QI (B series)

QI Series B

The front cover of the QI series B DVD, featuring Stephen Fry (left) and Alan Davies (right).
Country of origin United Kingdom
No. of episodes 12
Broadcast
Original channel BBC
Original run 8 October 2004 (2004-10-08) – 26 December 2004 (2004-12-26)
Home video release
DVD release date 17 March 2008
Series chronology
← Previous
Series A
Next →
Series C

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

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

Contents

B Series (2004)

Series B saw the first attempts to pay attention to a single theme within one episode, such as "Birds" in episode 2. The theme alluded to though, did not always begin with B (for example, episode 1 is announced as being about "Colour"), if present at all. As with series A, most of the titles below have been applied retrospectively to the episodes. First-time panellists included Jeremy Clarkson, Fred MacAulay, Dara Ó Briain, Arthur Smith and Mark Steel. This series also saw the only appearances to date of Barry Cryer, Mark Gatiss, Phil Kay, Josie Lawrence and Anneka Rice, as well as the last appearance of Linda Smith before her death from ovarian cancer in 2006.

Episode 1 "Blue"

Broadcast dates
Panellists
Buzzers
Topics
Tangent: The word "television" comes from the Greek "tele" and the Latin "vision", making it one of the few Greek-Latin hybrid words.
Tangent: Indigo is an Indian plant used for dyeing jeans and police uniforms.
Tangent: Alan's friend who could urinate through a high window.
Tangent: As mentioned in Series A, Episode 7, the difference between bugs and beetles is that bugs have sucking and piercing mandibles.
Tangent: The controversy over Smarties still using crushed bugs in their sweets and conning vegetarians into think they're vegetarian.
Tangent: Bill & Stephen's experiences as lepidopterists.
Tangent: The Natural History Museum has 12,000,000 varieties of beetle. The largest is the Titanus giganteus and the second largest is the Hercules beetle.
General Ignorance
Tangent: Stephen Fry's school's tailor was named Gorringe. The man who brought Cleopatra's Needle to New York's Central Park was called Henry Honychurch Gorringe.

Episode 2 "Birds"

Broadcast date
Panellists
Buzzers
Task
Topics
Tangent: The national bird of England is the European Robin.
Tangent: Johnny Cash was attacked ferociously by an ostrich. Rich then tries to claim that some countries use linoleum as currency, which obviously is rubbish, but Rich mentioned it hoping to get points, as Stephen said, "you get points for being "interesting", but Rich pointed out that it didn't have to be true.
Tangent: The lethal dose of chocolate for a human is about 22 pounds (10.0 kg).

. One Smartie would kill a songbird.

Tangent: Alan's friend had a hamster who wasn't feeling very well and his dad gave it some brandy and it died. One of Jo's friends gave their dog some LSD. Fry once kicked a hamster ball through a friend's window, because he didn't know what it was. The rodent survived. Bill Bailey's girlfriend's dog ate boxes of Daz, as well as underwear. Alan's cat could open a fridge.
General Ignorance
Tangent: Rich's aunt got struck by lightning on a golf course.

Fry ends the show with an anecdote about the Stephens Island Wren, about the lighthouse keepers' cat killing the entire species. However, in 2004, the year this episode was first aired, this was found to be untrue.

Episode 3 "Bombs"

Broadcast date
Panellists
Buzzers
Topics
Tangent: Kamikaze is Japanese for divine wind.
Tangent: Aeroplanes are theoretically kamikaze, because like kamikaze aircraft, they're only filled for a single journey.
Tangent: Groucho Marx believed Zeppo was the worst actor of all the Marx brothers, but everyone believes he was the funniest off-stage. Harpo Marx could actually talk in real life. His autobiography states that he and the other brothers stole stuff for 15 years, and he was proud of it.
Tangent: 50% of bagpipers suffer from repetitive strain injury.
Tangent: The easiest way to tell Ant & Dec apart is that Ant always stands on the left.
General Ignorance
Tangent: Hawaii is the only state not to have a straight line along one of its borders.
Tangent: 800 Americans die in a McDonald's every year.
Tangent: Polar bears and penguins never meet in the wild, because they live at the other ends of the earth. Tigers and lions have never met each other either, because they live on different continents.
Tangent: It's now believed that the Boy Scout movement is an American invention, because of the Woodcraft Indians, created by Ernest Thompson Seton.

Episode 4 "Bible"

Broadcast date
Panellists
Buzzers
Topics
Tangent: Hercules the bear mauled a television presenter. The Sugar Puffs bear was called Jeremy. Peter Brough always moved his lips when the doll was talking.
Tangent: The Archbishop of Glastonbury and Stonehenge is called Rollo Maughfling.
Tangent: The rulebook for Dutch prostitutes is about an inch thick.
Tangent: Jeremy Clarkson's description of how Birmingham people are dull, like Nigel Mansell. Many people who worked for British Leyland in the 1970s had the same colour paint all over their houses, like burnt orange. The Austin Allegro was more aerodynamic going backwards.
Tangent: Examples of Birmingham sayings include "He'd skin a turd for a farthing." The discussion of the folklore of Aynuk and Ayli and Noddy Holder's discussion with a costumier where Noddy misinterprets his accent and the possibility that Jimmy Savile invented bling.
Tangent: India has no speed limits and every car bought there will be involved in a fatal road accident within 5 years. The UK has the highest amount of car thefts in the world, which led to Alan revealing that his motorcycle was stolen recently and pleaded for its return.
Tangent: Stephen's discussion about his American cousin, who is a doctor and talked about taking corneas from people who'd been involved in motorcycle accidents in the rain.
Tangent: Britain and Finland are the only two democracies to have declared war on each other. It happened during World War II, because when Finland declared war on Russia, Britain declared war on Finland.
Tangent: The story of a man who accidentally shot a Golden Eagle, while hunting for pheasants and then told the judge he ate it and that it tasted of swan.
Tangent: Leviticus is a Latinisation of the "Levi", which is a type of priest. Jeremy's third puppy is called Leviticus. His first and second were called Genesis and Exodus and his fourth was called Numbers.
Tangent: The Roadkill Cafe in Wyoming, where you can bring in any roadkill and have it cooked. Their poster says "From Your Grille To Ours!"
Tangent: The Wedge-tailed Eagle in Australia hunts for roadkill and during the morning, the road train runs over it and windscreen height and splatters over the driver.
Tangent: Vladimir Putin hit someone who thought he resembled Dobby the House Elf in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The brother of the Brontë sisters, Branwell Brontë died standing up.
General Ignorance
Tangent: 90% of British people cannot name a battle in the English Civil War, 80% do not know which English king was executed by Parliament and 67% of schoolchildren have never heard of Oliver Cromwell.

Episode 5 "Bears"

Broadcast date
Panellists
Buzzers
Tasks
Topics
Tangent: Wombats have cubical faeces.
Tangent: Koalas can tell how old a eucalyptus leaf is, but scientists can't. It has to be between 1 year to 18 months old, if it's any younger, it has no value to the koala. They also sleep for between 20-22 hours a day. "Koala" means "no water" in the Dharug language.
Tangent: A panda's penis points backwards.
Tangent: Bill owned a type of cactus that flowers only once every 25 years and within 2 weeks of him buying it, it flowered.
Tangent: Floccinaucinihilipilification means the act of assessing something as worthless. The Evening Standard held a competition to find the word that people would say when answering a telephone and "hello" was top, 2nd was "Ahoy-hoi", which was Alexander Graham Bell's preferred method.
Tangent: Due to government regulations, Stephen Fry will probably be the last official Pipe Smoker of the Year. Bill read an article about Stephen in "The Chap" magazine, which showed that people who have a pipe have a sign of trustworthiness.
General Ignorance
Tangent: It takes a live chicken 55 minutes to become a Pret a Manger sandwich.

Episode 6 "Beavers"

Broadcast date
Panellists
Buzzers
Topics
Tangent: 400 tonnes of capybara (the largest rodent on Earth) are eaten in Venezuela during Lent. Beavers excrete castoreum, which is used to make aspirin.
Tangent: The Latin for bulge is "torus", which is the doughnut shape in a particle accelerator and the fleshy part of an apple.
Tangent: There is a named phobia of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth, which is Arachibutyrophobia. Pogonophobia is the irrational phobia of beards. Anthropophobia is the fear of people and antherphobia is the fear of flowers and ailurophobia is the fear of cats. Every phobia has an opposite philia. (a love of something, e.g. arachnophilia is the love of spiders)
Tangent: German for diarrhoea = Durchfall literally "through fall".
Tangent: At one Paralympics, the Spanish national basketball team pretended to be mentally ill so they could compete. They won the gold medal which was later revoked.
Tangent: Stephen's attempt to explain to Alan how the Moon causes the tides.
Tangent: There is no evidence of lunacy being related to the full Moon.
General Ignorance
Tangent: The clitoris is the only organ designed purely for pleasure. It also has 8,000 nerve endings, which is twice as many as in the penis.
Tangent: Roman statues' eyes are blank because they were later painted.
Tangent: The most common Death Row prisoner's last meal is a cheeseburger, French fries and a Coke (A Happy Meal).

Episode 7 "Biscuits"

Broadcast date
Panellists
Buzzers
Topics
Tangent: On the approach to Moscow, the French Army slept inside the dead bodies of horses. In the Battle of El Alamein, it is believed that 50% of the Germans had diarrhoea and Rommel was in hospital on the morning of the battle. Arthur's father was at the battle himself and according to him, he was the only one who didn't get the runs, but he got constipated. He also claims "He had to dig it out with a stick."
Tangent: In Turkmenistan, there is a city called Mary and a region called Mary.
Tangent: The President of Turkmenistan (who was born in the capital, Ashgabat) has his face on every yoghurt pot in the country. He has also named January after himself. He also fired 15,000 nurses and replaced them with army conscripts.
Tangent: The Duke of Devonshire had two pastry chefs, one just for making biscuits. During World War II, he was asked to spare as much men as possible for the war, he was asked to sacrifice one of his pastry chefs and replied "Oh damn it, can't a man have a biscuit?!".
Tangent: Peter Ustinov once went to a school sports day that was so posh, there was a chauffeur's race.
Tangent: The British call posh cake "gateau", whereas the French call it "le cake". The origin of biscuit is from the Italian version known as Biscotti, which mean "twice cooked". The French shout "bis", instead of "encore" at a theatre.
Tangent: In America, some roads in the Midwest go straight for miles, then make a sudden right turn, to account for the curvature of the Earth, so that it conforms to the map. The Americans didn't invent the car as Rich claims, it was invented by the Germans.
General Ignorance
Tangent: The triple point of water (when all three states of water (gas, liquid and solid) may coexist in thermodynamic equilibrium) is 0°C (In Series "C", Episode 12, this was found to be false).
Tangent: -40°C & -40°F are the same temperature. Fahrenheit was invented before Celsius. The British way of using Fahrenheit when it's hot and Celsius when it's cold.
Tangent: Nelson bought a lot of shiny silver stars for 25 shillings and then put on a sash from the King of Naples. Then, from around 50 feet (15 m), the French shot him. He never lost his eye, just the sight of his eye. Lady Hamilton was vastly overweight and had a Lancashire accent.

Episode 8 "Bees"

Broadcast date
Panellists
Buzzers
Topics
Tangent: Termite mounds are spiral shape, because as termites build them, they keep out of the Sun.
Tangent: If you put a magnet next to a honeycomb, it becomes cylindrical. The reason that the cells are hexagons, because it uses the minimum amount of wax for the maximum amount of storage in a given area.
Tangent: Eddie Izzard once claimed that it was odd that bees make honey, but earwigs don't make chutney. The lifetime of 12 bees, makes a teaspoon of honey. Bees also only have 950,000 neurons in their brain, whereas humans have 10 billion.
Tangent: When W. H. Auden was growing old, he had an incredibly lined face and David Hockney was commissioned to do some paintings of him and said "Blimey, if that's his face, what can his scrotum look like?"
Tangent: Jo once did a gig in the Isle of Man, where she got given a curry served with a cup of tea and some bread and butter.
Tangent: Scottish people have the worst teeth and hearts in Europe.
Tangent: Alan's relentless silly jokes. Stephen and Rich join in.
General Ignorance
Tangent: Pound for pound a cup of tea has more caffeine in it than tea.
Tangent: Alan asks when the panel would go back to if they had a time machine.

Episode 9 "Bats"

Broadcast dates
Panellists
Buzzers
Topics
Tangent: Leopards take their dead prey up a tree and leave it for days, often returning and eating the rotting animal carcass. Cheetahs only eat fresh flesh. It is also believed that Tyrannosaurus rex also wait for their prey to rot as well.
Tangent: Rich claims he ate animals that had food in their names, such as "butterfly", "honey bee" and "hamster".
Tangent: If anyone put cotton wool in the ears of a bat, they would be completely useless, because they couldn't use their echolocation. A French scientist proved this theory in the 18th century, but it was poo-pooed and only believed 150 years later.
Tangent: Stephen once saw David Attenborough do an interview where he was explaining that bats never got caught in your hair, while he was trying to get one out. Josie once did an interview when she was asked "Who do you want to be like?" She said Attenborough, because she liked the work he's done and his wisdom, etc. But a couple of weeks later, it was revealed that the question was "Who do you most want to look like?"
Tangent: When Richard Attenborough was directing Ben Kingsley in Gandhi and Attenborough's first assistant director David Tomblin was told to tell the 1 million extras to feel sad, because Gandhi had died, but then he shouted through his megaphone, "Right, listen up, Gandhi's dead and you're all fucking sad".
Tangent: Stephen tells the story of how his aga kept going out, so the man stayed overnight in his house. It was discovered that an owl had roosted on top of the cowling of the flue and blocked the chimney. Stephen also mistakenly said 'chicken' instead of chimney.
Tangent: One of Stephen's friends claimed that sugar was the only English word that had the "shu" sound at the start and began with the letters 'su'. Stephen then asked "Are you sure?" One of Alan's friends called Dave constantly repeats all his words, so he is referred to as "Dave-ja vu".
Tangent: Acronyms used in hospitals such as, GOOMER — Get Out Of My Emergency Room and SARA - Sexual Activity Related Accident and NFN — Normal For Norfolk.
General Ignorance
Tangent: St. Anthony is the patron saint of lost things. Stephen dismisses as bullshit Josie's claims that if you stood still for half an hour, he'd help find any missing article.

Episode 10 "Bills"

Broadcast date
Panellists
Buzzers
Task

A "Draw A Wigwam Contest": The panellists were originally asked to do it in the style of an artist whose surname began with "B" (the letter of the series).

Much to Alan's relief, they were then told that was a joke and they could do it however they wanted.

At the end, everyone revealed their drawings, but everyone accidentally drew teepees instead of a wigwam, except Clive Anderson, who twisted the competition by drawing the pop group Wham! wearing wigs. The main difference between a teepee and a wigwam is that a teepee is made out of buffalo hide and sticks and were mainly lived in by Indians from the Great Plains, whereas wigwams are mainly made of hay and were lived in by Indians from the Northeast.

Topics
Tangent: The Bayeux Tapestry isn't a tapestry either, it's officially a piece of embroidery. John was in Buffalo when he heard of the death of Elvis Presley.
Tangent: Flobbadob (the language used by the Flower Pot Men) was named by Peter Hawkins (who also was a Dalek and Cyberman in Doctor Who and in 1999, was associate producer of a show called "The Lifestyle: Group Sex In The Suburbs") because it sounded like a fart in a bath. (which turns out to be untrue, see QI Series "D", Episode 8).
Luvvie Alarm: When John Sessions met Robert Redford at the Sundance Film Festival, he mentioned to him that The Sundance Kid was Welsh or at least had Welsh stock.
Note: This is incorrect. When gravity decreases, time speeds up.
Tangent: The story of a Shropshire man who catapults dead cows.
General Ignorance
Tangent: Alan talks about his trip to Pompeii, where there are bits of sulphur crust that you can walk across, although they are fenced off, but you can only go over it in pairs and the guides tell the school people not to jump up and down on the thin crust.
Tangent: In Sicily, many hitchhikers are killed on the roadside, by putting their thumbs up.
Tangent: In Ancient Greece, instead of gladiator fights, they had naked wrestling.
Tangent: The Americans gave the Viet Minh a huge amount of money, when they were on the same side. Then using the Americans arms, the Viet Minh forced the French to surrender Indochina in 1954.
Tangent: In Denmark, King Kong is known as Kong King. (Correction: Though said by Stephen Fry in the episode, this is in fact not true. 'King' is 'kong' in Danish insofar as saying 'King Peter' would be 'Kong Peter'. (As a noun 'a king' is 'en konge') The famous giant ape is, in fact, called King Kong, also in Danish.)

Episode 11 "Beats"

Broadcast date
Panellists
Buzzers
Topics
Tangent: Alan's claims that there aren't any rattlesnakes on television anymore.
Tangent: In Australia, it was discovered that sheep possess Morphic resonance, mainly because they use this knowledge to get across cattle grids. It started in Britain with blue tits, they were able to peck the bottle top of a milk bottle within a week of it being discovered in Scotland and England.
Tangent: Spiders wrap flies in their web and drink them by dissolving them.
Tangent: Spiders listen with their eight feet and their penis is on the end of their feeler on top of their head. As well as having eight feet, they have eight eyes.
Tangent: Tesco music - a mix of techno and disco music.
Tangent: 80% of humans take caffeine at least once a day.
Tangent: At the British Museum, there is an exhibition which has a mesh with 14,000 pills sewn into it, which dictates the amount of pills taken by an average First World person during their lives.
Tangent: Sean's best radio link was when Dale Winton was linking Batt's song "Bright Eyes", in which he said, "Listen to that, a song about a rabbit, written by a Batt."
Tangent: Alan was frightened when he saw "The Wombles" as a child, because they were normal-sized men in Womble suits, rather than the small creatures seen on the TV.
Tangent: Linda's friends were in a production of "The Wind in the Willows" and they weren't getting on. One was the badger, the other was Mr. Toad. Before one show, the actor playing Toad got very drunk, and when Badger told him to mend his ways, Toad said "Fuck off, you stripey bastard!"
Tangent: Linda's claim that local newspapers never have a good story to write. Her former local paper, the Sheffield Star once had the main headline as "WORKSOP MAN DIES OF NATURAL CAUSES".
General Ignorance
Tangent: Alan's similarity to the "new" Anne Robinson.

Episode 12 "Birth" (Christmas Special)

Broadcast dates
Panellists
Buzzers
Topics
Tangent: Health & Safety wouldn't allow a demonstration of using helium on people's voices.
Tangent: Aristotle believed that having sex while facing northwards led to stronger and healthier babies.
Tangent: Fry talks about his interview with the President of Uganda (and David Frost).
Tangent: What special powers would panellist have?
General Ignorance
Davies insists that he will not be humiliated on Christmas, so Fry offers for the two to change place. Davies asks his own set of questions, most of them "just for Stephen Fry". (All Alan's questions still had pictures relating to them on the studio's big screens, indicating that the switch was thoroughly pre-planned. As evidenced by his regular forfeits though, Stephen was still unaware as to what the questions would be.)
Note: There are actually either 4 or 23 states of matter, depending on definition.

DVD extras

In the DVD (released 17 March 2008), there were some extra features which contained deleted scenes and extras.

Blue

Tangent: The colour "Barbie pink" is copyrighted by the Mattel Corporation, which makes the Barbie doll.
Tangent: Prawns are like the maggots of the sea. They feed off effluent pipes.
Tangent: Jo asks if there is any point to knowing any of the information given to her on QI. Stephen responds by saying that it tends to be those who say "What it is the point of learning something" that come off worse in life.

Birds

Tangent: Alan tells the old joke about the funeral of the man who invented the Hokey Cokey. This joke was actually broadcast in the "Beats" episode.
Tangent: 11 million turkeys are eaten in Britain every Christmas.
Tangent: Stephen had a friend who used to work for Bernard Matthews. Bernard Matthews employed someone to work on the idea of giving turkeys an extra third leg under the breast, so they could move around because they were so fat.
Tangent: Catfish have the most tastebuds of any living thing.
Tangent: Winston Churchill said he liked pigs, because cats look down at you, dogs look up at you, but pigs look you in the eye and regard you as an equal. It has been known for pigs to eat dead humans.
Tangent: Alan comments how people rob him. He was once robbed when he was asked by some kids if he was, "Off the telly". Another stole his car by putting a bamboo hook through his letterbox and stealing his car keys. Another time, someone broke through his front door at the middle of the night. Alan found him in the kitchen. Alan however was wearing only a T-shirt, so the kid ran off scared.
Tangent: "Onanism", meaning "Masturbation" comes from the Bible. All the people in the city of Onan masturbated. Dorothy Parker called her pet parrot "Onan" because, "It spilled its seed on the ground."
Tangent: The Kinsey Reports showed that 90% of American males masturbated regularly. When asked in an interview what this figure meant, Kinsey said, "It tells us that 10% of males are liars."
Tangent: In early castration procedures, the candidate was placed on a bed and asked if he would ever regret castration. If the answer was "No", the candidate was bound in tight bandages, given a bowl of nerve-stunning herbal tea and then the genitals were then dipped in an extremely hot chilli sauce to desensitise them. The penis and testicles were then swiftly cut off with a small, curved knife in a single movement. A metal plug was then inserted into the remains of the root of the urethra so that the man could still urinate. The entire wound was then bandaged and left to heal.

Bombs

Tangent: There was a German man who liked eating endangered species. He would telephone zoos whenever animals died and asked if he could eat them. He was found to have a freezer full of endangered animal meat.

Bible

Tangent: Alan claims that children's plasticine characters Morph and Charlie are named after morphine and cocaine. Stephen believes that it is an urban myth.
Tangent: Morris dancing is much different to modern folk music. Much of it is about fertility - the maypole for example.
Tangent: Russian soldiers during the Second World War used to take a duck, put the head in a drawer and have sex with the duck. The wiggling feet added to the pleasure. At the moment of climax, the soldiers would slam the drawer shut.
Tangent: "Manna", as in the food that came down from heaven and eaten by the Israelites, means "What is it?" in Hebrew. It was shaped like a coriander seed and tasted of honey.
Tangent: Alan, and then Stephen, have a rant about people forcing their views on others, whether it is religious or otherwise.

Bears

Tangent: Jo is angry about not being filmed correctly when she tests her buzzer.

Beavers

Tangent: In the early 1980s, during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, Stephen, Hugh Laurie and Robert Bathurst went to do a comedy show. The three were travelling on a dark green minibus and had just had haircuts, so they looked just like soldiers. In order to avoid being shot mistakenly, the three of them stuck their faces against the windows and pulled faces.

Bats

Tangent: Stephen sneezes very loudly. He apologises to the sound department for the shock. The department respond by playing dramatic music to him.

Beats

Tangent: Alan tells a joke about mass murderer Harold Shipman. The joke goes that Shipman has a curry for his last meal. When asked if he enjoyed it, he said, "Yeah, but I could murder a nan." The joke goes down badly.
Tangent: Alan talks about a whip display he saw at a theme park where a child was blinded. These leads into a rant about anti-smoking adverts and debt adverts. Stephen then mocks Alan who did an advert for Abbey National. Alan gets his own back because Stephen did an advert for Alliance & Leicester.

Birth

Tangent: Phill claims that a terrible superhero would be "Super Asthmatic". Alan goes on to talk about the comedian Paul Ramone, who used to do a character called "Lizard Man", who was a rubbish superhero. The character's theme tune was, "Lizard Man! Lizard Man! Does whatever a lizard can: Nothing much."
Tangent: When Albert Einstein first visited America, his secretary took a phone call from someone who asked for Einstein's address. The secretary said she could not give the information and asked who was speaking. It turned out to be Einstein, who had forgotten where he lived.
Tangent: When asked during "General Ignorance" about "What kind of animal is sacred in India", Phill comments on the unnatural way he himself says, "The cow".

External links