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1,227 QI Facts to Blow Your Socks Off book cover
1,227 QI Facts to Blow Your Socks Off
2012
First Published
3.84
Average Rating
304
Number of Pages

Part of Series

QI is the smartest comedy show on British television, but few people know that we're also a major legal hit in Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Africa and an illegal one on BitTorrent. We also write books and newspaper columns; run a thriving website, a Facebook page, a Twitter feed; and produce an iPhone App and a sister Radio 4 programme. At the core of what we do is the astonishing fact - painstakingly researched and distilled to a brilliant and shocking clarity. In Einstein's words: 'Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.' Did you know that: cows moo in regional accents; the entire internet weighs less than a grain of sand; the dialling code from Britain to Russia is 007; potatoes have more chromosomes than human beings; the London Underground has made more money from its famous map than it has from running trains; Tintin is called Tantan in Japanese because TinTin is pronounced 'Chin chin' and means penis; the water in the mouth of a blue whale weighs more than its body; Scotland has twice as many pandas as Conservative MPs; Saddam's bunker was designed by the grandson of the woman who built Hitler's bunker; Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, it is explicitly illegal in Britain to use a machinegun to kill a hedgehog. 1,227 QI Facts To Blow Your Socks Off will make you look at the universe (and your socks) in an alarming new way.
Avg Rating
3.84
Number of Ratings
4,138
5 STARS
29%
4 STARS
36%
3 STARS
26%
2 STARS
7%
1 STARS
2%
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Author

John Lloyd
John Lloyd
Author · 25 books

John Hardress Wilfred Lloyd CBE is a British comedy writer and television producer. Lloyd was Trinity College, Cambridge, where he befriended and later shared a flat with Douglas Adams. He worked as a radio producer at the BBC 1974–1978 and created The News Quiz, The News Huddlines, To The Manor Born (with Peter Spence) and Quote... Unquote (with Nigel Rees). He wrote Hordes of the Things with Andrew ("A. P. R.") Marshall, co-authored two episodes of Doctor Snuggles with Douglas Adams and then went on to co-write the fifth and sixth episodes of the first radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with him. Lloyd then worked as a TV producer at both the BBC and ITV 1979–1989 where he created Not the Nine O'Clock News (with Sean Hardie) and Spitting Image (with Peter Fluck and Roger Law). He also produced all 4 Blackadder series. Lloyd was originally to have been the host of BBC topical news quiz Have I Got News For You, but was replaced by Angus Deayton. His first new TV series for 14 years, QI (short for Quite Interesting, and a deliberate reversal of IQ), starring Stephen Fry and Alan Davies, began on 11 September 2003 at 10pm on BBC2 for a run of 12 episodes. In its eighth series, which started on BBC One in September 2010, Lloyd appeared as a panelist in one of the episodes. All the episodes of QI (including the pilot) have been directed by Ian Lorimer. Lloyd currently presents the radio series, The Museum of Curiosity (2008), which he co-created with producers Richard Turner & Dan Schreiber and former co-host Bill Bailey. Lloyd was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to broadcasting.

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