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|  | | Ever wondered how The News Quiz is put together? It sounds so slick on the radio but how difficult can it be to get a bunch of funny people together to read the newspapers then talk about them into a microphone?
We sent a member of the website staff to follow the production team around for the week as they prepared the first programme in a new series for broadcast.
| | Monday 3 and Tuesday 4 February:
"I like it but it was on page 15..."
 The start of the week finds News Quiz Producer Simon Nicholls in his Broadcasting House office surrounded by piles of newspapers and listener correspondence. The panel for this Friday's show - Alan Coren, Andy Hamilton, Linda Smith and Sandi Toksvig - have all confirmed their attendance, so now it's time to find some questions that they can get their comedy teeth into.
While the broadsheets teem with Iraq-related stories, the tabloids are obsessing over Michael Jackson but our job is to select sixteen different stories for the four rounds that make up the quiz, following this broad model:
Round 1 - pages 1-3 of the newspapers (politics, war, Europe)Round 2 - pages 4-8 (education, health, housing)Round 3 - lifestyle, science, arts, etcRound 4 - silly stories (animals, record breakers, funny foreigners)
The other main task of the day is to sift through the mail and select appropriate news cuttings for the team to read out at Thursday's recording - short, punchy ones for the newsreader, longer ones for the panel and anything to do with parrots for Alan Coren.
The News Quiz office receives an average of 20 letters and 15 emails a day, made up of funny news stories from around the world, fan mail, unsolicited jokes and letters of complaint about a perceived political bias in the show.
| | Wednesday 5 February: "It's been quite a thin week..."
 Another pile of newspapers to digest this morning. Lord Irvine's pay rise and the adventures of a pregnant cow catch the producer's eye and he types up a shortlist of stories to take along to the writers meeting.
Simon Littlefield, George Poles and Paul McKenzie are The News Quiz's very own gag factory, and it's their job to write the questions for the show and the related jokes Simon Hoggart rounds each question off with.
The first task is to pick eight news stories from the shortlist. An item about Frieda Hughes is suggested and rejected but Gordon Brown, Rowan Williams and a rival to Viagra all make the grade. The writers then share out the potential questions - George gets Cialis, the Archers virus and a pregnant cow, Simon opts for Michael Jackson, the army and asylum seekers, leaving Paul with the House of Lords and the economy - and they head back to their computers to try and find something funny to say about each one.
Simon, the producer, also takes the opportunity to try out the humorous press cuttings on the writers. Some elicit a smile, many end up in the bin.
Most of the afternoon is taken up with email exchanges between the writers and the producer as questions and jokes fly back and forth across the digital divide.
The team unearths the comic
potential of some major news stories 
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RELATED LINKS | | | H2G2 guide to the News Quiz
Meet the Newsreaders
Simon Hoggart profile and interview
Francis Wheen - My Radio 4
Andy Hamilton interviewed
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