QI

Radio Times review

The interestingness goes into overdrive this week. Yes, it's funny too, but there are historical titbits here that will mildly blow your mind, as Stephen Fry dissertates on a kitchen-y theme. We learn about the 18th-century pets bred to be "turnspit dogs" during the week and footwarmers in church on Sunday. We learn about why kleftiko is so called. And we learn something about the phenomenon of the overbite that may be the single most interesting dentistry fact ever shared on TV.

Adding comedic spin to this obscure knowledge are Victoria Wood, Richard Osman and Jason Manford. Osman's speed of wit is as devastating as ever, and listen out for a great Barocca gag and some lovely teasing about turtles.

QI: some quite interesting facts about Advent

From the brains behind the quiz show. This week: QI waits out Advent.

QI star Stephen Fry voted top holiday companion

Broadcaster Stephen Fry has been named the nation's ideal holiday companion.

Radio Times review

A nicely mellow and civilised gathering in the QI studio this week. Whether because there are two female guests (Sue Perkins and Victoria Coren Mitchell) or because the male one is that charming gentleman of the cloth Rev Richard Coles, it all feels pleasantly collegiate and polite, with no trumping-each-other's-gags.

Coles has almost as many quite interesting titbits of knowledge to chip in as the host (if a clergyman goes to a black-tie do, he can't have a stripe down his trousers, apparently...), but it's Coren Mitchell who makes us long to know more when she teases Fry about a poker game they once played - with Martin Amis and Ricky Gervais. Quite a night.

QI: how long is the world's longest bridge?

A quietly intriguing column from the brains behind QI, the BBC quiz show. This week: QI takes it to the bridge.

Bizarre facts from the TV comedy quiz QI

The comedy quiz show QI has been delighting TV audiences for ten years with a cornucopia of off-the-wall facts. But the name of the BBC programme - based on the phrase Quite Interesting - doesn't do them justice, as this fascinating collection from a new book proves...

Radio Times review

QI loves to stray towards the saucepot at the best of times, let alone when the episode theme is "Kinky". So tonight's episode is not recommended for the prudish, covering as it does electrically assisted kissing, sex with pigeons and a boy who got a certain body part trapped between powerful magnets. And that's the stuff we can print.

At one point Fry uses super-saturated sodium acetate and exothermic nucleation (apparently) to make instant crystals into a rude shape, while Johnny Vegas sings the theme from The Snowman. It's one of the oddest sequences you'll see on television, ever. Also steering through the smut are Sandi Toksvig and Janet Street-Porter.

QI: how much did Joan of Arc cost the English?

A quietly intriguing column from the brains behind QI, the BBC quiz show. This week: QI salutes warlike women.

QI and the magical power of facts

The TV quiz's top fact-checker reveals some of the favourite nuggets of information he uncovered for its latest publication.

QI: around the world in 1,339 jaw-dropping facts

In an exclusive extract, the QI team present just a few of the jaw-dropping facts in their new book - in no particular order.