Alex Horne

We Need Answers - Live on Twellyvision

We are launching the first ever (possibly) twellyvision experience. For, as the ninth episode of our glorious quiz airs on Tuesday night (at 10pm on BBC Four), we (myself, Mark Watson and Tim Key) shall both be watching and tweeting for your entertainment.

No More Women:

Mark Watson, Tim Key and Alex Horne have taken the no-budget irreverence of their BBC4 game show We Need Answers to the web with this intensely competitive name game.

Filmed in dimly lit rooms around their offices and the BBC, as well as on-set, No More Women features Key and Watson simply naming famous people in turn against the clock.

The trick is for each of them to create a new rule before their opponent's next go - for example "no more names with the same letter twice in a row" or for ruthless players, "no more women".

To enliven what is essentially a pub game, Horne wittily commentates on the action off-camera in much the same offbeat way as on the main TV show, incessantly layering on graphics and fact boxes.

And as the tournament has progressed, they've roped in T4 presenter Rick Edwards and Radio 1's DJ Nihal to challenge the regular players in some "exhibiton matches".

We Need Answers is now in its second series. This is an excruciatingly student-y comedy quiz hosted by Mark Watson, Tim Key and Alex Horne, which was transferred to television after proving a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe. Two celebrities (in this week's case, Vanessa Feltz and The Inbetweeners' Simon Bird) are quizzed on themed questions originally sent by members of the public to the text message answering service. Watson is the host and link to the audience, Key is the quizmaster (who is spat out into the studio on a railed leather armchair through a concealed door), and Horne provides supportive music cues, sound effects, action-replays, and homespun graphics from a laptop.

It's incredibly cheap, very silly, and not particularly funny. I suspect that by crossing over into my 30s, this kind of comedy has stopped looking hilariously anarchic and intellectual-but-daft, to just become annoying and puerile. That said, the trio behind it are aged 29-33, so maybe it's just me who's stonily bored by Shooting Stars-esque absurdity, particularly when it's in the guise of a cheapo '70s series. We Need Answers ran at the Fringe for two successful years, but I'm guessing it helps if you're a half-drunk festivalgoer attending the show in a live format. On television, it's another matter. There's a distance that Watson, Key and Horne can't bridge.

No More Women

Here's the first No More Women, a series of videos we've made for BBC Comedy online alongside our new quiz show We Need Answers.

We get answers from the stars of We Need Answers

Tim Key, Mark Watson and Alex Horne from TV's silliest quiz face the sheer randomness of Wikipedia.

We Need Answers Edinburgh Interview

One of the newer comedy collectives consists of core members Mark Watson, Alex Horne and Tim Key. The three friends have been working together on projects since 2001 and last year premiered the Fringe's first interactive quiz show.