h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Roy Hattersley agreed to appear on the programme no less than three times. The first couple of times he pulled out and was replaced by comedians who were no doubt happy for the exposure. It was only on the third occasion that the programme's bosses lost patience (and perhaps failed to find a suitable stand-in at short notice) and substituted the tub of lard.

Also, a few words are appropriate about the conduct of the quiz that night. Merton regularly consulted the tub of lard before answering, much to Hislop's apparent amusement.

When it came to the final missing words round, all of Merton's questions were from foreign language newspapers, starting with European languages ("Berlusconi forze di... what?"), moving on through a Chinese headline entirely in pictograms ("Cho nihao cha, xi ting... what?"), before the ultimate punchline, a headline which had been completely obscured ("and finally... what?").

Despite all this, Merton won of course, and Hislop lamented "I can't even win when his team mate is a tub of lard and his questions are in a foreign language."

Wonderful stuff.

Yes, and with reference to an incident a few weeks earlier where a TV news reporter had discussed certain alleged drugtaking incidents, Paul pondered something to the effect of, "I'm sitting here with a tub of lard trying to answer missing words questions in Russian - am I in one of John Simpson's trips?"

Classic stuff.

David.

Beatiful!

didn't see that episode i was proberbly too young

I remember it vaguely.