Cultural impact of QI

The British panel game QI has had a cultural impact, mainly in Britain. It is the most popular programme of any kind on BBC Four, and has had several DVDs and books released. The most successful of these is The Book of General Ignorance, which reached Number 1 on best-seller list.

Other than these, QI has a successful website, http://www.qi.com, with a very popular talk forum, http://www.qi.com/talk, a club and its own philosophy.

Philosophy
The philosophy of QI states that most people believe that there are three primal drives that humans have. These are food, sex and shelter. QI however claims there is a fourth that ultimately separates humans from animals - curiosity. Another part of QI philosophy is that everything in the world, even the most boring things, is quite interesting, if looked at in the right way. The website states that:

"We live, they say, in The Information Age, yet almost none of the information we think we possess is true. Eskimos do not rub noses. The rickshaw was invented by an American. Joan of Arc was not French. Lenin was not Russian. The world is not solid, it is made of empty space and energy, and neither haggis, whisky, porridge, clan tartans nor kilts are Scottish. So we stand, silent, on a peak in Darien: a vast, rolling, teeming, untrodden territory before us. QI country. Whatever is interesting we are interested in. Whatever is not interesting, we are even more interested in. Everything is interesting if looked at in the right way. At one extreme, QI is serious, intensely scientific, deeply mystical; at the other it is hilarious, silly and frothy enough to please the most indolent couch-potato."

The QI Club
The headquarters of QI is the QI club, in 16 Turl Street, Oxford, on the corner of Turl Street and Ship Street. It is a four-storey Georgian building, erected in 1785 by Mr. Priddy to provide accommodation for the scholars of Exeter College. In 1820, it became a coffee house, and between 1945-1998 was the popular Taj Mahal Indian Restaurant (with several other businesses running on different floors, together with 'Staircase 15' of Exeter). When QI took over, they bought the entire building, uniting all floors and restoring its Georgian appearance.

The building itself consists of a bookshop, a café-bar and a vodka bar. It also has a number of rooms devoted to use by the private members club.

QI People
The QI Elves
The Elves devise the questions for QI. The Elves spend their time researching several topics, constantly trying to find things 'quite interesting'. Often, when a subject is brought up in the show, the Elves will contact the show mid-way to provide and even correct information given. The panellists are given the list of questions to be asked an hour or two before recording, but are forbidden to ask the Elves for preparatory materials or other help. It is known that Alan never does any preparation at all.
*Matt Coward
*Piers Fletcher
*Christopher Gray
*James Harkin
*Molly Oldfield
*Justin Pollard
*Vitali Vitaliev

Former Elves are:

Forum Members
The QI website has a large forum that currently has over 3,000 members. The forum contains several sections including the "Quite Interestrings", for general topics, the "Series Talk" section which are dedicated to different series, indicated by a letter of the alphabet, and "The Forum of General Ignorance", dedicated to things that are often misunderstood by most people. Some of the material written in the forums is used in the TV series.

QI News

On 27 June 2007 Warner Music announced that it would be launching a new Internet TV channel called Comedybox. The free-to-view channel will include a feature called QI News that will be based upon QI. John Lloyd, producer and creator of QI, has been employed to secure talent for the new channel. The channel launched on 17 September, 2007.

Products
DVDs
Three DVDs have been published by QI with another one to follow.

On 14 November 2005 an interactive QI DVD game, called QI: A Quite Interesting Game, was released by Warner Home Video. A second game DVD, QI Strictly Come Duncing was released in UK on 26th November 2007.

The BBC's DVD division, 2 entertain released the first TV series on DVD on 6 November 2006. The DVD also contains the pilot, which has never been broadcast, and features to date the only appearance of Eddie Izzard as a panellist. The DVD of series B has been announced although no release date has been indicated.

Books
On 5 October 2006, ' was published in hardback by Faber and Faber, written by John Lloyd and QI's head of research, John Mitchinson. There was also a foreword by Stephen Fry and "Four words by Alan Davies" - "Will this do, Stephen?". It contains a list of 200 popular misconceptions, most of which have appeared in the "General Ignorance" round of QI. On 8 December 2006, the book reached the top of best-seller list. The book is to be released in America (with a different cover) on 7 August 2007.

A second book, The Book of Animal Ignorance was released on 4 October 2007. An annual was published on 1 November 2007.

Other publications
A QI feature has appeared in magazine from its fifth issue and is based on facts and questions in the sphere of General Ignorance. From 10 February 2007 a weekly QI column began in The Telegraph; 52 columns are planned.

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See Also

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