Just a Minute - 60 Seconds at AuthorHouse UK

AuthorHouse UK today takes a look at a British institution, Just a Minute. Just a Minute is a BBC  radio comedy  panel game chaired by Nicholas Parsons that has been running for 45 years. Its first transmission on Radio 4 was on 22 December 1967, just three months into the station's life. 

 The object of the game is for panelists to talk for sixty seconds on a certain topic "without, hesitation, deviation or repetition". The humour then seems to immediately burst out from the contestants, who whilst trying to keep within the rules, then banter with the other panellists.

In 2011 writer David Quantick described:

 “Just a Minute's success to its insanely basic format, stating, "It's so blank that it can be filled by people as diverse as Paul Merton and Graham Norton, who don't have to adapt their style of humour to the show at all.”

The idea for the game came to Ian Messiter as he rode on the top deck of a bus. He remembered a history master of his, who, upon seeing the young Messiter daydreaming in a class, ordered him to repeat everything he had just been saying in the previous minute without hesitation or repetition. For the game, Messiter added the third rule to stop deviation from the subject, plus a scoring system based on panellists' challenges to each other.

The Beginning

A pilot for the show was recorded in 1967, that had Clement Freud, Derek Nimmo, Beryl Reid and Wilma Ewart as the panellists. Jimmy Edwards was the original choice as chairman but he wasn’t available so he was replaced by Nicholas Parsons. Whilst the BBC mandarins hated the pilot, its producer, David Hatch, pressured them by threatening to resign if they would not run a full series. The BBC bosses, who didn’t want to lose Hatch, caved in. The show's theme music is  Chopin's Minute Waltz".

Nicholas Parsons has chaired the show since it started . On nine occasions he has appeared on the panel, and others have acted as chairman including Clement Freud, Geraldine Jones, Andrée Melly and Kenneth Williams. Ian Messiter was chairman on one occasion in 1977, when Freud arrived late and Nicholas Parsons took his place on the panel.^] Parsons has appeared on every show, either as chairman or panellist.

Latter Days

Each programme always has four panellists, with the exception of six shows in 1968 and another at the end of the 1970–1971season when there were three.

Until 1989, Ian Messiter sat on the stage with a stopwatch and blew a whistle when the speaker's minute was up (originally a cuckoo). He was replaced by a series of different whistle-blowers. Sarah Sharpe is the current incumbent. Messiter continued to be involved with the show, setting the subjects until his death in 1999.

AuthorHouse UK reviews applauds the 45 years of the show’s history and all the contestants including the five regular competitors in the show's history: Peter Jones, Clement Freud, Kenneth Williams, Derek Nimmo and Paul Merton