Sue Perkins

Mistimed for Halloween, but well-timed as the thirteenth episode, QI continued its "G" series with a look at "Gothic". This was probably one of my favourite episodes in quite some time, not least because I'm saturnine enough to appreciate ghoulish trivia about gargoyles (they're actually water-spouts, the purely decorative ones are called "grotesques"), zombies (it would take about a month for one zombie to infect the entire world), novelty coffins (a modern tradition in Ghana, apparently), etc. Plus, great comedy does tend to bubble up from the darker corners of the human experience. To that end, misanthrope Jack Dee and the cynicism of Jimmy Carr were employed well, and Sue Perkins proved (where Sandy Toksvig and Jo Brand have failed to this year) that, yes, women on panel shows can be funny! Spooky.

This new comedy quiz show is based on the premise that some news stories are so preposterous that they might as well have been made up. A group of comedians and celebrities are locked away for four days in a media-free "bubble", without access to phones, TV, newspapers or the internet. Oddly enough, there was no shortage of volunteers. When they emerge, the host David Mitchell confronts them with reports, headlines and images, some real and some invented. They have to distinguish one from the other. Frank Skinner and Victoria Coren are the contestants tonight, while future guests include Marcus Brigstocke, Clive Anderson, Sue Perkins and Germaine Greer. Already a big success in Israel and Poland, the quiz looks likely be a lot of fun.

There are plenty of quiz shows on TV so it's nice to see a format where questions can cover just about anything from Die Hard to the bard.

Quip queen Sandi Toksvig hosts this cultural comedy quiz, while captains and reliable comics Chris Addison and Sue Perkins are joined by hand-picked celebrity guests to face quick fire questions from across the arts and serve up plenty of irreverent laughs along the way.

Now I'm not usually a fan of radio but that's mainly the fault of Jo Whiley and Scott Mills, but I do enjoy The News Quiz. Not only because Celebrity Lesbian Sandi Toksvig is the chair, but also because Celebrity Lesbian Sue Perkins is a regular panellist.

The News Quiz never fails to have me laughing, which is the main reason that I can't listen to it in public, I don't want to develop a reputation. It is the wittier version of Have I Got News For You, and yes there is a certain overlap of topics, but The News Quiz (usually) has five brilliant wits on, whereas HIGNFY has to make do with two, a guest chair and Ian Hislop. And very rarely does it have Celebrity Lesbians, so it just doesn't stand a chance.

Expect an arched eyebrow and plenty of sardonic quips as Sandi Toksvig reprises her role as literary quizmaster. Filmed at the Hay festival, this tongue-in-cheek series invites the likes of Rick Wakeman, Jan Ravens, John O'Farrell and Frank Skinner to test their know-how: whereupon Toksvig will separate the truly bookish from the blusterers. Also parading their Eng. Lit. credentials will be returning team captains Sue Perkins and Chris Addison.

Sandi Toksvig chairs this comedy panel game in which celebrities are given the answer, and they have to come up with possible questions. It sounds like a round of Mock the Week expanded into a full half-hour, but with Chris Addison and Sue Perkins as team captains should be diverting enough.

Though The News Quiz is one of Radio 4's most loved programmes, it's hard for me to write about. It goes out on a Friday night, after my column deadline, and - obviously - it's topical. I can only review the previous show, in this case the first in the new series, which discussed the Labour party conference, the EDF energy company and Sarah Palin. See: they're so last week! (Apart from Sarah Palin.)

The other block to me reviewing The News Quiz is, well, me. Though I am a Radio 4 devotee, its panel shows drive me mad. They're so cosy! The combination of laugh-at-anything audience and aren't-I-clever contestants creates a tittering dinner party atmosphere that makes me yearn for Jerry Sadowitz or Keith Allen or Joan Rivers. In short, I want anger.

Still, there's enough of that in today's Britain, eh? And anyway, The News Quiz has Jeremy Hardy, whose anger is there, just clothed in exquisite one-liners, and he usually keeps me listening. Hardy has a gentle bedside manner which hides his vicious shanking of the pompous establishment. Last Friday he managed to stick it to middle-class parents, banks, the government and Barack Obama within the first 10 minutes. 'Obama said that the collapse of the banks is no time for politics. No, Christmas dinner is no time for politics.' But the bit I really liked was when he had a pop at Sue Perkins over her appearance on Maestro. What that says about me, I hate to think.