- 15 minutes ago
First broadcast 13th October 2006.
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Phill Jupitus
Ronni Ancona
Rory Bremner
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Phill Jupitus
Ronni Ancona
Rory Bremner
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Good evening. Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, and welcome once again to QI.
00:07Tonight on the panel we have four people who look uncannily like someone else.
00:12Please welcome Tony Blair.
00:17Tommy Cooper.
00:22Ruby Wax.
00:23I am so pleased to be here. I can't tell you. Really, I am. So pleased.
00:28And Alan Davis.
00:33Well, you do. In certain lights, you do.
00:39Alright, Brian May then.
00:40So, we start this evening with a dictionary theme. D for dictionary.
00:46So the buzzers are in alphabetical order too. Ronnie, give us an A.
00:51A B, please, Ronnie.
00:54A C, please.
00:58And a D.
01:07A, of course, is for Alan.
01:10So, Alan, where's the best place to start writing a dictionary?
01:14With I would say at the A's
01:21Well, it seems in lexicography the art of dictionary writing they like to start with M
01:29The theory is that they've got their I in by the time they get to A's they mean the M's
01:34are probably rubbish
01:35That means they started with the I then hey, no, no when I said hi
01:39I'm in EYE and you thought yeah, possibly for comic effect, but it's so
01:49It was completely something else it was one of those laughable misunderstandings and I used the word laughable quite wrongly
01:57Anyway the wrong dictionaries we turn and plunge into the heart of darkness
02:01Name if you can the subject of the three volume book whose first volume is entitled
02:07The long years of obscurity
02:12The career of Phil Collins
02:19Well not miss me and him as I loads of people on and he did a song called where's my
02:24hat and he was wearing his hat throughout
02:31Do another song it's rubbish
02:34Is this book about the word obscurity before it got famous how it was beaten by its adjective father?
02:44Left on the doorstep abandoned by his mother and then it was the only man growing up in a house
02:49of verbs
02:50Is it?
02:50The verbs were always going out doing lovely things because they're doing words and poor old obscurity
02:56Was stuck inside suffering from asthma
02:59And then after school, after school it was surrounded by quotation marks
03:04And got beaten up terribly and then one day entered into a reality TV show and it became very famous
03:11And it was much in demand and used to describe all the people that believe big brother has
03:20Absolutely amazing
03:24God I wish that were true Ronnie, I really do
03:27Is it Chairman Mao?
03:29It's not Chairman Mao the long years of obscurity
03:31This begins with D. It's got two D's in it. In fact, that's your clue
03:35Double diamond
03:38It's the sort of thing that railway enthusiasts
03:41They always try and make their steam trains sound more exotic
03:45Well, that's very odd you're on railways
03:47Do you actually know this because it is my local station
03:49It's about didcut
03:50It is about didcut
03:52You know how extraordinary you knew that
03:54Well didcut is only a station because the people of abingdon
03:56Was so snooty they decided we can't have a station don't want a station all that noise with steam all
04:00that so the local lord
04:02Wantage said no no we won't have it we'll have it up the road in didcut
04:05So they built a station next to the power station you see there
04:09Which is the third worst eyesore in the country?
04:11It was a country life thing you know what the first one was
04:14People public people
04:20Poorly groomed servants
04:36If I find that you've been intercepting my mail I should
04:41Let us know what was wind farms it was wind farms
04:48Oh really yeah, but the power station was designed by the same guy that did liverpool cathedral so
04:53You must have some points for knowing about didcut
04:55So am I do I get a little point for the railway
04:58You get five points for the railway and you're astonishingly moving story about the early abuse suffered by the the
05:04word obscurity
05:06You also get the telephone number of the therapist
05:09A little too late
05:15A didcut though is the small oddly shaped bit of card
05:19Which a ticket inspector cuts out of a ticket with his clipper for no apparent reason
05:22It's a little known fact that the confetti at princess margaret's wedding was made up of thousands of didcuts collected
05:28by inspectors on the royal train
05:33It's just got the second best of bloody everything
05:37Let's get some didcuts together for the girl
05:43It's not number one on a young girl's wish list a big white wedding lots of didcuts
05:50That particular fact i gave you is not so much a fact as a made-up thing
05:54It comes from the book the meaning of lift which oddly enough was co-written by douglas adams and the
06:00producer of this program
06:01And he somehow smuggled it onto my card
06:04Anyway there you are didcut does have and this is so typical of didcut
06:07The second oldest you tree in the country not the oldest no the second oldest
06:131600 years old though that's quite an old you third ugliest second oldest yeah always the brides my dicks are
06:21Anyway from didcut the gudansk of oxfordshire to the booby people of bioko what
06:27Can't the booby people of bioko do in the dark see very well
06:35I would imagine i want something that's specific to the boobies go to the lab
06:40Can't go to the lavatory in the dark no they're scared of it
06:45Well the fact is yes the isle of bioko used to be called fernando poe spelt poo but pronounced poe
06:52Do you know where bioko is the island is
06:55Equatorial guinea is the right answer five points that's very good i've never heard of it
07:00i'm impressed there it is
07:03There's equatorial guinea and it belongs to it it's in that sort of bite there and the booby
07:07Make up about 10 percent uh there are 40 000 of them
07:10They sound like the sort of tribe that those old intrepid colonial type
07:13Women travelers that you hear on desert island discs used to stay at
07:17Yes i stayed with the boobies for three years
07:20Happy happy days really and you know they look so wonderful in their bright colors and i get so
07:26Terribly annoyed the way they're patronized and their attributes dismissed it is very hard to wear yellow well you know
07:35It's rather bizarre because oddly enough uh the information
07:39We have about the boobies not being able to do this thing that they can't do at night
07:43Comes from one of the great female explorers of our times
07:46Talk eat sing walk climb
07:49First one you said talk they can't talk at night no because they're talking is mostly gesture ah they
07:56Can't see what they're saying so they can talk about each other behind their backs
07:59Yes
08:04But the great mary kingsley who was the sister
08:11I learned it all from the boobies
08:16But this was a good
08:17That was a good idea
08:27Mary kingsley writing in 1897 the sister of charles kingsley who gave us the water babies this is her description
08:33of her encounter with a crocodile
08:35Get ronnie to read it i would get ronnie to read it's the bottom one there i've highlighted it in
08:39pink
08:40Yes that's right he chose to quite get his front paws over the stem of my canoe
08:46Over the stern of my canoe rather should i say i haven't got my glasses so sorry
08:50And endeavored to improve our acquaintance and i had to return to the bows and fetch him a clip on
08:57the snout with the paddle
08:58That's it that's the way
09:06These women they always have this extraordinary oppressive story it always finishes up well yes i was
09:11Interned on some ghastly cam quite brimming over wood typhus survived on nothing but an ostrich egg for four years
09:19If you read the telegraph obituaries they're full of all sorts of people they're wonderful all retired army officers spent
09:24the war underground
09:26That's right
09:26There was an extraordinary
09:29Scottish peer who had one of those weird double titles like lord elgin and duncan and he was an extraordinary
09:35hero because he was the only
09:37Man apart from general roberts ever to be a knight of the garter and to have won a vc and
09:41it described in his obituary how
09:42He dropped the second part of his title in the 1960s or early 70s when social
09:48Fashions and acceptability was beginning to change and he arrived at a dinner and he looked at the place cards
09:53to see who was sitting next to him
09:55And he saw his own place card said lord elgin and then to see who was next to him he
09:58just saw duncan
10:02Someone had said who's coming to the well we've got lord elgin and duncan
10:05Where are we going to put duncan oh dear we'll put him next to him he'll be happier there
10:14Those strange women on desert island did you ever hear diana mosley now she liked a bit of wagner
10:19She did like that but she she likes hitler and uh
10:23Many manager somebody what people don't understand is is how funny he was it was very fun. You know his
10:29eyes were quite blue
10:30Oh, yes, oh, you said quite blue makes it all right quite blue. Yeah, you won't see never forgotten
10:38Well, that's all right, then
10:41Dio mostly was a mitchat girl of course and then married also mostly the fascist i met her and she
10:46said to me of course you never knew hitler did you
10:55I once pleasure to donkey to buy dinner in belgium
11:02They are they're really highly sexist woman there was i first crossed the goblin doesn't when i was 75 and
11:09that's when i met abdul
11:10who was 50 years my junior but went at it like a rabbit always on the wall
11:16curved like a scimitar it was
11:24That's right they can't talk because their language is so dependent on gestures according to mary kingsley in 1997 that
11:29they can't communicate meaningfully
11:31They can't see each other which is slightly worrying because the president is actually from the same tribe the boobies
11:36so whether he
11:37It's great they get a visit from margaret beckett as foreign secretary because of course she can't move below the
11:41neck
11:42Whereas she says blair's all the gestures and all that sort of stuff people love booby
11:48And george bush she does a lot of that he does you know he walks walks as if he's carrying
11:52two sheep for some reason
11:59And uses the odd word merkin you know you know merkin is but it's a pubic wig
12:05And george bush uses it all the time in his speeches i'm proud to be a merkin
12:15He also he also beats the cornish for his dislike of tourism doesn't he so we will not put up
12:21with tourists i don't approve of tourists and tourism
12:24war against tourism so um
12:28From the darkness which the boobies cannot communicate to dartmoor who owns dartmoor prison
12:34Thanks to charles you're on
12:36See
12:37Barkling form
12:38He does
12:46There he is
12:47Is he really?
12:48Having a visit yes it belongs to the duchy of corn
12:51duchy of cornwall
12:52Does he have no more making organic yoghurt
12:56No no he's he's a snout baron down there
13:01Norman Stanley Windsor you are
13:06Hello grouty um
13:09As an ex jailbird i can tell you that snout is very very old hat
13:12Very pure chapeau
13:13What do they call it now?
13:14Very pure chapeau
13:15Burn just burn
13:16Burn
13:16Yeah yeah two's up when you burn
13:18Two's up when you burn
13:19Two's up i swear i'm getting an erection
13:23I have to say when i first arrived in prison i was a little discombobulated by the entire experience
13:27As you can imagine you have to give your fingerprints and take your clothes off and it's all very
13:31It's just like public school it's lovely
13:34The first person came and said two's up
13:36I said
13:40What where two's up two's up mate two's up on your burn
13:44Two's up means when you've finished your cigarette you give it
13:48To the guy who's first to say two's up to you and he gets the rights
13:51It's like saying bags have your fag end basically
13:53And then they collect about six of those and then they make a new cigarette
13:56Do you think prince charles says that to his mum two's up on your throne
14:04Anyway yes prince charles or strictly speaking the duchy of gormall does indeed own dartmoor
14:09And while on this subject of royalty and alan alan if you were knighted what would the queen say to
14:15you
14:15Arise
14:22No no she wouldn't are you sure she doesn't say no i'm sorry i have to draw the lines
14:36Somewhere
14:36Well after his name for which we'll say alan after alan's name is announced
14:40The knight elect alan kneels on a knighting stool
14:43What are the chances
14:45You'll never know
14:46I wouldn't turn it down i'm not pop
14:49In front of the queen who then lays the sword blade on the knight's right and then left shoulder
14:54I'll be like that good cheer
14:55That's it
14:56After he has been dubbed the new knight stands up
14:59Contrary to popular belief the words arise sir dot dot dot are not used
15:03The queen then invest the knight with the insignia of the order to which he's been appointed a star or
15:07badge
15:08Depending on the order by tradition clergy receiving a knighthood
15:11What's the difference when clergy are knighted if they happen to be they kneel on a corgi
15:17No there's no sword no sword you can't take a sword to a clergyman exactly no you'd have to take
15:22a dagger wouldn't you
15:23Yeah exactly
15:25A scimitar or an axe
15:27Yeah exactly yeah
15:29The strict meaning of the word akenade is the salutation given on the bestowal of a knighthood from the
15:35Latin meaning of an embrace around the neck around the coal as in collar but you know about degradation
15:42And that's when you have your knighthood taken away the last public one was in 1621 when sir francis mitchell
15:48was found guilty of grievous exactions
15:51And had his spurs broken and thrown away his belt cut and his sword broken over his head and was
15:57then pronounced to be no longer a knight
15:59But a knave oh all by the king yeah, it would have been james first wouldn't it yes wow
16:06It's when she did Alan sugar did he go you're fired
16:11You degraded you are a knave
16:15Anyway now a cluster of questions about drips drops and dribbles and what shape is a raindrop
16:20We're doing a shape that I think would be a possible raindrop shape you are doing oh dear
16:28You've been doing so well it's not pear shaped or tear shaped i'm going to do another one yeah
16:39I don't think we even thought of that one no should i do a cock and balls
16:46It will be your coat of arms if you decide to be knighted won't you it's been so long
16:55Perfect circle is the right answer
17:01They used to use this thing that gravity made liquid completely spherical they used to have huge towers they're called
17:08shot towers
17:08There was one in waterloo until they shot lead shot exactly yeah huge one in america in baltimore
17:13Which was the tallest building in america until they built washington monument and they literally drop molten lead
17:19And it hits the water and it's just completely around by the time it seems extraordinary you'd think when it
17:23hit the water get flattened but
17:25Maybe someone will write in and explain but not to me
17:30All bearings and various other things have utilized this marvelous fact about liquids turning spherical as they fall
17:36Uh where might you bump into the world's biggest drip
17:44The biggest drip is in a cave it is in a cave it would be uh stalactite is the right
17:51answer well done
17:57The gruttered tomato in south america has the biggest of them all how big is it vast is the answer
18:06Thanks for that how big is it oh very
18:10I find was to quantified bigness will be doing it a disservice
18:14To say just how bigly big
18:17The vastly big bigness of the dripping thing
18:21I would feet meters anything throw me a bone for you
18:26The answer is actually about 20 meters long
18:28Thank you and they're between 18 and 20,000 years old and the ones that go up are called
18:34stalagmites we've got a g in because they're in the ground
18:37stalactites are in the ceiling
18:39I was always taught tights hang down
18:41Was the thing but it's
18:43Public school again
18:44Ah you know I
18:45You didn't really understand about those things but anyway
18:47For I put on the 15 denier and see me in my snow
18:54Oh lord you don't want me
18:56What does that mean anyway denier what's that
18:57It's it's a unit of sheerness of ladies underparts
19:03The stockings are sheer however sheer they are it's rated in denier
19:07What's the sheerest you can get
19:08Bare legs
19:09Well that is very
19:10No 10 you can get 10 that's sheer that's sheer after 30 denier they go into the peak
19:17So I see the higher the denier the less sheer they are
19:20Yes I understand fry you oaf those are fishnets
19:28Yeah the biggest trip is in the cave of the forest king the gruter re del matto in braviu
19:34So can you identify the world's biggest crashing ball
19:38Is this something to do with river seven it's sort of a tidal wave it's forced down a narrow inlet
19:45Against the direction of current yes absolutely right it's a bore and a crashing ball is the term
19:50Given to a very high bore that crests and foams people surf on them
19:54They do surf on them and in fact a man called king from gloucestershire he has the world record for
19:59surfing 7.6
20:00Miles well said him over an hour and a half to go up to the seven but it can't be
20:05the biggest we never have the biggest
20:06That's not the biggest you know the biggest you're quite right is in china
20:08Yangtze it's not the yangtze it's the chen tang
20:12The seine had one harris had a very good one it was called le masquerie
20:16But they dredged it in the 60s and the bore stopped happening now where is the largest floater under the
20:23sun
20:25In the office of the deputy prime minister
20:30Blue whale always the blue whale one day it will be the answer to something
20:36It hasn't been yet has it
20:38No that isn't it then
20:38No you've lost a lot of points
20:40Floater under the sun is well the sun is gaseous
20:44Gaseous ball but under the sun so not the sun itself it might be one of the gas giants jupiter
20:49uranus
20:51What's the other one neptune saturn saturn is the right answer
20:56Saturn's density is only 70 percent that of water and therefore would float if you found a large enough amount
21:02of water
21:02Huge amounts of helium and liquid hydrogen and so on it really is impossible to distinguish its atmosphere from its
21:08surface
21:08It's just a great gassy thing saturn anyway, we'll never go there at least i wouldn't
21:14Even if i could i wouldn't i'd say no i'm not going to go there
21:19You can't get him into supper
21:22Now that is true
21:24Anyway after that astonishing lack of knowledge except on the part of alan for no less a thing than the
21:28third largest object in the solar system
21:31We move easily into the orbit of general ignorance so palms on mushroomoid buzzers
21:35The current edition of the occidental distinction is it happens lists some 290 000 sparkling words
21:43And 615 000 word forms if you add in all the proper names which dictionaries omit estimates of the total
21:49number of words in our language
21:51Exceed three million so bear that in mind when i ask you this how many different kinds of plant
21:56Are there in the world is it more than you think
22:00Fewer than you think or about as many as you think
22:04I can't think does that rule me
22:09One
22:10You think there's one it's going to be one or it's going to be two billion
22:17Fewer than i think trees plants grass that's it
22:24Trees flowers weeds and grass
22:29Well my
22:32The answer is certainly fewer than anybody ever thought
22:35Kew gardens reckon there are a million types of plant but they look back in the record almost every single
22:41plant has been named four times
22:43So they're probably only a quarter as many plants as we thought there once were vegetables
22:48other
22:50Maybe as few as 223 000 i've lost interest yes i agree
22:54Yeah
22:56Now tell us who fought whom in the battle of culloden
23:01Yeah
23:02The battle of culloden is quite complicated because it was basically an italian fought with a polish accent
23:11with a bunch of highlanders some irish a few french
23:16Fighting some scottish lowlanders english led by a fat german from hanover
23:22It's a very good description of the battle of culloden indeed there were the campbells and the rosses and the
23:27grants and the gardens and many of the lowland families
23:29There were more scots there beating prince charles edward stewart than there were english
23:34It's so weird that these national heroes are not from the place that they're supposed to be william wallace was
23:40from
23:41kenya
23:41his mother was maasai
23:43no not really
23:45Just for a second i was going wow
23:50baby beckham is definitely from tinkwood
23:52yes that is true
23:54but you see i was educated in scotland and all english history is omitted as a matter of course
24:00the only thing that will be mentioned is bannock burn
24:04yes
24:04we beat the bastards
24:06and the irony is of course that the tories have never been voted for in scotland for the past 20
24:11years
24:11and the jacobite was a tory rebellion it was the tories who were the
24:14pro-stuart catholic high church anglican party and it was their fight and indeed the tories were out of power
24:21for the next
24:2250 and 60 years because they were jacobites it led to tartan being banned you weren't allowed to deep fry
24:28pizza anymore
24:31you're quite right and it was they were very savage in the reprisals and butcher cumberland
24:35all prisoners were killed yes do you know what the soldiers are called the soldiers are called tommy
24:44lobsters and also it was the first battle they were trained to use bayonets for the first time you
24:48you couldn't have a war like that in scotland now what's that smoking ban oh yay very good indeed
24:54so culloden was really more of a local difficulty it was highland versus lowland it was like celtic
24:59and rangers catholic versus protestant essentially it's that kind of fight and it goes on to this day
25:05will we never learn who knows religion shit it anyway
25:16you're watching the moral maze
25:19there were more scots in the force which finally defeated body prince charlie than there were in
25:23his own army it was basically a local derby that's the point and lastly what do dolphins drink
25:30oh aren't they beautiful ah they don't drink anything he's right they drink nothing nothing at all
25:38excellent
25:42as mammals like us their kidneys can't process seawater so they can't certainly drink seawater
25:46and they're a bit far away from fresh water unless they're two of those rare species in china and south
25:51america that are river dolphins so they just metabolize everything they eat the fat gives them
25:57enough water but when they haven't eaten enough then they usually die of dehydration rather than
26:02of hunger yeah i don't know why we haven't realized that before because there's that
26:12he's trying to say something
26:17funnily enough in captivity if you point a hose of fresh water at them they will drink it but then
26:24they won't eat for two days they can't distinguish hunger from thirst
26:32people say that they are in fact smarter than people but if they were wouldn't they be saying that
26:40the reason dolphins don't drink is because with these they can't get the fridge open in the
26:44supermarket
26:51they don't
26:52dolphin in aisle four
26:52we have a mop up there's a dead dolphin in aisle four
26:58this keeps happening he's by the tizer
27:04get the nets out no mind the tuna don't get them
27:09anyway it must be time for the score so let's have a little bit of a look shall we i
27:16literally do
27:16not know what to say second equal with minus seven are rory brenner phil jupiters and alan danes
27:53and speaking of what dolphins don't drink i'll leave you with this
27:57topical photograph good night
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