Ian Wolf
Sunday 12th September 2010 10:02am [Edited]
Stockton-on-Tees
2,839 posts
I wouldn't say that QI has joke writers, but it does have a big team of researchers. The questions and answers themselves are in a way the jokes. In fact, the original idea of "General Ignorance" was to sound the klaxon whenever someone did a dull joke. For example, in the first episode, a question relating to testicals resulted in Danny Baker getting the klaxon when he said: "New balls please."
In the beginning, Fry did read quite a bit from the autocue but it wasn't his style, so most of his humour comes from the cards. Also, QI has the benefit of getting humour from the buzzers and on-screen images so there are more places where you can get gags.