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Tell us a bit about your TV programme, QI
James Harkin: It鈥檚 based on the idea that everything is interesting if you look at it in the right way. We find interesting things then ask comedians to answer impossible questions about them.

How did the show first come to be made?
James: The story goes that when John Lloyd [the show鈥檚 creator] had kids, he realised that he didn鈥檛 know the first thing about anything. So he started reading encyclopaedias. He decided to make an encyclopaedia without the dull bits.

Anna Ptaszynski: His son Harry was a massive inspiration. When he was 4 or 5 he would ask John weird questions: Why are we here? What is the sun? It made John realise that, as soon as we finish formal education, we suddenly stop asking those kinds of questions. I suppose that鈥檚 what we are trying to do.

Your job is to research the questions, so why are you known as 鈥渆lves鈥�?
James: I think we got our name from Stephen Fry, the host, who is a fan of Tolkien. He had to reference us in the first series and off the top of his head called us elves. So we ran with it.

How do you get to become an elf?
Anna: It鈥檚 unorthodox. James has the best story.

James: I studied maths and physics at uni, and was working as an accountant. I was doing my work quickly so I had a lot of time to spend on the internet. I found the QI talk forums where they come up with questions and got involved. Luckily enough, they grabbed me and dragged me to London and gave me a job.

So why aren鈥檛 you a mathematician or physicist?
James: Not good enough.

Andrew Hunter Murray: Anybody can do degree-level maths, but finding interesting facts鈥�

That鈥檚 a specialist skill.
James: I think that鈥檚 kind of it. When I studied maths, for instance, the thing that I enjoyed most was the history.

But then you became an accountant鈥�
James: I needed to pay the bills.

Before you worked for QI, did you all have magpie-like minds, always collecting facts and esoteric ideas?
Anne Miller: Yes. We鈥檙e the ones in the pub who go, 鈥淭he funny thing about cheese, guys鈥︹�� And everyone rolls their eyes.

鈥淲e鈥檙e the ones in the pub who go, 鈥楾he funny thing about cheese, guys鈥︹�欌��

Andrew: The writer Neil Gaiman says that writers have the same number of ideas as other people but just happen to write them down. I think we probably come into contact with the same number of interesting facts as other people, but we are always collecting them.

What makes a good QI fact?
Andrew: What we鈥檙e looking for is the unexpected thing that makes you want to tell other people. The key element is that you immediately want to communicate it.

James: Unless someone puts you on the spot. Then you can鈥檛 think of anything.

Andrew: I鈥檝e always got mine at the ready: kangaroos have three vaginas.

Anne: Mine is that a baby puffin is called a puffling. That鈥檚 my favourite fact.

James: Every day you find something and think 鈥渢hat is amazing, must keep that, it will come in useful one day鈥�.

When you find a fact that you want to keep, what do you do?
Anne: You store it.

Anna: You keep it safe.

Andrew: But it isn鈥檛 always clear where it should go 鈥� every fact has several branches off it, and if you follow one, you can suddenly end up in different territory and find this whole chain of interesting things along the way.

You also do a podcast called where you discuss favourite facts with what sounds like incredible knowledge.
Andrew: We take each other鈥檚 facts away and do our homework on them. So when we come back to do the podcast we all have something.

The impression is that you just know loads of stuff off the cuff.
Andrew: Yes, forget what I said 鈥� we know it all.

How carefully do you check your facts?
Anne: We鈥檙e as careful as we can be. But we still get emails from people.

James: Facts are always changing and there鈥檚 not much we can do about that. But we try and get a couple of sources on every fact we put in. Of course, everyone makes mistakes.

What is your biggest howler?
Anna: There is one that we thought was true 鈥� and I still think maybe you鈥檒l find evidence that it is 鈥� that the government owns 100,000 cats in order to catch the mice in various public buildings. It鈥檚 an oft-repeated thing. It鈥檚 been in the . But it is very hard to verify.

James: Another is that we said poodle grooming was an Olympic sport in Paris in 1900. It turns out we fell for an .

Anna: Remember, we are looking for facts that seem like they鈥檙e not true.

What is your favourite science fact?
James: Mine is generally whatever I鈥檝e heard recently. I read in New 杏吧原创 that the corona of the sun is hotter than the centre, and no one can work out why. It rains plasma on there as well. I think it鈥檚 fascinating that something so basic has so many mysteries.

Anne: Mine is that baby elephants have to be taught to use their trunks. That tickles me.

James: An elephant鈥檚 sense of smell is so good that they can tell the difference between two tribes.

Andrew: They can also differentiate between human languages. They react with fear to adult male voices from tribes that hunt elephants but are not bothered by voices from tribes that don鈥檛. Also, an elephant has more muscles in its trunk than a human has in their entire body.

Is there a serious purpose to all of this?
Andrew: We think there is, although it can sound a bit pretentious to talk about it.

Talk about it anyway.
Anne: I think it鈥檚 about finding out more about the world and making people feel a bit better along the way. The one thing I love about QI is that you can be stupid. You can say 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know鈥�. We all have different knowledge and we like to share it.

Anna: It is basically a funny TV show, but we would love QI to have a bigger effect. In school, you start with the basic stuff and memorise it. But think if you instead started with the weird and quirky stuff that piques your interest, and then learned how it works and why. I would love it if people were learning more like that.

Andrew: We often try to remind ourselves that the fourth basic urge, after food, sex and shelter, is curiosity. We bridle a bit at being called trivia because there鈥檚 nothing trivial about finding out more about the world, whether it鈥檚 atomic structures or hairdressers in North Korea.

If you weren鈥檛 elves, what would you do?
Anna: I recently got a really strong urge to be an anthropologist. I think it would be really great to go around the world and meet people who are unbelievably different.

James: I thought that I would like to be a writer and genuinely thought I would like to write for New 杏吧原创. Maybe one day.

Do your family and friends enjoy your endless curiosity?
Andrew: They are deeply ashamed.

Anna: It depends. Sometimes my friends get hacked off with the constant facts in the middle of conversations.

James: I think my friends just put up with it as a personality quirk.

Anna: Like an illness.

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This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淨I鈥檚 little helpers鈥�