QI

We went to see QI get recorded last night. It was excellent.

Stephen Fry was very funny so too were the guests (David Mitchell, Dara O'Brien and Graham Norton) and Alan Davis.

I had to work till about 6 (last minute work for our head office in Japan), but luckily April managed to get to the studios on South bank at around 5:45. By the time I arrived 45 mins later the queue was huge. I know they over prescribe to these sorts of things but this looked ridiculous.

The show didn’t start till 6:30 and went on till 9:30 and it did begin to drag somewhat before the end but we both had a great time.

My hat goes off to the talented editors on the show. The new series is due to get screened on BBC1 instead of it’s usual late BBC2 slot. Editing out all the nonsense (although funny) and making a coherent show must be so difficult and that’s even if they don’t swear…

Not bad for a free night out eh?

Plans for this week

Tonight we're of to a Bill Bailey Orang-utan charity evening, we went last year and had a great time. Basically it's a bunch of comedians trying out their new material but it's for a good cause so happy to pay.

Wednesday i'm playing touch rugby again.

Thursday we're off to see an episode of QI get recorded.

QI

I went to see a talk put on by the creators of QI last night.

We went to a Dimt first (Dim sum) resaurant then on to a UCL lecture theatre near by. IT was odd going back to a university, I was the oldest in the room until a couple of old ladies turned up.

The QI creators John Lloyd and John Mitchinson were there to sell their new book (which I now have a signed copy for my Dad's Christmas present). It's basically a book of quotations (a toilet book), mostly quite funny.

The guys talked about how the series was created and various other aspects of the show plus a handful of other random bits and bobs. The openned it up to questions afterwards so I asked

Was any one else considered for the Stephen Fry role

The answer is yes. It was originally going to be Michael Palin, with Stephen as a fellow team captain pitting the toffs against the non toffs (Alan Davis). Michael Palin pulled out as he felt he wasn't intelligent enough so they asked Stephen to step in for the pilot. It worked so they kept it that way. Quite interesting really.

Afterwards we went to a nearby pub for a couple of drinks and who should turn up? The two John's with their publicists. They sat down next to us, and to cut a long story short April discussed how do you get to become a QI elf. She now has the details so we're going to certainly look into it.

All in all a successful evening. We must look into doing more like it.