The Museum of Curiosity

Bill Bailey acted as co-host of the programme in the first series,[2] before leaving the show after deciding to "retire" from panel games.

[3] Sean Lock, Jon Richardson, Dave Gorman, Jimmy Carr, Humphrey Ker, Phill Jupitus, Sarah Millican, Noel Fielding, Jo Brand, Romesh Ranganathan, Sally Phillips, Lee Mack, Bridget Christie, Alice Levine, Holly Walsh and Anna Ptaszynski have all assumed the role for a series.

As a result, some critics consider the radio show to be a spin-off of the TV programme,[2][4] and some have further ventured that The Museum of Curiosity is not as good as its forerunner.

[6][7] In series one, the programme began with Bailey introducing the show and playing its theme tune, which he performed in a slightly different way in each episode.

They then give a short guide to the museum, followed by the introduction of the "advisory committee", a guest panel made up of celebrities and academic experts, during which Lloyd reads their CVs aloud.

It is presented in two halves; in the first half, Lloyd and the curator introduce the three guests, provide an explanation of who they are, and the five engage in a general discussion.

[4] Kate Chisholm in The Spectator found the show a welcome change from the "smutty jokes and banal innuendo" usually associated with the timeslot, and compared the series to Paul Merton's Room 101, "but without the ego".

While praising the discussion between the guests as, "funny and flowing, and quite endearingly quirky", she found that the programme "fizzled away when it reached what ought to have been its crux: the donation of kooky items to the imaginary museum.

It was a wide-ranging discussion taking in ants on stilts, pianists with crippling, mechanical little fingers, the changing meridian and okapi sex (can you guess what I contributed?).

The show has a dedicated team of nerds behind it who have dug out amazing facts and I love the way it has a panel comprising comedians, scientists and experts and attempts to link each contribution to similar areas of the different disciplines.

While most TV panel shows (including to some extent even QI) gravitate to putting in the same well-known comedy faces, you get a lot more interesting stuff by mixing it up a bit.

It's intelligent and stimulating programming that is increasingly being edged out of TV and even radio, leaving a gaping open goal for independent internet productions to score in.

The TV companies insist on getting big names into all shows, which takes up all the budget and seems to ignore the fact that the pool of possible contributors gets smaller and more boring.