QI

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For other uses, see QI (disambiguation).

QI
Stephen Fry presenting an episode of QI
Genre	Comedy panel game
Running time	29 minutes
Creator(s)	John Lloyd
Starring	Stephen Fry Alan Davies Other panellists
Country of origin	UK
Original channel	BBC
Original run	11 September 2003–present
No. of episodes	49

QI, standing for Quite Interesting and a pun on IQ, is a comedy panel game television show hosted by Stephen Fry and shown on BBC Two and BBC Four. Older, syndicated episodes are shown on UKTV.

It is distinguished by the awarding of points not necessarily for the correct answer, but rather, for an interesting one. Many of the questions and answers are extremely obscure. Points are deducted from a panellist who gives an obvious but wrong (that is to say, boring or conventional) answer, typically one that is generally accepted as true but is, in fact, false. It is therefore possible (and quite likely) that a panellist will have a negative point score at the end of the game. In the words of the QI website, regular panellist "Alan Davies has turned this aspect of the game into somewhat of an art form."

1 Format
2 Episodes
- 2.1 Most appearances
3 Highlights
4 QI culture
5 Trivia
6 External links

[edit] Format

The QI Logo.

Writer and former BBC producer John Lloyd devised the format of the show, and it is produced by Quite Interesting Ltd., an organisation set up by Lloyd.

The panel consists of four panellists, one of whom, Alan Davies, appears in all but one episode in series four. He is the frequent target of jokes — mainly initiated by Stephen Fry — and is the panellist who normally offers up most of the "obvious but wrong" answers. Therefore, he usually finishes last. To date, Davies has won only three times: in episode 10 of the first series and in episodes 6 and 9 of the fourth series, which is nearly a three-year gap between the first and second victories. Most other panellists come from a stand-up comedy background, although there have also been musicians, actors, television personalities and poets including Richard E. Grant, Jeremy Clarkson, Gyles Brandreth and Roger McGough.

Providing an "obvious but wrong" answer results in a sequence of klaxons. In the first and second series, Stephen Fry produced the answer on a card to show the panellists, while it also flashed on the large screens behind them (excepting the very first episode, when only the cards were used). In the third series and onward, Fry's answer cards were dispensed with altogether, leaving only the screens as proof that the answers given had been predicted.

Tangential discussions and even complete non-sequiturs abound on the show, for panellists are apt to branch off into frivolous conversations, give voice to train of thought, and share humorous anecdotes from their own lives.

[edit] Buzzers

Each of the panel has a buzzer, the sound of which is often based along some sort of theme. Davies' buzzer usually contradicts the others' in some amusing way, and so his is always the last to be demonstrated. Past examples have included:

In Series 2 Episode 5, the first three panellists' buzzers were conventional nautical sounds, whilst Davies' featured a sexy-sounding woman's voice saying, "Ahoy! Hello, Sailor!".
The first three buzzers were the electronic voice of a supermarket checkout ("Cashier number 1/2/3 please"); Davies' was someone announcing a train being delayed.
Davies' buzzer once played the ignorance klaxon, allowing Fry to humorously deduct 10 points from him before the game had even started.
Davies' buzzer having the sound of a woman having an orgasm (which he claimed to be a genuine recording).
John Sessions' buzzer given the voice of a schoolboy saying enthusiastically, "Sir, sir, I know, sir!"
In an episode themed around cockney rhyming slang, Bill Bailey being given the song "Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey" sung by Patsy Cline (to which he responded sarcastically, "No-one's ever pointed that out before.")
In an episode themed around death, the three guests' buzzers were ominous death- or murder-related sounds; Davies' buzzer played Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life".
In an episode based on drink, Davies' buzzer didn't function or light at all, but at his persistent pressing, it finally played J.S. Bach's "Air on the G String" from the Hamlet cigar adverts.
In an episode about differences, Davies' buzzer was a conventional piano tune, of a similar nature to the others. However, when the panellists played them together, Davies' was completely discordant.

Other buzzer sounds have been used more than once, such as:

A humorous jingle built around the word "fruity", given to John Sessions and Alan Davies (in different episodes).
Charles Penrose's "'The Laughing Policeman", twice given to Davies.
The theme tune to The Twilight Zone, given to Clive Anderson and Johnny Vaughan.

[edit] General Ignorance

In a parody of "general knowledge" quizzes, the final round is off-topic and called "General Ignorance", focusing upon seemingly-easy questions which have "obvious but wrong" answers. Whereas in the main rounds of the show, the panellists' use of buzzers is not usually enforced, the "General Ignorance" questions are introduced by Fry's reminder to keep "fingers on buzzers".

[edit] Extra tasks

In some episodes, panellists are given an extra task to complete during the course of the game. Those who do the best are often awarded extra points. Extra tasks have included:

A "Pin the tastebud on the catfish" contest. Each panellist was given a cardboard cut-out of a catfish and told to paste stickers onto where they thought catfishes' tastebuds are located. Only Rory McGrath correctly identified the catfish having its tastebuds everywhere on its body.
Being given a set of magnetic letters and having to write something with them. Jimmy Carr astounded all by managing to use every one of his letters, forming, "Put Smarties tubes on cats legs/Make them walk like a robot." Which as Alan Davies pointed out, not only uses all the letters in a proper sentence, but a correct one, proceding to mime a cat walking with Smarties tubes on its legs, acting uncannily like a robot.
Marking their own scores (with a penalty equal to the amount by which they were off). Alexander Armstrong managed to get his score exactly right, and thus scored a bonus 100 points.
Predicting their own scores via the use of different objects. Anyone who did so correctly would score 666 bonus points. Phill Jupitus had teabags, Graeme Garden had cheeses and Johnny Vaughan had a sieve. Davies had disappeared but had a false pair of buttocks with which to predict his score. Jupitus, after tossing his teabags into the air, didn't even try; Garden spelled out -1 with his cheeses; Vaughan sieved out +7; and Davies simply gave a voiceover shouting, "Won on penalties!" Ironically, Vaughan correctly predicted Garden's score (who won), but Garden was not awarded the bonus points as it was not his own score that he predicted.

[edit] Episodes

QI Series 1 DVD cover, with Alan Davies on the left and Stephen Fry on the right.

See also: List of episodes of QI

The first series started on 11 September 2003. All of the questions (with the exception of the final "General Ignorance" round) were on subjects beginning with "a" (e.g., "arthropods", "Alans", "astronomy", etc.) A second series of 12 programmes started on 8 October 2004. In a continuation of the established theme, subjects began with the letter "b" (except in two episodes, one about music and one about colour). Series three started on 30 September 2005, and all subjects began with the letter "c" (e.g. "custard, cheating"). The fourth series, Series D, began filming on 19 April 2006 and started airing on 29 September 2006.

[edit] Most appearances

This list contains the people who have made the most appearances.

Alan Davies (permanent panellist, to Fry's immediate right)
Rich Hall
Jo Brand
Phill Jupitus
Bill Bailey
Sean Lock
John Sessions
Clive Anderson
Jimmy Carr

Many of the frequent participants are managed by the Off the Kerb Productions comedy group.

[edit] Highlights

The questions are, as in many comedy panel games, mainly created to set up jokes or discussions, rather than for any serious competition. Certain questions are purposely contradictory to established doctrine for the sake of entertainment. For example, to the question "How many planets are there in the solar system?", Alan Davies gave the answer "Nine" and lost points for an "obvious but wrong" answer, the explanation being that at the time a debate was occurring over whether Pluto was indeed a planet (see 2006 redefinition of planet). However, as the International Astronomical Union still defined Pluto as a planet at the time of questioning, the answer "nine" would have been a "correct" answer, if one accepted the contemporaneous IAU definition.

A further example of this purposeful contradiction occurred during the second series, when the question "How many moons does the Earth have?" was asked. Alan Davies had, in the previous series, been given negative points for answering "One" to the same question, due to the presence of the asteroid Cruithne which has an orbital resonance with Earth (although it is not normally defined as a natural satellite). This time, he was again given negative points for answering with "two", which was counted as correct during the first series. The change in answer was attributed to the recent discovery of new satellites ((54509) 2000 PH₅, (85770) 1998 UP₁ and 2002 AA₂₉) that share a similar resonance to Cruithne with respect to the Earth. Rich Hall got the last laugh when, following this, in response to the question "What man-made artefacts can be seen from the moon with the naked eye?" he said, "Yeah, which moon are you talking about?"

At the end of the third series, Dara O'Briain was deducted points for having stated, in the series before, that the triple point of water is zero degrees Celsius, an answer which earned him points at the time. Some viewers, however, wrote in to say that the triple point of water is in fact 0.01 degrees, and so the points awarded Dara in the previous series were revoked. Dara humorously retorted with, "How many people sat at home watching that and said, 'It's just a comedy show, but I'm not letting that fecker get away with that!'?"

Some people have suggested that answers to questions are rehearsed in advance, in order to provide a more entertaining programme, an accusation also headed towards shows such as Have I Got News for You. The makers of the show on the official website insist that this is not the case, and instead a series of "warm up" questions are asked before recording starts.

[edit] QI culture

QI: The Book of General Ignorance

In October 2004 a QI café/bar, eclectic bookshop and private members' club opened at Quite Interesting Ltd's headquarters, on Turl Street in Oxford. For the duration of the series, the bar shows the broadcast episode every Friday. The club intends to promote things that are 'quite interesting', and arranges speakers and events.

On 14 November 2005 an interactive QI game on DVD was released by Warner Home Video.

After much pressure from fans, the BBC's DVD division, 2 entertain released the first TV series on DVD on 6 November 2006. The DVD also contains the pilot, which has never been broadcast, and features to date the only appearance of Eddie Izzard as a panellist.

On 5 October 2006, The Book of General Ignorance was published in hardback by Faber and Faber, with a foreword by Stephen Fry and "Four words by Alan Davies". It contains a list of 200 popular misconceptions, most of which have appeared in the "General Ignorance" round of QI. On 8 December 2006, the book reached the top of amazon.co.uk's best-seller list.[1]

A QI feature has appeared in BBC MindGames magazine from its fifth issue and is based on facts and questions in the sphere of General Ignorance.

[edit] Trivia

QI stands for Quite Interesting, and is also a play on the term IQ, short for intelligence quotient.

The theme tune was composed by Howard Goodall, who has twice appeared on the show.

According to BARB QI has the highest ratings of any show on BBC Four. [2]

For all his role on the show is that of whipping-boy, Alan Davies has actually won 3 shows. The first came towards the end of Series A and the second and third time in the more recent D series. Since then, his best finish was second — which he has so far managed three times, once in series A and twice in Series D (once joint with Phill Jupitus and Rory Bremner, following Ronni Ancona). His third win appeared at first to be due to a question that Stephen muffed up on, and the elves in the background asked him to re-ask with a bonus of 50 points - and Alan pounced on his chance. As it transpires, however, Alan finished with 54 points whilst Andy Hamilton, John Sessions and David Mitchell each finished in negative figures - so he would have won anyway. This third win puts him towards, if indeed not at, the top of the QI leaderboard in wins - though since he's been on every episode of the 40-plus so far, his win percentage is woeful.

The highest score on QI is 200, scored by Helen Atkinson-Wood. Her high score was reached when she got a question correct about the chemical formula for the explosion in a custard factory. On the Children in Need 2006 episode, Jonathan Ross won with 3,000,000 points; however, this was merely in the spirit of comedy for charity.

The lowest score on QI is -144, scored by Alan Davies in episode 7 of series D. He got a 150 point penalty, for suggesting that Gandhi's first name was "Randy" (the correct answer is Mohandas Karamchand). Davies was leading with 6 points, and would have won if he had not got the penalty. Instead Dara O'Briain won with 3 points. In the Children in Need 2006 episode, Alan Davies got -29,000,000 points, in much the same manner as those awarded to Jonathan Ross above.

In series D, for the first time ever, the audience won answering just one question (scoring two points on the episode on Death). The panellist with the highest score was Andy Parsons with zero.

Series B saw Alan Davies making a stand and announcing that he didn't want to do General Ignorance questions because he always gets them wrong, and "will not be humiliated at Christmas". In turn, Fry offered to switch places with him, to the delight of the audience. Despite the seeming spontenaity of the swap, it was undoubtedly pre-planned, as evidenced by the fact that Davies, in turn, produced his own set of questions on loose-leaf paper, most of which he directed directly at Fry. At the end of the show, Fry announced that the game's loser was, in fact, he himself, as a result of his conceding to many of Davies' traps.

Episode 10 of series D (Divination) did not feature Alan Davies as a panellist except in a pre-recorded opening sequence where he appeared to teleport out of his seat and disappear. Throughout the episode he seemed to communicate with the other members from the spirit plane (via more pre-recorded messages), providing several obvious-but-wrong answers. Thus Davies still managed to end the episode with the lowest score, despite not actually being a contestant.

In episode 11 of series D (Deprivation), the show was done cheaply. The lighting director was "fired" so there was less light than normal, the desks had been removed, the audience were forced to watch on the street and the buzzers were hand-cranked.