Truth and Consequence

Buried deep in old revisions of the Wikipedia article for Would I Lie to You?, and the Wikipedia article for the list of episodes of Would I Lie to You?, are the recording dates for every episode except those in the first series, and one other day when I'm stuck for things to write about I'll probably stick them all up here.

Most of the time, WILTY? is recorded a while before broadcast -- ranging from Series 2 remaining on the shelf for seven months before broadcast, to Series 6 filming its final episode on 30 March 2012 and then beginning transmission just two weeks later on 13 April. But Series 7 is an odd one -- due to David Mitchell being in Turkey to shoot the short-lived comedy drama Ambassadors, it doesn't start in the same week as the return of Have I Got News for You as likely intended, but a few weeks in, and it's the only series that's still being filmed whilst it starts airing. So let's have a quick look at the order.

Weird Things I Have Found In Charity Shops

I like spending my weekends looking in local charity shops and, as the title of this post may indicate, sometimes I find some weird things in them. The image above, however, shows something I found a short while ago that wasn't just weird -- it was something I didn't even think existed.

Season 20 of The Simpsons was released on Blu-ray in America shortly after its original broadcast as a vanilla edition with no special features, to capitalise on the fact that it was the first season to contain episodes produced in high definition. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found a Region 4 DVD version of the same release in a charity shop in Bristol. Asking Wesley Mead about it revealed that only Australia and Germany got this release -- which seems a very odd thing to happen at all, given the only reason the release happened was because the episodes are in HD. My conclusion was that this set's previous owner had taken the trouble to import this from overseas. But then, if you're donating it because you've just got access to Disney+, then apart from the fact that you'd expect to find other DVDs of The Simpsons or even other Disney+ shows alongside this one (and I didn't) -- wouldn't someone who went to that length to get hold of a copy be a pretty hardcore fan, someone who'd want to hang on to this as an interesting curio? Wouldn't they be aware that just because something's available on streaming now, doesn't mean it always will be?

Anyway, this got me thinking about other similarly inexplicable (to various degrees) things I've seen or even purchased in charity shops over the years. Here's a selection of them. (Not included: a surprisingly large number of adventure gamebooks and Doctor Who novelisations from the 80s and 90s that go for upwards of £70 online and which nobody bothered to do a price check on.)

The 14 Museum

One of the most prolific adventure gamebook authors of the 1980s was J.H. Brennan. You may remember that his gamebooks were, in fact, the subject of the first ever post of this blog over five years ago. But to recap, he wrote three series of gamebooks at the height of the craze in the 80s: GrailQuest, which was set apart from most other series of the time by being incredibly funny; Sagas of the Demonspawn, which by contrast was played absolutely straight; and the Horror Classic Gamebooks, which fell somewhere inbetween those two extremes.

But, apart from the occasional cross-series reference, there was one thing which all three series had in common, and that was what happened when you died: you were directed to another section which described what happened afterwards. That section basically functioned as the gamebook's afterlife. Originating in GrailQuest as one of its many running jokes, this metatextual section was (at least in that series) always section 14, and was often referred to by the book as "the dreaded 14" whenever the player was directed there. You may think the use of the number 14 was a deliberate joke about how you'd expect the obvious number for such a section to be 13. And you'd probably be right. But if you look at how the idea was used in all three series you can, among other things, more or less prove that for certain. So here, then, are all the deep -- and not-so-deep -- hereafters that Brennan ever wrote.

Just Ask For The Guest Cast For Episode 3 Of South By South East

As you may recall, when I last left you on the subject of The Diamond Brothers, I had finally managed to see their 1991 TV series for myself -- but that threw up a brand new mystery. I'd already known that episode 3 had been interrupted by a technical fault, but getting to see the show added something significant: the net effect of that fault, and the way ITV dealt with it, meant that any actor who was only in the affected episode was not credited onscreen at all. So I had seven characters in search of an actor.

I included screenshots of all seven in that post, and after spreading it far and wide, I'm happy to report that four have been identified. So where are we now?

Christmas in April

The Would I Lie to You? Christmas special I was in the audience for went out on the 20th December (and is still on iPlayer here), but I've been waiting for the outtakes show to go out before I do my follow-up post detailing various things that didn't make the edit. So here you go.

Fight Time!

Here's a really interesting piece of Robot Wars ephemera to surface. On the show's reddit, someone has uploaded a filming schedule for 1 September 2001:

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.

I Shall Just Ask For South By South East No More

It was over four years ago now that I used the blog to ask a question that had been puzzling me for over a decade before that: Why was the television adaptation of the third Diamond Brothers novel by Anthony Horowitz so obscure that no visual record of it existed?

I'd hoped I could find some listings, maybe some continuity relating to it. I didn't know how likely it was that I'd be able to see all six episodes in their entirety, but as the saga went on and on, turning up more and more mysteries in its wake -- most notably the question of whether the series was an adaptation of the book or the book was a novelisation of the series -- I grew more and more confident that there was a copy out there I'd be able to see some day.

And then, in December 2021, Neil James got in touch to let me know that in his attic he had a VHS recording he'd made of the original (and only) CITV broadcasts from April 1991. Retrieving it, he found out we were in business -- it was in pretty good condition for an off-air recording that was approaching its 31st birthday. All he needed to do was digitise it, and I suggested Simon Drake, who had previously provided me with a digital copy of the extended VHS cut of the 1988 movie that preceded the television series, might be able to help out.

We then discovered a truly bizarre coincidence. Although he didn't know he was interested in the Diamond Brothers, Neil already knew Simon. In fact, the day before, they'd been to the cinema together... which certainly made things much simpler.

The VHS was digitised. Simon smoothed out some picture and audio glitches. Yesterday, he sent over copies of all six episodes, and at last I was able to see this TV series I'd been banging on about for so long, and I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am to Neil and Simon for making that possible.

And in the process, some mysteries were solved, but a few more cropped up. I am working on a longer piece, which I plan to take the form of a comprehensive episode guide, but let's tackle some of the questions we can now answer, and the new ones that we can't just yet.