Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2010-04-22 03:10 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2010-04-22 03:10 pm
Whoops, Forgot The Title.
On Tuesday, there was a You Have Been Watching recording that I could not attend. I sort of hate everyone who could be there, because the panel were Andy Nyman, Victoria Coren and David Mitchell. BROOKER, COREN AND MITCHELL IN THE SAME ROOM. I WOULD HAVE FAINTED.
I also love the people who could be there, though, because they wrote wonderful reports: derryderrydown, causethesounds.
Apparently (this isn't spoilery for the episode, as the context, alas, means it won't be broadcast), Brooker at one point, whilst relaying instructions from the voice in his ear to Mitchell, said, 'You want me to take off his what? Kiss him tenderly?'
BROOKER. BROOKER. YOU ARE MAKING IT VERY DIFFICULT FOR ME TO BE SANE ABOUT THIS PAIRING. I HONESTLY BELIEVE THAT YOU ARE GAY FOR DAVID MITCHELL AND YOU HAVE ONLY YOURSELF TO BLAME.
Anyway, last night I was able to attend another recording of Would I Lie To You?. I was rather hoping that the universe would make up for my absence at You Have Been Watching by having the guests be Charlie Brooker, Victoria Coren, Derren Brown and a clone of David Mitchell, but alas it was not to be. It was excellent fun, though!
The guests were Stephen Mangan, Kevin Bridges, Professor Brian Cox and Keeley Hawes (♥!). Fans present were![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anewcitylife, causethesounds, chocolatepeach, swing_set, amandapear and sawnoffcourtney.
Here is my report.
Some people with priority tickets must have failed to turn up, because we ended up only two rows back, very close to David Mitchell and Keeley Hawes. Hawes was gorgeous. Mitchell was adorable. It wasn't quite as wildly sexual-frustration-inducing as sitting near Brooker, but it was still fairly distracting.
David Mitchell and Keeley Hawes, incidentally, need to make out. She stroked his hair whilst the makeup lady was combing it! Also, Rob Brydon verbally wrote Mitchell/Hawes fanfiction; I'll return to this later.
(When I mentioned that I wanted Mitchell/Hawes,anewcitylife misheard. After a moment's confusion, I realised it would probably be best to refer to Hawes as 'Keeley' when speaking aloud.)
Mitchell cackled a lot! Perhaps four times? The audience cracked up every time he did. (Mitchell's cackle, for those who have not had the pleasure of hearing it, sounds like this.)
A couple of out-of-context quotes:
Brydon: Lee Mack is on fire tonight.
Mack: If only.
Mitchell: Is this show sponsored by Rohypnol? Because it seems to be mentioned an awful lot.
Mangan claimed to have names for both his big toes: Leslie and Scruple.
Mack: Do you do their little screaming voices when you cut your toenails?
Bridges told an absolutely bizarre, rambling, highly implausible story about accidentally buying a horse. During the cross-examination (which lasted a good twenty minutes. Hawes: 'Are there really three more rounds?'), Mitchell laughed so hard he doubled over at the desk and turned red. I laughed so hard I hyperventilated.
Mitchell: So what did he say when you tried to return the horse?
Bridges: The guy said - the guy said - the guy was gone.
Mack: (facepalm)
Cox: (looks at card) It says 'I once accidentally bought a house'!
Mitchell, summing up: So you were in Bulgaria, and you thought you would hire a horse for twenty-five minutes, presumably to leave time for adverts. You were on your way to the stables, but you met a man on the way there, and, thinking 'oh, there must be some sort of system', you paid an extortionate amount to hire this horse. When you were finished with the horse, you tried to return it not to the stables but to the random halfway point where you met this man, who of course was gone, and you tried to say 'hello, we've hired a horse under your Meeting Someone At A Random Point scheme', at which point over twenty-six locals ran up to you to say 'oh, no, you own it now'. If I live in a world in which all that can happen, I really don't care about losing a point on a parlour game, and on that basis we're saying it's false.
To the astonishment of all, it turned out to be true. It was mentioned throughout the rest of the recording, because it was just so ridiculous.
Mitchell: The horse incident has changed my perception of reality.
Mack: In the future, episodes of this are going to be divided into 'before the horse story' and 'after the horse story'.
When Bridges later started talking to Cox about Cox's past music career (rather to the annoyance of Brydon. 'Are you trying to start your own chat show?'):
Cox: The thing is, you talk so much bollocks I don't believe a word you say. I'm doubting my own life now.
Cox claimed to have shut down the Large Hadron Collider for three months by spilling yoghurt in it. He started trying to explain the technical function of the part on which he allegedly spilt yoghurt. Hawes pretended to fall asleep at her desk.
The gist of what Cox was long-windedly saying was that it transferred some sort of energy.
Mitchell: So are you telling us that it was a wire?
Cox: (laughs) It - it's a tungsten alloy -
Mitchell: I'm not saying it's not an excellent wire.
Later:
Cox: Well, as Mitchell well knows, [SCIENCE!]
Mack: Will you stop flirting with Mitchell?
Mitchell: Well, I'm very flattered, but I'm a historian. What I know is that Hitler died.
Eventually, Mitchell decided that the story was false, reasoning:
Mitchell: It's certainly more plausible than the buying-a-horse story, but I have to cling to the belief that some things that are more plausible than the buying-a-horse story haven't yet happened.
The 'Ring of Truth' question was about Richard Madeley. Cox explained that he thought Madeley was sinister because his (Cox's) wife had had a recurring dream in which she opened a door to find Richard Madeley there, wearing nothing but a pair of Speedos.
Hawes was horrified by the images. Mangan was strangely intrigued.
Mangan: Was he very hairy?
The 'This Is My...' guest was called Drak. He responded to Mack's 'All right, Drak?'
Brydon: Don't talk, Drak! I don't want to be draconian about this, but...
(audience silence)
Mitchell: (cackle!) ...oh, I'm horrible. I am a terrible, evil person. Sorry. I liked the 'draconian' remark very much. I'll enjoy it when I get home.
Bridges claimed that Drak had given him a driving lesson in which he reversed through a chip-shop window.
'Given that he was a driving instructor and you were at a chip shop,' Brydon says, 'you're lucky that he haddockar.'
Mitchell objected to this pun on the grounds that the setup made no sense. 'If he was a driving instructor, I would have thought it incredibly likely that he had a car. You could have said, "Given that he was a driving instructor, it's not surprising that he haddockar."'
Mack claimed that Drak was the winner of a Pie of the Year contest with which Mack was helping. Mitchell's team doubted it, thinking it the sort of clichéd Northern thing the researchers might have come up with.
Mitchell: Then again, if you have some sort of pie awards ceremony, who better to ask than Lee Mack?
Mack: (strikes cheesy advertising pose) Can you just say that again to camera? And then I'll do the same for you and the annual pipe-smoking awards.
Mitchell later commented that he thought Drak looked like a magician (I had been thinking this since Drak walked on-set; I'm glad I wasn't the only one). 'He could be the Derren Brown of pies.'
At one point, Mack was miming reading a tiny book and then caught himself putting it on the desk as he moved on. 'I just put the book down! It doesn't even exist!'
Mitchell's claim was that he'd been prising his bedroom door open for two years, since the handle fell off ('Two years is the length of time the handle has been broken, not the amount of time it takes to pry the door open').
Someone asked how the doorknob broke.
Mack: All the rent boys trying to get out. Or rent girls.
Mitchell: A variety of prostitutes trying to escape my bedroom.
Later:
Mack: You see, I can believe it's a sort of truth, in that the researchers for this show went to his flat to look for facts and there were scratches all over the door and he had to come up with an explanation quickly.
Mitchell: So your confidence that I am a serial murderer is telling you to say 'true'.
Mack: I didn't say you were a serial murderer! I wouldn't say that, because you're my friend. I'm saying you're a serial rapist. Murder victims don't scratch at doors.
Brydon painted a picture, complete with Mitchell-voice, of Hawes meeting Mitchell prior to her marriage, going back to his place, playing Boggle...
Brydon: And you're feeling good, 'cause he let you win, and he says, 'Shall we go upstairs?', and you go up, and there's no handle on the door... would that put you off?
Hawes: This actually happened to me.
Mitchell: ...I don't remember this.
Hawes: I woke up...
Mitchell: I've got to stop drinking.
Hawes: ...and I couldn't get out! He'd gone to work; I had to go to the window and call down to a granny to get the fire brigade.
Mitchell: I feel I should make it clear at this point that this wasn't my house.
The door-prying story, it turned out, was true. Brydon recorded a number of jokes afterwards. The first involved Mitchell's mother throwing Mitchell's clean underwear through the window; the second was blander and didn't get a laugh.
Mitchell: Thanks to your silence, you've just ensured that the mum-pants joke will stay in.
Brydon: No, there's one more.
Mitchell: Ah. (addressing the audience) You'll know whether or not I want you to laugh at this.
Brydon: (to camera) Yes, David has been prising his bedroom door open for two years! The doorknob broke in the first place, of course, because of the stream of nubile young Hollyoaks actresses...
(audience laughs)
Mitchell: Don't laugh at that!
Hawes claimed that she was releasing her own fragrance, named 'Dave' after her son's imaginary friend. Mack made the connection with David Mitchell.
Mitchell: The scent of defeat and decay.
Brydon gets to participate in the claim-making in this series, it seems, and his claim was that he pretended for a while to be his own agent on the phone, using a different voice.
Brydon: Someone actually said to me, 'Your agent is such a nice man.'
Mack: 'You're a twat.'
(laughter)
Brydon: (in the direction ofamandapear and sawnoffcourtney, I believe) Don't cackle at that!
The panellists started asking questions like 'Did you ever have a big falling-out?' and 'Do you still keep in touch?', causing Brydon to have an identity crisis and then sulk.
Brydon: Lee and these bastards: truth or lie?
Finally, an exchange that took place prior to the actual recording, because it amused me. During a conversation about Mitchell and Brooker:
anewcitylife: Fuck it, they just need to get married.
causethesounds: And then they can adopt me!
anewcitylife: Yeah, but that'd be creepy, 'cause you'd keep trying to walk in on them.
And she would!
I also love the people who could be there, though, because they wrote wonderful reports: derryderrydown, causethesounds.
Apparently (this isn't spoilery for the episode, as the context, alas, means it won't be broadcast), Brooker at one point, whilst relaying instructions from the voice in his ear to Mitchell, said, 'You want me to take off his what? Kiss him tenderly?'
BROOKER. BROOKER. YOU ARE MAKING IT VERY DIFFICULT FOR ME TO BE SANE ABOUT THIS PAIRING. I HONESTLY BELIEVE THAT YOU ARE GAY FOR DAVID MITCHELL AND YOU HAVE ONLY YOURSELF TO BLAME.
Anyway, last night I was able to attend another recording of Would I Lie To You?. I was rather hoping that the universe would make up for my absence at You Have Been Watching by having the guests be Charlie Brooker, Victoria Coren, Derren Brown and a clone of David Mitchell, but alas it was not to be. It was excellent fun, though!
The guests were Stephen Mangan, Kevin Bridges, Professor Brian Cox and Keeley Hawes (♥!). Fans present were
anewcitylife, causethesounds, chocolatepeach, swing_set, amandapear and sawnoffcourtney.Here is my report.
Some people with priority tickets must have failed to turn up, because we ended up only two rows back, very close to David Mitchell and Keeley Hawes. Hawes was gorgeous. Mitchell was adorable. It wasn't quite as wildly sexual-frustration-inducing as sitting near Brooker, but it was still fairly distracting.
David Mitchell and Keeley Hawes, incidentally, need to make out. She stroked his hair whilst the makeup lady was combing it! Also, Rob Brydon verbally wrote Mitchell/Hawes fanfiction; I'll return to this later.
(When I mentioned that I wanted Mitchell/Hawes,
anewcitylife misheard. After a moment's confusion, I realised it would probably be best to refer to Hawes as 'Keeley' when speaking aloud.)Mitchell cackled a lot! Perhaps four times? The audience cracked up every time he did. (Mitchell's cackle, for those who have not had the pleasure of hearing it, sounds like this.)
A couple of out-of-context quotes:
Brydon: Lee Mack is on fire tonight.
Mack: If only.
Mitchell: Is this show sponsored by Rohypnol? Because it seems to be mentioned an awful lot.
Mangan claimed to have names for both his big toes: Leslie and Scruple.
Mack: Do you do their little screaming voices when you cut your toenails?
Bridges told an absolutely bizarre, rambling, highly implausible story about accidentally buying a horse. During the cross-examination (which lasted a good twenty minutes. Hawes: 'Are there really three more rounds?'), Mitchell laughed so hard he doubled over at the desk and turned red. I laughed so hard I hyperventilated.
Mitchell: So what did he say when you tried to return the horse?
Bridges: The guy said - the guy said - the guy was gone.
Mack: (facepalm)
Cox: (looks at card) It says 'I once accidentally bought a house'!
Mitchell, summing up: So you were in Bulgaria, and you thought you would hire a horse for twenty-five minutes, presumably to leave time for adverts. You were on your way to the stables, but you met a man on the way there, and, thinking 'oh, there must be some sort of system', you paid an extortionate amount to hire this horse. When you were finished with the horse, you tried to return it not to the stables but to the random halfway point where you met this man, who of course was gone, and you tried to say 'hello, we've hired a horse under your Meeting Someone At A Random Point scheme', at which point over twenty-six locals ran up to you to say 'oh, no, you own it now'. If I live in a world in which all that can happen, I really don't care about losing a point on a parlour game, and on that basis we're saying it's false.
To the astonishment of all, it turned out to be true. It was mentioned throughout the rest of the recording, because it was just so ridiculous.
Mitchell: The horse incident has changed my perception of reality.
Mack: In the future, episodes of this are going to be divided into 'before the horse story' and 'after the horse story'.
When Bridges later started talking to Cox about Cox's past music career (rather to the annoyance of Brydon. 'Are you trying to start your own chat show?'):
Cox: The thing is, you talk so much bollocks I don't believe a word you say. I'm doubting my own life now.
Cox claimed to have shut down the Large Hadron Collider for three months by spilling yoghurt in it. He started trying to explain the technical function of the part on which he allegedly spilt yoghurt. Hawes pretended to fall asleep at her desk.
The gist of what Cox was long-windedly saying was that it transferred some sort of energy.
Mitchell: So are you telling us that it was a wire?
Cox: (laughs) It - it's a tungsten alloy -
Mitchell: I'm not saying it's not an excellent wire.
Later:
Cox: Well, as Mitchell well knows, [SCIENCE!]
Mack: Will you stop flirting with Mitchell?
Mitchell: Well, I'm very flattered, but I'm a historian. What I know is that Hitler died.
Eventually, Mitchell decided that the story was false, reasoning:
Mitchell: It's certainly more plausible than the buying-a-horse story, but I have to cling to the belief that some things that are more plausible than the buying-a-horse story haven't yet happened.
The 'Ring of Truth' question was about Richard Madeley. Cox explained that he thought Madeley was sinister because his (Cox's) wife had had a recurring dream in which she opened a door to find Richard Madeley there, wearing nothing but a pair of Speedos.
Hawes was horrified by the images. Mangan was strangely intrigued.
Mangan: Was he very hairy?
The 'This Is My...' guest was called Drak. He responded to Mack's 'All right, Drak?'
Brydon: Don't talk, Drak! I don't want to be draconian about this, but...
(audience silence)
Mitchell: (cackle!) ...oh, I'm horrible. I am a terrible, evil person. Sorry. I liked the 'draconian' remark very much. I'll enjoy it when I get home.
Bridges claimed that Drak had given him a driving lesson in which he reversed through a chip-shop window.
'Given that he was a driving instructor and you were at a chip shop,' Brydon says, 'you're lucky that he haddockar.'
Mitchell objected to this pun on the grounds that the setup made no sense. 'If he was a driving instructor, I would have thought it incredibly likely that he had a car. You could have said, "Given that he was a driving instructor, it's not surprising that he haddockar."'
Mack claimed that Drak was the winner of a Pie of the Year contest with which Mack was helping. Mitchell's team doubted it, thinking it the sort of clichéd Northern thing the researchers might have come up with.
Mitchell: Then again, if you have some sort of pie awards ceremony, who better to ask than Lee Mack?
Mack: (strikes cheesy advertising pose) Can you just say that again to camera? And then I'll do the same for you and the annual pipe-smoking awards.
Mitchell later commented that he thought Drak looked like a magician (I had been thinking this since Drak walked on-set; I'm glad I wasn't the only one). 'He could be the Derren Brown of pies.'
At one point, Mack was miming reading a tiny book and then caught himself putting it on the desk as he moved on. 'I just put the book down! It doesn't even exist!'
Mitchell's claim was that he'd been prising his bedroom door open for two years, since the handle fell off ('Two years is the length of time the handle has been broken, not the amount of time it takes to pry the door open').
Someone asked how the doorknob broke.
Mack: All the rent boys trying to get out. Or rent girls.
Mitchell: A variety of prostitutes trying to escape my bedroom.
Later:
Mack: You see, I can believe it's a sort of truth, in that the researchers for this show went to his flat to look for facts and there were scratches all over the door and he had to come up with an explanation quickly.
Mitchell: So your confidence that I am a serial murderer is telling you to say 'true'.
Mack: I didn't say you were a serial murderer! I wouldn't say that, because you're my friend. I'm saying you're a serial rapist. Murder victims don't scratch at doors.
Brydon painted a picture, complete with Mitchell-voice, of Hawes meeting Mitchell prior to her marriage, going back to his place, playing Boggle...
Brydon: And you're feeling good, 'cause he let you win, and he says, 'Shall we go upstairs?', and you go up, and there's no handle on the door... would that put you off?
Hawes: This actually happened to me.
Mitchell: ...I don't remember this.
Hawes: I woke up...
Mitchell: I've got to stop drinking.
Hawes: ...and I couldn't get out! He'd gone to work; I had to go to the window and call down to a granny to get the fire brigade.
Mitchell: I feel I should make it clear at this point that this wasn't my house.
The door-prying story, it turned out, was true. Brydon recorded a number of jokes afterwards. The first involved Mitchell's mother throwing Mitchell's clean underwear through the window; the second was blander and didn't get a laugh.
Mitchell: Thanks to your silence, you've just ensured that the mum-pants joke will stay in.
Brydon: No, there's one more.
Mitchell: Ah. (addressing the audience) You'll know whether or not I want you to laugh at this.
Brydon: (to camera) Yes, David has been prising his bedroom door open for two years! The doorknob broke in the first place, of course, because of the stream of nubile young Hollyoaks actresses...
(audience laughs)
Mitchell: Don't laugh at that!
Hawes claimed that she was releasing her own fragrance, named 'Dave' after her son's imaginary friend. Mack made the connection with David Mitchell.
Mitchell: The scent of defeat and decay.
Brydon gets to participate in the claim-making in this series, it seems, and his claim was that he pretended for a while to be his own agent on the phone, using a different voice.
Brydon: Someone actually said to me, 'Your agent is such a nice man.'
Mack: 'You're a twat.'
(laughter)
Brydon: (in the direction of
amandapear and sawnoffcourtney, I believe) Don't cackle at that!The panellists started asking questions like 'Did you ever have a big falling-out?' and 'Do you still keep in touch?', causing Brydon to have an identity crisis and then sulk.
Brydon: Lee and these bastards: truth or lie?
Finally, an exchange that took place prior to the actual recording, because it amused me. During a conversation about Mitchell and Brooker:
anewcitylife: Fuck it, they just need to get married.causethesounds: And then they can adopt me!anewcitylife: Yeah, but that'd be creepy, 'cause you'd keep trying to walk in on them.And she would!
no subject
I'm delighted that you enjoy the recording recaps! The recordings are so much fun to go to, and if I manage to share that fun with other people I feel that I'm doing my job.
Come to think of it, I'm simultaneously messy and obsessive as well. One of the reasons I love David Mitchell is he embodies so many things about myself that are rarely represented on television. We're not alone!
How did that take me a week to write? Rubbish. (And, after all that, I forgot to actually say hello. Hello! It's nice to meet you!)