How did a bunch of Essex builders inspire the cleverest show on television? And why did John Lloyd, the creator of QI, come close to shutting the whole thing down last year?
All this and more will be revealed as Event takes an exclusive trip behind the scenes at the hugely popular, very British comedy quiz that sets out to show that everything is quite interesting, if you look at it in the right way.
‘What animals begin with the letter O and are rescued by the fire brigade more often than cats?’ asks Sandi Toksvig, now in her second full series as host after taking over from Stephen Fry. She’s doing this for the BBC as well as helping Channel 4 reinvent The Great British Bake Off, but it’s QI that suits her best.
Sandi Toksvig became the first female host of a mainstream comedy panel show, but these days she treats questions about that with a light touch
The panellists are there to get laughs out of fiendish questions they have never seen before, but they look baffled. ‘Ostrich?’ Matt Lucas out of Little Britain sets off the infamous QI klaxon that sounds whenever a guest says something predictable but wrong.
He’ll lose points according to the baffling scoring system that is only really understood by the Elves, the team of QI researchers who mine for the facts that keep the show going. Some of the audience at the London Studios on the South Bank of the Thames shout out: ‘Owls!’
That gets the klaxon too.
They’re working through the alphabet and this series is themed around the letter O. ‘It’s a human animal… so an Obese person,’ reveals Toksvig, but the stand-up comic Romesh Ranganathan is outraged. ‘They’re still people too!’
Yes but we’re all animals, says Toksvig patiently, explaining that last year the fire service rescued more than 900 people who had become stuck because they were obese. Ranganathan shrugs: ‘Well done to them for getting up the trees though…’
The atmosphere at the recording is relaxed, but then QI has a very different attitude to fierce panel shows like Mock The Week. ‘This is the nicest experience a comic can have on television,’ says John Lloyd, who created the show after producing such colossal hits as Not The Nine O’Clock News and Blackadder. ‘Most panel shows are incredibly competitive. You come off sweating and angry and feel you haven’t got your thing away. Here, you turn up and it’s like going to the pub with friends. That warmth reaches the audience.’
Alan Davies has been with QI since it began in 2003, playing the idiot boy to the headmasterly Fry for 14 years. These days he has a more grown-up role and is sometimes hilariously melancholy. A pair of comedy spectacles with popping eyeballs falls apart in his hands. ‘I break everything… including my spirit,’ he sighs.
Alan Davies has been with QI since it began in 2003, playing the idiot boy to the headmasterly Fry for 14 years. These days he has a more grown-up role
Toksvig became the first female host of a mainstream comedy panel show, but these days she treats questions about that with a light touch. Is there any difference having a woman in charge? ‘Better flowers in the dressing room.’
OK, but what does it take to be the host of QI? ‘You do need to be playing your A-game. It’s like a very fast tennis match where there are often a lot of naughty boys trying to knock the ball out of the court. It’s huge fun, but I always finish a recording feeling I’ve been trying to pin clouds to a noticeboard.’
Is QI a quiz or a comedy? ‘It’s both, and that’s the genius of it. The audience will laugh and at the same time discover the science behind not sending nuclear waste to the sun.’
A builder working on her house quoted her a QI fact the other day – but it was Toksvig who had said it on the show in the first place, which brings us nicely to those Essex lads.
‘I was an Essex builder in my gap year,’ says Lloyd, in the Green Room while the next episode is set up. ‘Those guys were really smart. They might not have been educated to the extent I was, but for raw intelligence and raw comedy, hanging out with a bunch of Essex builders is about the best experience a person can have. They taught me a lot.’
So he starts from the belief that the viewers are smart. ‘Alan is like you and me: doesn’t claim to know a lot but he’s very funny. People make the mistake of thinking QI is all about knowledge but it’s actually all about ignorance, about what we don’t know.’
QI was born out of a midlife crisis, admits Lloyd. ‘I was a hard-working executive, I got married and had kids, I had an office covered in awards and pictures of me with famous people, and I thought, “Is this it?” I was overwhelmed by a sense of pointlessness. I had everything I could want in material terms and it wasn’t delivering.’
So he went looking for the meaning of life, fending off depression with a personal philosophy that ‘takes the best bits’ from Zen and Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, Chinese philosophy and gnosticism, the ancient belief in a higher spiritual realm reached by obtaining knowledge. That led to the QI philosophy of deliberately looking for the charm in everyday life.
‘Did you know potatoes have two more chromosomes than people, the same as gorillas? Or that rice has nearly twice as many genes as human beings? It’s about how extraordinary the plainest things are: water, laughter, consciousness, raspberries…’
He even plans to start a school on the same principles. ‘I am talking about it to people in education at the moment. I think it will happen, one day.’
Toksvig was the team’s first and only choice to take over from Stephen Fry but not everybody at the BBC agreed.
Is QI a quiz or a comedy? ‘It’s both, and that’s the genius of it,’ says Toksvig
Lloyd reveals that he threatened to close down the show if it didn’t install her as host. ‘I said to Sandi, ‘If you don’t get the job, I’m going to pull the rug.’ He got his way.
As the next recording begins, three of the QI Elves are in the control gallery, humming Howard Goodall’s cod-reggae theme tune.
‘The point is not for the panellists to get the answer right,’ says James Harkin, Head Elf. ‘Sometimes it doesn’t work if they do. The point is for them to make jokes. We’re looking for wording that will open the subject up enough for comedy.’
What’s his favourite QI question? ‘It’s from this series, about the saying: “It’s not over ’til the fat lady sings.” It comes from Wagner, but in that opera the lady sings, then a Bergandian warrior says one more line. So it’s not over when the fat lady sings. I love that.’
Toksvig gets involved with the questions more than Stephen Fry used to, and says that’s one of the pleasures of hosting the programme. ‘I am a Nisse at heart which is the Danish word for elf. I’d be proud to be thought of as an honorary elf.’
For Lloyd, QI is more than just facts, it’s a way of life. ‘At one extreme, QI is serious, intensely scientific, deeply mystical; at the other it is hilarious, silly and frothy enough to please the most indolent couch potato. The steam engine was invented in ancient Greece. George Washington’s teeth used to belong to a hippopotamus. The information goes on and on, deeper and wider, stranger and stranger…’
And so does the show. Will they make it to the end of the alphabet and beyond? Nobody knows, but watching them trying to get there is going to be quite interesting…
‘QI’ is on Fridays, 10pm on BBC2. The new book, ‘1,423 QI Facts To Bowl You Over’ is out now. ‘QI’ Volume Three and Four DVDs are out tomorrow, qi.com