h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So was this the derivation of the expression "the apple of my eye", originally "the apple of my armpit"?

QI - It's The Bolivian Navy on manoeuvres in The South Pacific! / "It's an apple!"
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Correct (+3)
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Toybox (104) - "orchards"
Rod (137) - "She peeled the apple"
Geggs (181) - "Armpit!"
Toybox (196) - "Here hold this apple for me will you?"
Geggs (216) - They kept the apple so he could be reminded of her scent when they were apart."



QI Bonus (+6)
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Taff (11) - How Bolivia ended up without a fleet.



DGI Bonus (+1)
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Gandalf'sTwin (42) - "Marital Engagement"
Pebble (49) - "The Countess of Shrewbury was Bess Hardwick"
Gandalf'sTwin (55) - "More glass than wall."
Nalot (66) - The Title clue is a quote from Red Dwarf.
Pebble (78) Was it a love potion concoted from the scent glands of Bolivian miners?"
Pebble (80) A potion extracted from the scent glands.
Pebble (113) "She stuffed apples up her vest"
Gandalf'sTwin (120) "Aristocrats rarely washed."
Pebble (133) - "A subtle message"
Geggs (145) - "Pungent"
Rod (151) - "She put the (apple) in her (armpit) to impart her (body odour): all correct just missed the relevant (facts).
Gandalf'sTwin (195) Phereomones


Klaxon (-5)
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Pedro (9) - "Is she a ship?"
Taff (36) - The Countess led a military campaign (in Bolivia!!)
Gandalf'sTwin (58) - "To get her money!"
Pebble (80) - "It's a banana!"
Gandalf'sTwin (126) - "She used Apple Blossom"
Gandalf'sTwin (192) - "Bust-thrust" (ample underwiring / lift and separate)

Elf Bonus (+2)
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Clive




Total to be added or subtracted.
------------------------
Geggs +7
Toybox + 6
Rod +4
Clive +2
Nalot +1
Taff +1
Pedro -5
Gandalf'sTwin -11


It's the society wedding of the season. The lucky groom stood waiting at the alter sniffing a withered and slightly mouldy apple core with a far-away look in his eye it's Geggs with an enraptured +7

Behind the curtain Toybox: the blushing bride to be, - "it's banana-shaped" they tell the hand-maidens. A virginal +6

Conducting the service it's Rod the local vicar and occasional village apothecary to newly weds for his patented sheep gut preventatives. A puritanical +4

But come the reception and getting steadily pished on the fruit punch, and in danger of committing a public offence by approaching strangers and asking if they "want to sniff his love apple", it's Gandalf's Twin on an unloved -11

This Qi came about becuase I was reading a book with a chapter on acquired tastes and I'll quote:

In Elizabethan times, lovers were so enamoured with each other's body odours that it was common for a woman to keep a peeled apple in her armpit until it had absorbed her sweat and smell. She would give this "love apple" to her lover to sniff in her absence."

Bess Hardwick was an Elizabethan lover of some reputation - so perhaps she used the apple trick, I've no proof that she did but maybe she did.

The book continues:

"We, on the other ahnd use synthetic aromas of fruits and flowers to mask our body odour from our lovers. Which of these is acquired and which is natural is not so easy to determine. A substance as "naturally" repugnant to us as cow urine is used by the Masi tribe in East Africa as a lotion for their hair - a direct consequence of the cow's importance to their culture."


Something not to be sniffed at.

Well done everyone!

Yes - I did not predict that this one would last as long as it did!

It was a good one, despite or because

Thanks, Clive

Clive, have you considered auditioning for "what's my fruit"?

i was going to say

to stop you getting the pox

an apple a day keeps the doctor away

We are on a miningship a gazzillion light years into deep space so what I want to know is where the smeg did I get this traffic cone?

That's nuthin' it's the police-women's helmet and the suspenders I don't understand.

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