QI

Themes

- The buzzers are all slang terms from Francis Grose's 1785 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Chris has: "fiddle-faddle", which means "talking nonsense". Cariad has: "frog's wine", which means "gin". Neil has: "twiddle-diddles", meaning "testicles". Alan has: "flying pastie", which is to wrap a turd in paper and throwing it over a neighbour's wall.

Topics

- The thing that begins with "V" and is very vulgar if visible on a woman is a violin. When the Royal Academy of Music was founded in 1822, with an equal number of boys and girls, no of the girls played violin. Female violinists did not appear there for another 50 years. As late as 1880, The Fiddler magazine declared that all movements made while playing the violin would turn a woman into a, "hideous, big-armed, unmarriageable beast." Religious people also believe the violin to be the "devil's instrument". Niccolo Paganini was said to have done a deal with the devil to become such a skilled violinist. German musical prodigy Gertrud Schmeling, born 1749, was one of the first internationally famous opera singers, but she had to give up the violin because it was thought to be unfeminine. Cellos were also considered unfeminine. One notable exception in terms of female violinists was Anna Maria della Pieta, an 18th century orphan in Venice who was taught by Vivaldi. She played the violin, viola, cello, oboe, lute, mandolin and harpsichord. (Forfeit: Vulva)

- XL Tangent: As a child, Sandi tried playing the violin for six months. When she got home one day she was given a present. It was an oil can, and after that she did not play the violin. Chris played the piano for a year at school, and then was asked to stop. Neil went to a Catholic school, with lots of priests around, so he claims that Fiddler on the Roof was more of a warning.

- XL Tangent: Vivaldi originally trained to be a Roman Catholic priest, but had to quit because he was allergic to incense.

- XL Tangent: There are several reasons give as to why there are so few left-handed violinists. One is the risk of opposite-handed violinists bumping into each other while playing. Some people think the audience might get seasick if they watched them perform. However, the main reason is that left-handed violins would be more expensive to make. The entire structure would be different and thus most left-handed people will learn to play a normal violin. Famous left-handed musicians include Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix, who played with their guitars upside down.

- Tangent: In orchestras, viola players are subjected to jokes mocking them. Wagner described viola players as: "infirm violinists". Examples of viola jokes include: "What's the difference between a trampoline and a viola? You have to take your shoes off to jump on a trampoline." "Why do most people take an instant dislike to violists? It saves time." "What's the difference between a violist and a dog? A dog can stop scratching." "How do you get four viola players in tune? Shoot three of them." Viola jokes date back to at least the 18th century.

- XL Tangent: Neil has a real-life oboe joke, which occurred when he went to see an orchestra play film scores. He was sitting in the front of the woodwind section with a friend, and when they played the Star Wars theme, afterwards Neil's friend leaned in and said: "OBOE-wan Ken-OBOE." Famous viola plays have included Beethoven, Mozart and Hendrix. Stradivari violas are worth more than the violins, with once called the Macdonald worth $45million. In 2013, a musician named Kim Kashkashian won a Grammy for a solo viola piece.

- XL: A violinist is useful in a battle to the death because they can hear where certain projectiles are coming from. Fritz Kreisler was one of the most successful violists at the turn of the 20th century, with Elgar's Violn Concerto was dedicated to him, and him playing with Rachmaninov. At the start of World War I, Kreisler served as an officer in the Austrian army, and Kreisler discovered that he could pinpoint where missiles were fired from by the change of pitch as they ascended and descended. He was sent out on reconnaissance missions where he would mark out on a map where he thought missiles were reaching their greatest height by just the sound. From this, the Austrians could pinpoint the exact range of the Russian guns. Kreisler later wrote a book about his experiences, and he wrote that he regretted that his artistic upbringing had made him so sensitive to the horrors of the war.

- XL Tangent: Another violent violin was the shrew's fiddle, which was a torture implement used in medieval Germany as a punishment for bickering. It consists of a hinged piece of wood with holes in it, locking around the culprit's neck with their hands in front of them. There were also two-holed versions used on bickering couples, forcing those bickering to face each other until they stopped bickering.

- The Roman emperor Vespasian was like the king of rock and roll because they both died on the toilet. Elvis Presley famously died on the toilet, his last words to his fiancée Ginger Alden being: "I'm just going to the bathroom to read." Vespasian's last words were: "I think I'm becoming a god." Vespasian had diarrhoea at the time, and the Romans had a tradition of deifying their emperors when they died.

- Tangent: When Vespasian took power in 69 AD, he was the fourth emperor in a year. Nero died and was succeeded by Galba, who was then rapidly assassinated and 120 people came forward and said it was them. Galba was succeeded by Otho, who in turned was followed by Vitellius, who himself was murdered. Vitellius had been a friend of Galba's, and thus tracked the 120 people who said they killed him, and had them killed. Vespasian then became emperor and reigned for 27 years. Vitellius has a way of supplementing his income was that whenever someone claimed they had made him a beneficiary in their will, he would have them murdered. Vespasian made money by imposing a tax on urine collected from public urinals, and sold the urine to be used in tanning and wool production. Vespasian was unpopular during his lifetime, with the historian Suetonius writing: "He had an expression that made him look like he was straining to have a shit."[/indent[

- Tangent: Vespasian and his children Titus and Domition commissioned the Colosseum. Neil did a tour of the Coloseeum, and while there he witnessed a family argument where two teenage boys were having a row with each other for about ten minutes. The father eventually shouted: "Will you stop?! This is the Colosseum. It is no place for fighting!"

- The most quite interesting thing that's ever been in a vagina is a live fish. In 1023, the bishop of the Holy Roman city of Worms, Burchard, produced a collection of 20 books listing all the possible sins that somebody could commit. One of the sins listed was a pagan ritual of a woman putting a live fish up her vagina. In the ritual, after the fish had been inserted, they waited for the fish to die, then cook it and serve it to their husband. Birchard wrote that the punishment for this should be two years of penance. (Forfeit: You, Sandi)

- Tangent: Cariad has seen someone put a live fish into an arsehole. A performer called Mouse, worked with Ken Campbell, had an act where she bent over, put a fish in her arsehole, and through some dancing and movement, the fish would emerge from her arse and land in a paddling pool. Mouse re-enacted this act at Campbell's memorial and Cariad said it was the highlight of the evening. Other unusual acts of the era Chris Lynam, famous for performing a routine where he stuck a lit firework up his buttocks.

- XL Tangent: Maui, the Polynesian trickster god, was killed by the Maori goddess of the underworld who crushed him with death with the obsidian teeth of her vagina. The Vishkanya were female assassins of ancient India who were raised on poisons from birth, thus they had lethal body fluids and killed their victims on sexual contact.

- Tangent: In the 1700s, Mary Toft of Godalming, Surrey, was famous for giving birth on multiple occasions to dead rabbits. She credited this to having been startled by a rabbit whilst pregnant. She was examined by Swiss doctor Nathaniel St. Andre, and he was so convinced of this story that he wrote about it in A Short Narrative of the Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbits. Just as the book was about to be published, it was revealed that her husband had been buying rabbits, thus ruining Andre's career as he had fallen for this hoax.

- Circling vultures mean they are climbing upwards on an updraft. This allows them to reach great heights while not using much energy, and they can spot prey from a bigger distance. However, law enforcement has tried to use vultures to find human remains, but it very rarely works. A scheme trialled in Germany used a vulture named Sherlock, but Sherlock did not like flying, could not distinguish between human and animal remains, and had anxiety. Another two vultures called Columbo and Miss Marple were brought in, but they just fought.

- Tangent: The subject of how vultures locate carcasses is one of serious debate. In the 1800s, ornithological circles, debate split between the nose-arians who believed vultures located bodies by smell, and anti-nose-arians who believed they used sight. In 1834, Rev. John Bachman of South Carolina was determined to prove that vultures had no sense of smell. He put a painting of a completely eviscerated sheep in his garden with some rotting offal a few feet away, and on 50 separate occasions, every single time the vultures arrived, they attacked the painting and ignored the offal. The truth is that there are different kinds of vulture, some of which go by smell and others by sight. There is one species that hunts entirely by smell, which is the American turkey vulture. Gas companies use them to detect gas leaks. Natural gas is odourless, so a foul-smelling gas called ethyl mercaptan is added to it, which is the same smell released by decaying carrion. Thus, if vultures go near a pipeline, you can tell there is a gas leak.

- Tangent: Neil once ate ram's testicles as a dare in college. He says you have to do it in stages, the first being to get a good firm grip of the ram. Sandi has eaten testicles, known as prairie oysters in the USA, which she did not care for.

- You can sex a wasp by looking for the number of antennae segments it has. Males have 13 antennae segments, and the females have 12. Also, only female wasps sting, but the males have a nasty prick. Research at Kobe University in Japan in 2022 revealed that male wasps have a kind of retractable spine on either side of the aedeagus, which is the insect version of a penis. When put in a tank with frogs, the wasps repeatedly jabbed the face of the frog with their spiky genitals until they were left alone. (Forfeit: Very carefully)

- Tangent: The wasps you most usually find in the UK are the common wasp and the German wasp. You can tell the difference between the two by the face spots.

- XL Tangent: Hornets are a type of wasp, but not all wasps are hornets. A 2012 study revealed that a strain of yeast in the belly of a hibernating European hornet makes excellent beer. It is called bumble yeast.

- XL: The thing that has been verified as the most vulgar vote in history was the election of Charles King, making him president of Liberia for a third term in 1927. He got around 230,000 votes, and the opposition 9,000 votes. However, Liberia only had 15,000 registered voters, meaning the turnout was 1,660%. This election is in the Guinness Book of Records as the most fraudulent election in history.

- XL Tangent: Alan suggests a vulgar vote would have been for an Italian porn star who won an election. Neil reveals that he was in a porn film - or to be more accurate, he was on TV in the background of an adult clip his friend sent him.

- XL Tangent: Other fraudulent election results include Saddam Hussein winning 100% of the Iraqi vote in 2002; Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan who in 1992 with 99.5%; Chechnya's United Russia party in 2011 with 99.5%; and Raul Castro winning the 2008 Cuban election with 99.4%. There are some genuine one-sided elections. For example, a 2013 referendum in the Falkland Islands about whether to remain part of the UK or to become part of Argentina, 99.8% voted to remain, and just three people voted to join Argentina.

- XL Tangent: In North Korea, voter turnout in elections is about 99.97%. Everyone aged over 17 must vote, with the only people exempt at people on boats at sea. You are supposed to turn up early and queue, and voters are given a ballot paper with only one name on it, which you put straight into the ballot box. It is the law that you have to turn up and vote.

General Ignorance

- If you are calling someone on a phone, you only need to be on it for about two seconds before there is enough information to track your location - or as Alan suggests, it depends on what film you are watching. It used to take a long time back in the 1970s, when you had switchboard operators who manually connected people. However, the process is now digital and thus tracking is almost instantaneous. When you make a call, the International Mobile Equipment Identity number (IMEI) is transmitted and can be used to identify you. This number is associated with the device, so changing the SIM card won't change the number. Triangulation using different towers is then used to pinpoint you.

- The form of energy production which kills most birds is fossil fuel production. In the UK, about 500,000 birds a year are killed by wind turbines, but 50million are killed by cats in the same period. Environmental damaged caused by fossil fuel production kills more birds, due to forest loss, depleted habitats and air pollution. The Audubon Society, which is the US environmental organisation, estimates that two thirds of species in North America are at risk of extinction because of rising temperatures. Wind projects kill 0.269 bird per gigawatt hour of electricity, but fossil fuel projects kill 5.81 birds per gigawatt hour. (Forfeit: Wind turbines)

- Tangent: One way to help birds avoid wind turbines is to paint them. A Norwegian study revealed that if one of the white blades is painted black, the whole turbine flashes black and white, thus warning the birds. Polish research has shown that clean bus shelters were seven times more likely to have been recently hit by flying birds than vandalised shelters. A million birda a year are killed by un-vandalised bus shelters. Alan says this is weird because you never see birds on a bus, but Sandi says she saw a goose on the Circle Line, and she was so shocked she didn't get on the train when it arrived.

- In a flat-out race between a peregrine falcon and a pigeon, the pigeon would win. Peregrine falcons are the fastest animal in the world when they are diving, also known as stooping, travelling between 200-240mph. However, in level flight, the falcon cruises between 40-56mph. Wild wood pigeons, which are prey for the falcons, routinely maintain speeds in excess of 75mph, and racing pigeons at 90mph. Thus, if the race is flat, the pigeon would win.

- Tangent: If you took a comparably streamlined, but much larger animal, and causes it to fall in the same way as a peregrine falcon, it would be faster. If you took a 16ft long, 10 stone, female blue marlin, and launched it from a hot air balloon, the marlin would reach a terminal velocity of 590mph.

Scores

- Cariad Lloyd: 1 point
- Neil Delamere: -3 points
- Chris McCausland: -5 points
- Alan Davies: -16 points