John Lloyd Interview

Back in February John Lloyd, producer of QI, came to the University of York to give an interview in front of 250 students in order to launch the Quite Interesting Society. Watch the interview in these two videos below:

QI Soc: An Interview With John Lloyd (1/2)
Uploaded by sicaroo

QI Soc: An Interview With John Lloyd (2/2)
Uploaded by sicaroo

Biography 12: Alan Davies

At long last, our journey through the most frequent QI panellists brings us to Stephen Fry’s favourite little stud-muffin, the eponymous, ubiquitous, indescribable Alan Davies.

Alan was born on 6th March 1966 in Chingford, England. His childhood years were spent in Chingford and Loughton where Alan was raised by his father after his mother passed away when he was only 6. Alan graduated from the University of Kent in 1988. It was at Kent that he became an active campaigner for animal rights, and a passionate vegetarian (although he is now a pescetarian).

Alan began performing stand up comedy in 1988 only five months after leaving university, with a three month trip across Canada performing at various Fringe Festivals and Comedy Clubs. The stress of performing to Canadians prepared him for his return to England, and he secured a TV spot within six months. In 1991, he was named Time Out's Best Young Comic. He soon appeared on Tonight with Jonathan Ross in 1992 and continued touring and performing in the UK and Canada, winning the Edinburgh Festival Critics Award for Comedy in 1994. Alan’s most successful stand up tour was his show Urban Trauma which completed a sell-out season at the Duchess Theatre in 1998.

Alan has most recently moved into serious drama. In 2004, he starred as Henry Farmer, a maverick barrister, in the ITV Sunday night drama The Brief, although he quit after the second series. His theatre debut was in Morris Panych's Auntie & Me. The production was a sell-out success at the 2002 Edinburgh Festival and transferred to the West End in 2003. Alan returned to the stage in 2005, this time alongside Bill Bailey as Felix in The Odd Couple, again at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Alan Davies is perhaps best known, not for QI but for his portrayal of Jonathan Creek, a trick-deviser for a stage magician with a side interest in solving crimes. The series ran from 1996 until 2003 picking up a BAFTA for Best Drama. The series earned Alan a large following of loyal fans and it has been exported to several countries.

2007 will probably be noted as a particularly turbulent year for Alan. In January he got married to Kate Maskell. It was a relatively low-key event although his good friend Bill Bailey was chosen as his best man at the wedding. However, in December a strange event outside the Groucho Club in London involving a homeless person made the national papers. Alan, having come out of the club claimed to have been insulted by the man and then bit his ear. It probably won’t be remembered as one of Alan’s finest moments.

QI wouldn’t be the show it is without its permanent panellist. Alan was originally intended to be the captain of the “dunderheads” on the show. The idea of a team panel show fell by the way-side before the filming of the pilot as Michael Palin failed to take the role as the host and therefore Stephen Fry took this job. However, Alan remained as the permanent member of the show, having missed only one recording in the D series to attend the Champions League Final. Alan is a huge fan of Arsenal but unfortunately they lost. Alan is the only guest who refuses the offer of seeing the questions one hour in advance (guests are given this opportunity to be able to think of some jokes) which makes his consistent performance even more remarkable. He certainly deserves his three wins in the E series.

Biography 11: Jo Brand

In our penultimate focus on QI panellists, we bring you the fabulous “ladygirl” that is Jo Brand.

Josephine Grace Brand was born on 3rd May 1957 in Hastings, East Sussex. At school, she took piano lessons and had a bad experience with playing the violin. By the age of 16, she was going out with a heroin addict and, after being told by her family to get her act together, she soon left home. She had been slim up until this point, but not long after, the weight crept on; she made up with her parents, ditched her boyfriend and moved to London.

Brand's mother was a social worker, and Brand herself worked as a psychiatric nurse in her late 20s at the South London Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital. Three things spurred her to begin a career in stand-up comedy: her weight, the lack of female comics on the circuit at the time, and her agent Malcolm Hardee, whom she was romantically linked with for a while. Acquiring the stage name "The Sea Monster", she soon became central to the British alternative comedy movement, working London alternative comedy clubs, and appearing initially on the Saturday Live television show in the early 1980s.

In 1993, she began her transition into mainstream comedy when she hosted her own series on Channel 4, Jo Brand Through the Cakehole, co-written with comedy writer and partner Jim Miller, who by then was already her main stand-up writer. Around this time, she was living in the Elephant and Castle area of London. Though it was a rough estate, many comedians, when the London Comedy Circuit has closed down for the night, would often venture there for after hours drink and drug-fuelled sessions of board games. Such comedians included Mark Lamarr, Jeff Green, and Alan Davies.
More recently her humour has softened and she has been a guest on such television shows as Have I Got News For You and Never Mind The Buzzcocks. She has had several solo television series, and presented shows such as Jo Brand's Commercial Breakdown. In 2003, she was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.

In 2004, Jo appeared in a special episode of What Not to Wear, where fashion gurus Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine gave her a makeover. As a fan of Countdown, she achieved an ambition when she was asked to appear in the show's Dictionary Corner as the celebrity guest. She later became a friend of host Richard Whiteley. Following his death in 2005, she attended his memorial service at York Minster. She appeared again on Countdown in "Dictionary Corner" in February 2007.

Jo has a close association with Comic Relief. Perhaps against her better judgement, she took part in the first celebrity version of Comic Relief does Fame Academy and then in 2007 in Comic Relief Does The Apprentice.

On 25 March 2007, Brand appeared on reality television show Play It Again where she was required to learn how to play the organ in just four months. This was in preparation to perform at the Royal Albert Hall on the largest pipe organ in the British Isles.

Despite rumors to the contrary she turned out not to be a lesbian but after reading it in the newspapers for so long, she started to believe it. She has described men as "fantastic – as a concept". Brand is a big fan of Crystal Palace Football Club, and has sponsored the match ball for games in the past. She also once delivered a guest lecture on the subject of Psychiatric Nursing for the University of Derby Psychology Society. The lecture was reportedly highly ironic.

As the only regular female panellist on QI, Jo has had to compete with the men for laughs, but has still flourished with her self-deprecating humour. She has thoroughly deserved her place as the most frequent guest on the show. Jo will return on several occasions for series E.

Biography 10: Phill Jupitus

Phill Jupitus, the second most frequent guest on QI, becomes the focus of this week's blog.

Phill's career in entertainment began in 1984 when he quit his job in a DHSS job centre to become 'Porky the Poet'. For the rest of the 80's he focussed on his performance poetry and moving into the music industry. This included supporting Billy Bragg in the Red Wedge tour and directing a couple of music videos, one of which was nominated for a Brit award. These experiences have certainly been valuable to Phill's comedy career.

Only in 1989 when Phill quit his job at Go! Discs did he begin to concentrate on a comedic career. Whilst he earned his reputation on the London comedy circuit and TV show warm ups, Phill continued to dip back into the music industry. In 1995 he started a show on Greater London Radio which would last until 2000. However, his true break into comedy came courtesy of Never Mind the Buzzcocks on which he has been a team captain since its creation in 1996. His music knowledge made him the ideal man for the job. The show gave him regular TV exposure that fledgling comedians like himself could only dream of.

During the late 1990's Phill had two UK tours. The first Jedi, Steady, Go was a comedic retelling of the Star Wars trilogy. The second called Quadrophobia discussed his many fears like arachnophobia as well as near-death experiences.

Phill made his first appearance on QI in the series A Christmas special (A12) and he been a panellist on 16 occasions. This included 5 in series D, the most of any guest in one series. Jupitus is well known on the show for his impressions of the 'upper-class Fry' which are performed with a superb toffs' accent. Despite the frequency of his appearances he has only won one episode (B03).

Perhaps the reason that Jupitus has been so successful on QI is his renowned improvisation skills. Phill tours with the Big City Improv a comedy troupe that asks the audience to provide subjects around which they create sketches on the spot. He also makes regulars guest performances on the radio 4 show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.

This year Phill has moved into a new medium. He has co-written and starred in the play Waiting For Alice. In the play which ran at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, he and Andre Vincent play Tweedledee and Tweedledum from the book Through the Looking Glass. Both Andre Vincent and Phill Jupitus claim that people regularly confuse them for each other, hence why they hit on the idea of playing twins. The play focuses on the 69 years they have been waiting for Alice to turn up for them to perform their part. The two of them take it in turn to play the the two different roles, switching for each performance. Jupitus claims that the play was largely the idea of Vincent but that his poetic background gave him the skills to produce the strong script.

Phill will return for another 4 episodes of series E of QI. His first episode will be E03 to broadcast on 5th October.

Biography 9: Rich Hall

This week is the turn of the American comedian who can explain biscuits and gravy, and wizards at roundabouts (but not the Clangers), Mr Rich Hall.

Rich was born on 10th June 1954 in Alexandria, Virginia. He drifted into street performing to pay off his student debts (at one stage, he supposedly faked his own death to avoid the payments). His original act was based around getting various passers-by to act out famous horror movie scenes. By this time, he had already worked on a newspaper and had also, rather bizarrely, been commentating on donkey basketball games. He soon quit that to pursue a career in comedy, at first touring with a stand-up act supporting the group Talking Heads.

He made his first appearance as a writer and performer in 1980 on the sketch comedy TV series Fridays. He then went on to appear in Not Necessarily the News (the American version of Not the Nine O’clock News) and Saturday Night Live (with the recurring character Robert Latta). He made further debuts on chat shows like the Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night with Conan O'Brien where he won two Emmy awards). In 1986, he had his own Showtime channel special, Vanishing America, which was turned into a book with the same name. According to one interview, by 1990 he had been in the comedy business for 11 years. In the same year, he hosted his own talk show on the Comedy Channel, entitled Rich Hall's Onion World.

It was in these 1980s shows that he invented the term "sniglet", described as “any word that doesn’t appear in the dictionary, but should”. He collected and published five books of examples of sniglets. As well as this, it has now been widely considered that he was the inspiration for the character Moe Szyslak from The Simpsons. This was later confirmed by creator Matt Groening.

Rich then began to gain momentum and popularity in the UK, where he now lives. This began with appearances in panel shows like QI, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Have I Got News For You (in the latter, he had to perform in an edition following the September 11th 2001 attacks). He also gave a memorable performance on Top Gear, where he successfully managed to make a song about a Rover 25 car, much to the enjoyment of the audience and Jeremy Clarkson. His popularity has spread further, becoming a panellist on the Irish show Don't Feed The Gondolas and Australian shows like The Glass House and Spicks and Specks. He regularly appears at the Kilkenny Cat Laughs comedy festival and at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. In 2004, in the Jack Dee series Live at the Apollo, he achieved recognition for his comments about Tom Cruise’s acting skills.

In 2000, Rich won the Perrier Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe alongside regular band The Black Friars. He played the character called Otis Lee Crenshaw, who is Rich’s uncle and a much-convicted country music singer. As Crenshaw, Rich has released several albums and performed a concert movie called ‘London, Not Tennessee’. In 2000 Rich also won the Time Out Comedy Award and an Adelaide Fringe Festival Award. In 2004, he published a book of memoirs, entitled Otis Lee Crenshaw: I Blame Society, and has recently finished a screenplay for a film based on the book, written for the director Mel Smith.

In 2006 Rich wrote and acted in a play called Levelland at the Edinburgh Festival. He has had three BBC series, Rich Hall's Badly Funded Think Tank, Rich Hall's Fishing Show in 2003, and Rich Hall's Cattle Drive in 2006, as well as a one off programme about the 2004 American Presidential Elections, Rich Hall's Election Special.

Rich is one the most frequent panellists on QI and has always sat in the same seat, on Stephen’s immediate left. His clash of cultures with Stephen and his grumpy but twisted sense of humour ensures his popularity, and we look forward to seeing more of Rich in future QI episodes.

Biography 8: Bill Bailey

It’s time to gander in awe at the part troll and confused hippy that is Mr Bill Bailey.

Mark "Bill" Bailey was born on 24^th February 1964. His father is a doctor, but he shares Bill’s passion for comedy. He spent the majority of his childhood in Bath. He attended King Edward's School, where he tried to “study everything”. He was once told that his ideal job would be a “museum curator” or a “member of the diplomatic service”. He excelled in music, and it was while at school that he was given his nickname Bill, when a music teacher once sang the song "Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey". Bill started a punk rock band called the "Famous Five”. However, he is a classically trained musician and he received an associateship with the London College of Music.

Bill began touring the country with other comedians such as Mark Lamarr and Phill Jupitus. In 1986 he formed a double act, the Rubber Bishops, with Toby Longworth (later Martin Stubbs). They achieved a certain amount of success on the club circuit, partly due to their rigorous schedule. According to comedy folklore, after one reviewer criticised his act for its lack of jokes, Bill returned the following night to perform a set composed entirely of punchlines.

In 1994 Bill performed the show Rock at the Edinburgh Fringe with Sean Lock. It was later serialised for the Mark Radcliffe show on BBC Radio 1. He confessed in an interview with The Independent that after this he almost gave comedy up to do a telesales job. He persevered, however, and went solo the next year with Bill Bailey's Cosmic Jam. The show was very well received and led to a recording at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London which was broadcast in 1996 on Channel 4.

In 2001, Bailey began touring the globe with Bewilderness, which became a huge success. It was released on DVD the same year, and the show was broadcast on Channel 4 that Christmas. He premiered his next show Part Troll at the Edinburgh Fringe in the summer of 2003. It has toured all over the UK as well as in America, Australia and New Zealand, and was released on DVD in 2004. As part of the show he contributed to another punk rock band, a Kraftwerk spoof called Augenblick. In March 2007 his stand-up was recognised by Channel 4 which declared him the 7th greatest stand-up comedian of all time.

Although Bill had made TV appearances as early as 1991, his break into TV came in 1996 after he was nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award. The nomination was enough to get him noticed, and in 1998 the BBC gave him his own television show, Is It Bill Bailey?

Over the next few years, Bill made guest appearances on shows such as Have I Got News For You, Room 101, Des O'Connor Tonight and Coast to Coast. When Sean Hughes left his role as captain on Never Mind the Buzzcocks in 2002, Bill became his successor and has been there ever since. Other television appearances include Jonathan Creek (opposite Alan Davies), 15 Storeys High and several interviews on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross.

In 2000, he starred in the Channel 4 sitcom Black Books as Manny Bianco. Three successful series of six episodes were made. He also starred in the sitcom Spaced, in which he played comic-shop manager Bilbo Bagshot.

Bailey’s film credits include British comedy film Saving Grace, and also voiced the sperm whale in 2005's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. He also had two minor roles as a police receptionist in the 2007 film Hot Fuzz.

Radio performances include two episodes each of The 99p Challenge, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, and Just a Minute. Bailey is closely involved with the radio show presented by QI producer John Lloyd called The Museum of Curiosities. A pilot has been produced and the first series has been commissioned for early 2008.

Bill is amongst the most popular guests on QI and despite missing a whole series last year due to his US tour, he is the fourth most frequent panellist. Bill featured in the pilot which he won and he was the only guest in the pilot to return. However, Bill has so far won only two shows both in the C series. This perhaps shows his willingness to play along and give klaxon answers.

Bill is now preparing for a UK tour named Tinselworm planned for November, and an Australian tour for the following year. Additionally, Bill is planning to put himself forward as Britain's Eurovision entry in 2008, as a result of several fan petitions encouraging him to do so.

Biography 7: Sean Lock

This week, our focus is on the infamous koala fiend, Mr Sean Lock.

Born on 22nd April 1963 in Woking, Sean Lock first began a career as a builder. Eventually he took to a new path as a stand up comedian, beginning with a five-minute open spot in a small pub in Hackney in 1988. He is currently a regular at London's Comedy Store and has appeared at all the major festivals around the world including Edinburgh, Melbourne, Montreal and the Stavanger Humorfestivat in Norway. In 2000, his show 'No Flatley, I Am The Lord Of The Dance' was nominated for the prestigious Perrier Award. That year he also received a British Comedy Award for Best Stand Up (previous winners have included Jack Dee, Eddie Izzard and Jo Brand). Sean has also won a Time Out Comedy Award.

Sean has performed in some of the most successful live shows of recent years, beginning in 1995 when he collaborated with Bill Bailey on Rock, a much misunderstood music industry spoof, which would later become serialised on Radio 1. His radio credits include regular contributions to Mark Radcliffe's Evening Show on Radio 1, Loose Ends on Radio 4, and The Treatment on Radio 5. He made his name in radio in 1998/9 with the show 15 Minutes of Misery on Radio 4, written by and starring Lock as the inhabitant of a South London tower block. This series grew into 15 Storeys High, where he played the same character, renamed as Vince and now a swimming pool lifeguard. It ran for two series on radio and two series on television in 2004.

As well as 15 Storeys High, Sean has gradually moved his comedy towards television, commencing with his own slot on the show Newman and Baddiel in Pieces, where he played Shenley Grange in a recurring sketch called Disappearing World – the character would warn about endangered species before ultimately killing said species. He subsequently became the first comedian to perform at Wembley Arena due to the fact that he was supporting Robert Newman and David Baddiel. However, he was booed offstage, and it was Newman and Baddiel who were widely reported as being the first to have done this.

As a writer, Sean co-created Mark Lamarr's Leaving The 20th Century, and has contributed to such shows as Never Mind The Buzzcocks, It's Only TV But I like It, and Is It Bill Bailey, and also wrote material for Bailey, Lamarr and Lee Evans. His other television credits include appearances on The World Of Lee Evans, Here's Johnny, and The Stand Up Show. He has also guested on the World Cup special edition of They Think It's All Over.

Sean is currently a team captain on the Channel 4 panel show 8 Out Of 10 Cats (a position he has held for the previous two years) and has his own show on the same channel, TV Heaven Telly Hell, that returned for a second series this year.

On QI, Sean has proved remarkably popular with such stories about how he got a little too close to a koala, how he went to a fish ‘n’ chip shop in Eastbourne (which wasn’t open), and most memorably, his discovery of a portal to the underworld while Rory McGrath discussed Latin bird names. Given his popularity, his appearances in future QI series seem assured.

Biography 6: Clive Anderson

This week it’s time to turn our attention to the man who is 17% less annoying than Antarctica, Mr Cleeve, er sorry, Clive Anderson, pictured left here, next to Andy Parsons.

Clive was born in Stanmore, Middlesex in 1952. He was educated at Harrow County School for Boys, alongside future politician Michael Portillo. After studying law at Cambridge University, where he was also President of the Footlights revue group from 1974 to 1975, he was called to the bar a year later and practised as a barrister in London for about 15 years, specialising in criminal law.

Despite his busy work, he found time to become part of the alternative comedy scene in the early 1980s, and was the first person to come onstage at The Comedy Store in 1979. During this time he wrote scripts for Frankie Howard, Griff Rhys Jones, Mel Smith and others (including the sketch series Not the Nine O’clock News), and performed as a stand-up comedian, which led to presenting radio and television programmes. He began his chat show connections by once standing in for Terry Wogan on his show, but came to prominence in Whose Line Is It Anyway? on Radio 4 and then on Channel 4. It was here that he bore the brunt of jokes referring mostly to his baldness and short neck, but this did not stop him from achieving further exposure. The show won a BAFTA in 1989. He presented ten series of his chat show Clive Anderson Talks Back, picking up British Comedy Awards in 1991 and 1992 and being named Top Channel 4 Presenter that same year. He later moved on to BBC1 with Clive Anderson All Talk. In 2003 he also presided over The Big Read for BBC2. His chat shows have been particularly controversial, most notably for causing the Bee Gees to walk out of an interview in apparent disgust, although the interview had seemed to be progressing smoothly. He has also had water poured over him by Richard Branson. Conversely, he has gained the upper hand in conversations with both Jeffrey Archer and Piers Morgan, the latter in an appearance on Have I Got News For You, where he has made several appearances as a panellist.

On radio he has chaired Chat Room on Radio 2, and The Cabaret Upstairs and Unreliable Evidence on Radio 4. In Unreliable Evidence Clive cross-examines some of the most eminent legal figures in the country. Other broadcasting credits include the shows Time Cycle, The News Quiz, The Devil's Advocate and a Radio 5 Live series called The Real… where he has profiled figures such as Gordon Brown, George Bush and Jesus Christ. Clive is also an accomplished writer and has written for The Times, The Observer, The Listener and The Sunday Correspondent. He is a keen supporter of Arsenal FC and lives in Highbury.

On QI, his nervous but quick delivery continues to shine, as does his drawing skills (when asked to draw a wigwam, he instead drew the band Wham! wearing wigs). He was revealed to be President of the Woodland Trust, although Jo subsequently became President of the Shut Up About The Woodland Trust Trust. A frequent panellist since the beginning of the show, he appears in series E and it is safe to assume he will reappear in future series.

Biography 5: Jimmy Carr

Today we raise a glass to the man that is Jimmy Carr.

Carr was born on September 15th 1972 in Limerick, Ireland. Carr was very successful at school. He achieved four A grades at A-level and went on to gain a first in Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge. Following this, he took a job as a marketing executive for Shell, which lasted him just under two years and was, according to him, the “easiest job in the world”. He then joined JC Productions and began to work on a career in stand-up comedy. Whilst there, he made his first film, The Colour of Funny, which starred Red Dwarf comedian Craig Charles. Though the film was a flop, it brought Carr into comic writing and stand-up.

Eventually, Carr performed at the Royal Variety Performance which opened up TV opportunities for him. Channel 4 chose him to present game shows like Distraction and Your Face or Mine? He now presents the panel shows 8 Out Of 10 Cats, with fellow QI panellist Sean Lock as a team captain, and The Big Fat Quiz of the Year. He has also been a guest on Have I Got News For You.

Jimmy Carr has continued his stand-up career. In 2002 his first full-length show Bare-Faced Ambition won the Perrier award. In 2003, he was named the best stand-up at the Time Out Awards, and won the same award at the Laftas in 2004. He was named “funniest man” at the same awards a year later. And in 2006, his tour Gag Reflex was named Best Live Stand-Up at the British Comedy Awards. The Observer named him one of the funniest acts in British comedy in 2003, and he was placed 12th in a list of the 100 Greatest Stand-Ups by Channel 4 in 2007. He commences a new tour, Repeat Offender, in autumn this year.

Carr is one of the few comedians to have broken into the USA. He has appeared numerous times with chat show hosts Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, hosted two series of Distraction USA and had a half-hour special on Comedy Central. Meanwhile in 2006 he acted in a number of films including Confetti, Alien Autopsy and Stormbreaker. He was also the first cyberspace comedian in the virtual reality world of Second Life.

Considering Jimmy Carr’s pedigree in panel shows he was an obvious choice of guest for QI. He has demonstrated his intelligence by coming up with the sentence “Put Smarties tubes on cats’ legs, make them walk like a robot” from a random selection of fridge-magnet letters. However, despite his claim that he only lost his virginity at 26, Carr has a reputation for producing a lot of ‘explicit material’ on QI. Anyone that has been to one of his recordings will know just how much has to be cut to allow the show to be broadcast. Still, Jimmy has earned his place as a regular panellist in the upcoming series E.

Biography 4: John Sessions

This week, we look at the life and times of Mr John Sessions.

Born John Gibb Marshall in 1953, John Sessions would later change his name when he became a performer. Sessions graduated with an MA in English literature from the University of Wales and later studied for a PhD in Ontario. Though he detested his experience in Canada, it was here that he first showed his skill at improvised comedy and stage acting. After he attended RADA he began to work in the small venue comedy circuit in the early 1980’s. He started with largely improvised freewheeling fantasy monologues, often topping a double bill with French and Saunders.

John Sessions made two film appearances in the 80’s but found these roles uncomfortable. He soon began to exhibit his strengths in improvised comedy with his one-man stage show Napoleon, which ran in London's West End. His ability to improvise landed him a spot as the first regular contestant on "Whose Line Is It Anyway?” on radio and television. It was here that he earned a reputation for being a swot because he has great literary knowledge. However, he also became known for his ability to convincingly portray accents and characters in a variety of styles.

In 1989, Sessions starred in his one-man TV show, John Sessions. The show involved Sessions performing before a live audience who were invited to nominate a person, a location and two objects from a selection, around which Sessions would improvise a surreal performance for the next half hour. After other similar shows he starred in Stella Street (1997) in which he plays a variety of middle-aged actors living in a suburban street, alongside Phil Cornwell.

Increasingly Sessions has returned to formal acting, with parts ranging from James Boswell in Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Isles (1993) to Doctor Prunesquallor in the BBC adaptation of Gormenghast (2000). He has also appeared in some Shakespeare adaptations, appearing in; Henry V (1989) and In the Bleak Midwinter (1995). He also played Philostrate in the 1999 film of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Salerio in 2004's The Merchant of Venice. In the recent revival of Jackanory, Sessions made two appearances to tell the story of Muddle Earth.

On radio, one of Sessions’ most memorable shows came when he guested in 1997 on the regular BBC Radio 3 show Private Passions, not as himself but as a 112-year-old Viennese percussionist called Manfred Sturmer. He told anecdotes about Brahms, Clara Schumann, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg and others so realistically that some listeners did not realise that it was a hoax.

On QI, he has demonstrated his knowledge of the birth and deaths of many famous artists and composers, calling such an ability a “sickness”. He was subject to a Luvvie Alarm given to him for name-dropping Robert Redford (Stephen Fry was also given an alarm when he mentioned the Duke and Duchess of Westminster).

Given his impressive performances on QI he may be disappointed that he has only won once on his second show. His fans will also be disappointed that he did not attend any of the recordings in series E. One hopes that he will return in series F.

Biography 3: Dara Ó Briain

As promised last week, today’s biography focuses on Dara Ó Briain.

Dara is relatively new to the UK comedy scene. Only in the last 4 years has he broken out of Irish television and the comedy clubs onto UK television.

Born February 4th 1972, Dara started his career as a children's presenter on RTÉ (an Irish broadcaster) whilst performing his first stand-up gigs on the Irish comedy circuit. He spent three years as a presenter on a bilingual (Irish and English) children's programme Echo Island which he looks back on with amusement (he put children’s presenters into Room 101). He came to prominence as a team captain on the topical panel show Don't Feed The Gondolas, an RTÉ similar programme to Have I Got News For You.

From 2002, with his profile rising in the UK due to his one man shows at the Edinburgh fringe festival, Dara began to start making appearances on UK television shows such Never Mind The Buzzcocks. His big break in UK television came in 2003 when he made an appearance as guest and, ultimately, four appearances as guest host of the popular news quiz, Have I Got News For You.

In "Three Men in a Boat", Dara rowed up the Thames with Griff Rhys-Jones and Rory McGrath to produce a two-part documentary following the route in the book of the same name. He has also performed stand-up in front of fantasy role-players as part of the ITV1 series Tough Gig.

Dara is now hosting the panel show Mock the Week on BBC television. The show attempts to blend the TV and radio panel show formats with features that would not look out of place on Have I Got News For You or Whose Line Is It Anyway?

In the last 4 series of QI (including series E) Dara has made 6 appearances. Dara has won on all but one occasion (not including series E) making him one of the most successful guests on QI. In episode C12 he lost a game because viewers had complained that he had been awarded points for saying that 0 degree Celsius is the triple point of water in his first time on the show. The correct answer is 0.1 degrees Celsius so Dara was given a klaxon and a ten-point penalty. Dara’s memorable response was “How many people sat at home, watching that, and thought ‘It’s just a comedy show, but I’m not letting that fecker get away with that!”

Biography 2: Jeremy Clarkson

The second biography was a choice between the two men who have both made 6 appearances on QI: Jeremy Clarkson and Dara O’Briain. Naturally, as QI works alphabetically, so will the biographies, and this week’s focus is the living legend that is Mr Jeremy Clarkson.

Jeremy Charles Robert Clarkson was born on April 11, 1960, in Doncaster. He was educated at Repton School, although he claims to have been expelled for drinking and smoking. In 1984, he combined his writing skills with his love of cars, and together with business partner Jonathan Gill, they formed the Motoring Press Agency (later MPA Fingal), conducting road-tests for local newspapers. He first began presenting the BBC motoring show Top Gear, in 1989, doing so until 1999 and again from 2002. It is for this show that he is most well-known. His current co-presenters are James May and Richard Hammond. Stephen Grant, the warm-up comedian at QI recordings, could have replaced James May as a co-presenter. In auditions to replace Jason Dawe he reached the final two. Producers chose James May because Stephen was too similar to Richard Hammond. Top Gear is now the most watched TV show on BBC Two, with about 350 million viewers around the world. It won an International Emmy in 2005, for the best non-scripted entertainment show that was not broadcast in the U.S. In spite of his penchant for fast driving and high-perfomance automobiles, Clarkson has remarkably been reported as having a clean driving licence record.

Clarkson is known to be opinionated and forthright in his views. He was once described by Tony Parsons in the Daily Mirror as a "dazzling hero of political incorrectness". He has criticised Piers Morgan, America, Hyundai, Rover, BMW, Politicians, cyclists, bus drivers, Wales and students at Oxford Brookes University (after a talk, a student threw a meringue pie in his face, but took it in good humour, claiming the pie had too much sugar). He has also championed Isambard Kingdom Brunel as the Greatest Briton. He has taken a keen interest in engineering, presenting programmes on British inventions like the Colossus computer.

He appeared briefly in the British version of the Pixar movie Cars as Lightning McQueen’s manager Harv. He has been blamed for poor denim sales in the UK, being called one of the “world’s worst-dressed celebrities” in an edition of What Not To Wear. He has also driven the London Marathon course in normal traffic, with a runner beating him by 8 minutes.

On QI Jeremy has won 2 episodes. When Stephen asked the panelists to predict their own scores Jeremy made a prediction of –29. However, he scored 0 prompting Stephen Fry to say he “did a lot better than he thought”. He was criticised by the RSPCA for his explanation on QI of the taste of whale and a seal flipper with grated puffin (which taste like “steak but with an irony texture” and “like licking a hot Turkish urinal” respectively).

Biography 1: Stephen Fry

Firstly, thanks must go to QI Fanatic for his astounding work on this blog and for giving me the role of one of his bloggers. I’ll be keeping my very small blog up for now, but I suspect that I will be transferring the posts over here at some point.

In the meantime, my objective is to bring you profiles on the main participants in QI. That means that every week, you can read up on information regarding Stephen, Alan, Jo Brand, Phill Jupitus, Bill Bailey and so on. This will continue until late September/early October, when series E of QI begins broadcasting on BBC Two. So today, here is a profile of the QI-master, Stephen Fry.

Born Stephen John Fry on 24th August 1957 in Hampstead, London, the 6' 4½" legend is the son of British scientist Alan Fry, and Marianne Neumann, an Austrian of Jewish descent. Writer, actor, and comedian, Fry lives in his London SW1 flat and his Norfolk house when not travelling. He grew up in Norfolk (where his parents still reside) and attended Uppingham School and Stout's Hill. After serving three months in Pucklechurch prison for credit card fraud at the age of seventeen, he attended Queens College, Cambridge in 1979, finishing with a 2:1 in English in 1981/2.

While at Cambridge, he was a member of the Footlights society, alongside Thompson, Tony Slattery, Martin Bergmann, and his now best friend Hugh Laurie. His prolific writing partnership with Laurie began in 1981, starting with Footlights revues for (among others) Mayweek, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and a three-month tour of Australia. In 1984, Fry was engaged to do the rewrite of the Noel Gay musical Me and My Girl, which made him a millionaire before the age of 30, and also earned him a nomination for a Tony award in 1987. Throughout the 1980s, Fry wrote for newspapers, magazines and hosted his own radio comedy show, Saturday Night Fry, with Laurie, Thompson and Broadbent often appearing as guests, and was a contestant on Whose Line is it Anyway? He also appeared in an episode of The Young Ones, as part of a University Challenge skit (he was familiar to this role, having been part of a real panel on the show not long before). He is perhaps best known for his television roles in Blackadder II and Blackadder Goes Forth as Lord/General Melchett, and in a cameo as the Duke of Wellington in Blackadder the Third. He went on to play the valet Jeeves in Jeeves and Wooster (1990), alongside Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster. Both shows ran for 4 successful series.

Fry's acting career has not been limited to films and television though. He had successful runs in Alan Bennett's Forty Years On, Simon Gray's The Common Pursuit with John Sessions, Rik Mayall, and others. Gray's Cell Mates was less successful. During what Fry described as one of his ‘episodes’ in his documentary The Secret Life of the Manic-Depressive, he walked out of the play. He then tried to commit suicide before later resurfacing in Belgium. Over that weekend, he had considered suicide and has since spoken frankly on the subject. Fry has published four novels as well as a collection of his radio and journalistic miscellanea. He has recorded audiotapes of many works for both adults and children, including the Harry Potter novels. As earlier reported on this blog, Stephen Fry is one of only 5 people to know the end of the final book in the series.

More recently, he has appeared in US drama Bones, directed his own film Bright Young Things and hosted the BAFTA awards. Fry is currently starring in the ITV1 drama Kingdom. A second series has already been commissioned and is currently in production.

Most readers of this blog will recognise Stephen Fry primarily as the host of QI. However, it was not originally intended that he would be the host of the show. When John Lloyd first presented the idea (which soon changed from a radio show to a TV show) he imagined Fry as a team captain with Michael Palin hosting the game. Palin turned down the role but QI has continued to be a huge success with Fry at the helm.