QI, standing for Quite Interesting, is a comedy panel game television show shown on BBC Two and BBC Four and hosted by Stephen Fry. It is distinguished by the awarding of points not necessarily for the correct answer, but rather for an interesting one. Many of the questions and answers are extremely obscure. Points can also be deducted, but, quite interestingly, not for wrong answers, but only for obvious but wrong answers; this often results in a negative points score at the end of the game. The first series started on 11 September 2003.

Format
The format of the show was devised by the writer and former BBC producer, John Lloyd and is produced by an organisation set up by Lloyd, Quite Interesting Ltd.

Alan Davies appears as a panellist in all episodes. He is the butt of many jokes throughout the series, and normally gives most of the obvious but wrong answers; thus usually finishing with a negative score. Most other panellists come from a stand up comedy background.

The panel each have a buzzer which makes a comedy noise when pressed. The noises produced are usually humorous and have a common theme. Alan Davies' buzzer usually contradicts the other panellists' buzzers in some amusing way. For example, in one episode, the first three panellists had sailing-themed buzzers, and Alan Davies' buzzer had a rather camp-sounding man saying "Ahoy".

Providing an obvious but wrong answer results in a sequence of klaxon sounds, followed by Stephen producing this answer on a card to show the panellist. This has resulted in fans referring to one of the panel (usually Alan Davies) as being klaxoned. From the second series onwards, the answer also appears in large letters behind them.

In some episodes, panellists are given an extra task to complete during the game. For example, they have been given magnetic letters and a metal board, and have been asked to spell appropriate words / phrases during the game (to which panellist Jimmy Carr responded with "put Smarties tubes on cat's legs to make them walk like a robot"); in another episode, they were given paper and pens, and were asked to draw a wigwam in the style of a given artist; in fact all contestants incorrectly drew a teepee. In another show, the contestants were asked to keep their own score with the promise of 100 bonus points to anyone who produced the correct score at the end (Alexander Armstrong succeeded, ending up with a score of 93). Most recently the panelists were given a swazzle to play with and a card showing a squirrel to hold up while they shouted squirrel when it was the answer to a question, that being "What was Cinderella's slipper made from?".

Things frequently get bizarre during the show. For instance, at the start of series B, during a question about what rhymes with the word orange, Fry piped up with the fact that his prep school tailors went by the name Goringe - bringing forth much insanity on the subject of wearing a cravat on cross-country runs, or a cummerbund for geography.

In a parody of "general knowledge" quizzes, the final round is off-topic and called "General Ignorance". This round focuses on seemingly easy questions which have obvious but wrong answers. Other rounds vary between having the contestants buzzing in, or by asking individual questions to each of them.


Episodes
See also: List of episodes of QI 
The first series started on 11 September 2003. Although most viewers did not notice at the time, all of the questions (with the exception of the final 'general ignorance' round) were on subjects beginning with "a" (e.g. "arthropods", "Alans", "astronomy", etc.) A second series of 12 programmes started on 8 October 2004. In a continuation to the established theme, subjects began with the letter "b" (except in two episodes, one about music and one about colour). Series three started on 30 September 2005, and all subjects begin with the letter "c".


Frequent participants
Alan Davies, permanent panellist, to Fry's immediate right 
Jo Brand 
Bill Bailey 
Rich Hall 
Sean Lock 
Clive Anderson 
John Sessions 
Many of the frequent participants are managed by the Off The Kerb Productions comedy group.


Criticism
The questions are as in many comedy panel games, mainly there to set up jokes or discussions, rather than for any serious competition. Certain questions are purposely contradictory to established doctrine for the sake of entertainment. To take an example; to the question "How many planets are there in the solar system?", Alan Davies gave the answer "nine" and lost points for an obvious and wrong answer, the explanation being that at the time a debate was occurring over whether Pluto was indeed a planet (a debate that has continued to date - see definition of planet). As the International Astronomical Union still defined Pluto as a planet at the time of questioning, the answer "nine" would be a "correct" answer, if one accepted the contemporary IAU definition.

A further example of this was encountered during the second series. Alan Davies had previously been given negative points for answering "one" to the question "How many moons does the earth have?", this is due to the asteroid Cruithne which has an orbital resonance with earth (although is not normally defined as a natural satellite). During the second series, he was again given negative points for answering exactly the same question with "two"; the "correct" answer for the question during the first series. The change in answer was attributed to the recent discovery of new satellites ((54509) 2000 PH5, (85770) 1998 UP1 and 2002 AA29) that share a similar resonance to Cruithne with respect to the Earth.

Some people have suggested that answers to questions are rehearsed in advance, in order to provide a more entertaining programme, an accusation also headed towards shows such as Have I Got News For You. The makers of the show on the official website insist that this is not the case, and instead a series of "warm up" questions are asked before recording starts.