Hey, for anyone else who missed it, here's the Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2012:




One of this year's panelists is Jack Whitehall. I fucking love Jack Whitehall. He's, I don't know, like twelve? and he's absolutely hilarious. One of the running jokes is that Whitehall comes from ludicrous kinds of money -- he does; his father is the agent for several tremendously famous people, and his mother is (was?) a successful actress -- and instead of coming out of his cocoon and being confused by normal people who, like, shop at Tesco, he's picked up the real world with a breathtaking quickness.  He's based a large part of his schtick on going, "Oh my god, you guys, I grew up on a different fucking planet, let me tell you how mad it is there."

He does rather acutely embarrass himself with it from time to time, but he gets away with a lot, on account of one of the things he never had to buy was brains. Whitehall is extremely quick, which results in him both being extraordinarily mouthy, and being more than a little cynical. On the other hand, he's also self-aware, and happily makes fun of himself for unironically loving boy bands and B*Witched and Teletubbies and thinking that Mr Blobby is a terrifying homicidal nightmare.

He's also a champion flirt. Flirting is per se a recreational activity with Jack Whitehall, and it is one of his favorite hobbies. I've only heard him mention being personally interested in women, but he will flirt outrageously with absolutely anyone who will cooperate, and occasionally people who won't. He brought an apple for Teacher when he was on QI -- which went over exceedingly well, especially combined with his total lack of fear of Teacher, which is a problem for a lot of the young'uns -- and he brought a series of trinkets for when Mena Suvari was inexplicably on Never Mind The Buzzcocks -- which went over slightly less wonderfully, as I think she had no idea what was going on.

Interestingly, that is also more words than I've ever heard out of Richard Ayoade at once on anything unscripted, ever. Ayoade was on 8 Out of 10 Cats once and it took nearly ten minutes out of a 23-minute episode to get him to use complete sentences, and even then Jimmy Carr had to basically poke him with a stick. From the timing and the direction, and how Whitehall decides to sort of pick on him/pick up on his running theme of "I spent 2012 underground", I'm guessing they smart-kid bonded at some point before taping.

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