QI

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QI, standing for Quite Interesting, is a comedy panel game shown on BBC Two and BBC Four and hosted by Stephen Fry.


Contents


[edit]

Series One [A]

[edit]

Episode A.01

[On the subject of Adam and Eve]
Stephen Fry: But perhaps, you know, we should believe in Adam and Eve. Geneticists have established that every woman in the world shares a single female ancestor who lived a hundred and fifty thousand years ago. Scientists actually call her "Eve", and every man shares a single male ancestor called "Adam". It's also been established, however, that Adam was born eighty thousand years after Eve. So the world before him was one of heavy to industrial-strength lesbianism, one assumes.
[Stephen has asked what connects a fennel to Italian homosexuals]
Alan Davies: ...Are there any Italian homosexuals in the room?
Stephen Fry: My dressing room number is 315.
[After a question concerning Burmese etiquette]
Stephen Fry: Actually, interestingly, while double-checking this information on etiquette and Burma on the Internet, we came up with the extraordinary information that it's considered polite to express joy by eating snow and to send unwanted guests away by biting their leg, and normal behaviour to wipe your mouth on the sofa. This is actually true, the researchers were writing this down with great excitement about Burma, only to discover in the end that Burma turned out to be the name of a poodle belonging to the author of the website.
Stephen Fry: What would you do with a pencil and a lesser anteater?
Alan Davies: Oh, hours of fun!
[edit]

Episode A.02


Bill Bailey: Is a weasel some kind of bonsai tiger? Surely not.
Jeremy Hardy: You couldn't get a tiger up your trousers.
Alan Davies: You could if you had really big trousers. Or a tiny little tiger.
Stephen Fry: Tigers only roar to tell other tigers where they are.
Alan Davies: Where the Frosties are.
[on being informed that the Earth has a second moon called Cruithne]
Alan Davies: But it does have one moon. It's called the moon.
Jeremy Hardy: "Blue moon, I saw you standing alone." Not, "with a small friend."
Rich Hall: Why's there not one romantic song with Cruithne in? "Blue Cruithne of Kentucky", or "Cruithne River"?
Stephen Fry: Because it was discovered in nineteen-ninety-fucking-four.
Stephen Fry: Where is ninety percent of the universe?
Jeremy Hardy: Ikea.
Alan Davies: See, in Ikea they don't have any windows. They don't sell windows either, but you can't see out so you just lose track of time, you've got no idea how long you've been in there. You could be in there for weeks... and if your body spends too long without being exposed to natural light -
Bill Bailey: You buy spoons.
Alan Davies: Is Gay Whispers like Chinese Whispers?
Stephen Fry: Only more fun.
[in the middle of Stephen's very long talk about Pluto]
Rich Hall: Is there a rest stop between you and the end of this thing?
Stephen Fry: What flavour is the oldest known soup?
Jeremy Hardy: Cream of plesiosaur!
Stephen Fry: What man-made artefacts can be seen from the moon?
Rich Hall: Which moon are we talking about?


[edit]

Episode A.04

[Danny Baker has related a theory that states if a person can consume their own elbow, then they will be immortal]
Stephen Fry: But isn't that how socialism was invented, that someone said, "Come, let us lick each other's elbows"?
[On the subject of Roman "cures" for medical afflictions]
Stephen Fry: What would you think if I touched the tips of your genitals with linen or papyrus?
Jo Brand: To be honest, Stephen, I'd be bloody impressed that you found the tip!
Danny Baker: The fourth largest navy in the world, if one goes by boats alone? Disney. Disney has the fourth largest flotilla in the world.
Stephen Fry: Good God. They'll be making films next!
Stephen Fry: How did Army medics in the Vietnam War prevent U.S. soldiers from swallowing their own tongues?
Alan Davies: Why would they swallow their own tongues?
Stephen Fry: It's quite common when wounded.
Alan Davies: They cut the tongue out!
Stephen Fry: No, they were sort of practical and American about it.
Jo Brand: Gave them a hamburger.
Stephen Fry: Now, Jo, what's rather attractive about the Army of Costa Rica?
Jo Brand: They've got a pulse?
[On only one type of frog that makes the call of 'ribbit']
Stephen Fry: Frogs actually make a huge variety of noises; they croak, snore, grunt, trill, cluck, chrip, ring, whoop, whistle and growl.
Alan Davies: They also say...
Stephen Fry: They make noises like sheep – yes?
Alan Davies: They also say, "It’s not easy being green..."
Stephen Fry: Most female frogs, like the Goliath frog, make no noise at all.
Jo Brand: (presses buzzer) 'Cause we can't get a bloody word in edgeways!
Stephen Fry: Does anyone remember - there's a wonderful line in that film, "The Agony and the Ecstasy", which is where Charlton Heston plays Michaelangelo, and Rex Harrison plays--
Alan Davies: Charlton Heston played Michaelangelo?
Stephen Fry: Yes, you know, and--
Alan Davies: The effete Italian homosexual?
Stephen Fry: Yes, that's the one, he was not effete--
Alan Davies: Played by the president of the gun club?
Stephen Fry: He was athletic! He was an athletic Italian homosexual.
Alan Davies: I thought he was a wussy one!
Stephen Fry: [gradually raising his voice over Alan's protests, looking supremely unimpressed] He may well have preferred man-on-man action, that doesn't mean he was a bleeding fairy! He was butch, like me!
Alan Davies: When I say "wussy one" I don't mean he was, that he was gay, I mean, he was a bit of a...[makes limp wrist actions]
Stephen Fry: No, you've got it the other way round!
Alan Davies: I thought Da Vinci was the hard case, and...
Stephen Fry: No, Michaelangelo was an animal! He was physical...
Alan Davies: Michaelangelo was! He never washed! He stank!
Stephen Fry: Very strong, a big beard...but he preferred to take it up the carriageway, so there we are.
[edit]

Episode A.05

Stephen Fry: Welcome to QI, the closest modern equivalent to Lions versus Christians.
Stephen Fry: How do otters kill crocodiles?
Rob Brydon: Softly with their songs.
[edit]

Episode A.08

Clive Anderson: I'm fascinated that hair grows after death. I'm looking forward to that.
Sean Lock: They walk.
Stephen Fry: I'm sorry?
Sean Lock: Banana plants, whatever they're called, walk.
Stephen Fry: Nurse, nurse, he's out of bed again.
Stephen Fry: If a lion mates with a tiger, you get a...?
Alan Davies: Scandal.
[on James Bond]
Stephen Fry: He has this strange idea that homosexuals can't whistle, for example.
Alan Davies: [quietly] Is that because they've always got cock in their mouth?
[Stephen hides his head on the desk for some time]
Stephen Fry: I want you to go and stand in the corner!
[edit]

Series Two [B]

[edit]

Episode B.01

Stephen Fry: Beetle-fanciers, as you probably know, are called...?
Bill Bailey: Coleopterists.
Stephen Fry: Very good! Coleopterists, I'll give you five points for that.
Alan Davies: Press him on how the hell he knows that.
Bill Bailey: Well, when I was a child, I -
Stephen Fry: In Alan's world knowing something is a kind of freakish, weird thing.
Bill Bailey: Welcome to my world of knowing!
Sean Lock: [to Alan] Aren't you supposed to be an actor?
Stephen Fry: Haven't you ever seen 'Jonathan Creek'?
Stephen Fry: So can you name me a green mammal?
Alan Davies: A frog?
Stephen Fry: Now name a green mammal.
[on discovering that Mars is brown, rather than red]:
Alan Davies: Oh why are we going there, what's the fucking point?
Stephen Fry: You! You are unbelievable...
Alan Davies: [mimes reeling Stephen in on a fishing rod]
Stephen Fry: Oh alright, alright. I am not rising to the bait.
[on things that rhyme with orange]:
Jo Brand: I'm sure that Richard Whiteley on Countdown said that nothing rhymes with 'orange'.
Stephen Fry: He may well have done, but we're here to explode- [pauses in thought]
Jo Brand: Richard Whiteley?!
Alan Davies: Explode Richard Whiteley!!
Stephen Fry: It has piercing mouthparts.
Sean Lock: Mandibles?
Stephen Fry: Yes, mandibles.
Sean Lock: You answered to that like it was your nickname. 'Mandibles?' and you went "Yes?"
Bill Bailey: It was his nickname in school.
Sean Lock: Mandibles Fry.
[on how people discovered beetles make good dyes]:
Sean Lock: They didn't start crushing animals and slowly work their way down to beetles? Crushing a squirrel [pounds on desk] No that's no good, that color. Next animal! [pounds on desk]
[on Stephen Fry making fun of Alan Davies' Mexican accent]:
Alan Davies: You really think the Incas talked like Oxbridge graduates?
Stephen Fry: However they talked is really im...
Alan Davies: [mimics Fry] 'I'm just going off to finish Machu Pichu. Help me with these stones?'
Stephen Fry: ...it was really the Aztecs we were concerned with. But in any case...
Alan Davies: [to Jo Brand next to him] Ever feel like your weapon's not big enough Jo?
Stephen Fry: Now we plunge into the land that knowledge forgot. Daviesland. The place we call 'General Ignorance'
[On Stephen Fry's comment that he had prep school tailors]:
Sean Lock: You had a tailor? For that suit you had made up when you were five?
Stephen Fry: It was a particular outfitter. The school outfitter.
Sean Lock: [mimics tailor] 'Which side does young sir dress on?'
Alan Davies: That's written on the bathroom wall.
Stephen Fry: Oh heavens. Why did I bring it up?
Sean Lock: Did you have to get measured up for shorts?
Stephen Fry: Oh lord.
Bill Bailey: [mimics tailor] 'Would sir like to wear a cravat on the cross country run?' [puts a pipe in his mouth and mimes running]
Stephen Fry: You are all such beasts.
Sean Lock: [mimics tailor] 'I suggest a cummerbund for geography.'
[edit]

Episode B.02

Jo Brand: When I was a teenager, someone I knew gave their dog LSD...
Stephen Fry: Oh my Lord!
Jo Brand: - It went to Glastonbury.
[edit]

Episode B.03

Stephen Fry: The answer is that none of them are the odd one out.
Phill Jupitus: What kind of hellish quiz is this?
[edit]

Episode B.05

[on the word "hello", as opposed to "hullo"]
Stephen Fry: It just meant an expression of surprise - "Hullo, what have we got here?" "Hullo, what's this?" And we still use it in that sense.
Bill Bailey: Do we?
Stephen Fry: ...Don't we, Bill?
Bill Bailey: Yes, when we live our lives like 1950s detective films, yes.
Stephen Fry: You beast, you beast, you utter, utter, beast.
Alan Davies: What was the last thing that made you go 'hullo'?
Stephen Fry: A genital wart.
Alan Davies: I knew it was going to be something about genitals.
[edit]

Episode B.11

Stephen Fry: What kind of music do snakes like the best? What do they find most charming?
Mark Gatiss: Kraftwerk.
Sean Lock: The huntsman spider is the only spider with lungs.
Alan Davies: So you can get it a birthday cake with a candle on.
[on the type of music spiders like best]
Stephen Fry: Well they did an experiment, and they found out that -
Mark Gatiss: Who are 'they'?
Stephen Fry: The University of Ohio, in this instance, is 'they', or are 'they' -
Sean Lock: The University of Fuck All Else Better to Do.
Linda Smith: Formerly the Polytechnic of Fuck All Else to Do.
[on discovering that 'Happy Birthday' was composed in 1924]
Alan Davies: What did people sing in 1923, for goodness' sake? The got the cake out and everyone just stood about in a slightly awkward silence?
Linda Smith: My favourite ever headline was "Worksop Man Dies Of Natural Causes".
[on the inventor of the Hokey Cokey]
Stephen Fry: He died in 1996; what happened at his funeral?
Alan Davies: Oh, it was terrible, they couldn't get him into his coffin.
Stephen Fry: Why was that?
Alan Davies: Well, they put the left leg in...
[edit]

Series Three [C]

[edit]

Episode C.01

[On car satellite navigation systems]
Rob Brydon: I have a gunsight, like a telescopic gunsight, and I don't know what message that is sending me - when you get to your destination, there's a gunsight, so, "You have reached your destination. Now slaughter the family."
Stephen Fry: Kill them, kill them all!
Rich Hall: For five million pounds, I'd want a map that showed me looking at the map I'd just bought.
Rob Brydon: Well I'm not really aware of what a Carlisle Surprise is, other than the shock of finding yourself in Carlisle. Which is surely more of a delight than anything else.
Stephen Fry: It's really big, as big a musical instrument as you could find.
Bill Bailey: A whale! Surely with a whale you just put you hand over the blowhole... [mimes making music with a whale's blowhole]
Stephen Fry: [to Rob] He's making jokes about Wales!
Stephen Fry: I remember the first time I heard my mother say 'fuck'. I couldn't believe it, because my brother and I had thought we made the word up.
Alan Davies: The Chinese claim to have invented absolutely everything!
Stephen Fry: They did.
Alan Davies: All I say to the Chinese is - why didn't you invent the camera twelve hundred years ago so we could prove it?
Stephen Fry: What do you know about the Isle of Wight?
Alan Davies: All the clocks stopped in 1952... and all the shops are the same as they were then.
[On what animal hasn't yet made it to the Isle of Wight]
Rob Brydon: Squirrel! Squirrel! Squirrel!
Stephen Fry: - the grey squirrel -
Rob Brydon: - Squirrel! Squirrel! SQUIRREL!
Bill Bailey: Alright, alright!
Rob Brydon: Stephen! Stephen! Shut up Bill! Stephen! STEPHEN! The squirrel!
Stephen Fry: The grey squirrel!
Rob Brydon: The grey squirrel!
Stephen Fry: The North American grey squirrel.
Alan Davies: [presses buzzer]
Rob Brydon: Don't say squirrel!
Alan Davies: The North American grey squirrel.
Stephen Fry: Well done, Alan, very good! You're the first person to get that.
Alan Davies: The red squirrel can't live with the grey squirrel.
Stephen Fry: Ebony and ivory are together on my piano keyboard, so why can't they be?
Alan Davies: What, you mean a kind of squirrel fur keyboard?
Stephen Fry: It'd be nice.
Rob Brydon: That's barbaric! Are you saying you want pianos clad in the pelt of a squirrel? Because if thats what you're saying, Fry, you should be stopped!
Stephen Fry: Talking of Christianity, Rich, could Jesus walk on custard?
Rich Hall: Maybe at one point when he was a children's entertainer. That sounds like a sort of sarcastic question you would ask Jesus: "Water, yeah, great, what about custard?"
Rob Brydon: It's not so much a question of 'could he?', Stephen -
Stephen Fry: Are you saying he did?
Rob Brydon: He did, he did. I mean, it was very hard to stop him.
[After discussing what can and what can't be supported by custard]
Alan Davies: Children everywhere, all over the country, will now be putting their hamsters in bowls of custard.
Stephen Fry: Children, whatever you do, please, please try and walk on as much custard as you can.
Stephen Fry: You've set me off! You've set Sir off again!
Stephen Fry: What is a taffy pull?
Rob Brydon: Is this another dig at my forefathers?
Stephen Fry: You've got four fathers? The Welsh are weird.
Stephen Fry: How many sheep were there on Noah's ark?
[Silence, as nobody wants to say 'two' and set the buzzer off]
Stephen Fry: Surely! Somebody.
Rich Hall: I smell a set-up...
Bill Bailey: Ok, it's a trick - none, they were floating on a raft behind the ark!
Stephen Fry: No, there were sheep on Noah's ark.
Rob Brydon: None, because they were walking on the custard being poured over the side.
Alan Davies: Noah didn't build an ark, it never actually happened!
Stephen Fry: According to the Bible...
Alan Davies: TWO!
[Buzzer goes off]
Alan Davies: There were two of everyone, they went in two by two. Even my nephew knows that.
Alan Davies: The animals went in two by two, hurrah, hurrah...
Bill Bailey: Except for the camels because they were filthy, hurrah, hurrah, and then the sheep but not the date and then came the ameoba, one, no two, no four, no eight, no sixteen, thirty-two...
Stephen Fry: What was the name of the archbishop murdered by Henry II?
Alan Davies: Thomas a ... no, not him.
[edit]

Episode C.02

Stephen Fry: Gentlemen, which one of you would like to smother Doon Mackichan in goose fat?
Andy Hamilton: What, again?
[On Doon Mackichan swimming the English Channel]
Stephen Fry: And were you smothered in goose fat?
Doon Mackichan: Yeah, it wasn't actually goose fat, it was just normal Vaseline in a tub.
Alan Davies: Jam?
Doon Mackichan: Jam? No, it wasn't jam.
Alan Davies: Peanut butter?
Doon Mackichan: No, that's in your head.
Stephen Fry: Yes, and we'd like it to stay there.
Stephen Fry: There's a thing called moronic acid. To whom would you give moronic acid?
Andy Hamilton: Is that a scientific name for Newky Brown?
[An image of a deep-fried Mars bar appears on the screens behind the contestants]
Andy Hamilton: Can we talk about herpes again, please?
Stephen Fry: Anyway, we move from Scotland to something quite unconnected, and that's the world of crime.
Stephen Fry: Arthur, why did Big Beard Wang regularly shave his pussy?
Arthur Smith: Well, I'm afraid I'm disappointed that we've got a cheap laugh from the word "pussy"...
Stephen Fry: I was thinking of "wang", actually.
[While the contestants are discussing what ages they'd like to be, and Arthur Smith has said he'd like to be six]
Alan Davies: You do get a lot of custard when you're six.
Stephen Fry: You do get a lot of custard.
Alan Davies: I haven't had as nearly as much custard since I was a child. I've probably had most, about ninety percent of my life's custard I think I had in the first ten years.
Stephen Fry: "Alan Davies: The Custard Years".
[Alan Davies has been complaining about other brands of baked beans not being as good as Heinz beans]
Arthur Smith: Why can't anyone else go into making beans? It's always Heinz --
Alan Davies: Gordon Ramsay, he could do beans!
Doon Mackichan: Ramsay Beans!
Stephen Fry: Ramsay Beans!
Doon Mackichan: 'Fucking Beans'!
Stephen Fry: It's a brilliant idea, a whole new range of 'Gordon Fucking Foods'!
Alan Davies: On the instructions, it'd say, "Put in the fucking saucepan, you fucking idiot! Show a bit of fucking passion!"
[While the contestants are discussing what ages they'd like to be]
Doon Mackichan: I'd quite like to be, sort of... a minute... old. After the smack and everything's washed off, you're straight on the tit, you've got entertainment, you've got sleep and you can cry all the time without anyone thinking you're weird.
[Guessing the contents of the Queen's handbag]
Doon Mackichan: The Little Book of Calm... and mace spray.
[edit]

Episode C.03

Stephen Fry: The Kinsey Report demonstrated that one in six men in Iowa had had sex with a chicken.
Sean Lock: Is it, like, there in the room? You know, have they got the chicken sitting next to you? They've actually had sex with chickens?
Stephen Fry: With, against, inside one, as it were, yes.
Rory McGrath: I mean, I don't know anything about this, is this like cockfighting, or is different from...?
Stephen Fry: I'm going to raise the tone, now - why did the inventor of the decimal point encourage his servants to stroke his cock?
[About Scottish mathematician John Napier]
Stephen Fry: There were some thefts, and he was almost certain it was one of his servants, and he wanted to trap his servants. Now, we're talking late-sixteenth, early-seventeenth century, so they were quite gullible, perhaps. And what he told them was that his rooster, his cock, could tell which one of his servants had stolen from him -
Jimmy Carr: Sorry, quite gullible?
Stephen Fry: Well, Rory, while we're on you, as it were - "thick, fat, coarse and lazy" -
Rory McGrath: Thank you! I'm going now.
Rory McGrath: Why is it called "coarse fishing"?
Sean Lock: Is it the course of the water?
Stephen Fry: No, "coarse" with an "a", dear.
Sean Lock: People can spell things wrong, can't they? Easily done...
Stephen Fry: (in an American accent) Not on my watch!
Stephen Fry: While we're reflecting on God's little chubsters, Jimmy, how many burglaries are committed in the UK by koalas every day?
Jimmy Carr: Every day?
Stephen Fry: Yeah.
Jimmy Carr: ...I'm guessing it's quite a low figure...
Rory McGrath: My favourite word, the longest palindrome in human language is the Finnish word saippuakivikauppias, but the meaning is, "a travelling salesman who sells caustic soda to the soap industry".
[Rory has been relating his knowledge of the periodic table]
Rory McGrath: Selenium is 34, arsenic is 33.
Stephen Fry: Very good. Isn't he good? They should really put railings around you and have children come and stare at you.
[Rory has been scoring many points for his knowledge]
Jimmy Carr: This is a team game, isn't it? I'm on his team. This is my team-mate, here.
[He points at Alan and Sean]
Jimmy Carr: We're killing them!
[Gives them the V-sign - palm inwards]
Jimmy Carr: Eh? Come on! D'you want some?
Sean Lock: Yes, but later on, when we go out, people will talk to us.
Stephen Fry: Who was the first Prime Minister, team, panel, friends?
Rory McGrath: Wasn't it Walpole?
Stephen Fry: Walpole?
[The klaxons go off]
Sean Lock: Lord Snooty!
Rory McGrath: The Cormorant is the Phalacrocorax carbo, the Shag is the Phalacrocorax aristotelis. It doesn't have the white face and the...
[He mimics the tuft of feathers on the head of the Shag]
Stephen Fry: This is brilliant! This is everything I've got written down.
Sean Lock: D'you get called "tosser" a lot?
[After Sean has insulted Rory about his intelligence]
Stephen Fry: Do you remember anything he said?
Sean Lock: ...No, not a word! He said something about calcium, and, er, there's a tree with a funny name, I dunno... koalas invented rice...?
Stephen Fry: Anyway, I'm impressed with Rory.
Rory McGrath: I'm impressed with you, Stephen!
Stephen Fry: No, shush!
Jimmy Carr: I believe, Rory, that you have pulled!
Stephen Fry: All it takes is a cute mind...
[Stephen is explaining about the Queen's pet dogs, Pembroke corgis, which are related to Nordic puffin-hunting dogs]]
Rory McGrath: Puffin! Fratercula arctica!
Stephen Fry: Oh... (chuckes) You are just beginning to try my patience, now...
[On the question why the House of Lords smells vaguely of urine]]
Stephen Fry: It's because there used to be more hereditary peers, and hereditary peers - what do they usually wear? What sort of jacket do they usually...?
Sean Lock: Tweed!
Stephen Fry: Tweed.
Jimmy Carr: Tweed, as we all know, is made with urine.
Stephen Fry: Yes.
Jimmy Carr: What?!
Stephen Fry: It's the answer. It's the answer, yes.
Jimmy Carr: Is it? Yes, it is, yes! Yeah, Rory, I told you!
[About 10 Downing Street being the only door that can't be opened from the outside]
Jimmy Carr: So, someone's employed to open the door?
Stephen Fry: Yes.
Rory McGrath: He's called a "doorman".
Jimmy Carr: That's a rubbish job, isn't it?
Stephen Fry: Well, I'm sure they have other duties.
Jimmy Carr: Closing it again?
[About Mr. Chicken, the last private resident of 10 Downing Street]
Stephen Fry: Sadly, nothing else is known of Mr. Chicken.
Jimmy Carr: He was a philatelist, and he worked in a bank. And he used to sail. So there's three facts, so I should get some points for those. Little known facts, but true.
Rory McGrath: I think he also played the tenor banjo.
Sean Lock: He had eleven knuckles!
Alan Davies: And, in fact, was actually a chicken.
Stephen Fry: So, the most biographed man in the eighteenth century, Mr. Ralph Waldo Peterson Arnold Chicken. The Third.
[edit]

Episode C.05

Stephen Fry: So, Jo, can you smell the fear?
Jo Brand: Of course.
Stephen Fry: Yeah?
Jo Brand: Mmm.
Stephen Fry: What's it smell like to you?
Jo Brand: Jeremy Beadle.
[On the fact that women have been proven able to smell fear]
Rich Hall: I think fear smells like crab salad. 'Cause I went into this deli the other day and I said, "Could I have a crab salad sandwich, please?" and the woman said, "We're all out of crab salad, I'm afraid."
Alan Davies: How many grains of sand in the Sahara, then, do you reckon?
Sean Lock: D'you reckon?
Stephen Fry: I lost count, it's quite a few. I got up to seventeen and it's definitely more than that.
Stephen Fry: What do you get when you cross a camel with a leopard?
Jo Brand: Is it a fireside rug you can have a good hump on?
[After Alan has related the fact that leopards have a taste for rotten meat]
Stephen Fry: But eating rotten meat is terrible, it gives you spots.
[The audience groan]
Stephen Fry: Oi! Now!
Alan Davies: Is it true you once gave Prince Charles, for his wedding present, some coffee made out of weasel shit?
Stephen Fry: ...Not exactly. It was Cambodian weasel vomit coffee. It's this coffee the weasels eat -
Alan Davies: They eat the beans, and from what they excrete -
Stephen Fry: No, vomit. They vomit, and the acid in the stomach kind of softens it, and apparently it's very flavoursome. I just felt it was something he wouldn't have.
[On people who dress up as Romans and re-enact the Empire]
Stephen Fry: We did a Blackadder Roman thing for the Millennium, and we used these sorts of people, and the Assistant Director as saying to them, "Um, Ken, isn't it?" "No, it's Marcellus Drusis, please, when I'm in uniform." And you had to call him 'Marcellus Drusis'. And I got him terribly cross by numbering them off: I, II, III, IV, V, VI...
[On how the ancient armies caught elephants]
Rich Hall: Well, the truth of the matter is many of these elephants volunteered. They came from small towns, there was no future, no... no circus coming through town...
Stephen Fry: Do you know what was supposed to frighten elephants? What they would do, I'm afraid, is they would cover pigs in oil - this is not funny - set fire to them, and the pigs would then run after the elephants on fire, and the elephants would be so freaked out by the spectacle of pigs on fire, they would run away.
Sean Lock: I wonder how they found that out?
Stephen Fry: I think they found that out because when a pig squealed, an elephant would rear up and run away, and so they thought, "How do we get pigs to squeal? We'll set fire to them".
Alan Davies: Set light to them?!
Stephen Fry: I know, it's horrible.
Jo Brand: Is that how they first discovered crackling?
Stephen Fry: Which is the largest lake in Canada?
Rich Hall: ...Width or depth?
Stephen Fry: Not depth. Not depth.
Jo Brand: Can I attempt an answer at this?
Stephen Fry: Yeah?
Jo Brand: Who cares?
[The klaxons sound and the words "Who Cares?" appear on the screens]
[On Bott's Dots, the Californian equivalent of cat's eyes:]
Sean Lock: The American ones break every time you drive over them.
Stephen Fry: Yes, why's that?
Sean Lock: 'Cause they're shit.
[edit]

Episode C.06

[The theme of this episode is Cockney rhyming slang:]
Stephen Fry: Now, tonight any flamencos in Pyong score Barney, and I'll also give you two Sundays -
Alan Davies: What the fuck are you talking about?
[Alan isn't sure about what his name could mean in Cockney rhyming slang]
Stephen Fry: If you went to a restaurant for Sunday lunch, you could ask for several types of Alan Davies - gravies, I suppose...
Bill Bailey: How many different types of gravies do you know?
[The panellists are playing "Pin the Tastebud on the Catfish"]
Alan Davies: If you had a catfish, would it come out of the pond and try to get in your bedroom at night by scratching on the window?
Stephen Fry: So, the question is, how does the U.S. Government look after its Sequoia groves?
Bill Bailey: Er... lions... and tigers are let loose to roam the surrounding areas...
Alan Davies: Do they try to win the hearts and minds of the Sequoia?
[On Sequoia needing forest fires in order to breed]
Phill Jupitus: I had a neighbour who really got annoyed with some Leylandii that I didn't even plant. I mean, he went mental over them. So if there's a chance I can stick three or four Sequoia in the back garden without him knowing and then, as an excuse ten years later, set light to his garden, I'm quids in!
Stephen Fry: Now, what happened to Barbra Streisand's moustache?
Phill Jupitus: (presses buzzer) Yentl? Did she play the young boy in Yentl? Did she have a...
Alan Davies: It's in a display case in Planet Hollywood.
Stephen Fry: If I were to tell you she ate it and pooed it out...
Rory McGrath: I wanna see that video!
Stephen Fry: I want to tell you that Carol Vorderman also ate her moustache and excreted it. What's more, I happen to know that Alan Davies did the same thing, and I did it, and you did it, and everybody in the audience did it, and everybody at home in Homeland did it.
Phill Jupitus: Whoa, whoa, whoa! Look! Oi! (points at his moustache)
Stephen Fry: You've already eaten yours and pooed it out.
Phill Jupitus: Well, I beg to differ!
Stephen Fry: You've grown another one.
Phill Jupitus: I've grown another one? Eaten it and pooed it out?
Stephen Fry: Yes.
Phill Jupitus: When you're a baby in the womb, you have a full 'tache? Groucho Marx number and a cigar?
Stephen Fry: Hair starts on the upper lip, and then the eyebrows, and then it covers the whole body and it's called "lanugo", as in "wooly", and then during the last weeks of pregnancy the baby sheds all its little wool and eats it.
Phill Jupitus: Mmm, lovely hair!
Stephen Fry: It does, honestly. And the hair, along with mucus and bile and bits of intestine and cells shed from the skin -
Rory McGrath: Ooh, can I have the recipe again, Stephen?
Stephen Fry: ...Amniotic fluid and cells form little baby's first stool.
Bill Bailey: Yes, we laminated it.
Stephen Fry: Put it in the baby book? "Little Baby's First Turd"?
Bill Bailey: Why Barbra Streisand?
Stephen Fry: Well, why not? She's a person, it just seemed...
Stephen Fry: Why shouldn't I strip Alan naked and cover him in gold paint?
Phill Jupitus: You, win your Oscar properly like everybody else!
[edit]

Episode C.07

[About the world's smallest dog]
Stephen Fry: This one was a Yorkshire Terrier which died in 1945, and it was two-and-a-half inches high and three-and-three-quarter inches long, weighed four ounces and could fit inside this box...
[He produces a small wooden box from under the desk]
Jeremy Clarkson: Or between two slices of bread.
[While discussing a tortoise that was the last survivor of the Crimean War to pass away]
Alan Davies: My nephew's got one, and it attacks you. It actually runs at you and throws itself at you.
Sean Lock: Sure that's not a rabbit in a helmet?
Sean Lock: I got the worst Christmas present ever, ever in my life. My sister gave me a "Grow Your Own Loofah" kit.
Stephen Fry: God bless her!
Sean Lock: It was a clay pot, a bag of earth and five seeds. And I think the clay pot hit her hardest.
Stephen Fry: What colour was the Model T Ford?
Alan Davies: (presses buzzer)
Jeremy Clarkson: (sotto voce) Don't say, don't say, don't say...!
Alan Davies: Black?
[Klaxons sound]
Jeremy Clarkson: Did you know a veal has to have more space to be transported to the abbatoir than a human being in the back of an aeroplane?
Sean Lock: Yeah, but to be fair, we have a holiday, they get killed.
Jeremy Clarkson: D'you know what I had for my starter when I had the whale?
Stephen Fry: With grated puffin?
Jeremy Clarkson: I had a seal flipper, and it looked exactly like a marigold glove filled with wallpaper paste. And it sat and you thought, "Ooh...!" And it tasted exactly like licking a hot Turkish urinal.
Sean Lock: Is it nice, whale, just out of interest? I've heard it's very nice.
Jeremy Clarkson: It's exactly like steak, but with a slightly iron-y texture to it.
Alan Davies: Have you ever been on Ready Steady Cook?
Jeremy Clarkson: No.
Alan Davies: You could have a really good carrier bag, couldn't you?
Alan Davies: If you could glue one person's mouth up, who would it be?
Rich Hall: I would do it to a ventriloquist. Then he'd really have to work, wouldn't he?
[edit]

Episode C.08

[Corby is the largest town in England not to have an operating railway station, but which is due to re-open in 2011]
Bill Bailey: When it re-opens, the first thing'll be - (mimics a tannoy annoucement) "We apologise for the late arrival..."
[On NASA naming a crater on Mars after the town of Corby]
David Mitchell: If there is life on Mars, aren't they going to be angry that everywhere's been named according to some NASA-based in-joke system?
Alan Davies: We're all going to live on Mars, in the end.
Stephen Fry: ...Are we? Are you sure about that?
Bill Bailey: Yeah.
Alan Davies: Yeah.
Stephen Fry: That 1950s Boys' Adventure Book isn't necessarily...
Alan Davies: I watched this documentary, and they said eventually the Sun will explode or implode or something, and everything will be gone.
Stephen Fry: That won't help Mars, will it?
Alan Davies: No, on the way out we have to stop at Mars.
Phill Jupitus: Oh, I thought you meant there was a services there.
Alan Davies: There'll be someone trying to get you to join the RAC in the car park.
Alan Davies: Humans will leave this planet, Stephen, they will!
Stephen Fry: The Wise One has spoken, ladies and gentlemen!
Stephen Fry: Name three more Chinese inventions.
Alan Davies: Pot Noodle.
Bill Bailey: Er... whispers!
David Mitchell: I bet it [the first flush lavatory, invented by the Chinese] wasn't very good. I bet it's just a bucket on a shelf that you poke with a stick, and it falls on you.
[On fortune cookies, which are an American - not Chinese - invention]
Phill Jupitus: I wish they'd be a bit more honest - I mean, snap, "With the amount of MSG you've just had, a massive coronary is on the way"!
[After Alan has related a tale of him being a member of the pub quiz team]
Phill Jupitus: Wouldn't it be great if you walked into a pub with him, though, (points at Stephen) with Fry on your team? "Yeah, this is Barry from down the road. Yeah, he does look like him." And Fry would be there having to fake it in the pub - "Oh, blimey!"
Bill Bailey: Giving it away by swearing in Latin!
[On 'coffee tights' - tights made from caffeine - invented by the Chinese and designed to reduce cellulite]
David Mitchell: Are we going to have more clothes made of liquid? Like custard socks, or maybe a nice vodka hat.
Stephen Fry: Now you've said custard socks, I want them now!
David Mitchell: You can't have your custard socks until you've put on your gravy cardi.
[on 'coffee tights']]
Bill Bailey: Decaf coffee tights are ... just tights!
[on 'coffee tights']
David Mitchell: They'd stop your leg going to sleep.
[edit]

Episode C.10

[On the founder of MI6, Sir Mansfield Cumming]
Stephen Fry: His name was Cumming.
Clive Anderson: Yes...
Stephen Fry: That was his name - stop it... I said stop it, and I meant it -
Clive Anderson: So how did he get the job, then?
[On Sir Mansfield Cumming losing his leg in a car accident]
Alan Davies: When did he have a car crash, then? Before cars?
[On the inventor of the champagne cork opener]
Alan Davies: Did he insert them in his person?
Stephen Fry: You will never know how thin the ice upon which you were skating was, there. We had a little forfeit all ready for you.
[The words "rams them up his arse" appears on the screen behind the contestants]
[On opening champagne bottles the correct way]
John Sessions: I was always taught to do that. You actually twist it...
Stephen Fry: Yeah, twist, exactly. That's it.
Mark Steel: Where do you get taught these things?
Stephen Fry: Well, where did you go to school, Mark Steel?
Mark Steel: I went to Swanley Comprehensive, and that was every Tuesday morning we did Double Champagne Opening!
[While on the subject of "catulus", the Latin word for "dog", from which we derive the word "cat"]
Clive Anderson: The word "rabbit" is an interesting word, oddly enough -
Mark Steel: - Because that comes from the Latin for "giraffe"!
Stephen Fry: "Puss" is actually from the Ancient Egyptian "pasht", meaning "cat" - or "moon", incidentally.
Alan Davies: Why is "pussy" another word for a front bottom?
Stephen Fry: I don't know, it's not my area of expertise.
[edit]

Episode C.11

[On the subject of phobias]
Jo Brand: Yes, what am I afraid of? Psychopaths with axes coming into my room at night and killing me.
Stephen Fry: You're weird.
[While still on the subject of phobias]
Phill Jupitus: [presses buzzer] Fear itself.
Stephen Fry: Ah.
Phill Jupitus: And spiders.
Stephen Fry: What's coconut milk?
Phill Jupitus: Tasty!
Stephen Fry: Where's it come from? What's it made of?
Phill Jupitus: Coconut cows!
[Clive Anderson is the President of the Woodland Trust]
Phill Jupitus: How d'you become President? Did the squirrels vote for you?
[On the subject of cockfighting]
Stephen Fry: It says here, "A good cocker would think nothing of cleaning his cock's wounded head by sticking it in his mouth and sucking it clean".
Alan Davies: Yeah...
Clive Anderson: Yes...
Phill Jupitus: You're watching "QI For the Straight Guy"!
[On the original story of Cinderella]
Stephen Fry: The original stories were quite gruesome. When the ugly sisters tried to slip into the slipper, they cut off their toes and their bunions to try and squeeze in, and the slippers filled with blood.
Jo Brand: They probably got that idea from Trinny and Susannah.
[edit]

Episode C.12

Stephen Fry: What I want you to do first is to tell me all about the twelve Frenchmen and the twelve mosquitoes.
Dara O'Briain: [presses buzzer]
Stephen Fry: Dara O'Briain.
Dara O'Briain: Once upon a time...
[On what happened to the crew of the RMS Titanic]
Stephen Fry: Every single member of the crew had their wages stopped at the moment of the sinking. The moment a ship sinks, it is not a ship, therefore you can't work on it, therefore the White Star Line paid them up to the minute of the sinking.
Phill Jupitus: I would imagine that in a sinking situation, you'd hope to be getting time and a half.
[On the Titanic]
Phil Jupitus: Is it true that someone dressed as a lady to escape detection?
Stephen Fry: Yes, apparently it is true because it was women and children first.
Bill Bailey: I thought you said "someone dressed as a baby".
Phil Jupitus: (posh accent) "Yes, goo-goo indeed. I have a lollipop and I have no control over my urinary functions. I am, in fact, an infant. And I know you think I'm Lord Albermal, but I am in fact a little baby. With a beard. Yes, goo-goo, gaa-gaa. And Madam, may I tell you I've been a very naughty baby?"
Stephen Fry: When you applied for a job as seamen on the Merchant Navy, you either registered as an Able Seaman or an ordinary seaman, and they accepted your word, but you kept a log of your work - which was the real proof of it - and it was called a "certificate of continuous discharge".
Stephen Fry: How can you tell an ordinary seaman from an able one?
Phil Jupitus: Err... well...
[On what are and are not nuts]
Stephen Fry: Peanuts, almonds, pistachios, Brazils, cashews, coconuts, Horse-chestnuts, pine nuts are not nuts.
Bill Bailey: They're tiny shoes.
Stephen Fry: We were apparently rather resistant to the idea of destroying witches in England, unlike views espoused in so-called books - and I use the word "book" very loosely - like The Da Vinci Code. [pretends to spit in disgust] It is complete loose stool water. It is arse-gravy of the worst kind.
Alan Davies: Peter Cushing lived in Whitstable when I lived in Whitstable, and a local band had a song about him which went, "Peter Cushing lives in Whitstable / I have seen him on his bicycle / I have seen him buying vegetables / Peter Cushing lives in Whitstable..."
Stephen Fry: I was lucky to do a film with (in deeper voice) Christopher Lee, a very scary man. I was with Peter Cushing and he said, "No, Christoper, he's lovely. I'll phone him. Hello Chris? It's Peter." I'm like, this is great Dracula and Van Helsing! "I have a young man here who is going to work with you and he's rather scared of you. Here he is:" (Fry pretends to add phone over. He grits his teeth and rocks erratically on his chair) Lee: "Hello. Who is that?" Fry: "(Quickly) Hello, sir. My name is Stephen and I'm looking forward to working with you." Lee:"Oh, well then. I guess I'll see you on the set then. Can you hand back to Mister Cushing please?"
Alan Davies (impersonating Lee with hand phone to his ear): (deep voice) I have seen you buying vegetables!"
[Dara has been penalised for an answer he gained points for in the previous series that was technically incorrect, prompting viewers to write in]
Dara O'Briain: 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!"?
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