QI, Series G

[Alan is testing his gentleman gardener's saw on the table, despite Stephen's protests]

David Mitchell:
I really wish they hadn't made the set out of asbestos.

Stephen Fry:
[both arms on his waist] Do you know that rhyme, "I'm a little teapot, short an stout, [looks right] here's my handle, [looks left] oh bugger, I'm a sugar bowl!"

[Stephen has explained that the best place to find new species is your own garden]

Alan Davies:
Still going rainforest. I'm sorry.

Stephen Fry:
Yes, but you'd have to travel thousands of miles, you'd have to park there, you'd have to look, you'd have to, you know -

Alan Davies:
Park?!

[audience bursts into laughter, Stephen looks as if he can't believe what he's just said]

Alan Davies:
You know when you find a bee, and it's crawling on its last legs.

Rob Brydon:
I always rescue them.

Alan Davies:
You give it honey. It's the only thing they eat, makes sense when you think about it.

[audience laughter]

Alan Davies:
No point in just talking to it. Give it honey!

David Mitchell:
They're very much a one-recipe species, aren't they?

Dara Ó Briain:
I'm intrigued, because I would, um, I generally give it a sole of my shoe. You know, not to be harsh, but…

Alan Davies:
[exasperated] You step on a struggling, crawling bee? Trying to get back to the hive?

Dara Ó Briain:
What? As opposed to rehabilitate it?

Alan Davies:
I like honey! I have it on my porridge! You murderer!

David Mitchell:
[after the argument has gone on for a while] But isn't it true, though, that a bee, in its entire lifetime, makes absolutely tiny amount of honey overall? So you don't have to give much rehabilitating honey to this one bee before the nation, the world, is making a net loss! I mean, it's useless. If you only get one teaspoon of honey from a whole bee's lifetime, and every time you have to get it back on its feet it takes a teaspoon and a half, suddenly there's no honey at all! You're insulting it apart from anything else! It's like showing a very tired mason a whole cathedral!

Stephen Fry:
What use is a goose?

Sandi Toksvig:
[dead serious] Is it toilet paper? [general laughter] No, seriously. Is it - [more laughter]

Stephen Fry:
Sandi, that is bizarre. Why do you say that?

Sandi Toksvig:
Well, because I once read this book by Rabelais, I think it was called Gargantua. And he recommended that the best thing for toilet paper was a live goose. And I have yet to check in to a five-star hotel without a sense of disappointment.

Stephen Fry:
So that's the uses of gooses or the eese of geese.

Sean Lock:

Is the next question on the habits of rabbits?

Stephen:

Oh, I wish that it were.

Sean:

"How far can you shove a dove?"

Alan:

Hats of cats. That's my offer.

[On giraffes]

Stephen Fry:
So there you are. There are these beautiful animals, and they are graceful and sweet and long eyelashes and sexy and rather desirable in many ways…

Sandi Toksvig:
Good thing you're tall.

Stephen Fry:
What's the commonest cause of death among mountain goats?

Bill Bailey:
[hitting his buzzer] BRIAN BLESSED.

Stephen Fry:
Which popular game traditionally ends with all of the participants being thrown into a lake of fiery sulfur?

Sean Lock:
I hope it's show jumping. I hate show jumping!

[On Ouija boards]

Stephen Fry:
…But the reference in the Bible to the fiery lake or whatever is from Revelations, where it does say that those who practice the magic arts will be cast into burning sulfur.

Phill Jupitus:
How about balloon animals?

Stephen Fry:
The punishment for people who do balloon animals is not specified in the Book of Revelations.

Rob Brydon:
Friends of mine, back in Wales, quite a few of them have got Welsh - it's not a famous voice but it's a Welsh SatNav, which basically goes, you know -

Stephen Fry:
In Welsh language?

Rob Brydon:
No, no, no, just with Welsh attitude. Welsh approach to life. Or death. "Turning coming up now in about forty yards, get ready for it. Getting a bit closer now, get ready, here it comes. [with utter disappointment] Ohh, you plank! You've missed it. [bored, motioning with his finger] Now, do a u-ie, do a u-ie. Do it! No - don't - oh, [cynical] pull over, attach a hose pipe to the exhaust and just end it all."

Stephen Fry:
What are large - very large - blue, rare, slow-moving, have calfs, suffer from wet bottoms, and are found all over the world?

Alan Davies:
[with a sly grin, pointing his finger at Stephen] Not the blue whale!

[After David Tennant has answered a historical question correctly]

Alan Davies:
It's all the time travel he does! He knows something about every era.

Stephen Fry:
[cough] He's acting. [cough]

Bill Bailey:
It's not real? [sounds agitated] What do you mean? What do you mean?

David Tennant:
Don't listen to him. [glares at Stephen]

Stephen Fry:
[raises a hand apologetically] I'm sorry!

Bill Bailey:
[leans towards David] Don't tell me it's not real!

David Tennant:
[whispering] Don't listen to the bad man!

Stephen Fry:
At school, we used to do what we called quad hockey, which is like a polo, only on bikes. You use a hockey stick and a ball, and you just go round on, um…

Bill Bailey:
On quad bikes?

Stephen Fry:
No, not on quad bikes. In a quad. In a quadrangle.

Bill Bailey:
You were playing hockey in a quadrangle? You had a very different sort of schooling to a lot of us.

Stephen Fry:
Why? How is that different?

Lee Mack:
Well, in my school, we used to set fire to cars. In an octangle.

Alan Davies:
The Nazis banned smoking?

Stephen Fry:
The Nazis, yeah, they had very strong anti-smoking…

Bill Bailey:
The more I hear about them, the less I like them.

Alan Davies:
"Well that's the final straw!"

Stephen Fry:
"Up until this point, I've been prepared to listen…"

Alan Davies:
"Oh, I can rationalise everything else, but that …"

Lee Mack:
You can't damn it and damn it and double damn it. You could damn it and damn it and triple damn it.

Stephen Fry:
Yeah. That was his mistake.

Bill Bailey:
[eyeing David] ...chairman of the pedantic society.

Lee Mack:
Vice chairman actually. [grins]

[On the term 'cool' becoming to mean 'fashionable' in 1933 - the year Hitler came to power]

Bill Bailey:
[mimicking German accent] "Zees new uniforms are cool!"

[General laughter]

Bill Bailey:
[ironically] So this is Christmas...

Alan Davies:
[mimicking German accent] "I joined ze Nazi party. Zey're cool, daddy-o!"

Bill Bailey:
"Cool, daddy-o!"

Alan Davies:
"And bezides, I have no choice."

Bill Bailey:
"I burned down a Reichstag. Cool!"

[On children]

Alan Davies:
I thought you were supposed to play natural sounds because the noises of contemporary life are extremely distractive and create behavioral difficulties. That's why you mustn't have television on 'til they're four, or something like that.

Dara Ó Briain:
That's not how parenting works, my friend. You have the television - you train them to like the television as quickly as you possibly can!

Alan Davies:
[laughing] Because there was no ADHD until television was invented, they kind of coincide…

Dara Ó Briain:
They're happy with HD, my friend.

[On a painting of Leonardo da Vinci's deathbed, Alan has spotted a figure looking very much like Rodney Bewes]

David Mitchell:
What a weird, unsettling thing to discover that would be, in the context of the credit crunch and everything, suddenly to discover that Rodney Bewes was immortal. Just imagine, on the news, them going: "And today it emerged that actor Rodney Bewes has been alive for as long as time."

Graham Norton:
Given the things that we're talking about, or pretending to know what we're talking about, I actually really don't know who Rodney Bewes is.

[After Stephen has explained who Rodney Bewes is]

Stephen Fry:
I have to say, the whole point about QI, right, is that the rest of the world talks about cultural things, reality TV and pop stars and Rodney Bewes… and we talk about Leonardo. And what you've done [motions towards Graham] by coming on is we started - no, you actually. [turns to point at Alan] We started talking about Leonardo and we've arrived at Rodney Bewes! That's the wrong direction!

Graham Norton:
I didn't even know who he was!

Stephen Fry:
How old are you?

[Silence, which then turns into laughter]

Graham Norton:
[flirtatiously] How old do I look?

Alan Davies:
[flirtatiously] How old do I feel?

David Mitchell:
Just shows you the effect of this game, though. You ask a question, all four of us think: "That is something I definitely know the answer to, but I've been made so uncertain, and frightened about that, [motions behind himself] that I'm not even willing to give my own age, name, or address".

Dara Ó Briain:
How can it be a trap? How can this possibly be a trap? I am thirty-seven. Look! [hits the buzzer] Thirty-seven! There we go. No points last -

[The klaxon goes off, with the text "DARA - 37" flashing on the screen]

[After Stephen has explained that 98% of the atoms in the human body are replaced yearly]

David Mitchell:
I think some of my socks are older than I am. I feel like I should defer to them.

Stephen Fry:
How many brains did the the man with two brains have?

Alan Davies:
…Two?

Stephen Fry:
Yes! That's brilliant!

David Mitchell:
[Banging both fists on the table] It's so cruel!

Stephen Fry:
He's wise enough to spot a double bluff!

David Mitchell:
It's just the technique of the bully! You hit us! And then you go: [with appropriate mimicry] "Oh, you thought I was going to hit you! I wouldn't hit you. I'm not going to hit you. This is my hand to stroke you." And we go: "Aargh, aargh, he's stroking us!"

[Panelists can win extra points by buzzing at a sexist comment]

Sandi Toksvig:
I, I like pink. 'Pink makes the boys wink'. And I think that's right. I've known boys who've been complete winkers. Marvelous thing, pink.

Jack Dee:
I, uh, sorry. [rings in] Bit sexist, wasn't that.

Sandi Toksvig:
[leans forward] Now, Jack, I've only just started. This is the beginning, my dear.

Jack Dee:
I'm gonna come down you like a…

Stephen Fry:
Hello!

Jack Dee:
…ton of bricks.

Sandi Toksvig:
[nonchalantly] Would be the first boy in my life to have done so.

Stephen Fry:
They can get a man on the moon, but they can't get one on Sandi.

[On why there are few female guests on QI]

Sandi Toksvig:
Is it because women are just not funny?

[Stephen gasps]

Ronni Ancona:
[imitating deep Southern woman] Now, that's right, but we're good at other things, we're good at raisin' kittens and knittin' cakes!

Sandi Toksvig:
I think there's a scientific relationship between a sense of humour and the male sex organ.

Alan Davies:
People are always laughing at mine.

[On how to conceive a girl]

Alan Davies:
Friend of ours had a baby in Thailand. English couple. And the Thai woman said to her: "If you look lovely when you pregnant, you will have girl. If you look tired and ugly, dress badly, you will have boy." And she said: "What do you think I'm gonna have?" "Boy."

Stephen Fry:
[laughing] Outrageous!

Alan Davies:
And she did!

[Rob has given an enthusiastic speech about the brilliance of long socks]

Sean Lock:
I just wonder what's gonna happen to you when you go, like, skydiving. You go: "Wow! [spreading his hands] That's incredible! Forget the socks! This is amazing!"

Rob Brydon:
I have been skydiving.

Sean Lock:
Have you tried jelly? That's nice.

Stephen Fry:
What happens in Germany at 11:11 on the 11th of November every year?

Alan Davies:
[completely deadpan] Everything carries on as normal.

[The panel is playing Call my Bluff with 18th century phrases]

Alan Davies:
I can't stand Call my Bluff. Why are we playing Call my Bluff? It's a shit game! We've invented a really good game, why are we playing a shit one?

Stephen Fry:
Now, tell me about the "Great Disappointment".

Jo Brand:
Have you been talking to my husband?

[The forfeit klaxon goes off, with the words "Have you been talking to my husband?" flashing on the screens]

Stephen Fry:
Why are so many great men short?

David Mitchell:
[doubtfully] Are they really?

Stephen Fry:
David, David. You've hit the nail on the head. Rem acu tetigisti, as they would say in latin.

David Mitchell:
…I'm sure they would.

Sean Lock:
It means: 'Nice one, son'.

Stephen Fry:
'Heightism' does exist. Short people are paid less on average than tall people. The disparity is comparable in magnitude to race and gender.

Alan Davies:
They should rise up.

Stephen Fry:
Yeah… Hey!

Stephen Fry:
Name and shame the worlds cheapest cheapskate.

Jan Ravens:
[rings in] Was it Diogenes the Cynic?

Stephen Fry:
…Wow.

Jimmy Carr:
You've seen this show before, haven't you? I think I'm slightly aroused.

Alan Davies:
I can confirm 'slightly'.

[On dance fly]

Stephen Fry:
It captures an insect, sucks out its innards completely, and then wraps the empty shell in silk. And then gives it to the female, but by the time the female's unwrapped it, and discovered that as it were her box of chocolates is empty, he's already mated her and scarpered.

Clive Anderson:
[to the audience] Now, don't try this at home!

Stephen Fry:
Now, what would you call someone who never laughs?

Alan Davies:
[points towards the audience] That bloke.

Stephen Fry:
[laughing] You're right. He hasn't cracked a smile the whole evening.

Alan Davies:
He might be dead. Nudge him.

[On the "Earth sandwich"]

Stephen Fry:
…There was an immediate controversy, 'cos they used baguettes. And so they weren't quite sure whether they were oriented in the same direction. It might have been a cross shape, which would have disqualified it as a sandwich, really, you can't have a sandwich baguettes crossing, can you?

Bill Bailey:
How do you get to be involved in these competitions?

[On equipment doctors leave in patients]

Barry Humphries:
This is when we need Hugh Laurie on this show, isn't it?

Stephen Fry:
He would explain it, exactly. If the script was put in front of him. He's a gibbering idiot without it.

Jack Dee:
I was a goth for a while.

Stephen Fry:
Were you?

Jack Dee:
I was asked to leave, 'cos I was just too miserable.

[On zombie apocalypse]

Stephen Fry:
Alan, you're a zombie. You bite Jimmy. Jimmy, you're now a zombie, you bite Jack. Jack, Jack bites Mel, and so on.

Alan Davies:
[pointing at Sue Perkins, who's rolling her eyes] Sue.

Stephen Fry:
What?

Alan Davies:
Sue!

Stephen Fry:
[Realizes what he has said, buries his face in his hands]

Jimmy Carr:
Stephen, ten points now if you know her name.

Sue Perkins:
Is this the warm, personal touch that you get when you come to this show?

Stephen Fry:
[bright red] I'm so ashamed! Oh Sue, I'm sorry.

Alan Davies:
No-one noticed, Hugh.

Stephen Fry:
Where does the saying 'saved by the bell' come from?

Jack Dee:
[hits his buzzer, then grimaces] Oh no, I know what's gonna happen now. It's gonna be, I'm gonna get the klaxon for this. Is it boxing? Is it a boxing reference?

Stephen Fry:
Yes!

Jack Dee:
Oh.

Alan Davies:
Is it - is this where the bells gonna go off…

Sue Perkins:
[whispering] Don't do it!

Alan Davies:
...Is it going back to being buried alive?

[The forfeit klaxon goes off, with the words "buried alive" on the screens]

Jimmy Carr:
How can you get it wrong after he's got it right?

[On the legend of Romans vomiting in order to be able to carry on eating]

Alan Davies:
People definitely did that in pubs when I was growing up.

Stephen Fry:
They threw up in order to drink more?

Alan Davies:
Yeah. Go outside, be sick on the pavement, shake their heads, go straight back to the bar.

Phill Jupitus:
Oh yeah, the tactical chunder. Totally.

Alan Davies:
Yeah. "I feel terrible. I'm gonna have to go and have a tactical chunder." Come back five minutes later: "I'm fine now!"

Stephen Fry:
Hmm. Makes sense.

Alan Davies:
Makes sense. Four quids worth of bitter in the gutter and carry on.

Stephen Fry:
We only call ourselves 'Quite Interesting', we don't call ourselves 'Astonishing'.

[Giving the scores]

Stephen Fry:
We should do this the Athenian way. We should offer Alan the chance - because I can say that Alan is coming last…

Alan Davies:
It's one of my best features.

[Why are people who don't eat meat called 'vegetarians'?]

Jeremy Clarkson:
It's because if you said you had a herbivore coming round for dinner, the children would be frightened.

Jeremy Clarkson:
How do you get wheat to mate?

Stephen Fry:
Pollination.

Jeremy Clarkson:
Yes, well, how does that happen?

Bill Bailey:
You turn down the lights…

Alan Davies:
Ask the barley to leave the room...

Stephen Fry:
There is this strange thing called libration, which is like vibration but beginning with an L. It was a thing that was noted by quite a few of the early astronomers...

Rob Brydon:
Can I say, sorry Stephen, but that's not an acceptable way of defining a word: Libration. It's like vibration, but beginning with an L.