Sandi Toksvig returns to host a festive edition of QI based around the letter R, so let's all Rejoice!
Regular panellist Alan Davies is back in comedy mode. This year he published a more serious painfully honest but also darkly comic memoir, Just Ignore Him, about his childhood growing up on the fringes of London and Essex in which he powerfully recalled, among other things, the death of his mother and being abused by his father. It's a traumatic but compelling book and you can buy it here.
It is great to see Holly Walsh in front of the cameras. She was an acclaimed stand-up on the circuit a decade ago – I remember a terrific Edinburgh show she did about breaking her arm when she entered the Worthing Birdman Competition. But in recent years she has become established as a writer too. She has worked on shows such as Dead Boss with Sharon Horgan and, more recently, Motherland. According to Wikipedia her specialist subject on Celebrity Mastermind was badgers. She came second to Ken Bruce.
Justin Moorhouse is one of the most entertaining comics on the circuit. This year he appeared on the Union Jack Radio sports/comedy series The Show Must Go On. I met him backstage at a comedy event in Wales once and he made me laugh more times in the green room than a lot of acts make me laugh onstage. You can read more about him in this classic BTJ interview here, where he revealed that the most dangerous thing he has ever done is distinctly Christmas-related. "Reaching under my Grandma’s television to plug the Christmas lights in and as they were the old fashioned sort – I touched live and was thrown across the room."
Liverpudlian comedian Chris McCausland (pictured) has had a good twelve months TV-wise, particularly given what we've all been going through. You could say he is the funniest blind observational comedian in the country at the moment. He has been on Would I Lie to You?, Have I Got News for You, Live at the Apollo, Mock The Week and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. He should have been on tour this year too, but inevitably that has been postponed until 2021. You can see his new dates here.
Apparently QI host Sandi Toksvig's son Theo also gets a mention in the show. Toksvig also has two daughters. The children were carried by her then partner, Peta Stewart, and were conceived through artificial insemination by donor Christopher Lloyd-Pack, younger brother of the actor Roger Lloyd-Pack. Which is quite interesting.
QI – Rejoice! A Christmas Special, BBC Two, 9.30pm
Pictures: BBC
