British Comedy Guide
QI. Image shows from L to R: Alan Davies, Sandi Toksvig. Copyright: TalkbackThames
QI

QI

  • TV panel show
  • BBC Two / BBC One / BBC Four
  • 2003 - 2025
  • 324 episodes (22 series)

Panel game that contains lots of difficult questions and a large amount of quite interesting facts. Stars Sandi Toksvig, Stephen Fry and Alan Davies.

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Series A, Episode 11 - Arts

Ant

Topics

- Pigeons don't like going to the movies because they see the world ten times faster than humans. To them, a film is a slow slide show.

- It was once believed that a pigeon's arse could be used to suck out the poison from an adder's bite. Pigeons are the only bird that can suck.

- The ant has the largest brain in comparison to its body size of any animal. (Forfeit: Human)

- There are 8,000 species of ant.

- Soldier ants were used by the ancient Indians as stitches in operations.

- In Thailand, red ants are poured into open wounds, because they secrete an acid that acts as an antiseptic and a painkiller.

- A greasy butcher, hog snout, and Gene Pitney are all kinds of apple.

- Apples and a game played with headless goats both originated from Kazakhstan.

- Both Ulysses S. Grant and John Prescott have both been arrested for speeding and have won interesting prizes. Grant won a prize for taming a pony in a circus. As a boy, the Prescott family won second prize for being "The most typical family in Britain" in 1951. However, they should have won first prize because the winning family was found to have been distantly related to the organiser of the competition.

General Ignorance

- The largest living thing on Earth is the honey mushroom. (Forfeit: Blue whale; Giant redwood)

- The first man to claim that the Earth goes around the Sun was Aristarchus. (Forfeit: Copernicus)

- Apart from other humans, the animal that kills more human beings than any other is the hippopotamus.

- Tangent: A hippopotamus's breath is so bad that it is used as part of its weaponry. George Washington had hippopotamus false teeth.

- The telephone was invented by Antonio Meucci.

Deleted Scenes

- Turkey eats more apples than any other country in world, with Germany second. The UK is lowest consumer of apples in Europe, but eats more bananas than any other country in the world. The banana is the most traded object in supermarkets.

Scores

- Richard E. Grant: 12 points
- Linda Smith: 5 points
- Bill Bailey: -2 points
- Alan Davies: -18 points

Broadcast details

Date
Thursday 20th November 2003
Time
10pm
Channel
BBC Two
Length
30 minutes

Cast & crew

Cast
Stephen Fry Host / Presenter
Alan Davies Regular Panellist
Guest cast
Bill Bailey Guest
Linda Smith Guest
Richard E. Grant Guest
Writing team
Samantha Ball Researcher
Adam Jacot de Boinod Researcher
Sophie Johnstone Researcher
Molly Oldfield Researcher
Adam King Researcher
Production team
Ian Lorimer Director
John Lloyd Producer
Phil Clarke Executive Producer
Richard Everton Editor
Jonathan Paul Green Production Designer
Howard Goodall Composer

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