QI, Series F

Stephen Fry:
What's the most famous line from a Tarzan film?

Ronni Ancona:
Oh, "Me Tarzan, you Jane."

Stephen Fry:
Yes, except of course it never happened.

Ronni Ancona:
What?!

David Mitchell:
Why do these films always forget to put their most famous lines in?

Stephen Fry:
How has the Eurovision Song Contest made Europe a better place?

Terry Wogan:
How has it made it a better place? Because it has, as you can see, the dove, it has brought together the nations of Europe-

Stephen Fry:
Has it arse, it's divided East from West.

[On Bertrand Russell's proof that 1 + 1 = 2]

Stephen Fry:
In order to prove mathematics from the very beginning, you have to establish the first principle of arithmetic, and that piece of symbolic logic was proving that one plus one equals two.

David Mitchell:
It's a bit late, the 20th century, to prove that, I'd say.

Stephen Fry:
A bit late?

David Mitchell:
You've got quite a lot riding by the 20th century on one plus one being two, you know? There's quite a lot of engineering happening. Quite a complex international economy. If you find out that it doesn't equal two, what do we do? Just burn everything! God know anything could fall on our heads. Money, you might as well eat it. Forget civilisation!

[on smoke signals]

Rob Brydon:
Was that before or after email?

Stephen Fry:
[grins] It's... close. They were spamming though, you'd get endless streams! [pretending to fan smoke] "do-you-want-a-big-ger-cock?"

Stephen Fry:
What happened to the fireman's pole?

Rob Brydon:
He tiled the fireman's bathroom.

[attempting a Richard Burton impression]

Rob Brydon:
"When a baby cries it's first cry when it's born it's crying out knowing..." [audience member giggles] Shut up. [more laughter] You wouldn't know a good impression if it sat on your face!

Rob Brydon:
I'm from the same town as Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins.

Stephen Fry:
And Michael Sheen.

Rob Brydon:
And Michael Sheen, of course. In fact, my father grew up in the same street, literally the same street, as Anthony Hopkins.

Stephen Fry:
Yeah... In England we live in houses.

Stephen Fry:
You know how sometimes it can be too cold to snow, yeah?

[There's complete silence.]

Rob Brydon:
Is that a question?

Stephen Fry:
Yeah. You know how it can be too cold to snow?

Rob Brydon:
Yes, because you need some moisture...

[The klaxon goes off.]

Rob Brydon:
You really hate me, don't you?

Alan Davies:
Did you really work that out?

Charlie Higson:
Some of us paid attention at school, Alan.

Alan Davies:
That one again! That seems to be the root of all my problems.

[After hearing about how the East German secret police used to take swabs of dissidents' body odour in order to identify them]

Charlie Higson:
It does sound like a new perfume range, though, doesn't it? "Dissidence, from Calvin Klein."

Stephen Fry:
Anyway. The Borgia pope celebrated the feast of chestnuts by an evening of prostitute racing in the vatican.

Stephen Fry:
[while explaining about the formula used to determine the number of times a paper could be folded] … what you need is length and thickness.

Alan Davies:
That will get ripped off and straight onto YouTube. That will also become a ringtone. "What you need is length and thickness." [mimes accepting a call] "Hello?"

Stephen Fry:
Damn you all. You want--

Alan Davies:
And that'll be for text messages.

Stephen Fry:
I believe, that you, as it happens, obviously, like Alan, felt some erotic feelings towards your instructor, is that correct?

Pam Ayres:
I did. I took a shine to the instructor. I think that's why I jumped out the aircraft, really. Cos I wanted to impress him.

Johnny Vegas:
I often do that. If I like a woman, I jump out of the window.

Stephen Fry:
Do you know what the French for "flying fish" is?

Alan Davies:
Poisson … d'aeroplane …?

Stephen Fry:
What's the opposite of a flying fish?

Sean Lock:
Tunnelling flamingo!

Stephen Fry:
Name something that's much easier to do when you're wearing boxing gloves.

Sean Lock:
Frisk a porcupine.

Stephen Fry:
Very good!

Johnny Vegas:
Give up masturbating!

[audience member inexplicably starts laughing hysterically]

Stephen Fry:
Nurse! Nurse! She's out of bed again!

[After confirming that the reason Tour de France cyclists shave their legs has nothing to do with aerodynamics or speed]

Hugh Dennis:
It's a shame it doesn't make any difference, because I've been using the fact that I don't shave my legs as an excuse for going five hours slower than the guy who won.

Stephen Fry:
Which stage did you do?

Hugh Dennis:
There's an open stage every year. An amateur stage. You do it two weeks before they do it. Eight thousand of us, and by the end, there were four thousand of us left at the end of it. I started in 2400th place, and I finished in 3400th place.

Stephen Fry:
Oh no.

Alan Davies:
You mean a thousand people overtook you?

Hugh Dennis:
I was passed by a thousand people. And it took me... it took eleven hours to do this stage. The winner of the actual proper stage when they did it the next week was a guy called Vinokourov, I think his name was. He did it in five hours, but he was using someone else's blood. And he was thrown out of the stage that night for blood doping.

Phill Jupitus:
[Laughing.] Someone else's blood!

Hugh Dennis:
But it took me nine hours to catch up to the bloke with the one leg.

Phill Jupitus:
[on the Bayeux Tapestry] That says 'Wil 6 Elm'.

Alan Davies:
Normmano. I like that.

Phill Jupitus:
Is that like medieval text speak? They never put the whole thing in. They just sort of... C U l8er.

Alan Davies:
We have been con-kered

Phill Jupitus:
'We've invaded Britain. lol'

Stephen Fry:
O … M … G! Very good.

[About the superb lyrebird]

Jimmy Carr:
It can mimic anything? I'd make it woof. How funny would that be, if you had a bird that woofed?

Alan Davies:
I'd get it to do limericks.

Marcus Brigstocke:
I'd probably get it to do Bill Oddie.

Stephen Fry:
Surely that would be a bearded tit, if it was anything.

Alan Davies:
You're thinking of Rory McGrath.

[On the superb lyrebird imitating a chainsaw]

Jimmy Carr:
I can't see that bird surviving for much longer if it's doing impressions of the chainsaw that's coming toward it.

Sean Lock:
Salamanders can go in fire, can't they?

Stephen Fry:
Yes, that's the legend, presumably that's what happened.

Marcus Brigstocke:
How long can a salamander go in fire?

Sean Lock:
'till it's cooked!

Stephen Fry:
The Eiffel Tower. They loathed it. Guy de Maupassant loathed it so much that his favourite restaurant was …?

Alan Davies:
The "Eiffel Tower is Crap" Bistro.

Stephen Fry:
No, it was in the Eiffel Tower.

Alan Davies:
Oh, so he didn't have to look at it.

Stephen Fry:
So-exactly. The one place in Paris he couldn't see the Eiffel Tower was inside the Eiffel Tower.

Marcus Brigstocke:
Could he not maybe just ask for a chair facing the other way?

Stephen Fry:
He was a French writer trying to make a point, and therefore a git.

Stephen Fry:
Now, how many commandments are there?

Jimmy Carr:
Are we talking about the commandments that God dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai?

Stephen Fry:
Yeah.

Jimmy Carr:
Literally none, never happened.

[on how the king of Syracuse asked Archimedes to find out if his crown was made of real gold]

Alan Davies:
I put it in the bath?

Stephen Fry:
Mm, yeah...

Jimmy Carr:
What, does gold go small and wrinkly in the bath?

Sean Lock:
That's your crown jewels!

[on sword swallowing]

Jimmy Carr:
I think that the actual secret of doing it is to do it really quick and if it gets caught on anything... just jab it.

Stephen Fry:
So this particular man, Archimedes, pondering this problem that he'd been given by the king gets in the bath, sees the water rise, and leaps out of the bath shouting...

Alan Davies:
Eureka!

Stephen Fry:
Exactly.

Sean Lock:
I really thought you were gonna say 'Arsenal!' then, Alan.

Stephen Fry:
By the way, does anyone know, incidentally, what is the best opening move of Paper, Scissors, Stone?

Dara Ó Briain:
If you say, "You go first."

[after being asked to hold pencils in their mouths]

Dara Ó Briain:
it doef feem like a bad move in a fpoken wowd comedy fhow, I'm chofing my wowds vewy cawefully hewe, to effenfially difable the fouw conteftants.

Stephen Fry:
What's the ideal way to kiss a Frenchman?

Alan Davies:
A French man? [laughing] I don't know. With their consent?

Stephen Fry:
Very well put! What a nice young man.

[About the number of kisses given as a greeting in certain regions]

Stephen Fry:
And 5 is Corsica, I suppose...

Dara Ó Briain:
5?! They really have very little to do in Corsica do they?

Stephen Fry:
Can you tell me what sort of person kisses 5 times? "Cors-i-can!"

Alan Davies:
If you're unsure about whether to do one cheek or two, best way to deal with it is to cup their genitals while you're doing it, and they won't mind how many kisses.

Stephen Fry:
[laughing] Cup their genitals! After the words "Carry your bag, sir?"

Stephen Fry:
How would you describe the famous Thatcher effect?

Phill Jupitus:
Yes. You get the country to bend over, and you give it one till its eyes water.

Jo Brand:
It was great actually when she became lady Thatcher, because then she sounded like a device removing pubic hair.

[About the Mona Lisa]

Stephen Fry:
The University of Amsterdam used emotion recognition software to analyse the famous enigmatic smile.

Phill Jupitus:
Or looked at her. "Emotion recognition software"? I don't know. My money's on "bored." What do you reckon?

Stephen Fry:
It showed that it was 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry. She was less than 1% neutral and not even a quarter of one percent surprised.

Phill Jupitus:
Sounds like a breakdown of the audience.

Reginald D. Hunter:
I was at a party here, and this guy was telling me about when he wore corduroy, and he says, "You're an American, do you know what corduroy is?" And I said, "No." And he went on to try and explain it, and eventually four or five people were around me, drunk, trying to explain to me what corduroy was. And eventually this girl who we didn't notice left the room, and she went upstairs to her apartment, and she just dashed in the room with a corduroy jacket, "Here! This is what it is! This is what it is!" And you know, I just … I went along with it because there's nothing like the warm look on white people's faces when they feel like they're teaching you something.

Stephen Fry:
My grandfather was a Hungarian jew, he said "A Hungarian is the only man who can follow you into a revolving door and come out first."

[on that London is not the city with the most Michelin stars in the world]

Reginald D. Hunter:
I feel that any country that can produce marmite, they started later than everybody else in trying to make food taste good.

Stephen Fry:
This from a country that has spray-on cheese?

Stephen Fry:
My name is Stephen "My Bottom Is a Treasure-house" Fry; Thank you and good night.

Stephen Fry:
[to the camera] If you are watching QI now, and you believe in astrology, you are banned from watching in future. You are not allowed; you must turn it over now. Thank you.

Alan Davies:
They had vacuum cleaners in America in the 19th century, and they were huge, and they had to go on the back of a car drawn by horses.

Stephen Fry:
[pedantic]I remember seeing that on a programme called QI! ...But well remembered!

Stephen Fry:
Now. Picture the scene. I'm out windsurfing. The breeze is ruffling my trousers and sun-bleached hair. I look up, and I see on the horizon a ship. How far away is it?

Alan Davies:
Twenty-one miles.

Stephen Fry:
No.

Alan Davies:
I thought it was always twenty-one miles.

Stephen Fry:
No.

Alan Davies:
I didn't even get flagged for that.

Stephen Fry:
No, no, I didn't know that anybody always thought that it was twenty-one miles.

Stephen Fry:
[pointing to the red flower in his buttonhole] What does my buttonhole tell you about me?

Jo Brand:
That you're a closet heterosexual?

Stephen Fry:
How dare you!

[After discussing how the heroine of La Dame aux Camélias wore a red camellia instead of a white one to indicate when she was on her period]

Stephen Fry:
And the film based on La Dame aux Camélias is …?

Jo Brand:
Carry On Menstruating.

Stephen Fry:
Do you know the difference between a frog and a toad?

Alan Davies:

 Spelling.

Stephen Fry:
What do you call a slug with a shell?

Alan Davies:
I'm not falling for that one.

David Mitchell:
There's one of those adverts that sort of says 'There are more germs on your chopping board than on your loo seat.' To which the answer is, 'well clearly that's fine, then.'

Emma Thompson:
[pointing at Stephen] I used to do that to him, actually, make sure that he couldn't get out while I was changing.

Stephen Fry:
You did.

Emma Thompson:
Yeah. It was very good fun.

Stephen Fry:
She used to show me her breasts. [He rhymes the word with "beasts".]

Emma Thompson:
This fantastic effect I used to have on him, 'cause I could make-I could do it now-I'm not going to, but I could-I could make him scream.

Stephen Fry:
[small scream] No. No. Don't.

Emma Thompson:
Not like that scream that we just heard, but a real, actual sort of scream of terror and fright, just by appearing nude at the top of his stairs. [Stephen shudders.] And doing what I like to do, which is locking all the doors at the bottom, so that when he tried to get out … [Stephen mimes pounding on locked doors] … as I came down the stairs, going, "Yes, baby, they're all yours!" By the end of which he was in a state of such extreme panic, and it's great to make someone very clever fall apart like that.

Stephen Fry:
[to Emma Thompson, about her pubic hair] Do you wax yourself down there, dovey?

Emma Thompson:
[gets up intimidatingly] Do you want to see?

Stephen Fry:
[collapses] No! I don't want to see! No, I do not. Oh, God!

Emma Thompson:
You know I'd do it.

Stephen Fry:
I know you would. She'd envelope me in her skirt.

Alan Davies:
Lock the doors! Lock the doors! Ye of faint of heart, leave immediately!

Emma Thompson:
You know the word "luvvie"?

Stephen Fry:
Yeah?

Emma Thompson:
What do you all feel about it?

Stephen Fry:
I mean, I'm not going to get as upset as some actors do-some actors say, "We do a bloody hard job at work, we're serious people, we-you know, it's a coal face, doing a play! How dare they call us luvvies!" You know? I mean, that's a bit overdone. On the other hand, it's a bit tedious when the Daily Mail says "luvvie couple XYZ" or something …

Emma Thompson:
Do you know what the first citation of it is in the OED?

Stephen Fry:
No.

Emma Thompson:
It's you.

Stephen Fry:
What?! No! I can't believe... Did I invent the word?

Emma Thompson:
Yeah, it's you sometime in the 1980s.

Stephen Fry:
Did I? I'm ashamed.

Stephen Fry:
What can you usefully teach an oyster? [as David rings in] Yes?

David Mitchell:
Is it … you know … not to get its hopes up? To expect … lemon juice and death?

Jimmy Carr:
The feeding of the five thousand? Like there's five thousand people and they wanted some bread and fish. I reckon that was just about four and a half thousand people going, "What have we got, bread and fish? I'm all right, thanks. I'll have something when I get home."

David:
The other interesting thing about that story is that out of the five thousand people, only two of them had thought to bring any food. And so in a way it's, okay, good miracle, but the other side of it is 4,998 idiots with no sense of foresight at all. And Jesus doesn't make them learn a lesson from that!

Stephen Fry:
"This is the sermon on the Mount. This isn't Glastonbury," he could have said, couldn't he?

David Mitchell:
But, you know, he should have said "You didn't bring any food! Of course there's not gonna be any food! Think about it!" ... "Plan next time! Judea would be better if people planned!" But no. "Yeah, it always works out fine; Jesus'll magic up some grub!" No! He's gonna get crucified one day, and then what are you gonna eat?

Stephen Fry:
Name a poisonous snake.

Jimmy Carr:
Piers Morgan.

[The forfeit alarm goes off.]

[About the Canadian Mounted Police.]

David Mitchell:
It's like trying to police a country with Daleks.

Jimmy Carr:
Which'd never work with the disabled access we've got now. The Daleks can get everywhere.

David Mitchell:
Jimmy, are you saying that you think that disabled access is a Dalek conspiracy?

Jimmy Carr:
Yes. That is exactly what I'm saying.