QI

To the London Studios to watch a recording of QI which I believe is for transmission later this autumn.
I haven’t been to a TV recording for years, and when I realised that I was going to have to leave work at six, I did consider that they might be recording two shows over the evening. But no.
After a warm-up (sorry, I forget the comedian’s name), it was into the show where a freshly eye-lasered Stephen Fry first explained that he might be squinting a bit as he tried to read his cards and an autocue.
Panellists on the show were Phil Jupitus (second time in a couple of weeks for me, since he’s been on Charm Offensive before), the very funny David Mitchell, Bill Bailey (no forthcoming series of Black Books), and of course, Alan Davies.
What really staggered me about the recording was that they went on for one hour and forty minutes with barely a moment’s interruption, to edit down a half hour show. Some bits were obviously funnier than others, but that’s an incredible amount of material to start with. And there genuinely are researchers working furiously in the background checking out facts as we went. Most of the retakes at the end were corrections of inaccuracies, and at one moment, Alan Davies told us a fascinating fact about statues of old generals on horses, that was immediately shot down in flames by the fact-checkers, as an urban myth.
Next time you watch QI, have a look at the enormous deck of cards that Stephen Fry starts with. Despite being something of a polymath, he has vast quantities of related information at his fingertips for use in plenty of eventualities.