I think that my favourite program on TV has to be QI. I just love it. I love the comedy, the personalisities, the friendliness, the teasing,the intelligence, the way they interact and develop ideas and the pleasure they all see to get from being on it. It is infectious.

There may be some of you who haven't seen it, so a little explanation is in order ....

QI (stands for Quite Interesting) This is a comedy panel quiz that is hosted by Stephen Fry - that should be enough of a reason to like it, but there's more. There are two teams, each hgaving two members. One of the teams always has Alan Davies in it. The guests tend to be comedians or entertainers, some regularly appear, others as one-offs. The questions asked are quite obscure and often are around things that we have grown up knowing only to discover that we were misinformed. Points are awarded for being quite interesting and/or for knowing things and points lost for getting things wrong. Often the contestants end up with minus scores.

So far there have been nine series run and each series has question themes around a particular letter i.e. series one was for A, series two was for B etc. In the UK, QI is shown in two formats; a 30 minute episode (as also replayed on Australian TV) and a longer XL version that lasts around 45 minutes and contains more banter. As the BBC have only released the first three series on DVD (and they contained the 30 minute versions), I have 'illegally' downloaded the XL versions for a more prolonged enjoyment of the series. If they released them on DVD, I would happily buy them - as they haven't, my options are limited.

So that is QI.

Due to the popularity of the show, they decided to make a stage show of it that came to Australia - I am not sure where else it was going, but I just care that it came here. Both Stephen Fry and Alan Davies toured with the show and each show contained three local guests - celebs from Australia.

When I heard that the show was coming to town, I was thrilled - I couldn't think of anything that I'd rather be at (well, maybe a Kate Bush gig, but let's be sensible here). So the day arrived and Carolyn (a huge Stephen Fry fan) and I headed off to Her Majesty's Theatre.

The show started with Stephen talking for about 45 minutes about how the show started and how it developed and stuff like that. Then he introduced the panel obviously starting with Alan Davies and then the locals of Jonathan Coleman (oh dear), Julia Morris (could be ok) and Stephen Curry (also possibly ok). They started off by playing a few rounds of the quiz for fun. Now let's think about this - the audience were there to see Stephen and Alan and the other 3 were there to fill it out - the audience didn't schoose to come to see them, so you'd think that they would adopt a supporting role. Unfortunately Jonathan (Johno - god help us) tried a funny line that wasn't a success so he continued with it for the whole night and failed every time - he should have shut up. Stephen tried to get involved but also waszn't up to the talent. Julie wasn't too bad and fitted herself into the format and the show and didn't try to make it about her.

After a while, they went into doing a 'proper' show - the usual format of the TV show. And it was ok. Not that funny but still entertaining. It made it clear that a lot of the magic of the show is down to the guests and how they interact - so it is unfair to blame the locals who didn't actually have relationships with Stephen or Alan - it just meant that a lot of the warmth and interactive elements weren't working properly.

Talking of guests, I heard that Shaun Micallef was a guest at one, Julia Zemiro at another - so they would have been good. Then again, they chose the appalling Wil Anderson at another, so all in all, maybe I should be happy.

Anyway. I got to see QI live and I am pleased to have done so

As QI was coming over here and Alan has family to visit, he stayed around and introduced the world to his new Stand Up show. Whilst he was in Melbourne, he did a few warm-up gigs to try out his new material. He also appeared in a book shoip signing copies of his book, ' Rebel Without A Clue: How the 80s Made Me'. Other than QI, Alan is probably best known for playing Jonathan Creek on TV, though he has done a lot of things throughout the years.

Anyway, I went to the opening night of Alan's tour at the Athanaeum Theatre and had great seats for the show. Unfortunately, for such a small theatre, the sound engineer decided to see how loud he could make Alan sound which wasn't very enjoyable when Alan would raise his voice during a story - it nearly blew our heads off. But having said that, it was a damn fine show and very entertaining - a very happy audience left the theatre that night.