QI

Sneer at trivia, and you sneer at my soul

Flick through most of the 500 channels available on television today and you will see that rule writ large. A huge majority of the programmes available are dreary, talent-free and insulting. But alight on something that treats trivia as it should be treated, with care and respect, and it becomes a real joy.

Take the recent series QI, utterly pointless and utterly irresistible. As might be expected, since it was presented by Stephen Fry, a man whose learning cannot be gainsaid, but who has the intelligence and range to observe popular culture with the critical eye it deserves. As he proves, it is possible to be a trivia elitist.

QI (BBC2), the quiz in which Stephen Fry presides benignly over a Beano-like collection of comics [...] What is funny is that my preview tape proved that the programme was originally intended to go out on Boxing Day. Fry's preamble was consequently stuffed with topical rib ticklers, each one hand-crafted by the master, about boxing matches and battling bruisers and the Feast of Stephen. "This day is my day and you are all scum." I would have loved to be there when he was informed that it was going out on Christmas Eve.

There are few pleasures on TV to equal QI (BBC2), in which Stephen Fry pours erudition liberally over insubordinate comics like honey on waffles. It is pure tmesis which, he explained, was the splitting of a word to include another, as in abso-blooming-lutely wonderful.

QI (BBC2) was like finding caviar on the menu in the canteen. [...] QI is the sort of quiz, more common on radio, where it is better to be bright than right. The beauty of television is that you can watch Hugh Laurie]'s expression as Stephen Fry explains that the forbidden fruit is believed to be a banana.

Any ad-libbed, improvised show requires a special skill from the players, and in a professional sense they are living dangerously. There was an occasion in Just a Minute when the subject was snapshots. Kenneth Williams was unhappy about one of my decisions, which went against him on this subject, and he began to harass me. Peter Jones and Derek Nimmo joined in, which added to the pressure. In an effort to bring them to order, I said: "I'm sorry Kenneth, you were deviating from snapshots, you were well away from snapshots. It is with Peter, snopshots, er snipshots, er snopshits . . . snop . . . snaps." The audience roared with laughter. I added: "I'm not going to repeat the subject. I think you know it . . . and I think I may have finished my career in radio."

QI, however much it tries to be subtly different, is part of a glorious tradition. When radio first presented panel shows they cast them from those with a proven intellectual background. This mold was broken in the early 1960s, when Jimmy Edwards devised a programme for the Home Service, with himself as chairman, called Does the Team Think?. The panellists were all well-known comedians, Tommy Trinder, Cyril Fletcher and others, who proved that comics were just as intelligent as academics, and usually much funnier.

QI is a direct descendant. And when you have Stephen Fry, and contestants such as Alan Davies, Hugh Laurie and Danny Baker, and a producer of the calibre of John Lloyd, the BBC must be on to a winner.