Lee Mack's Not Going Out special has hilarious live TV flub

From Digital Spy

Lee Mack tempted the TV gods with a live Not Going Out Christmas special, and, aside from a few minor flubs, he somehow managed to give fans a real festive treat.

The one-off episode aired on Friday night (December 21), taking a delightfully meta approach by having Lee (Lee Mack) and Lucy (Sally Bretton) planning their own Christmas variety show called Ding Dong Merrily on Live Christmas Spectacular to raise money for the kids' school.

Unfortunately, quality talent is hard to find, so the couple had to throw together a scrappy line-up that included an 'animal impersonator', an egg juggler and a knife thrower. The Royal Variety, it was not!

The episode started with Lee and Lucy delivering a monologue to camera about all of the potential problems that a live show can pose – and they learned that lesson a few seconds later!

Within two minutes of the episode starting, Lucy flubbed a line while ironically describing just how easily live shows can turn into "a disaster". However, Lee recovered a split-second later with a hilarious one-liner.

"What if it's a disaszzz," she stumbled, before correcting herself: "What if it's a disaster?"

Lee glanced to camera and then smiled: "I dunno, I think you carried it off quite well there!"

It was such spontaneous moments that fans really found hilarious - and, let's face it, it wasn't exactly a 'How's Adam'-level error anyway!

Later in the episode, Lee slipped a topical reference into the debate over whether Jeremy Corbyn referred to Prime Minister Theresa May as a "stupid woman" in Parliament.

When Lucy complained that he was just a "stupid man", he quipped: "Well you really are a… stupid people!"

Somehow, the pair managed to pull off their Christmas variety show without a hitch, even when Lee had to stand in for the knife-throwing act – yes, he threw real knives at Lucy on live TV and thankfully didn't impale her.

In the final moments, Sally Bretton seemed relieved to have got through this live Christmas special relatively unscathed, but begged her co-star not to plan any live shows for next year.

"Don't worry, next year's live show will be a lot more simple," Lee assured her, before pulling out a pair of ice skates.

While Lucy might not have been thrilled, the special was a roaring success for viewers:

Lee Mack's festive special follows a trend of live holiday events from the BBC. At Halloween, viewers were freaking out over a live episode from Inside No. 9 that messed with the very conventions of telly.

Not Going Out Live might not have been quite as flawless, but that knife-throwing was pretty impressive, wasn't it?

Fans of the show will be thrilled to know that Father Christmas has already blessed them with a tenth series, although there's no air date set yet.

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