Trivia / Would I Lie to You?

Trivia Tropes

• Actor Allusion: Sometimes with a few of the lies written for the guests, such as Neil Morrissey claiming to have had an extension on his house made by a builder named Bob, or Ronnie Corbett claiming to have asked for four candles in a hardware store.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Many guests have professed to already being big fans of the show prior to appearing. John Simm specifically said he agreed to appear because he wanted to meet Lee Mack and David Mitchell.
• Blooper: During the "This Is My..." round of Series 14, Episode 7, a timecode clock appears during a shot of the mystery guest.
• The Cast Showoff: Rob will take any opportunity he can to start doing one of his impressions. This is lampshaded in one episode where David Mitchell claims that the guest of the week owns a parrot that keeps complimenting him on his shoes. Rob repeatedly demands that David do an impersonation of the parrot despite David being vocally reluctant to do so and outright stating that it's going to be terrible, only to be incredibly unimpressed with the (admittedly awful) result. Rob proceeds to offer his own impression of the parrot would sound like, leading David to conclude that the whole thing has just been Rob's unnecessarily convoluted and roundabout way of giving himself an excuse to do a parrot impression:
  David: [Weary] Listen. Rob. You're in the chair. If you want to do an impression of a parrot, you can just do it. You don't have to go through this ridiculous process.
• Corpsing:
  • David Mitchell found the claim that he could no longer drink orange squash as it sent him "berserk" so ridiculous that it took him four attempts to read with a straight face.
  • This is fairly common amongst the "This Is My..." guests, who are meant to stand in silence for the whole round.
• Creator Backlash: Nick Hewer regrets his appearance in this programme, and claims he has never felt more embarrassed. Of course, his attempts to maintain his trademark sternness led a masterfully Comically Serious performance.
• Defictionalization: Omid Djalili's lie in Series 3 was that he was launching his own range of condiments, including Omid Djalili Picalili. The idea received such an enthusiastic response both on the programme and on Twitter that he later noted on his Twitter that he was seriously looking into getting some Djalili Picalili produced.
• Deleted Scene: The compilation shows at the end of the series show a few turns that got cut out of the regular programmes. Clearly a lot of stuff gets taken out when editing the show down to 30 minutes, as the series 4 compilation show consists entirely of deleted scenes with no "best bits", and there's even more after that that never gets shown.
  • The series recording Spring 2014 takes about 3 hours per show - approximately 1 hour per round. In the first and third rounds more questions are asked than will get shown, so to give options to which is the funniest and clean enough for broadcast.
• Enforced Method Acting: The panellists have never seen what is on the card before they read from it - all of the lies must have their details made up on the spot.^note In the case of the truths, the panellists have a meeting with the producers before the show and write down a couple of truths so they can generally expect what might show up there.
• Missing Episode: Series 2 episode 5 features a "Ring of Truth" question about Rolf Harris (introduced by a clip of Harris on Top of the Pops), and is unlikely to be broadcast in its original form again in light of Harris' conviction for child sex offences in June 2014.
• Only Barely Renewed: 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.
• Orphaned Reference: During his Let Me Get This Straight... rant about Kevin Bridges' infamous story about accidentally buying a horse, David Mitchell mentions an aspect of the story Bridges apparently never mentioned. The full, uncut version of that tale lasted a full half-hour and was edited down to about a quarter of its length for broadcast.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: A myth persists that Angus Deayton was fired from the show because of his comments about Jimmy Savile in the final episode of Series 1 (this being several years before his death and posthumous outing as a serial child molester). The show was censured after complaints, and this led to the BBC promising to cut the jokes out of all future broadcasts (although the point ended up being moot, as the series was never repeated), but they had nothing whatsoever to do with Deayton's dismissal, which happened over 18 months later (they were pre-scripted jokes read off an autocue, so he would never have been held personally responsible for them). The actual reasons why Deayton either decided to or was prompted to leave the show have never been publicly discussed.
• Production Posse: Virtually every regular contributor to The Mash Report has shown up as a panellist at some point. This is not a coincidence, as Mash is made by the same production company and executive produced by WILTY creator Peter Holmes.
• Promoted Fanboy: Rob, Lee, and David, despite being successful comedians/comic actors in their own right, geek out quite shamelessly in the presence of a longer-established figure.
  • Lee was particularly beside himself when Ronnie Corbett's claim in the Quick Fire Lies round was a reference to the famous Two Ronnies sketch and insisted on trying to run a little of it with him, saying it was a boyhood dream to ask Ronnie Corbett if he meant four candles or "handles for forks."
  • Shown a few times with everyone reacting to Harry Shearer when he came on the show. After Shearer read a fact about how he had to judge who had the best Mr. Burns impression between Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Bono, Rob Brydon and Jason Manford immediately become excited at the prospect, with Rob saying that it's one of the best things that's ever happened to the show. Later, when Shearer is asked to tell if it was true or false, Shearer frames the reveal as a conversation between Mr. Burns and Smithers.
    Harry Shearer as Smithers: Sir, you have to tell them now.
    Harry Shearer as Mr. Burns: All right, I will.
    (The audience laughs and Shearer's teammate, Sara Cox, can be seen shaking her hands and gasping with excitement at what just happened.)
    Lee: (holding back a chuckle) Don't rush it, because I want to hear that again.
  • One of Michael Aspel's "true" facts, shown in the series 2 Clip Show, was that he had received fanmail from then-host Angus Deayton.
• Rerun: The show has got quite a reputation for being repeated whenever the BBC have a spare 30 minutes in their schedule, as it's not topical so runs no risk of bearing any unfortunate resemblance to current events, and it's able to be shown pre-watershed.
• Screwed by the Network: The show has not been scheduled consistently for two series running. Just when it looked like things might be improving with series 5, the BBC inexplicably decided to dump series 6 in an awful pre-watershed timeslot in the Spring with no promotion. (To add insult to injury, the last episode went missing for a month due to Euro 2012 and a filler documentary about the Queen's jubilee.)
  • The BBC refused to broadcast the 2017 series, for no reason whatsoever. They showed repeats in its place. It eventually turned up on Monday nights at the last possible moment (suggesting they actually had forgotten about it), whilst they continued to show sitcom repeats on the Friday.
  • The 2018 series was pulled midway through its run, leaving three episodes unshown, for no stated reason whatsoever. It was replaced with more repeats. The outstanding episodes were finally broadcast a few months later.
  • Whilst not actually the BBC's fault for once, the 2019 series was interrupted due to the 2019 General Election and the political parties' leaders televised debates.
• Similarly Named Works: Has the same title as the English-language title of the French film series La Vérité si je mens!.
• So My Kids Can Watch: The show is pretty tame when compared to other panel shows, but some of the content still couldn't be classified as kid-friendly. Maybe "So Kids In General Can Watch"; the 2016 Children in Need special featured four children in place of the usual celebrity guests, and the jokes and topics were a bit more kid-friendly than usual.
• Throw It In!: In a Series 14 episode, the "This Is My..." guest was Raj Bisram's former assistant in a magic show, who took part in a trick where Bisram removed his shirt with a single pull. Bisram demonstrated the trick... except the first time he tried it, it went wrong and he almost choked the guest to death. He successfully pulled the trick off on the second attempt, but the botched go was too funny not to use.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Alan Carr was originally going to be a team captain instead of Lee Mack.
  • Roger Moore was meant to be a guest in series 9, but had to pull out.
  • In an example that expands beyond the series, a "This is My" guest from Series 8 was John Duff Lowe, pianist for the Quarrymen for two years, including their first recording session (the tapes of which he kept until 1981, when Paul McCartney bought them for £12000; they were later re-mastered and included on Volume 1 of The Beatles Anthology). As Brookside alumnus Ricky Tomlinson told the Would I Lie to You? panel, Lowe left the Quarrymen before they became the Beatles to join Tomlinson's own band, the City Slickers.
• Working Title: The original pilot (which featured Alan Carr as a team captain instead of Lee Mack) was titled Pants on Fire.

General Trivia

• The buttons the panellists press to (supposedly) bring the 'TRUTH/LIE' graphics up on screen aren't actually connected to anything and are purely for effect (as shown in a few out-takes where the panellists forget to push the button but the graphics come up anyway, or they do press the buttons but nothing happens).
• In Series 11 Episode 8, David Mitchell says (as part of a claim) that in a Series 1 episode he claimed to only have one album (the full, true story being that in the ten years since he's only bought one more). The original claim was never broadcast.
• Apart from David Mitchell & Victoria Coren Mitchell, six other married or engaged couples have appeared (separately) on the show at different points: Ade Edmondson & Jennifer Saunders, Marcus Brigstocke & Rachel Parris, Vernon Kay & Tess Daly, Charlie Brooker & Konnie Huq, Joe Swash & Stacey Solomon, and Jon Richardson & Lucy Beaumont. There are two cases of parent and child both appearing on the show (Danny & Dani Dyer, and Martin & Roman Kemp), and one of brother & sister (Russell and Kerry Howard). There are five double acts that have both appeared on the show: Mitchell & Webb, Baddiel & Skinner, Reeves & Mortimer, Mel & Sue and Armstrong & Miller.

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