Monday 7 March 2022

Truth, Lies and Videotape II


On Sunday evening, I was once again in the audience for a recording of Would I Lie to You?; having been watching the show from a cinema next door on the previous occasion, we had a priority note from SRO for future recordings. The show has moved from Pinewood to Elstree Studios this time, but I must say that once again we had nothing but a positive experience with the staff; once we'd shown our tickets and proof of negative LFTs, we were very professionally moved from the queue to a waiting room and then to the studio itself. As we were walking down a long corridor decked out with publicity pictures of Strictly, Holby, EastEnders and, er, Dimensions in Time, someone ducked out from a door at the side to ask if there was a group of three available, and my party took up this offer and ended up being escorted over to the audience seating right down by the set, the part you can actually see on TV. There is a good chance of there being a shot of the back of my head in the finished product.

Apart from being much closer to it (it's hard to judge but I think the set, despite the change of venue, looks pretty much the same as before, maybe a little smaller -- the desks are still socially distanced this series), the action then proceeded very similarly to last time; Mark Olver warmed us up, then introduced Rob, who then made to introduce Lee and David.

Amusing moment that won't be shown on television #1: When Rob introduced Lee and David, only David appeared at first, explaining that Lee was still on the toilet, leaving him and Rob to fill time for a minute or two.

Anyway, Lee turned up, and both captains then introduced their guests, who were on this occasion Henning Wehn and Michelle Visage on David's team, and Simon Gregson and Chizzy Akudolu with Lee, and things got started very quickly.

Interesting note: Rob's introductions of the guests at the beginning of the show no longer have jokes and are entirely factual (e.g. "on David Mitchell's team tonight, he's the German Comedy Ambassador to the United Kingdom, it's Henning Wehn"). Maybe this is because a recent review of the show in the Radio Times was mostly dedicated to criticising them, I don't know.

In one of the stories in the first round, Henning and Michelle both voted the same way, but then Rob seemed to jump the gun a little and asked the celebrity to reveal if it was true or a lie before David had given his official decision, because right after the reveal David worried he hadn't said it; they recorded him saying it as part of the pick-ups at the end.

Amusing moment that won't be shown on television #2: During the first recording break, the sight of Rob and David having quite an animated conversation whilst standing over Henning, seated at his desk, making it look like they were arguing over him.

Amusing moment that won't be shown on television #3: During that recording break, Mark Olver discovered two audience members had brought food in, and not just snacks, but hot food in foil trays. He then discovered that this food had been stolen from the production catering, but unfortunately filming resumed before he could get to the bottom of the matter!

Amusing moment that won't be shown on television #4: After all three members of David's team had explained their connection to the This Is My... guest for the first time:

ROB: "Off you go, Lee!"
[With beautiful comic timing, somebody's ringtone goes off; it's a short, uplifting sort of noise]
LEE: "I've just had a really good idea!"

During that round, Lee mentioned at one point that for the first recording, he'd genuinely gone to Pinewood Studios by accident.

Amusing moment that won't be shown on television #5: Rob touching his finger to his earpiece briefly, then saying, "please appreciate that last line, because I've been told there's no chance of it making the edit". (For #6, he later did the same thing during Lee's story in the Quick-Fire Lies round, then explained that the people in the gallery wanted to know "if Lee was OK"...)

The last story of the night was an extremely odd one which everyone was certain was a lie. This caused quite a bit of surprise when it turned out to be true, and in the ensuing kerfuffle Rob ended up having to announce it was the end of the show three times.

They then rattled through some retakes at the end; this time, any line that had to be redone for content was done during the show, but that was perhaps a situational thing because said lines were immediately obviously unsuitable (changing "oh shit!" to "oh my goodness!" stood out), so the retakes were mostly, er, taken up with redoing lines that someone else had spoken over the first time so they had a "clean" version for the edit. (Lee, upon noticing that most of these were coming from his team, wondered if there was a particular reason why...) David's reaction to the aforementioned very odd story had been to loudly exclaim "That is really unusual!", and he did that another five or six times for the edit.

Anyway, much like last time, finally they recorded a trailer and we got out a few minutes after 10pm. I think we got lucky with the previous recording we attended, because that was a particularly high-quality one, but this was a good one too; all four guests were funny, contributed a lot, and we got the always enjoyable sight of a story escalating to a completely unexpected place.

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