Never Mind the Full Stops is a British television panel game based on the English language, its idiosyncrasies, and its misuse. It is hosted by the British actor, author and Oscar-winning screenwriter, Julian Fellowes. Each episode lasts 30 minutes. The series was filmed in March 2006 at Channel 4's studios in Horseferry Road, Westminster. It was originally broadcast on BBC Four, and aired on BBC Two from 9 October 2006.
Two teams of two people are faced with various questions and challenges concerning English grammar, spelling and usage. The show is divided into rounds, with themes such as identifying the famous author of a badly spoken sentence (John Prescott was one of those picked on in the first episode) and correcting the punctuation in a written sentence. There is also a quick-fire round with questions such as "What is a malapropism?" Points are awarded throughout the show to determine the winning team.
Each show starts with the host giving a 'difficult-to-spell' word and an example mnemonic to help remember that spelling, and by the end of the show the panellists have to have devised their own. In episode one Julian Fellowes gave the example arithmetic: A Rat In The House Might Eat The Ice Cream; and Ned Sherrin's version (which earned his team the win as the final points were tied) was: As Richard Interred The Head Master Every Tiny Infant Cheered. By the end of series 1, even Julian Fellowes had realized that these so-called mnemonics were invariably harder to remember than the spellings – particularly as they were rarely related to the words in question.
The programme's name is derived from that of the long-running pop music panel game Never Mind the Buzzcocks, which is itself taken from the title of the Sex Pistols album, Never Mind the Bollocks.
Read more about Never Mind The Full Stops: Series 1
Famous quotes containing the words mind, full and/or stops:
“A man should not go where he cannot carry his whole sphere or society with him,Mnot bodily, the whole circle of his friends, but atmospherically. He should preserve in a new company the same attitude of mind and reality of relation, which his daily associates draw him to, else he is shorn of his best beams, and will be an orphan in the merriest club.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Farewell? a long farewell to all my greatness.
This is the state of man; today he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes, tomorrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him:
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls as I do.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A solitary traveller can sleep from state to state, from day to night, from day to day, in the long womb of its controlled interior. It is the cradle that never stops rocking after the lullaby is over. It is the biggest sleeping tablet in the world, and no one need ever swallow the pill, for it swallows them.”
—Lisa St. Aubin de Terán (b. 1953)