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King George (i think, might have been Edward) actually got his tattoos while serving in the navy. He disembarked in China and got a tiger on one arm and a dragon on the other, done using traditional methods
@5:01 There is no historical evidence that King Charles XIV of Sweden had such a tattoo. The tale was first told in an 1833 French play called The Bedfellow. In the play, it is believed that the king has a tattoo that reads something like "Death to Kings" but is later revealed to say "Long live the Republic". The play was a historical fiction and clearly propaganda. No historians have found any evidence that this element is true.
Holly Gerding Stephen had just as much if not more inaccuracies and the show has almost always been about the comedians and the more interesting sounding trivia so accuracy has always been sacrificed a little.
Interesting. But what conditions would lead to this tattoo business in a play becoming believed by people to be a fact? Indeed tattoos in Europe before the art of tattoo spread from Polynesia to the West via sailors would be very unusual, by my understanding. I would be happy to be corrected by any early modern historians who have different knowledge, but this is the common understanding among art historians. Then again ... 1833 ... I suppose it's hypothetically possible tattoos are starting to travel around the world. But i would have put it later than that. The earliest photographic evidence of European tattoos I've come across dates from the 1880s. Prior to that, you'd expect to find it in illustrations or textual descriptions, if anywhere but ... I really don't think it's likely
Minute 3:24 proves David Mitchell is a brilliant comedian, I almost sprayed my iPad with tea and laughed so hard I expected a seizure. I just love him.
I've heard that a lot before but let's think about it critically: you're the most powerful person in the country by miles, how much advice are you really taking from a guy you hired to wipe your ass?
9:35... Naive backwards is Evian... so is the bottled water company having a laugh at all the plonkers wasting their money buying bottled water which they can get equally as good out of the tap!
@@Zoe-bx9bp That is also true. Provided the journey was foreseeable and you planned ahead. However if you have ever filled a filtered jug (for example) from a tap and seen the crap it collects, you might also prefer not to go this method. I personally refill bottles after I filter it, but not everyone has a filter.
@@BumMcFluff the 'crap' is not gonna kill you ( if there is something dangerous in the water where you live then I apologise) so there's no need to filter it
The groom of the stool would have access to the King's ears. For long periods of time, considering they were all constantly constipated because of their diet.
3:30 ''I feel sorry for all the other finalists to be queen." is a wonderful joke! It is especially so watching as an American who's got ZERO understanding of the royal process and lineage BS the Brits go through to make a monarch.
I agree that Fry was wrong to rebuff him, Mitchell was _pretty_ _much_ correct and on point. All British monarchs to date have _chosen_ to be known with one single number across the UK. This has always been the English number, so this number has occasionally (such as now) been technically incorrect in Scotland. Elizabeth could, if she chose to, use the correct Scottish number of I rather than II (in Scotland only); she would have the Royal Prerogative to do so. If Jamie followed the convention that Churchill suggested, by calling himself 'James VIII', it would be technically correct in Scotland but not in England (this would be the first time this has happened). However, there are ways to avoid this issue altogether. Monarchs sometimes choose to reign under a different name than their given one, so Jamie could reign as King Jamie (the first), which would be correct everywhere in the UK.
British television seems to have a complicated relationship with Jeremy Clarkson. It seems every once in a while, he says something horrible or questionable, and his repeats get pulled from syndication, or he's rebooked at the last minute, but QI seems particularly keen to continue having him on.
The BBC realise they shot themselves in the foot cancelling his contract for Top Gear because he's really popular. Clarkson still appears on BBC programmes like QI and Have I Got News For You because they are made by external production companies. So the BBC can factually make the claim that they themselves are not employing him.
@@michaellejeune7715 if you look into the actual story instead of blindly believing he punched someone over a steak as the bbc would usually misconstrue a story you'd find out it goes much deeper than that but i doubt youd be capable of doing such a thing because apparently we should all blindly believe everything in newspapers without once looking it up.
Why don’t we dispense with the jokes about queer people’s sexual preferences? It’s usually seen as rather distasteful to make comments about what straight people do in bed, but when it’s about gay relationships it’s given a social license. It must be very intriguing to wonder about the mysteries of the “gay animal,” but it makes many people uncomfortable. Stephen has made comments about his sexuality in the past, but that’s at his prerogative and we should be respectful of the personal parts of his life.
Eric Burkheimer I appreciate your response. However - also as a gay man - I don’t think it is our call to fantasize about someone else’s personal life. A couple of days ago an article was released about singer Troye Sivan which contained very personal questions about his preferences which are only based on the fact he is gay - including a case of the gross ongoing speculation over Shawn Mendes’ sexuality. He said he was uncomfortable and declined to answer the questions. To be clear, the jokes are only made because Stephen is gay. There’s a sort of context that being gay is different, weird, against the standard, that it’s taboo. Children go through a stage of making jokes about sex and body parts because it’s new to them and the mystery is something they want to experience with others without talking about it seriously. That attitude is very common in queer adults because we don’t often get the chance to experience our sexuality the way other children do, so we make up for it later on. Straight people also operate in this “it’s gay, lol” setting because it’s something they don’t experience themselves. I don’t think that’s a very healthy way to look at your own sexuality; we should grow out of the childish stage and realize a more nuanced, seasoned, and beautiful view of ourselves.
mezalong Stephen has revealed personal information in the past to help quash stereotypes and make known truths about the LGBTQ+ community in the past, but that does not make jokes at the expense of his personal life appropriate.
The story of Bernadotte's tattoos is false but there are some interesting real stories they could have used. My favorite is that the very beloved Empress Elizabeth of Austria, wife of Emperor-King Franz Joseph, who is still beloved and something of a celebrity in Austria, had a tattoo of an anchor on her shoulderblade which was apparently done by a sailor in Greece and, more scandalously, she had a tramp stamp or a tattoo right above her bottom of the Austrian imperial eagle.
Ah! That might be the easiest yet anecdotal reference to knowledge of tattooing in Europe. But could this not also be apocryphal? Given that it was sailors who brought the Polynesian art of tattooing to the Western world, surely aristocrats would have shunned it. And an Austrian Empress letting a sailor inject ink under her skin with a needle? It sounds all so improbable. Most aristocrats wouldn't let sailors anywhere near them! Truly, an Empress with a "tramp stamp" is pure nonsense. Not only is that slang term new in the past two decades, that variety of tattoos is only slightly older. I suspect you are retelling stories passed around drunken Austrian Biergarten with more of a basis in fantasy than fact. A fun story, but i seriously doubt it's more than that.
I can't say yea or nay for this particular story, so I'll take your word for it, but I have to say that it's frustrating how often QI gets things wrong, given the nature of the show. If your premise is to make fun of people for believing common historical or scientific myths and misconceptions, then you'd better not be spouting those same misconceptions yourself, but they do, and so the show often feels a tad hypocritical.
Sarreq Teryx the problem is that your assertion “uses his real name, as is normal” doesn’t hold water. Until QEII, a whole series of monarchs chose to have an entirely different “ruling” name to their own first name.
@@DavidAndTheDog There were a few (going backwards, George VI, Edward VIII, Edward VII, and Victoria) but most have used their first name as their regnal name.
The story about the tattoo is apocryphal. It came from an 1833 play made for propaganda. There is no evidence for a tattoo and in fact in the play the actual tattoo reads "Long Live the Republic". It is rumoured before the reveal that it reads "Death to Kings".
Apparently, when Henry the 8th died (jousting, eye accident. That got infected) He was wheeled around on a barrow, through different areas, Until his body rotted so badly, that it burst open on the barrow, and spilled onto the ground, where the dogs of the town! Ate his decomposed organs and entrails; and licked up the liquids....... Mmmm yummy. Couldn't have happened to a nicer Guy!!
