The Idler (Issue 41) QI Issue - Tapa blanda

"Britain's coolest magazine" (Alex James, Blur)

"Uniquely engaging ... devoted to idleness in all its forms ... surprisingly energetic in its sagacious coverage of trends and trendiness ... Packed with ideas" (Time Out)

"I'd read it even if I didn't write for it" (Louis Theroux)

"Full of good things ... genuinely radical, irreverent and iconoclastic" (the late Rt Hon Alan Clark)

"The thinking person's Loaded" (Select)

We are born free but are everywhere in chains.

Our culture needs some fresh air. We are boring ourselves to death by re-packaging the same flavourless pap based on a patronising and second-hand version of what we think other people want. Meanwhile, out there, the world is as complex, beautiful and mysterious and ever.

Which is why QI and The Idler have joined forces to celebrate curiousity. As Dorothy Parker once sagely noted, curiosity is the cure for boredom, but there is no cure for curiosity. It is endless and free, unlike television, wine or the water in our taps. It is more pleasurable and reliable than sex. It's what makes us human.

Your hosts are Mr John Lloyd, founder of QI and the producer of legendary television shows including Blackadder and Spitting Image, and Mr John Mitchinson, co-creator with Mr Lloyd of The Books of General Ignorance (General and Animal). They have filled every spare inch with the absurd and curious learning that fans of QI will no and expect.

In addition, there is the first ever published extract from Mr Lloyd's 'lost' novel, fifteen never-before-seen, spanking-brand-new General Ignorance questions, the QI prospectus for a New School, Mr Justin Pollard's list of history's wildest stories and William Morris is rescued from ye olde gift shoppes and restored as a revolutionary hero.

So, read on, and help us overthrow the tyrant boredom. You have nothing to lose but your chains.