Every single week day at 5:15 I would religiously settle down with my Dad to watch my two favourite humans test the obscure knowledge of the public and occasional celebrities. We’d be hopelessly guess (and lose) round after round while Richard Osman himself would put us and everyone else to shame with his wonderfully weird answers.
So naturally, you can imagine my excitement when I found out they were coming to the Literature Festival, and then multiply that by ten for my excitement when they walked on stage. Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman, and nobody else to spoil it. They decided to interview each other with questions they had been asked before during promotion for their new book, “A Pointless History of the World”. Except this time, they promised to tell the truth.
I could barely believe some of the questions they had been asked, but it made for an entertaining conversation, “Do you actually like each other?”, “Would you ever do Strictly?” and most controversially “Would you ever sell Pointless to Channel 4?” referring to the latest BBC verses Great British Bake Off battle.
They took it in turns to answer questions, happy banter bounced back and forth between the two of them until it resonated around the tent. I can honestly say it was as funny as watching professional comedians. They are so quick witted and know exactly what to say to the right kind of audience to make them sit obediently in the palm of their hands; and Richard has rather large hands…
They rounded off the interview with a game of pointless, which resulted in a lot of debating over ABBA’s greatest hits and a member of the audience leaving with a bottle of sparkling wine. Finishing with a short Q&A they confidently handled odd questions asking where they lived and why their grammar was apparently so bad.
Hats off to them…