Rapid humor

The other day in a conversation at Dr Boli about clever game shows, one commenter said of "8 out of 10 Cats" that it would "take people who are already known to be clever and humorous and put them into situations that encourage them to be humorous and clever."

Season 1/Ep 1 of "8 out of 10 Cats" was available, so I gave it a chance. The contestants were very fast with their quips, no question--faster than I generally am.

Unfortunately the fastest way to come up with quips is to use cheap shots; joking about sex, joking about the pope -- maybe some of the obscure references were too, but I've never been in close touch with UK pop culture.

Celebrity teams nominally competed to see who could best guess survey results, though the real contest was to see who could come up with the best quips. Which sounded better than it was. Maybe it got better in later seasons, but my curiosity doesn't reach that far.