QI/Awesome

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• Any time Alan Davies gets the better of anyone, particularly when he wins and in the incident where he switched roles with Stephen Fry and proceeded to bully him like you wouldn't imagine. "I've been waiting for this opportunity!" indeed.
  • A recent one is when Stephen sets out explaining how long different things (humans, dinosaurs, etc.) would have been around if the whole of the earth had existed over a single year:

Alan: This is assuming time is linear.

• • And then Alan doing a little verbal Cutting the Knot on the topic of bees...

Stephen: [holding forth on how bees navigate using the sun] Amazingly, they can even do this on overcast days and at night by calculating the position of the sun on the other side of the world. Alan: Has it occurred to you that they may not be using the sun? That whoever worked that out is wrong.. "Even when you can't see it or it's on the other side of the world, they still use it," and the bees are thinking, "No we don't, we just remember where we live!" Why is it so remarkable that they know where they live? Stephen: Well, because they have only 950,000 neurons as opposed to our ten billion neurons in our brains. Alan: But they've only got one thing to remember: where they live.

• The scene when Alan seems to think it odd that Lew Wallace, a Texan governor, decided to write a book about Roman chariot racing, and Stephen lays into him for this attitude:

Well, what should he have written about then? Urgh, you wrote a book about something not particularly close to you! You wanker!

• Sean Lock's mocking of Rory McGrath's constant showing off. "There's some sort of portal to the underworld here, it's ridiculous!" "If I say it in a different language do I get more points?...Ocho! Ocho cardiganes!"
  • Rory McGrath managing to exhibit a remarkable knowledge of the Latin names of various birds and other such trivia.
• One episode had the cast given little boards with refrigerator magnet letters. Jimmy Carr promptly used all his letters to write out "PUT SMARTIES TUBES ON CATS LEGS MAKE THEM WALK LIKE A ROBOT". He got applause not only from the audience, but from the rest of the panel as well.

Alan: That is unbe-fucking-lievable.

• • Likely the result of some fixing, since this is a joke Jimmy Carr has previously used in his stand up routine. He also had rather more letters than everyone else. On the other hand, it doesn't mean they expected him to do it, just means they hoped he would.
    • He pinched the extra letters off Bill Bailey sitting next to him, Bill only had enough left for 'gay elf romp'.
• In the same vein, Helen Atkinson-Wood, best known for playing Mrs. Miggins on Blackadder, earned 200 points for recognizing the chemical equation for an explosion in a custard factory.
  • Worth pointing out that the equation is actually specifically for the oxidation of glucose, but the oxidation of glucose is usually taught to children using an explosion in custard as an example.

Helen: "I believe it's an explosion in a... just a hunch here, a custard factory?" Stephen: "How in the hell did you know that?"

• Reducing Stephen to a wreck with just nine words... repeated over and over again, also counting as a Crowning Moment of Funny. All together now:

They say of the Acropolis, where the Parthenon is... That there are No! Straight! Lines!

• David Mitchell's rant against his school.
  • His rants in general.
• Dave Gorman turning up, and then breaking the game in his first question.
• Phil Kay correctly predicting that his buzzer would be a crowing rooster in the 'Birds' episode.
• David Mitchell getting two "Teacher's Pet" accolades during the Series F episode "Food." (Unfortunately, it doesn't make him "feel that cool".)
• In the series D episode "Doves", the final question was a bonus question worth 50 points, but Stephen got confused and provided the answer before asking the question. He was then instructed to ask the question again, and Alan buzzed in and got the correct answer and hence the bonus points. When the scores were read out a moment later, it turned out he would have won even without the bonus.
• Series G was an extended CMOA for Alan Davies: he won three shows in a row (4, 5 and 6), tied for first place in a further two (12 and 13) and finished that up when he won episode 16 with the highest score all series and indeed the highest score since series D.
• Roger McGough spontaneously composing a poem about Hoover the Talking Seal.
• In the 'International' episode, Bill Bailey asked a question about the scoring system, then used the Ignorance bonus to earn 3 points and put himself in the lead before the first question.
• A double awesome moment in the 'Intelligence' episode. First, for ASIMO, the most advanced humanoid robot, for walking down a step without falling over, for running, and for dancing. The second awesome moment is for QI, for having enough pull to get the most advanced humanoid robot in existence as a guest.
• In Series "I", Alan Davies correctly guesses the "Nobody Knows" bonus almost every episode.
  • If there is one thing Alan knows, it's nothing.