Phill Jupitus quotes from QI

Stephen Fry

What I want you to do first is tell me all about the twelve Frenchmen and the twelve mosquitoes.

Dara Ó Briain

Once upon a time, there were twelve Frenchmen called... 'Appy, Sleepy, Arrogant, Furieux, Un Chose Comme Ca, Bof and Zut Alors. And...

Phill Jupitus

That's six!

Dara Ó Briain

Fenètre, Boulangerie...

Alan Davies

Le Table.

Dara Ó Briain

Le Table, of course. And Jambon et Fromage, the twins. And they used to travel around with mosquitoes...

Phill Jupitus

And what were the mosquitoes called?

Bill Bailey

Buzzy, Stingy...

Dara Ó Briain

It was a very, very low-rent 1950's French detective series, that involved, at some point, the extraction of a tiny amount of blood from one of the suspects.

Stephen Fry

When the Titanic sank, what was the first thing that happened to the crew?

Phill Jupitus

Terrible luck for them, but they actually had their six-month review...

Stephen Fry

Every single member of the crew had their wages stopped at the moment of the sinking. The moment a ship sinks, it is not a ship, therefore you can't work on it, therefore the White Star Line paid them up to the minute of the sinking.

Phill Jupitus

I would imagine that in a sinking situation, you'd hope to be getting time and a half.

Phill Jupitus

Is it true that someone dressed as a lady to escape detection?

Stephen Fry

Yes, apparently it is true, because it was women and children first.

Bill Bailey

[chuckling] I thought you said "someone dressed as a baby".

Phill Jupitus

[posh accent] "Yes, goo-goo indeed. I have a lollipop and I have no control over my urinary functions. I am, in fact, an infant. And I know you think I'm Lord Albemarle, but I am in fact a little baby. With a beard. Yes, goo-goo, gaa-gaa. And madam, may I tell you I've been a very naughty baby?"

Stephen Fry

Name, if you can, the subject of the three volume book whose first volume is entitled "The Long Years of Obscurity."

Phill Jupitus

The career of Phil Collins.

Ronni Ancona

Is this book about the word obscurity before it got famous? How it was beaten by its adjective father. And left on the doorstep abandoned by its mother, and it was the only noun growing up in a house of verbs. And the verbs were always going out doing lovely things, because they were doing words, and poor old obscurity was stuck inside suffering from asthma. And then after school it was surrounded by quotation marks and got beaten up terribly. And then one day entered into reality TV show and it became very famous and it was much in demand and used to describe all the people who leave Big Brother House?

They built the station next to the power station you see there, which is the third worst eyesore in the country. It was a Country Life thing—do you know what the first one was?

Phill Jupitus

[in a posh accent] People! Public people! Working classes! Poorly groomed servants! The ill-bred ponies! That Blair fellow!

Stephen Fry

If I find out you've been intercepting my mail …

Phill Jupitus

I'd love to have been in parliament that day. "And I put it to the honourable member, that he who smelt it, dealt it!"

Stephen Fry

Whoa!

Phill Jupitus

Stephen doesn't have beer goggles, he has Madeira pince-nez. "Oh, you're a cracker! More Madeira? A small Sherry?"

Alan Davies

A Sherry Monocle? He's got the Sherry Monocle in.

Stephen Fry

You're all rotters and I hate you.

Stephen Fry

Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit für das deutsche Vaterland! Danach lasst uns alle streben Brüderlich mit Herz und Hand!

Phill Jupitus

I have an erection.

It's a shame it doesn't make any difference, because I've been using the fact that I don't shave my legs as an excuse for going five hours slower than the guy who won.

Stephen Fry

Which stage did you do?

There's an open stage every year. An amateur stage. You do it two weeks before they do it. Eight thousand of us, and by the end, there were four thousand of us left at the end of it. I started in 2400th place, and I finished in 3400th place.

Stephen Fry

Oh no.

Alan Davies

You mean a thousand people overtook you?

I was passed by a thousand people. And it took me... it took eleven hours to do this stage. The winner of the actual proper stage when they did it the next week was a guy called Vinokourov, I think his name was. He did it in five hours, but he was using someone else’s blood. And he was thrown out of the stage that night for blood doping.

Phill Jupitus

[Laughing.] Someone else’s blood!

But it took me nine hours to catch up to the bloke with the one leg.

Phill Jupitus

[on the Bayeux Tapestry] That says 'Wil 6 Elm'.

Alan Davies

Normmano. I like that.

Phill Jupitus

Is that like medieval text speak? They never put the whole thing in. They just sort of... C U l8er.

Alan Davies

We have been con-kered

Phill Jupitus

'We've invaded Britain. lol'

Stephen Fry

O … M … G! Very good.

Stephen Fry

How would you describe the famous Thatcher effect?

Phill Jupitus

Yes. You get the country to bend over, and you give it one till its eyes water.

Jo Brand

It was great actually when she became Lady Thatcher, because then she sounded like a device removing pubic hair.

Stephen Fry

The University of Amsterdam used emotion recognition software to analyse the famous enigmatic smile.

Phill Jupitus

Or looked at her. "Emotion recognition software"? I don't know. My money's on "bored." What do you reckon?

Stephen Fry

It showed that it was 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry. She was less than 1% neutral and not even a quarter of one percent surprised.

Phill Jupitus

Sounds like a breakdown of the audience.

Stephen Fry

…But the reference in the Bible to the fiery lake or whatever is from Revelations, where it does say that those who practice the magic arts will be cast into burning sulfur.

Phill Jupitus

How about balloon animals?

Stephen Fry

The punishment for people who do balloon animals is not specified in the Book of Revelations.

Sean Lock

I think it's loneliness, their punishment

Phill Jupitus

What does she show in Blockbuster...?

Stephen Fry

A twenty pound note.