Great Dane

Due to tour here in December, the formidably clever comedian, broadcaster and political activist Sandi Toksvig wears her brightness lightly.

- MICHELE HEWITSON

How could you not love Sandi Toksvig? She is all of the very best things: clever and funny and charming. She has lovely twinkly eyes, which suggest mischief. She is the host of the equally well-loved TV quiz show QI, short for Quite Interesting, which she took over, seamlessly, from Stephen Fry in 2016.

The enduring appeal of QI is hard to quantify, really. It is a bunch of clever, funny people mostly failing, in a clever and funny way, to answer the questions posed. Why do people love it so much?

“Because it is the best kind of entertaining education, is what I think. We all love to learn a fact. So, it is an extraordinary thought that right now the blood vessels in your body, if you put them end to end, would go two and a half times around the planet. And it’s the sort of thing that makes you think: Oh my goodness. What an extraordinary thing.”

She is much animated when contemplating the wrasse fish. If the dominant male dies, the dominant female will grow full male genitalia in two weeks. Good heavens.

“So, none of the show is rehearsed. There's no script. There’s just me asking questions. It’s what school should have been like. It should have been like where somebody knows stuff and passes it on to you in an amusing manner.”

She has, by the way, known Fry since he was 19. He has always been funny and charming and clever, she says. He’s in his 60s now. And he hasn't changed. He seemed to be in his 60s when he was 19.”

She did a stint as co-host on The Great British Bake Off. If she was a cake, she’d be a Victoria sandwich, a respectable and sensible sort of cake but with added frivolity: the jam and cream in its middle.

She is a comedian she hates being called a comedian but too bad, she’s funny and author and the co-founder of the Women’s Equality Party.