There's one of those adverts that sort of says 'There are more germs on your chopping board than on your loo seat.' To which the answer is, 'well clearly that's fine, then.'
S1 E15Unfinished Business
[pointing at Stephen] I used to do that to him, actually, make sure that he couldn't get out while I was changing.
You did.
Yeah. It was very good fun.
She used to show me her breasts. [He rhymes the word with "beasts".]
This fantastic effect I used to have on him, 'cause I could make—I could do it now—I'm not going to, but I could—I could make him scream.
[small scream] No. No. Don't.
Not like that scream that we just heard, but a real, actual sort of scream of terror and fright, just by appearing nude at the top of his stairs. [Stephen shudders.] And doing what I like to do, which is locking all the doors at the bottom, so that when he tried to get out … [Stephen mimes pounding on locked doors] … as I came down the stairs, going, "Yes, baby, they're all yours!" By the end of which he was in a state of such extreme panic, and it's great to make someone very clever fall apart like that.
[to Emma Thompson, about her pubic hair] Do you wax yourself down there, dovey?
[gets up intimidatingly] Do you want to see?
[collapses] No! I don't want to see! No, I do not. Oh, God!
You know I'd do it.
I know you would. She'd envelope me in her skirt.
Lock the doors! Lock the doors! Ye of faint of heart, leave immediately!
You know the word "luvvie"?
Yeah?
What do you all feel about it?
I mean, I'm not going to get as upset as some actors do—some actors say, "We do a bloody hard job at work, we're serious people, we—you know, it's a coal face, doing a play! How dare they call us luvvies!" You know? I mean, that's a bit overdone. On the other hand, it's a bit tedious when the Daily Mail says "luvvie couple XYZ" or something …
Do you know what the first citation of it is in the OED?
No.
It's you.
gasps
[Whistles go off and the words "Luvvie Alarm" flash on the screen.]
No! I can't believe... Did I invent the word?
Yeah, it's you sometime in the 1980s.
Did I? I'm ashamed.
I'm inclined to give the point to Rich, because he's sort of accidentally right, only he's sort of wrong as well.
As usual.
What can you usefully teach an oyster? [David rings in] Yes?
Is it … you know … not to get its hopes up? To expect … lemon juice and death?
The feeding of the five thousand? Like there's five thousand people and they wanted some bread and fish. I reckon that was just about four and a half thousand people going, "What have we got, bread and fish? I'm all right, thanks. I'll have something when I get home."
The other interesting thing about that story is that out of the five thousand people, only two of them had thought to bring any food. And so in a way it's, okay, good miracle, but the other side of it is 4,998 idiots with no sense of foresight at all. And Jesus doesn't make them learn a lesson from that!
"This is the sermon on the Mount. This isn't Glastonbury," he could have said, couldn't he?
But, you know, he should have said "You didn't bring any food! Of course there's not gonna be any food! Think about it!" ... "Plan next time! Judea would be better if people planned!" But no. "Yeah, it always works out fine; Jesus'll magic up some grub!" No! He's gonna get crucified one day, and then what are you gonna eat?
Name a poisonous snake.
Piers Morgan.
[Forfeit klaxon goes off - PIERS MORGAN]
[About the Canadian Mounted Police.]
It’s like trying to police a country with Daleks.
Which’d never work with the disabled access we’ve got now. The Daleks can get everywhere.
Jimmy, are you saying that you think that disabled access is a Dalek conspiracy?
Yes. That is exactly what I’m saying.
Poison is not the same as venom. It can’t be. Because there are loads of poisonous snakes.
You sounded so like Jonathan Creek just then. You just somehow, with the pen, it’s just so right.
I’ve got the answer! In a locked room.
[Alan is testing his gentleman gardener's saw on the table, despite Stephen's protests]
I really wish they hadn't made the set out of asbestos.
Now, before we move on, we’d like you to draw now, you should have a card if you haven’t sawn it in half. We’d like you to draw the world’s first novelty teapot.
[Alan blows the sawdust on his desk aside and coughs as it goes everywhere.]
Alan.
Sorry, it all went down... it’s quite a draught in here as it turns out.
What did I ask you to draw?
Draw the world’s first novelty teapot.
Damn, you were listening. That’s very good.
[both arms on his waist] Do you know that rhyme, "I'm a little teapot, short an stout, [looks right] here's my handle, [looks left] oh bugger, I'm a sugar bowl!"
[Stephen has explained that the best place to find new species is your own garden]
Still going rainforest. I'm sorry.
Yes, but you'd have to travel thousands of miles, you'd have to park there, you'd have to look, you'd have to, you know -
Park?!
[Audience bursts into laughter, Stephen looks as if he can't believe what he's just said]
You know when you find a bee, and it's crawling on its last legs.
I always rescue them.
You give it honey. It's the only thing they eat, makes sense when you think about it.
[audience laughter]
No point in just talking to it. Give it honey!
They're very much a one-recipe species, aren't they?
I'm intrigued, because I would, um, I generally give it a sole of my shoe. You know, not to be harsh, but…
[exasperated] You step on a struggling, crawling bee? Trying to get back to the hive?
What? As opposed to rehabilitate it?
I like honey! I have it on my porridge! You murderer!
[after the argument has gone on for a while] But isn't it true, though, that a bee, in its entire lifetime, makes absolutely tiny amount of honey overall? So you don't have to give much rehabilitating honey to this one bee before the nation, the world, is making a net loss! I mean, it's useless. If you only get one teaspoon of honey from a whole bee's lifetime, and every time you have to get it back on its feet it takes a teaspoon and a half, suddenly there's no honey at all! You're insulting it apart from anything else! It's like showing a very tired mason a whole cathedral!
These quotes come from Wikiquote's QI pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.







