And quite like the word, the monologue itself was obscured by all the madness going around it. And suddenly now is its time to rise and show the world how glorious it is.
Ah, good old Didcot! Lived there for 9 years, and I've still just 8 miles away in Wantage (as in Lord Wantage, mentioned in the clip). I'll even be using Didcot station on Sunday on my way to London...
Is it really that good though? Swindoner here so not taking the piss, my place is shite. But I remember my grandparents taking me to the railway museum and whilst loving it, it was pretty bleak. Every time I've gone to London by train it always looked like... well... Royston Vasey (the village lol).
@@hopintheroflcopter It's a lot better than it was 20+ years ago. The new centre of the shopping centre, arts venue & cinema have improved it a lot & there's a distinct shift towards making it a place to live rather than a place for commuters to either Oxford or London. As for Swindon, I was once asked by a colleague to describe Milwaukee after I'd been there for a work trip. My reply was "It's like Swindon but without the charm!"
As a resident of Didcot, here are 2 more QI worthy things: 1) a few years back someone had some fun with the road signs and we ended up having places like Mordor, Gotham, the Emerald City, and any other fictional place you can think of on the signs! 2) a survey was carried out and Didcot was going to be the most ‘Normal’ place in the country. They gathered economic and voting data among other things and Didcot came out on top!!
Not far west of Hitchin in Hertfordshire they have, or more correctly had, a very narrow lane which was (genuinely) called *Wibbley Wobbly Lane* (This was a very fair descriptor of it too). Some years ago the Council changed the name to something more banal The reason was simple ............ People kept stealing the old lane's name plates 🙄
Yeah, I really don't get why people hate them so much. They look nice, and even if they don't, they're literally just in the middle of some random field that has nothing else going for it.
How can anyone not like a clear vista being replaced by a forest of giant white trees? I'm waiting with anticipation to see the kinds of wildlife that will inhabit such forests - especially the birds that will nest on the revolving branches.
'The meaning of liff' is a marvelously entertaining bit of writing. I was pleased with myself having recognized Stephen's reference...I still have my 35-year-old worn, loved, and dog-eared copy.
@@simonkevnorris Part of the Williams Engineering business is still in Didcot but WilliamsF1, now Williams Racing, moved to Grove near Wantage many years ago.
Didcot was a tiny village until the railway boom of the mid 19th century. Nearby Abingdon, the county town of Berkshire was too snooty to accept. Station, which was actually a branch line up to Oxford, so the GWR (Great Western Railway) built it at Didcot instead. Now not only is Abingdon no longer the county seat of Berkshire, it’s not even in it, having been moved into Oxfordshire in 1974. Now Abingdon is essentially a suburb of Oxford.
Fun fact about Didcot: it’s home to the hottest place in the Solar System (I know that sounds like it’s from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but it’s true).
What are you referring to? The diamond light source? Or something else in Harwell? Of course neither of them are actually in Didcot, I worked labouring helping build the Diamond light source.
I used to live in a village, not far from Didcot, called Kingston Bagpuize, which also features in the Meaning of Liff, defined as “A sixteen-stone man trying to commit suicide by jogging”. Later in life, I was working for a company that decided to move to a place called Frimley, which is also in the book, defined as “The carefree saunter adopted by Norman Wisdom, immediately before disappearing down an open manhole”. The company folded 15 months after the move.
If I have got the right figures here, a stone equals 14 lbs. So a 16 stone man would only weigh 224 lbs. Unless ofc the Meaning of Lif is using stones on the heavier end of the scale (32 to 40 lbs a stone), then a 16 stone man would weigh somewhere between 512 and 640 lbs, which for the hilarious description "a 16 stone man trying to commit suicide by jogging" makes way more sense
My goodness! I'm American and I actually have that book, but I had forgotten about it. I'll have to look for it. I also have the complete 5 books of the Hitchhiker trilogy and the Dirk Gently(Svlad Cjelli) books, but I don't like to brag. Just stating some totally freakin' awesome facts. PS I also just happen to have the original BBC produced Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series on VHS. But once again, I don't like to put my business out there for other people to be envious of me.🤭😆
A few years ago, I was lucky enough to meet John Lloyd at an event, and I told him that his "Meaning of Liff" with Douglas Adams was my favourite thing he had ever done, expecting him to raise an eyebrow at my niche choice. Instead he virtually purred with delight, and shook my hand 🥲
She had another wonderful skit in another episode, in the persona of a Victorian lady who had lived with a native tribe in Africa, but her best "bit" was her impersonation of Monica Geller from "Friends" impersonating Bette Davis in "Now Voyager"...
As a member of the Magdalen College School Air Cadet Force, I once flew over Didcot power station in a Chipmunk trainer. It would have been about 1979, and my pilot at the time let me fly the aero plane in a shallow dive over the power station in a pretend bombing run. Needless to say, that at the age of 15 years, I missed by a mile!
Don't knock the place u try living in a town with no shops and no rail station, l lived there in the sixties good times, good mates and a good railway job.
I wonder if Ancona was the lead writer of those jokes about language (e.g. Irish Jockey with Mack, English Class with the gang, Sign language interpreter with Mack, etc.) in Season 1 of The Sketch Show? Later seasons (without Ancona) lacked those types of sketches. I think that's the case anyway after rewatching those shows.
Being from Abingdon myself I have many a memory of trips to Didcot sometimes to go to the cinema but more often to the sainsburys to do the weekly shop and on occasion drop off/pick up my mum who worked there for a time. Always the bridesmaid couldn't sum up a place better than Didcot. It's got frighteningly little going for it. It's only real use was in preventing me from losing my bearings on dog walks as you could always orientate yourself with the power station bc yoh could see the eye sore for miles.
“And you thought, possibly for comic effect but if so disastrously, that’s not what was happening at all. It was completely something else entirely. It was one of those laughable misunderstandings and I use the word laughable quite wrongly”.
This was very close to having double allusions to ABOFAL with Stephen in the verbose overexplaining mode he so often employed there and the misremembered* Phil Collins song reminding me of Hugh Lauries cause of death, "Where is the Lid?". * Apparently it is called "Wear my Hat" which makes him wearing a hat rather apropos.
Wow her story was incredible, especially being made up on the spot. Shows she's exceptionally intelligent behind her comedienne façade. That was really clever, at the end she looked kind of exposed and a bit shy, like she'd shown a part of herself she often keeps out of public view, which made it even more endearing. And then Alan just launched into his theory without even pausing to acknowledge what she'd just said....went right over his head...🤣
Totally wrong! Williams won their first driver's championship in 1980 with Alan Jones while the factory was in Didcot plus a couple of constructor's championships before moving to the current factory in Grove and continuing to win driver's and constructor's championships until 1997.
Phil Jupitus, one of the funniest , cleverest comedians, totally under appreciated and underrated, worth a thousand of your Nish Kumars and Romesh Ranganathans, Why so little exposure on TV is beyond me.
Fun fact - the claimed collapse at Didcot power station which resulted in three workers being trapped and killed wasn't a collapse at all, me and my ex lived close at the time, right near ladygrove lake, in sight of the station and we heard an explosion, no way was it a collapse, but for what I assume are liability reasons the lie was spun that it was a collapse, coincidentally enough occurring just before they demolished it with explosives and the three people who died were working on the demolition in some capacity, the site had shut down normal operations at that point,. I would swear to it.
''Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? First: `A’. How would you define `a’?..... 'Good. So we’re well on the way, then. `a’; impersonal pronoun; doesn’t really mean anything.” Right! Next: `A’… `A-B’. ''
I don't mind the occasional dud answer on comedy quiz shows. Even the best in the business can't split sides every time they open their mouths. But I'm moved to cringe by how Ronni doesn't even appear to know how tedious her answers are. Listen how the others pipe up, trying to save the ship, and she obliviously talks over them. Like ok I get it. She made a punny interpretation of the question and pretended the book title referred to anthropomorphized words. I concede it's clever enough to warrant maybe a quick one-liner, but I don't know why she thought it had the gas to get through an entire children's book. They keep bringing her back on, so I assume not everyone does what I do and skips past her answers if I can tell she's settling in for story time.
Weird question. It just means they liked something I didn't like. Something I do like is imagining you counting the words in my comment in order to draw a false equivalence. I find it endearingly petty. @@Octamed
Ronni's monologue on "obscurity" was exquisite
That was brilliant, especially if it was just improvised.
And quite like the word, the monologue itself was obscured by all the madness going around it. And suddenly now is its time to rise and show the world how glorious it is.
Well she was bound to have one talent
@@danbongard3226 Its not - the "celebrities" see all the questions before filming to give them time to come up with their "funny" quips.
@@JohnyG29 I am pretty sure that's not true
That was utterly brilliant by Ronni. She had to have improvised the whole thing, but she delivered it perfectly.
Meanwhile, Stephen Fry just ended Rory Bremner’s whole career…😏
One of Ronni Ancona's finest moments - a much underrated panellist
Ah, good old Didcot! Lived there for 9 years, and I've still just 8 miles away in Wantage (as in Lord Wantage, mentioned in the clip). I'll even be using Didcot station on Sunday on my way to London...
Is it really that good though? Swindoner here so not taking the piss, my place is shite. But I remember my grandparents taking me to the railway museum and whilst loving it, it was pretty bleak. Every time I've gone to London by train it always looked like... well... Royston Vasey (the village lol).
@@hopintheroflcopter It's a lot better than it was 20+ years ago. The new centre of the shopping centre, arts venue & cinema have improved it a lot & there's a distinct shift towards making it a place to live rather than a place for commuters to either Oxford or London.
As for Swindon, I was once asked by a colleague to describe Milwaukee after I'd been there for a work trip. My reply was "It's like Swindon but without the charm!"
I remember Didcot station.
Then for some reason it became Didcot Parkway.
As a resident of Didcot, here are 2 more QI worthy things:
1) a few years back someone had some fun with the road signs and we ended up having places like Mordor, Gotham, the Emerald City, and any other fictional place you can think of on the signs!
2) a survey was carried out and Didcot was going to be the most ‘Normal’ place in the country. They gathered economic and voting data among other things and Didcot came out on top!!
It's also fittingly the home of the chief exec of GWR.
can you really come out on top as being the most normal?
Confusing as Gotham is near Nottingham
As a fellow resident, i did not know this
Not far west of Hitchin in Hertfordshire they have, or more correctly had, a very narrow lane which was (genuinely) called *Wibbley Wobbly Lane* (This was a very fair descriptor of it too).
Some years ago the Council changed the name to something more banal
The reason was simple ............ People kept stealing the old lane's name plates 🙄
Windfarms are mesmerising - I wonder at the lack of taste of those that despise them.
Some of the anti wind farm sentiment is / was fostered by the nuclear lobby. Country Guardians had same office as Supporters of Nuclear Energy.
@@alicequayle4625 yeah, it was vested interest in Australia too - the fossil fuel lobbyists and Murdoch here though.
Yeah, I really don't get why people hate them so much. They look nice, and even if they don't, they're literally just in the middle of some random field that has nothing else going for it.
How can anyone not like a clear vista being replaced by a forest of giant white trees?
I'm waiting with anticipation to see the kinds of wildlife that will inhabit such forests - especially the birds that will nest on the revolving branches.
@@trueaussie9230 A clear vista of what? The local pub? The wind turbines _are_ the vista.
1:16 So who is going to tell Alan that the song is called "Wear My Hat", not "Where's My Hat"?
Ronny's obscurity story. Chef's kiss 😍
'The meaning of liff' is a marvelously entertaining bit of writing. I was pleased with myself having recognized Stephen's reference...I still have my 35-year-old worn, loved, and dog-eared copy.
My only knowledge of Didcot is that it was one of the places David Brent thought of working in after he had finished with Slough.
The way Brent said "Winnersh" always gets me.
Didcot, Yately, Bracknell, Taploe, WINNERSH
Didcot was where the Williams F1 team were based. They may still be there.
@@simonkevnorris Part of the Williams Engineering business is still in Didcot but WilliamsF1, now Williams Racing, moved to Grove near Wantage many years ago.
@@simonkevnorris They are based in Grove, not Didcot.
Ronnie @1:24 is amazing. Fluid imagination.
Didcot was a tiny village until the railway boom of the mid 19th century. Nearby Abingdon, the county town of Berkshire was too snooty to accept. Station, which was actually a branch line up to Oxford, so the GWR (Great Western Railway) built it at Didcot instead. Now not only is Abingdon no longer the county seat of Berkshire, it’s not even in it, having been moved into Oxfordshire in 1974. Now Abingdon is essentially a suburb of Oxford.
Fun fact about Didcot: it’s home to the hottest place in the Solar System (I know that sounds like it’s from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but it’s true).
What are you referring to? The diamond light source? Or something else in Harwell? Of course neither of them are actually in Didcot, I worked labouring helping build the Diamond light source.
@@scottjohnstone6204 There is an experimental fusion reactor in Didcot.
@@scottjohnstone6204 neither was JET in Culham
I love Didcot ❤ I went there back in the good old days of when I did my motorsport course at MK College Bletchley campus 2010-2012 ❤
I used to live in a village, not far from Didcot, called Kingston Bagpuize, which also features in the Meaning of Liff, defined as “A sixteen-stone man trying to commit suicide by jogging”.
Later in life, I was working for a company that decided to move to a place called Frimley, which is also in the book, defined as “The carefree saunter adopted by Norman Wisdom, immediately before disappearing down an open manhole”. The company folded 15 months after the move.
that's a darn good name for a village
@@spookydirt It dates back to the Norman conquest.
If I have got the right figures here, a stone equals 14 lbs. So a 16 stone man would only weigh 224 lbs. Unless ofc the Meaning of Lif is using stones on the heavier end of the scale (32 to 40 lbs a stone), then a 16 stone man would weigh somewhere between 512 and 640 lbs, which for the hilarious description "a 16 stone man trying to commit suicide by jogging" makes way more sense
Hooray for "The Meaning of Liff"! That book changed my life.
Yes, it changed it from "life" to "liff" specifically.
My goodness! I'm American and I actually have that book, but I had forgotten about it. I'll have to look for it. I also have the complete 5 books of the Hitchhiker trilogy and the Dirk Gently(Svlad Cjelli) books, but I don't like to brag. Just stating some totally freakin' awesome facts.
PS I also just happen to have the original BBC produced Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series on VHS. But once again, I don't like to put my business out there for other people to be envious of me.🤭😆
It's funny because there used to be a mental hospital local to me known as 'Liff Hospital' Liff being the place it was located.
A few years ago, I was lucky enough to meet John Lloyd at an event, and I told him that his "Meaning of Liff" with Douglas Adams was my favourite thing he had ever done, expecting him to raise an eyebrow at my niche choice. Instead he virtually purred with delight, and shook my hand 🥲
I got a few of my liffs in "Afterliff", John Lloyd's sequel. Cool bucket list achievement.
If dictionaries had more of that salacious word family histories stuff, I'd never put them down!
Ronni Ancona is awesome.
Is this why the power station was referred to as Didcot Cathedral?
Where can I see more of her? I don't even know Ronni's last name! If that's just her improv, she's incredible!
Ronni Ancona
With you.
She had another wonderful skit in another episode, in the persona of a Victorian lady who had lived with a native tribe in Africa, but her best "bit" was her impersonation of Monica Geller from "Friends" impersonating Bette Davis in "Now Voyager"...
is there a best of for Ronni? there should be there are a few episodes she has some awesome moments
I suspect this was selected really to highlight Ronni's rant about obscurity.
This specific video is so british, it asked me to accept usage of biscuits
Fun fact: Nobody has ever seen Ronni Ancona and Johnny Vegas in the same place at the same time.
The brain with two bodies...
Wtf
Ronni's monologue is brilliant, but Phil's bit on Country Life is also fantastic.
As a member of the Magdalen College School Air Cadet Force, I once flew over Didcot power station in a Chipmunk trainer. It would have been about 1979, and my pilot at the time let me fly the aero plane in a shallow dive over the power station in a pretend bombing run. Needless to say, that at the age of 15 years, I missed by a mile!
This is my favorite QI clip
Poor Didcot - by time the trains to Paddington get there, they’re already full with people from Oxford
Or Cardiff. Gets a very irregular service on the GWML hi-speeders.
What about the one from Cheltenham?
Don't knock the place u try living in a town with no shops and no rail station, l lived there in the sixties good times, good mates and a good railway job.
I wonder if Ancona was the lead writer of those jokes about language (e.g. Irish Jockey with Mack, English Class with the gang, Sign language interpreter with Mack, etc.) in Season 1 of The Sketch Show? Later seasons (without Ancona) lacked those types of sketches. I think that's the case anyway after rewatching those shows.
Our friend's "eye / I" joke got thoroughly destroyed in the first few moments of this clip :')
In Queensland!
An abandoned railway station, defunct line, sorry can't post my photo
0:46 Phil: The fuck have I gotten myself into
You can see the Didcot Power Station from Wendover hill and Combre hii in Buckinghamshire
Didcot is one of the localities offered with Railworks the train simulator software
Phil's posh pricks impersonation👌🏻😅
Being from Abingdon myself I have many a memory of trips to Didcot sometimes to go to the cinema but more often to the sainsburys to do the weekly shop and on occasion drop off/pick up my mum who worked there for a time. Always the bridesmaid couldn't sum up a place better than Didcot. It's got frighteningly little going for it. It's only real use was in preventing me from losing my bearings on dog walks as you could always orientate yourself with the power station bc yoh could see the eye sore for miles.
I love Ronni
No "hanging chads" at that wedding. lol
Those cooling towers are long gone.
Yes. That's noteworthy to mention.
That monologue ... Hot damn ...
“And you thought, possibly for comic effect but if so disastrously, that’s not what was happening at all. It was completely something else entirely. It was one of those laughable misunderstandings and I use the word laughable quite wrongly”.
I get the feeling Stephen really didn't like the guy
@@DevilsAdvocateofnazareth I think they knew how to banter off each other. Bremner though does think he knows everything, whereas Fry does.
Ronni is a doll
This was very close to having double allusions to ABOFAL with Stephen in the verbose overexplaining mode he so often employed there and the misremembered* Phil Collins song reminding me of Hugh Lauries cause of death, "Where is the Lid?".
* Apparently it is called "Wear my Hat" which makes him wearing a hat rather apropos.
Maybe they just heard it said, so thought it was 'where my hat?' That would explain it AND be funny too, so I hope that's it 😊
Ah Didcot, the armpit of Oxfordshire. Growing up in a village near there I saw it transform from a dump into a dump with a shopping centre
Wow her story was incredible, especially being made up on the spot. Shows she's exceptionally intelligent behind her comedienne façade. That was really clever, at the end she looked kind of exposed and a bit shy, like she'd shown a part of herself she often keeps out of public view, which made it even more endearing.
And then Alan just launched into his theory without even pausing to acknowledge what she'd just said....went right over his head...🤣
"if i find out youve been intercepting my mail -"
The halcyon days of QI.....
When all this were nowt but fields...
Too late! Hahaha! That was funny.
Where is Didcot.. What county?
Oxfordshire
@@AndrewTBP thank you
I love how you can feel the out of touch poshness oozing out of him when he talks about windframs being ugly.
To be fair he was merely reporting what Country Life considered the ugliest eyesore in the UK.
There was a lot more japery than normal packed into this clip.
Rory had a rough time.
Ronni would be the pent-ultimate player at the Game of 'give me the first sentence, and I'll weave a story from it."
That explains why the Williams F1 team stopped winning after moving to Didcot. Something in the water.
Totally wrong! Williams won their first driver's championship in 1980 with Alan Jones while the factory was in Didcot plus a couple of constructor's championships before moving to the current factory in Grove and continuing to win driver's and constructor's championships until 1997.
@@746laurie Ah, I was thinking of Grove and wrong anyway. Whoops.
Alan is wrong, the song by PC is called "Wear My Hat". It is rubbish though lol.
The theory is..
The trivia about the ticket punch confetti and its use at a royal wedding only has a single "source" on the internet.
Methinks it's apocryphal.
It's from _The Meaning of Liff_ as Stephen said.
Stephen directly states the source in the video...
Phil Jupitus, one of the funniest , cleverest comedians, totally under appreciated and underrated, worth a thousand of your Nish Kumars and Romesh Ranganathans, Why so little exposure on TV is beyond me.
Phill is great, as are Romesh and Nish. And there's no exchange-rate between comedians.
Romesh is funny, Phil tries too hard, and Nish is a prick.
Fun fact - the claimed collapse at Didcot power station which resulted in three workers being trapped and killed wasn't a collapse at all, me and my ex lived close at the time, right near ladygrove lake, in sight of the station and we heard an explosion, no way was it a collapse, but for what I assume are liability reasons the lie was spun that it was a collapse, coincidentally enough occurring just before they demolished it with explosives and the three people who died were working on the demolition in some capacity, the site had shut down normal operations at that point,.
I would swear to it.
Nothing good ever happened at Didcot Parkway I can tell you that . . . . .
''Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?
First: `A’. How would you define `a’?.....
'Good. So we’re well on the way, then.
`a’; impersonal pronoun;
doesn’t really mean anything.” Right! Next: `A’… `A-B’. ''
Big blue thing that mermainds live in ?
A buzzin' fing !
Women don't want Didcot's on their wedding day though the word does sound very similar.
Phil & Alan slagging off Phil Collins. He's been around longer & made more money than they ever will.
this used to be funny
Then as a repeated segment, that would mean that this is funny then...yes? 🤔
first
I don't mind the occasional dud answer on comedy quiz shows. Even the best in the business can't split sides every time they open their mouths. But I'm moved to cringe by how Ronni doesn't even appear to know how tedious her answers are. Listen how the others pipe up, trying to save the ship, and she obliviously talks over them.
Like ok I get it. She made a punny interpretation of the question and pretended the book title referred to anthropomorphized words. I concede it's clever enough to warrant maybe a quick one-liner, but I don't know why she thought it had the gas to get through an entire children's book.
They keep bringing her back on, so I assume not everyone does what I do and skips past her answers if I can tell she's settling in for story time.
There's bound to be MANY dud comments on YT.
As soon as I realised you were settling in for story-time I just skipped over your comment. 🤣🤣🤣😉😊😇
and the vast majority in the comments loving it mean?.. Your reply was longer than hers btw.
Weird question. It just means they liked something I didn't like. Something I do like is imagining you counting the words in my comment in order to draw a false equivalence. I find it endearingly petty. @@Octamed