Headscratchers / Would I Lie to You?

• Why did Angus Deayton get replaced? I do love Rob Brydon but I am very curious.
  • He made a series of offensive jokes about then-beloved Jimmy Savile while on the show.
    • Although he made those jokes towards the end of Series One (end of 2007), and then left after Series Two (beginning of 2009). If that was what got him fired, then it was obviously a bit of a delayed process. I also assume that Deayton once again getting fired from hosting a panel show under controversial circumstances would generate a bit more fuss in the media than there appears to have been (and certainly, in light of the revelations about Savile and his current reputation, I imagine it would have come up at some point since as well). In absence of any other information or evidence, I assume it was something simple and non-controversial along the lines of Creative Differences or Deayton getting tired of the job or something. If there was some kind of controversy or rift, we'd have likely heard something in over ten years.
  • It's possible that the producers simply thought that Brydon worked better for the show than Deayton did. Say what you will, the show's been pretty successful with Brydon in the host's chair, and there seems to be a lot more of a spark between him, David Mitchell (Actor) and Lee Mack than there ever was with the other two and Deayton. You just have to watch the episode in which Brydon appears as a guest to see that Brydon clearly works well with the material and has chemistry with the other two regulars.
• It seems that someone telling the truth is at a disadvantage since the point of the game is to convince the opposing team what you're saying is true. However they'll get a point if they correctly guess it's true. It's a head-scratcher in itself that it would seem the right thing to do here is to try to convince the other team you're lying without actually lying. They never seem to do this though and it would seem to defeat the purpose of the game. Lampshaded by David in one episode where Lee tried to prove his statement.
  • I think it's just that it's a harder skill to successfully disguise a true story. It involves thinking an extra step ahead. Trying to convince someone that a lie is true is a familiar activity to most of us; trying to convince someone that we want them to think we're telling the truth when really we want them to think we're lying because we are telling the truth would be a bit of a Mind Screw. And though the host never says so, the contestants have said a few times — plus it's just a common-sense necessary rule — that if the claim on the card is true as far as it goes, they're required to tell the truth in all the details too, because if they were allowed to make stuff up it would make the game unfair. So that limits their options somewhat. (Although Vic Reeves evidently didn't feel himself bound by this rule, and I guess there's really no way to enforce it.) I'd say this is more the fault of the team doing the judging, who often seem to assume every story is trying to sound true, than on the person doing the telling, because you can sometimes see people's efforts to make a true story sound false, whether skillfully (Stephen Mangan estimating the date of his story at "the late eighties... '83?") or really obviously (Janet Street-Porter reading her card with caveman-like difficulty to prove she'd never seen it before).
    • Another very good example of someone successfully passing off a truth as a lie: Claudia Winkleman exhibiting her pet turtle Yoshi; she mispronounced the name and acted as if she was disgusted by the animal.
  • While outright lying might be discouraged, I suspect that several guests who successfully pass off a true story as a lie have stretched the "required to tell the truth in all the details of a true story" requirement at least a little (I'd be very surprised, for example, if every single detail of some of Bob Mortimer's stories was the gospel truth, even if the fundamental claim he's defending has turned out to be true), partly because it does put the contestant at a bit of a disadvantage to have to scrupulously tell the truth but also because at the end of the day the point of the show is ultimately to be entertaining rather than scrupulously, unyieldingly, rigidly honest. It's a TV comedy show, not a courtroom, so even if the underlying claim is true it's not like there's going to be any repercussions if they fudge the details a bit for the sake of a laugh or for the sake of winning a point.

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