Before we get to Bob, I want to say that I love TV. I have always loved it. I read a lot of writers saying that they haven’t got one, don’t watch anything, and I always think, Are you nuts? For a start, that’s where the best writing has been, for the last decade or so, maybe for most of the twenty-first century. No novel, I’m sad to say, has provoked as much conversation as Fleabag, Mad Men, Girls or Succession. And before you complain that it’s not a fair fight, and then TV get piped into your living room whether you want it or not… these conversations are being had by exactly the same demographic that used to talk about Bonfire Of The Vanities, or the Rabbit books. But it’s not just that. TV eats up an awful lots of ideas. It eats up a considerable number of your ideas, whatever it is you’re doing. A comic trope that has become a TV cliche has, de facto, become a cultural cliche. But if you are sitting in your log cabin in the middle of nowhere refusing to watch, you have no idea what this cliche is. So watching TV has become a part of the writer’s job now. We need to know what’s going on.
That was an entirely pointless way of introducing a hymn of praise to an unscripted TV show, and a completely unscripted person.
As many English readers will be aware, there is a much-loved BBC panel show called Would I Lie To You - WILTY to its fans - , a show that is still going strong after seventeen seasons. The idea is simple. A team-member picks up a card in front of him and reads out what’s on it, and what’s on it is either the truth or a lie, and the other team has to guess which. The story on the card is always autobiographical, or faux-autobiographical, so only the card-reader can know whether it’s the truth or a lie.
The two team captains, David Mitchell and Lee Mack, are both clever, funny, and stupefyingly quick comedians; the four guests tend to be stand-ups too, and many of them make return visits. But nobody has made as many return visits as Bob Mortimer. When Bob Mortimer is a guest, a buzz goes around Twitter (“Bob’s on tonight!”). You know you have a chance of seeing five minutes of comic genius that may leave you unable to breathe. A Bob appearance on WILTY is afforded the same anticipation as an important sporting event. And a photo of him holding a card has become a meme, usually wheeled out when a Conservative politician has said or done something so preposterous that the only plausible explanation is be a WILTY segment. Here’s one, from the COVID Partygate days.
(And yes, that actually happened.)
Bob is a former solicitor. He was part of a successful double-act before branching out on his own. His autobiography went to the top of the Sunday Times bestseller lists. He is deeply eccentric, and he may well be the most-loved person in England. He certainly doesn’t divide opinion.
Here are three clips from WILTY. The stories are shaggy and extraordinary. They are not all true, but they are told with conviction. Please observe how Bob makes fellow comedians helpless with laughter. Professional pride and jealousy usually requires a straight face. Bob’s tall tales are very funny and ingenious and full of quite brilliant narrative detail. I would take these clips and others (there are very helpful YouTube collections of all his appearances) to a desert island with me. Give yourself time to savour them.
Number one: Does Bob perform his own dentistry?
Number 2: Was Bob ordered to leave the town of Castle Douglas because he was frightening the locals?
Does Bob take a bath with an egg in it, following advice from the singer Chris Rea? Some context required for American readers. Both Bob and Chris Rea come from Middlesbrough, in the north-east of England. They are both fans of Middlesbrough Football Club. There used to be a tradition that when football teams reached a cup final, they would record a song to celebrate the achievement, Sometimes these songs reached the top of the charts. They would occasionally involve celebrity supporters. It’s not a spoiler to tell you that Bob and Chris Rea - big at the end of the ‘80s and ‘90s, a poor man’s Mark Knopfler - recorded Rea’s ‘Let’s Dance’ in 1997, with the Middlesborough players.
I personally don’t think you can absorb the full magnificence on first viewing, and in any case, if you are new to these clips, you will want other people to watch them, and you won’t be able to get on with something else while they do so. I got waylaid drafting this post, and I have seen them…Well. Let’s just say I have seen them more than once. You’re welcome.
We do beg your pardon, we are in your garden!
He is just brilliant. On this, on Taskmaster, on a boat with Paul Whitehouse, everything he does is golden.