Have I Got News For You. Image shows left to right: Ian Hislop, Paul Merton. Credit: Matt Crockett
Have I Got News For You

Have I Got News For You

  • TV panel show
  • BBC One / BBC Two
  • 1990 - 2024
  • 600 episodes (67 series)

Long-running topical panel game with a strong political slant, featuring team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton. Also features Angus Deayton.

Press clippings Page 29

Was HIGNFY right not to joke about Japan?

Andrew Pettie reviews the first episode of the 41st series of the satirical panel show in which guest host Jack Dee was at his miserable best.

Andrew Pettie, The Telegraph, 9th April 2011

After an ill-advised shift to Thursdays, the 41st series sees HIGNFY back in its spiritual Friday night home.

Slightly worryingly though, this series will be the first to be ­broadcast in HD - giving viewers the chance to subject Ian Hislop and Paul Merton to the kind of warts-and-all scrutiny they routinely dish out to politicians.

No offence to the panel, but if there was ever a show absolutely NOT crying out to be broadcast in HD, then this is probably it. You don't need technology when you're armed with a laser-beam wit that can spin crude lumps of current affairs into comedy gold in a nanosecond.

Jack Dee chalks up his tenth spot in the host's chair tonight, while Ian and Paul are joined by comedian Jon ­Richardson and Caroline Wyatt.

And after his dedication throughout the last series of Dancing On Ice, we do hope to see daughter Chloe in the audience waving a badly ­hand-made banner saying Come On, Dad!

This is the start of a nine-week run spread across 10 weeks, because the show will be off air during the week of the royal wedding.

You can bet they'll have something to say about that! But as there are now so many topical news shows on the box, sometimes there's barely enough news to go around.

The Have I Got News For You team should be flattered at having spawned so many ­imitators.

Mock The Week, Stand Up For the Week, Frank Skinner's ­Opinionated, Russell Howard's Good News, and 10 O'Clock Live all try, but this leads the pack.

Jane Simon, The Mirror, 8th April 2011

We're on to series 41, though we've never tired of this intelligent and high-spirited ribbing of the week's headlines, which has now rightly been shifted back to Friday nights. Paul Merton and Ian Hislop return, and the highly capable Jack Dee sits in the presenter's chair.

Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, Metro, 8th April 2011

The usual reaction to a new series of HIGNFY is: oh good, it's back. But this time round there's also: oh good, it's back on Fridays, where it belongs. The bizarre idea (we said so at the time) of moving it to Thursdays was a big bag of wrong. The show is about rounding up the week's events with some cant-skewering wit and bizarre flights of fancy - the former courtesy of Ian Hislop, the latter by way of Paul Merton. It may not have quite the comic zing of old, but this is still essential viewing, the humorous full stop on the working week, the comedy safety valve, the excuse for a beer on the sofa, should you need one. Series 41 kicks off with Jack Dee trying not to corpse in the host's seat.

David Butcher, Radio Times, 8th April 2011

After two series spent looking oddly out of place on Thursday nights, the topical quiz returns to its rightful Friday-night home. Jack Dee is the guest host (for the 11th time; only Alexander Armstrong has been asked back more often). The panellists are Caroline Wyatt, the BBC News defence correspondent, and comedian Jon Richardson, joining old-timers Paul Merton and Ian Hislop.

Michael Deacon, The Telegraph, 7th April 2011

Have I Got News for You is back on Friday nights

Michael Deacon previews the satirical panel show, which returns to BBC One for its 41st series.

Michael Deacon, The Telegraph, 7th April 2011

Have I Got News For You to return to Friday nights

Popular satirical show Have I Got News For You is to return to its traditional Friday night slot.

The Mirror, 8th March 2011

Have I got a new host for you?

Have I Got News For You gets a prime slot in the Christmas Eve TV schedule tonight. So what is the secret of its continuing success?

Mark Lawson, The Guardian, 24th December 2010

Ian Hislop: Humorist, historian - a national treasure

Best known for his razor-sharp wit on Have I Got News For You, Ian Hislop has turned his attention to the Victorian age.

Elizabeth Grice, The Telegraph, 30th November 2010

Poor James Blunt. Ever since he shuffled onto the music scene with his pre-pubescent twang and feminine looks, he's become something of a pop-culture hate-figure. His name is not only a by-word for a wet blanket, but cockney rhyming slang for the rudest word in the English language.

It can't be easy for comedians and TV presenters lumped with the singer - who's currently promoting a new album - to resist the temptation to mock and berate the singer. Astonishingly, Graham Norton managed to restrain himself when Blunt appeared on his Friday-night show, but surely the acid tongues of Ian Hislop and Paul Merton wouldn't show him such mercy; surely, they would lay into Blunt and rip him apart, ruthlessly mocking his every word?

Well, perhaps they would have done, were they given the chance. But Blunt proved to be the funniest panellist on the programme last night; perhaps even the funniest off the series so far. As he regaled stories of dinner with Bill Clinton and Cher and joked about his army days, he outshone even Merton, who was on excellent form himself.

When Hislop called him a "cool dude", he snapped back: "Thanks, Dad" and the audience roared with laughter, delighted by yet another Blunticism. It was actually fellow panellist Nick Robinson who found himself the butt of his teammates' jokes, most notably when footage of his recent outburst at a protester's banner was shown.

Even Blunt's appalling leather jacket went unmentioned; such was the distracting sophistication of his humour. He might have trouble shaking that rhyming slang from his name, but perhaps "James Blunt" will now be a by-word for "self-deprecating wit of the first order".

Rachel Tarley, Metro, 5th November 2010

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