Ask The Nincompoops

Ask the Nincompoops runs on a premise a child can grasp in seconds: ask a question, and two grown-ups will answer it with enormous confidence and very little truth. The grown-ups are Andy and Carrie. On air they call the programme Ask the Clever Grown-Ups, and the gap between that name and the one the show actually goes by is the whole joke in miniature. Each question is credited to a child, sometimes with an age attached, such as seven-year-old Jamie, who asks who the first person on Earth was. What follows is less an answer than a building project. One of them lays down an idea, the other adds to it, and within a minute the thing has foundations and a roof. Flams, for instance, are offered as tiny building blocks of life, smaller than atoms and invisible to the naked eye, though easy to spot if your eye has its trousers on. They look, it emerges, a lot like eye trousers. A ladybird carries a backup pop gun because the first one can jam in the heat of conflict. An imaginary tightrope crossing is attempted in Crocs, with an anvil for balance, a plan to dip the shoes in chip fat and a chain to a building against the wind. The pair also remember a rhino in their class at school who sat at the back, answered no questions and was friendly but secretive. None of it is true, and all of it is delivered as though it were. The episode titles show the range of subjects: animals in 'Why Do Flamingos Stand On One Leg?', food in 'Why Are Sprouts Disgusting?', the physical world in 'What Is The World Made Of?', inventions in 'Who Invented The Door?' and the bathroom in 'Where Does All The Poo In The World End Up?'. Each is filed as a numbered lesson in a school term, which suits a show that pretends to teach. A few small rituals hold the nonsense together. The greeting changes from episode to episode, whether 'supernatural little breadcrumbs', 'triangular little pentagons' or 'exotic little popper smurfs'. The line about how the pair respond to children's questions ends differently each time too, sometimes with 'happy to help' and sometimes with a chant of 'here we go' and raspberries. In one cold open Andy starts reading Bleak House aloud until Carrie asks what he is doing. In another episode the questions come out of a bucket of mystery and are put to the pair by a figure called Question Mark. Made-up facts turn up between questions, such as tigers becoming higers whenever they walk about on their hind legs. The result is quick nonsense, made by two people working together, in which a child's question is the first move in a game.