Blog: Just a Minute in India

As a producer of Just a Minute I went with Nicholas Parsons to India to make a documentary about a game played in student tournaments there that resembles Just a Minute.

Audio: Just a Minute's Indian adventure

For 45 years, Just a Minute has been challenging contestants to talk for one minute on a subject without hesitation, deviation or repetition - a feat seldom achieved.

To celebrate its milestone birthday, the host of the BBC Radio 4 panel game - Nicholas Parsons - travelled to India to meet some of the game's fans, and to record special editions of the programme.

On his journey, he found fast-paced hybrid versions of Just a Minute - so-called 'jamming' - being played in clubs across the country.

Forty-five years after its invention, Just a Minute is taking its singular mix of the clever and the silly to India for two shows. The location, the Mumbai Comedy Store, changed the whole feel of the programme. Over here, it tends to take place in halls, where the laughter echoes; in the Comedy Store, the audience sounded like it was almost on top of the performers (Paul Merton and Marcus Brigstocke plus domestic talent Anuvab Pal and Cyrus Broacha), in what felt like a bearpit.

The Indians, in a sense, are ahead of us. Just a Minute took off there when it was on the BBC World Service, and it's played by young Indian professionals at "JaM sessions". This gave Pal and Broacha a leg-up as far as the rules were concerned, though neither could quite get the hang of the "repetition" bit.

The subjects were well chosen - they included "cultural exchanges" and "colonial India" - which elicited the following from Pal: "General Malcolm Muggeridge of the 1st Jaipur Infantry liked to wear his breeches and go for deep swims." There followed a long, smutty riff from the assembled cast about what "deep swims" might be a euphemism for - suggesting that the cultural divide between ourselves and our former subjects isn't very wide at all.

Radio 4 Extra - Just a Minute: without hesitation

On a cold winter's evening I made my way to London's BBC Television Centre. Something rather special was taking place. To celebrate 45 years of a classic radio comedy show, those rich cousins in TV were recording a special series of Just a Minute, featuring its ever present chairman, Nicholas Parsons, joined by regular player Paul Merton and a host of favourite all-star panellists.

A special edition of the show as it hits its 45th birthday. "Am I really that old?" asks 88-year-old host Nicholas Parsons, thinking back to when the series started in 1967, and has to answer himself with an honest "Yes".

Well, old it might be but it's lost none of its wit and edge. Ross Noble is particularly hilarious here - although not very good at scoring actual points.

If I may say this without repetition, hesitation or deviation, a radio institution celebrates an anniversary on Monday as the splendid Nicholas Parsons introduces the panel show he has chaired since its inception in just a minute.

Doubtless the shades of such esteemed departed panellists as Clement Freud and Kenneth Williams will be issuing some hollow challenges from the wings as panellists Ross Noble, Jenny Eclair, Gyles Brandreth and Paul Merton are asked to pontificate on subjects given out in the original series back in 1967, from "Why I Wear a Top Hat" to "Knitting a Cablestitch Jumper".

Should Just a Minute transfer to TV?

The brilliant Radio 4 panel show is to get a run of 10 episodes on BBC2 to celebrate its 45th birthday. Will you be watching?

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