Stephen Fry

QI Book of the Dead - exclusive extracts

QI author John Mitchinson introduces exclusive extracts from a new book from the brains behind the TV show - 'dead good' according to Stephen Fry.

QI to face-off against The Bill

BBC1 is to pitch panel show QI against ITV1 police drama The Bill when the Stephen Fry-fronted show returns for its seventh series next month.

You need to watch QI. I don't know if you know it at all, it's been around for a while in England. Stephen Fry's the host, Alan Davies is the permanent guest star and there's a rotating panel of famous people whose qualification for being on is they're amusing. Or Quite Interesting, which is what QI stands for. It's really just people talking shit. Tonight they're Rob Brydon, Andy Hamilton and Charlie Higson. I only really know Rob Brydon, and I love him. He's in Gavin & Stacey at the moment, it was on UKTV last night, he plays Bryn, Stacey's uncle. The topics on QI are letters from the alphabet, we're up to the Fs at this point, a fair way into the series. But it's a loose half hour. Tonight includes James Bond's job, Mick Jagger's walk, Bert Ward's post-Batman and Robin career in porn, and flags. Quite a lot about flags - extremely entertaining and mindless, just what you need during stressful times of (insert source of personal worry here). Even the buzzers are good - Andy Hamilton's is the Captain Pugwash music.

In a battle between Martin Ellingham and Peter Kingdom over who had the superior sedately paced Sunday-night coastal-set drama, the harrumphing GP would win hands down. Martin Clunes's Portwenn doc, with all his suppressed yearning, is a fully rounded presence, something it's strangely hard to say about Stephen Fry's Norfolk-based solicitor. Tonight's developments are a case in point. At the end of last week's fourth-series opener, long-suffering Louisa turned up at Martin's place looking very pregnant indeed. And it's no time at all before she's dealing with doctor Edith, who - as we also gleaned from episode one - has something of a history with Louisa's former fiance. You'd never find all this on a show like Kingdom, where romantic angst seems to be restricted to the supporting characters. So it's very nice to have Doc Martin back in the schedules, quietly but appealingly going about its business with a central relationship that the writers consistently find interesting ways to refresh.

Nerd on your gift list? Give a Gömböc!

We buy pet rocks, snuggies, and shrinky-dinks; mathematicians have Klein bottles, Mobius strips, and the ultimate mathematical novelty item, the Gömböc. Gömb means "sphere" in Hungarian, but the Gömböc is an extraordinary shape all its own (and is apparently pronounced "goemboets"). As QI host Stephen Fry demonstrates in the video above, no matter how you set it down, the Gömböc will wobble and rock itself right side up. And, unlike the common Weeble, the amazing Gömböc isn't weighted. It rights itself thanks to its unusual geometry.

Shown on Christmas Day last year, this 60-minute documentary was made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the sitcom. Rowan Atkinson talks about the development of his character, Edmund Blackadder, plus there are interviews with the core cast (Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Tony Robinson) and writing team (Ben Elton and Richard Curtis).

Do you remember Johnny Morris and Animal Magic? Well, somebody at the BBC does and they've decided to resurrect his old gag of lending funny voices to our furry, and scaly, friends.

Morris, mindful of his obligation to educate as well as amuse, used the device sparingly. Walk on the Wild Side, however, tries to fill an entire half-hour with wildlife verbiage and the joke is stretched very, very thin indeed.

Some moments are genuinely inspired. Who amongst us has not laughed at, discussed with friends or summoned up on YouTube the doctored footage of the marmot calling after his mate Alan? And who can blame the BBC for trailing it endlessly to promote the show?

Unfortunately, nothing else in Walk on the Wild Side is anywhere near as funny, clever or perfectly synched. The gorilla squeezing out farts is fitfully amusing, as was Stephen Fry expressing the languid musings of a giant panda. But Walk on the Wild Side is a novelty filler, not an entire programme. Talking animals merit ten minutes' screen time, maximum.

This new series sets comic voice-overs to wildlife footage. Critics may claim it's another example of lowest-common-denominator humour, in the manner of ITV1's Animals Do the Funniest Things, yet it's hard not to smile at the sight of a weight-obsessed panda and a hip hop-loving badger. The filming is provided by the BBC's Natural History Unit; the voices are those of comedians including Jason Manford (8 Out of 10 Cats) and Steve Edge (Phoenix Nights). Throughout the series various well-known people, including Stephen Fry, Richard E. Grant, Barbara Windsor and Sir Tom Jones, also lend their larynxes to the creatures featured.

Readers of a certain age will have fond memories of Animal Magic, the highlight of which was always Johnny Morris doing comedy voiceovers of zoo animals. I dimly remember his camel voice being hilarious to my six-year-old self. This new teatime series follows the same principle, but with the likes of Stephen Fry and Jason Manford putting funny voices on footage of animals in the wild. Fry plays a languorous panda reflecting on fame as he chews bamboo. There are dancing badgers and puffins singing Chas & Dave songs. There are ants trying to mug a beetle, a seal waking from a bad dream, and a crime-fighting hawk chasing down bad-guy lizards ("No-one's above the claw"). Some of it's silly, some of it's a bit lame, but parts are oddly brilliant. It's not necessarily the ideas that look good on paper that work best: a rodent repeatedly shouting "Alan!" is very funny, as is a bug hopelessly trying to climb a sand dune. It's simple, innocent fun that grown-ups and kids can laugh at together.

Any radio show that's just started its 51st series has to be considered a national treasure. Described as an antidote to panel games, Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue may be mainly cosy, middle class comedy fare, but it's impossible not to warm to the panel's total enthusiasm - including Barry Cryer and Victoria Wood - and eagerness with which the live audience boos and claps at every opportunity. Now using rotating chairmen, after the death of Humphrey Lyttelton last year, Stephen Fry sets the bar high here for those following, clearly relishing the banter he has with his quick-witted colleagues. Criticising such an institution may be tantamount to heresy, but adding 15 minutes to the 30 wouldn't do any harm.