Have I Got News For You - Format

Format

Have I Got News for You began on BBC Two on 28 September 1990 and transferred to BBC One in October 2000. "Myself and Ian, we did a disastrous pilot for it," Paul Merton explained nine years later. "It was a beautiful summer's afternoon in 1990. Far too nice to be in a television studio, but I think the BBC had already bought it, so that's how it became a series."

Two series are made every year. At first, the number of episodes per series was inconsistent. However, a pattern soon formed whereby the spring series between April to June comprises eight episodes and the autumn series between October to December contains nine, with a one-week break in the middle to allow the broadcasting of Children in Need.

The 39th series, broadcast in early 2010, moved the show to a Thursday night slot after 19 years on Friday nights (with the exception of the Election special, which aired on a Friday night). The 40th series remained in this new time slot, despite one episode of the 40th series been broadcast the day after due to the Royal Variety Performance; both series featured an extra episode, with the spring series now featuring 9 episodes and the autumn series 10 episodes.

Over an hour's worth of material is recorded for each 30-minute programme for broadcast the following day, allowing the programme to remain topical while the BBC's lawyers have time to request cuts of potentially defamatory material. As for its popularity, Merton explained that it was mostly word-of-mouth: "No reviewer could possibly review it in that time. We started off with an audience of two million, and somebody might have mentioned it to their friend, and then it sort of built up a momentum of its own."

In recent years, the late-night weekend repeat has occasionally contained extra material from the week's recording. This became a permanent feature from the spring 2007 series, with the repeat having a running time of 40 minutes, and being titled (in the TV listings) Have I Got a Bit More News for You.

The programme is recorded at the London Studios, former home of London Weekend Television, although the 2001 Election special episode was recorded at BBC Television Centre on the Friday morning after the election. The quiz aspect and scores are largely ignored in favour of the panellists' witty exchanges and jokes, and the format seems to change frequently.

"There's been a lot of confusion, with people saying, 'Well, they see the questions beforehand,' which we do," revealed Merton in 1999. "But some people say we see the answers, which we don't, because that would rob it of being a quiz."

"There is a certain amount of show business that goes on in putting on a show," continued Merton. "We found very early on that it's worth seeing the questions beforehand so that you can work out your depth of ignorance. If you really don't know, you think, 'Well, I've really got to try and say something here.' It's much better to be doing that for ten or fifteen minutes before the show than be doing it when the cameras are rolling, in front of an audience, going, 'Well, who's he?'"

Norman Tebbit wrote an article in The Mail on Sunday criticising the whole programme: 'Well, of course Have I Got News for You is all edited. These people, they couldn't improvise live. You put them on a stage, they wouldn't be able to improvise.' Merton said of this: "Well, when Norman Tebbit said I couldn't improvise, I was... ."