Gyles Brandreth

Interview: Gyles Brandreth (Link expired)

Gyles Brandreth is a man who wears many hats. In time, we'll get on to the one that says "playwright", perhaps touching on "journalist" and "novelist" and "former Tory MP". But right now, I need to get to grips with the hat which he calls "born-again stand-up comic".

Invented by Ian Messiter in 1967, now starting its 57th season, still brilliantly chaired by resourceful Nicholas Parsons (who got the gig when Jimmy Edwards, the original choice for chairman, said he'd rather play polo than turn up on a Sunday to record the pilot episode). Messiter, who also invented Many a Slip and other fondly remembered amusements, used to wear red socks at recordings, for luck. Perhaps "red socks" could be a subject for tonight's panel, Graham Norton, Paul Merton, Gyles Brandreth and Jenny Eclair, as they strive to fill their 60 seconds.

Ah, QI. It's the televisual equivalent of punting down the Thames in a top hat and tails, isn't it? It's an afternoon spent leisurely playing croquet with Mater and Pater, drinking cups of Earl Grey and reading PG Wodehouse. It's everything this proud nation stands for isn't it? Well, yes it is. This is the nation of intellectual snobbery, extreme pedantry and Gyles Brandreth after all.

Stephen Fry is a funny, charming man. All you must do to retain that image of him is remember he's a (quite) good author, he was in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Blackadder and the less twee of his recent documentaries (obviously block out Kingdom, his crashingly dull Twitterisms and his shameless, omnipresent advert ho-ing).

The format, a simple panel game, works well enough and, along with some often genuinely interesting topics, it gives enough opportunities for some for the better guests to put their amusing spin on it and make for agreeable, if slightly passive, watching.

So why do we hate it? [Deep breath] Well... It's Jonathan Creek and his 'Cutesy Little Brother' act or whatever it is he's trying to do by consistently failing to grasp the basic idea of the show for 'comedic' effect, much to the hilarity of the fawning, hyperactive studio audience. It's a Quite Interesting fact that 98% of Davies's laughs are achieved by acting out a simplified version of another panelist's joke again and again and again, all the while looking like Anita Roddick in a particularly loud and ill-fitting blouse. Sitting there grinning, acting like a black hole swallowing up all the jokes and trivia, a comedy anti-catalyst extraordinaire, the anti-Midas of the one-liner. He is consistently, no always the least funny, the most annoying participant and yet, he's always there. He's the one constant. He's ALWAYS there. He's enough to make you wish your left eye was blind.

tvBite wouldn't point any of this out to him of course. We value our ears far too much to do that.

There were real laughs to be had, and plenty of them, on Just a Minute (Radio 4, Sunday), the last in the current series. The mood was already rather hysterical ("When I look at that beautiful masculine form I can't help but think of King Kong" said Paul Merton of host Nicholas Parsons) when Gyles Brandreth was given the topic of "pretentious vocabulary". Off he went, unstoppably, unleashing a torrent of verbal flourishes. So unstoppable, in fact, that they let him go beyond the full minute. Moments later, Brandreth was emboldened to assert that he has no hair on his body at all. "Show us your chest," suggested Parsons. "Dear Lord," muttered Pauline McLynn. "Off, off, off!" chanted the audience. "What on earth," asked Graham Norton, "has happened to Radio 4?"