Show 19: the man behind QI on our love of general ignorance...
John Lloyd is a British comedy writer and television producer who is probably most famous for TV series including Spitting Image, Blackadder, and the Stephen Fry-hosted quiz, QI.
Born in Dover and educated in Hampshire, Lloyd went to Cambridge, where he befriended, and later shared a flat with Douglas Adams. He then worked as radio producer at the BBC from 1974 to 1978 and created The News Quiz, and The News Huddlines. He co-wrote the fifth and sixth episodes of the first radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with creator Douglas Adams (who wrote all the rest solo), and was involved in the TV series as Associate Producer.
He worked as a TV producer at both the BBC and ITV from 1979 to 1989 and created Not the Nine O'Clock News and Spitting Image; he also produced all four Blackadder series.
His first new TV series for 14 years, QI (short for Quite Interesting, and a pun on IQ), starring Stephen Fry and Alan Davies, began on BBC2 in September 2003 for an initial run of 12 episodes. It’s a testament to its popularity that the fifth series began to air in September 2007.
The Pocket Book of General Ignorance
The title "General Ignorance", designed both to emulate and parody general knowledge quizzes, was first used to describe the final round of the panel game QI, which was created by Lloyd. Appearing initially in the pilot, the round has varied little in content and style since, although the questions have perhaps become slightly more obtuse. From the start, the round consisted of several deliberately-misleading questions which appear to have obvious answers that are actually inaccurate. (For example, black boxes in aircraft are in fact orange, for ease of recovery.) The pilot also introduced the concept of penalising answers that were overly predictable, especially obvious jokes: one such question in the pilot was, "What is sixth most popular name for a baby boy in Germany?" The answer to the question is "Tim". However, QI's regular panellist Alan Davies answered with the overly-predictable suggestion "Adolph", allowing host Stephen Fry to produce a pre-prepared piece of card reading "Adolph," whereupon the obvious-but-inaccurate answer was revealed to carry a penalty score of -10 points. When the pilot was shown to the then-controller of BBC2 (Jane Root), it was this feature that particularly caught her attention, and penalties became a regular feature throughout the programme. Due to the nature of the questions in the final round, however, the majority of penalties still feature during "General Ignorance".
While most episodes are structured around a theme topic beginning with the Series' initial letter (each series is alphabetically structured, with Series 5 being ‘E’, etc.), "General Ignorance" contains questions on a range of diverse subjects, linked only by common misunderstanding. Occasionally, the round differs - in particular during the Christmas specials. During the course of the "B" Series special, Fry and Davies swapped places for "General Ignorance", with Fry attempting to answer questions ostensibly written by Davies to stump him.
The book is a compendium of popular misconceptions, misunderstandings and common mistakes culled from the show. If, like Alan Davies, you still think that Henry VIII had six wives, the earth has only one moon, that George Washington was the first president of the USA, that Bangkok is the capital of Thailand, that the largest living thing is a blue whale, that Alexander Graeme Bell invented the telephone, that whisky and bagpipes come from Scotland or that Mount Everest is the world's tallest mountain, then there are at least 200 reasons why this is the book for you. The book will be out in pocket form in April 2008.