I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue

Jack Dee to host Radio 4's Clue

Comedian Jack Dee will host the next series of long-running BBC Radio 4 show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.

Comedy preview: I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, on tour

Like Private Eye, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue is one of those comic institutions where the idiosyncrasies and familiar jokes are glorious fun for the initiated, but mildly baffling to the outsider.

These are my final radio thoughts, and I've decided to mark the occasion with a round-up of all the things I've got wrong in the period between now and the last time I did a round-up of everything I'd got wrong.

Just a Minim is not a dark new round of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, invented with the sick-minded genius of grief to give the show some pzazz after Humphrey Lyttelton died. In fact, it has run since the early 80s. One reader claimed the late 70s. Nobody truly knows.

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.

Is bringing back I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue post-Humph a good idea? ISIHAC is my answer: the show has never held the place in my heart that it has in others'. Still, its return on Monday seemed fine enough, not particularly because of Stephen Fry, the host (Jack Dee and Rob Brydon are to step in later), but because of Victoria Wood. She is so clever with words - "Dictaphone: person on a mobile," she quipped - and so generous as a performer, arguing when she needed to, hanging back likewise. I hope she returns.

No Humph, no Samantha, but plenty of quality smut

After a decent interval following the death of Humphrey Lyttelton a year ago, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue returned with a knowing wink and a helpless giggle. It's taken three men to replace the great man, and on Monday Stephen Fry was in the Humph seat. (He'll rotate with Rob Brydon and Jack Dee, though I'd like to have seen Bill Bailey given a shot, too.)

There was a fear that reconvening without the show's spiritual leader might be like The Beatles re-forming after John Lennon died. But though Fry was berated in some quarters after his debut, the essence of the complaints was that he's not Lyttelton. He probably can't play the trumpet, either.

The Lyttelton lacuna apart, it was business as usual, with the innuendo quotient maintained at its traditionally ferocious level. The lovely Samantha has been given a rest (for newcomers, she's the non-existent scorer) in favour of "the rippling Sven", who's had the builders round: "Whenever they ask for cheese and chutney, he always palms them off with relish."

Radio Head: I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue

"They must have had two choices," I thought, for the first half. "They could either rip the whole thing up and start again. Or do the whole thing as an homage to the way it was ... "

Radio review: I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue

A radio institution returned last night minus a key ingredient: I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue (Radio 4) is now Humph-less. It was an interesting listen, working out how much of the show can still flourish with new, rotating hosts - Stephen Fry last night; Rob Brydon and Jack Dee to follow - and how much is lost. The good news is that the show is as funny as ever, and the pointless, unscored rounds remain very ticklish indeed. What's gone, inevitably, is a rich layer of impish spirit.

Stephen Fry, the first of Clue's replacement chairmen is, without doubt and in other places, a very funny, clever, witty, charming, versatile man. The problem here is that he shows it by performing every line. Where Lyttelton made them seem as if they had just entered his head, Fry sounds as if each one has been the subject of lengthy study.

The script's rudery, therefore, no longer comes as a surprise. It's overt, intended, inescapable. Victoria Wood, last night's guest panellist, has said she found doing the show "oddly relaxing". Maybe that's why she hardly shone. Or maybe the show is just in transition.