QI | When Should You Have 300 'G&T's? 

I wanna heal people, I wanna heal people, I wanna make people look ✨fabulous 💅🏼

As The Gin Lady Malika Andress will tell you, it isn't actually tonic that was the mixer with gin, it was actually the gin that was the mixer with tonic! When sailors had to drink tonic every day, they couldn't stand it, but they got a ration of gin a day, so they mixed their ration of gin with the tonic to make it drinkable.

I'm so glad Sandi brought up that Clarissa D-W story. She (Clarissa) said in an interview that she was talking to a dr about her symptoms and she suggested it could have been from the tonic she had been drinking. Doctor: You would have to have drunk an awful lot of tonic Clarissa: [Recounts years of multiple bottles/day] Doctor: Well......yes. That would do it.

I love that this fact was covered. I went to school in Portland, OR to become a pastry chef and one of our assignments was to make whatever cake we wanted. The idea was to just see if we understood basic cake composition, the flavors were up to us. I chose to make a "Gin and Tonic cake". It tasted foul but I still aced the test and as a result of my research, I learned about the history of gin and tonics and the use of them to stave off malaria. I also learned how illegal it was to access quinine when you aren't a doctor. Ha ha. If I remember right, I ended up using baking soda in excess on purpose and went heavy on steeped juniper berries to get that soda/bitter flavor. Fun fact about tonic water: The quinine present luminesces under a blacklight. Consider serving a drink with Tonic water if you throw a Halloween party. Even a small amount of quinine will glow brightly.

"It is a curious fact, and one to which no-one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85 percent of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand variations on this phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian ‘chinanto/mnigs’ which is ordinary water served just above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks’ which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the only one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that their names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds." Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe I do love gin and tonic

I’m somewhat glad, Jennifer always rode the motorcycle and Clarissa sat in the sidecar after hearing that story. Both absolute legends, of course.

It's not a complicated process to get quinine from the bark. Boiling it will do. The problem is you will have little idea of the concentration and you need a very good filter or you'll get a huge dosage of quinine from the bits of bark in suspension.

My boss knew a girl in university who went on one of those humanitarian trips to Central America. They had to take anti-malaria drugs. By the third day half had stopped taking them because they would rather contend with malaria then deal with the night sweats and nightmares when they went to bed.

Quinacridone Violet, one of the most *delicious* colours on the plnet!

I once studied quinine as part of my degree. Fascinating stuff.

I don't know where I heard this (maybe on "Connections by James Burke"?) but many years ago "tonic water" had far more quinine than the tonic water you can buy today from the supermarket. In fact, there was so much quinine that it tasted very nasty/borderline undrinkable. The only way it was tolerable to drink was to add gin and a good squeeze of lemon juice. Unsure if true, but sounds reasonable.

I was a nurse for a hundred years, and I had just read an article on it when a patient rolled in going crazy, and we could not figure out what was going on. Her husband appeared about 30 mins after the ambulance, and he had a tan, in the dead of winter, and I asked him if they had been on a trip which would need malaria meds? He said yes and then we figured out how to treat her!

i've never heard the british pronunciation of quinine. i've always said it as, 'kwai nine?' not 'kwe neen.' NEAT!

Some muscular issues are treated with small amounts of quinine but the quantity needed is usually smaller than what you get in quinine tablets. In such cases the best treatment is to drink tonic water. I didn't like gin, so I had traditional bitter lemon which is made with tonic water, thus two bottles a day gave me the right dosage and a heck of a lot less than the smallest tablets could provide.

Quinine also helps with muscle cramps - leg cramps, etc.

It is actually quite interesting

Gin & Tonics are magical. Gin by itself is awful, and tonic water by itself is disgusting, but mix the two together and you inexplicably end up with something lovely.

Anyway is good day in a hot day in Australia! Thank God for that tree. And I love Mauve

I had to look up that story about Clarissa Dickson Wright from _Two Fat Ladies._ It is a sad story. She drank herself into poverty with gin-and-tonics and was homeless in her mid-thirties. She drank so many of them that her adrenal gland was permanently damaged from the tonic, causing her to put on weight.

I owe my life to quninine.

Mauvine was not the first synthetic color. Mauvine was invented in 1856, about 30 years after the invention of synthetic ultramarine. It might be the first synthetic dye, though (ultramarine being a pigment).

Shocking swearing from Prue at 0:59

was thinking "at Thermopylae?"

Phil Jupitus is hilarious

What's the blue thing on the window sill in the outro (bottom left)?

Fun fact, that photo of young William Henry Perkin is one of the earlist self-photos ever taken

Alan: "And now we have to go there to catch it" Alan: pauses Alan's face: *AM I GONNA GET IN TROUBLE FOR THAT?*

Quinine glows under UV (and hence G&T does). I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned!

I use tonic to stop cramps..works

When my mum starts asking why I dont have kids yet at 34, for the 300th time.

I'm surprised we're not having 300 G+T's right now

Does Campari still have a high quantity of quinine in it, or is it something that jsut tastes simialr now? It used to be stuffed with the stuff ~ Colonial French answer to G&T.

Thought it was gonna be about DNA (ACGT)

The hydroxychloroquine reacts with magnesium and potassium in your blood. This can lead to magnesium- and potassium deficiency. Since the hydroxychloroquine is turned inert by magnesium and potassium and the reverse. I guess that is better than both psychosis and malaria though lol.

I really don’t like the ending with the closing of the laptop. Can you either re-edit it so it isn’t that annoying towards Sandi, or just reshoot a normal one?

That young inventor guy at the end looked a little like Adam Driver.

When should you order 300 G&Ts? Well, when having a back-to-back Fleabag marathon of course!

Anyone else think the younger photo of the guy who created the dye looks like Stephen a bit? Pic near the end of the vid fyi

When you're at the Tiny Hamster Bar?

Don't need to watch the clip. The answer is every day!🍸

QI fact... The island of Rapa Nui's (Easter Island) mosquitos caught Dengue Fever from Oriental tourists that visited the island. Now the islands mosquitos transmit it to residents and tourists alike.

Tuesday

Anyone else think the young picture of the guy at the end looks like Adam Driver?

Election night?

Young sir William Henry Perkin looks a lot like a young Dustin Hoffman.

A quinine tablet tastes so unbelievably bitter I could only take one that was wrapped in a cabbage leaf . I'll never be sure what illness I had but it wasn't it was chloroquine resistant malaria they gave me quinine for. Possibly a touch of typhoid.

Now look, while I live in Northern Europe that is not a reason to be unprepared. So I drink G&T every chance I get to make sure that if I get malaria I am already being treated.

When your about to start battle of Thermopylae

When they're free

Before watching the video I thought they were going to talk about ordering just the letter G and T. I was so curious why someone would need 300 G’s and T’s.

My grandfather got malaria growing up in the swamps of East Texas. Between the meds for it and the gas he was exposed to in the trenches of WWI, he was stone blind by his 60s. He lived to be 92. I learned that I could be both stubborn and mild-mannered from his example.

Why is there mint in the picture of gin & tonic?

When you're serving Richard Hammond

im finding it fascinating that the first artificial dye was invented so late in man's history .. or is it that the bar for what is considered "natural" set really really low?

Mauve - the first artificial colour and very popular in Victorian England.

She didn’t say what the color was. I didn’t recognize the name. Anyone?

03:07 Not for a fat person. Yeah, but imagine the fall down. It'd be like kerplunk!

I don't know if it works or if it's superstition but whenever I have a cold I drink a bottle of tonic water

We in the New World gave you syphilis. Lol Turn about is fair play!

Surely the answer would depend entirely on which planet you were ordering them. Take extra care in a Gagrakackan bar, especially if you have any cattle nearby.

Isn't it "Gins and tonic"?

You don't have to drink 300 Gin and Tonics...Just 300 Tonics!

Between Sandi and the sticky blood lady... Do people not know you can drink gin and tonic separately?

Is G&T like Sauvignon Blanc with Sprite? I'm asking because I've never had a G&T.

I’ve never actually counted them, but 300 grits seems like a good amount for one serving.

when I lived in the USA i had to give up drinking G&T because you cant get proper tonic water there - even in NY. i ended up having to settle for gin & juice like snoop dog. why doesnt the US have tonic water? is quinine illegal in the "land of the free"?

first? This is my first first!

Well done Phil Jupitus here, highlighting Sandi's white guilt snobbery about "Europeans" apparently stupidly not knowing about Quinine whilst the infinitely clever natives did.

When might it be a good idea to order 300 G&T's...maybe when Russia invades your country?

"Entendiquichu manachu?" That's quechua for "do you understand? Or you don't?" "Llunku" is the word for the followers of the left government.

Sandy is great but the show lacks energy now. Everyone just going through their paces with little enthusiasm.

please, for the last 8 series, bring Stephen back. Pay whatever he asks