of Torture in Spain where he saw all kinds of things used to punish people during the Spanish Inquisition. One was a spike which would go through your anus, miss all your vital organs and then come out of your shoulder. You would then be left for days on end. They also used spiked cages and left people trapped inside them outside city walls.
Tangent: At the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony the winner is expected to make a speech. However, in order to stop the speeches from going on too long, after 60 seconds an eight-year-old girl called Little Miss Sweetie Poo comes onto the stage and says, Please stop, I'm bored, over and over until the winner stops. When McManus won, Little Miss Sweetie Poo was played by his own identical twin daughters.
  • Between a mouse and a hippopotamus the mouse is more mammaly, in the sense that it is faster for someone to categorise a mouse as a mammal than a hippo. This is because we consider a hippo to be less mammaly than a mouse because the hippo lives in water. Similarly, if you were to categorise different kinds of fruit, we would almost instantly recognize apples and pears to be fruits, would take a bit longer to recognize figs and raisins as fruits, and even longer to recognize olives and pumpkins as fruits.
Tangent: Phill says the picture of the mouse looks like it is clicking its fingers like it is in West Side Story or if it is rolling up a Rizla paper. The correct way to pronounce the word Rizla is Ri-la, from the French for rice, riz, and the company that makes them, Lacroix.
  • What you would not call an Irishman with no nipples is King. In ancient Ireland one of the ways to show loyalty to the king was to suck his nipples. In order to become King of Ireland people would fight each other and if they were considered not suitable they would have their nipples cut off, meaning they could never be king.
  • The national colour of Ireland is St. Patrick's blue. The coat of arms of Ireland has a shield depicting an Irish harp on a St. Patrick's blue background, and the Irish Guards have a St. Patrick's blue patch on their bearskin helmets. The idea of green being the national colour comes from a rebellion in 1798. It became the colour associated with Irish nationalism and began to take over from St. Patrick's blue.
Tangent: According to Herodotus when the Persians wanted to make a decision they would make it when drunk, and if they thought it was still the right move when they were sober they stuck with it. Alternatively they would make the decision sober and would stick to it if they through it was right when they were drunk.
Tangent: When Marilyn Monroe was engaged to Arthur Miller she was very nervous about meeting his parents for the first time who were Jewish intellectuals. They went to their small house in New York and at one point Monroe went to the bathroom. She then realised that the bathroom was directly above the dining room were everyone else was, so to disguise the sound of her urinating she turned on the taps. The next day Miller asked his father what he thought of Monroe, and he said: Nice girl - pisses like a horse.
  • If one of two identical twins had committed a crime, and you had eye-witness reports, DNA testing and fingerprints, it would still be incredibly difficult to get a conviction because there is a danger of imprisoning the innocent twin. In January 2009 $6.8million worth of jewellery was stolen from Berlin's Kaufhaus des Westens department store. Two of the suspects were identical twins, Abbas and Hassam Qmurat, and they walked free despite there being DNA evidence, because although they could deduce that one of the brothers took part in the crime, they did not know for certain which one.
Tangent: Alan was once in a café and he saw someone steal a scooter using some bolt cutters. When the police came around he said that he was an eye witness. The police asked for a description and he said that the scooter was painted metallic gold. Then the victim pointed out it was metallic silver. A few moments later Alan spotted the stolen bike being ridden by the thieves. Alan gave chase and phoned the police to report what had happened, but they never came.

Episode 5 "Invertebrates"

Broadcast date
  • 7 October 2011
Recording date
  • 31 May 2011
Panelists
  • Alan Davies (–1 point)
  • Jimmy Carr (–24 points) 20th appearance
  • Sarah Millican (2 points) 1st appearance
  • Johnny Vegas (Winner with 4 points) 5th appearance
Buzzers
  • Jimmy: A loud, low buzz
  • Sarah: A cricket
  • Johnny: A high-pitched buzz
  • Alan: A fly buzzing, then getting swatted
Topics
  • Apart from making honey, the other thing that bees do better than dogs is smell things out. While it takes about 3 months to train a sniffer dog, it only takes a bee 10 minutes by putting it in a box and making them associate a smell with sugar as an award.
Tangent: An old joke is that the best way to smuggle drugs is via a dog's buttocks because when the sniffer dog arrived it would look like the dog was just sniffing the dog's backside.
Tangent: Sarah's father once punched a bee. He said it was like punching a velvet tennis ball.
Tangent: Stephen has a selection on insect related foods. They include lollipops with ants in then, a scorpion brittle, dried bugs and ants in chocolate. Stephen tries to persuade the panel to eat them by eating a chocolate ant himself. However, it repeats on him, makes him cough, gives him acid problems and there is a bit stuck at the back of his throat.
Tangent: Johnny has eaten smoked insects at Bug World in Liverpool. He claims they had a bad aftertaste.
Tangent: The website beedogs.com features pictures of dogs dressed as bees.
  • The best way to charm a worm is to vibrate the ground. It is believed that the worm thinks there is a mole nearby and the worm escapes by going to the surface.
  • The thing with the amazing eyes did not escape from a tank. The Mantis Shrimp is a crustacean from Vietnam that has split eyes so that they can see ultraviolet, infrared and circularly-polarised light. It is the only creature on Earth that can see circularly-polarised light, meaning it could see a 3D film without the glasses. They can accelerate through water at 10,000 times the force of gravity, which is so fast it makes the water in front of it boil. They can break out of aquarium glass with one strike of their claw. It can also punch pray.
Tangent: Johnny decides to eat Stephen's scorpion brittle, which takes him ages to break into two. Johnny pretends that the effect of the scorpion poison gives him superpowers and he does a forward roll across the set. Alan decides to eat a chocolate ant which he finds disgusting. Stephen fails to persuade Sarah to eat anything, saying that her mum told her she did not need to put anything into her mouth she did not want. It is suggested that this is her version of sex talk and Alan suggests she should put an ant lollipop up what Sarah calls me nunny.
General Ignorance
  • A vertebrate with no backbone is called a shark. Sharks are classified as vertebrates but their backbone is made out of cartilage. They do not have a spine or a rib cage.
  • The strongest creature for its weight in the world is gonorrhea, which is a bacterium that can pull 100,000 times its own weight. The original cure for gonorrhea was to put an umbrella up the urethra which would scrape the inside.
  • Nobody Knows: Nobody knows why moths are attracted to light. One theory is that they are attracted to moonlight and that other sources of light disorientate them. Alan gets the bonus.
QI XL Extras
  • Nobody Knows: No-one can tell if a dog has a guilty conscience. Owners think that they can but it is all in their mind according to various tests. No-one gets the bonus.
  • There are no vegan Venus flytraps because in order to trap their pray it needs to hit the trigger hairs at a certain time. Plant matter cannot do this but animals and insects can.
Tangent: The South American bolus spider traps its pray by making a silk thread lasso which it swings around to catch flies.
  • You would go out with a bucket full of ladybirds at night because they are used as a form of pest control as they eat greenflies. However, if you release them during the day they will just fly away. So you release them night, when they do not fly, and when dawn breaks they eat the nearby greenflies in your garden, then become full up so they do not fly off.
Tangent: Stephen had a similar pest control problem in a conservatory, so he used gall wasps.
  • An ant mill goes around and around in circles until it dies. When ants lose the pheromone trail made by the leaders they start following each other in a circle constantly until they die.
Tangent: Sarah has a rule saying that if an insect comes into her house she can kill it, because it is in her home, but not if it is outside because it is their home.
  • The thing that you should not breathe in if you are a stink ant is the spore of the cordyceps fungus in the rainforests of Cameroon. If it does it gets into the brain, sending the ant mad, then makes the ant walk up the tree where the fungus lives, consumes the rest of the brain and the soft flesh of the ant, then a new spore grows out of the head.
General Ignorance
  • Oystercatchers mainly eat cockles and mussels, not oysters. An oystercatcher can consume 500 cockles a day. (Forfeit: Oysters)
  • The animal with the most genes is the water flea, which has 8,000 more genes than humans. They play an important role in the food cycle of sea creatures. (Forfeit: Jeremy Clarkson)

Episode 6 "Inventive"

Broadcast date
  • 14 October 2011
Recording date
  • 25 May 2011
Panellists
  • Alan Davies (1 point)
  • Bill Bailey (-3 points) 24th appearance
  • Nina Conti (Winner with 5 points) 1st appearance
    • Gran (4 points) 1st appearance
  • Sean Lock (3 points) 26th appearance
Buzzers
  • Bill, Sean, Nina/Gran: High-pitched bells, each higher than the last
  • Alan: An electrical discharge
Topics
  • You should be glad that you did not invent the flying car, the parachute suit and the web rotary press because the people who did invent them were killed by their own machines. William Bullock, inventor of the rotary press fell into the machine's works and was killed by them. Austrian Franz Reichelt invented a suit with a parachute in it and tried to prove it would work by throwing himself off the Eiffel Tower in 1912, but it did not work and he fell to his death. Californian Henry Smolinski invented a flying car, in which you drove to an airport, collected the wings, attached them to the car, then flew to another airport, took off the wings and drove away. In 1973 one of the struts broke off and Smolinski and his co-pilot fell to their deaths.
Tangent: Bill claims a man fell through a tunnel the size of a CD and he managed to survive. Alan then claims that he is now however in a redundant format.
Tangent: Nina once lost Gran on a plane which she claims for legal reasons she cannot mention, but Gran says it is Ryanair.
Tangent: Stephen has a friend who has micro-pigs. When they travel via air his friend puts the pigs in the hand luggage without telling anyone. The phrase Pig in a poke comes from dishonest pig sellers who would hide a dog in a sack and claim it was a pig. The phrase is also hard for ventriloquists to say, but Nina manages to get Gran to say it successfully.
  • The well known invention which lurks in the belly and deserves to dwell in the cesspool is ventriloquism. The Patriarch of Constantinople, Photius, who once excommunicated the Pope, used this phrase to describe it. The word means belly speaker and ventriloquism has a dark history. People originally would just throw their voice anywhere and people thought it may have been demonic possession or a divine utterance.
Tangent: The other members of the panel are given their own puppets and try to do ventriloquism themselves. Bill in the process accidentally breaks his buzzer.
  • Imaginary friends among children are more common place than we may think. It is believed by some psychiatrists that having imaginary friends is a good thing because it improves social interaction with real people and their verbal skills.
Tangent: Yasser Arafat said that the history of religious wars is the history of people fighting over their imaginary friends.
  • Each member of the panel has an old invention from the Maurice Collins Collection, and is asked to identify what it is.

- Bill: Has a wooden finger stretcher which was used by pianists to increase the range that they could play with one hand. Bill can play from notes C to E, which is a wide reach. - Sean: A glass water grenade which was once used by firemen to put fires out by throwing them into the middle of the blaze. - Nina and Gran: A wooden tube-like device which is inserted into the rectum in order to administer a solution to help with hemorrhoids. It comes with a screw lid which is turned and forces the solution out of the holes in the bottom. - Alan: A pair of glasses which allow the wearer to read a book while lying down, without having to hold the book up high. - Stephen: A policeman's Lady Reviver, which contained smelling salts and was used by the police in order to revive women who had fainted.

General Ignorance
  • Nobody Knows: Nobody knows how dinosaurs had sex. While the most common theory is that they did it like reptiles and birds do it today using a cloacal sack, no sexual organs survive because the flesh has all rotted away. We have only been able to sex dinosaurs in the last 15 years. Alan gets the bonus.
  • No diseases are spread by feral pigeons according to pigeon experts.
QI XL Extras
Tangent: Alan does not like flying, but despite this he was brought a flying lesson for his 40th birthday costing £99.
Tangent: Ventriloquist acts were once popular on radio. One of the most popular BBC comedies was Educating Archie starring Peter Brough. However, Brough made the mistake of moving the show to television and it was shown to everyone that his lips moved all the time.
Tangent: Nina was taught ventriloquism by Ken Campbell, and he excited her by saying that people tend not to say the first thing that comes into their head but the second, and in a way she could say what she was really thinking using her puppets. Campbell's puppets were given to Nina in his will and Gran used to belong to Campbell.
Tangent: The idea of a ventriloquist doll taking over the actual ventriloquist is most famously seen in the film Magic. Nina confesses that she sometimes wonders why Gran is not saying her line, despite the fact that Gran cannot really talk.
Tangent: The actress Candice Bergen claims that she had an imaginary brother, who was Charlie McCarthy. He was the puppet belonging to Edgar Bergen, Candice's father and the most famous ventriloquist in America.
  • Edwin Beard Budding's invention affected an army of men with wooden blocks strapped to their feet because it put them out of work. Budding's most famous invention was the lawn mower. Previously, lawns were cut by scythe men who made sure the grass was level by wearing wooden blocks on their feet and matching the height of grass to the height of the block. Once the lawnmower was invented it put them out of work.
Tangent: There is a British Lawnmower Museum in Southport which has over 300 exhibits, including the lawnmowers belonging to Vanessa Feltz, Alan Titchmarsh, Nicholas Parsons, Brian May, Roger McGough, Albert Pierrepoint, Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
  • The man who invented the idea of having bacon and eggs for breakfast and the phrase Torches of Freedom was Edward Bernays, who it could be argued to also invented public relations. At the time American breakfasts were very light, but he collected 5,000 doctors and he made testament to the fact that a heartily breakfast was better for you and promoted the idea of having bacon and eggs. This worked and the dish became a staple. The phrase torches of freedom was created by him to promote cigarettes to women.
General Ignorance
  • The internet was invented by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, who were responsible for the internet protocol. The first internet was called ARPANET. The first communication took place in California, from Los Angeles to the Stanford Research Institute (over 400 miles), and read Lo. The full message was Login but the system crashed mid-way through the message. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. (Forfeit: Tim Berners-Lee)
  • The right conditions for dry rot are that it has to be damp. According to architects rising damp does not exist, although it is mentioned in building regulations. It is believed that it is normal damp that comes from a leak.

Episode 7 "Incomprehensible"

Broadcast date
  • 21 October 2011
Recording date
  • 18 May 2011
Panellists
  • Alan Davies (2 points)
  • Brian Cox (Winner with 5 points) 1st appearance
  • Ross Noble (–6 points) 4th appearance
  • Sue Perkins (–17 points) 3rd appearance
Buzzers
  • Sue: A baby babbling
  • Brian: A descending electronic sound
  • Ross: A telephone "chatter" sound effect
  • Alan: A series of Alan's voice samples overlapping each other, ending with "dirty old bag"

Episode 8 "Inequality and Injustice"

Broadcast date
  • 28 October 2011
Recording date
  • 1 June 2011
Panellists
  • Alan Davies (–1 gazillion points)
  • Clive Anderson (second place with 7 points) 15th appearance
  • Sandi Toksvig (Winner with –54 points) 7th appearance
  • Henning Wehn (–60 points) 1st appearance

In a twist on the "injustice" theme, the points were unfairly given out before the quiz began (as the buzzers were "tested" at the beginning of the show), and Toksvig was named as winner despite having a worse score than Anderson. The true scores were not revealed at the end.

Buzzers
  • Sandi: An audience cheering
  • Clive: "Objection, milord!"
  • Henning: "Don't mention the war!"
  • Alan: An audience booing

Episode 9 "Illness"

Broadcast date
  • 4 November 2011
Recording date
  • 10 June 2011
Panellists
Buzzers

Episode 10 "The Inland Revenue"

Broadcast date
  • 11 November 2011
Recording date
  • 3 June 2011
Panellists
  • Alan Davies (-22 points)
  • Al Murray (-13 points) 1st appearance
  • Dara Ó Briain (6 points) 12th appearance
  • Sandi Toksvig (Winner with 11 points) 8th appearance
Buzzers

Episode 11 "Infantile"

Broadcast date
  • 19 November 2011 (XL edition)
Recording date
  • 8 June 2011
Panellists
  • Alan Davies (6 points)
  • Ronni Ancona (-7 points) 5th appearance
  • Dave Gorman (Winner with 10 points) 2nd appearance
  • Lee Mack (5 points) 4th appearance
Buzzers
  • Dave: A connection tone
  • Ronni: A dialing-out tone
  • Lee: A disconnect tone
  • Alan: An automated answering system for touch-tone phones, with several unusual options

No normal-length edition was broadcast in this week due to the Children in Need telethon on 18 November. The episode was eventually aired 29 December 2011 on BBC Two, in the much later timeslot of 11:30PM.[1] It was thereby listed on iPlayer as the 18th episode of the series.

Episode 12 "Illumination and Invisibility"

Broadcast date
  • 25 November 2011
Recording date
  • 13 May 2011
Panellists
  • Alan Davies (-45 points)
  • Chris Addison (-9 points) 2nd appearance
  • Jack Dee (-1 points) 6th appearance
  • Rich Hall (Winner with 3 points) 24th appearance
Buzzers
  • Jack: A lightsaber
  • Chris: An exploding firework
  • Rich: A lightning bolt
  • Alan: A misfiring igniter, followed by an explosion

Episode 13 "Intelligence"

Broadcast date
  • 2 December 2011
Recording date
  • 15 June 2011
Panellists
  • Alan Davies (-16 points)
  • Jo Brand (-8 points) 27th appearance
  • Phill Jupitus (-4 points) 26th appearance
  • David Mitchell (Winner with 4 points) 16th appearance
Buzzers
  • David, Jo and Phill: The Mastermind theme, in three parts
  • Alan: "Uhhh... pass."

Episode 14 "Idleness"

Broadcast date
  • 4 May 2012
Recording date
  • 20 May 2011
Panellists
  • Alan Davies (Winner with 12 points) 14th win
  • Jeremy Clarkson (1 point) 9th appearance
  • Ross Noble (4 points) 5th appearance
  • Dara Ó Briain (-15 points) 13th appearance
Buzzers
  • Ross, Dara, Jeremy: The exact same generic buzzing sound
  • Alan: Several seconds of silence before the same buzzing sound

This episode premiere, scheduled for 9 December, was pulled following Jeremy Clarkson's comments on BBC's The One Show about the recent strike action earlier in the month. It was replaced by a repeat of Episode 1 of Series I. The XL edition was nonetheless available on iPlayer for a short period on the evening of 10 December.

Episode 15 "Ice (Christmas Special)"

Broadcast date
  • 29 December 2011
Recording date
  • 10 May 2011
Panellists
  • Alan Davies (Winner with 9 points) 15th win
  • Brian Blessed (-2 points) 1st appearance
  • Sean Lock (-8 points) 27th appearance
  • Ross Noble (-3 points) 6th appearance
Buzzers
  • Sean: Sleigh bells
  • Ross: Tiny musical bells
  • Brian: Musical church bells
  • Alan: A party horn

Episode 16 "The Immortal Bard (Shakespeare Special)"

Broadcast date
  • 27 April 2012
Recording date
  • 24 May 2011
Panellists
  • Alan Davies (3 points)
  • Bill Bailey (-14 points) 25th appearance
  • David Mitchell (Winner with 6 points) 17th appearance
  • Sue Perkins (-10 points) 4th appearance
Buzzers
  • David, Sue, Bill: Orchestral trumpet fanfares
  • Alan: A Latin-style trumpet tune

References

  1. ^ BBC Two - QI, Series I, Infantile
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