Truth, Lies and Videotape

As you may be able to tell from the fact that I am illustrating this article with a picture taken from Wikipedia, I was extremely scrupulous about the rules against on-set photography.

On Saturday night, my first excursion outside of Bristol in eighteen months was to Pinewood Studios to be in the audience for a recording of Would I Lie to You? I have some (spoiler-free) notes on the subject.

• As it turned out, the recording in question was for the Christmas special; the first inkling we had of this was rocking up at Pinewood and the first member of staff we saw was wearing a Santa hat, with one or two others we saw later decked out in Christmas tree deeley-boppers.
• The crew were all, without question, exceptionally helpful and polite and I feel I really should mention it here.
• The show is being recorded with the same split-audience approach as last series, with 50 or 60 people actually in the studio, and about the same number watching from a cinema next door. As it turned out, we were in the latter, and it was pointed out to us that we probably had the better deal overall, as the cinema was used to screen Hollywood films to the cast and crew for the first time (and was hence extremely comfortable), whereas the audience seating in the studio is, in David Mitchell's words, "not quite big enough for a human being".
• In a lovely touch, warm-up man Mark Olver first came in to the cinema to warm us up personally, before going into the studio. In an even lovelier touch, Rob, Lee and David themselves also came in to the cinema to chat for a few minutes (there was a joke about an appropriately Christmassy thing for David to wear being a tie that had a graph of spiking suicide rates on it that was as good as anything in the show).
• David reckons the set should be more Christmassy for the Christmas show, with Christmas trees on the set and tinsel on the desks.
• They then entered the studio themselves, Mark introduced Rob to the studio audience, who introduced David and Lee, who introduced their guests, and the show got underway very quickly. For those of us in the cinema, the experience was exactly like watching a three-hour-long episode of the show on a big screen, probably because that's basically what it was.
• The guests were Rose Matafeo and Jim Broadbent on David's team, and Angela Rippon and Ardal O'Hanlon with Lee.
• All four guests were good (Jim was a little quiet when it wasn't his turn, but was a good storyteller when it was and got in one good riposte to Rob), but Ardal was something else. It's a bold claim to make, I realise, but I think he might be better than Bob Mortimer at the show. One of his stories went to such an odd and surreal place that, whilst it was very, very funny, I worry it might not make the edit because it would be such a strange thing to show on Christmas Eve.
• In the first round all four guests told a story, then in the Quick-Fire Lies round there were stories from David, Jim, Rose and Ardal.
• The thing you most pick up on when seeing the show live for the first time is that there's a lot more deliberation between the panellists when trying to decide if a story is true or not, and they sometimes ask a few follow-up questions (there was a lovely Columbo-esque moment from David at one point). Panellists flip-flopping over what to guess was quite common. I don't know if it was unique to this recording or what, though, but they also tend to think about "might this be something the production team thought would make a good lie" quite a lot.
• There were two short recording breaks between rounds, whilst they set things up for the This Is My... guest (of which more in a moment).
• In a new innovation, the This Is My... guest was brought in via video link, appearing on a monitor next to Lee's team. This provided an interesting meta-twist, since why the guest wasn't in the studio became part of the round. (For some reason, as we were leaving at the end the raw footage of the guest sitting in silence during the round appeared on the cinema screen.)
• During that round Lee said something that made David literally cry with laughter, but is sadly unlikely to make the edit (no spoilers, just in case it does -- once the series has gone out I'll do another post with anything I can remember that didn't get shown).
• The two uses of the c-word are definitely not making the edit.
• Since the way the scores work are hotly contested on the Internet: At the end of the recording, Rob read out the scores from the full recording, which (since Series 6) then gets dubbed over with the scores of the half-hour edit. This sometimes changes the result, but they didn't record alternate reactions for that eventuality.
• There was a fly in the studio that nobody seemed to notice, and seemed particularly attracted to Lee.
• At the end of the show they quickly rattled through some retakes -- mostly Rob's links, although they also retook some of the reveals, some cutaway shots of Possessions, and a few other odd lines and moments. (David was asked to re-do a line, screwed it up on the first attempt, and upon delivering it perfectly the second time noted that they could use the much better audience reaction from his screwing it up.) They also re-recorded two lines for content -- Ardal had said "pissing about" during his first story, so he was asked to supply a cleaner version and went with "having me on". Lee had also used the word "pissed" in the context of being drunk, and after providing several substitutes including "muntered", at Rob's suggestion he finally went with "drunk". Rob then recorded a load of random lines and words, including references to the scores at the end of the round (but not the end of the show), "Lee's team", "David's team", etc., which were, in his words, "so they can rig it in the edit" (clearly aware of the controversy over exactly how the scores work). Finally they recorded a trailer, and we got out at a few minutes after ten.
• It goes without saying, but the whole recording is so funny. You are left wondering how they can possibly get it down to 29 minutes. Some bits work better than others, but there isn't anything that doesn't work or falls flat. Whatever happens in the edit, there are going to be some parts that it is very sad they will never get shown.