Would I Lie to You? (2)

Synopsis

Essentially, a straightforward true-or-false quiz but done in the banter-heavy Have I Got Buzzcocks All Over style. In the first and last rounds, the questions take the form of facts and anecdotes provided by the guests themselves, while in between there were originally a number of other variations: celebrity "quotations", TV-related "facts" (heralded by shoehorned-in clips) and one game (This is My..., the only one that still survives today) wherein a person is brought out from backstage and each panellist on a team claims to know them in one capacity or another. Typical Comedy Panel Game editing, i.e. the scores make no sense (except that from the sixth series onward, they've quite unnecessarily taken to working out the score from the final edit and dubbing it on in post-production).

The show debuted in the Saturday 10pm slot, which looked suspiciously like a burial (we remember The Murder Game, even if no-one else does), but it has to be admitted, the years in development hell actually paid off. Somehow the format seems to bring out the best in the guests as well as the regulars, and unlike the earlier show of the same name, it's proper funny, like. And while Angus Deayton's presence has certainly lifted a few otherwise unremarkable formats in recent years (Hell's Kitchen, Bognor or Bust, Only Fools On Horses), this is arguably the first show where he's really looked at home since, well, the big one. Which makes it all the more puzzling that he stopped doing it after two series. Replacement host Rob Brydon took a little time to settle in but the format was strong enough to take the change, and now it's hard to imagine the show without him.

Key moments

Kevin Bridges struggling to get through his story on how he once accidentally bought a horse.

Trivia

Before settling on the final title, the show had previously been announced as Unbelievable and Pants on Fire. Alan Carr was a team captain in the pilot before being replaced by Lee Mack.

One of Claudia Winkleman's "true" stories was that she once wrote to Jim'll Fix It asking to meet Abba, but was offered a visit to a stilton factory instead, which she turned down. This was rebuffed in a letter to Radio Times by Fix It producer Roger Ordish, who said that "no-one who wrote in was ever offered an unrelated alternative... [we once] fixed it for someone to see how blue cheese was made, but that was in response to a request to see how blue cheese was made". This episode was one of two Deayton-era episodes had to have bits taken out for subsequent broadcasts after Deayton's post-reveal spiel implied that Jimmy Savile's interest in blue cheese was why he delayed burying his mother; the other included a clip of Rolf Harris presenting Top of the Pops.

Web links

BBC programme page

Wikipedia entry

British Comedy Guide entry

The show publicised the hashtag #wilty.

Pictures

See also

Call My Bluff

Pull the Other One (1)

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