The Book of the Year 2019

No Such Thing as a Fish is a team of researchers who work on the BBC TV show QI. Each week they gather together in their Covent Garden office and record a podcast discussing the most interesting facts they’ve discovered over the previous seven days.

In the five years since it launched, the show has been downloaded more than 200 million times, won multiple awards, been transformed into the spin-off topical BBC Two TV series No Such Thing as the News, performed national and international tours (including selling out the Hammersmith Apollo and the Sydney Opera House along the way), and was named one of iTunes’ top 10 most downloaded podcasts of 2016, 2017 and 2018.

The team is made up of James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Ptaszynski and Dan Schreiber.

James is a script editor on QI, with a dozen series and seven bestselling books under his belt. He has also appeared on TV quiz shows Fifteen to One and Only Connect, reaching the semi-finals in the latter and embarrassingly crashing out of the former.

Andrew is a writer and comedian who also contributes to Private Eye magazine. His first novel, The Last Day, will be published in spring 2020. His nickname among No Such Thing as a Fish fans is ‘Lightning’ (or so he claims).

Anna is a script editor on QI who has previously worked in Scottish politics and Australian advertising, as well as selling fruit wine and hay-baling in the Highlands. She refuses to join Twitter. #GetAnnaOnTwitter

Dan is a comedian and producer who co-created the award-winning BBC Radio 4 series The Museum of Curiosity; has fronted numerous TV shows, including his own Channel 4 documentary; and, as a stand-up, saw his debut show named at the time as one of the top 100 most favourably reviewed shows of the Edinburgh Fringe. He ranked 100th.