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"Blue" is the first episode of the B Series of QI and the 13th episode overall. It was first broadcast on BBC Two on 8 October 2004. It featured no new panellists.

Scores[]

Numbers in brackets mark appearances - e.g. "(2)" means "(second appearance)".

  1. Sean Lock (3): 17 points
  2. Bill Bailey (4): 7 points
  3. Jo Brand (5): -20 points
  4. Alan Davies (13): -22 points

Subjects[]

This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia's article "QI (B series)" (view authors here or here). Smallwikipedialogo
  • The Ancient Greeks claimed the sky was bronze as they had no word for blue. The Greeks never used colour to describe things. Homer believed that wine, the sea and sheep were red.[1]
  • Rainbows happen when the sun reflects off the back of a raindrop at 42 degrees. In Estonia, it's believed that if you point your finger at a rainbow, it will fall off.
  • Urine used to be the third largest export from Newcastle after coal and beer, it was used to fix dye, such as that used in police uniforms.
  • Crushed insects are used in food colouring: Red E120 (cochineal) is made from bugs. 70,000 bugs are crushed to make one pound of cochineal. E122 is mentioned as an alternative, but also that it is bad for you if you have an allergy to aspirin and tends to make you hyperactive.[2]
  • A new type of beetle is discovered roughly every hour. Since 1700, the rate has been no more than 6 hours. There are around 2,000 coleopterists in the world and 10 million different species of beetle–around two thirds of all insects are beetles. If every species of animal and plant was placed in a row, every fifth one would be a beetle and every tenth one would be a weevil.
  • A ptiliidae beetle can pass through the eye of a needle, unlike a camel or the Sultan of Brunei (an example of a rich person).

General Ignorance[]

This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia's article "QI (B series)" (view authors here or here). Smallwikipedialogo
  • Blorenge, a place in Wales, near Abergavenny and Gorringe (a surname) rhyme with orange.[3] Blorenge has a famous car park in it. The horse, Foxhunter, is buried there.
  • The planet Mars is brown.[4] According to the New Scientist, recent NASA images were tweaked using filters to make it appear red.
  • Nothing prevented Henry VIII from marrying Lord Pembroke,[5] because it was one of the titles given to Anne Boleyn.
  • There are no green mammals. There is a sloth that looks green, but it has algae growing on it, so it isn't green.
  • In ancient Greece, dildos were made from bread. This was only discovered in 1987.

Forfeits[]

  1. Blue
  2. Beetles
  3. Nothing
  4. Red
  5. Gay marriages were illegal
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