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.
- Continues on Monday 10th February on BBC2 at 10pm with Series V, Highlights Special
- Catch-up on Series V, Episode 13
- Streaming rank this week: 263
Episode menu
Series V, Episode 12 - Vices and Virtues
Topics
- The least-romantic Valentine's Day experiences is being chosen your sweetheart by lot. This was done in many parts of Europe, including Britain, in the 17th century. The women would write their names on a piece of paper, put them in a box, and the men would draw a name out at random. In some villages, the men were expected to court the woman they had picked until the following Valentine's Day, whereas in others it was just for the day. Another English tradition was that the very first person you saw on Valentine's Day was the person who would be your Valentine. Thus, people would sneak into their sweetheart's garden, so when they opened the curtains the first person they would see would be them. In Hamlet, Ophelia says: "Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's day, all in the morning betime, and I a maid at your window, to be your Valentine."
- Tangent: Eshaan suggests the answer is knowing that the person you've been in love with for three months doesn't want you. Eshaan was in love with someone ten years ago, and for Valentine's Day he took an Earl grey tea, her favourite book, and tickets to a West End musical. Eshaan didn't hear back for two days, and the woman thanked her for flowers, which he didn't send. When Eshaan asked where she had been, she told him she went to see a West End show with a man she had been seeing for the last two months. She married the other man. For the story, Sandi gives Eshaan five points. Rhys says his most romantic moment was taking Eshaan's girlfriend to the theatre.
- XL Tangent: Rhys gave an anonymous Valentine's Day card to the new girl at his school when he was a ten-year-old. He then witnessed her take the card out, show it to her friend, screw the card up and put it in the bin. Rhys says that the card's anonymity goes out when you are the only one in the playground crying.
- XL Tangent: No-one knows why St. Valentine was picked as the patron saint of love. He was a third-century Roman. A painting shows Valentine before Christ on the cross, next to Mary Magdalene and St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of finding partners and the tonsure, the hairstyle worn by monks with the top being bald and hair around the sides.
- XL Tangent: The ancient Roman version of Valentine's Day was Lupercalia, which started with a ritual involving sacrificing goats. The goat hides were then made into a form of whip called a februa, and the men whipped women whilst half naked. The festival is in honour of the she-wolf that raised Romulus and Remus.
- The panel are asked for some novels way in which animals can help you on Valentine's Day. In 2022, Bristol Animal Rescue Centre offered to write a name of your choice on the bottom of a cat litter tray for £5, so for example you could chose the name of someone who dumped you. Seattle Aquarium used to celebrate Valentine's Day by inviting the public to come and watch octopuses having sex, but they stopped doing so in 2016, because in some species of octopus the female eats the male after mating. The San Antonio Zoo in Texas allows you yo name a cockroach after your ex, and watch it being fed to another animal.
- XL Tangent: Jo used to rather cockroaches when she was younger, which she got fond of. One night, she came home quite drunk, forgot she had left the TV on, and spotted two cockroaches watching it. Another time she was painting the ceiling, and one cockroach fell into her mouth.
- XL: While we cannot say for certain what the Venus de Milo was doing with her hands, the most likely thing is that she was holding up the robe around her waist with one hand, while holding an apple with the other. The statue was already missing the arms when it was dug-up in 1820 on the Greek island of Milos. However, a disembodied hand holding an apple carved from the same marble was found fairly near to the statue. Another idea suggests that both hands were spinning thread, which was an activity used in ancient Greece to symbolise sex workers. A third suggests she was holding a shield and admiring her own reflection. France bought the statue when it was first found, and they placed it in the Louvre, but it originally came with a plinth which named the sculptor, Alexandros of Antioch. However, recently the government returned Napoleon's looted art collection, and they wanted to have something really valuable. So they took the sculptor's name away, in the hope that people would then assume that the Venus was made by a more famous 4th century BC Greek sculptor. The French wanted the Venus de Milo to be more valuable than the Venus de' Medici, which is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful representations of Venus, which they had to give back to Italy. It took about the century before the Louvre to revert the change. The Venus de' Medici however ended up being not as famous as the Venus di Milo, because Pope Innocent XI declared the statue to be too sexy and was sent off to the Uffizi Gallery, where it was put in a hidden-away area. (Forfeit: Having a w***)
- There are people who would queue for two days and nights for a haircut. These people are Hindus, queuing for the most-visited Hindu temple in the world. The temple in Andhra Pradesh, the Sri Venkateswara Swami, is also the world's largest barbers. This 2,000-year-old temple hires 1,316 barbers, who cut hair for free, 24/7. Over 40 million people visit annually, and the site has had to create two queuing complexes to hold 14,000 people, all of them queuing for haircuts. In 2023, the queue reached 5km, with some waiting 48 hours, although there is a system where you can pay to reserve your place in the queue. The temple is dedicated to one of the many incarnations of Vishnu, who was once meditating on an ant hill, and fellow gods Shiva and Brahma, in the form of cows, fed him milk daily. One time, the cow herd followed them, and they wondered why the milk was disappearing. They witnessed the milk being poured into the ant hill, so the gods struck the ant hill and thus Vishnu on the head. After Vishnu's head healed, the hair did not grow back, so to help a princess cut off her own hair to cover Vishnu's baldness. According to legend, all offerings of hair at the shrine go to the princess.
- Things in Vegas that make you stay in Vegas include the addictiveness of games and the maze like structure of casinos. The idea of casinos not having clocks is a myth because some bets are time-sensitive. Windows do exist in casinos, but were rare because the sunlight shone on slot machines, making them harder to use. Thus casinos usually use tinted glass. Another myth is the casinos pump in oxygen in order to keep you awake, but this would be a large fire hazard. (Forfeit: No windows; No clocks)
- Tangent: While Eshaan is no longer a practicing Muslim, he still does not gamble, despite the possibility of him enjoying it. Sandi thus bets him £100 that he cannot get the next question right.
- The dice game craps probably gets its name from the French for toad, because players had to crouch at the table when playing. Craps is one of the oldest casino games, probably dating back to the 12th century, and is mentioned in the Canterbury Tales. Eshaan does not get the question right, but Sandi doesn't make him pay.
- The thing that is about as useful as a cow's fifth teat is the Vice President of the United States. The job was despised by many who have held it, and was considered so small that the Vice President wasn't included in presidential cabinet meetings until 1919. Harry S. Truman said the job was as useful as a cow's fifth teat when he was offered it by President Roosevelt. However, when Truman did accept it, he was only in the job for 82 days, after which Roosevelt died and he took over as President. Thus, Truman went from senator to VP to President to authorising the dropping of the atom bomb on Japan in just under seven months. Senator Daniel Webster turned down the job of VP twice, which was a bad move because he was offered it by Presidents William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, who both died in office, and thus he probably would have become President he took the post. Webster himself ran for the presidency three times and lost them all. The first Vice President, John Adams, said: "It was the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived, or his imagination conceived, as can do neither good nor evil."
- Tangent: Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson, who served under Martin Van Buren between 1837-41, had so little money that halfway through his term he went back to his home in Kentucky and opened a tavern and spa. He proposed that the Senate fund a plan to explore the centre of the Earth, which would involve explorers travelling to the North Pole via reindeer and sleigh, and then entering a passageway to go down into the Earth. 23 senators supported him.
- Tangent: Charles Dawes, Vice President under Calvin Coolidge, won a Nobel Peace Prize and wrote a No. 1 single, called 'It's All in the Game', sung by Tommy Edwards, the first black American to reach No. 1. The only other person to win a Noble Prize and write a No. 1 is Bob Dylan. Coolidge's favourite thing to do in the Oval Office was to ring for the Security Services and then hide. He was also the most silent President of all time, being so taciturn that he was said to be able to be silent in several languages. When Coolidge died, poet and wit Dorothy Parker said: "How could they tell?"
- XL Tangent: Sandi once met Nelson Rockefeller, the Vice President under Gerald Ford, who died of a heart attack in 1979. Initial reports said he had died at his desk, but many speculate that he probably died of a heart attack by having sex with his secretary. This rumour lead to New York Magazine running the quip: "Nelson thought he was coming, but he was going."
- [i]XL Tangent: Mike Pence, Vice President during Donald Trump's first term as President, had an Instagram account entirely devoted to pictures of his pet rabbit.
- The virtue of having a vibrating toe is that you can hunt with it. Holy cross frogs, aka crucifix frogs, so called because of their cross-like markings on their backs and native to boroughs in New South Wales and Queensland. Living mostly underground, they practice pedal luring. This involves vibrating a toe backwards and forward to mimic a small insect, and then they eat the large insect that has been tricked into nibbling their toe thinking it was a tasty morsel.
- Tangent: Holy cross frogs give off a gluey substance from their skin. It makes small insects stick to them, and then the frog can take off that layer of skin and eat the lot. It also helps males and female stick together. During amplexus, their mating session, it stops the male from sliding off. It can also confuse predators due to the strange texture. No other amphibians create this kind of glue, but many eat their own skin, in what is known as dermatophagy. Maternal dermatophagy is when the mother keeps growing layers of skin specifically for her children to scrape off and eat.
- Tangent: The gastric-brooding frog has not been seen in the world since 1981. Females would ingest their own eggs, which they would later vomit up as a fully formed froglet. They would secrete a substance which formed a jelly around the eggs while they were in the gut, to prevent the stomach acid from harming them.[/indent[
- Tangent: Another Australian creature, the red triangle slug, gives off defensive glue to protect them against frogs. The glue makes frogs stick to branches while the slug escapes.
- Erotic landscape gardening was an aristocratic craze in 18th century Britain. The most famous example belonged to politician Sir Francis Dashwood, who was famous for his debauched parties. At his estate at West Wickham, near Oxford, he has breast-like hills topped with pink flowers designed to look like nipples; a mound featuring an oval-shaped doorway which lead into a tunnel resembling a vagina; and added a giant golden ball to the top of the local church steeple, which he used as a viewing gallery to show guests his estate. One story reported that he took the vicar up there and arranged for all the fountains in the garden to burst into life in each of the garden's erogenous zones. The vicar needed a stiff drink afterwards.
- Tangent: Other people fond of erotic landscape gardening included the artist Mary Delany, who was married twice to men, but it was also very like she had lesbian lovers. She designed gardens with a vulva-like grotto, where she would organise sessions with her female companions. Other things Delany made was the Flora Delanica, which was a decoupage using tissue of paper to look like very-detailed flowers. She did not start until she was 72, and carried on until her eyesight failed at 88. These are now in the British Museum.
- XL Tangent The Utroba Cave in Bulgaria has been associated with fertility since the Thracian period (over 2,000 years ago). The name means "womb", and the shape of the cave casts a phallic ray of light into the cave every day at midday.
- [i][colour=#000080]XL Tangent: There is a vulva-like sculpture made by artist Fernando de la Jara, based in Germany. In 2014, an American student got stuck in it, and it took 22 fire-fighters to get him out. The show is not allowed to show a photo of this incident, so Sandi instead uses a modle of the artwork and a doll to show what it looked like.
General Ignorance
- Ratty in The Wind In The Willows is a vole. There is no such animal as a water rat. (Forfeit: Rat)
- [i][colour=#000080]XL Tangent: Sandi once visited the island of Skomer, off the coast of Wales, which is an isolated nature reserve. On it is a creature called the Skomer vole, which eats carcinogenic bracken that has no ill effects on the vole. Thus, scientists are studying it in the hope of understanding ways of treating cancer.
- XL: The panel are shown a photo of a borrowing animal that sounds like a vole and are asked what it is. It is of a golden mole, but it is not a species of mole. The closest relation is the tenrec, and it is more closely related to elephants than it is to actual moles. Similarly, otter shrews are not shrews. Golden moles can go their entire lives without drinking a single drop of water. They are blind, but have ears so sensitive they can distinguish between the footsteps of an ant and termites walking above them. (Forfeit: A mole)
- If you can climbing a snowy mountain and run out of water, the best was to rehydrate is to melt some snow and drink the water you make. Drinking urine is a bad idea because it contains waste products your kidneys have already got rid off, so drinking urine can cause kidney failure. Eating snow is also a bad idea because it will dehydrate you even more due to the additional energy expended on consuming it. This is because the body is trying to keep your internal organs warm, but eating something cold will hinder this.
- XL Tangent: When Jo was eight, she and her dad climbed up Snowdon on a hot day. They did so without taking any water with them, because her dad said there would be a cafe at the top. When they reached the top, the cafe was shut. Alan also climbed Snowdon with his father, despite the fact there was also a train to the top.
- Tangent: If you are starving, cutting off one of your legs and eating it would be a bad idea. There is the initial shock, the risk of infection and the risk of bleeding to death. If you did eat your leg, you would still weigh the same.
- It would not be nice to be happy all the time, because you need low-points in order to feel the high-points. Happier people do less well in negotiation, and being happier than normal is a hallmark of being a psychopath. (Forfeit: Yes)
- [colour=#000080XL Tangent: In 2012, a French-Tibetan monk and close adviser to the Dalai Lama named Matthieu Ricard was declared to be the happiest man in the world by researchers at the University of Wisconsin. He was upset by this, saying that he has been upset at times during his life. One example he gave was when his friend threw flour on his laptop. Eshaan's niece once pour undiluted Ribena on his laptop.
Scores
- Eshaan Akbar and Rhys James: -4 points
- Jo Brand: -7 points
- Alan Davies: -24 points
Broadcast details
- Date
- Tuesday 14th January 2025
- Time
- 9pm
- Channel
- BBC Two
- Length
- 45 minutes
- Recorded
-
- Saturday 16th March 2024, 18:45 at Television Centre ('Vices and Virtues' with Eshaan Akbar, Jo Brand and Rhys James.)
Cast & crew
Sandi Toksvig | Host / Presenter |
Alan Davies | Regular Panellist |
Jo Brand | Guest |
Eshaan Akbar | Guest |
Rhys James | Guest |
James Harkin | Script Editor |
Anna Ptaszynski | Script Editor |
Sandi Toksvig | Script Editor |
Will Bowen | Researcher |
Anne Miller | Researcher |
Mike Turner | Researcher |
Jack Chambers | Researcher |
Emily Jupitus | Researcher |
James Rawson | Researcher |
Lydia Mizon | Researcher |
Miranda Brennan | Researcher |
Leying Lee | Researcher |
Manu Henriot | Researcher |
Joe Mayo | Researcher |
Lieven Scheire | Researcher |
Tara Dorrell | Question Writer |
Diccon Ramsay | Director |
Piers Fletcher | Series Producer |
John Lloyd | Executive Producer |
Nick King | Editor |
Jonathan Paul Green | Production Designer |
Gemma O'Sullivan | Lighting Designer |
Howard Goodall | Composer |
Aran Kharpal | Graphics |
Helen Ringer | Graphics |
Sarah Clay | Commissioning Editor |
Video
The 18th Century politician who had an erotic landscape garden
What would Gen Z do if they had gardens?
Featuring: Sandi Toksvig, Alan Davies, Jo Brand, Rhys James & Eshaan Akbar.