David Mitchell (I)

David Mitchell interview

Digital Spy spoke to David Mitchell about the show, his favourite quotes, Robert Webb's Star Wars obsession and why Twitter is more than just "pointless minutiae"...

David Mitchell: I want a Peep Show reunion... in 20 years

David Mitchell has said that even if Peep Show is cancelled after the next series, he hopes there will be a reunion show one day.

Opinion: Sketch shows v panel games

I think it would be pushing it to say that there is a raging feud between Charlie Higson and David Mitchell over a 'crisis' in TV comedy.

David Mitchell defends panel shows

Panel show regular answers criticism from Charlie Higson that format crowds out sketch shows.

David Mitchell interview

David Mitchell talks about his new comedy panel show about quotations.

Two panels of celebrities led by David Mitchell and Phill Jupitus. An extremely sarcastic host with a distinctive laugh. And the occasional run-in with Ofcom and certain newspapers when someone (hello Jack Whitehall) takes things too far. Yes, it can only be Channel 4's quick-witted pub-quiz-style-show, which returns with some fiendish questions about the 1980s. Most of the guests should have no trouble recalling the events of that decade but we are a bit concerned about how much Alan Carr will remember. He wasn't born until 1976.

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.

There's bound to be ribaldry in an episode titled Knees and Knockers so lie down on your antique fainting couch right now as Stephen Fry and the teams get blushingly saucy. But it's all good fun and even educational. Come on, don't tell me you're not curious about where in the human body the "end-bulbs of Krause" are? Or the pores of Kohn? (Clue: it's not the title of a Star Trek movie.)

Elsewhere, David Mitchell has one of his Would I Lie To You?-type comic rants, this time about, of all things, the supposed idiocy of pandas. We learn why robins are associated with Christmas, the rules for the driving of cars in early 20th-century Pennsylvania and why red kites are called red kites, even though they aren't red.

A wonderfully enjoyable edition opens with Jimmy Carr claiming that he was given coffee in his bottle as a baby and progresses through the idea that Susanna Reid may have held the Breakfast team's speed record for drinking a pint of beer ("How big are your glugs?" enquires host Rob Brydon) and that Dave Myers of The Hairy Bikers once spent Christmas locked inside a bank.

All these prompt enjoyable cross-examination but, as so often, it's David Mitchell's mock-exasperation that really lights the comic touchpaper. "We've been doing this show for a thousand years!" he wails at one point to Lee Mack. "I know everything about you, including the fact that you did not learn to drive in a hearse."