IT Pays To Be Ignorant - Q&A

Q&A

Each episode would start with some jokes ("Do married men live longer than single men?"... "No, it only seems longer.") and an introduction of the experts. After this, three or four questions would be discussed in detail: some posed by Howard, some picked at random by a guest from the audience. These questions often had the answer obvious in the query ("What town in Massachusetts had the Boston Tea Party?") or were common knowledge:

• "Can you tell me the man's name children look for on Christmas Eve?"
• "How long does it take a ship to make a five-day journey?"
• "What animal does a blacksmith make horse shoes for?"
• "For what meal do we wear a dinner jacket?"
• "What is the habitat of the Bengal tiger?"

Even so, the panelists would inevitably get the answer wrong, providing outrageously funny answers instead, followed by an even more uproarious rationale for their answer. The show had a number of running gags which became catchphrases with listeners such as McNaughton's "Now we're back to Miss McConnell again" and Shelton's "I used to woik in that town."