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I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue is back
The funniest thing on the radio, anywhere in the world, now in its 75th series.
One of the sweetest pleasures in this life is the astoundingly funny, long-running BBC Radio 4 comedy quiz show, I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. It is back for a 75th (!!!) series and:
It.
Is.
Amazing.
I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue is very hard to describe. Essentially, it’s a bunch of mock competitive quiz-show “games” that are both incredibly silly and incredibly weird, and (this is the magic bit), they never get tiresome.
Now, much of that is down to the amazing comedians who use these games as frameworks for hilarious sketches (and, of course, the comedy writers who back them up).
For many years, the show was helmed by the fabulous Humphrey Lyttelton (“Humph”) and after his death in 2008, many of us despaired of the show ever finding a suitable person to fill his seat. But after Stephen Fry stepped in, it became clear that ISIHAC had a future.
Today, the show is hosted by Jack Dee, who is so goddamned bone dry in his delivery that you need to apply moisturiser after his best lines. You can listen to his masterful chairmanship in Episode 1, courtesy of the Comedy of the Week podcast:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09mjl7b
The episode features Tony Hawks, Marcus Brigstocke, Vicki Pepperdine (who combines a posh accent with superb delivery and had me doubled over with laughter) and Henning Wehn (a one-man rebuttal to “Germans have no sense of humour).
Two more episodes in the series are now available to stream on the BBC’s website:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000x501
Listening to these episodes has me puzzled about how the games can be so durably funny — how “Swanee Kazoo” (two comedians on slide-whistle and kazoo mangle a pop song) can be funny three times in a single episode, and then in many episodes.
https://isihac.net/popup-humpth_trumpet_audio.html
I mean, it’s easy to see what makes “Uxbridge English Dictionary” (comedy…
