Stephen Fry on QI

[Ethan Thane Athen]

Taken a while to comment on this (mainly because I lazily thought someone else would pick it up but I haven't noticed it so....) but on QI a week or so ago, in response to Sean Locke making a joke about scientists making a finding up to justify their analysis of an item, Stephen Fry made a quite impassioned observation that, far from 'making something up' the default position of a scientist is 'I don't know' and how bizarre it is that they are accused of arrogance by 'religionistas' when they're quite happy to admit they don't know something or to change their minds when more evidence comes to light etc and that it's the 'religionistas' who are arrogant in their assumption, based on no evidence, that they have the answer to everything.

What a great asset to the atheist cause this man is.

 

[Ryokan]

He's an asset to humanity, period.

 

[Cayvmann]

Taken a while to comment on this (mainly because I lazily thought someone else would pick it up but I haven't noticed it so....) but on QI a week or so ago, in response to Sean Locke making a joke about scientists making a finding up to justify their analysis of an item, Stephen Fry made a quite impassioned observation that, far from 'making something up' the default position of a scientist is 'I don't know' and how bizarre it is that they are accused of arrogance by 'religionistas' when they're quite happy to admit they don't know something or to change their minds when more evidence comes to light etc and that it's the 'religionistas' who are arrogant in their assumption, based on no evidence, that they have the answer to everything.

What a great asset to the atheist cause this man is.

You forget, the ability to change one's mind, based on evidence, makes you a flip-flopper.

And I agree Stephen Fry is a great asset to humanity.

 

[NoZed Avenger]

I dunno about all that, but I like the show.

 

[Cayvmann]

I forgot to add a sarcastic smiley to the flip-flopper statement...

 

[Sledge]

Stephen Fry is a national treasure. Sean Lock is an arrogant tit.

 

[joeybernard]

Stephen Fry is a national treasure. Sean Lock is an arrogant tit.

But that is Sean Lock's shtick. He does the bumbling arrogant buffoon. I don't for a second believe that he is like that off camera.

And yes, Stephen Fry is a blessing to humanity. If there was such a thing as blessings

 

[Sledge]

I don't think it is shtick, but even if it is, he should stop interrupting his superiors.

 

[m_huber]

Can you find a video?

 

[andyandy]

whilst i do like Stephen Fry as a general rule, QI always seems a bit self-congratulatory and smug.....and they don't always get the facts right....which is a bit annoying......

it's interesting just how many comics are atheists - it seems to be the default.....

 

[Big Les]

But that is Sean Lock's shtick. He does the bumbling arrogant buffoon. I don't for a second believe that he is like that off camera.

Believe it. His stand-up routine is even more blokish ignorance (and less funny than his semi-improvised panel-show stuff). I practically cheered when SF put him down the way he did. Most hosts would just let it ride. He and Dara O'Briain are both great in that respect.

 

[Sledge]

Lock (and Rob Brydon) remind me of Douglas Adams' story about falling out of love with comedy.

There’s always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it’s with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it’s one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again. For me it was hearing a stand-up comedian make the following observation. “These scientists eh? They’re so stupid! You know those black box flight recorders they put on aeroplanes? And you know they’re meant to be indestructible? It’s always the thing that doesn’t get smashed? So why don’t they make the planes out of the same stuff?” The audience roared with laughter at how stupid scientists were, how they couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag, but I sat feeling uncomfortable. Was I just being pedantic to feel that the joke didn’t really work because flight recorders are made out titanium and that if you made planes out of titanium rather than aluminium they’d be far too heavy to get off the ground in the first place?

I began to pick away at the joke. Supposing Eric Morecambe had said it? Would it be funny then? Well, not quite, because that would have relied on the audience seeing that Eric was being dumb, in other words they would have had to know as a matter of common knowledge about the relative weights of titanium and aluminium. There was no way of deconstructing the joke (if you think this is obsessive behaviour you should try living with it) that didn’t rely on the teller and the audience complacently conspiring together to jeer at someone who knew more than they did. It sent a chill down my spine and still does. I felt betrayed by comedy in the same way that gangsta rap now makes me feel betrayed by rock music. I also began to wonder how many of the jokes I was making were just, well, ignorant.

You can see Lock's eyes start to glaze over whenever the conversation gets beyond him, and after about a minute he has to chime in with some snide little comment about how what's being discussed is irrelevant or stupid. Why they have him on the show, I have no idea.

 

[Harpo]

You can see Lock's eyes start to glaze over whenever the conversation gets beyond him, and after about a minute he has to chime in with some snide little comment about how what's being discussed is irrelevant or stupid. Why they have him on the show, I have no idea.

For that matter why have Alan Davis on with his god awful miming-while-someone-else-is-talking-in-an-attempt-to-look-funny schtick. The guy just isn't funny.They should also ****-can Jo Brand - who hasn't got an act unless the joke involves eating or menstruation plus she hardly ever gets a question right (or even attempts to). Jimmy Carr who without a carefully prepared script is lost, Roger McGough who shouldn't be allowed within 5 miles of a TV camera (or a microphone) so we aren't tainted with his (McDonalds shilling) mewling, "aren't-scousers-the-salt-of-the-earth" poetry. Anymore I've missed out?

Oh and I agree about Sean Lock - he just isn't that funny and certainly not funny enough to share a stage with Steven Fry, Dara O' Briain or Johnny Vegas

 

[Tanja]

I for one, love Sean Lock, Alan Davies and Jo Brand. I saw one of the episodes filmed in May - the one screened last week, with Sean Lock, Bill Bailey and Sandi Toksvig as regular guests (plus John Hodgman as special guest, who I admittedly never heard of before the show). That was just about a perfect panel.

 

[fleabeetle]

Stephen Fry is a national treasure. Sean Lock is an arrogant tit.

I’m inclined to feel that the latter description applies to the former gentleman, as well. For sure Fry has an excellent brain, and uses it incisively and lucidly; but strikes me as a smug and self-satisfied individual, to an extent which prevents me from liking him. Impression got, that among his legion of fans, none is as zealous and enthusiastic as Stephen Fry.

Plus, Fry can IMO be waspishly personally nasty, in a way which where I’m concerned, is not endearing. Comes to mind, a passage in “the book of” his television series about his travels in the United States; the same, involved time spent by Fry in the wilds of Oregon, with a Bigfoot proponent. Fry plainly thinks that the notion of Bigfoot’s existing, is ludicrous – fair enough; but the terms of personal scorn and spite, against his “Bigfooter” host and against BF proponents in general, in which he couched that sentiment, grated on me. What happened to “attack the idea, not the people who espouse it”?