List of Games On I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue - Sound Charades

Sound Charades

In Sound Charades, a team of two panellists is given the title of a book, film, or other artistic work, and they must communicate it to the other team. This is allegedly a variant of charades, in which a single player is given this task. However, whereas in charades the player is not permitted to speak and communicates by mime, in Sound Charades the title is communicated by acting out a very short improvised play. Usually the title to be communicated is a contorted pun on the central object in the play, which has (of course) not been explicitly named but only described indirectly. For example, the film Zulu has been acted out by a whispered question being answered with directions that pass several animal enclosures – the questioner has been given directions to the 'zoo loo'. Another example: for Dirty Harry, the entire clue went

'Potter!' (as in Harry Potter)

'Sir?'

'Don't do that' (reference to famous Joyce Grenfell catch-phrase)

The game also provides Humph with the regular opportunity to make fun of Lionel Blair, long-standing team captain on Give Us a Clue, the TV show from which Sound Charades was derived. This usually involves some sort of outrageous innuendo such as "Who wouldn't have been moved to watch the tears of frustration well up in Lionel's eyes at being unable to use his mouth to finish off Two Gentlemen of Verona?". Una Stubbs, another regular captain on Give Us a Clue, is also occasionally mocked in this way, for example when Humph recalled "the occasion on which Una Stubbs, her hands a blur, managed to pull off Three Men in a Boat in under ninety seconds".

Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden often tell their story as two elderly Scottish gentlemen, Hamish and Dougal. It is in essence a minute-long improvised sketch where each performer knows the other well enough to be able to set up joint jokes seamlessly.

Each sketch is started with the line "You'll have had your tea", with which (un)welcome visitors who have a habit of dropping in at dinnertime are reputed to be greeted with in Edinburgh, Scotland. (In Scotland and the north of England, the evening meal, typically called dinner in the south, is usually called tea; this can sometimes lead to confusion.) This is done either to deter scroungers or because the person in question is quite tight-fisted himself. A spin-off on BBC Radio Four was entitled You'll Have Had Your Tea, in which the sketches last 15 minutes.

One occasion saw a team come to the end of their "four-word" charade, only for Humph to pipe up "It's The Last of the Mohicans: that's five words," thus giving away the answer.