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Have I Got News for You

British television panel show

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ1768525 ↗
Source-derived summary

Have I Got News for You (HIGNFY) is a British television panel show, produced by Hat Trick Productions for the BBC, which premiered on 28 September 1990. It focuses on two teams, one captained by Ian Hislop and one by Paul Merton, plus a guest panellist on each answering questions on various news stories on the week prior to an episode's broadcast. The programme's format focuses more on the topical discussions on the subject of the news stories related to questions, and the satirical humour derived from these by the teams. This style of presentation had a profound impact on panel shows in British TV comedy, making it one of the genre's key standard-bearers.

The programme aired on BBC Two for its first ten years, before moving to BBC One in 2000. Until 2002, it was hosted by Angus Deayton, who was sacked following reports in national newspapers of several scandals about his private life. Since then, it has been hosted by a different celebrity each week; many of them add their own comedy. While the standard episodes are broadcast on Fridays, since 2003 extended versions of each episode, initially titled Have I Got a Little Bit More News for You and later simply Have I Got a Bit More News for You, have been broadcast, originally on the following Saturdays on BBC Two, and later moved to the Mondays of the following week on BBC One. The Monday repeats of Series 70 were standard 29-minute episodes until Programme 6, since when both broadcasts were extended to around 34 minutes in duration. Repeats of older episodes are named Have I Got Old News for You or Have I Got a Bit More Old News for You.

Editorial summary

“Have I Got News for You” enters the record as british television panel show. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Have, News and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1990, 2000, 2002, 2003—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Have, News and British.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Have I Got News for You” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Have, News and British provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1768525. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1990, 2000, 2002 and 2003.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Have I Got News for You”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Have I Got News for You primary sources, Have I Got News for You archive and Have research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Have I Got News for You”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Have I Got News for You” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.