Humpday Funday: The clash of the titans

David Mitchell and Bob Mortimer

Some of my favorite things to watch are British comedy panel shows. We don't really have that sort of show in the United States. The tl;dr version of what a panel show is this: It's usually in the form of a quiz show, with competing sets of comedians—usually British, but occasionally with expats living in the UK—vying against each other for honor, glory, and a paycheck. Panel shows abound on both the BBC and Channel 4.

My favorite panel show is Would I Lie To You, where the panellists are presented with cards detailing some anecdote in their lives, which may or may not have occured. The opposing team has to, as the tag line goes, "sort the fact from the fiction". It's about to go into its 19th series, so that's not too shabby.

The show has two permanent team captains: The quick-witted Lee Mack, and the Renaissance Man David Mitchell. (No, really; last year he published a popular history of England's monarchs, from King Arthur (spoiler: he didn't exist) to Elizabeth I. Let's see John Oliver do that.)

Dozens of guests have graced the WILTY stage. But no guest gets under David's skin more than Bob Mortimer.

Bob Mortimer. He is wonderfully strange. He trained as a lawyer until he realized he wasn't unscrupulous enough to make a career of it. He was the long-time comedy partner of equally surreal talent Vic Reeves—real name Jim Moir, who is also an amazing artist. Bob has a long-running series on the BBC called Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing, which is a wonderfully gentle series of two friends traversing the British Isles, taking in prime angling areas, and discoursing on life. (Such a show would never get made in the US.) 

Now the thing about Bob is this: He's had innumerable unbelievable adventures. When he goes on WILTY, he is always on Lee Mack's team. And over the course of the nineteen series, he has become David's bête noire; as David says, no matter how implausible one of Bob's stories is, it could be true, and no matter how plausible his tale is, it could very well be a lie. In one episode during the pandemic—series 16, episode 6, if you want to view it on YouTube—he has the misfortune of Bob getting two questions. When Bob comes up for the second time, David exclaims "Oh dear God." 

So, for our Humpday Funday, because I really do want to get back to not having every piece on this blog be about the mishigas through which we are living, enjoy a compilation of David and Bob tussling, with David humorously going through his living hell.

This is also a memorial to our lost member, Howie14, who shared with me a love for this brand of light entertainment. Wherever you are, I hope life is treating you well.