If you search for "would i lie to you" on Shutterstock, you will be met with around 500 images related to said comedy panel show, most of which were taken on set during the fourth and fifth series. Quite a few of these actually depict moments that didn't make the edit of the final programmes. In some cases, the exact context is lost to time.
This particular photo might not seem remarkable at first; it's David Mitchell reading out a story which didn't make the cut. But back in the day there was a very good fan forum, That Mitchell & Webb Fansite, which reported back from each recording from Series 3 up to partway through Series 7 with, among other things, a full list of stories from each show, but not whether they were true or not. Sadly, only the Series 3-4 ones are still online (the forum having closed and gone offline very abruptly), having also been posted, and still preserved, at this LiveJournal community.
So we know that particular photo is the reaction to David Mitchell reading out the claim that he was the British ambassador to the eighth session of the European Youth Parliament.
A claim which is entirely true. And in a similar fashion, we can identify this photo as depicting Richard E. Grant, in the midst of realising he's going to have to defend the claim that he was hypnotised to cure his fear of spiders, it failed and gave him an added fear of bees.
For one last trick, if we go back to the recording report for the first recorded episode of Series 3, we can find this unaired claim from Reece Shearsmith: "Possession: A copy of The Beano that blew into Reece's hands on Bridlington Pier - spookily, it contained a letter he'd written and sent in."
After writing the first draft of this post, I decided to finally read the stack of old Beanos I'd purchased in some charity shops a few weeks earlier, which included issue 1943, dated October 13th, 1979.
Satisfying, isn't it?
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