QI
- TV panel show
- BBC Two / BBC One / BBC Four
- 2003 - 2024
- 312 episodes (21 series)
Panel game that contains lots of difficult questions and a large amount of quite interesting facts. Stars Sandi Toksvig, Stephen Fry and Alan Davies.
- Continues on Tuesday on BBC2 at 9pm with Series U, Episode 15
- Catch-up on Series U, Episode 14
- Streaming rank this week: 719
Episode menu
Series A, Episode 1 - Adam
Topics
- Adam's navel and the Archbishop of Canterbury's left ear are both purely decorative.
- God allowed Noah to eat animals, a right he had previously denied to Adam and Eve.
- Christopher Plummer once said of Julie Andrews that working with her was like being hit on the head with a Valentine card.
- Andrew Graham-Dixon discovered that the painter Caravaggio accidentally killed Ranuccio Tomassoni on a tennis court. He was merely attempting to cut off his testicles. (Forfeit: New Balls Please)
- Tangent: Sheep are castrated without breaking the skin.
- Tangent: Discussion of Prince Albert's libido and the Prince Albert piercing.
- "Finocchio" (fennel) is Italian street slang for a homosexual.
- According to Andrew Marshall's writings on Burma in The Trouser People, the Burmese idiom, "Excuse me sir, but I see your department store is open, even on weekends," means, "Your flies are open."
- Edward Woodward has four "D's" in his name to prevent it becoming, "Ewar Woowar".
- Tangent: Kiwifruit use up more than their own weight in aviation fuel getting from New Zealand to Europe.
- Tangent: When Sir John Gielgud first heard of the name "Edward Woodward", he thought it sounded like a fart in a bath.
- Actor John Barrymore regretted not being able to see himself perform on stage.
- Tangent: A drunken Peter O'Toole once went to see a play, having forgotten that he was supposed to be in it.
- Young giant anteaters indulge in "bluff charging". Their claws are sharp enough to eviscerate a human.
- Anteaters have sixteen-inch tongues, but mouths as narrow as a pencil.
- Tangent: The average graphite pencil can write for thirty-five miles.
- Dwarf anteaters are the size of squirrels and are a delicacy in parts of South America.
General Ignorance
- The country with the highest suicide rate is Lithuania. (Forfeit: Sweden)
- Tangent: Two urban myths invented by the film industry: A ship's captain cannot marry people, and lemmings do not jump over cliffs. (The lemming myth was later corrected in Series "D", as the myth was actually invented in a children's encyclopaedia in 1905.)
- Caravaggio's real name was "Michelangelo".
- The steam engine was invented by Hero of Alexandria, and was named the "Aeolipile". The railway was invented seven hundred years earlier by Periander of Corinth. The modern steam engine was invented by Richard Trevithick.
- Tangent: When Stephenson's Rocket was introduced, people were concerned that travelling at such high speeds could cause irreparable brain damage.
- Tangent: The Romans believed that buggery caused earthquakes.
- The twenty-third tallest tree in the world is a giant sequoia called "Adam".
Scores
Danny Baker: 18 points.
Hugh Laurie: 11 points.
John Sessions: 10 points.
Alan Davies: -5 points.
Broadcast details
- Date
- Thursday 11th September 2003
- Time
- 10pm
- Channel
- BBC Two
- Length
- 30 minutes
Repeats
Show past repeats
Date | Time | Channel |
---|---|---|
Sunday 15th February 2009 | 9:00pm | Dave |
Saturday 5th September 2009 | 8:20pm | Dave |
Saturday 25th December 2010 | 7:40pm | Dave |
Wednesday 8th June 2011 | 10:20pm | Dave |
Tuesday 20th December 2011 | 4:20pm | Dave |
Sunday 8th July 2012 | 9:00pm | Dave |
Monday 29th October 2012 | 5:20pm | Dave |
Monday 17th December 2012 | 2:00pm | Dave |
Wednesday 6th February 2013 | 11:20pm | Dave |
Tuesday 14th May 2013 | 10:40pm | Dave |
Wednesday 15th May 2013 | 1:40am | Dave |
Sunday 1st September 2013 | 2:40pm | Dave |
Monday 5th January 2015 | 11:00pm | Dave |
Tuesday 10th March 2015 | 11:00pm | Dave |
Monday 6th July 2015 | 12:00am | Dave |
Monday 6th July 2015 | 11:00pm | Dave |
Monday 19th October 2015 | 11:30pm | Dave |
Tuesday 5th April 2016 | 12:10am | Dave |
Tuesday 5th April 2016 | 8:40pm | Dave |
Saturday 27th August 2016 | 1:45am | Dave |
Tuesday 3rd January 2017 | 3:20pm | Dave |
Monday 6th March 2017 | 2:00pm | Dave |
Tuesday 7th March 2017 | 12:20am | Dave |
Wednesday 10th January 2018 | 11:00pm | Dave |
Thursday 11th January 2018 | 1:00am | Dave |
Tuesday 13th February 2018 | 11:00pm | Dave |
Wednesday 14th February 2018 | 1:00am | Dave |
Friday 16th March 2018 | 2:00am | Dave |
Friday 16th March 2018 | 11:00pm | Dave |
Tuesday 5th June 2018 | 12:00am | Dave |
Tuesday 5th June 2018 | 2:00am | Dave |
Tuesday 21st August 2018 | 11:20pm | Dave |
Monday 21st January 2019 | 11:40pm | Dave |
Tuesday 22nd January 2019 | 1:40am | Dave |
Monday 27th May 2019 | 11:00pm | Dave |
Tuesday 28th May 2019 | 8:20pm | Dave |
Cast & crew
Stephen Fry | Host / Presenter |
Alan Davies | Regular Panellist |
John Sessions | Guest |
Danny Baker | Guest |
Hugh Laurie | Guest |
Samantha Ball | Researcher |
Adam Jacot de Boinod | Researcher |
Sophie Johnstone | Researcher |
Molly Oldfield | Researcher |
Ian Lorimer | Director |
John Lloyd | Producer |
Phil Clarke | Executive Producer |
Nick King | Editor |
Jonathan Paul Green | Production Designer |
Howard Goodall | Composer |