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Just a Minute is a BBC Radio 4 radio comedy panel game and was first broadcast on the BBC on December 22, 1967. The four panelists are challenged to speak for one minute on a given subject without repetition, hesitation, or deviation.
The premise of the game came to Ian Messiter as he rode on the top of a number 13 bus, recalling a particularly cruel headmaster from his school days, who punished him with the task of speaking for sixty seconds without hesitating or repeating himself. To this, he added a rule preventing players deviating from the subject presented by the show's chairman, as well as a scoring system based on panelists' correct and incorrect challenges.
The long-suffering but good-natured host of Just a Minute was (and still is, as of 2004) Nicholas Parsons. Until 1989, Ian Messiter sat quietly on the stage with a stopwatch and blew a whistle when the speaker's minute was up.
The classic line-up of performers was:
- Clement Freud (politician, food writer, grandson of Sigmund, brother of Lucian, and father of Emma) whose favourite strategies were to slowly rattle off lists, and to present a challenge moments before the whistle was due to sound;
- Derek Nimmo, who improvised new and contradictory descriptions of his home life nearly every week;
- Peter Jones, who once said that in all his years of playing the game, he never quite got the hang of it; and
- Kenneth Williams, the indisputable star of the show, whose flamboyant tantrums, arch putdowns, and mock-sycophancy made him the audience favourite. He also stretched out his speeches by extending every syllable to breaking point.
Freud is still a regular competitor, but Nimmo, Jones, and Williams are all now dead; those who participate regularly in the programme in their places include Stephen Fry, Tony Hawks, Paul Merton, Ross Noble, Graham Norton, and Linda Smith, alongside many other occasional guest comedians.
The show's theme music is a very fast rendition of Frédéric Chopin's Waltz in D flat major, Op. 64, No. 1, nicknamed the "Minute Waltz".
A Swedish version of the show, called På minuten, is broadcast on Sveriges Radio P1.
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