Stephen Fry

TV quiz host Stephen Fry duped by story of fictional Scots conman

Telly know-all Stephen Fry has been embarrassingly duped by the story of a mythical Scots conman. The quiz show host told viewers of QI about the life of the supposed master criminal called Arthur Furguson.

TV Dinners: How to make ... QI

1. Hurrah! Could life get any more yummy or fluffy, it's QI, lathers Stephen Fry - the show that will be nibbling the nipples of knowledge, fondling the buttocks of braininess, and cerebrally satiating itself on the G-spot of good humour.

Stephen Fry hosts another round of the quite interesting panel show. If you'd like to play along at home, here's how. One player flicks open an encyclopedia and asks a question on the first topic they see (a dictionary or Jilly Cooper novel works as a substitute). Then, one player makes witty remarks, while the other player wears a mophead and says little of relevance.

Friday nights just don't seem the same without Stephen Fry. If you're shattered after a tough week, there's nothing better than sitting down to an episode of QI. In fact, it's almost worth staying in for. Almost. Even the Beeb agree - they've bumped it over to BBC1 which clearly means "QI is more popular than University Challenge."

Stephen Fry's comedy-quiz QI has become so popular that it's transferred from BBC2 to BBC1 (a la Have I Got News For You), but otherwise it's business as usual for the comedians given schoolboy roles, with Fry as the indubitable headmaster and Alan Davies the class dunce. Tradition dictates that, as the sixth series, the trivia revolves around the letter 'F'. Of course, things aren't particularly strict, and conversations veer off into random, surreal tangents. The only disappointing thing with QI is a tendency to make smutty, schoolboy jokes usually involving sexual innuendo. There's nothing wrong with such comedy, but QI is guilty of spending far too long giggling at crudities, when the real gems of the show are to be found elsewhere.

Stephen Fry hosts as the Quite Interesting panel show returns for a new series.

Laughter's said to be the best medicine - although if that's the case, why do doctors bother with those drugs? But chortling certainly does help the brain garage store juicy facts. Countless folk have chortled at Stephen ribbing Alan's ineptitude and still been able to fire out some impressive trivia down The Stoat and Radish. Sparkling smarty-pants comedy.

Fifteen years ago, Reeves and Mortimer pulled the rug from under panel shows with a jerk that sent their legs in the air. All subsequent panel shows owe something to that Big Bang. Shooting Stars was juvenile, anarchic and fizzing with ricocheting invention. Matt Lucas in a pink romper suit looked as if he might at any moment burst out of his cocoon and become something huge and hungry. Which he did. Visiting celebrities took their lives in their hands. Larry Hagman looked like a man in a nightmare. Stephen Fry was lost in the wash. Johnny Vegas remembered Vic and Bob asking him, Are you drinking tonight? (a question with which he was all too familiar), and adding reassuringly, Because we are.

All New Shooting Stars, a one-off special, was an object lesson in never going back. Vic and Bob seemed like their own fathers. The only recognisable celebrity was Jack Dee, who, with a blue tit balanced on his head, stood nose to nose with an opera singer giving Nessun Dorma plenty of welly. Any trembling or precipitation of the tit would indicate failure and cost him a beautiful pillowcase. To watch Dee crack into a smile was joy enough for one night.

A little piece of history tonight as one of Auntie's most ardently admired panel games, QI, makes the journey from BBC2 to BBC1 for its latest series.

It's not the most obviously conformist of comedies: a blend of the scintillating and the silly, an echo of Radio 4 on TV, hosted with avuncular omniscience by Stephen Fry, who puts panellists to the test with questions so arcane that points are awarded only for the most outlandish or 'quite interesting' answers (with suitably massive deductions for the incorrect or predictable).

Wit, that rarest of commodities, is the show's stock in trade and it is a marvel to behold how much is distilled on a regular basis by panellists drawn from a broad cross-section of contemporary comedy talent.

QI goes Dutch

The Netherlands is to get its own version of QI. Public broadcaster VARA has bought the rights to remake the Stephen Fry panel show, with Dutch author Arthur Japin as host. Comedian Thomas van Luyn will be the only regular guest, as Alan Davies is in the BBC version.

QI plans daytime spin-off

QI is attempting to become the first panel show to create a TV spin-off.

As the programme moves to BBC One next year, producers Talkback Thames have been commissioned to make a pilot of a sister quiz for BBC Two.

Provisionally titled The QI Test, the show is expected to fill a daytime slot and will feature members of the public rather than comedy panellists.

Stephen Fry will not be hosting the show - although no presenter has yet been named.