QI, Series I

[On the aye-aye]

Lee Mack:
I'm not surprised that they're endangered, because clearly they aren't mating, are they? They're looking at each other and going: "I'd rather not!"

Stephen Fry:
It is dark, remember.

Alan Davies:
All the ugly ones come out in the dark.

Lee Mack:
That's how Jimmy mates. "I'm happy to do it, luv, but it'll have to be with the lights off."

Jimmy Carr:
I can't believe your wife told you that.

[On the I series "Nobody knows" bonus]

Bill Bailey:
What are the points that you gain by using it correctly?

Stephen Fry:
I think we all agree that nobody in this universe understands QI's scoring system.

Bill Bailey:
Right. So, by that logic, were we to raise the subject of the scoring system, and I was to do that, [holds up his "Nobody knows" card] then… [he's cut off by laughter and applause]

Alan Davies:
He's made a very good point.

Stephen Fry:
Somehow, I feel like I'm trapped in an infinite loop. Yes, fortunately that isn't one of the questions.

David Mitchell:
If it were in a hypothetical round a question - "What is the QI scoring system?" - and then "Nobody knows", [mimics lifting up the card] what would happen to the person who does the QI scoring? Would they not then feel rather sad? They are at least presumably sitting there thinking that they know.

[In the end of the discussion, it turns out that Bill has been rewarded three points for his insight]

[When was the First World War first called "the First World War"?]

David Mitchell:
It's gonna be some point after 1939, isn't it?

[The forfeit klaxon goes off, with "1939" flashing on the screens]

David Mitchell:
Excuse me! I think I said - I think what I said, people in the box, is after 1939. Which may contain 1939, but does not mean it.

Stephen Fry:
No. Well -

[The klaxon goes off, with "after the Second World War" flashing on the screens]

David Mitchell:
[waving finger] Okay! No, no, no! "After 1939" and "after the Second World War" are not synonymous. Now, this is just giving you time to type "after 1939".

[The klaxon goes off, with "during the Second World War" flashing on the screens]

David Mitchell:
...Why don't you just type "Mitchell is a cock"?

Stephen Fry:
[warningly] I wouldn't put it past them...

[On French phrases that the French themselves don't use]

John Bishop:
What about bidet?

Stephen Fry:
Bidet they do indeed have, though it's easier, really, to do a handstand in the shower, to be honest. But if you want the expense of a bidet…

Sean Lock:
Easier?

Stephen Fry:
[laughing] If you are as nimble as I am.

Sean Lock:
I'd pay good money to see that. I'd like to see you doing that, with a camera, [mimics lifting a camera phone] going: "Tweet this!"

Frank Skinner:
I tell you what's always frustrated me, and that is that on a standard typewriter keyboard, when you hit the semicolon, you just have to hit the key. But to get the colon, you have to press that other key. If I was a colon, I'd think: "Surely I take precedence. You are merely a semi version of me! I should be the one that just needs one key!"

[On answering a question about how you tell whether a chick is male or female]

Stephen Fry:
This is something I vaguely knew about growing up in Norfolk, because in Norfolk there is a community of Vietnamese turkey sexers who... (He is cut off by the audience laughing)

Phill Jupitus:
I can NEVER watch Platoon again! You've ruined Apocalypse Now for me!

Stephen Fry:
I'm sorry about that...

Phill Jupitus:
(Putting two fingers to his temple, imitating a gun and speaking in an Asian accent) WHAT SEX IS CHICKEN?!?! YOU TELL ME NOW!!!

Stephen Fry:
He genuinely believed it was possible that after Christ's ascension in to Heaven, the rings of Saturn are where he put his foreskin. Now, you're maybe thinking that I'm trying to mock the church, that this is nonsense. But Christ, of course, was a Jewish boy, and like all Jewish boys, at the eighth day of his birth, he was circumc -

Brian Cox:
They're fifty thousand miles across!

Stephen Fry:
[Talking about St. Catherine of Sienna] She also actively sought out degrading experiences. She once drank a cupful of cancerous pus from a woman who'd abused her.

Alan Davies:
But had she appeared on Mock the Week?

[Question:
"How were the rings around Saturn actually formed?" Brian Cox and Alan Davies, sitting on the opposite sides of the studio, both pull out their "Nobody knows" cards]

Brian Cox:
I'm going to, to play the card there.

Stephen Fry:
[looking at Cox] You are right! You're a true scientist. The fact is that nobody does really know, do they.

Alan Davies:
[pointed cough]

Stephen Fry:
[turns to see Alan with his card] Well done!

Alan Davies:
[Formally] Thank you.

Ross Noble:
Of all these [Saturn's] moons, which one is most likely to be the home to Ewoks?

Brian Cox:
Would be, um, Titan.

Ross Noble:
Titan?

Brian Cox:
It's got a thicker atmosphere than the Earth, so you'd need to be furry.

[Ross and Alan quickly open their notebooks and start writing]

["Fill in the gaps in slogans"]

Stephen Fry:
"Welcome to Northamptonshire - Let yourself..."

Sue Perkins:
"…down."

Stephen Fry:
This is an optimistic one here. "Welcome to Tower Hamlets - Let's make it..."

Alan Davies:
"…out alive."

[Talking about SatNav]

Stephen Fry:
I've just done voice for them, so that if you have TomTom or Garmin…

Ross Noble:
No, you drive along, and it goes: "Turn left. Now, the interesting thing about this particular building…" [His voice is drowned under the audience's laughter and applause. Stephen buries his face in his hands.]

Alan Davies:
Did you do it as if you were talking to me? That's the worrying thing. "Left, you moron!"

[Looking at a painting on the screen]

Alan Davies:
That's a really ugly baby.

Clive Anderson:
That's not any use! Don't learn that expression. "Really ugly baby." There's never an option to use that in real life.

[Explaining a radio interview of an actress]

Alan Davies:
Cut the long story short, they airbrushed her nipples out of the poster. Her nipples were showing through her costume, just the two little… [motions with his hands]

Clive Anderson:
But this is radio!

Alan Davies:
[laughing] Not just for the radio. And, uh, she had complained about it. "So why have you airbrushed my nipples, that's ridiculous. Why don't you just leave them?" And the presented said: "Well, perhaps they thought they weren't suitable for children".

[On corporal punishment]

Stephen Fry:
Children were always beaten. Really, we are the first generation - Um, I'm not. I was beaten huge about when I was a child in prep school.

Clive Anderson:
Really?

Stephen Fry:
God, yes. From age seven 'til thirteen, at least twice a week. I was a bad boy, and I was always being thrashed.

Clive Anderson:
What for?

Stephen Fry:
Oh, stealing, lying, cheating, um, being cheeky, being a nuisance, evading games…

Clive Anderson:
Bit of a smartarse, were you?

Stephen Fry:
Yeah, being a smartarse...

Clive Anderson:
...being too clever for your own good. That sort of thing. Always telling everyone what was going on.

Stephen Fry:
All things that annoyed people about...

Clive Anderson:
Well, they certainly beat that out of you, didn't they?

Henning Wehn:
If you're in your seventies now, how old were you in the end of World War II? Maybe ten years old? How did you help win the war? When you were just ten years old, you did not help win the war.

Stephen Fry:
By not eating bananas.

Henning Wehn:
Yeah. You were nothing but a drain on British resources!

Stephen Fry:
[to the laughing panelists] You've gotta admire his guts, haven't you?

Henning Wehn:
Effectively every 70-year-old Brit, effectively fought on the side of Nazi Germany! And lost the war every little bit as much as we did!

Ben Goldacre:
Female sexual dysfunction, for example, started being pushed at the time that various companies were trying to get licences for things like Viagra for the 50% of the population who are unlucky enough not to have a penis. And...

Stephen Fry:
[to Jo Brand] Steady.

Alan Davies:
Jo's got loads of penises, but they're all in her drawer.

[On flatulence]

Stephen Fry:
It seems that we produce about three pints of wind a day.

Jo Brand:
Pints?

Stephen Fry:
Yes, it's measured in pints. Released in ten to fifteen individual "episodes".

Andy Hamilton:
You can get the box set as well.

Alan Davies:
Or, you can have a feature-length episode.

[On fire stations]

Stephen Fry:
You've gotta have two machines abreast, is usual, isn't it? And then all the living quarters were next door... [interrupted by a chuckle from Alan]

Alan Davies:
Sorry, I've just thought of breasts. [hands on his chest] "Two machines"?

Stephen Fry:
[laughing] Two machines per breast.

Sandi Toksvig:
It was an odd moment, Alan, 'cos I was with you.

[Dara is given back points unfairly deducted from him in an earlier episode]

Sandi Toksvig:
Sorry, is he gonna get points for something - and we weren't even there!

Al Murray:
I know a loads of stuff I haven't said!

Dara Ó Briain:
I'm okay, 'cos I came on series two, and I mentioned the triple point of water being zero. And in series three I came back, and they said: "Oh no, we've had e-mails, that actually the temperature is 0.01." Right, so I was one hundredth of a degree off on this. And he docked me points! The following year! So I'm happy, I'll take them.

Stephen Fry:
Yes, exactly. What goes around, comes around. [to the other panelists] Don't feel bad. You may get points, next… two years time.

Dara Ó Briain:
Some day when you least expect it, when you're sitting and having coffee, Stephen will appear and go: [bows] "Some points".

Chris Addison:
You know, Edison electrocuted an elephant. It's my favourite fact of all time.

Stephen Fry:
Yes. Do you know why?

Chris Addison:
He was carrying out an execution.

Alan Davies:
I think you might know this 'cos you saw it on QI.

Stephen Fry:
[laughing] Yes.

Chris Addison:
Really? [over the audience laughter] The problem of joining you people so late is that you've basically covered all human knowledge!

Stephen Fry:
Tell me something quite interesting about the original geishas.

Jack Dee:
They were all men.

Stephen Fry:
Yes!

Jack Dee:
Oh, God.

Stephen Fry:
The first person to reason that the tropics were not hotter because they're nearer the sun, but because a smaller area is lit by an equal amount of light compared to other latitudes, was George Best. [to the incredulous amusement of the panelists] It's absolutely true! It was George Best who worked that out.

Chris Addison:
Oh, you've lost it now. You've completely lost it. You're gonna have to hand this over to someone else.

[Turns out Stephen was talking about an Elizabethan scientist, not the footballer]

[On Broadway musicals inspired by Shakespeare plays]

Stephen Fry:
There was one based on The Comedy of Errors...

Sue Perkins:
What happens in The Comedy of Errors?

Stephen Fry:
There are two sets of identical twins...

Sue Perkins:
[exasperated at Shakespeare's stock characters] Oh God, one of them's shipwrecked, "who's a girl, who's a boy?", "I'm married!", everyone's dead!