On 4 October 1996, Have I Got News for You returns for its twelfth series. For some reason, several listings magazines incorrectly report the guest panellists will be David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, which the show feels compelled to address, showing the above clipping with the following joke:
"Good evening and welcome to 'Have I Got News for You', and we apologise to the millions of viewers who have tuned in expecting our guests to be the two stars of the hugely popular series 'The X-Files'. This information appeared in several newspapers and magazines, and yet no-one seems to know quite how it happened."
My purpose here today, however, is not to find out how that happened. (I don't think Anderson or Duchovny were even in the country at the time!) Two weeks later, for the third episode, the following call-back happens:
"Good evening and welcome to 'Have I Got News for You', and apologies to the millions of viewers who may have read that this week's guests were to be Lord Lawson and Mark Little, as I'm afraid they are."
One week later, the fourth show opens thusly:
"Good evening and a special hello to those of you who may have read in the current edition of TV Quick that this week's guests are Father Christmas and Rupert the Bear. So, welcome to the show, I'm Jemima Puddle-Duck."
Putting aside the revelation that HIGNFY only had one publicity image to use at the time... surely this is someone at TV Quick trying to keep the joke going for another week? (That might seem the obvious conclusion, but it's never mentioned on the show.) I wondered what the Radio Times listing for this episode said... and it doesn't mention either guest, indicating that information was not yet known and the editors of TV Quick weren't actually leaving that out just for the sake of the joke, they just decided to do the joke in absence of actually having the information available. Thereby creating a very odd non sequitur to anyone not watching old repeats in sequence, or who just happened to read the listing in isolation.
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