QI

QI: what's the heaviest living thing on earth?

A quietly intriguing column from the brains behind QI, the BBC quiz show. This week: QI is out of its tree.

QI crustacean facts: woodlice don't urinate

An intriguing column from the brains behind QI, the BBC quiz show. This week: QI gets into a crustacean situation.

Look out for a revealing exchange tonight between Stephen Fry and Alan Davies, comedy's most unlikely double act. They're friends off-screen, and there's a lovely spat where Fry grumbles under his breath that Davies didn't invite him to his wedding. "I DID invite you but you didn't come!" Davies protests, and Fry has to bury his head in his hands in shame as Davies reminds him that it was filming an episode of Bones that kept him away.

Aside from these recriminations, it's the usual pattern of recent QI episodes: Fry answering his own questions at length while the panellists chuckle along. Along the way, there's a detour into bestiality, some amusing Korean sayings and the timeless line: "Are you ready for me to pump the custard?"

QI on gas: how much gas does the average human produce?

A quietly intriguing column from the brains behind QI, the BBC quiz show. This week: QI's all right now - in fact, it's a gas.

It's a round titled "Kit and Kaboodle" and Stephen Fry wants to know if there's a use for kitty-litter that doesn't involve cats. Alan Davies tries to be helpful, but his contribution ("In an episode of Jonathan Creek I weed into some cat litter") isn't quite what Fry is after. Ross Noble and Noel Fielding, with Australian comic Colin Lane, can't quite lift the episode off the ground.

But there are some bright bits, including Fry demonstrating martial arts on a pile of three bricks: "This takes extreme focus and extreme pain," says Fry, wincing in agony.

John Lloyd: the brain behind QI

You probably haven't heard of John Lloyd - but this self-described Stoic, whose career was derailed by depression, has probably made you laugh more times than anyone else.

QI: some quite interesting things about 300s

In their 300th column for Weekend, the brains behind the BBC quiz show QI consider matters tercentenary.

Knee-jerk reactions, klaxons and Kiesselbach's plexus are among the subjects under scurrilous discussion as QI returns for its 11th series - which means we've reached the letter K in our comedy intellectual hike through the alphabet. Fount of all knowledge Stephen Fry is back on his throne, the kittenish Alan Davies by his side, joined tonight by perennial quiz show panellist David Mitchell, versatile Jack Whitehall - showing his brainy side after laddy larks with One Direction on A League Of Their Own - and comedian Sara Pascoe. Kick back and find out how Father Christmas, the colour orange and pandas manage to pad their way into the show.

There's bound to be ribaldry in an episode titled Knees and Knockers so lie down on your antique fainting couch right now as Stephen Fry and the teams get blushingly saucy. But it's all good fun and even educational. Come on, don't tell me you're not curious about where in the human body the "end-bulbs of Krause" are? Or the pores of Kohn? (Clue: it's not the title of a Star Trek movie.)

Elsewhere, David Mitchell has one of his Would I Lie To You?-type comic rants, this time about, of all things, the supposed idiocy of pandas. We learn why robins are associated with Christmas, the rules for the driving of cars in early 20th-century Pennsylvania and why red kites are called red kites, even though they aren't red.

QI: some quite interesting facts about seashells

A quietly intriguing column from the brains behind QI, the BBC quiz show. This week: QI wants a word in your shell-like.