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  • Archive Binge: 40 years. More than 400 episodes, which means more than 200 hours worth of material. Have fun!
  • Big Lipped Alligator Moment: Occasionally played with by playing a completely incomprehensible game that makes no sense, then moving onto another round and never playing that game again (such as Wordbuilders in series 56).
  • Dude, Not Funny: Lionel Blair has stated this about the Running Gag whereby the Sound Charades round is introduced with an Innocent Innuendo at his expense.
    • Also, in one episode, Humph messes up one of his lines. The cast respond to it by pretending to treat him like a doddering old man. The audience generally reacts with laughter, but when Barry rubs it in by saying "Your trumpet went very well at the auction!", there's a pretty huge audience groan to signify he's gone too far.
    • The regulars have sometimes mentioned this trope when someone makes a joke about age, with the sentence "You know, there was a time when we might have found this funny..."
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: In an episode from 1995 where, after they both try to speak at once, Willie Rushton says to Barry Cryer, "No, you go first, you're likely to die sooner than me". Willie Rushton died the next year.
    • During a game of predictions in 1986, Willie predicted — to much laughter — that one of the sad events he foresaw for 1996 was his own death that January; he died in December.
    • In 1995, Tim Brooke-Taylor predicted that a 2010 Radio Times would include a listing for "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue with Humphrey Lyttelton, Barry Cryer, Graeme Garden, and Tim and Samantha Brooke-Taylor." Willie, the only one of the regulars left out, died the next year, while the others were all alive up to Humph's death in 2008.
    • Willie often complained about the "___'s Ball" games full of punning names about various subjects. At his last ISIHAC recording, the chosen subject was "Undertaker's Ball," full of puns about death and burial.
  • Memetic Mutation: Mainly Mornington Crescent. There's also Barry Cryer's distinctive 'filthy laugh'; Dead Ringers once suggested the BBC could improve more serious Radio 4 programmes by dubbing it in at random intervals.
  • Overly Long Gag: The set-up for One Song To The Tune Of Another; occasionally, also the set-up for Uxbridge English Dictionary.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Some people's reaction to the decision to keep going with the show after Humph's death. However, after Stephen Fry, Rob Brydon and Jack Dee all hosted two shows each (recorded in a single session then broadcast over two evenings) Jack Dee appears to have filled the Chairman's slot on a permanent basis, having hosted three full series since then.