Colin Lane

The most memorable comedy gigs of 2018

Chortle editor Steve Bennett's personal top ten

Preview - QI: Overseas

The final episode from Series O (except for two highlights episodes) sees Denmark's Sandi Toksvig take the show across the world.

Preview - QI: Opposites

Everything is back-to-front in this episode of QI as Sandi Toksvig and Alan Davies deal with opposites.

We've reached "L". Lordy. That's some longevity, right there. However, to make things a little less lumbering, question maestro Stephen Fry is concentrating only on the animal kingdom tonight: from lonely whales to larval locomotives. And possibly lolloping lorikeets, lecherous lions and lesser mouse lemurs. Guests Sarah Millican, Ross Noble and Colin Lane join resident fixture Alan Davies.

Radio Times review

It's certainly a big night for comedy panel shows with Have I Got News for You joining Would I Lie to You? on BBC1 and, testing our knowledge of the baffling and the obscure, the wonderful QI on BBC Two.

We're on to the letter L - although that hardly matters - and it takes less than five minutes for it to get lewd despite the headmasterly efforts of Stephen Fry. He asks an innocent question about the sound a lonely whale makes and the ensuing banter suddenly spirals off into filth. Hilarious filth, mind you. Fry, whose obsession with gadgetry matches his love of language, also gets to demonstrate how a fish can drive a tank.

Joining QI regulars Ross Noble and Sarah Millican is the quick-witted Australian comic Colin Lane, but even he is no match for Alan Davies who, for once, isn't there simply to play the fool. "What has 32 brains and sucks," the panel is asked. "The front row" is his speedy response.

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.