recorded in 1967, featuring Clement Freud, Derek Nimmo, Beryl Reid and Willma Ewert as panellists. The chairman was originally intended to be Jimmy Edwards but he was unavailable on Sundays, the proposed recording dates, and was replaced by Nicholas Parsons, who was originally supposed to be a panel member. Parsons did not want the job and only reluctantly took it, just for the pilot episode. After the show settled in, again he found himself in the role of a straight man for the panellists. Although executives at the BBC disliked the pilot, its producer, David Hatch, insisted on having Parsons as the chairman. The first series was not very successful, but Hatch threatened to resign if the programme was not given another chance. Not wishing to lose Hatch, the BBC acquiesced. The show's theme music is Frédéric Chopin's piano Waltz in D flat major, Op. 64, No. 1, nicknamed the "Minute Waltz" (which, despite its name, lasts longer than 60 seconds; the nickname actually refers to "minute" as in "small" rather than the unit of time). The recording used for the theme is by David Haines. For a time, broadcast of the show was to continue even following a nuclear attack as part of the BBC's continuation programming. The show was later dropped from the schedule in the 1980s, along with all other light programming, in order to conserve power. In 2018, Nicholas Parsons was unable to attend the recording of two editions of the programme as he had the flu. This broke his uninterrupted run of fifty years as a performer on the programme. The episodes were recorded on 1 April 2018 with Gyles Brandreth standing in for Parsons and were broadcast on 4 and 11 June 2018. He was also not present for a recording session for two episodes in series 85; episodes 942 and 943 were broadcast on 9 and 26 August 2019. Brandreth again covered for Parsons. Just a Minute continued to be transmitted with Parsons as host until his last show on 23 September 2019. Repeats were then broadcast until Parsons' death on 28 January 2020, at the age of 96, and for a couple of weeks thereafter as a homage. Series 86 began transmission in February 2021, with a number of guest panellists from the show's history being asked back to host an episode each. Rules The panellists are invited, in rotation, to speak