Alan Davies

Interview: Alan Davies

Alan Davies has returned to his stand-up roots, with his first live comedy tour in ten years.

No room in Derry as Alan Davies cannot find a hotel

It's not the kind of full house Derry-bound comedian Alan Davies is used to - the funnyman is struggling to find somewhere to stay while he's here.

Poor, hapless Alan Davies is on the receiving end of a storm of QI klaxons as he good-naturedly lurches from one wrong answer to the next. But it's an honourable tradition and Davies is a willing fallguy - he even fails at a supposedly foolproof experiment involving a broom's centre of gravity.

Elsewhere, guests Danny Baker, Jo Brand and Marcus Brigstocke enjoy a bit of a jolly knockabout that's full of surprises and "well, I never knew that" sort of facts, including the answer to questions such as £what do mosquitos do in the rain?" and which country has the longest traffic jams. At one point it all becomes a bit much for Baker who wails, "On behalf of the audience I have to say, sometimes I hate this programme."

Alan Davies pays Lord McAlpine damages over tweet

Alan Davies has paid damages after he "re-tweeted" a post linking a Tory peer's name to a TV report on a "senior political figure who is a paedophile", the High Court has heard.

In a series famous for facts, here's a killer one: of the things QI presented as true in its first series, 60 per cent are now thought untrue. Stephen Fry announces this near the start of a landmark (and very funny) edition where he explains "the half-life of facts" - scientists revising knowledge about how many moons the Earth has, for instance - and makes recompense for all the points that should have been awarded over the years for answers that have proved to be right, as a result of which Alan Davies is retrospectively awarded... 737 points.

Davies is on good comedy form, pretending to pluck the legs off a millipede or describing his stealthy mother-in-law. We also learn how the Romans avoided forgetting names and how 19th-century Germans realised birds fly south for the winter - a flabbergasting story.

Look out for a revealing exchange tonight between Stephen Fry and Alan Davies, comedy's most unlikely double act. They're friends off-screen, and there's a lovely spat where Fry grumbles under his breath that Davies didn't invite him to his wedding. "I DID invite you but you didn't come!" Davies protests, and Fry has to bury his head in his hands in shame as Davies reminds him that it was filming an episode of Bones that kept him away.

Aside from these recriminations, it's the usual pattern of recent QI episodes: Fry answering his own questions at length while the panellists chuckle along. Along the way, there's a detour into bestiality, some amusing Korean sayings and the timeless line: "Are you ready for me to pump the custard?"

It's a round titled "Kit and Kaboodle" and Stephen Fry wants to know if there's a use for kitty-litter that doesn't involve cats. Alan Davies tries to be helpful, but his contribution ("In an episode of Jonathan Creek I weed into some cat litter") isn't quite what Fry is after. Ross Noble and Noel Fielding, with Australian comic Colin Lane, can't quite lift the episode off the ground.

But there are some bright bits, including Fry demonstrating martial arts on a pile of three bricks: "This takes extreme focus and extreme pain," says Fry, wincing in agony.

Knee-jerk reactions, klaxons and Kiesselbach's plexus are among the subjects under scurrilous discussion as QI returns for its 11th series - which means we've reached the letter K in our comedy intellectual hike through the alphabet. Fount of all knowledge Stephen Fry is back on his throne, the kittenish Alan Davies by his side, joined tonight by perennial quiz show panellist David Mitchell, versatile Jack Whitehall - showing his brainy side after laddy larks with One Direction on A League Of Their Own - and comedian Sara Pascoe. Kick back and find out how Father Christmas, the colour orange and pandas manage to pad their way into the show.

Alan Davies used to steal as a child

After a very frugal childhood, actor and comedian Alan Davies, 47, is starting to feel more relaxed about money.

Alan Davies reveals Margaret Thatcher 'saved' him

Alan Davies, the comedian, has admitted he owes his career to Margaret Thatcher despite being a lifelong Labour Party voter and a self-confessed "Leftie".