Just A Minute

Radio 4's Just a Minute spawns a junior version

No hesitation, repetition or deviation. It's a simple formula that has worked for Just a Minute since 1967. But now the Radio 4 show chaired by Nicholas Parsons is asking children to take up the challenge for a special version on The 4 O'Clock Show, a strand on Radio 4 Extra.

The magazine show includes a special week of broadcasts of Junior Just a Minute. Nicholas Parsons is a kindly, paternal host, but please don't expect the same heights of humour as Paul Merton and Graham Norton.

Nicholas Parsons: Irritating man must get a gong

A campaign is afoot to have Nicholas Parsons knighted. Sir Nicholas? Is it really such a ridiculous notion? He's a unique performer - pompous, infuriating, the butt of all jokes. What many people fail to realise, including fellow actors, is that this is a deliberate persona, a comic front.

Knighthood bid for for Nicholas Parsons

There is a growing demand for the Queen to confer a 'K' on gentleman quiz show host Nicholas Parsons, who is now 90.

There's no deviation for JAM's veteran Nicholas Parsons

The 90-year-old actor and presenter of Radio 4's Just a Minute shows no sign of slowing up.

Every day, in a stairwell at Broadcasting House, I pass by a photograph of Nicholas Parsons. If you haven't seen that photo, you've seen one like it. Down the years, Nicholas must have been photographed thousands of times with timepieces of all descriptions. He is invariably pointing at them, and beaming as if the clock in question is the most wonderful object ever conceived.

And well he might. Since the earliest days of Radio 4 in 1967, Nicholas has presided over Just a Minute with the same glee exhibited in every publicity shot. His cry of "Welcome to Just a Minute!" at the start of each programme is as enthusiastic a greeting as you'll hear on the radio... an enthusiasm that the passing decades have not dimmed.

His cheery and wily chairmanship are the backbone of it all, with the game's players giving the show new form every week. For a programme obsessed with the passing seconds, time has robbed it of some of its most accomplished participants. Paul Merton is now the mainstay, though he's not here for this first edition of a new series: here it's Gyles Brandreth who picks up and runs with his topics, full of clever word play, boisterous energy and mischief.

As always, anarchy is never far away. In round one, panellist Patrick Kielty accuses Parsons of behaving like a contestant and awards him a point. Never a wasted minute.

Radio 4 panel games come and go. In some cases they come, then stick around for decades after you wish they'd disappeared. But not this one, which might still be the best of the bunch. Nicholas Parsons, Paul Merton and other regulars are back for the show's 66th series - and in the first episode, fans will be holding their breath for 60 full seconds as Graham Norton achieves the rare feat of speaking for a minute without hesitating, deviating or repeating himself. Pam Ayres and new BBC2 sketch-comedy star Kevin Eldon round out a great panel.

As any JAM fan will tell you, it's not often that a panellist speaks for the whole minute, uninterrupted, without deviation, hesitation or repetition, but that's exactly what Graham Norton does here. Admittedly, he does have a distinct advantage with his subject matter - it's the Eurovision Song Contest - but even so, it's a rare enough event to inspire a warm and spontaneous round of applause from the audience.

And Nicholas Parsons takes some gentle ribbing from Paul Merton when he manages to work his forename into a round entitled "Fur coat and no knickers" - "You've been waiting 45 series to use that gag," says Merton.