Stephen Fry

Douglas Adams celebrated by fans worldwide on Towel Day

Annual celebration of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams's birthday attracts huge support on Twitter from fans including Stephen Fry.

A bit more Fry & Laurie, please...

Stephen Fry says he and Hugh Laurie are working together again. For F & L superfan Jack Seale, that's enormous news...

Video: 20 of Fry & Laurie's best bits

Hurrah, and indeed, huzzah. As either Stephen Fry or Hugh Laurie themselves might say.

Stephen Fry keeps fans up to date as he shoots new film

Stephen Fry is keeping his Twitter fans up to date on his filming stint in Scotland - and his sleeping patterns. Fry is making the movie adaptation of Ian Rankin's art heist book Open Doors.

The provenance of this episode is quite as interesting as anything Stephen Fry has on his cue cards. It was pulled from the schedules last December after Jeremy Clarkson, one of its guest panellists, made his much-derided comments about public sector strike action. The furore surrounding Clarkson has died down enough to show the episode (and to allow him to guest-host tonight's Have I Got News For You), and he joins Alan Davies, Ross Noble and Dara O'Briain to answer questions about idleness.

Sandi Toksvig joins Stephen Fry's production company

Sandi Toksvig has joined Sprout Pictures as a director, the independent production company co-founded by Stephen Fry.

Stephen Fry cast in TV film of Ian Rankin's Doors Open

Stephen Fry has been cast as an art expert who gets mixed up in an underworld heist in a new TV film based on a novel by Rebus writer Ian Rankin.

Top 10 times they got it wrong on QI

Finding out Stephen Fry has uttered a statement which isn't entirely true is a bit like discovering that not only is Santa not real but that, in fact, he was based on the man who gave The Twang a record deal. It's our sad duty to report that even QI, the receptacle of all things wise and witty, sometimes goes a bit wonky.

This is the third attempt to put JAM on the box, the BBC having done it previously in 1994 and 1999. Parsons and Merton appear in each episode, with guests appearing being Sue Perkins, Gyles Brandreth, Stephen Fry, Liza Tarbuck, Graham Norton, Josie Lawrence and Julian Clary. There are also a fair number of new contestants: Jason Manford, Miles Jupp, Ruth Jones, Phill Jupitus, John Sergeant and Russell Tovey.

The format is the same, but there are some obvious changes; for a start, there's no scorer sitting next to Parsons. Instead he just has the scores on a screen, and the clock is started by a large button next to him. There's also a little bell rang to indicate they are moving into the final round.

Some things do remain the same, though. The studio is designed to look like the art deco BBC Radio Theatre, where the radio series is normally recorded. For some reason, however, the studio lights change from blue to purple when the subjects start. Why they need to do this I have no idea. I find the camerawork even more irritating. There's no need to cut from here to there every three seconds.

However, there's still much to enjoy from this show. I for one enjoy the little amusing asides that go through out each episodes. My personal favourite was in the fourth episode when the panel kept making jokes about Miles Jupp being the supposed love child of Gyles Brandreth. The jokes just kept snowballing throughout.

With regards to the TV adaptation, I know that there will always be people who will insist that it's not as good as the one on radio, but there are always people who complain about TV adaptations of radio shows. If we rejected every TV adaptation of a radio adaptation out of hand we wouldn't have had the TV successes of shows like Whose Line is it Anyway? or Little Britain.

I'd love to see more episodes of the TV version of Just a Minute; but I doubt they'll produce them. Unless they want to celebrate the show's 50th anniversary, that is, and given that Parsons is 88 years old that might be a bit dangerous.