QI/Funny

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
< QI


General

  • Jo and Alan are always good together:

Stephen Fry: Who are the lords of shouting?
Jo Brand and Alan Davies: WE ARE!!

    • Also:

Jo Brand: Can I just say something that's very strange? Because there's some German chewing gum called Spunk, and, um, you do have to be careful you don't swallow it - but in fact, I actually talked about that chewing gum on Clive James's show with you [pointing at Stephen] and Princess Diana! Do you remember? Seriously!
Alan Davies: [wearily] That was a dream. You've got to sort these out.

    • Another great collaboration as Dara was relating his early piano lessons:

Dara Ó Briain: Left and right for me was always, erm -- just maybe because I learnt them at the same time was the hand that played the "dun dun dun dun" on the piano-- and this was the melody hand.
Alan Davies: [aside to Jo] Look at him with his tough working class background.
Jo Brand: Oh, I know!

      • Dara's answer is also worth mentioning.

Dara: I had to play piano to get out of the ghetto- you don't know how hard it was! I had to play piano hard, my friend!

    • There's a great one when Stephen introduces the round on phrenology/physiognomy by asking how he could tell Alan is a criminal just by looking at him. Jo abruptly says, "Is it the shifty little eyes, pointy nose and just general sort of little pug face?" and then cracks up all on her own while the audience gasps at Alan's stricken expression.

Alan: Never seen you happier! Never seen you happier! That's the happiest I've ever seen you!
Phill: That one's been building up for twenty years!
Alan: "Someday I'm really gonna tell you what I think of you! When will that opportunity arise?"

He's vindicated somewhat a bit later when all their "readings" turn out to be equally bad and Jo's describes her as, among other things, "venerous."

Alan: What's the national bird of England?
Jo: I'll tell you what it is for women. Thrush.
Alan: You know what it is for men?
Jo: Um...
Alan: Cock.
Jo: There. Sorted!
Alan: Cock and Thrush. Good name for a pub.

  • All the buzzers are pretty funny, with Alan's being the kicker at the end; see for yourself - A, B, C, D, E, F, G and H.
  • On the moon:

Stephen Fry: How many moons does the Earth have?
[extremely long pause - everyone knows exactly what's coming]
Alan Davies: [buzz!] [resignedly] The Earth has one moon, which is made of cheese.
[klaxon]
Alan Davies: But it has got one moon! It's called The Moon!

    • Then in the next season, when the same question is asked again, Alan says 'two' and the klaxon sounds because three more moons were apparently discovered. And while we're on the subject of Mr. Davies and cosmology:

Pluto and Bangkok don't exist or something! I'm scared to go out!

    • And let's not leave out Rich's comeback line (after complaining that the second-moon fact was bullshit) -- at the end of the episode, they were asked what manmade object can be seen from the moon, leading up to a correction of the Great Wall myth. And Rich says: "Which moon are we talkin' about?"
      • He has since made this a stock response whenever Stephen asks a question about the moon while he is on the programme. In Series I, however, he asks it, and it sets the klaxon off. His reaction is priceless.
    • Two more from the initial talk:

Rich: Who comes up with this shit?

    • And Stephen's exasperated answer when asked why there hasn't been a song made about the second moon.

Stephen: Because it was discovered in NINETEEN-NINETY-FUCKING-FOUR!

    • The lead up complaint to this is quite funny as well:

Jeremy Hardy: The song is "Blue moon, I saw you standing alone", not "with a small friend"!

  • Every time Bill Bailey smokes a biro.
    • The gag ran so long that for the Series G episode "Green" he brought in an actual pipe.
  • Pretty much every episode Phill Jupitus appears in will have one moment that reduces the viewer to uncontrollable laughter.

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    • The above exchange resulted from a question concerning where one would find the world's biggest drip. When Stephen initially asked the question, the viewscreens displayed a picture of a smiling Hugh Laurie, to Stephen's dismay.

Stephen: Oi! No!

    • From the same episode, Stephen talks about prison slang from when he was in jail as a teenager.

Phill: I swear I'm getting an erection.

    • Or this one, if only for the way Stephen gets suckered into proving Phill's point:

Phill: No one has a kettle like that! Where do you plug in that... Look at it! We don't all live in a fluffy-duffy Dickensian world of charm like you! [as Fry] "Oh, there goes the kettle, and on the Aga!"
Stephen: [stuffily] It's a perfectly sensible way of cooking food and preparing meals --
Phill: [breaks down laughing]
Stephen: -- and it keeps the kitchen warm! It's --
Phill: [laughs again] No wonder fucking Twinings had you, pal!

    • When Stephen names the units that shoe sizes are measured in (barleycorns), Phill imagines walking into a shoe store and using this information.

Phill: GOOD VENDOR OF SHOES! How many barleycorns am I on this lovely day!?

    • Phill Jupitus's imitation of eight-year-old Stephen on a space hopper. "Baah... baah... baah... nearly to Garboldisham!"
      • It's been theorized that (at least recently) Phill has been using QI as an opportunity to vent some of his frustrations with stupid contestants on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, which is why he seems to have so much fun on the show.
  • Any episode with Johnny Vegas in. Even if you hate him, you have to realise the genius of it.
  • Rob Brydon's appearances in general. In particular:

Stephen: Rob, what is the difference between a Carlisle Surprise, a Reverse Canterbury Pleasure, and a sheep tied to a lamppost in Cardiff?
Rob: Now this is another example of the institutionalised racism which is accepted when it's directed towards the Welsh. Is this a reference to the joke "what is a sheep tied to a lamppost in Cardiff?" "It's a leisure centre." [audience starts to laugh] No. No. [points at Rich Hall] And you, no. [points at Stephen] And you, no. [points at Alan Davies] And you...no.

    • Rob Brydon getting worked up about anything mocking the Welsh, especially:

Rob Brydon: And 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!

    • Another one, after Stephen asks a question about taffy (as in the American candy):

Rob: Is this another dig at my forefathers?
Stephen: You've got four fathers? The Welsh are weird.

    • And then there's this:

Stephen Fry: How does the 'love bomb' work?
Rob Brydon: I just turn up, and I get on with it.

  • Rich Hall's first line on the series, having been given a buzzer that made the sound of a clock tower chime, though it loses something in the writing. After the first question:

Buzzer: BONG
(Beat)
Rich [totally deadpan]: I just wanna say that it's 9 PM.

    • Phill Jupitus had a similar one.

Buzzer: GONG
Phill Jupitus: The Rank Organisation.

    • And sometimes, just the buzzer is enough:

Stephen Fry: What happens when you blow out the candles on your birthday cake?
Alan's Buzzer: You're fired.

  • A couple of gems involving Clive Anderson:

Stephen: What is the commonest material in the universe?
Clive: Jim Davidson's!

[Stephen has asked what dust is made of]
Jeremy: Animals... insects...
Stephen: Yeah, a little bit.
Clive: [quietly] Dust mites.
Jeremy: Bits of...bits of smashed badgers...
[klaxon]
Jeremy: SMASHED BADGERS is coming up there!?
[the screen flashes DUST MITES]

  • The buzzers give us such wonderful gems...

Stephen: And Clive's goes...
Buzzer: "And everything I do... I do for you..."
Stephen: [with a smooth, slightly cheerful tone] Sometimes there's just not enough vomit in the world.

  • Two of the funniest things included the name "Peter":

Alan: Peter, I have seen you buying vegetables.

and Stephen's speech about his Hungarian grandfather pronouncing Pythagoras "Peter Gorus" ("You learn the Peter Gorus!"), and then going on to explain how he pronounced "pineapple upside-down cake".


Klaxon

  • Some of the funniest moments involve forfeits that are not wrong answers per se, but potential jokes which are actually cheap laughs. For example...

Stephen: What has huge teeth and only one facial expression?
Bill Bailey: Janet Street-Porter.
[klaxon]

    • Or this gem...

Stephen: Name a poisonous snake.
Jimmy Carr: [buzzes] Piers Morgan.
[klaxon]

      • David Mitchell's laugh after that is a thing of phonic beauty.
    • Or this one...

Stephen: Now, tell me about the Great Disappointment.
Jo Brand: [buzzes] Have you been talking to my husband?
[klaxon] [Screen: "HAVE YOU BEEN TALKING TO MY HUSBAND?"]

    • Or more recently...

Stephen: Who finds garden gnomes attractive?
Rob Brydon: I do, and it's lovely to get the opportunity to be able to admit it in public.
Stephen: Good!
Rob: [screen shows a garden gnome wearing a bikini] Phwoa, look at...
[klaxon] [Screen: "PHWOARR!"]

    • Or this...

Stephen: Skin is the answer. The largest organ in the body.
Alan: It may be in your body. [laughter] I've got a huge cock.

[klaxon] [Screen: "SPEAK FOR YOURSELF"]

    • And then this:

Stephen: Who suffered from Chagas [pronounced "shagas"] disease?
Arthur Smith: [buzzes] [in his best Sid James voice] I did, know what I mean? [Sid James laugh] I bloody shagged them all!...

[klaxon] [Screen: "I DID"]

    • The first episode had one of these, after it had been explained that Caravaggio's "outrageous behavior on the tennis court" was accidentally killing a guy in the act of cutting off his testicles:

Alan: Over a game of tennis?
Danny Baker: New balls, please!
[klaxon]

    • From "Invertebrates":

Stephen: What has the most genes?
Alan: Jeremy Clarkson.
[klaxon]

  • Also, the season A episode where Alan's buzzer was the forfeit klaxon. Used again in a series H episode, and yet again in a series I episode.
  • Best show opener ever:

Stephen Fry: How do you do, Mr. Davies?
Alan Davies: Uh.. fine, thanks.
[klaxon]

  • Along with...

Stephen Fry: Alan, what are you doing?
Alan Davies: Huh? What? Nothing...
[klaxon]

  • Ah, banisters.

Stephen Fry: Has anyone ever slid down a banister?
Alan Davies: Yes.
[klaxon]
Phill Jupitus: Please don't destroy Alan's childhood.

    • From that same bit:

Jo Brand: When I was at college I slid down a barrister.
Phill Jupitus: Did you hit yourself on the knob at the end?


Series A

  • During a discussion about Aborigines in the Australia episode, Stephen brings up Native Americans. Alan says that it's more fun to call them redskins. Then, this:

Stephen Fry: I wouldn't try it, though, in America. Or you'll have your balls turned into a small purse.
Alan Davies: A very big purse, I think you'll find.
Jackie Clunes: [matter-of-factly] It is actually possible for the ball sack to be stretched beyond recognition.
[pause]
Jimmy Carr: By a woman scorned?
Stephen Fry: Now, the scrotum is quite an interesting thing...

  • From the first episode "Adam", Stephen asks Hugh Laurie why Edward Woodward has four 'D's in his name. After Hugh gets interrupted by a buzzer and calls said buzzer presser out on it, Alan Davies starts talking about kiwi fruit.
  • One of the outtakes from Series A, when Stephen fluffs a line: Piss and arse and wank!
  • "What rhymes with purple?"
    • "Do you realize what you're doing on national television?"
  • The reaction of everyone to Sean Lock's revelation that banana plants walk (especially when they found out he learned that on a trip to Colombia) and then everyone's reaction to the fact that he was later proved correct.


Series B

  • In Series B, Stephen reads the original advertisement for Pony Express riders:

Stephen Fry: Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over 18. Must be expert riders and willing to risk death daily.
Alan Davies: You wrote that.
Stephen Fry: ...Orphans preferred.

  • The role reversal in the B series Christmas episode. Alan was allowed to take over from Stephen as the chair (with Stephen mentioning that, traditionally, at Christmas the servants were waited on by the masters for a change) for the General Ignorance round. Naturally, he spent the entire round targeting Stephen with questions and delighting in hitting the klaxon, resulting in Stephen finishing last out of all five contestants.
    • Bonus points for Fry actually getting the first question right.
    • He got one of the following ones right too - which way does water go down the plughole in the northern hemisphere? Any way you want it to.

Stephen: *buzzes*
Phill Jupitus: Fry! Cambridge!

    • Phill's impression of Fry after Fry announces that he's tested his response (that you can make water drain either way) is icing on the cake:

Phill: "Stephen, what are you doing in that bathroom? [imitating Fry] I'm pushing it to go one way, pushing it to go the other, I'm the master!"

  • In series B, while testing the buzzers, Phil Kay has a hilarious moment. The panelists aren't told what their noise would be, mostly to make sure Alan Davies is kept guessing. The topic was "birds", and each buzzer was a bird call; Phil "presses" his, while making a rooster crowing sound. He laughs at the jib, and actually presses it. It's a rooster crowing. (it's early, at 00:47 seconds in) His reaction is priceless!
  • Rich Hall also has the line (on the topic of butterflies):

Rich: I think it's evil to put a food in front of any bug. To name it like a butterfly. Cause I would eat butterflies when I was a kid, because I thought they had butter in 'em. And honeybees.
Steven: There are two theories as to why- [laughs]
Rich: And a hamster.

  • Thomas Edison believed that 15 tiny people live in everyone's brain. After being asked how she would respond to someone who thought this, as a psychiatric nurse:

Jo Brand: Punch them to the ground!

    • In another reference to Jo having been a psychiatric nurse, after Stephen's description of Van Gogh:

Jo Brand: It was a bit more than that. I mean he was, like, seriously mentally ill, rather than, "not a happy bunny."

  • After a non-sequitur about fugu, Phill Jupitus mused about Stephen Fry visiting the nation.

Phill (As Japanese): "AAAH! Stephen FerrrrAayuuu!"

Phill (As Fry): "Baaaaaaah!"

Phill (As Japan being tread on): "Stomp stomp stomp!"

  • Alan on his Welsh roots: "Unfortunately, because of you English people destroying our natural culture and heritage, I don't know our own language. Cruel imperial invader! My great-grandfather was forced to flee Cardiff and set up a restaurant in the East End."
    • This somehow becomes even funnier when he states, in a later series, that he's discovered that he doesn't actually have any Welsh roots at all.
  • The discussion of the Hokey Cokey.

Stephen Fry: There was an American version of the dance by a man called Larry LaPrise, and he died in 1996. What happened at his funeral?
Alan Davies: (Completely deadpan) Oh, they couldn't get him in the coffin.
Stephen Fry: Why is that?
Alan Davies: They put his left leg in, and then the troubles started.

  • Some more Rich Hall wisdom: "They say that the wheel was the greatest invention ever, but I think it was probably the second wheel. Because... you ever see a guy on a unicycle? What an asshole."


Series C

  • In the first episode of series C, Stephen asks what was the last place in Britain to be converted to Christianity. Rich Hall suggests "SatanIsMyMaster-on-Wye." Bill Bailey informs him that "it's pronounced Semster."
  • Another Rich gem, from "Constellations":

Jeremy Clarkson: Sixty-two miles is what you're calling outer space. Did you know there was a man called Joe Kittinger who once jumped from a hot-air balloon at that height, in 1961?
Rich Hall: Oh, Dead Joe Kittinger.
[NB: He's not dead, and although Jeremy got the height drastically wrong as well as the date and the type of aircraft, Project Excelsior is still worth knowing about]

  • After a question about why the House Of Commons smells of urine (It used to be a public phone box?) and the panel deduce that most of the attendants where tweed, we got this:

Jimmy Carr: And, as we all know, tweed is made of urine.
Stephen Fry: Yes, that's absolutely correct.
Jimmy Carr: (incredulous) It is? Where do you buy your tweed?

  • A discussion of baked beans results in a Gordon Ramsay joke, featuring a Cluster F-Bomb from the panel.
    • At the end of the same episode (Season C, episode 2, Cummingtonite), Stephen has them attempt to break a glass with their voice. Alan does so, but it's shown to have been faked, and Stephen mentions that his glass was a sugar glass, and takes another sugar glass and smashes it on his head. Andy Hamilton picks up his glass and throws it at Alan, at which point everyone shouts "IT'S REAL! IT'S REAL!".
  • Alan Davies choking on his swazzle in the episode "Carnival."
    • Especially as Phill and Clive swazzle-laugh at him.

Stephen: If you don't take your swazzles out very soon, I will kill you.
Alan: [with swazzle] Svzz-zzle!

    • Actually, he makes a disappointed sound, kinda like a puppet in a swazzle-puppet show.
  • The "Colour" episode. The entire thing was basically a Crowning Moment Of Funny: "I suggest a cummerbund for geography", "DEES PINK POLENTA I LOVE EET!", "Are you telling me the Incas talked like Oxbridge graduates!?", etc.
  • The C season outtakes have the scene in which Stephen attempts to close the show with a Will Rogers joke, only to encounter stiff opposition from Rich Hall:

Rich Hall: Oh you're not going to do that crap joke again are you?
[a minute later after Stephen thanks the guests again and launches into the joke]
Rich: Don't do it Stephen!

  • The episode (Series C, Episode 7) in which Jeremy Clarkson tells a story about eating puffin, an action that he justifies with the slow and carefully delivered line: "I wanted to [eat] it, because it was something I had never tried before". After about half a second, Sean Lock brightly asks Clarkson, "Have you ever had one of my turds?"
    • "Would you like me to grate some puffin on that?"
  • Sean Lock discovering a portal to the underworld while Stephen Fry and Rory McGrath argue about Latin bird names.
  • The "Combustion" episode (episode 12) of series C. Stephen gives a rather savage opinion of The Da Vinci Code, when Alan suggests one of his... 'Epithets' would be a good name for a blues singer. Bill Bailey immediately hits his buzzer, which happened to be a blues harp.


Series D

  • From the episodes "Discoveries":

Clive Anderson: The mark of a true queen, Stephen...
Stephen Fry: (lasciviously) Yeeeees?

  • The episode about dogs. Jeremy Clarkson is a stitch in that one!

[After observing that dogs like to smell people's crotches, talking about the dog on the screen.]
Jeremy Clarkson: It can smell my crotch!
Neil Mullarkey: We all can.

  • "Descendants," the fourth-series Children in Need episode, has many, many a CMoF, but it all kind of comes to a head at the end when Stephen asks how much of the charity's income goes to administration.

Jonathan Ross: Ninety percent.

Stephen: It would be depressing if that were true. It is, I'm happy to say, less than that.

Alan: None! None at all!

Stephen: You're right! Nada. Not one percent...

Alan: There's no administration at all, it's a shambles!

Stephen: [post-recovery] The first Children in Need telethon, what year would you guess it was?

Alan: 1979.

Stephen: Oh, you're only one year out!

Alan: 1978.

Stephen: Oh, wrong way! [Alan rolls his eyes] It's 1980. And how much did it raise?

Jonathan: Twenty pounds.

Stephen: It was about one million. Last year's appeal, seventeen million, two hundred and thirty-five thousand, two hundred and fifty-six pounds...

Alan: That's not very good in terms of the rate of inflation, is it?

Stephen: Are you urging the public to do better?

Alan: [shrugs] They've probably got other things to spend their money on.

    • In the same episode, at around the halfway mark the questions proceed through such topics as The Clangers, Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men, the "Crazy Frog" ringtone, Geordie accents, and Terry Wogan and his televised 33-yard putt at Gleneagles. Familiar topics to the British panellists (Alan, Phill Jupitus, and Jonathan Ross), but rather alien to the panel's resident American, Rich Hall. After sitting in silence for nearly ten minutes, he hits his buzzer (which plays a Bill and Ben-esque "Flobbadobbadob!"):

Rich: Ever since The Clangers I've been lost. The last picture I recognised was the KKK, and that's just sad.

    • From the same episode, when Stephen asks what Kingpin put on Spiderman so that he would always know where he was, and Alan jokes "an ASBO".
  • In the Christmas special, Stephen Fry describes the Christmas routine of the Royal Family. You really have to see it to understand.
  • Fry asks what you might do with donkey milk;

Phill Jupitus: Donkey milk! It probably makes an amazing cheese.
Stephen Fry: Well oddly enough that's the one thing it doesn't.
Johnny Vaughan: Phill, come on, you're so naive. Sometimes, honestly...
Phill Jupitus: [petulantly] I want donkey cheese!

  • Stephen is explaining how a woman slipped and fell on to a knife sticking out of her dishwasher. Alan is a bit perplexed, and Stephen claims he's cut himself doing this because loading the knife with the point of the blade up 'gets a better clean', to which Phill utters the immortal retort:

I clean my knives on a crossbow! Some people say it's foolish... I put them in the hoover and set it on Blow, and then just shoot water at them around the kitchen, as I sit with the plug bare-wired at my feet, peeing on it! "You get a better clean."

  • Stephen's description of how other London Gangsters used to have to compliment Ronnie Kray's boyfriends to avoid offending him.


Series E

  • The moonwalking manakin bird. The backwards walk is already funny, but it's when it moves sideways back into view that really makes the clip.
    • From the same episode: the "A Night to Remember" sing- and dance-along.
  • They say of the Acropolis, where the Parthenon is...
    • I think they broke Stephen...
  • Johnny Vegas desperately trying to get the "Elephant in the Room" bonus in the Series E episode "Eating."

Stephen: When did rabbits arrive in Britain?
Alan: Tuesday.
Stephen: Do you remember what year it was?
Alan: Three thousand years ago. Tuesday morning.
Johnny: [buzz] There's an elephant in this question!

    • And later

Stephen: But the extraordinary thing about the introduction of rabbits into Britain was that they were kept in these warrens which were run by--
Johnny: ELEPHANTS!
Stephen: --people called warreners.

  • From "Espionage", Stephen asks how gummi bears could be used to rob a bank and the panellists start coming up with the stupidest things they can imagine.

Alan: Simple bribery?

  • From the "Everything" episode, Stephen is talking about car accident statistics and says that the "most dangerous" cars in the world are green and driven in China.

Alan: They're called tanks.

Stephen: How many times do you think lightning strikes the Earth every day?
Jo: Four.
Stephen: So we've got four. I can say that it's more than four.
Jo: Is it five?
[later, on the question of how many Britons are killed by lightning each year...]
Stephen: It's between three and six.
Alan: Four or five.

    • In the same episode, Jo Brand, Alan and Stephen got into a lengthy argument over the fact that the term "boat", in navy parlance, actually refers to submarines. Jo Brand just refused to believe it, and at the argument's end Rich Hall said "and I'll tell you something else, there's not two moons".
  • The question about what cornflakes were originally used for, and Johnny Vegas's joke response;

Johnny: It was for, er, putting in mattresses, for monks, as, er, an anti-masturbation sound trigger device.
Stephen: Johnny Vegas! (Dramatic Pause) ...take some points!
Johnny: You're jokin'!


Series F

  • The extended version of the Series F episode "Fingers and Fumbs." All of it.
  • In the "Fire and Freezing" episode, Rob takes it upon himself to teach the others about the dangers of smoke.
  • In the "France" episode from the F series, in the lead-in to a question about a giant elephant-shaped building which was planned for the spot now occupied by the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Alan declared "There's an elephant in the room" and dug out his elephant placard - which was still there after the previous series. An amazed Stephen promptly gave Alan bonus points.
  • The "Fame" episode had a discussion on the supposed fact that if a hedgehog's fleas are removed it will die turning out to actually be a myth. Following a funny rant from David Mitchell in response to Alan Davies saying humans shouldn't eat bread and milk, Stephen then goes on to talk about how David had actually reported in his Radio 4 programme "The Unbelievable Truth" that hedgehogs WOULD die if their fleas were removed, prompting:

David: Yeah, just... people give you this shit and you read it out.
Stephen: [holding a QI note card very close to his face] I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU MEAN.

    • It was not merely a "funny rant." David Mitchell verbally castrated Alan Davies, though Alan had an unconvincing argument (that bread and milk are bad for humans). Here, watch the carnage for yourself.

Stephen: You shake hands and be friends now..

    • This was followed up with a question on how often Shakespeare mentioned cricket; he did several times, again contrary to what David had read out on The Unbelievable Truth. All this was then topped off with Stephen and Alan, as well as QI's creator John Lloyd, being invited onto The Unbelievable Truth for a 'rematch' in a QI-themed special.
    • John Sessions's stories about Alan Rickman's Typecasting as "interesting people" also drew a large amount of laughs.
    • Emma Thompson's appearance on the show. First she told a story of how she could make Stephen scream by threatening to show him her "breests" (as Stephen called them) and by appearing nude in front of him while the doors were locked so he couldn't escape. Then, after Stephen asked if she waxed "down there", she threatened to flash him, scaring him silly.

Stephen: Do you wax yourself down there, darling?
Emma: [starts to stand] Do you want to see?
Stephen: [recoiling] No, I don't want to see!! No I do not! Oh, God...

    • Also, from the extended version, mortifying Stephen with the revelation that the OED's first recorded use of the word "luvvie" is his.

Stephen: HWA!? NO! I... I can't believe... did I invent the word?

Emma: Yes it was you, sometime back in the 1980's.

Stephen: Did I? I'm ashamed.

  • From "Fight or Flight", a discussion on flying fish and how they can't really fly for long periods. Pam Ayres commented that she thought she had seen one flying. Cue Johnny Vegas:

[stage whisper] Should anyone tell her that she actually witnessed a duck?

    • Later in that episode (XL Version), Stephen somehow convinces Johnny that he's really gay and the show gets completely derailed after that.
  • Rob Brydon and Ben Miller fusing into Siamese twins on the "Future" episode.
  • Alan's story about the time his Alsatian came to wake him up one morning, led him into the kitchen and showed him that there was a frog in its water bowl. Have a link.
  • "I know what you got for Christmas Luke..."
  • David Mitchell, always top quality, expressing what we're all thinking on Bertrand Russell's proof that 1 + 1 = 2.

David: That's a bit late for the 20th century, I say. You have a lot riding on 1 + 1 = 2. Quite a lot of building going on, an international economy...what happens if you find out 1 + 1 doesn't equal 2? What do we do? Just burn everything! God knows anything can fall on your head. Money? You might as well eat it. Just forget civilisation.

  • Following a discussion on the number of muscles used in frowning and smiling, the stupidity of pointing out the difference in order to make people be more friendly, and the fact that there are no muscles in fingers:

Alan: [frowning and smiling at the same time, sort of] "I'm using 23 muscles!" [holds up middle finger] "Still 23!"

  • From "Food", a discussion about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police gets a bit off topic:

David Mitchell: So they have no unmounted police?
Stephen: Well, I don't know...
David: 'Cause that must be difficult on raids of, of small flats. [mimes hitting his head on a low ceiling] "OW! My head!"
Jimmy Carr: You should see the squad cars! They're a mess, David, they are a mess.
David: Imagine trying to chase a heroin addict up a small staircase on a horse, it's ridiculous!
Alan: All the heroin addicts would know to head for the small staircase!
Stephen: Yes, they would!
David: It's like trying to police a country with Daleks!

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

David: Yeah, do you think- Jimmy, are you saying that you think that disabled access is a Dalek conspiracy?!

  • Alan making reference to how vacuum cleaners used to be massive horse-drawn things for cleaning streets. Then...

Stephen: I remember seeing that on a program called QI.

    • Alan's face is the saddest reply ever.


Series G

  • Stephen's brain fart in "Gothic":

Stephen: Speaking of this kind of infectious issue... Alan, you're a zombie. You bite Jimmy. *turns to Jimmy Carr* Jimmy, you're now a zombie. You bite Jack. *turns to Jack Dee* Jack bites... *turns to Sue Perkins* Mel,[1] and so on.
Alan: ...Sue.
Stephen: What?
Alan: Sue.
Stephen: *buries face in hands*

  • From the Genders episode:

Stephen Fry: Why don't we have more women as guests on Qi?
[...]
Ronni Ancona: Is this to do with the fact that people always say there aren't as many female comedians as there are men? Because, you know what, there's loads of female comedians, it's just that we never see them, because they're being systematically rounded up and kept in a pen just outside Harwich. But you can go and see them, and adopt them online, and you can visit them and feed them lines, and you might get a joke back. And then sometimes, some of them escape and disguise themselves as male comedians, but you can always tell which ones: it's the ones with the beards, just like The Life of Brian.
Jack Dee: [buzzes] Is it because once you get them started, they don't shut up?

IMAGINE IF YOU WILL... a lone figure walking across Hampstead Heath, the sun GLINT-ing off his very eyes. For! He is making his way back from an evening at the INN, where he has partaken of mead, and other... lascivious beverages. ADORNING THE CHIN OF SAID STOUT FELLOW... are pimples! For! They betray his excesses, and these, at the time, were known... as... [looks straight into the camera] Marty Fitch, 01-287-469, available for panto... [looks back at the panel] grog blossom.

    • Also from the XL version of "Gallimaufrey", the discussion of various unusual alarm clocks, such as one that donates money to a political cause you hate each time you press the snooze button, or one that runs off and hides when you press the snooze button.

Andy Hamilton: That's a very demoralising start to the day, isn't it, being outwitted by a clock?

Stephen Fry: (singsong) He's acting!
Bill Bailey: (to Tennant, sotto voce) What's he talking about?
David Tennant: Don't listen to the bad man.
Bill Bailey: Yeah, I know, it's a documentary.

  • From the 6th episode of the G series "Genius", the surreal digression prompted by Alan Davies' observation that a man in a Renaissance painting of the death of da Vinci bears an uncanny resemblance to 1970s British actor Rodney Bewes.

Dara Ó Briain: So, Rodney Bewes is the Highlander?
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... I mean, can you imagine on the news them going [serious voice] "And today it emerged that actor Rodney Bewes has been alive for as long as time"?

Stephen: How many brains did The Man With Two Brains have? [visible awkwardness, as all the panelists refuse to take the seemingly obvious bait]

Alan: ...Two?

Stephen: ...yes! [Audience laughter] That's brilliant!

David: IT'S CRUEL! IT'S SO CRUEL! [turning to Stephen] It's just the technique of the bully! You hit us, then you go, "Oh, what, did you think I was going to hit you? No I'm not going to hit you, no. This is my hand...to stroke you." And we're here being: "AHHHH! AHHHH! HE'S STROKING ME!"

  • From the "Groovy" episode, Bill Bailey suggesting the word 'cool' originated with "jazz Nazis."

Bill Bailey: [German accent] "Zees new uniforms are cool!"
Alan Davies: [German accent] "I joined ze Nazi party. Zey're cool, daddy-o! And bezides, I have no choice."
Bill Bailey: "I burned down a Reichstag. Cool!"

  • From the episode on Germany...

Stephen Fry: What happens on November 11th in Germany?
Alan Davies: [German accent] Everything proceeds as normal.

Rob Brydon: They laughed at Edison, you know, they--
Stephen Fry: They laughed at a lot of weirdos as well, though, Rob. [beat] You know, they did! I was just saying...

  • The Series G episode "Greats," particularly the discussion on giant tortoises. David Mitchell, Sean Lock and Alan Davies discussing why it took 300 years to give a Latin name to the giant tortoise is much, much funnier than it sounds.
  • The "Gardens" episode features a discussion of bees and feeding them honey to help them get better, which is followed up by Alan accusing Dara Ó Briain of being a murderer after he says his normal reaction is to just kill them, which is then itself followed by a discussion about feeding bees more honey than they make in a lifetime, which ends with them talking about killing bees ironically by drowning them in honey.

Dara Ó Briain: This is more honey than this bee has ever before seen in its life!!
David Mitchell: You're insulting it apart from anything else. It's like showing a very tired mason a whole cathedral!

"You have to let it sit, you have to let it go black, and then you have to push it back so that no more gas goes into it. Five twelfths of an inch is the ideal head round the top. ... And if somebody paints a shamrock into it, you're allowed to stab them in the eye with a fork."

    • And in response to Stephen's attempt at an Irish accent, "Well, the pub I worked in actually wasn't located in a movie from The Fifties..."
  • Series G episode "Greeks": What are Olympic gold medals made of? The panel collectively hesitates for about 20 seconds before Alan Davies gives in and says "gold" which of course is the forfeit answer.
  • In the XL version of Gardens, reciting the "I'm a little teapot" rhyme, only to realise, in mid-flow, "Oh bugger, I'm a sugar bowl."[2]
  • The Series G episode "Green," where Jeremy Clarkson (of all people!) chides Stephen for wasting electricity by having two large screens to project images and getting him to turn one of them off, meaning that half the panel has to sit on the other side of the set for the rest of the show. Stephen then says: "And people say you're an enemy of the environment!"
    • Jeremy then declares that this is just a cunning scheme to ensure Bill Bailey will have to sit on his lap, but he's doomed to disappointment.
    • He also came up with a complex scheme for putting tortoises on motorised wheels to help you carry things back from the shops.
  • In the episode "Germany," Rob Brydon keeps going on and on and on about his new, long socks. He shows them off, waxes poetic about the feeling of security he gets from them, even draws the audience in on it. The rest of the panel mocks him mercilessly for this. And then eventually a picture of Hitler appears on the screen, wearing long socks. It's, ah, probably funnier than it sounds.

Rob: Say what you want about the man... But nice socks.

Johnny: [upon hearing that the columns on the Parthenon look straight because they are] That's not a question! "Why does this man look thin? Because he is." ... This is why I struggled in school! "If a train travels at 40 miles an hour and leaves at 9 o'clock and arrives in Glasgow at 12 o'clock, how did it get there?" And you're going, "'Cause it did!"... [holds up his notebook with a squiggly line drawn on it] "Why does that look straight?" "Because it's not!" That could have been a question. [draws a straight line] "Why does that look straight? Because it IS!" [breaks down sobbing]

    • In the XL version of the episode, Rob Brydon appears to place himself in the camp that finds Johnny's contributions of limited value, leading to a number of hilarious confrontations with Stephen when he appears less interested in Rob's factual contributions than Johnny's bizarre outbursts. This culminates in the discussion following a question about how many cricket pitches could fit into the state of Kansas, when Rob spins from the fact that the capital of Kansas is Topeka to the fact that Elvis Presley was born in the similar-sounding Tupelo, and proceeds to recite a condensed Presley biography. David Mitchell's expression of mounting confusion at how this is relevant to the discussion at hand is priceless.

David: It's like Radio 2 in the middle of the night!
Rob: [mock outrage, indicating Johnny] He has come up with such bilge and you sit there like we're in Rain Man, loving it! I come out with something factual! And there are a lot of Elvis fans out there who will be loving that!

    • This is immediately followed by a question about the best place to see the future, and Rob muses on the fact that the best way to predict the future is to look for patterns in the past. Johnny apparently senses a Berserk Button to be pressed:

Johnny: [placing his hand on Rob's shoulder] When are you gonna realise he's not interested?
Rob: Listen, you- [to Stephen] Tell him you're interested!
Stephen: I'm very interested in that, that's a very, very good answer!
Rob: [to Johnny] Unlike when you speak, he's not frightened!
[later, after David correctly guesses "by the International Date Line"]
Johnny: Does it have the magic hill, where you're going up, even though you're... [indicates going downhill]

Stephen: Oh, it's not that, no, it's not that, no, this is literally the Date Line-

Johnny: [to Rob] See, that was stupid, but he entertained me!

Stephen: No, it wasn't stupid-

Johnny: I knew that was wrong, and he went, "No, of course it's not, Johnny", but with you, he just doesn't like you!

[Rob folds his arms and turns away, feigning offence]

    • The discussion of onomatopoeic words:

Stephen: It's not that every single word in every language is onomatopoeic; it's merely an example like that.
Rob: They often are, though, aren't they?
Stephen: They often are.
Rob: [slaps table] Desk.
Stephen: Yeah. And-
Rob: Desk. [picking up various objects] Tin! Tin! Tin! Tin! Boooooooooooook. Pen!
Alan: This is how you teach a chimp to speak.
Rob: Then pay attention.

  • During the Groovy episode, Stephen explains that "groovy" may also have had sexual connotations for the "lady bits".

David Tennant: Oh hello.

  • From the G series: when Alan is given a saw. First he attempts to saw a notebook, then a QI cheat card, then his desk - and succeeds. And then he attempts the plastic trees.

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

  • Ronni Ancona, when asked about a book called The Long Years of Obscurity:

Ronni: Is this book about the word Obscurity before it got famous, how it was beaten by its adjective father, and left on the doorstep and abandoned by its mother, and then it was the only noun growing up in a house of verbs, and the verbs were always going out doing lovely things, because they're doing words, and poor Obscurity was stuck inside suffering from asthma, and then after school it was surrounded by quotation marks and got beaten up terribly, and then one day it entered into a reality TV show and it became very famous, and it was much in demand and used to describe all the people that leave Big Brother House?

    • From the same episode, the introduction of Ancona's Mary Kingsley voice.

Ronni: It is so hard to wear yellow well, you know.

      • Stephen gets in on the fun, as well:

Stephen: Of course, you never knew Hitler, did you?


Series H

  • In the series opener, "Hodge Podge", Alan got the klaxon for his buzzer again, putting him at -10 before the first question of the series was asked.
  • In the episode "Hocus Pocus", the buzzers were magic words - Daniel Radcliffe, of course, got, "Expelliarmus!"
  • From the H series episode "Health and Safety":

Jeremy Clarkson: I've got a twisted testicle, a hideous skin disease, two slipped discs-
Alan Davies: And a partridge in a pear tree!

  • Alan's buzzer for the "Horrible" episode. The first three were somebody retching, a man shouting "That is disgusting!", somebody being violently sick, and then his was "Hello, I'm Piers Morgan."
  • "Mighty fuhrer of the sausage people!"
    • Also from "Highs and Lows," on learning that a certain type of cricket's chirping corresponds with the temperature outside, Rob Brydon has a slip of the tongue:

Rob: So the quicker it's chirping, the hotter it is?. . . well, it makes sense now when you think about when you've been in the hot country and you're tossing at night and you can't get off--

Alan and Stephen: {{[[[Freud Was Right]] look}}]

Rob: No! No, no, no, no, no. I'm simply not having it!

Sandi Toksvig: Sounds like it.

  • Ross Noble in the H series.

If [a monkey testicle] was scaled to the size of the Earth, it would take hours to scratch.

Stephen: What "H" means you'll always be the bridesmaid and never the bride?
Phill: Hepatitis C.
Stephen: Oh. Oddly enough you're surprisingly right, in a kind of way.
Phill: Herpes.

  • In "H-Anatomy", Alan Davies tying a wire around the arm of the skeletons behind Fry, and proceeding to wait until all eyes are on Stephen to slowly inch the arm towards him...

Stephen: Ah, I have been goosed by the palm of a skeleton.
Alan: I've been sitting here for ten minutes thinking "when should I do it, when should I do it?"

  • From the XL version of "Hoaxes", Sean Lock and David Mitchell's discussion on whether or not NASA were responsible for the death of Michael Jackson. Their conclusion? Not NASA, no. Buzz Aldrin.
    • In the episode's General Ignorance round, the topic of oranges being green eventually becomes a discussion of the word's original name and spelling. Sean Lock sends everything downhill.
  • The funniest thing ever for Rich Hall: John McCririck falling out of a boat.

Rich: Funniest thing I ever saw was John McCririck fall out of a boat.
Stephen: [looks very interested] Really?
Rich: Pretended it didn't happen, and I was interviewing him, and so none of the crew could laugh until two hours later. Everyone laughed at the same time and didn't stop for half an hour. They kept it in for two hours. It is possible.
Stephen: That's fantastic. Because he was so... Sort of... Pompously refusing...?
Rich: Well, yeah, he's a big, blustery guy, and he had a cigar... And he fell right on top of me. And then fell out of the boat. And then got back in and said; 'Right. Where were we?' [makes 'Whut?' face] 'You just fell out of the boat! You're dripping wet!' Cigar just hanging out of his mouth... Guy pretended it never happened! So we all pretended it didn't happen until two hours later. We're driving back and the guy driving was just... [makes zig-zag gesture] ..almost wrecked, he was laughing so hard.


Series I

  • From "I-Spy", in a discussion about how aye-ayes are so ugly they don't want to mate with each other, but they live in the dark:

Lee Mack: That's how Jimmy mates.
Jimmy Carr: I can't believe your wife told you that story.

    • At the QI Sport Relief special (recorded at the same session as "I-Spy"), Alan guesses that the most popular sport in Britain in 1835 was horse racing and sets off the klaxon yet again:

Alan: I have that noise in my sleep now. Even my dreams are wrong!
Jimmy Carr: D'you know what? I've had a few of those, Alan, it's nothing to worry about.

  • Season "I"(9) Episode 2 "International" sees David Mitchell trip the klaxon three times on one question, because he spent the first two arguing with the klaxon. Here.

[the question is "When was the First World War first named as such"]
David: It's gonna be some point after 1939, isn't it.
[klaxon] [screen flashes "1939"]
David: Excuse me!... I think what I said, people in the box, is "after 1939". Which may contain 1939, but does not mean it.
[klaxon] [screen flashes "AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR"]
David: 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"!
[klaxon] [screen flashes "DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR"]
David: Why don't you just type "Mitchell is a cock"?

Stephen: (warningly) I wouldn't put it past them.

    • Earlier on in the episode, Bill Bailey jokes about using his "Nobody Knows" card when the subject of the scoring system comes up. Funny by itself, but a minute later Stephen checks the scores and announces Bill has 3 points.

David Mitchell: Why three?

    • Stephen's giant fake moustache - and the comment that it'll probably have its own website soon - and the weird gadgets men used to use for them.
    • Alan noticing that, in a photo from the 1936 Olympics, Herman Goering looks like he's making a "neener-neener" gesture:

Alan: No, no, the one on the far right.
David: Surely they're ALL on the far right!

    • The joke about Hitler and David Mitchell having the same hairstyle.
  • A hesitant display of Genre Savviness in "Imbroglio":

Stephen: What do the signal bars on your phone mean?
Alan [hesitantly]: Well... it means... how much signal you can...
Stephen: Don't be scared...
Sean Lock: It means... um... well... how well the speaker... in the sky... and it comes through... and all gone...
Stephen: I need it in English, I'm afraid, in order to give you points...
Sean: Talkie -- talkie power all gone away! Sky no fly down in ear -- hair -- ear!
Alan: Big bird in sky -- you're either connected...

    • Stephen, during the course of discussing French-derived words which have no meaning in French, laments the construction of a certain bathroom fixture:

Stephen: They do indeed have 'bidet', though in actuality, it'd be easier to do a handstand in the shower. If you want the expense of a bidet-
Sean: Easier?!
Stephen: If you're as nimble as I am.
Sean: Nimble? I'd pay good money to see that. I'd like to see you doing that, with a camera up here (holds hand above his head) going "Tweet this!".

  • From "Invertebrates", Alan's reaction to learning about 'worm charming', and the fact that at a recent worm-charming festival there were no worms found by anyone:

Alan: At least when you go trainspotting, there are trains!
Johnny Vegas: The trainspotters are over a hill, shouting "GET A LIFE!"

  • In the same episode, we get to see Stephen, Alan and Johnny Vegas all eat candy-covered insects with varying results of disgust and distress.
  • The entire discussion from the Incomprehensible episode about throwing Ewoks into lakes of methane.
    • Ross Noble can rest assured that he was the first person alive to say "I could be tossing Ewoks into a lake of farts" on television.
    • And earlier on in the show, when the topic of Ewoks comes up for the first time.

(after a long, serious discussion about Saturn's rings and moons)
Ross Noble: ... this is the one thing I wanted to ask you, of all these moons, which one's the most likely to be home to Ewoks?
Brian Cox: That would be Titan, I think.
Ross: Titan?
Brian: Yeah, it's got a thicker atmosphere than the Earth, so you'd have to be furry.

    • From the same episode, Alan theorises what his Sat Nav would be like if Stephen recorded it for him, personally:

Alan: Left! Left, you moron!

  • Reading town mottos, in Incomprehensible.

Stephen: Welcome to Tower Hamlets - Let's make it...
Alan: ...Out alive.

  • On the Illness episode, Jo Brand attempted to answer every question with an insult to Michael Winner. After about four questions, the phrase "Michael Winner" set off the klaxon.
    • This was later followed by the following allusion to Winner's appearances in an E-sure Insurance ad campaign:

Stephen: Now, I'm feeling extremely angry! What should I do?
Alan: "Calm down, dear!"

  • The Series I episode "Idleness" (as of this writing, only available in the XL version) features a question about the American Nuclear arms code, leading into a discussion of password protection.

Ross Noble: If you need lots of different ones for lots of different things, do what I do and have each of the seven dwarfs... (realizes what he just said, covers his head) Oh shit.
Stephen: Oh, you've given it away.

  • Series I, episode 6 had Bill Bailey, Alan Davies and Sean Lock playing with puppets in honour of the presence of ventriloquist Nina Conti on the panel. Hilarity Ensued.
    • Later in the same episode, when the talk comes round to imaginary friends, Sean Lock comments that he'd never had any imaginary friends, but then notes:

Sean: I hear voices. But I ignore them and carry on killing.

  • Johnny Vegas claiming (a la Spider-Man) that eating a scorpion gave him the superpower of...being able to do a forward roll.
  • Brian Blessed pulling Sean Lock off his chair. Repeatedly.
    • Also from the Ice episode, Brian's story about the wolf that accompanied him on one of his expeditions.
    • Alan managing to vigorously shake apart two phonebooks that were apparently incapable of being separated by brute force.
    • Alan's facial expression when Stephen informed him that the rods that the panel were being handed were lubed.
  • From "Illumination":

Stephen: Tell me something quite interesting about the original geishas.
Jack Dee: [sarcastically] They were all men.
Stephen: Yes!
Jack: Oh, God!...

  • From "The Immortal Bard", Sue Perkins' reaction upon being told The Lion King was based on Hamlet:

Sue: At which point does Hamlet say "Hakuna Matata"?!

Back to QI
  1. ↑ Mel Giedroyc being Sue Perkins' former comedy performing partner
  2. ↑ (Neither of his arms was in the correct position for "spout". Long-term viewers of such children's fare as Lamb-Chop's Playalong may recall the gag was used there as well.)
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