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| - Panel Game (according to the introduction, "the antidote to panel games") broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and the "classic radio" station BBC 7. Born in 1972, it was something of a continuation of the Sketch Show I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again (which was also the origin of Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Goodies). The main difference was that, as a panel game, they didn't need to write any scripts. In 2012, the show's official site was launched, which can be found here.
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| abstract
| - Panel Game (according to the introduction, "the antidote to panel games") broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and the "classic radio" station BBC 7. Born in 1972, it was something of a continuation of the Sketch Show I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again (which was also the origin of Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Goodies). The main difference was that, as a panel game, they didn't need to write any scripts. The chairman was Humphrey Lyttelton, a jazz trumpeter (the thinking being that improvisational comedy owed a lot to jazz), who created the persona of a curmudgeonly Deadpan Snarker who would rather be doing something else. Anything else. The regular panelists for most of the show's history were Barry Cryer, Willie Rushton, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden (the third Goodie, Bill Oddie, was in Series 1). After Rushton's death in 1996, the fourth panelist became a rotating position. Because of the show's pedigree, and the fact that the regulars have the final say in who the guests are, being asked to appear on the show is seen as an honour (and many have turned down the opportunity for fear they might ruin it). Other people on the show include Colin Sell, the long-suffering pianist, and Samantha, the entirely fictional scorer, about whom many Double Entendres are made. Colin Sell's stand-in as duty pianist was veteran jokester musician Neil Innes, best known for the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band and The Rutles. Humph introduced him as 'a man whose royalty payments on "I'm The Urban Spaceman" have just run out', to which Innes responded with several bars of the Death March from Aida. While winning and losing is seldom an important part of Panel Games, ISIHAC views it as entirely irrelevant. In one 1997 episode, Humph commented, "It's just occurred to me Samantha hasn't given us the score. Since 1981." It would be impossible to determine who won most of the games anyway, given that many of them don't make any sense, and the "Complete Quotes" round has the warning "points will be deducted for a correct answer". Most of the games are simply excuses for a Hurricane of Puns, but some have a surreality bordering on nonsensical. These include "Celebrity What's My Line" (in which the panel has to guess what a celebrity does for a living), versions of board games and other quizzes (where the joke is that we need to see what's going on to understand it), and, of course the Great Game, Mornington Crescent (a game of complex and subtle rules which, to the uninitiated, sounds like people shouting out tube stations at random) and its boardgame cousin Boardo! (complete with rattling dice and clicking counters). There are also some musical rounds in the show. While the most popular musical game in the early years was the "Blues" (where each team has to create one on the spot), the three most popular throughout most of the show's run are "One Song to the Tune of Another" (which is self-evident, although Humph thinks otherwise), "Pick-Up Song" (where each of the team members have to sing along to a song which is muted half way through and still be in time with the lyrics when the sound is turned back up) and "Swanee-Kazoo" (where each team has to play a given song with a swanee whistle and a kazoo). There's usually a Running Gag at the expense of guest Jeremy Hardy whenever he's on the show as he's a hilariously terrible singer (which has extended to jokes about said singing even when he's not present). The show has won three Golden Sony Awards, including one for I'm Sorry I Haven't A Christmas Carol, a Christmas Episode which cast all the regulars and guest panelists into a version of A Christmas Carol and somehow managed to force most of the games into the storyline. This was followed a couple of years later with Humph In Wonderland. The future of the show was in doubt following Lyttelton's death in 2008, although Series 51 was aired in mid-2009 with Stephen Fry, Jack Dee, and Rob Brydon taking over the chair for two episodes each. The show returned to its regular schedule with Dee chairing every episode later that year. Although it has not been definitively stated that he is the full-time replacement, Dee has chaired every series since. In 2012, the show's official site was launched, which can be found here.
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