Stephen Fry hosts as the Quite Interesting panel show returns for a new series.

Laughter's said to be the best medicine - although if that's the case, why do doctors bother with those drugs? But chortling certainly does help the brain garage store juicy facts. Countless folk have chortled at Stephen ribbing Alan's ineptitude and still been able to fire out some impressive trivia down The Stoat and Radish. Sparkling smarty-pants comedy.

Fifteen years ago, Reeves and Mortimer pulled the rug from under panel shows with a jerk that sent their legs in the air. All subsequent panel shows owe something to that Big Bang. Shooting Stars was juvenile, anarchic and fizzing with ricocheting invention. Matt Lucas in a pink romper suit looked as if he might at any moment burst out of his cocoon and become something huge and hungry. Which he did. Visiting celebrities took their lives in their hands. Larry Hagman looked like a man in a nightmare. Stephen Fry was lost in the wash. Johnny Vegas remembered Vic and Bob asking him, Are you drinking tonight? (a question with which he was all too familiar), and adding reassuringly, Because we are.

All New Shooting Stars, a one-off special, was an object lesson in never going back. Vic and Bob seemed like their own fathers. The only recognisable celebrity was Jack Dee, who, with a blue tit balanced on his head, stood nose to nose with an opera singer giving Nessun Dorma plenty of welly. Any trembling or precipitation of the tit would indicate failure and cost him a beautiful pillowcase. To watch Dee crack into a smile was joy enough for one night.

A little piece of history tonight as one of Auntie's most ardently admired panel games, QI, makes the journey from BBC2 to BBC1 for its latest series.

It's not the most obviously conformist of comedies: a blend of the scintillating and the silly, an echo of Radio 4 on TV, hosted with avuncular omniscience by Stephen Fry, who puts panellists to the test with questions so arcane that points are awarded only for the most outlandish or 'quite interesting' answers (with suitably massive deductions for the incorrect or predictable).

Wit, that rarest of commodities, is the show's stock in trade and it is a marvel to behold how much is distilled on a regular basis by panellists drawn from a broad cross-section of contemporary comedy talent.

QI goes Dutch

The Netherlands is to get its own version of QI. Public broadcaster VARA has bought the rights to remake the Stephen Fry panel show, with Dutch author Arthur Japin as host. Comedian Thomas van Luyn will be the only regular guest, as Alan Davies is in the BBC version.

QI plans daytime spin-off

QI is attempting to become the first panel show to create a TV spin-off.

As the programme moves to BBC One next year, producers Talkback Thames have been commissioned to make a pilot of a sister quiz for BBC Two.

Provisionally titled The QI Test, the show is expected to fill a daytime slot and will feature members of the public rather than comedy panellists.

Stephen Fry will not be hosting the show - although no presenter has yet been named.

Stephen Fry's QI to move to BBC1

BBC2's Stephen Fry-hosted comedy panel show QI is set to move to BBC1 for its new series.

The show, which sees panellists such as Alan Davies competing to provide the most interesting answer to obscure trivia questions, is one of BBC2's most watched programmes, hitting 4.8 million viewers in November - the channel's third highest rating of 2007.

Discussions are currently taking place within the BBC about the move, which is expected to be given the green light soon.

"It is only natural when a show becomes so popular to look at taking it to a wider audience but nothing is confirmed yet," a BBC spokeswoman said.

It is surprising that this radio-TV crossover about the venality of PR folk hasn't been more successful, especially as it stars Stephen Fry and John Bird. Here the eponymous masters of spin Prentiss McCabe try to make a tabloid newspaper more successful. Go on, laugh. It won't kill you.

Sneer at trivia, and you sneer at my soul

Flick through most of the 500 channels available on television today and you will see that rule writ large. A huge majority of the programmes available are dreary, talent-free and insulting. But alight on something that treats trivia as it should be treated, with care and respect, and it becomes a real joy.

Take the recent series QI, utterly pointless and utterly irresistible. As might be expected, since it was presented by Stephen Fry, a man whose learning cannot be gainsaid, but who has the intelligence and range to observe popular culture with the critical eye it deserves. As he proves, it is possible to be a trivia elitist.

"Are you clapped out, exhausted and shagged? Are you flabby, flaked out and flatulent? Are you just too tired, fat and sad to have a life? Then watch BBC TV. Does your brain hurt? Do you want to come home and collapse and rest your weary head? Then watch BBC television. It makes no demands on the brains at all."

The spin doctors of Prentiss McCabe are back for a final series of Absolute Power (6.30pm, Radio 4), written by Mark Tavener. Things get off to a bad start when Martin McCabe (John Bird) makes the fundamental error of telling his most important client - the Beeb - the truth about itself and its audience. Can Charles Prentiss (Stephen Fry) dig him out of the hole?

Devotees of Prentiss-McCabe, the most underhand, crooked and downright malevolent firm of political PRs outsideof reality, will be downcast to know that this is the last series for radio. So revel while the going is good (and while we anticipate the usual move to television, after Mark Tavener's creation made a successful fleeting visit a few weeks ago). Stephen Fry is in typically fruity top form as arch-manipulator Charles Prentiss, while John Bird is the slightly dithery but equally cold and calculating Martin McCabe. Tonight's episode gets the series off to a topical start, as Prentiss-McCabe, former servants of New Labour, find themselves representing the BBC.