List of QI episodes (C series)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

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

The first series started on 11 September 2003. Although most viewers did not notice 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"). A second series of 12 programmes started on 8 October 2004, with subjects beginning with the letter 'B' (except in two special episodes, one about music and one about colour). The C series started on 30 September 2005 and the D series started on 29 September 2006.

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, there are five guests that have appeared ten or more episodes (out of 48), they are Jo Brand (14), Rich Hall (14), Phill Jupitus (12), Bill Bailey (11), and Sean Lock (10). In total there have been 47 different guest panellists in the three series to date.

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stated during the series have since been found to be incorrect, in some cases due to a mistake and others by becoming outdated.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.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details about the points scored by the participants follow.

Contents

[edit] C series (2005)

[edit] Episode 1

Broadcast dates
Panellists
Buzzers
  • Bill - A bus's bell
  • Rob - Men singing "Bread of Heaven"
  • Rich - A dog howling ("How is that a bus?" "It's a dog being hit by a bus")
  • Alan - Children singing "The Wheels on the Bus"
Topics
Tangent: The gray squirrel has not made its way to the Isle of Wight
General ignorance
  • Taffy Pull (forfeit: Welsh chat-up line) – a form of toffee
Tangent: Salt water taffy isn't actually made from salt water

[edit] Episode 2

Broadcast dates
Panellists
Theme
  • Opera - a 50 point bonus was offered to any contestant who could break a wine glass using only the power of their voice. It is almost impossible to achieve.
Buzzers
  • Doon - A woman singing falsetto
  • Arthur - An opera singer
  • Andy - A man singing in a deep voice
  • Alan - A long howl by a dog
Topics
  • Doon swam the channel in 1998; Captain Webb was the first man to do so in 1875, smothered in goose-fat in order to insulate himself.
Tangent: Captain Webb died in 1883 attempting to swim across the river at the foot of the Niagara Falls
Tangent: Fry's various anecdotes on the Scottish accent
  • Ordeal by bean is an (outlawed) Nigerian tribal custom whereby accused individuals are forced to eat a lethal strain of bean. (Forfeit: anything to do with Mr Bean)
  • Big Beard Wang was the name of the hairdresser to Chairman Mao (Mao in Chinese meaning cat)
  • According to one survey, the age people would most like to be is 17. From a man's point of view, a woman's perfect age is said to be half his own plus seven.
General ignorance
  • How big is a platypus? Alan used his hands to measure the size of a duck-billed platypus, which brought up the forfeit "About This Big" on the screen.

A platypus, technically speaking, is a genus of beetle, not to be confused with a duck-billed platypus. The latter has no nipples, but instead sweats milk.

  • A dialogue does not require only 2 people to take part. (Forfeit: It does)
  • The Queen's handbag contains some money, a comb, a handkerchief, a small gold compact and some lipstick.

[edit] Episode 3

Broadcast dates
Panellists
Theme
  • "Common knowledge"
Buzzers
  • Sean - A builder's drilling machine
  • Jimmy - A fire alarm
  • Rory - A police car's siren
  • Alan - Noise and the speaker from the House of Commons shouting "Order! Order!"
Topics
  • The commonest bird in the world is the domesticated chicken.
Tangent: according to the Kinsey report, 1 out of 6 men in Iowa has had sex with a chicken.
  • John Napier, inventor of the decimal point, kept a black cockerel which he used as a ploy to catch a thieving servant.
  • A chevin, or chavender, is a type of carp (forfeit: a chav called Kevin; a chav in Eastenders).
  • Fry stated that marsupials are not mammals, however this is incorrect.
  • The fingerprints of a koala are indistinguishable from those of a human.
  • 'Dermatoglyphics' and 'uncopyrightable' are the longest words in English language with no repetition of a letter.
Tangent: The Finnish word saippuakuppinippukauppias is one of the longest palindromes in the world.
  • The commonest metal in the human body is calcium ("Genius" award - 100 points). (Forfeit: iron, mercury).
Tangent: Rory's knowledge of all the atomic numbers.
General ignorance
Tangent: Rory and Stephen discuss Latin bird names.
  • The Queen's corgis are of the Pembroke variety, not the Cardigan.
  • Tweed used to be fixed with stale urine.
  • Mr Chicken was the last private resident of 10 Downing Street.

[edit] Episode 4

Broadcast dates
Panellists
Buzzers
  • Jeremy - A firework
  • Alexander - A hippo groaning
  • John - A humorous jingle based around the word "fruity"
  • Alan - A cuckoo clock (and a gun shooting the cuckoo)
Tasks
  • The panelists were asked to keep their own scores. An extra 100 points would be awarded for any contestant who recorded their score absolutely accurately.
Topics
  • Cheating - the 'winner' of the marathon at the 1904 Olympics, Frederick Lorz, went most of the way by car. Fourth place was awarded to a Cuban postman named Felix Carvajal, despite falling ill to apples he ate from an orchard en route. Len Tau, one of the first black African competitors in the Olympic Games, finished 9th despite being chased a mile or so off course by a large dog.
Tangent: George Eyser won six gymnastic medals at the 1904 games despite his left leg being made of wood.
Tangent: Cricket at the 1900 Summer Olympics
  • Many riders competing in the 1904 Tour de France were disqualified because of receiving illegal tows from motor vehicles during night races. Maurice Garin was disqualified for taking a train through part of the route.
  • Challenger, Tornado, Typhoon, Mustang, Hurricane, Starquest, Buccaneer, Jetstream, Superstorm, and Cobra are all makes of caravan. (Forfeit: tanks, jet-fighters, helicopters).
  • Patriot, Gladiator, Dagger, Javelin, Archer, Arrow, White King, Excalibur and Merlin are all variants of parsnip. (Forfeit: missiles).
Tangent: Boris Pasternak's surname means parsnip in Russian.
  • The first creature to be sent into space was a fruitfly. (Forfeit: monkey, dog).
Tangent: 65% of diseases found in humans are paralleled in the fruitfly.
  • The fruitfly has the largest sperm of any organism, with an uncoiled size of around 20 times its own length (5.8cm).
Tangent: The sperm is the smallest cell in the human body, and the ovum is the largest.
General ignorance

[edit] Episode 5

Broadcast dates
Panellists
Buzzers
  • Sean - A deep inhale through a stuffy nose
  • Rich - A hacking cough
  • Jo - A sneeze
  • Alan - A very deep groan
Topics
  • Women have been shown to be able to "smell fear". Animals can smell the fear of each other but not of another species.
  • "Cats-eyes" Cunningham shot down the very first plane by night in 1940 because he had airborne radar. (Forfeit: carrots).
Tangent: the tiny carrot museum in Berlotte, Belgium. [1]
Tangent: why children aged around 2 go off vegetables.
  • The curious sounds that can be heard in the desert.
Tangent: there are more molecules in a glass of water than there are grains of sand in the entire world.
Tangent: Stephen gave Prince Charles for his wedding present coffee made from Cambodian weasel vomit.
  • A centurion was in charge of around 83 men. (Forfeit: 100)
  • Nero never literally "fiddled while Rome burned". He blamed Christians for the great fire of Rome.
  • Elephants used to be caught by Ethiopian elephant catchers who would capture one, disable it and use it as a breeding animal. Methods used to frighten elephants included setting fire to oil-covered pigs and setting them at the elephants.
  • The memory of the goldfish has been shown to be far longer than the oft-believed three seconds.
General ignorance

[edit] Episode 6

Broadcast dates
Panellists
Theme
Buzzers
  • Phil - An exercpt from "Henry the Eighth I Am"
  • Rory - An exercpt from "Knees Up Mother Brown"
  • Bill - An exercpt from Patsy Cline's "Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey"
  • Alan - Dick van Dyke singing "Chim Chim Cher-ee" from Mary Poppins
Topics
Tangent: the work "nylon" is not a combination of New York (ny) and London (lon), contrary to popular myth
General ignorance

[edit] Episode 7

Broadcast dates
Panellists
Theme

Dogs (buzzers)

Topics
  • That outer space is 62 miles above the surface of the earth
  • The smallest recorded dog in the world was a Yorkshire Terrier (2.5 inches high and 3 3/4 inches long, weighed 4 ounces).
  • Chihuahua cheese is a popular roasting (Asadero) cheese from the Chihuahua State in Mexico.
  • Flint is made of quartz from sponges.
  • The only survivor of the Crimean War is a naval tortoise called Timothy the Tortoise. It died 2004 and was the mascot of the naval ship HMS Queen during the first bombardment of Sebastopol.
General ignorance
  • A luffa is a plant and not from the sea.
  • The Ford Model T was only available in black after 1914. (Forfeit: black, any color so long as it's black)
  • S.O.B. is a naval term meaning Souls on Board.
  • The Gatso Camera was invented by Maurice Gatsonides to monitor the speed of a car so he could find a way to make a car go faster around corners. (Forfeit: to raise money for the government)
  • Samuel Pepys buried a Parmesan cheese in his garden during the Great Fire of London (Forfeit: diary)
  • Judge the Constellation Challenge: Join stars on a piece of paper to form a constellation. Actual constellations were: Taurus, Aries, Sagitarius and Cancer

[edit] Episode 8

Broadcast dates
Panellists
Theme
Topics
Non sequitur: Stephen presents Alan with an Alan Potato Head
Tangent: MSG and umami
General ignorance

[edit] Episode 9

Broadcast dates
Panellists
Theme
  • Animals/zoo
  • Difficult question bonus - one question is deemed "so impossible" that a correct answer would be rewarded with 200 points.
  • Spot the cuttlefish - concealed somewhere in the show there would be a cuttlefish or part of a cuttlefish.
Topics
This is also where part of the cuttlefish was hidden: Marie Curie's photo appeared on the screens in sepia tone, which was originally created using a pigment coming from cuttlefish. The Italian word for cuttlefish is sepia. However, this was not spotted by the panellists
General ignorance
Cuttlefish prize - Alan shouts out "cuttlefish" when the picture of Florence Nightingale appears in sepia tone
  • Most tigers in the world are in private hands in the United States (forfeit: asia, zoos)
  • Silly, Billy, Chilly, Pussy, Pissy, Corny, Punchy, Misery, Messy and Prat - French place names (forfeit: Dwarves)

[edit] Episode 10

Broadcast dates
Panellists
Theme
Buzzers
  • John - Theme from the James Bond films
  • Clive - Theme from Mission Impossible
  • Mark - Theme from Hawaii Five-O
  • Alan - Theme from Z-Cars
Topics
Tangents around the table: one-leggedness
Luvvie Alarm: Stephen starts telling a story about his Champagne allergy at a party given by the Duke and Duchess of Westminster
General ignorance

[edit] Episode 11

Broadcast dates
Panellists
Theme
  • Party/circus
  • One answer involved squirrels – if a panellist identified it correctly they would receive 50 points, with 10 points taken away for a miscall
Topics
Tangent by Clive Anderson: Woodland Trust
General ignorance
Tangent by Jo Brand: Croesus

[edit] Episode 12

Broadcast dates
Panellists
Theme
  • One fact would be incorrect – the "doubt card" can be shown by any player when they think they have spotted it
Topics
Side swipe by Fry at the The Da Vinci Code
General ignorance
  • Balsa wood, one of the softest of woods, is not a softwood but Pine is
  • Contrary to popular belief if you cut an earthworm in two is does not become two living worms, it becomes two halves of a dead worm – the confusion is due to the length of their death throes.
  • The debunking of the theory that Americans spent millions developing the Space pen while the Russians relied upon pencils
  • Neil Armstrong and the Mr Gorski story – told as a fact but then shown to be fictional
  • The triple point of water is actually 0.01 degrees centigrade – a correction from a previous episode as pointed out by viewers. Apparently those viewers forgot to explain that "centigrade" had been thrown out back in 1948 (six years before the triple point was fixed at 0.01 °C) along with "centesimal" in favour of the third name in use then, "degrees Celsius".

[edit] See also

[edit] External link

v • d • e
QI
Quite Interesting People
Stephen Fry | Alan Davies | John Lloyd | Repeat offenders
Quite Interesting Series
A | B | C | D
Other Quite Interesting Things
General Ignorance
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../l/i/s/List_of_QI_episodes_%28C_series%29_0c8f.html"