The QI researchers behind the No Such Thing As A Fish podcast are to launch their own topical BBC TV show.

No Such Thing As The News will be broadcast on BBC Two on Friday nights after Newsnight, beginning next month.

It will be produced by John Lloyd – creator of QI, Not The Nine O'Clock News, Spitting Image and producer of all four Blackadder series – and features James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Ptaszynski and Dan Schreiber.

Lloyd said: ‘The last time I started a topical TV comedy show with four exceptionally talented but completely unknown stars was Not The Nine O’Clock News in 1979. No Such Thing As The News is radically different but equally exciting – and 37 years younger.’

BBC News are making five episodes for the 11pm slot, to be filmed in front of a live audience the night before transmission at Up The Creek comedy club in Greenwich, South London.

But the makers insist it’s not satire, even though director of BBC News James Harding inevitably called it a ‘sideways look at’ topical events.

‘It aims to do for the news what QI does for the universe at large: making the apparently dull interesting, the obscure clear and the frightening comprehensible,’ said a spokesman for QI. The format is that the four QI ‘elves’ – as Stephen Fry calls them – tell each other the most interesting things they’ve discovered in the news that week.

James Harding added: ‘This is news for people who don’t watch the news – as well as those who do. We’ll give viewers a sideways look at the big stories of the week. John Lloyd is a comic talent second to none, and we’re delighted to have him on board.’

Since launching in 2014, No Such Thing As A Fish has put out 110 weekly editions. It has been downloaded 25 million times and attracted 715,000 subscribers. It won iTunes Best New Podcast award in 2014 and the Chortle internet award in 2015 and 2016. It has toured theatres, sold out the Lyric in London’s West End, and released a vinyl album.

Published: 29 Apr 2016