"Have I Got News For You" is the brainchild of Hat-Trick Productions, an independent company run by executive producers Jimmy Mulville and Denise O'Donoghue. A pilot was made but never broadcast, and the first series was aired in the UK on BBC2 in 1990 and it is still going strong to this day, although the 20^th series, which started in October 2000, was promoted to a plum slot on the more primetime BBC1 following the relocation of the channel’s evening news bulletin.  It has always been broadcast on Friday nights, barring General Election one-offs, Christmas specials, repeats and compilations, though while initially it went out at 10pm, it has more recently been moved to a 9pm slot.  Repeats were shown the following night at varying times until recently, when repeats were moved to Sunday evenings.  The first series contained eight episodes, which was then increased to ten until Series 5, when it returned to eight. Series 8 and Series 12 consisted of nine episodes, though in the case of Series 8, this incorporated a Christmas special.

The show is presented by actor and comedian Angus Deayton whose role is to anchor the show, provide continuity, ask the questions, award the points and deliver a selection of comedic monologues to camera on the news subjects of the week.  He sits at the helm of a large semi-circular desk in the studio.

He is joined each week by two team captains.  On his right hand side is Ian Hislop, a writer and satirist who has been the editor of satirical magazine Private Eye since 1986.  On his left hand side is comedian Paul Merton, who had previously been a regular performer on Hat-Trick's flagship improvisation show, "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"

Each team captain is joined by a special guest from the worlds of politics, journalism, comedy or theatre.  Politicians and journalists are usually allocated to Paul and guests representing comedy or the theatre are normally seated alongside Ian, in order to give the show a balance.  In the show's early days, the two guests rarely represented the same profession, though this policy was relaxed in later series.

Angus opens proceedings with a one-liner about the show and then goes into a selection of film clips with a preceding punchline, before introducing the guests.  For many years he introduced Ian's guest before Paul's, but in recent series he has chopped and changed the order. In Series 1, he also introduced the team captains before their guests in order to help viewers gain the required level of familiarity with the regulars.

The show initially asked far more questions than it has in more recent years. By Series 2, when the show was established and settled, the guests scored points in six regular rounds. These rounds would run as follows:

ROUND ONE:

Two rolls of TV news footage would be shown to each team who would be required to identify the story and add their own views.

ROUND TWO:

Each individual would be shown a tabloid headline of the week and asked to explain the tale it represented.

ROUND THREE:

The teams would each observe a selection of seemingly unrelated clips which together with the music, would all link to a story of the week.

ROUND FOUR:

Each team would be shown some archive footage of a past news story and while on occasions they would just be required to identify the tale, invariably the film would be stopped at a crucial point and they would be asked to state what happened next.

ROUND FIVE:

Each competitor is shown four famous faces or items or a mixture of the two and would be asked to identify who was the odd one out and for what reason.

ROUND SIX:

Five newspaper headlines would be shown to each team with a word missing and the players would be required to fill the gaps or come up with an alternative solution.

In Series 1, two further experimental rounds were played, though not in every episode. These were a Props round, in which the teams were handed a selection of items which provided clues towards a story of the week, and a Mini-Headlines round, in which the teams were given a collection of one or two-word sub-heads from tabloid pieces which again supplied hints towards a story. Both of these rounds had disappeared by Series 1 Episode 5 and were never to feature again, leaving the six rounds stated above.

These six rounds made up the quiz element of the show, with two points awarded for a correct answer and an open opportunity for the opposition to butt in and steal the points should the other side not be able to pinpoint the story. In earlier series, extra points were added for gags and satire, as well as occasional additional marks if other unrelated but still topical stories were mentioned by the guests. Angus would have scripted monologues about each story to recite, though whether he read them or not depended on how amusing each guest has been in giving their answer.

Between rounds one and two, each team would also be shown a photograph per show and asked to think of captions which they would then relay at the end of the quiz, with points only being awarded in the rare event of a tie. Angus would then thank the guests and show a selection of photographs with preceding punchlines before closing the programme.

In later years, the connections and archive rounds were removed from the show - although the archive round has occasionally made a guest re-appearance - while the other rounds have often been dumbed down in order to accommodate more banter between the competitors. Sometimes the teams may only get one batch of news clips or one quartet of faces for the odd one out, while the tabloid headlines have often been reduced to one per team rather than per individual.

The number of headlines with words missing has also been significantly reduced and has also become a free-for-all, as opposed to a batch of headlines per team. An extra twist was added during Series 6 when headlines from a "guest publication" were included in the round.

For two episodes in Series 9, the Missing Words round changed completely, when the newspaper headlines were ditched and instead, the panellists were shown a series of crimes and were asked to fill in a blank which obscured the nature of the punishment handed out or vice versa.  This was renamed "Going Down".

The caption competition now makes only fleeting appearances, with only one photograph shown, and the preview of the picture between rounds one and two has also disappeared. A number of one-off rounds have been introduced over the years in the event of a certain guest or high-profile news story inspiring a change of format, or because the show is a "special", such as an election or Christmas edition, or because the number of stories with good potential for discussion or banter is low.

Each episode is prepared and recorded 24 hours before broadcast in order to give the writers and producers as much time as possible to include late news stories of the week.  Filming has been known to last for longer than an hour but once the recording is over, the tapes are then frantically edited down into the allocated broadcast duration of 28 minutes. Only the 1991 Christmas Special was allocated a longer slot, which consisted of 40 minutes.

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