QI (F series)

QI Series F
Country of origin United Kingdom
No. of episodes 12
Broadcast
Original channel BBC
Original run 14 November 2008 – 20/21 March 2009
Series chronology
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Series G

This is a list of episodes of QI, the BBC comedy panel game television program hosted by Stephen Fry. Series F was the first series to broadcast originally on BBC One, starting on 9 January 2009,[1] with the exception of two episodes: one made for Children in Need, which was broadcast on BBC Two on 14 November 2008, and a Christmas special, transmitted on 22 December 2008 on BBC One.

The rest of the series began on 9 January 2009 on BBC One, with an extended version of the show (known as QI XL) shown on BBC Two the following day.

Contents

Episodes

Whereas the previous series had seen only two new guests, series F featured new guests in most of the episodes. They were; Pam Ayres, Marcus Brigstocke, Hugh Dennis, Reginald D. Hunter, Dom Joly, Ben Miller, John Sergeant, Emma Thompson and Sir Terry Wogan. Wogan was the first guest in the show's history to have previously received a knighthood.

Originally, the main bonus of the series, following on from the "E" Series' "Elephant in the Room" was to be the "Fanfare", where if any of the panelists said something particularly interesting a fanfare would sound. In the end, this only appeared in the final episode when David Mitchell was talking about French and Russian dinner service. It was styled as the "Teacher's Pet" prize. The only other time it was mentioned was in the extended version of "the Future" episode, when Stephen says that if any of the panelists knew the answer "I'll reward you with 2 fanfares".

The Children in Need special was the last edition of QI to be originally transmitted on BBC Two. All the others were shown on BBC One, starting with the Christmas special on 22 December 2008, with the series proper commencing on 9 January 2009. This transfer of networks also brought about the broadcasting of extended versions – called 'QI XL' – on BBC Two the following day (as per Have I Got News for You since 2007). This was the first series of QI not to be produced by John Lloyd. The role was taken by Piers Fletcher.

This series was the first to be broadcast in Australia, with the "Flotsam and Jetsam" episode being broadcast on 20 October 2009 on ABC1.[2]

Episode 1 "Families" (Children in Need special)

Broadcast date
Recording date
Panellists
Buzzers
Theme
Topics
Tangent: Other ones included "cheese gives you bad dreams", "a crow follows a busy squirrel" and "eating your crusts puts hairs on your chest".
Tangent: Terry's grandmother used to say that "Love flies out the window when poverty walks in the door", and "It doesn't matter whether you rich or whether you are poor, as long as you have money".
Tangent: In the 18th century, 75% of all children died before they were five years old. 90% of all children born in workhouses died before they were five years old.
Tangent: Terry claims that while the last Children in Need raised around £35 million, in order to make a real difference, the charity appeal would need to raise £150 million.
Tangent: 3 million Jelly Babies are eaten every week. The powdery substance on the Jelly Babies is starch, used to get the jelly out of the mould.
Tangent: Ann Widdecombe once said, "Hungry? I'd eat a baby's arse through a wickerwork chair".
Tangent: In the days immediately following birth, an infant is unable to distinguish the cries of its mother from the cries of a rhesus monkey.
Tangent: It's believed that 90% of attention you receive in your lifetime, is received under the age of 3.
Tangent: The line, "Me Tarzan, you Jane", was never spoken in any of the Tarzan films.
Tangent: The song itself only scored three points and the entry was second last overall. The winning song was Waterloo by ABBA.
Tangent: Salazar, the dictator of Portugal, suffered a stroke in 1968, a new Prime Minister, Marcelo Caetano, was made to replace him, but Salazar did not know anything about it and was tricked into thinking he was still ruling the country at the time of his death. He also declared three days of national mourning when Adolf Hitler died.
Tangent: You do not have to have lived in a country in order to represent it in the Eurovision Song Contest. It is a contest for songwriters of particular nationalities rather than the singers themselves.
Tangent: The French criticized their own song in this year's contest, Divine, by Sébastien Tellier, because it was sung in English.
General Ignorance
Tangent: Russell was said to have had very bad breath and to have been bad at mental arithmetic.
Other

In discussing old wives tales, David Mitchell is censored while saying "wanking" and then "wankers", which is not normally done on post-watershed broadcasts in Britain. One possible reason could be in the context of airing the episode as part of a broadcasting event traditionally aimed at a family audience, even though QI itself was broadcast in the usual time slot. (The sound effect used to cover up the words is not the usual bleep but a quacking sound, indicating that it may be removed from repeat screenings and the DVD release). Interestingly, later in the episode, he plainly uses the word "shit" without censorship.

Episode 2 "Fire & Freezing" (Christmas special)

Broadcast date
Recording date
Panellists
Buzzers
Theme
Topics
Tangent: Wet straw is used to make the smoke black in the Vatican whenever a new Pope has not been elected.
Tangent: For centuries in Britain, the signals used in case of invasion were flaming beacons.
Tangent: To swing the fan around means, "I love another", and closing the fan slowly means, "I promise to marry you".
Tangent: The fire brigade was invented by insurance companies, everyone who bought fire insurance was given a plaque they put up outside their house and firemen were only allowed to put out houses on fire if they had a plaque.
Tangent: Smoke tends to kill people before the fire does, This is because smoke makes it harder to breathe.
Tangent: When striking a match, always strike it away from you, otherwise the flash point will come towards you and might cause you to catch fire.
Tangent: A popular expression in Australia is, "I wouldn't piss up his arse if his kidneys were on fire."

Lord Louis Mountbatten convinced Winston Churchill to make a pykrete aircraft carrier after he threw some in Churchill's bath and showed him that it did not melt in his hot bath water.

Tangent: Stephen talks about the game "In my trunk".
General Ignorance
Tangent: Rob comes from Port Talbot in Wales, the same town as Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins and Michael Sheen. Rob's father and Anthony Hopkins grew up in the same street.
Tangent: Snow has been recorded at −41° and −50° Celsius.
Tangent: −40° Celsius and −40° Fahrenheit are the same. This is the point where the two scales meet.

Episode 3 "Flotsam & Jetsam"

Broadcast date
Recording date
Panellists
Buzzers
Topics

Other flags include O for Oscar, which means man overboard, N for November, which means no and F for Foxtrot which means "I am disabled; communicate with me".

Tangent: When Andy was on The News Quiz, with a person who did sign language who signed Bill Clinton by undoing his zip.
Tangent: Stephen was in America, where he claimed they use a crooked index finger to represent the letter R.
Tangent: Rob says that stories of odd sexual encounters are more common and acceptable in showbiz. This leads Charlie to joke that there was a lot of sex in Dad's Army.
Tangent: Alan, who regularly goes diving, claims that at night all the ugly fish come out, mainly because they do not need to be pretty when it is dark.
Tangent: Pope Stephen VI dug up the body of his predecessor Pope Formosus and put it on trial, with people moving his arms around and a ventriloquist was used to make him speak to deny his charges. He had his fingers that he used for papal blessings cut off from his skeleton and was to be reburied in a common grave. But after Stephen was deposed, imprisoned and strangled, his successor Pope John IX rescued Formosus' body from the common grave and reburied it in a papal grave.
General Ignorance
Tangent: In the original football rules, outfield players as well as the goalkeepers were allowed to catch the ball.
Tangent: Alan and Rob comment that photos of sporting teams are odd, in that Victorian ones show the team relaxed, whilst today they all stand in rigid rows. They comment that you would expect it to be the other way round.
Tangent: When Sean Connery applied for the part of James Bond in the films, Ian Fleming and the producers said that he "walked like a panther".
Tangent: The difference between a walk and a gait.
Tangent: Alan and Stephen comment that Mick Jagger and Ian McShane are arse-less.
W = \pi t 2^{(3/2)\left(n-1\right)}.
L = \frac{\pi t}{6}\left(2^{n}%2B4\right)\left(2^{n}-1\right).
W is the width and L is the length needed to be able to fold a paper of thickness t a number of n times.
Tangent: Brief discussion about the film, The Queen.
Tangent: When David Walliams and his mother met the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh after he swam the English Channel.
QI XL Extras
Tangent: During the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, Lord Nelson asked for the signal "Nelson confides that every man should do his duty", but "Nelson" and "confides" weren't flags, but "England" and "expects" were, so it became "England expects that every man should do his duty".
Tangent: Andy went to a Scout Jamboree in Sweden, where there were American Scouts.
Tangent: Officially the Union Jack is only called the "Union Jack" if it's flying from a boat. Otherwise, it's called the Union Flag. The only U.S. state with a Union Jack in its flag is Hawaii.
Tangent: Finding a piece of shipwrecked wreckage results in a fine of £2,500 plus twice the value of it to the owner of the ship.
Tangent: Alan tells about filming on Jonathan Creek at an estate full of pheasants.
Tangent: In Australia, dead kangaroos are often found at the roadside because they try and drink water gathered on the side of the roads.
Tangent: Lightning goes up and down.
Tangent: Alan was in Ayers Rock when he was caught up in a storm in a helicopter. Rob was also stuck on a light aircraft during a storm in Sydney.
General Ignorance
Tangent: Northamptonshire would also be doubly landlocked if it didn't have a 19 yard border with Lincolnshire.
(Buckinghamshire also fulfills this phenomenon but is not mentioned.)

Episode 4 "Fight or Flight"

Broadcast date
Recording date
Panellists
Buzzers
Theme
Topics
Tangent: The world record for the highest skydive is 32,000 metres (19.88 mi). He achieved a speed of 614 miles per hour.
Tangent: Both Alan and Pam have been parachuting, but Pam's was static whilst Alan's was freefall. Alan's jump was at 12,000 feet.
Tangent: Pam was a WAAF in Singapore and Germany during the 1960s, she says why it is useful if there is a cricket pitch on an aerial photo.
Tangent: Flying fish is the staple diet of the Tao people of Orchid Island, near Taiwan.
Tangent: Pam's father was a boxer who took a horseshoe everywhere with him as he was superstitious.
Tangent: Only two people were ever recorded dying from bare-knuckle boxing related injuries whereas four people every year die of gloved boxing injuries in the United States alone.
Tangent: Alan Minter once famously said, "Sure, there have been injuries and deaths in boxing, but none of them serious."
Tangent: Radical feminists claimed that missiles were deliberately shaped like penises as a symbol of typical male aggression.
General Ignorance
Tangent: Bearskins are made out of real bearskin. There have been failed attempts to make them out of other materials.
Tangent: You can tell which member of the Guards a soldier is in by the spacing of the buttons.
Tangent: A scandal in the 1950s about a backbench MP who was caught in St. James's Park having sex with a Guardsman. When Churchill – Prime Minister at the time – was told it was one of the coldest February nights in 30 years he said, "Makes you proud to be British."
QI XL Extras
Tangent: Muhammad Ali would win a fight against Bruce Lee because he had a superior height and weight advantage and his punches are much faster and more frequent than Lee's kicks.
Tangent: The 2 boxers in the boxing glove question are James J. Jeffries and Jack Johnson. Jeffries retired, so Johnson, known as "The Galveston Giant", became the first black heavyweight champion of the world, which wasn't liked much during the racist times. Jeffries came out of retirement to fight Johnson, hoping to "prove that a white man will always be better than a black man", but he was soundly beaten. Johnson later opened a nightclub in Harlem.
Tangent: A film was made about him, and in it, he married a white woman, but he went to another U.S. state, where a black person wasn't allowed to be with a white person.
Tangent: A hawk would probably beat a goose in a fight, but geese can frighten nearly everything away. Alan once saw a swan chase a goose in Clissold Park which frightened many of the visitors away.
Tangent: Stephen comments that Johnny, who has been wearing his leather flying helmet throughout the show, looks like the pigeon from the cartoon series Wacky Races. Johnny then claims he had a dream in which he teaches his family to fly by holding their arms out and running off cliffs. This leads to a strange conversation about Stephen thinking that Johnny might be gay and Johnny's pre-op boyfriend.
Tangent: Alan reveals the times he bought a massive rocket for Guy Fawkes Night and when a nest of ducklings were on his roof .
Tangent: Johnny asks if a duckling would be scared of a missile. Sean claims it would because they are scared of noises such as clapping. Johnny thinks it would be better to show the ducklings a DVD of When the Wind Blows.
General Ignorance
Other

Pam's score was not read out on the show. However, according to comments made by the show's producer Piers "Flash" Fletcher on QI's web forum, she scored 8 points.

Episode 5 "France"

Broadcast date
Recording date
Panellists
Buzzers
Theme
Topics
Tangent: Alan loses five points at the start for saying "mon tête" when talking about removing his onions from around his neck. The word Head is feminine in French, so it should be "ma tête". In French, the word "vagina" is masculine.
Tangent: Today, the people of Les Landes dance on their stilts.
Tangent: One French shepherd walked all the way to Paris on stilts and he climbed the Eiffel Tower on them, and then walked to Moscow on them in 58 days.
Tangent: Jo asked a man in the Aran Islands, near Galway, what he did during the winter. He said, "Fishing and fisting".
Tangent: Hugh jokes that the difference between a French kiss and a Belgian kiss is that the Belgian kiss has more phlegm
Tangent: The French language has only a quarter of the words that English does.
Tangent: A photo is shown of an Englishman and a Frenchman in stereotypical dress. Phill claims that the Frenchman looks more like Arthur Daley. The Frenchman appears to have been holding a cigarette but has dropped it. Stephen claims it might have been removed due to people's views on smoking. Jo claims that's the only advert she would do for smoking.
Tangent: Hugh claims the first thing French doctors give patients is a suppository, regardless of condition.
Tangent: Groundskeeper Willie in The Simpsons coined the phrase "Cheese-eating surrender monkeys"
Tangent: The aggressive Frenchman in the photograph accompanying the question is the wrestler André the Giant, who also starred in the film The Princess Bride.
Tangent: With his glasses and beret, Stephen looks like Benny Hill.
Tangent: A Google bomb resulted that searching for "French military victories" meant it came back with the response, "Did you mean 'French military defeats'?".
General Ignorance
Tangent: 'toga candida', the term for a white toga, is where the word "Candidate" came from, because they were worn by Romans running in an election.
Tangent: Alan once hosted a toga party, where the guests wore sheets instead of proper togas. Alan's friend Danny wore a pink sheet with the words "Pontin's Holidays" embroidered on it.
Tangent: In 2003, Austrian cyclist René Haselbacher tore his shorts and it was revealed he shaved all over, except for his facial hair.
Tangent: Swimmers travel 2% faster when they have shaved.
Tangent: Hugh once took part in a stage of the Tour de France. It took him eleven hours to complete the stage and nine hours to catch up with a man with one leg.
Tangent: Some dialects only have the /θ/ sound and not the /s/, (ceceo) and this is considered bumpkinish by other Spaniards.
Tangent: Arnold Schwarzeneggers denied request to voice himself in the German dub of The Terminator
Tangent:All Saxon names disappeared about 50 years after the Norman Conquest.
QI XL Extras
Tangent: Alan and Phill talk about the shepherds using dogs on stilts. This goes on to talking about smaller dogs mounting bigger ones, to which Phill claims it would probably be easier for them to mount buses.
Tangent: Alan says that the show is not representing the French accurately. He points out he is being more accurate because he is wearing ladies knickers. Phill claims that they look more like the case of The Wild Geese. The panel then reference several war films, with Alan performing The Dam Busters march and Hugh doing his impersonation of Flight Lt. Colin Blythe from The Great Escape. Jo instead references Mary Poppins in a rude manner, leading into a description of a pornographic version of the film.
Tangent: In 1919, a pilot called Charles Godefroy flew his biplane through the Arc de Triomphe to commemorate all the airmen who died in World War I
Tangent: At this point Alan pulled out his "Elephant in the Room" card from the last series, to Stephen's surprise. Even though the bonus had expired, Stephen still decided to give Alan 10 points.
Tangent: the word "impressionist" was used as an insult by a critic.
Tangent: Vincent van Gogh had a massive collection of Japanese prints.
Tangent: As Stephen talks about the Impressionists, Alan messes around with his beret.
Tangent: Hugh's visit to the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume after finishing his A-Levels
Tangent: Alan tells a story about his art teacher, Mr. Bradshaw.
Tangent: William Hogarth, who is only being famous for his roundabout on the A4.
Tangent: One of Stephen's friends was at a dinner party with Anthony Burgess and said "What do you think of Jean Genet?" and he replied "Masturbator and excremental narcissist."
Tangent: Axolotls are popular pets in Japan, since they can heal without scarring. If you cut off its arm, it can grow it back.
Tangent: Samuel Beckett drove André the Giant to school. André had a growth problem which couldn't be stopped.
General Ignorance
Tangent: During the stage of the Tour de France that Hugh did, the leader of the race, Alexander Vinokourov was kicked out of the race that night for blood doping.

Episode 6 "Fakes, Frauds & Fakirs "

Broadcast date
Recording date
Panellists
Buzzers

The panel's first task of the show is to identify what is making their buzzer noise:

Theme
Topics
Tangent: Water softens your facial hair better than shaving foam.
Tangent: A story of a bearded lady who wanted to marry a contortionist but the contortionist did not want to marry a lady with a beard, but if she shaved they would lose their main source of income. In the end the woman shaved off her beard and got lots of tattoos, becoming the first tattooed lady.
Tangent: Samuel Gumpertz, the most famous freak show owner on Coney Island. His freaks included Ursa the Bear Girl, Bonita the Irish Fat Midget, Lionel the Dog-Faced Boy and Schrief Afendl the Human Salamander. According to legend, salamanders can survive a fire.
Tangent: Arthur Furguson was a similar con man. He tricked an American tourist into buying Nelson's Column for £6,000. He also pretended to sell the Eiffel Tower for scrap to an American and the White House in Washington DC. He eventually got rumbled when he tried to sell the Statue of Liberty to an Australian.
Tangent: In 2008, unemployed bankrupt lorry driver Tony Lee conned businessmen Terry Collins and Marcel Boekhoorn out of £1 Million into thinking they were buying the Ritz Hotel.
The Eiffel Tower was planned as a temporary structure.
Tangent: Alan's favourite tabloid report about a Page Three girl who was happy that Saddam Hussein had been captured.
Tangent: Sword swallowing has been practised for over 4,000 years.
Tangent: Sean claims that he gags when putting in contact lenses. He also jokingly claims that if you pull the tail of a Pekingese dog, it's eyes pop out.
General Ignorance
Tangent:Because there were so many buildings and shops on Old London Bridge, it was quicker to cross the river by ferry than crossing the bridge.
Tangent: Margarine is white in colour and is between 80 and 90% fat.
Tangent: In the United States, dairy lobbies tried to prevent margarine going on sale. In New Hampshire where the lobby was very powerful, they insisted that margarine should be coloured red to stop people from buying it.
Tangent: Less well known commandments include: "You shall not suffer a witch to live" (this is a mistranslation and should be corrected), "You shall never vex a stranger" and "Whosoever lies with a beast shall be surely put to death".
Tangent: Stephen tells a joke about the 10 commandments in which an angel is sent to Earth. The French do not want them as it forbids adultery, the Germans don't want them as it forbids killing and the Italians don't want them as they forbids stealing. When the angel gets to the Jews they ask how much the Commandments are, the angel replies free, so the Jew says I'll take 10.
Tangent: Sean argues that the commandment "Thou shall not kill" should be the most important.
QI XL Extras
Tangent: Parrots, Myna birds, and drongos are other examples of talking birds.
Tangent: The reason why the word "Drongo" is an insult in Australia comes from a 1920s racehorse which lost almost every race it entered.
Tangent: The most number of words spoken by a single bird is 1,728, by a budgerigar called Puck in 1995.
Tangent: "Snake oil" is made from Chinese water snakes and used by Chinese immigrants to the United States.
Tangent: Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound which was popular in the US during prohibition.
Tangent: In America, "Jam" is referred to as "Jelly".
Tangent: When monkeys were used in adverts such as the PG Tips adverts, peanut butter was put onto the roofs of the monkeys' mouths for the voice actors.
Tangent: Barnum statements include "rainbow statements", "vanishing negative" and the "escape hatch".
Tangent: Tartary is a region in the Far East near Mongolia, inhabited by the Tatars.

Episode 7 "Fingers & Fumbs"

Broadcast date
Recording date
Panellists
Buzzers
Theme
Topics
Tangent: Jo says that the best person to play fargling with is a Saudi shoplifter, because cutting off limbs is a common form of punishment in Saudi Arabia. This leads to the panel talking about playing against Abu Hamza.
Tangent: The use of pencils in the panellists' mouthes leads Phill to suggest that Stephen would prefer them to wear ball gags, and goes on to suggest Stephen is a fetishist.
Tangent: In Belgium and Holland, they kiss three times and in Corsica they kiss five times. In Spain, you have to the kiss the person on the right cheek first.
Tangent: In 1819, a German travel guide to London says that the kiss of friendship between men is strictly avoided in Britain as inclining towards the sin regarded in England as more abominable than any other.
Tangent: The Thorny Devil can walk on alternating feet.
Tangent: Elvis wore nappies in his final days.
Tangent: The Melbourne Gaol has Death masks of Ned Kelly among others.
Tangent: In Macbeth, King Duncan famously said, "There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face."
Tangent: Jo claims that Lady Thatcher sounds like a device for removing pubic hair.
Tangent: Pictures of Mars, a piece of toast and a sonogram are shown, supposedly images of Madonna, Marlene Dietrich and Jesus in each of them.
General Ignorance
Tangent: Dara complains about not being able to get size 13 shoes.
Tangent: The ring finger shares a tendon with the middle finger.
Tangent: Alan complains about people who say "Cheer up!" to him when he's pensive.
QI XL Extras
Phill's fuck forfeit, Phill loses 10 points as he and Stephen both play scissors.
Tangent: In India and Indonesia, they use animals to play Rock, Paper, Scissors. The animals are ant, human and elephant. Elephant beats human, human beats ant and ant beats elephant, in the same way Elephants are afraid of mice.
Dara's fuck forfeit, Dara loses 10 points as he and Stephen both play scissors.
Tangent: In America, only 1 kiss is given. In Spain, you always kiss the right cheek first.
Tangent: Discussions about why there is so much oestrogen in the water supply, a part of the urethra, an Austrian-accented woman who can apparently tell breast sizes.
Tangent: There is a part of the urethra that curves down before it gets back, so some urine gets trapped at times. This is why sometimes when you go to the toilet at night, once you get back into bed you want to go again. To solve the problem, pull the urethra down to release it (but not to far).
Tangent: After Stephen tells Phill off for getting doth and dost wrong, Phill says it is somewhat pointless seeing as how he got a U grade in English literature and a C in English language.
Phill's fuck forfeit, Phill loses 10 points as he and Stephen both play scissors. Alan says that Phill should be playing stone.
Tangent: Stephen has a friend who studied at the University of York who always claimed that the city has the largest plastic-bottomed lake in Europe. He goes on to say how awful it would be if there was a larger plastic-bottomed lake in Europe.
Phill's fuck forfeit, Phill loses only 5 points by playing scissors against paper.
Tangent: Leonardo da Vinci painted a full set of eyebrows and eyelashes and were described by the art critic Giorgio Vasari as being very fine and even raved about them.
Tangent: Marcel Duchamp famously painted a moustache and beard on the painting, which gave it the nickname "L.H.O.O.Q.", which means "She's got a hot arse" in French.
Tangent: 90% of all the people who go to the Louvre in Paris go straight to the Mona Lisa and spend less than three minutes there before leaving.
Tangent: The University of Amsterdam used emotion recognition software to analyse the emotions conveyed in her smile.
Tangent: Stephen jokes that there was a rabbi who collected foreskins, had them dried out and made into a wallet- whenever you stroked the wallet it became a briefcase.
General Ignorance
Tangent: The word xylophone comes from the Greek word "xylos", meaning wood.

Episode 8 "Fashion"

Broadcast date
Recording date
Panellists
Buzzers
Theme
Topics
Tangent: Rich jokes about the origins of the Phillips Head Screw.
Tangent: The abstinent Louis VII was told that to cure his illness, he needed to have sex, but his Queen could not be reached, so he died chaste rather than commit adultery.
Tangent: The Simpsons refer to the Hundred Years' War as "Operation Speedy Resolution".
Tangent: The conversation about the Duke of Wellington's trousers leads Stephen to make up his own catchphrase "I can come in any trousers I like".
  • Turn-ups were banned.
  • Tailors were told that they would go to prison if they intentionally sold long trousers.
  • Boys under 12 had to wear shorts.
  • Women couldn't wear stockings, so they drew seams on the backs of their legs, after staining their legs with gravy to make them look tanned.
Tangent: The Gömböc is compared to the Weeble
Tangent: Other Hungarian inventions include the Rubik's Cube and the ballpoint pen, made by László Bíró.
Tangent: The history of the planet in relation to the calendar.
Tangent: "Saurus" was Ancient Greek slang for penis, because saurus means lizard and that was how they described their penis.
Tangent: Thesaurus means "treasure house".
General Ignorance
Tangent: Reg talks about his dislike for Marmite.
Tangent: Nic O'Tine, the cigarette devil.
Tangent: Having one testicle is referred to as monorchism, from the Greek for testicle which later evolved into the english word 'orchid'.
Tangent: In the memoirs of Mao's doctor, Mao was infertile, had herpes, never brushed his teeth, instead rinsing them with tea which turned them green, he also slept on a wooden bed.
QI XL Extras
Tangent: Songs sung by fans of Norwich City F.C.
Tangent: His father, James Gordon Bennett, Sr., was a newspaper magnate.
Tangent: Another faux pas was when the Queen was with the monarch of another country in the royal coach. One of the horsees farted and the Queen apologised. The other monarch said "Never mind Ma'am, I thought it was the horse.
Tangent: Bennett once tipped a railway porter £341,000, because he found having huge amounts of cash on him uncomfortable.
Tangent: Gerald Ratner's famous faux pas in a speech to the Institute of Directors.
Tangent: Wigs in the British court system are only now used in criminal courts.
Tangent: Barristers robes are black because Queen Anne died as they were about to change the colour, the court changed them black as it went into mourning and they never changed it.
Tangent: Reginald tells about a story he was told about a Briton wearing corduroy.
Tangent: Corduroy was restricted to royalty when it was first used. It's derived from the French "corde du roi", meaning "cord of the king".
Tangent: The term "living fossil" was what Charles Darwin used to describe the duck-billed platypus and later crocodiles and coelacanths. It means that they aren't identical to their fossil predecessors.
Tangent: Ginkgo biloba is another living fossil, which is used by herbalists as a memory enhancer.
Tangent: Lowell also had an the Lowell Observatory named after him, as well as the "planet" Pluto.
General Ignorance

Episode 9 "The Future"

Broadcast date
Recording date
Panellists
Buzzers
Theme
Topics
Tangent: Ben explains the elementary particles that are created and annihilated in the vacuum of space.
Tangent: Scientists are currently looking to find the Higgs boson in the Higgs field, using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland.
Tangent: There are four known forces – gravity, electromagnetism, the nuclear strong force, which holds nuclei together and the nuclear weak force, which causes radioactivity.
Tangent: There is a theory that all matter has its corresponding antimatter.
Tangent: The Grandfather Paradox
Tangent: Ben visited the LHC 2 weeks before the recording of the show. Sean claims that his objection to this level of physics is that the average person cannot understand it. Stephen gives a similar example in the form of Michael Faraday, who pioneered studies into electricity. However, when Faraday talked about it, it sounded like nonsense to people. It was only when machines developed that could utilize electricity, people were able to understand it better.
Tangent: A discussion about why kids always talk about having hoverboots.
Tangent: Rob does his impersonation of Ronnie Corbett
Tangent: The word "robot" is a Slavic word that meant a "slave worker" and was devised by Karel Čapek, who wrote the 1920 play, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots).
Tangent: Rob and Ben admit to liking each other, which leads to QI's first gay kiss.
Tangent: In Singlish, "Layleo" means "radio", "Lolex" means "Rolex" and "Orleng tzu" means "orange juice".
Tangent: Esperanto, a constructed language has only 900 words, no irregular verbs and takes a year less to learn fluently than any other language.
General Ignorance
d = \sqrt{1.5h}
This normally means, when standing at sea level, the horizon is roughly 3 miles (4.8 km) away from you.
Tangent: Smog is the urban phenomenon of smoke, fog and sulphur dioxide mixing together. The last bad smog in 1952 killed 12,000 people during a 4-day spell. This caused the Clean Air Act to be introduced.
Tangent: In Hawaii, instead of fog and smog, they have vog, which is volcanic fog.
QI XL Extras
Tangent: There are over 10,000 time capsules around the world, but most of them have been lost, the International Time Capsule Society urge people burying them to contact and register them.
Tangent: A time capsule on Voyager 1, which contained the binary information on a record.
Tangent: A discussion about stripping old wallpaper and finding things put on by previous owners of houses. It was also common for a barrel of beer to be buried under the cement in house that had stoops or stairs.
Tangent: According to the equivalence principle, there have to be aliens. Ben talks about the Fermi paradox, by Enrico Fermi, which describes the whereabouts of all alien life.
Tangent: Ben discusses Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, and gives the example that if you were to travel in a spaceship near to the speed of light, it could take only one minute for you, while on Earth, four years could pass.
Tangent: Sean says that he has trouble understanding electricity and understanding how telephones work. Ben then explains how they work, but Sean still does not understand.
Tangent: Rob claims that he had similar support problems when his house extension was built. The extension fell down.
Tangent: When he was in Singapore in 1988, Alan was asked by a local, "You Lick Astrey?.
Tangent: While Rob often complains that language should not change, he is aware that it has to. Stephen moans about people who attack other people's language, such as people using the words fewer and less incorrectly. Alan attacks him by saying that Stephen has complained that Alan has used the words fewer and less incorrectly on no fewer than three occasions.
Tangent: In Welsh mini golf is known as "golf mini".
Tangent: The invented Klingon language, devised by Marc Okrand
General Ignorance
Tangent: Guyana is also the only South American country with a cricket team.

Episode 10 "Flora & Fauna"

Broadcast date
Recording date
Panellists
Buzzers
Theme
Topics
Tangent: Flea circuses were mainly popular during the 1920s and 30s before dying out in the 1960s.
Tangent: Alan reveals the time when he had some fleas in his house.
Tangent: A flea's back legs are very powerful. If a human had as powerful legs, they could jump over the Eiffel Tower.
Tangent: John tells an old joke. "How do you build a flea circus? You have to start from scratch".
Tangent: Stephen brings up the notion that Jo and John might be related.
Tangent: There are 1,270 species of killifish.
Tangent: There is no definitive difference between a frog and a toad, but toads live drier lives and have drier skin.
Tangent: 20 tonnes of toad die in road accidents each year. They are being limited by the construction of toad tunnels. The reason why so many are killed is because their mating ponds are near roads.
Tangent: In 2005 in Hamburg, toads expanded to three times their normal size and exploded.
Tangent: Ferrets are the third most popular pet in United States after cats and dogs.
Tangent: It's unclear if there was a sport where ferrets were put up people's trousers (ferret legging), but it has since been created. They are also used in pet therapy, because they are friendly and interacting with them reduces stress hormone, they help the elderly, depressed and children recovering from severe illnesses.
General Ignorance
Tangent: Tie silk is made from the silkworms that live on White Mulberrys in China.
Tangent: The trail of slime that slugs leave behind gets eaten up and is used as an act of foreplay. There are 37,000 species of gastropod, which is the largest after insects.
QI XL Extras
Tangent: If a human did make the jump they'd probably die when they landed, due to the force of the impact. Fleas also have two penises, one of which serves as a helping aid. Medieval representations of Satan depict him with 2 penises.
Tangent: Alan tells the story of a boy at his school who caught frogs and skinned them before letting them go.
Tangent: It is believed that it had rained toads and Jo claimed that it rained fish in Knighton, Powys, Wales.
Tangent: The panel tell some silly jokes.
Tangent: Myths about fairy rings include: if a young lady goes into a fairy ring on a May Day morning and washes her face with the dew of the grass, she will turn into a hag. They're also claimed to create time vortexes.
Tangent: Body lice, which only live in clothing, are only 70,000 years old, which means that humans first wore clothing 70,000 years ago. Human fleas are also dying out because of vacuum cleaners.
Tangent: John talks about flea circuses again. Only human fleas were used and they are noe in danger of becoming extinct.
Tangent: The panda is the symbol of the World Wildlife Fund. As a result, a disproportionate amount of the money it receives goes to saving pandas compared to other endangered animals.
General Ignorance
Tangent: The botanist Joseph Banks, after who Botany Bay is named, described in his diary that "everybody commended them (the albatross steaks) and everyone ate heartily of them, though there was fresh pork on the table."
Tangent: Young Albatrosses can stay in the air for 10 years without landing.

Episode 11 "Film"

Broadcast date
Recording date
Panellists
Buzzers
Theme
Topics
Tangent: Walt Disney won the most Oscars, with 26. When Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs won an Oscar, Disney was given one big statuette and seven small ones.
Tangent: Stephen made an Oscar statue at the factory in Chicago. They're made of britannium and you have to buff it out, then they're dipped in nickel, then in gold.
Tangent: Emma's Oscar record, and the time Stephen helped save her script for Sense and Sensibility.
Tangent: John claims that the best kind of villain is to get an Englishman to play a German villain, like Alan Rickman in Die Hard. John then does an Alan Rickman impersonation. John claims that Alan Rickman can talk without his lips touching his teeth.
Tangent: Stephen's friend's encounter with Christopher Plummer.
Tangent: There is a room in the Vatican which contains some chipped off penises.
Tangent: Emma's father, Eric Thompson narrated a film about the small things that live in things such as hair and mattresses.
Tangent: The discussion about the advert that claims that there is more bacteria on chopping boards than toilet seats.
Tangent: It is now almost universally accepted pink shape behind God in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is a transverse section of the sagittal area of the brain. Michelangelo would have seen an illegal dissection of the brain and tried to put it in the painting, as he believed it was one of God's greatest achievements.
Tangent: A museum in Oregon is dedicated to replications of the brain made of fabrics.
General Ignorance
Tangent: You shouldn't give a hedgehog bread or milk, because they get diarrhoea and dry out.
Tangent: Nits are the egg-cases of the louse, which can take weeks to get rid of.
QI XL Extras
Tangent: The most ubiquitous line of film dialogue in a survey of 150 films between 1938 and 1974 was "Let's get outta here!"
Tangent: Even while playing Robin Hood, Errol Flynn seems to maintain his American accent.
Tangent: According to John, Alan Rickman hates being good at playing villains. In Emma's version of "Sense and Sensiblity" he played Colonel Brandon. Rickman was at a party once, and a child once said to him, "Alan? Why do you always play villains?" Alan said, "I don't play villains, I play very interesting people".
Tangent: Stories about the 1999 solar eclipse in Cornwall.
Tangent: Cole Porter became so enamoured of her that he wrote a song for her.
Tangent: Emma tells the myth about John Ruskin's sex life with his wife Effie Gray.
Tangent: Brazilian waxing.
General Ignorance
Tangent: There is a French joke which says that if you had a meeting with an Englishman on a Wednesday, it would screw up two weekends of his, because the French think the British are lazy.
Luvvie Alarm: The first citation of the word "luvvie" in the Oxford English Dictionary was made by Stephen in the 1980s.

Episode 12 "Food"

Broadcast date
Recording date
Panellists
Buzzers
Theme
Topics
Tangent: It's believed that certain tribesmen in the Masai Mara area of Kenya and northern Tanzania mix cattle blood with milk
Tangent: Discussion about bloating, constipation and farting on television.
Tangent: Colonists discovering Oysters when they first arrived in the area around where New York City is now.
Tangent: The Mounties, or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are the official police force in Canada.
Tangent: David says that using mounted police has it's disadvantages - for example going on a drug bust in a small flat. He compare it to policing with Daleks. Jimmy says that now there is so much disability access, the Daleks would cope, leading David to point out that Jimmy is suggesting that disabled access is a Dalek conspiracy.
Tangent: The fruit machine was eventually replaced with the plethysmograph. The male version was a sort of cock ring, while the female version is a sort of dildo used to measure lubrication. It was used up until the 1980s.
Tangent: Until the 19th century, all French meals were brought out in one go.
Tangent: Escoffier invented frog legs, which Alan found out on David's radio show, The Unbelievable Truth. David also wrote a page about Escoffier for the QI Annual.
Tangent: Escoffier:
General Ignorance
QI XL Extras
Tangent: Tapeworm pills were a popular dieting method in the early 20th century.
Tangent: Alan's that his great-uncle was in the Mounties and had his leg blown off in World War I.
Tangent: Before going on stage, Nellie Melba believed it was good to have oral sex to improve your voice.
Tangent: Mae West famously said of all-in wrestling that "if it's all-in, why wrestle?"
Tangent: Having gum disease doubles your chance of having coronary artery disease. A lot of diseases in the heart are actually infections.
Tangent: Rich reveals the way a man escaped jail in Mexico, as seen on MythBusters. He wiped salsa on the bars for six years, which made the acid corrode the steel and a current was run through it.
Tangent: Currently, they are trying to fast track the sainthoods to Padre Pio (who became a Saint in 2002) and Mother Teresa.
Tangent: Discussion about the Feeding of the 5,000.
Tangent: Stephen tells a story of a famous French restauranter who used to say to women "Can I smell your pussy?". When the women said no, he replied, "Oh, it must be your feet then".
General Ignorance
Tangent: David rants about headlines incorporating crap jokes
Tangent: It was believed that the Romantics used to eat off meat to give themselves crazy dreams. Byron once wrote a poem on a toilet wall, about having a "good stool", which included an example of a pathetic fallacy.

Notes

References

  1. ^ "QI moves to BBC One". 2008-10-02. http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2008/10_october/02/qi.shtml. Retrieved 2008-10-02. 
  2. ^ "QI". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. http://www.abc.net.au/tv/comingsoon.htm#?vid=PRM0073186qi. Retrieved 15 October 2009. 
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