John Lloyd, creator and founding producer
In 1978, when Douglas Adams asked me to help him finish The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio show, I was halfway through writing my own science-fiction novel. Fifteen years later, aged 42, I woke up one Christmas Eve and completely lost the plot. I’d won two lifetime awards, got married and had my first kid – and had no idea what to do with the rest of my life. I was directing ads, travelling the world, and rushing home in the evenings to read philosophy. Wherever I went – Moscow, Arizona, the Australian outback – I read. And the more I read, the more I thought: “This is ridiculous. Everything I was taught at school doesn’t make sense.”
So in 1999, I decided to finish my novel. As I sat down at the kitchen table to write, the top of my head opened like a boiled egg and out poured this idea: QI, Quite Interesting, the opposite of IQ. Everything in the universe without exception is interesting if looked at from the right angle. It was like a religious epiphany. I spent the morning feverishly scribbling down what QI could be: radio, TV, education videos, interesting shops, a GCSE, a university chair, even The Royal Quite Interesting Society. It was such a great insight I was convinced someone would steal it, so I kept it to myself for two years. Finally, I told Alan Davies, and he loved it.
The original format was The Smartarses – Oxbridge types such as Stephen Fry, John Sessions and Clive Anderson – versus The Dunderheads – rather less top drawer people like Alan Davies, Sean Lock and Lee Mack, with nice, neutral Michael Palin as the host. When he turned me down, I managed to persuade Stephen instead. We made a cheap pilot in a plain white studio hung with QI logos. I thought it was the best TV pilot I’d ever made, but when it was commissioned, many people said: “What do you mean you get points for being interesting?” We struggled for guests.
After the first episode, my wife said: “This is the strangest programme I’ve seen.” I said: “Do you mean the strangest comedy show?” She said: “No, the strangest show of any sort.” Her current favourite fact is that elephants are 22 million times the size of bees. That’s what QI is about. It’s not about knowing stuff. It’s about how extraordinary the ordinary world is. A simple fact about elephants and bees makes you realise you haven’t really been paying attention to anything.
Alan Davies, panellist
I met John Lloyd making commercials for Abbey National. By the time we’d finished, they had to change the name of the bank to Santander so I don’t think they went as well as they wanted. John and I hit it off and, in a lull between shooting, he told me he had an idea for a panel show where you don’t have to get the answer right, you just get points for being interesting. I liked the idea because, in my experience, panel shows are more fun when the conversation goes off on a tangent, so he asked me to do the pilot.
He got Stephen Fry to host, which was a real coup because Stephen wasn’t doing much TV at the time. Eddie Izzard was on the other side – it felt like Eddie and I were going to be team captains – with Bill Bailey and Kit Hesketh-Harvey from Kit and the Widow.
John wrote the script and all the questions. The points were flying – Stephen gave out loads. After the pilot, I said: “If you get something wrong, there should a penalty.” So we cooked up the idea of the klaxon, which turned out to be the worst idea of my life as I’ve had more klaxons than hot dinners.
We were thrilled when the BBC commissioned the first series. John asked if I would be a regular, but not a captain – just sat next to Stephen as his unruly sidekick. It took me years to realise that if you don’t know who the patsy is in the room, it’s you. By about series D, I thought: “Hang on a minute, I’m the fool here.”
Its longevity is extraordinary but then it’s never gone off the boil. We were a bit worried when Stephen left, after series M, but Sandi [Toksvig] stepped in effortlessly. We’re on series U now. I’m waiting for someone to say: “That’s enough.” I’ll be 62 by the time we get to Z. John says after we get to Z, we’ll start on the numbers. I don’t even think he’s joking.
I haven’t learned anything. I forget all of it. The only bit I ever remember is the one about the Vikings taking a raven on ships. If it saw land, it would fly off. If it didn’t, it would come back to the boat because it can’t land on water. That’s my favourite fact.
• QI is on BBC Two and iPlayer
