QI E08 Recording Review

*This is episode E08 in the Autumn transmission order.

The eighth recording of QI was, in my opinion, the best that I have seen in the series so far. It also means that there are now only two weeks of QI recordings left before the long summer wait for the new series to start.

I made a point of going to check the length of the queue at 5:55pm, just before the queue was moved in through the gate. It was clearly evident that people arriving then would not be getting into the recording. Phil was turning people away at the end of the queue soon afterwards since it was obvious that they would be wasting their time.

Stephen Grant is back and he's even written some new material for his warm up. Hurrah! Hopefully he'll be warming us all up for the rest of the recordings because we did miss him.

Phill Jupitus brought his camera onto the set with him and made a point of photographing the audience. Since he had been at the E06 recording I can only presume that he is competing with Alan Davies who put his mobile phone video up on YouTube. Then again, perhaps he just wants some snaps of the occasion.

Now for some details about the recording which include spoilers. You'll need to highlight the following text to read it. The first paragraph only has details of the guests if that is all that you want to know.

The guests were Phill Jupitus, David Mitchell and Jimmy Carr. All of them have made previous appearances in the series. Phill and Jimmy were both doing their fourth recording. If the reliance on the same guests is a strategy for this series, it seems to be working because all of the guests produced an excellent performance. Alan was on his best form as well.

The theme of the episode was eyes and ears. The subjects discussed (some very cryptic ones here to avoid making the answers too obvious) were Scoops, Babygays, Biometrics, First Looks, Ecoboxes, Cod, Cooling, Big Ears, Sneezing, Acronyms, Rough Music, Earwigs, Earing, Grass, Camels, Four Eyes, Plane Crashes and Captain Flint.

The recording of an intro and outro for the QI Vodcast is becoming a regular feature of each recording (one presumes that the decision to do these must have been made half way through the series since they were not made in the early episodes). This week it was the audience that produced the intro and outro.

Finally, a big thanks to U-Girl (again) for bringing those excellent dark chocolate covered flapjacks. I'll have to do a lot of laughing to burn off all of those calories.