John Lloyd Audiobooks

The Museum of Curiosity: Radio 4 wonder from the mind behind Blackadder and QI

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Who is John Lloyd?

Not the Nine O’Clock News. Blackadder. Spitting Image. QI. Four of the most quoted things British television has produced in fifty years, and one name sits behind all of them. John Lloyd, born in Dover in 1951, is a producer and writer rather than a performer, which is why his face is far less familiar than his work.

He began in radio, co-writing episodes of the radio Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with Douglas Adams, then moved into television comedy and stayed there for decades. QI, which he invented, turned him from a producer of other people’s jokes into a curator of facts, and the same instinct produced The Museum of Curiosity for BBC Radio 4, a programme he created with Dan Schreiber and Richard Turner and has hosted since 2008.

His real subject, across all of it, is delight: the pleasure of learning something absurd and true, relayed by people who cannot quite believe it themselves.

John Lloyd in audiobooks

The title we hold is The Museum of Curiosity: Series 9-12, a generous run of the Radio 4 show in which guests donate an imaginary object to an imaginary museum and then defend the choice. The format sounds slight on paper and is anything but in the ear.

Our edition is credited to Jo Brand, who took the curator’s chair beside Lloyd for one of the series gathered here. Expect scientists, comedians and historians inside the same half hour, and the particular pleasure of a fact landing on a room that was not expecting it.

It suits short journeys and washing-up hours equally well, since every episode stands on its own. Have a look at the audiobooks below and pick your entry point.