Six Degrees of Stephen Fry | QI

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This clip is from QI Series J, Episode 14, 'Jingle Bells' with Stephen Fry, Alan Davies, Danny Baker, Phill Jupitus and Sarah Millican.

[@gameXylinder]

This is the sort of anecdote you'd expect from Gyles Brandreth 😄

[@SevCaswell]

He learned from the Best

[@markchapman6800]

It didn't go on for nearly long enough 😊

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

Imagine. Before the invention of TV advertising, we had to buy our own gorillas to play the drums.

[@r0bw00d]

A collector's piece, indeed. Every detail exactly as she said. Will you still play when all the rest of us are dead?

[@covrtdesign5279]

Or ruin your luggage.

[@archivist17]

The earliest jingles were surely market calls from street vendors.

[@chrisburn7178]

Immortalised in music like "The cries of London" by Orlando Gibbons.

[@Azmarith]

I was at the filming if this episode. It was filmed on June 25th, and was Phil's 50th birtday. They found it interesting that June 25th is litterally the furthest away from christmas day you can get.

[@HavasiP]

What about december 26th? For a kid that is by far the furthest from Christmas you can get.

[@Azmarith]

@@HavasiP they argued that December 26th is only one day away from Christmas technically.

[@Roronoa2zoro]

@@Azmarith I think the point is that a child doesn't see it that way.

[@SevCaswell]

@@Azmarith So I share a birthday with Phil then. It was also my father's half birthday, he was born on the 25th of December. (and was a lifelong atheist)

[@IgglePyggle]

Uhh, okay?

[@django3422]

Phil's met a whole bunch of top notch musicians, too!

[@DrZaius3141]

And even more utterly inept ones.

[@django3422]

@@DrZaius3141 Too true... he did have to sit next to Donny Tourettes that time...

[@DJMattEmpathy]

My auntie gave him a parking ticket

[@DJMattEmpathy]

He talked about her in his act

[@marycanary86]

he probably panicked and forgot every person he has ever met lol

[@bsjeffrey]

this should be the future of handshakes.

[@jonpowell8014]

Stephen Fry just getting every possible 'clang' in there with the name drops... 🤣

[@rtyuik7]

now try it with Gyles on the panel :-P

[@BitchinStitchin]

They'd probably trace that back to Cleopatra.

[@samfisher6606]

I can’t imagine

[@bramtahasoni]

As it turns out, one of my forebears...

[@matthewcarrasco4037]

@@bramtahasoni was Jesus Christ himself

[@BitchinStitchin]

@@bramtahasoni "Ahh yes, Cleopatra Brandryth, who, it turns out, put bees in a gourd and called it a vibrator."

[@dorkarama3135]

Nice: Stephen Fry vs Kevin Bacon...Sarah: bang on form, "louis Spence"😝

[@nst1981]

**shakes hand** jet from gladiators

[@hiltonian_1260]

An old friend of my family, recently deceased at 97, was the head of hiring for JFK, but that’s not the really interesting thing. When he was a child he knew a man who lived to be 100. That man, Thomas Leighton, had been born in 1839. We’re just a couple of really old people away from the mid 19th century. Harrison Tyler, the grandson of President John Tyler (b. 1790) is still alive.

[@edwardcamp3376]

My grandmother got Lee Harvey Oswald the job at the Texas School Book Depository when she was with the Texas Workforce Commission.

[@phillwainewright4221]

My grandfather was born in the 19th Century, my grandson was born in the 21st.

[@aryobvg]

If you've shaken hands with a Catholic priest, he's shaken hands with a bishop, who has shaken hands with the pope, who has shaken hands with his predecessor, etc, who has shaken hands with the apostle Peter, who has shaken hands with Jesus. (Although I'm not sure if shaking hands was the custom at that time, but you get what I mean.) Also works with other churches that have apostolic succession.

[@1969Kismet]

I kissed hello/goodbye a man who sang with Ben Harper, had a chat with a band who sold millions of album, had dinner with an international singer and spent an evening with a world famous DJ. Admittedly, I didn't have a clue who he was. He was just a very nice guy who took the time to explain how DJing worked. He even invited me to his concert the next evening and I didn't go because it's not my scene. A couple of weeks later, a friend of mine who is into electro, told me how she had missed a concert because she couldn't get tickets and how she was gutted because it was her birthday. It clicked then and it was that DJ. Mega star and very nice.

[@mannie7028]

Stephen fry is amazing... is there anyone he doesn’t know or whom he’s met

[@brianm6337]

He doesn't know me.. 😉 😁

[@Tao_Tology]

He's also met Giles Brandreth so he's shaken the hand of the man who has met/is related to eeeeeeveryone.

[@gariko]

It'd be great if he hasn't met Kevin Bacon

[@John_Ridley]

Topped perhaps only by Giles.

[@janeeyre1990]

He's a poster child for ADHD and bipolar II used productively (and I'm not diagnosing him, he has been open about having both conditions). When he was self-medicating as a young man, he said that he would use cocaine to calm himself down from manic episodes. Some of us are born on stimulants. People have thought that I was tweaking as a sober ADHDer. We are "hyperactive": literally "too much energy." But if you know how to work with your brain, you can channel that energy into art and other creative projects.

[@Sub_D47]

I love this idea..😂😂

[@petejones879]

I once bought a newspaper of a man that once sold one to Paul McCartney.. Does that count? Lol

[@GedMaybury23]

Awwwwww, well: okay. Just this once!

[@PureZOOKS]

01:20 I wanted to hear the recording of Von Multke so i looked it up.... he was born 26 October 1800. Edit: I know that still makes him 18th century but still the date should be noted.

[@GedMaybury23]

All I managed were two chaps who, by sheer random chance, ended up climbing Mount Everest in 1953. That's really the long and the short of it.

[@fearofthechippan]

My dad was on a plane with Alan once! I guess that’s my second degree relation 😂

[@SceneArtisan]

Many years ago, I shook the hand of Harold Wilson (and had a lengthy chat with him). ;) *Yes, really.

[@MAC...007]

He is alive.🙏

[@dixonballes2940]

Who, Stephen Fry? Well, as far as I know.

[@samdumaquis2033]

Interesting

[@GeneBlack]

I would think the FIRST person to sing the jingle was the songwriter who wrote the jingle.

[@mariem5027]

Meanwhile, I was so proud of my 10 year old self for shaking Prince Edward’s hand at the 2011 Commonwealth Youth Games

[@SevCaswell]

Edward is probably the best of the current crop tbf, he's kept himself out of the limelight since his disastrous attempt at a TV career.

[@mariem5027]

@@SevCaswell I didn’t even know about his TV career attempt! When was this?

[@SevCaswell]

@@mariem5027 in the 80s, he is most infamous for a royal edition of Celebrity Squares. He ran a tv company rather than trying to be an actor or presenter.

[@bengoacher4455]

well if you think about it Prince Edward would've shaken hands with the late Queen Elizabeth, who would've shaken hands with her father surely at some point, and with his father, and so on right the way back to William de Normandy who I doubt shook hands with Harold Godwinson.

[@user-dh1yq5cz9v]

@@bengoacher4455 I think the Hanovers being German sadly breaks the chain back to old Willy, although I reckon someone more well versed in Royal history could tell me it was broken before then!

[@Phylaetra]

I have shaken the hand of Buzz Aldrin, and I have spoken with Ronald Reagan (in that I was on duty and answered the phone - it's not like we had a conversation). That's about it, but I think many people have a connection like that - meeting a famous person once.

[@jmakiola]

One jingle like that I thought of was Tippecanoe and Tyler too, so we're talking about a jingle from 1840.

[@bsjeffrey]

it was santa claus...ho ho ho green giant

[@Dave-uj5wx]

makes me so mad when they think Marconi invented radio, it was Nikola Tesla! i think Marconi was the first to publicly broadcast it.

[@noatrope]

If I remember correctly, Tesla patented the parts before Marconi patented the entire device and there was a messy lawsuit about it

[@jordivermeulen2519]

Guess what: all science builds on the achievements of those who came before. Tesla wasn't even working on data transmissions, but power transmission. You can't say someone didn't invent the radio if they are the person who designed and built the first device used to make a radio transmission.

[@Dave-uj5wx]

Tesla sued marconi for infringment for the patent of radio invention. In 1943 US courts overturned the patent in favour for Tesla, unfortunately this was after his death.

[@oscarramage95]

I suppose it was normal in those days. Marconi's second wife was 27 years younger than him

[@Tao_Tology]

Well..... * some * of us have shaken the hand of Emperor Palpatine. Jus' sayin.

[@GedMaybury23]

Bwah-hah-hah-hah!

[@BitchinStitchin]

I would love to shake the hand of Harrison Ruffin Tyler, the grandson of 10th president of the United States, John Tyler. Harrison is still alive (AFAIK). Imagine the lineage of handshakes you'd pick up from just that one greeting!

[@christopherbell5817]

I like Vic Reeves' story, of meeting three of Britain's most notorious serial killers. Peter Sutcliffe, Dennis Neilson and Fred and Rose West.

[@peterdance9143]

4?

[@ronweasley9001]

Fred and Rose identified as conjoined twins

[@adamknopp6631]

I met the grandson of the army officer who led the first attack of the first world war gif Austrkk ok Hungary. The same year, I shook the hand of the granddaughter of the man who signalled the end of the First World War on the British side.

[@GedMaybury23]

right, yes - I'm impressed! That's a good one! I cannot compete. All I managed were two chaps who, by sheer random chance, ended up climbing Mount Everest in 1953.

[@djr3386]

One pound fish, hava hava look........

[@carolbeckett7922]

No, it's not his birthday

[@Hellwyck]

...hence the klaxon.

[@John_Smith_60]

According to another commenter, this was recorded in June, so it was probably closer to His birthday than when it was broadcast.

[@pico2260]

There is an old game called "How many hands away are you from ...?" I have a first class connection so I am three hands away from Elisabeth Taylor and four hands away from Lenin. (You probably won't know to whom the first hand belongs but you might get the second one.)

[@NewMessage]

Why am I suddenly craving bacon?

[@frankster200]

I just had Gammon

[@3rdmm]

Symptom of an oncoming stroke?

[@dorkarama3135]

Kevin flavoured bacon.

[@john.premose]

Because ur dum?

[@waynemarvin5661]

Pavlovian response.

[@j1shot2]

Contentiously I have to say that Marconi did not invent the radio but did use a number of Tesla's patents combined to transmit a radio signal from Nova Scotia to Ireland

[@r0bw00d]

If he combined parts to make a new object, then he invented it.

[@kieranbennett7453]

The logic followed then that the man who made the bicycle did so by attaching wheels together in a straight line so really the bicycle was invented by cavemen who made round things go around?

[@JW-zy3rc]

Marconi possibly not inventing radio was covered in qi elsewhere kzbin.info/www/bejne/mYGTlGBrq8aLmtk

[@waynemarvin5661]

He was, for some reason, transmitting to Ireland, so does that still count?

[@ukuleletyke]

Heinrich Hertz, in actual fact, was the first to construct a practical device that proved the existence of transmissible radio waves. So if you want to contend Marconi’s claim to practical radio transmission, then you’d be better looking to him. Marconi built heavily on Hertz’ published work.

[@chrislongstay]

I sold cigarettes to Merv the Swerve, the great Welsh rugby player. Best I can do!

[@alfnoakes392]

My (7 year old) brother got told to "F**k off" by Freddie Truman (the cricketer). Does that count?

[@brianm6337]

Gee- the best I got is being patted on the head by Bigfoot (yes, really).

[@La_sagne]

no, not really!

[@brianm6337]

@@La_sagne Shut it, idiot. You weren't there.

[@crazylizard1889]

How has Danny Baker met John Lennon?

[@largee24]

My friend Google says Mr Baker worked for the NME in the late 1970s so that seems like the obvious connection.

[@randyleazenby2351]

the first singing ads were during the medieval period when the sellers on the streets sang and shouted out their wares for sale to the public. However, Marconi was not the inventor of the radio. It was proven in a U.S. court to be Tesla.

[@rustythecrown9317]

lol...any lie to try and be first eh?. first to do this , first to do that...bollocks. first man in space : russian , fist to fly; French... first telephone; Canadian. And I trust anything a us court has to say about as far as I can comfortably spit a rat.

[@DomWeasel]

Tesla didn't invent radio. He did his own research into high frequency electricity but dismissed Heinrich Rudolf Hertz's work because he believed radio waves if they did exist could only travel in straight lines and would therefore be useless. Tesla instead planned to use high frequency electricity for power distribution; not communication. Guglielmo Marconi believed that it could be used for communication and used some of Tesla's early work to develop his own system and create the first functional radio. While some of Tesla's tech led to the breakthrough, the idea and development was all Marconi's. I know the US has a hard-on for Tesla now as they try to make up for all the patents stolen by Thomas Edison, but Tesla is not the Da Vinci of the electrical age. Ironically da Vinci wasn't the da Vinci of the Renaissance as most of his 'inventions' were completely conceptual and unworkable with the technology of the time and even today remain completely impractical or non-functional.

[@waynemarvin5661]

@@rustythecrown9317 Excepting the first person in space, all your other claims are false.

[@rustythecrown9317]

@@waynemarvin5661 Montgolfier brothers did the hot air balloon flying thing in the 1700's and Alexander Graham Bell received the first patent for the telephone thereby making the invention of the phone Canadian... sit down.

[@magnificentfailure2390]

I got high and jammed with Ronnie Wood. I don't think I shook his hand. I was pretty stoned.

[@jonathangwynne1917]

Marconi didn't invent radio. That was Nikola Tesla.

[@AndrewTBP]

No.