Thread by @doctorow

One of the sweetest pleasures in this life is the astoundingly funny, long-running @BBCRadio4 comedy quiz show, @ISIHAClue. It is back for a 75th (!!!) series and:

It.

Is.

Amazing.

isihac.net

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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.

2/

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).

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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 @stephenfry stepped in, it became clear that ISIHAC had a future.

4/

Today, the show is hosted by @TheRealJackDee, 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:

bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09…

5/

The episode features Tony Hawks, Marcus Brigstocke, @vickipepperdine (who combines a posh accent with superb delivery and had me doubled over with laughter) and @henningwehn (a one-man rebuttal to "Germans have no sense of humour).

6/

Two more episodes in the series are now available to stream on the BBC's website:

bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…

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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.

isihac.net/popup-humpth_t…

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I mean, it's easy to see what makes "Uxbridge English Dictionary" (comedy definitions of English words, often turning on a regional British accent) work - it's the sheer brilliance of the writing, which set up all these slow-burn gags.

isihac.net/popup-ued_vide…

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But Sound Charades (two comedians obliquely act out the name of a TV show, movie, etc)? That's all in the delivery. How do they get such consistently funny sketches out of this weird bit?

isihac.net/popup-sound-ch…

10/

The supreme mystery of ISAHAC is Mornington Crescent, which is literally comedians pretending to play an imaginary board game with farcically complicated rules consisting of reciting London Tube stations until someone shouts "Mornington Crescent!"

isihac.net/mornington_cre…

11/

It's a scary time. Things are on fire. The Delta variant is raging. New historic and recent atrocities come to light every day. ISAHAC is no antidote to all this, but it is a respite. I can't remember when I last laughed so hard.

Image: isihac.net

eof/

ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2021/07/02/spo…