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Stephen Fry is one of the most popular television and film personalities in the UK. Emerging from the Oxbridge comedy tradition which produced the likes of Rowan Atkinson, John Cleese, and others. Upon emerging from university, he appeared in a number of British comedy shows like Jeeves and Wooster, a TV series based on the P. G. Wodehouse novels, and a very non-Stephen role as Blaster Sump in "Kids Today" in the Thin Blue Line.
But Stephen's acting tour de force was not a comedy. It was the film Wilde where he played (who else?) Oscar Wilde . This movie holds a particular if not unique distinction in that the screen writers strove for accuracy rather than sensationalism. Perhaps for that reason the film was not wildly (no joke intended) successful and remains an all-time CooperToons favorite. Today, though, Stephen is best known as the host of the intellectual panel/quiz/comedy show Qi, or in the expanded title Quite Interesting. Each week Stephen asks the panel of British (and the occasional American) comedians a series of questions which are so interesting and unusual that no one is expected to get the answer. Instead points are awarded if the answer is interesting and deducted if they are both wrong and obviously so. Vastly superior to anything - that's anything - currently (or possibly ever) aired on American television, it should strike the US viewer as odd that topics or remarks which would get a host bounced from an American network quicker than you can say politically incorrect are bandied about with such savoir faire and élan on what is a government run broadcast. The main reason, of course, for such freedom of expression is that despite a constitutional guarantee of free speech in the United States, through custom, judicial rulings, and legislation clearly at odds with the Bill of Rights, it is clear that most Americans, regardless of political persuasion, prefer their free speech limited to those who share their own particular views. Fortunately, England, with no specific constitution, has been able to avoid such degeneration of civil liberties. Then there is of course the fact that the English can joke about themselves, something Americans have long forgotten how to do. Of course, nothing is perfect, not even BBC's Qi and sad to say America's lifeless attempts to imitate British comedy seems to be having an unwholesome influence on the show. Not only has the decibels of the more recent broadcast increased at least an order of magnitude - American comedians tends to think that shouting the lines somehow transforms boring non-jokes into high wit - but Stephen's regular foil Alan Davies - who in the past inevitably landed in last place at show's end - has actually starting winning! A bit more worrisome for true Qi fans is that some statements and comments that have been aired are actually incorrect - in actual fact of content, not just politically so. Or at least the answers and discussions might mislead the unwary. So in keeping with the philosophy of Qi, CooperToons has compiled a list of a few of these trifling errors and ambiguities which can be viewed if you just click here.