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 K, Episode 15 - Kitsch

Preview clips

QI. Image shows from L to R: Alan Davies, Sue Perkins, Stephen Fry, Reginald D Hunter, Jimmy Carr. Copyright: TalkbackThames

Topics

- Out of a flowery chair, a balloon animal, a Tiffany lamp and a pooing donkey cigarette dispenser only the last of these would be kitsch, according to the dictionary definition of the term. Something that is "kitsch" is strictly speaking worthless. A Tiffany lamp made in the 1890s was sold at auction for $2.8million. The balloon animal was made by the American pop artist Jeff Koons, who specialises in making artworks that deliberately look tacky. One of his pieces sold for $38million. Chintz armchairs originally come from India, entering Europe in the 1680s and were so popular that in Versailles the king ordered that no-one could own it except for himself, in order to help the French textile industry. British courts also banned it in 1720 to help their textile industry. In comparison, the pooing donkey cigarette dispenser really is kitsch and worthless. Other things that today might not kitsch include furry dice, lava lamps and garden gnomes which may be considered now to be retro or ironic. Ultimately, what is kitsch varies from person to person.

- XL Tangent: Other Jeff Koons artworks include three Michael Jackson and Bubbles porcelain figures, which sold for $5.6million.

- XL Tangent: The word "chintz" is one of only three 6-letter words in the English language which are spelt in alphabetical order. The others are "almost" and "biopsy".

- XL: You should worry about a man in fluffy slippers because he has come to tell you that you are guilty. In some Australian aboriginal tribes if someone committed a crime a figure called a "kurdaitcha" would find the perpetrator, point a bone at them, and the perpetrator would freeze and die, either through psychosomatic or shock. The slippers were made out of the blood of a young man's arm and emu feathers, and could only be worn if you dislocated all of all toes except the little toes which poked out of small holes.

- XL Tangent: Jimmy asks Stephen if he knows the boomerang joke. Stephen asks Jimmy to tell him, to which Jimmy says: "It'll come back to you."

- XL Tangent: Cow shoes were wrong by bootleggers during prohibition. The footprints they made looked like cow footprints, so they were worn to trick the police.

- XL Tangent: There was once a cattle rustler called George "Big Nose" Parrot who was hanged. He was then skinned by Dr. John Osborne, who became a Democrat governor of Wyoming, and who turned the skin into a pair of shoes that he wore during his inaugural ball. This occurred as late as 1893.

- The thing that was originally made out of shower curtains, could be used as wallpaper, works as a burglar alarm, prevents sweaty toilet syndrome, covered Farrah Fawcett when she modelled for Playboy, is good for stress relief and wraps things up so they do not break is bubble wrap. Invented in 1957 by Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes, they put two shower curtains together hoping there was some use for it. They tried selling it as wallpaper and greenhouse insulation, but it did not work. In 1960 they decided to use it to wrap up products sold by IBM. The Sealed Air Corporation which produces bubble wrap makes enough bubble wrap per year to cover the Earth ten times. Bubble wrap is put inside toilet cisterns to prevent sweaty toilet syndrome in tropical countries, because the cistern sweats.

- The panel and the studio audience are given each a sheet of bubble wrap and are told not to press it. They are all then shown pictures of cute animals to test "cute aggression", which is when you want to hold a cute animal that you cannot reach. In 2013 psychologists from Yale used the bubble wrap to measure the aggression. They told people it was a test of motor activity and memory, but in fact if the people wanted to pop the bubble wrap more and more because they were frustrated at not being able to cuddle the animals they looked at.

- Tangent: The last Monday in January is Bubble Wrap Awareness Day. Rhett Allain of Wired Magazine calculated that you would need to wrap yourself in 39 lays of bubble wrap in order to survived falling out of a sixth floor window.

- XL Tangent: The collective noun for a group of kittens is a "kindle".

- The panel are shown a menu and are asked what each euphemistically named item is:

- Sea kittens: Fish, as referred to by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), who thought that if you referred to all fish by this name it would prevent people from eating them because it sounds cute.

- Nymphs of the Golden Dawn: Frogs legs, created by Auguste Escoffier. They were first served to the then Prince of Wales who became George V in 1908. In French the name is "Cuisses de Nymphes de l'Aurore", which means "Thighs of the Nymphs of Dawn".

- XL Tangent: Sue has eaten rooster's testicles.

- Mendip Wallfish: Snails, served in the Miners' Arms in Priddy, Somerset.

- XL Tangent: While French snails are served with garlic and butter, Mendip Wallfish are served with cider, herbs and seasoning.

- Rocky Mountain Oysters: Bulls testicles, but it can also be those of sheep or pigs. Also known as prairie oysters, cowboy caviar, Montana tender groins, dusted nuts, bull fries, swinging beef, criadillas, huevos de toro (bull's eggs) or sweetmeats.

- Tangent: Sweetbreads are the thymus gland or pancreas.

- Kaninhoppning is rabbit show jumping. It is a sport mainly performed in Scandinavia and Denmark. The terms seems to come from "coney hopping". The record for the long jump is currently held by the Danish rabbit Yaboo at three metres. The high jump recorded is currently by Tosen at 99.5cm. Sweden has nearly a thousand rabbit show jumpers. Lisbeth Jansson has written two books on the subject and claims that rabbits that take part live for twice as long as other rabbits (10-12 years compared to 5 years). The rules of kaninhoppning state that the owner cannot lead the rabbit, so the owner must stay behind the rabbit at all times. Going ahead of the rabbit means they must forfeit.

- The panel are each given a muddled up Rubik's cube and are asked to solve it. It turns out that Alan and Jimmy were told in advance how to solve it in six moves, but only Jimmy is able to solve it in this amount. The total number of combinations on a Rubik's cube is 43,252,003,274,489,856,000, which is more than the total amount of inches that light travels in a century. There are also 4x4 Rubik's cubes. In 2010 it was discovered that the minimum amount of moves needed to solve any cube is 20, known as "God's number".

- Tangent: Stephen loved Rubik's cubes as a child, so Jimmy gives him a cube to solve. As Stephen tries to solve it there are points where the screen fades to black with the captions "Some time later..." and "Later still...".

- XL: The American army and navy used 100,000 View-Masters to train their soldiers to recognise different kinds of aircraft during World War II. Invented in the 1930s in Portland, Oregon, the army supplied gunnery crews with them so they could be trained to tell the difference between Allied and enemy aircraft. Six million discs were used.

- XL Tangent: Alan once visited Vietnam and fired a machine gun there, because you can pay for bullets and fire guns that were used in the war. Someone once told Alan that they also hire bazookas that you can use to fire at cows with. There is a Shropshire man who has a Roman-style ballista catapult which he uses to catapult dead cows with.

- XL Tangent: Both the internet and sat-nav were originally used by the military before being used by civilians.

- If you take a Polaroid picture and want to develop it quicker, you should stick it under your arm. Professional photographers used to do this as they took Polaroid photos as a test image. The Polaroid camera was invented by a man called Land, who also made polarised sunglasses. The Polaroid camera was launched in 1948 and is so called because the company was already named "Polaroid". (Forfeit: Shake them).

- XL: Every fourth monkey is like a search engine because it does not do evil. The Koshin monkeys are the ones who speak no evil by covering the mouth, see no evil by covering the eyes and hear no evil by covering the ears. There is also a fourth which represents "do no evil", which is represented by covering the genitals, but by the time it came to the west it was considered too rude and so was not mentioned. The reason it is like a search engine is because Google's (often mocked) motto is "Don't be evil".

- The world's most dangerous karaoke song is "My Way". At least six people in the Philippines have been killed because they have performed terrible versions of the song. However, in 2008 a gunman in Thailand killed eight neighbours because they were singing "Take Me Home, Country Roads". Most people credit the invention of karaoke to Japanese man Daisuke Inoue in 1971, but he did not make any money from it. He has however patterned a a cockroach killer to be used specifically inside karaoke machines.

- XL Tangent: The grand prize at the Karaoke World Championships in Moscow, 2010, was a million dumplings.

Scores

- Jimmy Carr: 9 points
- Alan Davies: 6 points
- Reginald D. Hunter: 0 points
- Sue Perkins: -8 points

Broadcast details

Date
Friday 10th January 2014
Time
10pm
Channel
BBC Two
Length
30 minutes

Repeats

Show past repeats

Date Time Channel
Saturday 11th January 2014 9:30pm
45 minute version
BBC2
Thursday 12th June 2014 9:30pm BBC2
Friday 1st August 2014 9:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Saturday 2nd August 2014 8:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Saturday 2nd August 2014 10:30pm
45 minute version
BBC2
Saturday 18th October 2014 9:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Sunday 19th October 2014 2:00am
45 minute version
Dave
Saturday 27th December 2014 8:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Sunday 28th December 2014 12:00am
60 minute version
Dave
Sunday 12th April 2015 9:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Monday 13th April 2015 12:20am
60 minute version
Dave
Tuesday 16th June 2015 9:40pm
60 minute version
Dave
Monday 7th September 2015 1:00am Dave
Tuesday 8th September 2015 12:00am
60 minute version
Dave
Thursday 3rd March 2016 10:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Friday 4th March 2016 2:00am
60 minute version
Dave
Friday 20th May 2016 9:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Saturday 21st May 2016 12:00am
60 minute version
Dave
Friday 19th August 2016 8:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Friday 11th November 2016 8:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Monday 1st May 2017 12:20am
60 minute version
Dave
Wednesday 25th July 2018 9:00pm Dave
Thursday 26th July 2018 12:00am
60 minute version
Dave
Tuesday 23rd October 2018 1:00am
55 minute version
Dave
Friday 15th March 2019 9:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Sunday 30th June 2019 8:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Thursday 18th July 2019 11:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Friday 19th July 2019 8:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Sunday 17th November 2019 8:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Thursday 26th November 2020 9:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Friday 27th November 2020 2:00am
65 minute version
Dave
Monday 1st February 2021 11:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Tuesday 2nd February 2021 2:50am
70 minute version
Dave
Friday 18th June 2021 1:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Friday 18th June 2021 9:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Saturday 19th June 2021 1:20am
70 minute version
Dave
Saturday 26th June 2021 8:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Sunday 27th February 2022 11:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Monday 28th February 2022 9:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Friday 13th May 2022 11:00pm Dave
Saturday 6th May 2023 12:15am
60 minute version
Dave
Saturday 6th May 2023 10:20pm
60 minute version
Dave
Thursday 10th August 2023 9:00pm
60 minute version
Dave
Sunday 8th October 2023 11:40pm
60 minute version
Dave

Cast & crew

Cast
Stephen Fry Host / Presenter
Alan Davies Regular Panellist
Guest cast
Jimmy Carr Guest
Reginald D Hunter Guest
Sue Perkins Guest
Writing team
James Harkin Script Editor
John Mitchinson Question Writer
Mat Coward Researcher
Justin Pollard Question Writer
Molly Oldfield Question Writer
Will Bowen Researcher
Andrew Hunter Murray Question Writer
Anne Miller Researcher
Anna Ptaszynski Researcher
Alex Bell Researcher
Stevyn Colgan Researcher
Production team
Ian Lorimer Director
John Lloyd (as John Lloyd CBE) Series Producer
Piers Fletcher Producer
Ruby Kuraishe Executive Producer
Nick King Editor
Jonathan Paul Green Production Designer
Howard Goodall Composer

Video

Measure aggression with cute kittens and bubble wrap

The panel measure their aggression by popping bubble wrap whilst looking at cute animals.

Featuring: Alan Davies, Stephen Fry, Jimmy Carr, Reginald D Hunter & Sue Perkins.

Share this page