ABSTRACT
There is a well-known quiz show on British television, Have I Got News for You, which involves teams looking at a group of pictures and guessing which is ‘the odd one out’. Maybe one day the following might come up: Ben Jonson, Peter Barnes, Charles Dickens, Edward Bond, John Arden. The ‘game’ works on the basis that even though there are several possible answers, only one of them is ‘right’. In this instance, for example: Charles Dickens because he wrote novels and the others are playwrights; John Arden because he lives in Ireland and the others live (d) in England… But no-the ‘right’ answer is never the obvious one; and Angus Deayton, the quiz master, is annoyingly revealed as the fount of idiosyncratic wisdom. Paul Merton, one of the contestants, usually mocks the very idea of the closed question, and so everything’s all right-and, even if his suggestions don’t get rewarded with points, he gets the best laughs.
