I Suspect There Was A 'Mr Whippy-Lash' Joke, But My Mind Has Blocked It Out.

[rionaleonhart]

A bit I'd forgotten to write down from the Would I Lie to You? recording on the sixth (the Wallace-Havers-Wadia-Brooker one): Gregg Wallace had a possession claim, a book that he said he read in the sauna to make it look older. As Wallace wears glasses, Lee Mack pointed out that these would steam up in a sauna; Wallace explained that he read in the sauna without glasses, holding the book very close to his face.

Mack: So someone else comes into the sauna, and you're sitting there, naked, like this: (holds the book over his face, then lowers it slowly to stare creepily over the top)
Brooker: If he really does read that book in saunas, it's infused with his sweat. You've just rubbed it all over your face.

Later, Mack started pestering Brooker to smell the book, possibly for fairness, so at least they'd both have rubbed it over their faces.

Brooker: I don't want to smell it!
Brooker: ...
Brooker: ...
Brooker: (presses the book to his nose and takes a quick sniff)
Brooker: I'm going to be disgusted with myself if that's true.


I went to yet another Would I Lie to You? recording yesterday! On David Mitchell's team were Frank Skinner and Bill Oddie; on Lee Mack's were Jon Richardson and Sarah Millican. The host, as ever, was Rob Brydon. Here is my report.



Sarah Millican's claim in the first round: 'I once wet myself in the car and blamed it on my friend's dog.'

Oddie: Well, who hasn't?

Mitchell: Why?
Millican: Because I was in the car and I really needed to go. Has that never happened to you?
Mitchell: It has happened to me, but I've never actually gone. Maybe that's just because I'm repressed.

I think Mitchell misunderstood and thought it was her friend's car, because the following exchange took place:

Mitchell: Was anyone else in the car with you?
Millican: No.
Mitchell: Why not?
Millican: ...because I was driving to work, and I don't need my parents to do that for me?

Mitchell: Was there a good reason for this? Were you in a traffic jam? Had you had a lot of Evian?
Millican: Tap water, it'd be, probably.
Mack: Is there going to be a class war?
Mitchell: Well, I've never been in a car with a tap, so I'm impressed.

Mitchell: In bed and breakfasts, they're asking you to piss in the sink. ...I have never actually pissed in a sink.
Richardson: Really? Because I'm weird, and even I've still done that.
Mitchell: Well, there's more than one scale of weirdness. It's not just 'the weirder you are, the less likely you are to have gone in a sink'. Is it? I hope that's not it.

Mitchell: Evidently, lavatories are just for me.
Mack: That'd be a great title for your autobiography.

Skinner: Well, obviously it (Millican's car-wee adventure) was safe enough, because you're alive.
Millican: I am. That's a fact.
Mitchell: They put that on one of my cards once. Nobody believed it.

Millican: I climbed over into the passenger seat, got my trousers down, did a wee, climbed back over, pulled my trousers back up: champion. I felt quite MacGyverish, like I'd fixed something that needed to be fixed.
Mitchell: That would be rather an untypical episode of MacGyver.


Frank Skinner: 'I was once taken to hospital in an ice-cream van. Instead of a siren, the driver played the ice-cream van music.'

Mack: Instead of dialling 999, did they just dial 99?

Skinner claimed that he'd twisted his ankle whilst playing rounders in Cornwall.

Mack: Did you know the ice-cream van driver?
Skinner: No. I didn't know anyone in Cornwall.
Mack: So why were you there?
Skinner: Well, I'd taken the people I know with me.
Mack: What, as hostages?

Richardson was dubious that this apparently took place in Truro, as the trains didn't go straight there; they would have had to change at Penzance.

Mack: Do you go up to people holidaying in the Lake District and ask why they didn't just stay at Heathrow?

Mack: How quickly did he put on the siren?
Skinner: It wasn't a siren; it was 'Greensleeves'. And I can't remember any part of the journey that didn't have 'Greensleeves' playing.
Richardson: But there probably wouldn't have been that much traffic in Cornwall. So he was just maximising the chances that you'd knock down a child.

Mack implied that a threesome took place in the van.

Skinner: 'Crushed nuts? No, just me ankle.'
Mack: (CHOKES)

Richardson began to wonder how bored they must have been to start playing rounders on holiday.

Mitchell: At the risk of sounding uncool—
Mack: No, don't do it! Your cool image is the only reason we brought you on this show!
Mitchell: —what's wrong with rounders? What were they meant to do all day in Cornwall: mine tin?

Brydon: (post-claim line) Ice-cream van accidents are rare, but always result in the tragic loss of hundreds and thousands.


Bill Oddie: 'I was once saved from drowning by a character from Rainbow.'

Mack: Which character?
Oddie: I'm not going to tell you! That'd be giving you too much!
Richardson: You'd make a terrible murder suspect.

Mitchell: Zippy and George only had one arm each, didn't they?
Mack: The other was coming out of their mouth.
Mitchell: (appalled) WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?

Freddy and Jane of Rainbow were apparently a couple.

Mitchell: Rod must have felt quite left out.
Mack: He was busy fisting the hippo.
Mitchell: Are you saying that every time they put the puppets on they thought of it as an act of violation?
(Mack mimes shoving one's fist into a puppet and then making it speak)
Millican: Do you think when people are actually fisting they pretend to make their hands talk inside the other person?
Mitchell: I'm sorry, how much of the programme did they say should be about fisting, again? Twenty per cent? Because we've managed at least fifteen.

Later, Mack was asked for a broadcastable version of the hippo-fisting line. He mimed getting Zippy to give him a blowjob. I'm not sure he quite understands what 'broadcastable' means.


Jon Richardson: 'I will not look at or be within ten feet of a tomato.' He said that biting into a raw tomato 'reminded' him of biting into a human leg, worryingly.

Skinner: What if you committed a crime in mediaeval times? They'd put you in the stocks and throw tomatoes at you.
Mack: 'Greensleeves' playing in the background.
Mitchell: (quite as appalled as he was by all the puppet-fisting) He said mediaeval!
Mack: All right!
Skinner: What would you do in that situation?
Richardson: Well, this isn't a scenario I've really considered, but in that situation I'd be very... unable to do anything about it, because you can't move much when you're in stocks. I wouldn't be able to cope as a mediaeval felon.
Mitchell: But you wouldn't even be able to throw the tomatoes. That's the good part!
Richardson: I'd throw a rotten courgette, don't get me wrong.
Mitchell: Where are you going to source a courgette in the fifteenth century? Fifteenth, Lee, not sixteenth.

Mitchell: Why won't you be within ten feet of one? I can understand not wanting to eat them, but it's easy to be in the same room as a tomato without suddenly eating it.
Richardson: It's a slippery slope, though, isn't it?
Mitchell: It is a slope with tremendous grip! It is perfectly possible to be in a room full of food and people and machinery without eating all of it. I question whether it's a slope at all.

Richardson: It's like vegetarians. You know when some vegetarians haven't had meat for, like, fifteen years, and then they accidentally eat some and throw up? I reckon I'd be like that with a tomato.
Mitchell: But many vegetarians are perfectly happy to be in the same room as some meat.
Richardson: But some aren't. There are those vegetarians who won't even be in the same room as another person because they're afraid they'll accidentally eat them.
Mitchell: ...are there?
Richardson: I once met a vegetarian through a wall...


The warmup, Charlie Baker, had recently won Let's Dance for Comic Relief. Mack commented 'at least you didn't dress up as a woman for cheap laughs' and realised too late he was looking in Millican's direction as he said it. She hit him.


Brydon at one point described Mitchell's demeanour as 'like a disinterested policeman'.

Mitchell: Uninterested, surely. All good policemen should be disinterested. (Brydon is confused.) 'Disinterested' means 'impartial'.
('I love him,' I squeaked at this point.)
Skinner: This show should be called Would I Speak Ungrammatically to You?
Mack: (Mitchell-voice) 'I think you'll find it's "non-grammatically".'
Mitchell: That's an uncanny impression. Of course, I would never say that, because 'ungrammatically' is fine.


Richardson said that the 'This Is My...' guest had hit his car when they were both on their driving tests and subsequently asked him for his number 'so they could make sure they didn't both go out for their tests on the same day again'.

Mitchell: So, failing to notice the obvious flirting that was going on, you—
Richardson: Well, it's difficult to flirt with a girl who's already rear-ended you.


Millican claimed to have tricked the tabloid press into printing a fabricated story regarding the 'This Is My...' guest.

Mitchell: How did they respond when you came clean?
Millican: They were quite upset.
Mitchell: How did this upsetness manifest itself?
Millican: There was a man from the Mirror sitting in his car outside our flat...
Mitchell: ...crying.


Mack claimed that the 'This Is My...' guest was the receptionist who'd helped him eject a peacock from his hotel room.

Mitchell: Where was this?
Mack: It was in Dorchester.
Skinner: You notice he didn't say the hotel was in Hilton? If you're going to come up with a fake place for a hotel... 'It was in the small village of Roomservice.'

Mack: I got back, the peacock was in my room, and I thought '...well, I did have a heavy night...'

Oddie: Was this a place with an ornamental garden?
Mack: Yes, I think it did have an ornamental garden.
Mitchell: Was this ornamental garden—
Skinner: Can I just say, I've never heard the phrase 'ornamental garden' in my life, and three people have just said it.
Mitchell: Bill said it with such authority. I assumed it was the correct term.
Mack: I was convinced. I'd have gone along with anything he said. 'Did you have a boogle woogle?' 'Yes, I did have a boogle woogle.'

At this point, reipan, who was sitting next to me, broke into uncontrollable silent laughter. This lasted for, I am not exaggerating, four minutes. She's always had a weakness for silly-sounding phrases.

Mack at once point said that he was trying to sort of waft the peacock out of his room. Mitchell seized on this and proceeded to use 'waft' continually to describe Mack's peacock-shooing technique, to Mack's frustration. 'Can you use a word that makes me sound a bit more masculine?'

Mack claimed to have edged nervously around to the phone ('It was one of those things where something suddenly becomes really scary when it's in your room') and called the receptionist, who came up to help get rid of it.

Richardson: It was a ruse by the peacocks to distract the receptionist. When she gets back to reception: fifty peacocks. 'This is our hotel now.' (mimes peacock tails snapping out to form a wall)

Mitchell: Would there really be that extravagant a hotel in Dorchester?
Mack: I think you're exaggerating the niceness of this hotel in your head. It wasn't that posh.
Mitchell: Oh, yes, all those very downmarket places with peacocks.
Mack: Peacocks aren't that posh. People farm peacocks.
Mitchell: Who farms peacocks? In any case, you tend to get them in places that are very—
Mack: Rural.

At this point, Mitchell went into full-blown bellowing rant mode.

Mitchell: ...SO THERE YOU WERE, UNSUCCESSFULLY TRYING TO—
Mack: If you dare say 'waft'...
Mitchell: —WAFT THE PEACOCK OUT OF YOUR ROOM, AND YOU CALLED UP THE RECEPTIONIST TO HELP AND SHE SAID TO THE PEACOCK 'OH, SORRY ABOUT LEE, HE'S SO STUCK UP.'

When the peacock story was revealed to be a lie:

Mack: I'd have punched that fucking peacock.


Mitchell claimed to have won a colouring-in competition and, as a prize, shared a pizza(!) with racing driver Nigel Mansell.

Richardson: How old were you?
Mitchell: Seven.
Millican: He's never been seven.

Mitchell said that he had chosen a picture of the interior of a theatre to colour from several options.

Richardson: What were the other pictures?
Mitchell: Well, I can't really remember, but there was probably a seaside scene, a—
Millican: More fun-looking things.
Mitchell: I do hate fun, as you well know. I was looking for a funeral scene, of course, or an operation gone wrong, but in the end I had to make do with the theatre.

Mack: I'm not buying this 'seven' thing. I mean, how old are you? Thirty-five, thirty-six?
Mitchell: I'm not claiming to be seven now. They should put that on one of my cards. 'Despite appearances to the contrary, I am in fact a child.'

Can't quite remember the context for this, but:

Mitchell: Yes, Lee, I know you didn't eat food until you were fifteen, but I had a very privileged upbringing. I'd have thought we'd have established this by now.

Millican's eventual verdict:

Millican: I don't believe it, firstly because even colouring in sounds like too much fun for him and secondly because I don't think he'd have done it himself. He'd have someone to do it for him. Like staff.


Brydon: Yes, Lee Mack does amuse himself by shaving one side of his face and pretending to have a conversation between two different people. Tell me, Lee: have you ever considered Sky?
Millican: Or counselling?


Richardson had a 'possession' claim.

Richardson: This is my emergency travel kit. I keep it in my car at all times.
Mitchell: Well, obviously you don't keep it in your car at all times, because it's here now. Lie!

(Mitchell takes the box to examine it)
Richardson: That's the first time I've ever given another man my box.

Mitchell: I'm going to repack this in a sort of parody of respect. As it is, I think it's nonsense.



Many thanks to valderys, who was kind enough to drive our party back to the tube station! My evil plan is to contribute detailed write-ups so that people will be more inclined to offer me tickets to things; evidently her evil plan is offering transport. It is an evil plan of which I heartily approve.