QI. Image shows from L to R: Alan Davies, Sandi Toksvig. Copyright: TalkbackThames
QI

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.

Episode menu

Series A, Episode 1 - Adam

Creation of 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

Cast
Stephen Fry Host / Presenter
Alan Davies Regular Panellist
Guest cast
John Sessions Guest
Danny Baker Guest
Hugh Laurie Guest
Writing team
Samantha Ball Researcher
Adam Jacot de Boinod Researcher
Sophie Johnstone Researcher
Molly Oldfield Researcher
Production team
Ian Lorimer Director
John Lloyd Producer
Phil Clarke Executive Producer
Nick King Editor
Jonathan Paul Green Production Designer
Howard Goodall Composer

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