T Campbell's Blog

One of the rare pleasures of my stay in Oxford has been an honorary membership at the QI Café-Bar. QI, for those not in the know, is a British program somewhere between quiz show and improv comedy. (It stands for quite interesting, which is a phrase you'll hear Britishers use a lot.) Frankly, it'll probably be only a matter of time before it comes to America in some form.

Among the show's regular "contestants" is Stephen Fry, who's also been a fairly regular presence at the café-bar that the TV show founded.

It's got the most well-booked café I've seen anywhere, with all kinds of volumes that clearly provide good research for the show's procducers (including The Book of Lists, one of my old favorites) and a board of Scrabble. The menu's full of hearty, filling fare, giving the lie to what everyone's told me about British food, and it's reasonably priced by Oxford standards (meaning about twice as expensive as my hometown, but hey).

Mostly, though, I've enjoyed the bragging rights. "Oh, yas, Stephen Fry? I know Stephen. We were in the same club together at AUCHS-FOURD."