Inspired nonsense is the name of the game in one of radio’s longest-running panel shows.
I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue started out in 1972 as a spin-off of 1960s sketch-based favourite I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again, and has been a Radio 4 and BBC World Service constant ever since, also enjoying a lengthy stint on Radio 2.
A mainstay of the endearing parody panel game was jazzer Humphrey Lyttelton, who chaired the “quiz” from its inception right up to his death in 2008.
The Goodies trio
Goodies trio Bill Oddie, Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor were other early contributors – with the latter sticking around for decades along with comedy writers Willie Rushton and Barry Cryer.
The early evening offering commands an on-air audience topping two million, and it visits Perth Concert Hall and the Caird Hall on Tuesday and Wednesday with its latest touring show.
Fans can revel in appearances from such comic luminaries as current ISIHAC host Jack Dee, Rory Bremner, Pippa Evans, Jan Ravens, Marcus Brigstocke, Tony Hawks and Perthshire’s own Fred Macaulay.
Legendary impressionist Bremner insists the programme’s in-person version is every bit as hilarious as its surreal radio parent, boasting all its familiar madcap games.
“It is a riot to do live,” he says.
“Harry Hill’s been joining us and you never know what he’s going to do next. It’s kind of a greatest hits version, with favourites like the Uxbridge English Dictionary and One Song To Another, so I get to sing John Lennon’s Imagine to the tune of The Muppet Show, which is quite fun.
Top radio comedy
“And Pippa, who’s got a wonderful voice, she’ll be singing How Much Is That Doggie In The Window? to the tune of the theme from Cabaret, Life Is A Cabaret.
“Mornington Crescent, of course, is another round we do, and just various bizarre things, like lines that you could hear in the kitchen or the bedroom.”
Its status as Britain’s top radio comedy is reflected in the sizeable venues the team are playing across the UK this month.
“It’s a really, really silly show – it’s just laugh after laugh after laugh,” Bremner, 61, adds.
“There’s not much happening politically, is there? BBC Scotland rang me after Nicola resigned and they said, ‘Have you heard the news? How will you remember her?’ And I said, ‘Well probably in that bikini from One Million Years BC’, and then I realised they didn’t mean Raquel Welch, so we had to get out of that one.
Doing Nicola…
“I’ve never really done a Nicola – Jan does her quite well. They said, ‘Can you do a Rishi Sunak?’, and it takes me about six months to get a voice properly and they said, ‘Oh well, don’t bother then, he won’t be around that long’.
“Rishi sounds a little like Tony Blair, doesn’t he? But it’s funny, the government’s obsessed with growth so we’ve now got the shortest prime minister we’ve had for 80 years, like an AI chatbot in Wallace and Gromit shoes.
“But it’s not a political show, it’s just round after round of words. I can promise you, if you don’t laugh at a joke in that show then you definitely have to see a doctor.”
I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, March 14 and 15, horsecross.co.uk / dundeebox.co.uk
