John Lloyd (II)

A festive dollop of the panel show that encourages comedians (not that comedians need much encouragement) to twist the truth into interesting new shapes for our amusement. With David Mitchell, Stephen Fry, John Lloyd and Rob Brydon on board, this promises to be a lavish smorgasbord of skulduggery and fabrication.

John Lloyd, producer of Not the Nine O'Clock News, Blackadder and currently QI, takes The Word magazine's invitation to list Five Lessons I've Learnt as an opportunity for a curmudgeonly polemic. Today's programme makers, he argues, pick ideas apart instead of using intuition, and say: "If people want crap, let's give them crap." "When we [Lloyd's generation] made programmes, the idea was to make them as unlike anything else that was around at the time. Now it's got to be exactly the same as something that's already successful." All very cogent, although some wonder how Lloyd evinced his lifelong quest for original shows by following the brainy TV panel game QI with the brainy radio panel game The Museum of Curiosity.

A Blissful, Timeless Exploration Of Human 'Ignorance'

The 18th century poet Thomas Gray is responsible for the often quoted phrase, "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." President Thomas Jefferson embellished that quotation with one of his own when he said, "If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?" - a line that British comedy writers John Lloyd and John Mitchinson co-opted for the title of their new anthology of quotations.

Lloyd and Mitchinson talk with Liane Hansen about their third book together, titled If Ignorance Is Bliss ... Why Aren't There More Happy People?. It follows The Book of General Ignorance and The Book of Animal Ignorance.

Executive producer John Lloyd explains BBC's QI refusal

John Hodgman's public lambasting of the BBC for not bringing QI to America didn't explain the network's reason for their decision, other than Dumb Ol' America is so dumb (how dumb are we?) that when we go to a sperm bank, we ask the teller for a BLANK.

Thankfully, Hodgman isn't the only man coming to the U.S.A.'s defense. John Lloyd, the show's executive producer, feels the same way so much so that he was willing to interrupt his vacation in Turkey to chat with me about it.

The Museum of Curiosity is also enjoyable, but very Room 101. John Lloyd is the professor of ignorance at the museum, which needs to fill a second, empty gallery. Sean Lock and three guests make up the "advisory panel". All are comedians and suggest some weird and surreal objects for the gallery. The result is pretty funny.

It just makes me wish the commercial sector would put more resources into this area of programming. But it doesn't have the safety cushion of the license fee, does it?

The Museum of Curiosity has the potential to be a great format. But with almost half of this episode was given over to introducing the guests, the actual idea of the programme (guests suggest curious ideas that get put into a museum) seemed to get lost. Hopefully this is just a quirk of this episode. The strength of the panel, comprising Brian Eno, Dave Gorman and Viz founder Chris Donald, means their introductory chats with host John Lloyd are funnier than their actual nominations for which they only had a very short time left over.

Sean Lock acts as the "curator" but this seemed to only further clutter the programme. Couldn't this and the host role have been combined into one, thereby allowing more time for the format to breathe?

'Green' village gets backing from Brian Eno

Plans for a pioneering green2 village in County Durham have been given the seal of approval by a music legend.

Brian Eno, one of the founder members of 70s glam and art rock hitmakers Roxy Music, and now a respected newspaper columnist and record producer, spoke out in favour of the proposed eco-village at Eastgate, Weardale.

Speaking last week on The Museum of Curiosity show on BBC Radio 4, hosted by John Lloyd and comedian Sean Lock, he was invited to 'donate a fascinating exhibit to a vast imaginary museum'.

He put forward an Icelandic volcano as a means of energy production, and discussed potential geothermal energy production in the UK, naming Southampton and Eastgate as the country's key geothermal schemes.