Just a Minute Just a Minute Just a Minute is a BBC Radio 4 radio comedy and television panel game chaired by Nicholas Parsons. Its first transmission on Radio 4 was on 22 December 1967, three months after the station's launch. The Radio 4 programme won a Gold Sony Radio Academy Award in 2003. The object of the game is for panellists to talk for sixty seconds on a given subject, "without hesitation, repetition or deviation". The comedy comes from attempts to keep within these rules and the banter among the participants. In 2011 comedy writer David Quantick ascribed "Just a Minute"'s success
Just a Minute to its "insanely basic" format, stating, "It's so blank that it can be filled by people as diverse as Paul Merton and Graham Norton, who don't have to adapt their style of humour to the show at all." Throughout its half-century history, the show has, in addition to its popularity in the UK, developed an international following through its broadcast on the BBC World Service and, more recently, on the internet. The idea for the game came to Ian Messiter as he rode on the top of a number 13 bus. He recalled Percival Parry Jones, a history master from