Just a Minute

I tell you what, the latest series of Just a Minute has taken the game into a new age. The games between Stephen Fry, Sue Perkins, Fi Glover and Paul Merton have been like a new superleague with no place for a hapless fall guy, previously a part taken by Kenneth Williams or Wendy Richards for comic effect and a lovable last place.

In olden days, the masterful tactician Clement Freud would pick off the points and start as a short-priced favourite every time he took part. One might expect Stephen to have it all his own way now but there are no easy games any more, with these contests veering towards a real game of erudition and quick thinking rather than slapstick histrionics which, of course, was only another word for the scientific study of the past.

Stephen is genuinely trying to win as if he thinks he ought to but against opposition of this standard, he doesn't have it his own way. They are all brilliant, with vocabulary and the ability to cover a wide range of subjects that is a tribute to the educational standards that served the generation they come from as well as their own wit and natural talent. And it hasn't lost any of its sense of fun in the process, it's just become more the game as it was originally conceived and is the better for it.

We've been told about 'dumbing down' in the media for a long time now, how things have been stupidized and how everyone makes verbs out of adjectives but it seems this old warhorse of a programme has been, erm, 'taken to the next level.'

And, while lauding Radio 4, which isn't always my default station of choice, the season of Terence Rattigan plays has been tremendous, too. He was a more serious, and better, dramatist than I had realized and I'm grateful that I was given the chance to chance upon them and find out for myself.

Lds & Gnlmn, I give you The BBC. Raise your glasses.