Hugh Laurie

Fry's delight

Quizmaster Stephen Fry is joined by two of his best buddies in this week's QI. It's a real luvvie fest, thanks to the presence of John Sessions, who's appeared on the show several times before, and first-timer Emma Thompson. She and Fry go way back, of course. They met at Cambridge, and were members of the famous Footlights troupe, which also included Tony Slattery and Hugh Laurie. They've appeared on screen together in such projects as Alfresco and Peter's Friends.

A Bit of Fry and Laurie is coming out on DVD. Fantastic news. [...] Of course, as each series arrived it got progressively worse, culminating in the unwatchable fourth season (and see here for some quotes on that), with Peter's Friends-rank guest stars lurking around Hugh's piano. Nevertheless, at its peak it remains the finest comedy ever seen on British TV. Fact.

QI (BBC2) was like finding caviar on the menu in the canteen. [...] QI is the sort of quiz, more common on radio, where it is better to be bright than right. The beauty of television is that you can watch Hugh Laurie]'s expression as Stephen Fry explains that the forbidden fruit is believed to be a banana.

Any ad-libbed, improvised show requires a special skill from the players, and in a professional sense they are living dangerously. There was an occasion in Just a Minute when the subject was snapshots. Kenneth Williams was unhappy about one of my decisions, which went against him on this subject, and he began to harass me. Peter Jones and Derek Nimmo joined in, which added to the pressure. In an effort to bring them to order, I said: "I'm sorry Kenneth, you were deviating from snapshots, you were well away from snapshots. It is with Peter, snopshots, er snipshots, er snopshits . . . snop . . . snaps." The audience roared with laughter. I added: "I'm not going to repeat the subject. I think you know it . . . and I think I may have finished my career in radio."

QI, however much it tries to be subtly different, is part of a glorious tradition. When radio first presented panel shows they cast them from those with a proven intellectual background. This mold was broken in the early 1960s, when Jimmy Edwards devised a programme for the Home Service, with himself as chairman, called Does the Team Think?. The panellists were all well-known comedians, Tommy Trinder, Cyril Fletcher and others, who proved that comics were just as intelligent as academics, and usually much funnier.

QI is a direct descendant. And when you have Stephen Fry, and contestants such as Alan Davies, Hugh Laurie and Danny Baker, and a producer of the calibre of John Lloyd, the BBC must be on to a winner.

The start of A Bit of Fry and Laurie (BBC1) a couple of weeks ago was so self-absorbed, so steadily unfunny, that, as Bertie Wooster used to say, only the fact that I couldn't think of anything refrained me from saying something pretty stinging. Frankly, I thought it might be me. Perhaps, like a vulture with a heavy head cold, I couldn't distinguish between a smash hit and a nasty accident. Circumstances were guaranteed this week's show a rating which should dinge the feeling. Luckily, it is better. Or my head cold is.

I can't but feel that Fry is wrong for Jeeves. Too young for one thing but he will still be wrong when he is too old. However, Fry and Laurie are probably indissoluble like Damon and Pythias or Crosse & Blackwell.