General Ignorance
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General Ignorance is the final round in the intellectual British panel game QI. It is a parody of General knowledge rounds on game shows.
In General Ignorance, all or most of the questions appear to have fairly obvious answers, however, these answer tend to be the incorrect ones, and as a result score large penalties for anyone who say them. Penalties normally result in 10 or 20 points being deducted. The biggest penalty for such a question was, "What was Gandhi's first name?" to which regular panellist Alan Davies jokingly answered "Randy", and was deducted 150 points, resulting in the lowest ever score on the show (-144 points). Ironically, if Davies had not given this answer, he would have won 6 points to Dara Ó Briain's 3 points. In one episode, the question "What is the most common material in air" was asked, if anyone gave carbon dioxide as an answer, 3000 points would have been deducted off them. Fortunately, no one gave this answer.
[edit] Examples of General Ignorance
The following are all examples of General Ignorance.
- Henry VIII of England had six wives. In fact he only had two or four, depending on the source. His marriage to Anne of Cleves was annulled, the Pope declared his marriage with Anne Boleyn to be void as he was still married to Catherine of Aragon, and the marriage to Catherine of Aragon was declared void by Henry himself as it was illegal to marry the widow of one's brother (Catherine had previously been married to Henry's older brother Arthur).
- Nothing rhymes with orange, purple or silver. "Blorenge" is a town in Wales and "Gorringe" is a surname. "Hirple" means "To walk with a limp" and a "curple" is the strap under the girth of a horses saddle. A "chilver" is ewe lamb.
- The name of the archbishop murdered by Henry II of England was Thomas à Becket. The "à" is a mistake. His name was simply "Thomas Becket".
[edit] The Book of General Ignorance
On the 5 October 2006, The Book of General Ignorance was published. This book contains 200 pieces of General Ignorance. It is written by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson, as well as having a foreword by Stephen Fry and "four words" by Alan Davies ('Will this do Stephen?'). On 8 December 2006, the book reached the top of amazon.co.uk's best-seller list.[1]
A follow-up is in the works and will focus on animals.
[edit] External links
| Quite Interesting People |
| Stephen Fry | Alan Davies | John Lloyd | Repeat offenders |
| Quite Interesting Series |
| A | B | C | D |
| Other Quite Interesting Things |
| General Ignorance |
Categories: QI | Trivia
