History Series / WouldILieToYou

''Would I Lie to You?'' (begun in 2007) is a British [[PanelGame Panel Show]] based around truth and lies. Essentially, over a series of rounds the panellists (two team captains with two guests each) will read out a series of statements about themselves; the opposing team must figure out whether they are true or not. It is currently on its fifteenth series.

There is now a [[Recap/WouldILieToYou Recap]] page covering the truths and lies told throughout the series.

* TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers: The stories the guests have for the 'This Is My' round can sometimes fall into this.
--> '''Lee:''' I know Ina because she's my local newsagent, and she sold me a scratchcard which I won £2,000 on.
--> '''Natalie Cassidy:''' Ina's worked on ''Series/EastEnders'' for 21 years as a supporting artist, and she used to run the lampshade stall.
--> '''Dom Joly:''' Ina's actually my aunt, who is Greek, and she is a voiceover artist in Greece, and she has been the voice of Helen Mirren in the last four of her films that have been translated into Greek.
--> '''Creator/AngusDeayton''' ''(as audience laughter dies away)'': So, it's as simple as that. A winning newsagent according to Lee, a veteran ''Series/EastEnders'' extra according to Natalie, or Helen Mirren's Greek voice dub according to Dom.

* HandyHelper: In Series 13 Chris [=McCausland=], who is blind, appeared as a guest. When it was his turn to read out a statement, he said the producers had offered him a card written in Braille, only to discover he couldn't read it, so Lee read the card out on his behalf (and also helped him out with some of the more visual elements of the show's format).

* OnlyBarelyRenewed: The second and third series had very poor ratings; the show likely only got renewed because panel games are generally very cheap to produce. Thankfully, the fourth series did considerably better.

* MirthlessLaughter: David erupts into peals of this, after Lee's ludicrous story about how he remembered the names of the Teletubbies turned out to be true (with his team guiding him into guessing lie). On top of this, his team hadn't had a correct answer all night and he was siding with Adil Lee, who on previous occasions had guessed the correct answer only for David to go the other way, so David announced that if it turned out the answer was true he would merely "laugh at tragedy". Sure enough:

** David Mitchell, in one of his HairTriggerTemper rants, accused Mike Read of having the deaths of British soldiers on his conscience, for once doing a 10-minute rap at a Tory party conference. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR7wUUUNyD0 Link.]]

* TheBoardGame: [[http://www.endemoluk.com/programme/would-i-lie-to-you-board-game Came out last year]].

** Ardal O’Hanlon, in an attempt to get out of being Santa at his kid’s school Christmas Fair, told the head of the PTA that he was going to be away that weekend. The problem was he wasn’t planning on going anywhere, and ended up having to book a break to Stockholm, and going by himself, so he would be out the country at the time he said he would be.

The host for the first two series was Angus Deayton, in perhaps his biggest hosting job since being sacked from ''Series/HaveIGotNewsForYou''; from Series 3 he was replaced by Creator/RobBrydon of ''Series/GavinAndStacey'' fame. The team captains, Creator/LeeMack (from ''Series/NotGoingOut'') and Creator/{{David Mitchell|Actor}} ([[Series/ThatMitchellAndWebbLook from]] [[Series/PeepShow everything]] [[Radio/TheUnbelievableTruth else]]) have remained consistent through all the run (the exception being one episode in the eighth series where Lee was unable to attend the recording and Greg Davies took his place). The guests will typically be one comedian and one guest from another field per team, with actors and television presenters being the most common for the latter -- although singers, sportspeople, and even politicians have appeared.

* AsideGlance: The host sometimes indicates surprise or disbelief at a panellist's story with a sardonic look at the camera. Angus Deayton was good at these, but Rob Brydon excels.

* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: Angus Deayton has not been referred to once since he left, although several references have been made to 'true' facts from the series he hosted.

* CouchGag: When Angus Deayton was host, he would emerge from behind a screen where he was visible in silhouette engaging in some ridiculous activity, which changed with each episode.

* DeadpanSnarker: Angus Deayton.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The early episodes had more questions and spent less time on each one; more recent series have dropped a few rounds (see [[RetiredGameShowElement Retired Panel Show Element]] below) and included fewer questions in the Quickfire round to spend more time on the questions that do make the edit. The difference between the totally deadpan Angus Deayton and Rob Brydon (who also tends to interact with the panel more) can also be disconcerting.
** What's much weirder, though, is seeing the Angus Deayton era episode where Rob Brydon was a guest on David's team.

* {{Expy}}: Angus Deayton's manner of hosting was very similar to how it was on ''Series/HaveIGotNewsForYou'', including his imaginary "prizes", descriptions of the current points, and "I leave you with news that..."

* GentlemanSnarker: Angus Deayton, and several of the guests.

** The fact that Angus Deayton was the original host, given that part of the reason he was sacked from ''Series/HaveIGotNewsForYou'' because after the first round of tabloid revelations he assured his bosses there was nothing else to come... only for more to follow a few months later.

--> '''Angus Deayton''' ''(as audience laughter dies away)'': So, it's as simple as that. A winning newsagent according to Lee, a veteran ''Series/EastEnders'' extra according to Natalie, or Helen Mirren's Greek voice dub according to Dom.

* MediumAwareness: Several jokes about the host's use of an autocue, such as the joke Angus Deayton read out after David Mitchell's claim that he used to proofread dictionaries for a living:

* OncePerEpisode: In his introductions to the "This Is My" round, Angus Deayton would always refer to the title's incompleteness.

* ThePeteBest: Angus Deayton once he was replaced by Rob Brydon. This may border on {{Unperson}}, as he has not been referred to and the BBC have not repeated any of the Deayton episodes (and even Dave only started airing them recently).

* PromotionToOpeningTitles: Rob Brydon appeared as a panellist in Series 2 before replacing Angus Deayton as host the next series.

-->'''Angus Deayton''': And now, for the round you've all been waiting for...the last one.

-->'''Angus Deayton:''' I think he's saying it's true.

* SpitTake: One particularly memorable example - after one "Telly Tales" claim that Pam St. Clement was a member of the British Abseiling Association and had abseiled down Mount Rushmore, Angus Deayton's autocue joke made reference to her "mounting the north face of [[Series/EastEnders Frank Butcher]]". Lee's team managed a (completely unrehearsed) synchronised triple spit-take in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZLv4JCfT0A?t=2m38s response]] .

* SpotlightStealingSquad: Rob Brydon as host is far more involved in the action than Angus Deayton was and there have been moments where the focus has gone entirely off either team (and the ostensible fact they are discussing) and landed squarely on him; one of the worst cases was the first episode in series 4, where Martin Clunes' turn was more or less abandoned for the sake of Brydon's impressions.

-->'''Angus Deayton''': Yes, every three seconds ''(snaps fingers)''...[[Music/{{U2}} Bono]] does something annoying.

** Angus Deayton's autocue joke following Lee's 'Possession' claim about a coconut that nearly killed him:

* {{Squick}}: {{InUniverse}}. In a Series 3 episode, Claudia Winkleman had a taxidermic cat (ostensibly her childhood pet) as her possession in the Quick Fire Lies round. She stroked it lovingly for most of her turn, but as soon as her story was revealed to be a lie she dropped it back into its box and shook her hands in disgust.

* EskimosArentReal: In the 2018 Christmas special, Music/LilyAllen claimed that for her entire life she had believed that reindeer were mythical creature, until corrected by her young daughter (and then goggling 'reindeer'). [[spoiler:She was lying]].

* KansasCityShuffle

* SpecialGuest: Just occasionally, there will be an unexpectedly very famous guest you wouldn't expect to turn up on a low-budget panel game (who often admit to appearing because they're big fans of the show). Examples include Samantha Morton, John Simm, Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone and Charles Dance).

-->''[In the Ring of Truth round, David has been told that Bono's trilby which he paid $1,200 to have eflown first class was "upgraded" from first class to the cockpit and is insisting that this is not an upgrade]''

** David put Fern Britton's tea cosy on his head at Lee's request, then hurriedly took it off when Ken Livingstone suggested that if, as she claimed to, take it everywhere with her it should be quite dirty.

-->-'''Davina [=McCall=]''': No. She's right.

** In the unseen bits, Sara comments how she owns a pair of lenses-less glasses that she wears only when she's playing ''Scrabble''. They make her feel cleverer.

-->'''Lee Mack''': Me and Jimmy think it's a lie, but Terry, you're going to overrule us..

* HypocriticalHeartwarming: A rare example in the series 5 compilation episode, when Lee, alongside his team, starts booing at Rob for making a derogatory comment about David's appearance.

-->'''Rob''': You have to spoil it, don't you? You'll be telling me next the Wombles weren't real!
*** Hilarious in Hindsight when Katherine Parkinson's true fact in series 5 was that she had once put down a womble as an example of a mammal on a GCSE biology paper.

** Panellists can make up a detail of a false story on the spot that seems clever at the time, but falls apart under further investigation.

--->'''David Mitchell:''' Your grandad was 100 before you were 18? [[note]] Lee then tried to claim it was his ''step''-grandad, which naturally raised the question as to why Lee thought he would have inherited the old man's genes. [[/note]]

** Gabby Logan, in a possession-based lie, had to convince David's team that she gave birthday cards to her pets, including a dog named Sydney and a rabbit named Jody. When they ask to look at the cards, she immediately goes into a panic, having made up the names Sydney and Jody without looking at what's actually written inside the cards, and apparently not realizing that the opposing team could inspect the cards more thoroughly. A quick look at the cards shows that the names written in them are Michael and Sherbet.
* DiggingYourselfDeeper: Jamelia trying to explain why she thought Jimmy Carr's statement (that he was a ballboy at Wimbledon and Prince Phillip said he was an funny-looking fellow) was true.

** Davina [=McCall=]'s fact in Series 3 was that she was having her tattoo of two chillies covered up as they more closely resemble carrots. [[spoiler:It was true.]]

** In one episode, David O'Doherty produced a pair of tiny leg-warmers he claimed to have made for birds. The opposing team react with naked astonishment when he claims to have made them for swans, given their tiny size and the fact that swans would react aggressively if he even went near them, much less tried to force them to wear leg-warmers. One lengthy and not-very-convincing defence of his claim later, Rob chimed in with:

** Cricket commentator Henry Blofield's, who is known for his extremely posh voice, story that when he is out and about, and doesn't want to be disturbed, he puts on a "common" accent ran into trouble as soon as he was asked to demonstrate said accent. Firstly, he started off with a Cockney burr that made [[Film/MaryPoppins Dick Van Dyck's]] sound good, then it started to stray around all four corners of the UK, before it eventually landed somewhere in the West Country. Unsurprisingly, Lee's team didn't believe him.

** This was particularly common around Series 8 & 9, where it happened in more than half the episodes; however, one guest who had all of their turns cut out subsequently complained on the grounds that the recording was effectively a waste of their time, and in later series the edit seemed to try and ensure that everyone got at least one claim. The series recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic in particular made sure that every guest got something to do at some point, due to the unusually high-risk nature of making the show at all.

** Another case had David saying that he used to write horoscopes for a women's' magazine for six months. When Lee asks what the magazine was, David replies with "Top Santé". Lee and his teammates immediately express confusion as they've never heard of it, even though Fern Britton and Rob confirm its existence. Later on, after Lee's team correctly guesses that it's a lie, David stops the show briefly to invoke this trope.

* SchrodingersButterfly: Frankie Boyle had to defend the claim that when he was a child he was afraid his life was a book being read by a bear, and that one day the bear would close the book and his life would end. Rob's followup autocue joke made reference to the famous philosophical question.

--->'''Brian''': --they become superconductors and they have no electrical resistance and carry currents of up to 13,000 amps in wires with a very small cross section...

* {{Sexbot}}: When Ronni Ancona claimed that the This Is My guest had built a household robot which speaks with her voice.

* ShowDontTell: Wherever possible, a panellist will be asked for a demonstration of their claim, including Michael Aspel's shadow-boxing, Lee's juggling skills and Bob Mortimer's ability to rip an apple in two with his bare hands.

* SlasherSmile: David, of all people, pulls one in season 10- to match a cake Lee claimed to have made for him. Rob calls for a splitscreen comparison, and we get a lovely side by side of arguably ''equally'' [[TechnicallyASmile unnerving grins.]]

* SlobsVsSnobs: Much of the banter between Lee and David riffs on their respective comic personas as a scruffy OopNorth working class loutish type and a fastidious southern upper-middle-class intellectual. In at least one episode Lee, annoyed after feeling condescended to by Brian Cox, jokingly claims that the inverse is actually true off-screen and that ''he's'' the milquetoast intellectual and David is the bluff-talking northerner.

** In one "This Is My..." round, David's team are forced to choose between three equally implausible alternatives[[note]]Gareth Malone's neighbour who used to distract him from his singing practice by singing the same song back at him in German; the rickshaw driver who Greg Davies invited to spend the night after making him pull Greg all the way from London to Hounslow; a ''Series/{{Pointless}}'' audience member who distracted Richard Osman with his AnnoyingLaugh[[/note]]. After much second guessing, they eventually make a decision but end up cringing behind their desk as if they're expecting to come under artillery fire when waiting for the truth to be revealed.

-->'''Gabby Logan''': Did you ever have [[TalkingToHimself banter between yourselves]]?

* CampGay: Julian Clary was on Lee's team in Series 4.

* ADateWithRosiePalms
-->'''Clive Anderson''' [''realising that Lee is clutching the desk as he waits to see if he has guessed correctly on a fact''] You're clutching the desk, man! It's only a panel game!
-->'''Lee''': That's not the desk!

-->'''Henning:''' Well, you know what it sometimes is like, isn't it, like, er... well, I can't quite think of anything like this...

* BriefAccentImitation: Rob Brydon does this quite a bit. Quite often, David Mitchell's the subject.

* ItSoundedLikeAGoodIdeaAtTheTime: In series 5, Rhod Gilbert's claim that he paid for £15 worth of tapas with a Nissan Micra turned out to be true. David Mitchell's response was to straight-up call him a moron.