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Funny You Should Ask Again - QI ****

The BBC TV show QI has some very irritating characteristics. First, there's the twee reference to their researchers as 'elves'. Then there's the smugness. No quiz show has ever been so smug in the way it delights in the wrong answers of contestants. And it has featured some scientific bloomers, such as naming Galileo as the inventor of the telescope. But this book is based on the QI researchers (still nauseatingly called elves) appearance on Zoe Ball's breakfast show on BBC Radio 2, answering listeners' questions - making it far less cynical and a compendium of good, fun, surprising facts.

What we get here is a collection of one and two page articles answering questions from how an ant measures distance to why we don't say 'sheeps' (unless we are Jeremy Clarkson). Some of the topics are fairly well-known already - like there not being a licence to kill in MI6, why a computer mouse is called a mouse, or whether or clone would have the same fingerprints (they don't mention that you just need to look at identical twins). Others are obscure, but frankly hard to imagine why anyone would want to know. For example, which of our lips is more important or has there ever been a strike at a bowling alley. But there is a solid base of genuinely interesting and surprising answers, whether it's to why embedded spies are called moles or why unsavoury doesn't mean sweet. It's not a long book - I read it in under two hours - but there's plenty to enjoy and to want to tell whoever is near you.

There were a few small issues. The 'answers' don't always answer the actual question. The very first one in the book is 'Why do ladybirds have spots?' What they answer is 'Why are ladybirds brightly coloured?' - which isn't the same thing at all. Sometimes there are opportunities missed to go a bit further in what can be over-simplistic answers. So, for example, the section on why Christmas puddings are sometimes called plum puddings points out that the pudding is traditionally made on 'Stir-up Sunday', the Sunday before Advent. The implication is that the Sunday is called this because of the pudding. But it's much more interesting if you know that traditional collect (prayer) for that evening begins 'Stir up, O Lord...'

The biggest gaffe is in the section answering 'What's the difference between antlers and horns?' The text points out that unlike bony antlers, horns (found on cattle, sheep etc.) contain a 'little core of bone' with the external part being keratin. And the exception to this is the rhinoceros which 'doesn't have a horn at all' because the apparent horn is all keratin and 'lacks the bony core that normal horns have.' The book is somewhat randomly illustrated. This section is illustrated with a deer and its antlers... and a rhino with its horns have a bony core.

Mostly, though, the content is fine if sometimes the (groan) elves try a bit too hard to be funny. This title is clearly aimed at the gift book market and it would make an excellent present for teenagers and adults alike.

Hardback: 
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Review by Brian Clegg

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