The autumn of 2011 saw the return of what has become one of the classic celebrity panel quiz show, QI, firing yet more random chunks of useless information, facts and historical anomalies at us through the television screen. QI series 9/10 brought back the genius comedy might and high firing IQ mind of host Stephen Fry and his rather more foolish sidekick Alan Davies (who turned out to be absolutely nothing like his alter ego, Jonathan Creek) to BBC 2.
However, the confusing part in the Albert Einstein inspired equation is that the BBC press pack with the release info about the series claims that it’s series 10, but information elsewhere indicates that it will actually be Series 9. It’s a modern day mystery that even Sherlock Holmes would need to have a little think about, but we’re going to soldier on regardless and assume that whatever the number may be, it’s just good news that we continue to get a good helping of QI fun in our viewing diets.
Each series is based around a letter of the alphabet and apparently we had just seen letter H the year before the announcement, so that would make the next series the letter I, but with the mix-up between 9 and 10 already we may just skip on to J and forget I ever existed. That aside, and using our super sleuth skills, we can deduce that series 1 would have been the letter A, because A is the first letter of the alphabet, and considering the fact that the letter H is the eighth letter in the alphabet it must have been series 8. The show also started in 2003 with one series per year, making 2011 it’s 9th year, supporting the Series 9 hypothesis, .
Whether or not the BBC website has made another in what’s starting to be a long line of typos (we know, kids in glass houses! But then we’re not Mother) the new series was bound to be as class as the previous 8, or maybe 9. Hold on. We’ve just watched episode 10 from Series 7 on BBC iPlayer. It was the letter G, which would make Series 8 H and Series 9 I. There’s also only 8 previous series in the list on the BBC website, and the programme info for the last episode of Series 8 said it was broadcast on the 4th May 2011. Ipso facto… Adversus solem ne loquitor! And with special thanks to Wikipedia and Sherlock Holmes, we can officially confirm that the Autumn 2011 series was series 9, not 10, confirming that the Beeb did in fact get it wrong in their release information.
Phew, glad that’s over with. Now you can relax and watch a little clip that we like from series 8, which will help you to understand the I before E rules, or lack thereof:
