Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Judi Dench, Bob Mortimer, Graham Norton, Jimmy Carr, Greg Davies, David Mitchell (British Comedy RPF), Lee Mack, Rob Brydon

Additional Tags:

Crack Treated Seriously, Crack Crossover, Married Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Autistic Shane Hollander, Taskmaster (UK TV) References, Famous Shane Hollander, Humor, Fluff and Humor, this is the most niche fic i have ever written, like three people are going to find this funny and they have all already seen it, Social Media, Mixed Media

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of Shane Hollander, Famous

Collections:

I need sunshine ☀️🏒 ~ Heated Rivalry (Game Changers) fics, Lazer's Social Media fics, Best of Hollanov

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-20 Words: 30,421 Chapters: 1/1

Would I Lie to You?

Summary

“Shane,” Ilya said slowly, putting his phone in his pocket as he walked into their home gym to find Shane running on the treadmill. “Do you mean to tell me that the years of you doing ‘just a little promo’ has actually been you tormenting David Mitchell with your apparently not incredibly boring life? And you never thought to mention it once?”

“Huh?” Shane called, slowing the treadmill to a walk to glance over his shoulder at where Ilya was stood. “What do you mean?”

“I mean there are lots of tweets here about you on these shows and you seem to be giving all of them aneurysms?” Ilya said, pulling his phone back out and opening up twitter to show Shane.

//

Or; Shane Hollander is far more famous than the Hockey world ever realised

Notes

hello this work uses a workskin pretty please make sure you have it set so you can see them i did not do all this coding for it to turn out looking scuffed :3

This fic started out with the concept of shane hollander being more famous than he realises and somewhere along the line we got lost and it became shane hollander terrorising british comedians... don't ask me how

“Judi Dench, do you still go clubbing, do you still cut a rug?” Graham asked, tapping his question cards together on his knee. 

“Do you know I've never ever been to a club in my life,” the crowd mumbled sounds of shock and dismay, “yes terrible quite-”

“Judi Dench, you lie like a rug.”

“Oh, do I?”

“Yes, yes you have– I bumped into you in heaven.” 

Judi thought for a moment before bringing her hand to her mouth in shock, Shane was grinning from ear to ear.

“Oh yes you did! Absolutely true, they took us in through the backdoor.”

“Wouldnt they,” Graham said, his eyebrows cocked and his mouth pulled into a cheeky grin.

“Story of her life,” Shane added, patting Judi on the shoulder affectionately. He felt comfortable in a way that he hadn’t quite ever been able to explain - he supposed it was something to do with the way Graham put the guests at ease, the way it felt like he was talking to a friend rather than an audience of thousands.

Part of him thought that it was because he could just be Shane here. He wasn’t Shane Hollander gay asian-canadian hockey player. He wasn’t Shane Hollander, ex-disgraced captain of the Montreal Voyagers. He was just– Shane, sat on a sofa with his friends, talking about Judi clubbing, or Greg working in a school, or Bob's podcast. Half the time he didn’t even need to talk, he was more than content sitting back and listening to the practiced way Graham put everyone at ease.

“That is the only time,” Judi confirmed solemnly.

“Is that really the only time?”

“Yes!”

“Did you not have a nice night? You looked like you were having fun.”

“Yes I think we did.”

“I’m gay and I've never been to heaven, I've never been there either. That's astonishing, why were you there for god's sake?” Shane asked, finding himself genuinely curious in a way that was easy on this sofa.

“That's a good question too” Judi thought for a moment. When she was unable to think of an answer she turned to Graham who was practically jumping out of his seat.

“I know the answer to that too, you were there to see Cher.”

“What?”

“You were there to see Cher, the singer Cher.”

“Oh yes that's right!”

“Well anyway Judi isn’t this just like a little reunion, obviously Greg, Bob, Shane you’re all familiar with each other– but did you two know that Judi and Shane actually know each other?”

“What?”

“I know,” Graham said with faux surprise as if he hadn’t already been told the story by whatever researchers were paid to find the juicy details about all of the guests that found themself sat on the sofa talking to Graham. “Oh do tell us how that went down please I have been dying to know ever since I saw the two of you pictured together!”

“Where was that again?” Shane asked, turning to face Judi more fully as he did.

“Oh you know I don't remember.”

“I know I know! It was at the red carpet for the cinematic release of Spirited” Graham answered, beaming his usual characteristic grin and practically bouncing out of his seat with excitement at getting to hear this story.

“Graham, why do you know that?”

“It’s my job to know that Shane.”

“Well, you're very good at it,” Shane said sincerely. Graham waved his hand in the air dismissively.

“Oh stop you, you’ll make me blush”

“Well, do you want to tell the story or should I?”

“Oh no you tell it go on,” Judi said, settling back a bit into the sofa to watch Shane speak.

“Ok so I was at the red carpet, and well I don't know if you know this but I don't exactly do well in environments like that.”

“You do press all the time post games surely you’d be used to it by now?” Graham asked.

“I mean it’s different, the press for hockey is always the same it’s oh ‘how do you feel about winning?’ or ‘how do you feel about your loss?’ and ‘what can you do to be better?’ its like hmm I don’t know maybe if we score more fucking goals than the other team that would be good right? Whereas a red carpet is like– big.”

“Big.” Graham repeated simply, raising his eyebrows a little as he did.

“Yeah like its fucking big theres maybe ten reporters in a busy hockey press room, you guys have fucking hundreds of people shouting at you and calling your name it seems so stressful!” The rest of the sofa nodded a little in agreement as Shane continued. “Anyway like I said I don’t do super well on them and I mean I was only there because Ryan thought I would like the film-”

“Ryan?”

“Oh Ryan Reynolds? Sorry I forget I'm supposed to clarify who I'm talking about - it drives the guys on the team mad for some reason.” Shane shrugged a little with a look that said he very much did not understand why it might be necessary to clarify that the ryan he was talking about was ryan reynolds, nor why him knowing ryan reynolds might be shocking to any number of hockey players. 

“So yeah no one is really there for me I'm just there because he thinks I'd like the film and I'm just trying to avoid the cameras really because they're all so loud and there's so much flashing in my face so I kind of rounded off around the back somewhere to try and find a quieter way down to the screen when I bumped into Judi-”

“Bumped is an understatement he nearly bowled me over!” she added, joining in to Shane's story.

“I said I was sorry!” he cringed a little remembering the event. “Could you imagine the headlines if I had actually knocked you over though? I don’t think I'd be allowed back in the country honestly”

“Rightfully so! Dame Judi Dench taken out by a Canadian hockey player, the people would riot in the streets!” Bob chimed in, Shane had almost forgotten there were other people on the sofa with him. The world seemed to have narrowed to himself and Graham and occasionally Judi - studio lights and live audience be damned Graham really did do a remarkable job of making Shane feel like he was the only person in the room.

“Well-” Shane grinned a little at Bob's comment and Judi brought her hand to her mouth, the memory seeming to have caught up with her.

“Oh no you can’t-” she insisted, waving it away like she could shoo the story off the sofa.

“Come on, it's funny!”

“It is not I sound like an idiot!” she insisted. Dame Judi Dench did not pout, it was unbecoming, however, if dame Judi Dench did pout she would most certainly be doing so now.

“Oh do tell do tell please you’ve got us all on the edge of our seats!” Graham said excitedly, clearly knowing the outcome of the story already and wanting to pry the juicy details from Judi's clutches.

“Ok, alright fine but you must know how bad I felt afterwards.” she relented, allowing Shane to continue with his story.

“Ok so we get to talking and she’s laughing and we’re chatting about the film - she ends up giving me her number so we can keep in touch and I don’t think anything of it right?”

“Oh of course, we all know what it’s like to be given Dame Judi Dench's number - hardly crosses your mind, it's such an insignificant event” Greg commented from where he was sat on the other side of Bob. 

“Well, anyway, a few days later I'm back home and I get this text from her that just says ‘you play hockey? But you're so funny I thought you must have been a comedian or something?!’ and I just cracked up because can you imagine the Dame Judi Dench thinking you were so funny you must be a comedian?”

“You thought he was a comedian?” Greg asked.

“Well- no actually at first I thought maybe he might have been a model, you know something to that effect he’s just so handsome you know!”

“Stop, no you didn’t did you?” Shane's cheeks flushed as Judi spoke.

“Of course I did look at you!”

“Oh my god thats so embarrassing what the fuck.” 

“Shane, were you not named the hottest player in the NHL? Is it such a surprise-” Graham started but Shane interrupted him with a series of half strangled cries.

“I- yes I mean technically I was but come on those things are never really serious its just one person sat in an office deciding it.” Shane said, he could feel the heat radiating down his neck, never one for being able to accept compliments well.

“I think technically it was a popular vote,” Graham chimed in, adding fuel to the fire that Shane hoped would take him out so he could get out of this awkward conversation about if he was or was not attractive.

“He’s always so humble you know- never one to brag about his achievements” Judi said matter of factly. It warmed his heart a little, he had always had the weight of his success laid upon his shoulders, it was something he had been carrying for a very long time. The constant drive to be the best had been pushing him forwards for so long he rarely let himself bask in the pride he knew he was supposed to feel about his achievements. 

Still it was nice to hear from someone so far removed from his world that everything he had worked for was not to be sniffed at.

“So how did you find out he was a hockey player then?” Graham pressed, 

“Well I guess someone took a picture of us together - you know how these sorts of events are there are people everywhere you never get a moment to yourself,” Judi continued.

“It's the worst right?!”

“Yes well anyway one of my great grandchildren saw the photo on one of those twitter social media things and asked me how I knew Shane Hollander and I know she's a fan of these sort of would I lie to you, taskmaster type shows so I thought maybe he might be a comedian not a model and then they told me he was some super famous hockey player that everyone knew and the rest is history!”

“Have you ever wanted to do those sorts of panel shows?”  Graham asked

“Oh I don’t know if I would be very good at them–” Shane said with a knowing grin, “the people on them are supposed to be funny right? I've always been told I am incredibly boring.”

“Well I find that hard to believe!”

“No really! I mean maybe it's because those sorts of shows aren't really a thing in Canada or maybe it's just a different sort of humour but I don't know that I've got the personality for them you know?”

“So there's a video of you warming up that went a bit viral recently, you must have seen this, I mean the stretching these guys do” Graham said, turning the attention back to Shane. There was a smattering of whoops and cheers from the crowd at the mention of the stretching.

“Ah you know I mean my warm up has been the same for as long as I've been playing hockey honestly.”

“Now what is that? Is it because it's taught that way or is it something else?”

“No, I mean everyone figures out their own sort of routine for warming up, you think of guys like Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin. Those guys have sort of perfected what they do and what works for them and I'm the same. There's a few things everyone tends to do I think– we’ll walk the kids through the same sort of warmups and stretches but eventually they’ll find their own thing.”

“Would you show us just a little?” Graham asked, a coy smile stretched across his face. The crowd went wild cheering and whooping and calling out for it.

“In this suit? Graham, what are you doing to me!” Shane blushed a little as he spoke.

“Oh go on.”

“If I'm showing you guys how to stretch you all have to join in I think it's only fair,” Shane said, standing from the sofa and holding an arm out for Judi to use to get herself up. 

Together the five of them made their way down the small step onto the main studio floor where there was a little more room.

“Ok, alright alright so what are we doing where are we going?” Graham asked, half fussing about, half ushering people to congregate into roughly the same area.

“Well if we just- yeah down here is spacious enough for all of us I think right?” Shane said, coming to a stop at a clear spot on the floor a few feet away from the first row of the audience. 

He arranged Greg, Bob, Judi and  Graham in a sort of rough semi circle ensuring there was enough space between each of them before taking his own place at the head of the group.

“What do you want the whole warm up routine? Because that might take a while.”

“Just a few stretches I think we’ve got time for that don't you think?”

“Ok, ok alright then so if you start out stretching your arms up and over your head and lean back as far as you can breathing in– now breath out and swing your arms between your legs like this.”

Shane took a breath to steady himself, he supposed it was no different really to when he had been asked to do some yoga at the cottage for that programme, albeit there wasn’t quite such a large audience watching him as he stretched. He let himself relax into the familiar movements, even restricted as he was in his suit he was still able to take steady breaths out and fold himself down letting his back stretch out as he moved down and again as he breathed in and pulled himself backwards like a puppet pulled taut.

“Oh I dont think I can bend like that anymore Shane” Judi said, watching as the others tried to follow along with what Shane was calling out.

“Just as far as you can Judi, they’ll have my head if I throw your back out.” Shane reassured, letting himself fold forwards and backwards a few more times to ease the knots that had settled there.

“So once I've done a few of those,” Shane started, shifting himself down onto his knees to stretch out his hips before looking around a little lost without his hockey stick. “I mean normally I have a stick so it's a little different.”

“Oh we have sticks I think, right?” Graham said, looking past the cameras to where the crew were pointing, gesturing to behind the sofa where they had been sat. “They're- oh yes there they are! Just behind the sofa if you pass them down, and yep yeah pass them along that's good!”

The hockey sticks made their way down the line, being passed along until everyone had one.

“Normally what I like to do is-” Shane struggled for a second to figure out how to explain the positioning before eventually giving up and deciding to just get on the floor first to show them what he meant. “So you're gonna get down like this into a position a bit like a frog with your legs splayed out, and I mean obviously it's easier on the ice because you can slide your knees in and out easier but the floor here is slippy enough that you’ll be able to move a little at least. You're just gonna brace yourself on your stick in front of you like this and then slide your knees in and out.”

Shane was met with mostly blank stares from everyone else so once again he took the lead, letting his hips stretch as he slid his knees in and out. The crowd was a cacophony of hoots and cheers and woos as he let his arms slide out in front of him, stretching his back at the same time as he stretched his hips.

From the corner of his eye he could see Greg, Bob, Graham and Judi all attempting to follow along with varying degrees of success. Judi was knelt on her hands and knees with the hockey stick trapped beneath her more like an ikea table than a stretch but Shane could forgive her for not wanting to try in a dress. Greg and Bob had taken it upon themselves to attempt the stretches facing towards each other, while Graham was now faced in towards the group, his back to the audience. 

Greg looked a little bit like if you dropped a cat statue on uneven ground as he wobbled about Shane thought, though it would be mean to point it out. 

“Shane I don't think these stretches were built for people my size.” Greg complained, finally managing to get somewhat into the stretch but with much complaint and very little elegance.

“You don't get to use that as an excuse Greg we’ve got guys bigger than you playing hockey and they all stretch like this.”

“Yeah but even your heavy guys have got washboard abs, my gut hits the ground before my knees do most of the time frankly its a fucking miracle you’ve got me this far.”

“Me and my friends almost got arrested doing this in Scotland once” Bob chimed in, following along with Shane's stretching with relative ease.

“Bob what the fuck are you talking about?” Shane asked with a laugh. He had long since stopped stretching himself, content to sit and watch to see how long it would take the others to realise he had stopped.

Judi clocked him first, getting up from the floor and coming to rest beside where Shane was sitting, Graham was next ushering the two of them back over to the sofa with a grin while Bob and Greg continued to half stretch, half thrust at the floor with about as much technique as Shane would have expected.

“Well you see it was me, Ken - Top-Heavy Ken we called him, Mickey the drink and Good Monson on a road trip around Scotland,” Bob explained, not pausing his stretching to tell his story. “We were somewhere on a road to Edinburgh up from Carlisle but we had opted to go a little more rural a route because we wanted to immerse ourself in the culture you see. The four of us were in kilts of course, and Ken - Top-Heavy Ken, he had this awful cramp, we had been driving too long and so Mickey the drink pulled us off to the side of the road and said he knew some stretches that were good for alleviating and preventing cramps - much like this you know except because of the kilts of it all– and we were wearing them traditionally you know, we were apparently giving the local wildlife a bit of a show, except the local wildlife also included a policeman– who was a sergeant by the way, and he wasn’t too happy with the view. We were almost arrested but we managed to convince him we didn't speak English and he got tired of trying to figure out what we were saying so he let us go.”

“I don't think I can get up actually, I think the floor might be my home now sorry Graham you’ll just have to work around me.” Greg said, before lifting his head up a little further to realise that it was only him and Bob still half-heartedly attempting to stretch while the other three giggled at them from where they were sat on the sofa. “Oh you fuckers.”

“Here I'll give you a hand,” Shane relented, walking over and offering a hand down to Greg who looked at it like it was as much use as a chocolate teacup.

“I don’t think you’re going to be able to lift me up.”

“Is that a bet?” Shane asked, his eyes suddenly sharp and fiery.

“It is not so much a bet as it is a guarantee Shane I am six foot eight and well over a hundred kilos.” 

“I reckon I could, if you sit back on your knees I reckon I could get you up onto my shoulders and squat you up. You aren't total deadweight, you'll still be helping me even if you don’t think you are.”

Greg's protests were quickly buried under chants of ‘Shane, Shane, Shane, Shane’ from the crowd. Greg sighed and shifted onto his knees, holding his arms up as Shane maneuvered himself under him. He shifted Greg's weight onto his shoulders and pressed up onto his knees before finally managing to stand up. 

Greg wasn't sure whether to laugh or scream from the shock as Shane hauled the two of them back over to where everyone else was sat, up the few steps before dropping him somewhat unceremoniously onto the sofa again.

“I- genuinely did not think you were going to be able to do that.” he said with a laugh, slapping him on the back affectionately. 

“I’m stronger than I look - I once had to carry Matt Rempe back to his room and he’s like as tall as you and over 100kg but people tend to underestimate me because I'm quick you know? I’m not necessarily some enforcer slamming people to the ice and giving them concussions but I know how to hold my own against people like that and that includes being able to shove them back if I need to.”

“Oh Shane, you can’t dangle a story like that in front of us and not elaborate!” Graham perked up, latching onto the little detail Shane had shared and running with it.

“It's nothing special. I don’t think it's a very interesting story” Shane said with a laugh, trying to wave it off with very little success if the crowd, or the other people at the sofa had anything to say about it.

“You said that about you and Judi Dench meeting and the room loved it I think perhaps you just don't know quite how funny you are”

“Well ok but dont say I didnt warn you if it's boring.” he said with a shrug, “It was at the Beijing Olympics 2022, we had played our gold medal game and won and after that I mean there's celebrating of course but then usually guys will go home if they don’t have anything they want to stick around for you know? But I had a few buddies in the figure skating programme I wanted to watch and it was matts first olympics so he wanted to stay for the closing ceremony anyway so the two of us decided to get rooms at this hotel nearby because we didn’t have to stay in the village any more and you know you can only tolerate those beds for so long.”

“Is it true they’re made of cardboard?” Judi asked.

“Yeah! I mean you wouldn't think it really, they can hold your weight just fine but you're sleeping on like a cot mattress you know? It's fine for a bit but if you've got the choice you wouldn't pick them over a nice hotel you know?” Shane explained, before continuing with his story. 

“Anyway I don't know how but we ended up in the hotel bar with a bunch of Canadians that had come over just to watch the hockey and they were insistent upon celebrating with us. Now I don’t really drink, anyone who knows me knows that but Matt, he had no issue joining in, and I didnt want to seem rude refusing drinks so he was doing my shots for me when people werent looking which meant he got pretty fucked up pretty fast.” he grimmaced a little remembering it, really he thought it was probably just as rude to refuse the shot as it was to let Matt take them for him but in his defence it had been a complicated year for himself. 

“Halfway through the night he's wobbling all over the place and he drags me over to this little karaoke machine in the corner - we get halfway through a duet of some song he wanted to sing– think he said it was like, Evanescence or something I don't know I'm not big into music when he just- topples, like it was like a puppet had its strings cut he just folds and drops and im like oh shit this isnt good obviously but like he was still breathing and everything he was just blind drunk and so I kind of haul him up and onto my shoulders and carry him up to his room. It was honestly a pretty good excuse for me to head to bed myself because really there's only so much celebrating I can do with a bunch of strangers you know? I would much rather be curled up in bed with my husband than singing terrible songs I don't know the words to.”

“Not interesting he says, Shane Hollander we have got to work on your ego a bit for gods sake let us stroke it.” Graham said, waggling his eyebrows and grinning his signature smile.

“Well I don't know about interesting but-” Shane flushed a little under the attention.

“Oh you hush! Looks like we’ve got a little bit of time left, now you aren't just here to regale us with your fun stories of hockey life– you're over here at the moment working to set up some overseas camps as part of the foundation you started with your now husband isn’t that right?” Graham prompted, effortlessly pivoting into the whole reason Shane had been there in the first place.

It had started out as his mum's idea– taking the hockey school to more cities. Logistically it didn’t really make sense at first, with just Shane and Ilya running the bulk of it and only a few coaches willing to spend their off season helping out it had been hard to figure out what exactly they could do across the country. Then came Scott Hunter and his idea for a united front and a whole host of hockey players prepared to stick their neck out for people and things started moving.

It caught on quick, or well, quicker than Shane would have expected all things considered. He supposed it helped that nothing they were doing was overtly about being queer, it was harder for Crowell to push back against it when outwardly they were just trying to teach kids hockey and support mental health, and well, if a majority of the volunteers happened to be queer then wasn’t that just an interesting coincidence.

Shane had been the one to finally talk about getting them over in the uk. He’d spent a fair amount of time there in the off season, between catching up with unlikely friends and the various late night tv shows he’d been talked into doing under the guise of advocacy for charity and mental health he had come to know the teams in the area well and so it really only seemed like a natural progression to bring the camps there. 

He couldn’t lie, the whole idea sort of terrified him. When they had set up the camps across America he could soothe his anxiety somewhat by knowing that he could be there to see them out at least once, he was only a short flight away if anything went wrong and it was all within the familiar confines of the NHL teams he had grown up with. 

This though, felt different, not just because he was an ocean away if anything went wrong, but because it was bringing a part of him somewhere that really had managed to stay relatively untouched by the Shane Hollander five times Stanley cup winner of it all. He worried sometimes if he had to be Shane Hollander hockey player here he would lose the freedom he had worked so hard to find.

“Yes yeah, sorry I realise I'm supposed to be talking about the Irina foundation more” he said, a little guiltily - that was the whole point of him ever being here really he supposed. Not that it really felt like it, he had spent more time on game shows with ridiculous premises or being snuck down back entrances for film premiers than he ever really spent talking about his life as a hockey player.

“Well we’ve got a bit of a fun idea that I do so hope you’ll agree to.” Graham continued, if he felt any of the tension in Shane's body he didn’t say anything, guiding them swiftly back onto topic with a practiced ease that Shane couldn't help but feel comforted by.

“Oh? Do tell”

“So, I have here a stick that I am assured is the same specifications as the ones you use back home, and some tape that I am told you need for some reason, and a couple of pucks here for you-” he said, passing down each item as he spoke. Shane was impressed, true to his word his stick was the exact same make and model he used, the grip tape the same brand, even the white tape he used to seal in his grip tape was the same. 

“We have three little practice nets,” Graham continued easily, pointing them out to Shane as he spoke. “One either end of the studio and one at the very back of the audience and some fake ice here, and we were hoping you would show off some of those fancy hockey skills kids might learn at your camp, while you tell us about it!”

“Oh I don’t know if I could I mean-” Shanes protests were quickly overruled by shouts from the audience and encouragement from everyone sat on the sofa.

“Go on, you know you want to show off!” Graham said, practically bouncing out of his chair with excitement.

“I’m really not sure if-”

“Shane, Shane, Shane, Shane, Shane.” Judi barely needed to start the chant before the audience were picking it up, devolving into whoops and cheers as Shane set the tape in front of him laid out exactly as he normally would.

“Ok, ok alright let me get my stick taped and I'll see what I can do” Shane said with a smile. The crowd cheered as he began taping his stick with a practiced ease.

“Oh talk us through this would you Shane? I have always wondered how it is you know what to do.”

“Oh it’s practice mostly - everyone tapes their stick differently, same as how everyone figures out the best way for them to warm up, some people are superstitious about it, some people just go with whatever feels best on the day.” He tore at the white grip tape first, "I like to keep it pretty simple on the handle, I just go round a few times at the top to make a little knob before I move down roughly enough to get a glove around comfortably.”

He moved the tape around the stick with a practiced ease, seven passes around the very top of his stick before he brought it down onto the handle of the stick, two passes then down, two passes then down all the way until he had gone just wider than his hand would sit.

“The grip tape has a tendency to unwind or ruckle if you aren’t careful so I seal it in with one wrap of this stuff” he explained, picking up the white tape and making a pass around to stick it down and seal it in. “And then on the shaft I do the same but without the first little knob.”

“This is all sounding very carry-on” Graham said with a grin, Shane grinned back something easy and real.

“I bet you say that to all the guests” he said with a wink, sealing the grip tape on the shaft in at either end with the white tape. “Normally about now I would write my mum's name onto the grip tape up here but we don’t need to for demonstration purposes.”

Graham looked around for a pen, almost a little dismayed that he hadn’t known about this one minor detail that Shane had never really spoken about before.

“And then for the blade I guess I'm a little weird,” he grabbed the black tape and started taping from just under halfway down towards the toe. “I do toe only with this black tape, and then I make this little sort of- I don't really know how to describe the shape I guess it's just like you stuck a rectangle on the bottom half of the blade.”

“And that's unusual?” 

“Mm it’s not the most common thing no - I know some people that do toe only but not with this weird extra little box bit. It’s good for letting you snap the puck off the stick faster; having it toe only,” Shane explained, smoothing any little bumps out of the tape as he spoke. “Its nice for a fast wrister but I found without this little rectangle here I wasn’t connecting as well on my passes; my blade was slipping more across the ice without the tape going all the way up so I started adding this little rectangle bit and I guess I've just kept it like that ever since.”

Satisfied with his tape job Shane stood and made his way towards the patches of plastic ice they had set out for him. He dropped a puck onto the ice and began handling it around as if he were tracing the letters on home ice, shifting his wrist around quickly to let the puck curve in delicate arcs and lines before he stopped again, this time snapping the puck around a small imaginary circle a few times back and forth.

He shifted his hands and jumped the puck up and over in a small arc, catching it as it landed before sending it across the imaginary circle once again, blocking it before it could slide too far out of the area. He did this a few times, letting himself fall into the practiced routine he had done a thousand times before warming up. 

“Greg, if you’d be so kind, would you do me a favour and kneel down like you were before for me?” he called, satisfied with his warm up and wanting to show off a little while still staying in the realm of what he would call warming up.

“Does your husband know you want to keep another man on his knees?” Greg shot back with a grin, nonetheless he stood and followed Shane down onto the plastic ice.

“You trust me right?” Shane asked as Greg settled into the stretch Shane had been showing them not so long ago, the hockey stick grasped firmly in his hands the only indicator that he was nervous for what was about to happen.

“A terrifying question to be asked when you're holding a hockey stick a few inches away from my face but there's just something about your face that makes me want to trust you”

“Stay still, this will all be just fine if you just stay still” Shane said with a grin. 

He began walking carefully around the ice where Greg was stretching, jumping the puck over his outstretched legs as he went.

“So the Irina foundation is something Ilya and I started in 2018, the idea is that we are sharing our hockey knowledge, passing it on to the younger generation, and raising money for mental health organisations at the same time.” he said easily, falling into a fairly well rehearsed speech. 

“And what sort of things do you do at your camps?”

“Well, the focus is obviously generally improving your hockey skills–” Shane said, circling around Greg a little faster now, skipping the puck over each of his legs with a little more force. He watched as Greg's eyes widened with each pass over his legs, concern written across his face. 

“We’ve got a number of different drills we run through with the kids, we try to have a coach for each the forwards, defence and goalies because they all need something different, and if the kids want to work on something specific they just have to ask we’re all always more than happy to help.” Shane continued, “Now Greg I need you to be very, very still for this next bit” he said quietly, Greg nodded his head barely half an inch before freezing again.

Shane took a spot near the front of where Greg was stretching and hooked the puck up onto his stick before hitting it up and over Greg's body, he shifted around as it was in the air to catch it as it landed the other side of him. He continued this a few more times as  Graham asked him follow up questions.

“How many camps do you have now?”

“We’ve got five across Canada, one in Montreal.” He skipped the puck over Greg's body, letting it fly half a foot or so over his head, “Ottawa.” He caught the puck and sent it back over Greg's head, an inch lower than the first time, “Vancouver.” He said calmly, hitting the puck with a little more force this time, letting it drop another inch closer to Greg as he did, “Edmonton.” The puck whizzed barely three inches up from Greg's face before Shane caught it again the other side, shifting his body to once more send the puck over Greg's head, “and Toronto.” This one sailed over Greg's head, missing him by barely an inch. 

“That was perfect Greg thank you so much” Shane said kindly, holding a hand down to help him up off the floor and gesture him back to the sofa where the others were Watching with a mixture of shock and awe. 

Shane flipped the puck up onto his stick and began tossing it up in the air, twirling his stick around in his hands and catching the puck on the toe as he continued to list the locations of the hockey camps. 

“Then we have twelve across the US, seven in the east - Pittsburgh and New York being the main bases but the others are dotted around,” Shane lined himself up, spotting the empty net on the far right hand side and sending the puck in with a slap shot that cracked through the air like a bullet, “and five in the west.” 

Shane took another puck from the ice, he passed it back and forth to himself a few times, warming it up as he went. “Colorado and San Francisco take the bulk of those but there's some out into Arizona and up to Seattle," he said, turning and sending the puck whizzing across the studio into the empty net on the far left side with a wrist shot. 

He took the final puck onto the ice, he was showing off now he knew it, throwing the puck up a few feet in the air, feigning backhands and forehands keeping the puck tight to the blade of his stick the entire time.

“And now with the help of some very generous players over here we have two, one in Wales that the Cardiff Devils very kindly offered their home ice for, and one in Ireland that I think the Belfast Giants are helping to run.” Shane lined himself up with the net sat right at the back of the studio behind the audience, there was no room for error. He tossed the puck up into the air and took a breath, he shifted his stance half a step back, as the puck was falling he lined himself up, snapping it into the net with a powerful one-timer that left the audience shrieking. It sank itself into the back of the net exactly where he had intended it and he grinned a satisfied smile. 

“Theres a few coaches from other teams pitching in to help, I think Zane McKenzie and David Clemence are coming over from coventry.” he said, leaning on his stick as he finished explaining the new camps, somewhat unsure of where he should go now he had no pucks to work with. “Obviously we’d love to get them set up in every city that has an ice rink across the world. It's just finding the right players that are willing to help us, you know?”

“Thank you so much Shane that was- I mean wow!” Graham said excitedly, standing to applaud Shanealong with the audience who were cheering and yelling with glee. “I know they say you’re like a hockey god but it really is different seeing it up close”

“Oh it’s not-” Shane blushed again, making his way back to the sofa to take his place beside Judi. “This isn’t- I mean thank you.”

“Bob, kick us off, who is this and how do you know him?” Rob said, gesturing to where Shane was stood with a quiet smile to the side of Lee’s team for the ‘This is my’ round of his first appearance on would I lie to you.

“This is Shane, and he once had to drive me to the hospital when the massage oil he gave me gave me an allergic reaction” Bob said simply.

“Lee, how do you know Shane?”

“This is Shane, and on a trip to Thailand he ended up leaving the airport with my luggage so for a week I was stuck wearing his clothes.”

“And Sarah, who is this and how do you know him?”

“This is Shane, and I was once paid to paint a portrait of his dog.” Sarah concluded, Shane smiled a little but nonetheless said nothing as Rob turned to David's team.

“Ok, Davids team take it away”

“That is Shane Hollander” David said, and Shane wasn’t quite sure if it was a question or a statement of fact, luckily for him Lee seemed to be having the same difficulty.

“Is that a question?”

“No I'm sorry, are we just- are we just brushing over this like this is nothing?” David asked, a mixture of genuine confusion and total and utter disbelief. “That is Shane Hollander, three time Stanley cup winner Shane Hollander.”

“I didn't think you followed sports David” Lee said, “well not unless it’s the polo or maybe some hunting perhaps.”

“I don't really, and I also don’t think hunting counts as a sport Lee, but my wife is a fan.” David said quickly, not wanting to be brushed off the subject as he was so often want to do. “I'm sorry are we just- are we just going to pretend like this is normal? Shane Hollander knows one of you? Not only does Shane Hollander know one of you but it was either because Sarah, who is not a painter, painted him a portrait of his dog, Lee swapped clothes with him in Thailand, or Bob was driven to the hospital by him, none of which sound even remotely plausible when given the context that that is SHANE HOLLANDER. YOUNGEST ROOKIE OF THE YEAR SHANE HOLLANDER!” David ranted, throwing his hands up in the air in utter disbelief.

“I really have to insist you ask the other teams some questions David we cannot dwell all night on who the guest is,” Rob prompted, trying to get them to move off the fact that the mystery guest was Shane Hollander and onto the bulk of the game.

“Ok, so well the whole world has gone topsy fucking turvy I guess,  Lee–” David pointed, “how did you end up wearing his clothes for a week?”

“Well, we must have both been on the same flight out to Thailand,”

“Obviously otherwise it would have been very, very strange you wearing his clothes. I think that's just called petty theft although given that it's Shane fucking Hollander taking whatever was in his suitcase would probably amount to grand larceny.” David said, clearly still annoyed at the fact that they were all very casually moving around the fact that the man stood in front of them was a major celebrity. 

“Yes, well anyway, I picked up what I thought was my bag, and by the time I made it to the hotel room and unpacked I realised I had picked up the wrong bag.” Lee finished explaining, mostly ignoring David's outburst in a way he knew would annoy him.

“You didn’t label your bag with anything distinct?” Dara asked. “That’s very remiss of you wouldn't you say?”

“Well it was either very remiss or I'm lying isn’t it?” Lee countered quickly, with a look that very much said he thought he had got them.

“Sorry, so just to clarify, are you still saying that you took home his luggage or are you backing out of that one as well because the very implication that you had done something remiss has you immediately backtracking.” David said, the glee evident in his voice.

“It- I'm sure we had each labelled the bag but the labels were just, the same that would be it we both had the same sort of tag.” Lee stumbled over his words a little in a rush to explain the situation, clearly recognising the trap he had fallen into.

“So you had tags on your luggage, and you still managed to pick up the wrong bag?” Miranda asked.

“They had fallen off.”

“The tags had fallen off?” David asked, his voice dripping with scepticism.

“Yes exactly, we had the same sort of tags you know those luggage tag things the ones you put your name and address in–”

“Yes we all know what a luggage tag is Lee because we all properly label our property before going away.” David drawled.

“Oooh alright wouldn't want any of your millions worth of property to go amiss when you go abroad David heaven forbid.” Lee mocked, “anyway, my point being that I had labelled my suitcase before leaving, but they had fallen off and so that's why I ended up with his bag and he ended up with mine.”

“So you’re saying that not only were your labels so poorly secured that they could fall off in transit, but that Shane Hollander's were also just as improperly secured, and neither of you had any back-up labels or any other identifying marks about your suitcases. Not only that but both of you apparently, upon seeing a bag with no labels came to the exact same conclusion that was your terribly secured labels must have fallen off in transit and there is no other possible explanation so this non-descript bag must of course be yours and you both left the airport without stopping to verify any of these details. Is that correct?” David recounted the obvious lie with a smug grin.

“Yes, that is exactly correct David.”

“Ok, fine I mean you’re obviously lying but lets just ignore that for a moment. Why did you have to wear his clothes?”

“Because he had my bag, what else was I supposed to do?”

“BUY YOUR OWN CLOTHES” Miranda, Dara and David all shouted simultaneously, looks of total incredulity were plastered across all three of their faces.

“We’re not all made of money you know. It's alright for you over there Mr Richy Rich living off of the wealth of millions, us poor working class folk over here have to earn every penny.” Lee said, accenting his northern accent to drive the point home.

“Yes I'm sure you have to work terribly hard thinking of absolute bullshit all day long.” David said sarcastically.

“Lee, would you do me a favour and would you just stand next to Shane for a moment please?” Dara asked.

“I object to this level of objectification Dara.”

“Lee, if you wouldn’t mind.” Rob said simply, Lee looked between Rob, Dara, and Shane.

“Oh alright fine.” he relented, standing from the desk and walking over to where Shane was still stood with his hands clasped gently behind his back. He was swaying ever so slightly and grinning at the ridiculousness of the whole situation.

Lee was a similar height to Shane, barely half an inch shorter than him, however, where Lee was gangly and out of trim Shane was built and broad, his shoulders were wider than Lees by a significant margin. Shane glanced to the side and could see Lee trying to flex a little to bulk himself out a bit more, never one to be outdone Shane did the same, flexing his biceps as subtly as he could to bulk them out a bit further.

“You see the problem here right?” Dara asked, turning to David to point between the two of them.

“No, no I'm seeing it, his arm is the same size as Lee’s leg.”

“I think you need glasses David.”

“I am actively wearing my glasses Lee.”

“Ok, that's all I needed to see.” Dara said, “thank you Lee, you can sit down now.”

“Well, I'm pretty sure we have decided that he is quite obviously talking utter shit so, Sarah.” David said, moving the conversation along to Sarah who was sat to the right of Lee.

“What, you don’t want to go to Bob next?” Miranda asked.

“I don’t have the sanity needed to speak to Bob right now.” David said with a sigh, the audience laughed at his attempt to very swiftly move past Bob's story.

“David that is very offensive, I feel very hurt by-” Bob began to protest.

“Sarah please for the love of god tell me why four times Art Ross winner Shane Hollander asked you of all people to paint a portrait of his dog.” David said quickly, interrupting Bob before whatever convoluted tale he could start to spin could be told.

“It's cute that you know what awards he's won.” Sarah said with a laugh, Shane could feel himself blushing a little under the attention but maintained the best, neutral and stoic look he could manage.

“Victoria rattles stats off like it's a game you can’t help but pick them up,” David said with a very noncommittal shrug.

“Ok, so well, I had a sort of, well, ok I'm not explaining this well–” she started.

“You aren't explaining it at all but you know who's keeping track anyway.” David said with a pointed look.

“So I was introduced to Shane by a mutual friend when I was over in Canada touring, we had gone to one of the games he was playing, my touring agent organised it I think I don’t really know, and please don’t ask me who I didn't know then and I don't know now.” She said honestly, “And then we got the chance to hang out with the team afterwards - now as you can all clearly see I am the leading expert in all things sports, and by that I mean I follow the available snacks at games very closely, so I didn’t really know anyone in the room or anything and I guess maybe Shane could tell that I was a bit awkward in the room so he comes over like the sweetheart he is.”

Shane flushed a little, unused to being complimented so freely without being allowed to rebut it. Sarah continued, “I mean Shane he’s a very easy guy to talk to and we sort of got into a conversation about him and his life and all of that sort of stuff, and he was telling me about his husband and the dog they have and how he really wanted a nice portrait of the three of them, and I sort of offered in a very like oh ha ha I could do that for you, except I don't think he realised it was a joke and he got so excited and have you seen him? He’s just so lovely I couldn't say I was kidding.”

“Have you ever painted anything before?” Miranda asked.

“I’ve done like- finger painting, flowers, you know the easy stuff.”

“When you were, how old?”

“Eight!” 

“Right, so, how did that go then the whole, suddenly having to paint a portrait of not only a dog, but also two people?” Dara asked, fairly certain he already knew the answer but wanting to hear it anyway.

“Oh it was bad, it was really bad I would imagine they threw it out or burned it immediately after it arrived.” she said with a laugh.

“That's convenient - no evidence of it for us to look up then if we wanted to I suppose?” David said, an air of suspicion in his voice.

“Exactly!”

“Ok, ok fine, I mean you do seem awkward enough to offer a thing you absolutely cannot do to an incredibly famous hockey player but I don’t know if Shane would be unable to recognise that you were kidding.” Miranda said.

“I’m leaning that way for sure but I don't know, I know Bob is going to tell us some absolute bullshit and it will probably end up being true because the producers of this show despise me.” David said, somewhat exasperated, “Bob just- I don’t even know if I want to ask but how did you end up being driven to hospital by Shane Hollander of all people?”

“It all started when–” Bob started, a shit-eating grin already stretched across his face, he leaned back in his seat and air of total and utter confidence as he spoke.

“Jesus fucking Christ give me strength,” David muttered under his breath.

“So we were in the sauna together–”

“I can’t-” David said, half wailing half sobbing in despair. “I can't do this Bob please, please I am begging you just explain it like a normal person.”

“It was me, Shane, and my mate Stabber in the sauna,” Bob began, David let his head hit the desk with a thud as he spoke, “and Shane he turns to me and he says ‘oh Bob! You know what you would love, I have this amazing massage oil you have to try it!’ And I go ‘oh well Shane Hollander you are so fabulous and wonderfully knowledgeable about all things health and fitness related, how could I possibly say no?’ So he gets this massage oil and now I didn't know this at the time but it had eucalyptus oil in it as well as some other oils like jojoba and a sort of melted cocoa butter formulation, good for the skin you know lots of wonderful health benefits it is supposed to leave you smooth like a baby's bottom, well I am deathly allergic to eucalyptus.”

“Deathly allergic.” David said incredulously, his head lifting ever so slightly to look Bob in the eyes as he spoke.

“Oh yes David deathly allergic I come out in hives and my whole face swells up.” Bob said seriously, David groaned and let his head thud back onto the desk.

“Was he massaging your face?” Dara asked, David hummed in agreement with Dara's question.

“No of course not dont be stupid Dara what a ridiculous question, no Shane was massaging my shoulders for me and oh he has the most magical hands you ever did feel and then all of a sudden I can feel my eyes shutting and at first I think oh yes I am in utter bliss, but then I realise I actually cannot physically open them and so I ask him I go ‘Shane Hollander however many times winner of the Stanley cup, is there eucalyptus in this massage oil?’”

“Do we dare ask why he was in a sauna with Shane in the first place?” Miranda leant in to ask David from his place with his head on the desk.

“Miranda I do not have the strength in me to listen to whatever bullshit he comes up with for that.” David groaned, not lifting his head from the desk.

“Anyway so I says to stabby says I ‘stabby I think there was eucalyptus in that oil and as you know I am deathly allergic’, and stabber says ‘mmmmm yes I know you are but as we both know I have been banned from driving for six years’, and Shane Hollander he is freaking out and panicking and so he offers to drive me to the hospital to make up for the attempted murder. And so that is why Shane drove me to the hospital” Bob concluded, looking very content for just having thrown a cat amongst the pigeons.

“Where do you even begin trying to figure out which one is true?” Miranda asked somewhat desperately with a nervous laugh.

“Miranda, if I knew that I wouldn't have to get my blood pressure checked every time Bob is on the show,” David said, finally lifting his head from the desk and sitting up like it took all the effort in the world to face him.

“I mean does Shane seem like the sort of person to panic? He looks so cool on the ice, is he cool?” Dara asked, turning to David who had, up until that point, been the expert on all things Shane Hollander.

“I mean maybe? But then again I think Sarah is the right sort of awkward that she probably could talk herself into having to paint a portrait for someone right?”

“I think I'm leaning that way but everything Bob says sounds so insane you just dont know what's true and what's not.” Miranda said with a laugh. 

“It's how he does it, he hides behind the madness and makes you think you're losing your edge and then BAM he strikes with something true hidden beneath all the bullshit.” David said, with a thousand yard stare that told everyone he knew far too well what he was talking about.

“I’m going to have to press you for an answer David” Rob prompted.

“I think we’re going to say Sarah.”

“Ok, Shane, will you please reveal who you are,” Rob said, gesturing for Shane to step forwards and speak.

“Hi, I'm Shane, and one time I had to drive Bob to the hospital after he had an allergic reaction to some massage oil I recommended.” Shane said with a grin, there was little time for anyone else to react before David was slamming his hands onto the desk in a rage of utter disbelief.

“OF COURSE! OF COURSE YOU DID, WHAT ELSE COULD POSSIBLY HAVE HAPPENED - HE SAID HIS FRIEND STABBER HAD BEEN BANNED FROM DRIVING SO OF COURSE YOU HAD TO DRIVE HIM, WHAT A FANTASTIC AND WONDERFUL GAME IT IS WE HAVE MADE UP WHAT AN ABSOLUTELY STELLA CONCEPT THANK YOU SO MUCH TO WHICHEVER PRODUCER AT THE BBC SET THIS UP. WHEN MY BODY IS FOUND FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER AT NOON JUST KNOW MY NOTE WILL HAVE EXACTLY THREE WORDS ON IT AND THEY WILL BE BOB FUCKING MORTIMER AND NOTHING ELSE. HA HA HA, LOOK AT HOW HARD I AM LAUGHING HA HA HA HA HA!”

Shane was laughing so hard he was almost bent double, he stepped past the others who were in various stages of laughter and shock at David's outburst to shake Bob's hand, giving him an affectionate, familiar slap on the back as he did.

“If it makes you feel better only about sixty percent of what he said was actually true,” Shane said with a laugh, turning to face David's team. “I did drive him to the hospital because he had an allergic reaction to some massage oil but it was nowhere near as dramatic as he makes it out to be.”

“It does not make me feel better Shane, it absolutely does not, if anything it fills me with rage that he can hide the truth under the layers and layers of complete and utter bullshit.” David said seriously.

“It’s Shane's turn!” Rob said, the light in front of Shane lighting up with a ding.

“Ok so I just-” Shane half gestured towards the cards that were stacked in front of him, unsure and hesitantly reaching out, looking at Rob as he did to make sure he was doing the right thing.

“Its just one of the cards in front of you, turn it over and read it out,” Rob explained.

“Right yeah got it got it.” Shane pulled one of the cards from off the stack in front of him and started reading it, “Ok, I once had to help a boat dock because I was the only person who spoke French.”

“Davids team.” Rob gestured, letting them take the lead.

“What does speaking French have to do with being able to dock a boat?” David asked, kicking off the questioning.

“Oh well it was in Monaco and the port authorities didn’t speak English and no one else on the boat spoke French so-” Shane started to explain before David interrupted him.

“I’m sorry Monaco?”

“Yeah what sort of a boat are we talking about because I was picturing like– a pedalo or something.” Rhod asked.

“A pedalo? Do you frequently find yourself on a pedalo so big there are multiple people and none of them speak French?” David asked incredulously, “oh yes of course all those many pedalos, so big you have to dock them!”

“I mean you do definitely have to dock a pedalo you can’t just hop off in the sea and swim for it,” Lee pointed out, David spluttered a bit at his mistake being pointed out before relenting. 

“Well- yes but I mean it’s about the wording- and this is besides the point we’re getting off topic, what sort of a boat were you on?”

“Like a regular boat? A ship? I don't know what you’d call it really what's the difference” Shane said with a somewhat nonchalant shrug. He wasn’t necessarily being deliberately obtuse, he knew what David was asking— still it was fun to make him work for it, he was so used to being on the other side of this sort of deliberate teasing and annoying from Ilya that he found it rather fun to be the one dishing it out for once.

“Well I think there's a pretty big difference between a boat and a ship in colloquial terms so how big was it?” David asked.

“Sixty metres.”

“SIXTY METRES? A BOAT?”

“I think technically it was a superyacht,” Shane added, he knew full well it was a superyacht, he had booked the yacht tour, paid for it, and made sure he and Ilya were at the port an hour ahead of their scheduled departure time so they had time to greet the crew and thank them for the upcoming trip, but watching David look totally aghast at him with every extra added detail brought Shane a certain sort of happiness.

“I’m sorry, in the space of thirty seconds we've gone from a boat, to a ship, to a superyacht?” David clarified, his hands thrown up in disbelief.

“I didn’t think the wording mattered really David,” Shane said nonchalantly, leaning back in his chair with a quiet smile. “I think you’re getting far too hung up on it.”

“Have you ever watched this show Shane? Getting hung up on wording is how you catch people out”

“And is it working for you now?” he asked, no longer hiding his grin as he continued to antagonise David.

“Oh it is so fun watching someone else wind him up,” Lee said gleefully, "I'm normally on the receiving end of his looks of incredulity so it’s nice to see it directed at someone else for a change.”

“Ok, David's team, what are we thinking, did Shane really once have to help dock a boat in Monaco in French?”

“I don’t know, I think his story has changed too many times.” Rhod said, “surely if you knew it was a superyacht from the out you would have said that, and he hasn’t even explained why knowing French helped him out.”

“I’m the same and I mean does he even speak French?” Roisin asked.

“I think we’re going to say it's a lie right?” David asked, conferring quickly with his team. Once everyone had come back to him with a general sort of agreement he turned to rob, “Yes, yeah we’re going with it being a lie.”

“Ok, Shane tell us, was it the truth, or was it a lie?”

“It was in fact, the truth.” Shane said happily, pressing the button in front of him to light up the screen behind him with a bright green ‘truth’ banner.

David threw his hands up in front of him, “of course! Of course why not he said it was a boat and then it was a ship and then it was a superyacht and of course Shane Hollander helped dock a super yacht by speaking French!”

“So what happened then?” Lee asked, curious now.

“Oh it was last year, in the off season Ilya and I decided to take a trip to the south of France - neither of us really ever get to go away what with all the hockey camps and training and pre-season things but we had a little bit of time with both our teams out of the playoffs.” Shane explained, smiling a little as he recalled the fond memory.

“Anyway,” Shane continued, “We had spent most of the trip just sort of relaxing hanging out on private beaches you know that sort of thing and it was coming up to Ilya’s birthday so I decided to surprise him with a weekend in Monaco-”

“I’m sorry you decided to take a holiday while you were on holiday? What was the beach too relaxing? Sea too blue? Caviar not fresh enough?” Lee teased.

Shane chuckled light and airy and entirely carefree, “Well Ilya has a more expensive taste than I do and it didn’t seem fair that we had spent most of the trip doing the boring relaxing things I wanted to do so I organised the weekend away with all the fast cars and gambling and yachts he could want. Anyway, Ilya and I were on this superyacht, extravagant I know but it was his birthday and he was so excited when I brought up the idea of going to Monaco, anyway the captain had some kind of medical emergency and passed out and he was the only one who spoke French - the co-captain had declared pan-pan and the port authorities were trying to communicate something about shipping lanes and safe entries and which dock we were allowed to use based on our size but the co-captain didn’t speak French and they didn’t speak English so I offered to help.”

There was a smattering of applause that rippled through the audience, Shane grinned a little.

“That is genuinely one of the most impressive things I think I've ever heard,” Lee said sincerely.

“Oh well, it’s not like I was driving the boat or anything I was really just acting as a middle man, it isn't that big a deal,” Shane said, a little sheepish now.

“First on our quick fire round is Shane,” Rob called, the light coming to a stop in front of where Shane sat with a ding.

“I once shot thirty seven under par.” he said simply, replacing the card underneath the pile he had taken it from and clasping his hands in front of him on the desk.

“Ok does anyone here know anything about what that means?” Sue asked, glancing between David and Josh.

“It's golfing,” David said quickly, looking doubtful of the story's truthfulness already, “it is an exceptionally low golf score.”

“How low are we talking like, tiger woods low?” Sue asked, “like– like– ok I don't know any other golfers.”

“It is an elite professional low score and an incredibly rare thing to see in an amature unless they were exceptionally lucky.” David said, fixing Shane with a hard stare while Shane sat there smiling gleefully.

“Where was this?” Josh asked. 

“On a golf course.” Shane said simply, deliberately electing to leave out as much information as possible because he knew it drove David mad.

“I- yes obviously on a golf course but a golf course where?” David interrupted before Josh could ask any follow up questions.

“It was the marshes golf club in Ottawa - I went with my dad I think.”

“You think you went with your dad? Or you think it was the marshes golf club?”

“Does it really matter either way?”

David let out a long drawn out groan, bringing his hands to his head to massage his temples, “Shane please you know full well it matters it is these sorts of details that make or break a story and you leave them out every single time.”

“Do I? I’m not sure I do David, are you sure you’re remembering that right?” Shane said, a shit-eating grin stretching across his face as he spoke, knowing full well he did in fact do this every single time for no other reason than because it was exceptionally funny to annoy David.

“And have you ever played golf before?” Sue asked, interjecting before David got sent off on a ranting tangent.

“Nope! It was my first time!” Shane supplied happily, grinning more when he saw the way David's eyes flew open.

“Your first time? And you shot 37 under par?!”

“Yes exactly, glad to see you're keeping up!”

“So, just so we’re clear, you have never played golf a day in your life?” David started.

“Yes.”

“And then you go to a golf club and you shoot better than a significant number of elite professional players?” David continued. 

“Yes.”

“And you expect us to believe you?” David finished, looking increasingly desperate with the positively affirmed answer Shane gave him.

“Yes, yeah that sounds about right!” Shane nodded, smiling happily at the obvious anguish he was putting David through.

“You know the worst part is he says it so earnestly I really can't tell,” Josh chimed in, David let out a little wail of despair as he said it.

“No, no josh you have to understand this is what he does, he tells you something that couldn't possibly be true and he gives you so little information and then it turns out to be true anyway.”

“I don’t know I really don’t think no matter how athletic you are in one sport you can just slide into another like its nothing I don’t think thats how it works,” Sue piped up, “I mean there is only so far athleticism will take you and I don’t think it is to elite professional level on your first attempt.”

“So David, do you think it’s a truth, or a lie?”

“Well I personally think it's true because everything that has ever come out of Shane Hollander's mouth on this show has been, but my team thinks it's a lie so I'm going to go with the majority, and Shane, I need you to know, if it is true– I DON’T CARE.” David said firmly, in a way that very much said he absolutely cared.

“Shane, tell us, is it the truth or is it a lie?”

“It was in fact, true!” Shane said happily, ignoring the wail of anguish David let out. “My dad has the score card in a frame somewhere I'm pretty sure.”

“Do you like– I mean have you ever not been good at something?” Josh asked sincerely.

“I don’t think it's that hard– it's basically the same as hockey,” Shane said with a shrug, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You're just hitting a thing with a stick and getting it in a hole right? Like that's just shot accuracy and I still hold the record for fastest time in the shot accuracy competition at all-stars to this day.”

“I need you to understand that ice hockey and golf are absolutely not basically the same sport Shane. It is so important to me that you understand that.” David said with a long, drawn out sigh.

“Shane.” Rob called as the light came to a stop in front of him.

“Oh god no.” David groaned, already bracing himself to hear something so unbelievable it couldn't possibly be true but inevitably would be knowing his luck.

“I once convinced an entire town that there was a cryptid in the woods.” he said, placing the card back on the desk in front of him with a smile.

“It’s true, of course it’s true fucking look at him.” Sara said quickly, “I mean who else would have something like that happen to them but you Shane.”

“Ok, so, sorry, was this like an intentional thing or did you just make it happen? Like what's the story there?” David asked.

“You know it’s funny, I didn’t actually know it was happening until my agent rang me and asked if I had seen this video,” Shane recalled, flushing a little out of embarrassment of the memory. “Then I had to make a statement about it and apologise to a whole bunch of people– It was a whole thing really.”

“So see, what you’ve done there is you haven't actually answered the question in the slightest Shane.”

“Right, right yeah I mean, ok so there was this buzzfeed unsolved video that went around I don't know if you guys know-” Shane trailed off a little, looking at them with a quizzical look.

“Is it like a show?” Hugh asked.

“Yeah sort of– it’s on youtube there's these guys uh Shane and ryan I think? I dont know I dont really follow it but from what I can tell they do a bunch of like? Investigations into potentially paranormal things or like, weird unsolved mysteries–”

“Hence the name.” David said, nodding understandingly.

“Yeah exactly, anyway they did an episode about a supposed like you know saskwatch, big foot type creature that was in these woods and they had a bunch of like blurry videos of a sort of hunched over thing and then this massively tall thing and so they went out to investigate it and like halfway through the video the skeptical guy- Shane I think-”

“This is very confusing I hope you know.”

“Hey for you and me both it’s weird saying that Shane said this Shane said that because you know- im Shane!” Shane said a little too enthusiastically.

“So what happened then?”

“Oh basically they realised that the area they were in was around my cottage–”

“Is your cottage location just common knowledge? I’d have thought that would be like, the exact opposite of what you would want from a place you go to relax?" Sara asked.

“I mean the exact location is private but the general area is somewhat known - there's a lot of hiking trails and things that end up in and around the lake area not too far from the cottage so I guess it’s sort of an open secret that I live there.” Shane explained, “besides it’s pretty hard to keep a location totally private when a film crew does a whole documentary of you there you know?”

“Shane, you have such a unique perspective on life because you said ‘you know?’ there with such genuine sincerity that it makes me think you don’t realise that most of us don’t retreat to our luxury private cottages in the lakes, or have film crews follow us around for documentaries there.” Rob said with a laugh. Shane grimaced a little, not having realised the social faux pas he made, but nonetheless he continued with his story.

“Well, yes, anyway then it kind of became an inside joke I guess, that I was actually the cryptid they were going after but then people started like? Zooming in on the videos and comparing it to photos of my cottage and it turns out it was actually just– me.” he said with a somewhat sheepish smile, “they had to do a follow up episode basically explaining that it was no longer an unsolved mystery because they were one hundred percent certain it was me and then it got so big that I was eventually asked to comment on it in some post-game press I was doing which is when I found out about it all.”

“And you had to make a statement?” David asked.

“Oh yeah it was a whole thing I felt so bad about it, I mean it wasn’t like I was doing anything wrong or anything it was just me hiking - I mean one time I was giving Anya a piggieback ride because she was refusing to walk any further so I guess that one ended up looking like a bit of a weird, many legged creature which really freaked people out.” Shane said. 

“Anya?”

“Ilya’s dog, she's a sweetheart but sometimes she will just absolutely refuse to walk any further, I think because Ilya is soft on her and she knows she’ll get carried the whole way home with him, so now she does it with me too and its quicker to just pick her up than it is to try and argue with a stubborn dog.” Shane explained.

He still admittedly felt bad about that one to this day, logically he knew there was nothing wrong with walking his dog around his private property but still, knowing he had maybe upset a whole community of people was not something he ever liked to dwell on for too long.

“I guess it kind of worried a whole bunch of people out so eventually when it got back to me I had to say something.”

“David's team, what do you think? Do you think it is true, or is it a lie?”

“I just don't know if he's tall enough to be described as a bigfoot type creature” hugh said, sizing Shane up as best he could from where he was sat.

“No, no I agree,” David said, “but that detail of carrying his dog around just feels like something you wouldn't be able to come up with on the fly.”

“I mean I think it could be true” sara chimed in, “he’s got that sort of creepy energy-”

“Creepy energy? What does that mean?” Shane asked with a laugh.

“I don’t know its your like- your mannerisms or something, it’s just the energy you give off. I can see why people might think you were a cryptid.”

“David I'm going to need an answer,” Rob prompted.

“We’re going to go with a lie.”

“Ok Shane, tell us, did you really get mistaken for bigfoot or was it a lie?”

“Well Rob, it was true!” Shane said gleefully, pressing the button to reveal the green banner that read ‘truth’ on the screen behind him.

“NO! HOW?!”

“I mean technically it wasn’t just me - one of the photos where it was sort of horrifically tall and weirdly hunched over with too many limbs was just my husband trying to see if he could carry me on his shoulders.” Shane recalled, his smile wide as he recounted the fond memory.

He was certain Ilya would not be able to carry him, at least not for any length of time on his shoulders. He knew Ilya was strong, he had checked him into the boards hard enough and carried him to bed plenty enough times to know that physically Ilya was able to move Shane's weight with not a significant amount of effort. It was another thing entirely though for him to be able to squat down so Shane could clamber onto his shoulders, and then stand with relative ease.

Shane smiled softly, remembering the way he shrieked with a mixture of absolute terror and absolute joy as Ilya hauled him through the forest on his shoulders, jumping and jogging in a bid to show off all the while Anya was barking happily, circling them as they made their way through the woods. He thought about how the one of the pictures had looked, Shane half doubled over clinging desperately to Ilya's shoulders so he could press a kiss to the tip of his nose as they walked.

“He can if anyone was wondering,” Shane said, shaking himself out of the memory gently, “but I guess someone got a kind of faraway shot of me clambering on and it looked a bit strange to say the least!”

“And our last quick fire is, Shane!” Rob said brightly as the light once again came to a stop in front of Shane.

“Please Rob, please anyone else.” David groaned, “I don’t know if I have it in me today please don’t do this to me.”

“I have-” Shane began, laughing as David interrupted him.

“True it's true I don't need to hear anything else it’s true.”

“I have a tattoo of Bob Mortimer.” he said simply, before tucking the card back underneath the pile. The audience whooped and cheered raucously for a moment before settling once again.

“Do you actually?” Jack asked, so taken aback by the statement he seemed to temporarily forget the entire premise of the game.

“Yeah!” Shane answered quickly, before also remembering the premise of the game and steeling his face into something cold and much more serious. “Well I mean, or maybe I don’t you don’t know.”

“This is psychological torture Rob, you have done this to me on purpose and you will never see the pearly gates for this.” David said seriously, his head in his hands as he sighed.

“None of us are seeing the pearly gates David.” Rob said, “when we die there will be no panel shows in heaven.”

“And people around the world breathe a sigh of relief,” Lee joked.

“Where is it?” James asked.

“It’s on my leg, like by my calf?”

“Are you asking me or telling me that?” 

“Telling you?”

“I don’t trust him.” James said firmly, “he’s a shifty shady character. There's something about him I just can't put my finger on it.”

“Do you think maybe it's the fact that he’s just told us he has a tattoo of Bob Mortimer that makes him so untrustworthy?” David asked.

“Mmm, no, nope it’s something else, he has the air of a man who loves a wednesday and you know what they say, you can never trust a man who loves a wednesday!” James said entirely deadpan.

“Can we see it?” Jack asked, once again seeming to have forgotten the whole concept of the show in favour of genuine curiosity.

“Well that would sort of defeat the purpose of the game would it not?” Shane said with a wry smile.

“Are you ok David?” Lee asked, watching as David slowly lowered his head to the desk and began gently banging it there as he groaned.

“I- I need a moment I just- because I genuinely think it might be true, he hasn't even given us any information but I really think it might be true, and I don’t know what to do with that information.”

“Is it just his face? Or is it something fancy?” James asked.

“It is Bob Mortimer as a little garden gnome, the hat is red and sparkly and he has a little fishing rod that he’s holding.” Shane said, David let out something that sounded like a mix between a shriek of laughter and a wail. For just a second James looked so taken aback he almost broke and Jack looked all the more curious.

“See that level of detail I mean would you be able to come up with that on the fly?” Jack asked, “that sounds rehearsed you know, like he’s reading it from a script.”

“Oh yes and you’d know all about reading from a script with your extensive acting career Mr Wickers.” Lee said pointedly.

“The thing is, he hasn’t lied once,” David said, his face a pained mix of disbelief and despair, “the entire time he’s been on here he has not told a single lie so I have to believe him.”

“I mean it’s up to you, I just– I don’t think he would do that you know? He really doesn’t seem the sort he seems so prim and proper.”

“James, what about you, what do you think?” David asked.

“I don’t trust him, I think he’s shifty and you can never trust a shifty person David." James said, focusing a hard stare in Shane's direction.

“David, is it true or is it a lie?” Rob prompted.

“Please don’t make me say this outloud Rob, because I know what I am saying if I say it’s true, I am saying that I whole heartedly believe that the incredibly decorated Shane Hollander of the Montreal Voyagers and the Ottawa Centaurs, has a tattoo of Bob Mortimer as a fucking gnome. And I don't know if I can bring myself to say that!”

“So you’re saying it’s true?”

“I suppose I am but dear god what is the world coming to if that is what I'm saying.” David said with a sigh of exasperation.

“Shane, put David out of his misery, is it true? Or is it a lie?”

“Well David, you’ll be happy to know, it is a lie.” Shane said with a broad smile. He watched David's face go through several emotions all at once before he threw his hands up in anguish, shouting more to the ceiling than to anyone else.

“AUGGHHHHHHH. OH COURSE ITS A LIE HE SAID HE HAD A TATTOO OF BOB MORTIMER AS A GNOME ON HIS LEG ITS SO OBVIOUSLY A LIE BUT IT WAS TRUE ABOUT THE ORCAS IN THE LAKE, AND IT WAS TRUE THAT HE DROVE BOB TO HOSPITAL, AND IT WAS TRUE ABOUT HIM SHOOTING 37 UNDER PAR. WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? HOW DO I TRUST A WORD YOU SAY? SHANE HOLLANDER YOU ARE A SICK SICK MAN WHO THRIVES ON DRAGGING ME TO THE LOWEST DEPTHS OF HELL AND YOU HAVE EARNT MY FURY!” David ranted, Shane watched on in glee, laughing so hard he thought he would get a stitch.

“Lads, I appreciate you’re angry.” Lee said, as calmly as he was able to but with a sick sort of smile on his face that set Rob and David's stomachs on edge.

“Yeah, very angry.” David said, the rage under his skin barely constrained.

“I didn’t- I don’t- I didn’t write the invites!”

“Very angry, and very hurt, and very bruised whether this is true or not,” David said firmly, "that's the terrible thing because my thought processes have gone down the lines of it being true and it feels like I've been through it emotionally even if I haven't.”

“Ok time to decide” Rob said.

“Well um-”

“I think its’- I mean I'd love it to be true but I think it’s unlikely.” Richard started, Rob was glaring at him from his place on the podium.

“I wouldn't," Rob said firmly.

“This has been one of the most psychologically damaging thought experiments I've ever gone through and um so I couldn't- I don’t think I could pronounce the words I think this is true, oh I just did.” David said dejectedly, Shane couldn't help but feel bad for the man he looked more broken than he thought he had ever seen him.

“You think it's true?” Rob asked, half wishing they would say it was if nothing else but to get it over with.

“You think we’re going to say lie?” David confirmed with the rest of the team.

“I think lie,” Diane said simply.

“No, we're going to say lie.”

“I’ve a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that it's true,” Rob said with a grimace, “it's like waiting with a specialist for a result.”

“Ironically, if this is true, when that moment comes for both of us it’ll just be a mercy.” David said. Shane thought privately that it looked to all the world like David was very rapidly cycling through the stages of grief but he thought it best not to voice that particular thought right now.

“So Lee, tell us, they think it's a lie, I pray it's a lie, were you invited to Harry and Meghan's wedding last year?”

“It is in fact– true.” Lee said with a sick smile on his face. David turned to look around in horror, his mouth agape and a look of absolute betrayal written all over his face. Richard sat beside him laughing in disbelief.

Shane could see Rob just barely mouthing the word ‘what’ to David, clearly as upset as David was at the reveal. 

“Terrible, horrible, awful.” David said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Well, I hope that's the last question of the evening.”

“So how did you keep that a secret?” Kerry turned to ask Lee, as surprised as everyone else was at the reveal. 

“Oh actually there's something else as well sorry I've got to tell you this as well which is quite important, this is a true story as well, I was lying.” Lee said, pushing the button again to change the bright green ‘truth’ banner on the screen behind him out for the purple ‘lie’ banner. 

David rocked back in his seat laughing, the look of betrayal replaced with a grin. Rob seemed equally overjoyed, smiling widely as Shane leant in to whisper a few words to Lee while the others were distracted by the relief of finding out that Lee was not in fact invited to the royal wedding. 

“Look at the smile on his little face, look at his little happy face!” Lee pointed over to Rob who was now cheering up to the sky grinning from ear to ear. “You won't have that smile for much longer when I tell you what Shane just leant over and whispered to me.”

“Oh don’t you do this to me, don’t take away my happiness Lee.” David warned, his face dropping as Shane looked away guiltily, “no Shane, lee, please, I am begging you do not do this to me I will not have the only shred of happiness ripped away from me so soon after I got it back.” 

“He said, ‘I didn't think I saw you on the seating plan but I suppose I could have missed it’.” Lee said, leaning back in his chair with a smug grin having thrown the cat amongst the pigeons.

“No!” David said, his jaw dropping as Shane rushed to explain himself.

“Listen-”

“YOU WERE INVITED?”

“Well, sort of, I was asked to be a plus one.” Shane said quickly, before considering that that was perhaps not the information David had been after.

“A PLUS ONE? YOU COULD HAVE BEEN A PLUS ONE TO THE ROYAL WEDDING?” David looked around in horror, hoping somebody would jump out and tell him it was all a joke. When no such thing came he continued, “I DIDN’T THINK THEY EVEN DID PLUS ONES, IN WHAT UNIVERSE- I MEAN HOW DO YOU- A PLUS ONE?!”

“Judi said I would be some good eye candy for her,” Shane explained, ducking his head a little to help avoid the death glare both Rob and David were sending his way. “She was joking I think and it was right around the last round of playoffs so I wouldn't have been able to go even if I wanted to.”

“YOU MEAN YOU BLEW OFF THE FUCKING ROYAL WEDDING IN ORDER TO PLAY HOCKEY? AND THEN YOU HAVE THE AUDACITY TO SIT THERE AND LISTEN TO LEE SPIN THAT AWFUL AWFUL TALE, AND WATCH THE ANGUISH ROB AND I WERE PUT THROUGH, ONLY TO SWOOP IN AND TAKE EVERYTHING FROM US AT THE END? YOU ARE A CRUEL, CRUEL MAN SHANE HOLLANDER.” 

“I mean I would have only really been going for Judi, dont get me wrong I think harry and Meghan are lovely and they’ve always been so supportive with all the charity stuff and they’ve always been incredibly hospitable but it's really not my sort of scene there's far too many people who all think they're way more important than they are and it's just a mess you know?” Shane said with an awkward smile, hoping to have soothed some of the hurt David and Rob were feeling right now. 

Judging by the looks on both of their faces he was guessing he had not been successful.

“This is- this is just awful I mean, the psychological torture of it all has ruined me. This has got to be the end of the show now surely, surely we can’t go on.” David said in desperation, looking at Rob pleadingly.

“Bob.” Rob called as the light came to a stop in front of him.

“I have a tattoo of Shane Hollander's face as a garden gnome.” Bob said, his voice entirely deadpan with a wicked grin across his face.

“NO. NO YOU WILL NOT PUT ME THROUGH THIS AGAIN, ROB HOW COULD YOU, HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME DID YOU KNOW? DID YOU KNOW THEY WOULD DO THIS TO ME?” David launched into a tirade while Shane glanced over to where Bob was sat, giggling like a madman.

“I am simply the man in the chair David I have no power over the lies nor truths that our dear contestants provide.”

“I refuse to participate in these mind games,” David said seriously, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms across his chest defiantly. “I abstain, I cannot and will not be dragged down to their level. Someone else can ask the questions because I will not.”

“Why a garden gnome?” Russell asked.

“Well, it was something Shane brought up last year I think it was?” Bob said, turning to Shane with a questioning look for confirmation.

“Yeah, yes I think so about a year ago now it must have been–” Shane thought back to the last time he had been on the show, wracking his brain for if it had been brought up any other time before then. “The last time I was on this show surely?”

“Anyway Shane had one of the most spectacular lies I have ever heard on this show, and someone sent it to me or it ended up popping up on one of my twitter, instagram, blah blah sort of things you know?”

“No, no I think Rob brought it up actually-” Shane corrected, his memory finally deciding to play ball. 

“Oh yes! Yes I do remember actually, on his podcast!” Bob confirmed, launching back into the story with little care for the seething hatred and rage that seemed to be emanating out of David and across the room to them in wafts. “Yes, yes I was on his podcast that's right, so anyway we sort of got to chatting about it Rob and I– the lie– and I thought it was just the funniest idea ever so I text Shane and I asked him if he would be ok with me getting a tattoo of his face as a little garden gnome and he agreed, I got it done maybe six months ago.”

“Can we see it?” Russell asked eagerly, leaning forwards in his seat utterly enraptured by what Bob had been saying.

“No!” Bob said, his mouth agape in shock at the mere suggestion. “No, it's very private, it's in a very private area.”

“What about us, can we see it?” Lee asked, practically bouncing out of his seat with enthusiasm.

“Oh well I don't see why not,” Bob said with a shrug. There was a clamouring of protests from the other team which was quickly settled down by Rob who pointed out that obviously they wouldn't be allowed to see it because that would make the game incredibly easy.

“Wait this is so exciting I haven't actually seen it yet!” Shane said excitedly, pushing himself out from his seat and heading to huddle around where Bob was now also standing sort of half crouched behind the desk to give himself a little privacy.

“Well you’ll have to form like a little–” Bob gestured a little as Shane and Lee crowded around him yeah like a wall around me so I don't expose myself too badly and-”

Bob shimmied a little as he unzipped his trousers and pulled them down as best he could without exposing himself too badly, Shane cocked his head a little trying to get a glance and then-

“Oh my god!” Shane said excitedly, leaning in a little to get a closer look.

“That is incredible,” Lee agreed, the two of them stood inspecting Bob's thigh for a moment before Lee cleared his throat, giving Bob a moment to fix his clothing again before moving away and back to his own seat.

“This is bullshit. I don't believe them for a second they're bluffing,” Russell said firmly.

“Oh Russell, you have to see it!” Shane said excitedly, grinning a shit-eating sort of grin as he knew full well neither Russell, David nor Jo would be allowed to look until after the truth had been revealed. “Oh wait, actually no you- yeah sorry you cant see it, sorry I forgot how the game worked for a second I was just so excited to see my face as a little garden gnome.”

“David surely-” Jo started.

“No, I will not be brought into this.” David said firmly, his arms still crossed over his body, he was barely looking in Lee's team's direction, choosing instead to glare at a particularly egregious stain on the ceiling. “I refuse. It is a sad petty little game they are playing and I want nothing to do with it.”

“So, ok, we can’t see it but will you describe it to us.” Jo suggested.

“So it’s-” Bob began, but Russell interrupted him before he could get properly into a description.

“Actually no, Shane, you describe it to us since you’ve just seen it.”

“Is that allowed?” Shane asked, looking to Rob as the authority on the matter. “That doesn't feel very in the spirit of the game.”

“No no, I'll allow it, Shane please tell the other team what Bob's tattoo looks like.”

“So it’s on his thigh, it's like a little gnome, the hat and clothes are blue and instead of a fishing rod I'm holding my hockey stick like a fishing rod and I'm fishing up a little stanley cup by the looks of it.” Shane said easily.

“Fuck see thats so well described,” Russell said, throwing his hands up a little in exasperation.

“This is my issue, I don’t know whether Shane is good enough at lying to come up with details like that on the fly,” Jo agreed.

“No, see I thought that and then last year he managed to convince us all he had a fucking tattoo of Bob Mortimer as a garden gnome.” David chimed in from his seat where he had slumped impossibly lower and had brought his hands over his head, trying for all the world to try and hide from the mere idea of Bob having a tattoo of Shane's face.

“Well, in your team's defence I didn't actually give you any details about it.” Shane said with a shrug.

“What? Yes you did im sure you did?” David said, he would not be goaded into participating, he would not be he swore he would not he-

“I said he was holding a fishing rod and it was red and sparkly but I didn't really talk about any actual details,” Shane said simply, knowing full well the inaccuracy of what he was saying would annoy David into joining in.

“Shane, what do you think a detail is?” David said with an annoyed look.

“I don’t know–” he absolutely did know– “like its the little things like the fact that the garden gnome tattoo me isn’t standing in grass or by a pond it's standing on a tiny ice rink.”

“SEE, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO WORK WITH THIS WHEN YOU KEEP ADDING BITS LIKE THAT?” David shouted, “WHO IS SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU SAY THINGS LIKE THAT SHANE?”

“Youre the one that asked for this I'm really only following what you asked me to do.” Shane shrugged something noncommittal and what he hoped was incredibly casual.

“I would like to point out actually that it was Russell that asked you to do the description, not me first of all.” David said, his voice shaky and quiet as he spoke. “God I hate this show, I hate it, ten years on here and I have been subjected to nothing but frankly inhumane psychological torment. Prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment experienced less psychological horror than that of being put on a team against Shane Hollander and Bob Mortimer.”

David unfurled his arms and brought his hands up to his head.

“So David,” Rob said, breaking some of the tension that had been building in the room, “what do you think is it the truth? Or is it a lie?”

“See I didn’t believe it until he started adding the details and I just don’t know if you’d be able to make something like that up you know?”

“Russell?”

“I think it’s bullshit, I think there's no way Bob would do that.”

“No you see because I do absolutely believe that Bob would do it, it's just determining whether or not he has done it yet, because I am sure if he hasn’t already he will after this, you see the issue?”

“David?”

“Lie I think, yes, we’re going to say it’s a lie.” David said, his voice unsure but firm.

“Are you sure-”

“Absolutely not Rob, I have no idea if it's true or not, all I know is until I tell you whether I think it is the truth or a lie this hell space will continue and frankly I just want it to end.”

“Ok, Bob, tell us, is it the truth? Or is it a lie?”

“It is in fact…” Bob paused for dramatic effect, the crowd were stamping their feet on the ground, the tension was building, “true!”

“No!” Jo and Russell shouted at the same time. David was sat in a quietly seething rage, betrayal and disbelief etched across his face.

“This is awful, this is just- I mean- Shane, with all sincerity, I hope you never, ever, ever come on this show again.”

Shane laughed an easy sort of laugh as he nodded at David, “always glad to be here David." he said sincerely.

“Can we see it?” Russell asked again.

“I mean I'd have to do some shimmying about so I'm not just stood here in my pants or you can come around and have a look if you want?” Bob offered, Russell and Jo both stood to meet Bob beside his table, David was still sitting in resolute silence, a scathing protest if ever Shane had seen one.

“That is- that is quite possibly the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen jesus fucking christ Bob.” Russell said as Bob finally managed to pull his trousers into the exact right position to show off the tattoo.

“And the category is, best object that you've borrowed from a fairly close friend.” Alex said brightly. 

“Ooh,” Greg said enthusiastically, “that's right tonight one of you will be walking away with five, yes five, objects that someone borrowed from someone else.”

“That’s gonna be an awkward one for whoever doesn't win,” Joe commented.

“Ok, kick us off then Greg, whose best borrowed object would you like to see?” Alex said, readjusting the cards he held in his hands and sitting back ever so slightly in his chair.

“Shane,” Greg said somewhat dramatically, fixing him with a pointed stare. “Tell me, what is the best object that you have borrowed from a fairly close friend?”

“Well I don’t really borrow things that often,” Shane said, leaning forwards on his knees a little as he spoke. “And I figured there was a chance whatever I borrowed would never make it back to the person I borrowed it from–”

“On account of the entire structure of this show, yes that makes sense.” Greg nodded along.

“So I thought, who could I ask to borrow something from for the purpose of it maybe being lost forever to someone else on this show? So I rang my friend Matthew and explained the whole situation and asked if he had anything I could borrow and he offered me his van.”

“I’m sorry you explained that they would probably never get it back and someone just– gave you their van?” Katherine asked in disbelief, leaning forwards in her chair so she could turn to look at Shane with a skeptical look.

“Thats right Shane did in fact borrow a van from his friend Matthew, would you like to see it?” Alex asked.

“Of course I want to see it!”

“Ok here it is the van that Shane borrowed from his friend Matthew.” Alex said, gesturing to the screen at the front of the studio.

The five of them plus Alex and Greg all shifted slightly in their seats to get a better view of the screen. There was a moment's delay before finally a photo of a blue and green van with orange flowers popped up on the screen, scrawled across the side in that same orange were big bold letters that read ‘THE MYSTERY MACHINE’. There was a moment of stunned silence before the crowd burst out into a confused mixture of cheering, laughter and sounds of disbelief.

“There we go, that is the van Shane borrowed from his fairly close friend Matthew, obviously he couldn't bring it into the studio with him but here we do have a few more photos of it if anyone wanted proof that Shane did in fact bring it in.” Alex said, he waited a second for the studio team to get the image changed and then gestured once again.

This picture was slightly different, rather than the van sitting against a plain white background looking rather like a stock photo this one seemed to have been taken from the loading bay of an airplane hanger, the van was being driven onto the plane by someone in a hi-vis vest while Shane stands off to the side with a thumbs up.

The image changed again, this one was Shane sat in the co-pilots seat of the airplane grinning wildly again with his thumbs up.

Another click, and another image appeared on the screen, the van appeared to be on a landing strip at a small airport, Shane was in the drivers seat, there was someone sat in the passenger seat not fully visible to the camera, Shane was sticking his head out of the window smiling holding his thumbs up.

A final click and the image changed again, this one showing Shane parked outside of the studio building they filmed in, the van has its own designated parking spot with a small sign that read ‘Shane hollander prize task van [Season 2 Production - 19/06/2019]’. There was a cacophony of raucous noise filling the studio now, the audience cheering and stamping their feet and clapping. 

Shane turned to see his fellow contestants staring at him, their faces all a mix of shock, confusion and total disbelief.

“Shane,” Doc Brown said carefully, “is that the mystery incorporate van from scooby doo?”

“It’s called the mystery machine actually,” Shane corrected, “but yeah!”

“Is your fairly close friend Matthew Lillard?” he asked, trying to confirm what everyone had already realised to be the case.

“Well, let me answer that one for you Doc,” Alex said quickly, interrupting Shane before he could answer. There was another click and a final picture filled the screen before them, it showed Shane, alex, and Matthew lillard all posing in front of the mystery machine with big smiles, Shane was in the middle, holding both his thumbs up while he smiled madly, Alex and Matthew were either side of him, their arms slung over Shane's shoulders with a grin.

“Well yeah, I mean I wasn’t sure if he was gonna be cool with me taking it but he’s the coolest guy I know and he has a bunch of interesting memorabilia from movies and things so I figured if anyone had something I could borrow it would be him.” Shane said with a shrug, “it was a bit of a hassle getting it here but it was a fun trip to take!”

“Im sorry, do you mean to tell me that you went to your close personal friend Matthew Lillard, asked to borrow the mystery machine, he said yes, then you had it air freighted here while you and him took a private jet to meet it here, then you drove it to the studio together to take a picture? Is that actually what you are telling me right now?” Jon asked, utterly bewildered and feeling somewhat betrayed at having been one-upped so thoroughly.

“Well yeah, I mean how else was I supposed to get it here?” Shane asked, genuinely confused as to why Jon was not following the logic.

“You know you have to be fairly close friends for it to work right?” Greg chimed in, hoping beyond all hopes that he would be able to find a loophole to get away with giving Shane no points.

“Yeah?” Shane said, a little confused at Greg's line of questioning. “That was specified in the task.” Greg laughed, shocked at the directness of his response. 

“How– sorry I don’t–” Katherine stuttered a little. “What do you mean you’re fairly close friends with Matthew Lillard?”

“Oh you know I don’t actually remember how we met but he’s a really cool guy you know?” Shane said with a sort of non-committal shrug. “He showed up at Hayden's kids birthday party as Shaggy a couple of times, brought the whole gang along once which Ilya hated because it meant that I was suddenly the favourite uncle which is a title he has been defending fiercely since he met the kids.”

“How the fuck are we supposed to compete with that?” Jon complained loudly, “his fairly close friend is Matthew Lillard?!"

“Oh, hang on, let me think what I hear the rookies say sometimes in situations like this, I think it was- skill issue? Get good?” Shane cringed a little when he spoke, not sure he was really using it in the right context but hoping beyond all hopes that he didn’t sound too stupid.

“I don’t even- what-”

“Sucks to suck? Is this working?”

“And the thing we asked our contestants to bring in today is their most important document.” Alex said, holding his hands up a little expectantly for the audience to ooh and ahhh. When nobody picked up the cue Shane took it upon himself to help Alex out.

“Ooooooh,” he said, the others caught on until eventually the room was oohing and ahhing excitedly.

“Ok, shall we kick things off?” Greg asked, addressing the audience, when they didn't react excitedly enough for his liking he repeated himself, "I said shall we kick things off?!”

The audience broke out into a smattering of cheers. Satisfied by their reaction Greg turned his attention to the contestants waiting expectantly in their chairs.

“You didn’t specify what counted as important though,” Joe piped up, soft laughter rippled through the audience as he continued, “could have like, helped us out on that or something.”

Greg fixed him with a hard stare, raising his eyebrows as he did so. “Joe, do you– understand the concept of this show?”

“No, yeah I'm just saying it would be easier if you told us what you thought was important you know?” he continued, shrugging in a way that very much said he did not understand what Greg was not understanding about his line of reasoning.

“Well no, that's sort of– the point of the game.” Greg said, looking absolutely incredulous that he had to explain this so far into the season. “You have to figure out what I think might be the most important document– if I just told you what the most important document was you would just– bring that in. Do you see the issue?”

“Ok so here in the studio tonight we have five of these peoples most important documents, Greg whose would you like to see first?” Alex asked, adjusting his cards as he spoke.

“Shane! You’ve had some interesting prize tasks this season, can you keep it up?”

“I certainly hope I can Greg," Shane said brightly, shuffling forwards a little in his seat so he could be a little closer to Greg whilst talking. “Well, ok so I wasn’t too sure if what I was going to find important was what you were going to think was important. So at first I thought well Ilyas citizenship papers were pretty important but then I thought well they’re probably not that important over here because well you don’t care about being a Canadian citizen.” Shane said simply, ignoring the looks of shock from the other contestants as Greg laughed.

“No, yeah, I mean how important are citizenship papers really? You could probably burn those for all they're worth.” Greg joked.

“Then I thought maybe my contract with Ottawa was pretty important but again I thought well it's probably no skin off your back if I do or don’t have it and there’s multiple copies anyway so fairly low stakes.” Shane explained, “in the end I decided to ask Judi if I could have her warrant of appointment for her OBE and she was a bit hesitant at first kind of obviously I suppose, but when I explained that it was for this show she thought it was hilarious so yeah that's what I ended up bringing in.”

“Thats right Shane Hollanders most important document is the official warrant of appointment of an OBE to Dame Judi Dench,” Alex said, gesturing to the screen for the others to see it sitting there against a white background, zoomed in they could see the official seal and stamp alongside the signatures.

Shane sat in his seat smiling sweetly while the other contestants either side of him stared at him in utter disbelief. He turned to Katherine and gave her a little smile and a wave before turning back to Greg and Alex.

“I'm sorry can we just talk about how your FIRST THOUGHT, was to bring in YOUR HUSBANDS CITIZENSHIP DOCUMENTS?” Jon said, his face aghast.

“Well they’re pretty important to me obviously but I wasn’t sure if you guys would see it the same.”

“And then you settled, ON DAME JUDI DENCHS OBE DOCUMENTATION?”

“Is that real?” Greg asked, still staring in disbelief between the screen and Shane and back again.

“It is,” Alex confirmed, Greg laughed in disbelief, “we received it in signed for delivery alongside the certificates of authentication - it was delivered by a member of the crown estate because they weren't sure they could trust the royal mail to get it here safely.”

“How did you even get her to agree to that?” Greg asked.

“She thought it would be quite funny,” Shane said simply, shrugging like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “She’s always up for something she thinks would be a good story - it’s how the two of us ended up going horse riding with a couple of mounties a few years back.”

“I mean how are we supposed to beat that?” Joe asked, laughing in shock.

“You could put like, your birth certificate in or something?” Shane suggested, entirely serious and suddenly a little worried that perhaps someone had done exactly that. He hated being beaten at the best of times and the thought of being one upped and losing Judi’s OBE made him feel a little sick. “That's probably pretty important too.” he finished weakly, hoping beyond all hopes that no one had actually done that.

“Shane I'm not sure you have the best frame of reference for how important things are actually,” Katherine said, not unkindly but far more genuine than Shane had been expecting.

“Get this potato into the golf hole,” Shane read, standing on the steps of the taskmaster house. Alex stood a few feet away holding a timer up expectantly.

“You may not touch the red green,” Jon read aloud.

“You may not touch the red, green I get it.” Katherine said quickly, noticing the large red carpeted golf green that had been placed on the grass outside the taskmaster house.

“I get one shot at this?” Shane asked, turning the potato over in his hand and quickly surveying the scene in front of him.

“No?”

“Ok, oh but if I throw it and I miss I can’t go on it right?” Shane realised quickly, re-reading the card he held in his other hand. “Ahhhh that's clever, so it's like a one- man oh man you’re kidding me.”

“Fastest wins, your time starts now.” Katherine said, taking a few uncertain steps towards the green before backing away again to find something to work with.

“Oh we’re off– uhhh– but what if- well but I cant-” Joe hesitated for a moment, pacing back and forth slightly before stepping forwards and launching the potato straight into the hole in the middle of the green. “There we go,” he said casually.

“14.3 seconds.” Alex said, a look of shock on his face.

“I didn’t think that would work at all,” Joe admitted, laughing in disbelief.

“Well done Joe.”

“I’m really emotional, I think that's the best thing I've ever done.”

“Good shot.”

He and Alex stood beside the house steps for a few seconds both looking at each other with wild smiles and utter bewilderment. They were giggling a little at the ridiculousness of the whole situation.

“Cheers, I'm just gonna pop that in there,” Joe said, slotting the task card into an upturned welly sitting outside of the house. “Job done.”

“Alright see you in a bit,” Alex said, waving him off ever so slightly as Joe headed back into the house.

The audience were cheering wildly as Joe took a small victory lap around the studio, holding his arms up victoriously while the other contestants clapped along with the audience.

“I mean, I don't know how you feel Shane but it made me like sports.” Greg said, leaning in a little as Joe continued to bask in the glory that came with such a wonderfully executed task. “Joe, it's incredible. I mean talk us through it. How are you feeling?”

“Instincts.” he said simply, having finally returned to his seat, leaning back casually with one leg crossed over the other and his arms slotted behind his head. 

“Just gut, laser like accuracy?” Greg asked.

“Yeah, and then I thought, piece of piss. Did it another seventeen times after that,” Joe said, cocksure and casual now, confidence radiating out of him as he sat almost swinging on his chair.

“What I liked was what you said to Alex, I don't know if any of you heard that but you went ‘yeah you didn't think that was going to happen did you’ and you did. I mean it was incredible, it was so incredible I personally would like to see it again, would you like to see it again?” Greg asked, turning to the audience to rile them up a little until they gave him the necessary cheering and applause. “Ok here it is again.”

The clip played again on the screen, showing the moment as Joe took a step forward casually tossing the potato into the hole. It replayed again, showing the potato sailing through the air in slow motion as it sank into the hole.

“Oh that's joyous,” Joe said gleefully, leaning back in his chair happily. The clip replayed again, this time zooming in on the way Joe's foot stepped half an inch onto the red carpeted green. It zoomed again a little closer, focusing on the way the carpet shifted under his foot as the potato found its way into the hole.

“Oh! Oh no! Oh!” Shane clamoured, there were gasps rippling around the audience at the revelation. Joe brought his hands over his head in despair, rising from his seat in shock.

Greg grinned a sick sort of smile as he watched Joe sink back to his seat, unsure of what exactly he could do. His head hung low, his hands still covered his face as he shook his head in desperation.

“Guys, sometimes it's hard to be the taskmaster, sometimes you've got to crush dreams.” Greg said, his voice dripping with vicious glee as he grinned a malicious smile.

“Thats the most exciting bit of sport I've ever seen in my life.” Jon said somewhat breathlessly, glancing over to where Joe was rocking slightly in his seat moaning lowly in despair.

“Objectively incredibly funny of you to say that sat next to two times Stanley cup winner Shane Hollander,” Katherine pointed out.

“No, no I mean I'm right there with you,” Shane agreed, “I've never experienced such a range of emotions so quickly.”

“Please don't take it away from me,” Joe wailed, sinking out of his seat slowly to his knees as he crawled his way over to where Greg was sat. He reached a hand up to grip weakly at Greg's leg as he begged, “please, please.”

“God I got a real sense of power there for a second.” Greg said with a vicious smile as Joe made his way back to his seat. “You know Joe it's awful because clearly you've got an awful home life we’ve established that already.”

“Speaking as a fellow competitor I thought it was an incredible achievement and if I had done what he had done I would have wanted the five points and that's just my view.” Shane said honestly, thinking about how he felt every time a goal of his had been overturned for one reason or another. “I mean I wouldn't want to cede it to him but I do think it's just so barely there you could argue he didn’t touch it.”

“Its really strange that, because that was such an impassioned and eloquent argument Shane and yet it only makes me more inclined to take it off him.” Greg said gleefully.

“Well of course it's up to you I mean you are the taskmaster I just know if I had done it like that I would have wanted those points so badly.”

“Oh well I'm so glad you said that Shane,” Greg said, his eyes lighting up excitedly, “shall we have a look at your attempt next?”

“Don’t do this to me.” Shane said weakly.

“No, no really I insist, shall we see Shanes attempt everyone?” Greg asked, turning once more to the crowd waiting for their cheers and applause before he turned back to the screen, Shane's attempt now filling it.

“Ok so I just have to throw it in?” Shane confirmed, turning the potato over in his hand and surveying the green in front of him.

“The information is all there in the task Shane.” Alex said simply, not moving from his place beside the house to offer any other comments.

“Ok well I-” Shane took half a step towards the green, still mostly sheltered by the shadow of the house looming over him and about six feet away from the red circle on the lawn. “Ok, sure yeah let me just-” he threw the potato easily, watching as it sailed through the air quickly before dropping into the hole, rattling the flag slightly as it landed.

Alex stopped the clock and Shane looked between him and where the potato had landed.

“Was that it?” he asked, a little confused, “i mean am I done with the task now?”

“The potato is in the hole and I have stopped the clock.” Alex confirmed, holding back a surprised laugh.

“Oh well that wasn’t too bad then I suppose.” Shane said with a shrug, turning on his heel and making his way back into the house.

The audience was in chaos, shrieking and yelling and cheering. Shane's own head hung low in embarrassment as Joe shot to his feet in horror, rounding quickly on Shane who still had not looked up to face him.

“OH THIS IS AGONY SHANE HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?” he shouted desperately, Shane thought for a second that Joe was crying the way his voice shook. He looked up and offered Joe a half hearted awkward smile before shrugging a little.

“In my defence, how was I supposed to know you’d do the same thing but worse?”

“WORSE? Shane you wound me, I am wounded i– oh this is terrible, this is just awful I have never felt so low.” Joe muttered mostly to himself, finally letting himself drop back into his own seat with a sigh.

“You know, I was going to let your fellow competitors decide on your outcome Joe but I think either way it wouldn't matter because what was Shane's time Alex?”

“11.8 seconds.”

“Ooh, tough luck there Joe, tough luck indeed. As it stands I'm going to have to disqualify you, you get no points Shane gets five points.”

“Shane Hollander you have made an enemy of me this day and you will rue it evermore.” Joe said quickly, refusing to drop his gaze from where Shane was shifting somewhat awkwardly in his seat.

“Hello and welcome to 8/10 cats does countdown the show all about letters, numbers and conundrums!” Jimmy said brightly, turning on his spot at the camera cue to face the audience. “Did you know for example an afterclap is an unexpected or unpleasant consequence of an event as in I ate too many spicy burritos and then, there was an afterclap.There are 206 bones in the human body although that rises to 207 if it's a third date and he seems nice, right lets get started!” Jimmy said brightly, hopping off of the small raised platform in the centre and making his way over to the seat he always took on the far right of the studio. Ok lets meet tonight's players first up its Jon Richardson.” he called, gesturing over to the desk closest to him where Jon was sat. He paused for a moment, allowing the audience to cheer and applaud. “Jon recently got married, well it was either that or pay the postage to send her back.”

“Now tell me, is that a joke about an inflatable girlfriend or a foreign bride?”

“Ooh! Ah well it was sort of multi-layered,” Jimmy said, stacking his hands in the air to gesture what he meant.

“Ok good,” Jon nodded, his face straight and unreadable.

“We’re just suggesting that it is not a real love.”

“I’ll enjoy it twice then… ha ha ha.”

“Jon had been single for so long, that for the something blue at his wedding he just used his balls, and Jon's teammate Shane Hollander!” Jimmy said. Shane waved a little wave as the audience cheered loudly. “Since taking up late night TV Shane has put his day job as a hockey player behind him, and shown off the incredibly diverse range of skills he has, whether it's shooting hockey pucks at Greg Davies head on the Graham Norton show, or baking hockey themed cakes on celebrity bake off, he can do it all!” Shane laughed easily and genuinely at the jokes made at his expense. “Up against them this evening it’s Sean Locke! I must admit, sitting opposite Sean on so many episodes of Cats does countdown has really inspired me, it's inspired me to moisturise my forehead.”

“What do you mean?” Sean asked, raising his eyebrows as high as he could to emphasise the wrinkles on his forehead.

“Ok, joining Sean tonight it’s Miles Jupp! Comic actor Miles Jupp is in huge demand at the moment, or he would be if someone was making a film about a young Boris Johnson.” Jimmy eased into the evening, settling back into his seat with ease. “Shane, I've been doing a little research on you this week, little bit of research online and I found a fun fact about you, Shane's trademark is actually his husband.”

“Got me again,” Shane said with a grin - Ilya was so rarely mentioned by others when he was on these sorts of programmes and his heart warmed a little to think of him.

“Are there any other fun facts about you?”

“Uh,” Shane thought for a moment before saying simply, “I'm a very keen dogger.”

“You know I wouldn't have expected that of you,” Jimmy said, an air of pleasant surprise in his voice.

“Oh I think it's great, being out in nature you know it's just so relaxing.” Shane said, a coy smile stretched across his face as he leant forwards a little in his seat.

“And your husband is ok with this?”

“Yes of course! He loves coming with me - it's nice and secluded by the cottage so it means we don't really get too much interruption you know which is always nice." Shane said somewhat wistfully, “I mean I'm always happy to spend time with the fans but it is nice to have a bit of peace and quiet to yourself you know?”

“Do you sing when you're dogging?” Sean asked.

“I mean not really - if I'm by myself I might wear headphones but I've never been big into music.”

“I don’t think they call across the forest,” Jimmy chimed in with a soft laugh.

“What do you mean? I thought it was like old market criers you know– fish for sale, dogging.” Sean said, the audience cheered and laughed wildly as he continued. “Or like, to the tune of jammin’, I'm doggin’, I'm doggin’, I’m doggin’, I’m doggin’ I hope you like dogging too.”

“How did you get into that?” Jon asked, genuinely curious.

“Well I mean obviously Ilya was the one that kicked it off, it was a bit of a surprise at first but we adjusted and it wasn’t that big a change in our routine you know?” he shrugged simply, his face drawn into a wistful smile as he recalled fond memories in the woods with Ilya. “Actually I was recommended some good routes by Justin - he has a cottage maybe ten or so miles out? We bumped into him one time and he had some great tips I hadn’t thought of!”

“Justin?”

“Trudeau.”

“I’m sorry you go dogging with Justin Trudeau?" Jon asked in disbelief.

“Well yeah, his dog is such a sweetheart she gets on so well with Anya it seemed a waste not to make the most of it you know?”

“Just to clarify, do you think being an avid dogger involves walking your dog?” Jimmy asked, a bright laugh falling from his throat.

“Yes absolutely, what else would it mean?” Shane said, waggling his eyebrows, a coy smile stretched across his face.

“Jon what did Shane ask you at the beginning of that I didn’t quite catch it,” Jimmy asked, having noticed the way Shane had whispered to Jon as the timer was started.

“He-” Jon massaged his temple, frustration bleeding across his face. “He fucking asked me if he was allowed to take the numbers away or if he was only allowed to add them.”

Jimmy burst into laughter, looking at Shane with a look of absolute bewilderment.

“I was just making sure I understood the rules!” Shane defended, holding his hands up.

“I thought you were supposed to be smart?” Jon asked pleadingly.

“I am hockey smart, I don’t know if you know this but it doesn't really translate very well to like math smart.”

“What, you don’t ever have to do maths?”

“The only math I really give a shit about is ‘do we have more goals than the other team’ if the answer is yes then great if the answer is no then I have to work a bit harder.”

Jon threw his hands up in disbelief, about to snap back with something that would surely dissolve into some kind of argument Jimmy interrupted them. “Ok then,” Jimmy said quickly, cutting Jon off, “the target was four hundred and forty four Sean did you get it?”

“Yep.”

“Great, Miles, what about you did you get it?”

“I got four hundred and forty four yeah yes I did.”

“Jon?”

Jon glared at Shane a little before finally turning his attention back to Jimmy, “yep I got it”

“And Shane?” Jimmy asked brightly.

“Oh Jimmy please don’t-” Shane begged with a whine, hiding his face behind the paper he had been working from.

“You know thirty seconds is not long enough to enjoy Shane's face,” Jimmy said with a grin, watching the confusion build on Shane's face.

“Everyone says that,” he said with a coy smile.

“Did you get it Shane?”

“Maybe, I'm not sure- yes? Please ask somebody else for the love of god.”

“Well I think we’re all curious to know how you did it, because I believe everyone else,” Jimmy said, leaning back in his chair with a self satisfied smile, crossing his hands in front of his body.

Shane waited. Jimmy waited. The audience waited.

“Fine fuck-” Shane relented, grimmacing at the thought of having to explain something he almost certainly had not done right outloud. “Five times a hundred equals five hundred, ten plus six equals sixteen.”

“Going strong so far,” Sean commented lightly.

“Times by four is sixty four?” Shane said, incredibly uncertain that what he was saying was right. “No, yeah? Is it?”

“Yeah…” Rachel said, a bit confused by what method Shane was using but seeing the logic nonetheless.

“And then take that away…” Shane hesitated, hoping beyond hope that somehow five hundred minus sixty four would be four hundred and forty four.

“Four hundred and thirty six.” Rachel said simply.

“Oh fuck.”

“You’ve got a number left,” Jon pointed out quietly, “Shane you’ve still got a number left.”

Shane glanced up at the board, at the small eight still sitting there unused. The universe was on his side today it seemed. “And- I- yeah and add eight I reckon mhm yep!”

The audience burst into raucous cheers and applause, Jimmy seemed genuinely surprised, laughing brightly at the look of shock on Shane's own face having gotten the answer right by a miracle of the universe and little else.

“Everyone was really rooting for you there,” Jon said.

“You really tricked us there with pretending you hadn’t got it right until the last minute,” Jimmy laughed, Shane flushed a little but said nothing, soaking in the cheers and whoops of the audience still celebrating his win.

“Thats a really interesting method! I wouldn’t have thought of that one!” Rachel said, Jimmy laughed at the backhanded compliment.

“Thank you! Thank you Rachael," Shane said sincerely, smiling brightly under the praise.

“I don’t think that was a compliment I think she was saying-”

“She was saying it was an interesting method,” Shane said firmly, interrupting Jimmy before he could shatter the illusion Shane was happily sitting in, “she did it was a compliment.”

“Rachael out of interest would you have used all the numbers straight away would you?”

“I would have done one hundred plus the five and the six is one hundred and eleven, times the four is four hundred and forty four.” she said quickly, scrawling her own solution out beside the one she had written for Shane's explanation.

“But you didn’t use all the numbers!” Shane said indignantly, pointing at the board insistently, almost standing now. “You have an eight left over!”

“You don’t have to use all the numbers,” Rachel explained gently, “it’s just if you can make the target number with the numbers that we pull out.”

“Well, I think it’s more impressive that I managed to use all of the numbers.” Shane huffed, sinking down low in his seat and crossing his arms over his body. He was not sulking, he was decidedly not sulking, he was just… adjusting his attitude given the revelation of new information.

“I think it's impressive you managed to count higher than ten to be honest,” Jimmy joked, Shane glared at him in a way that was decidedly not part of the tantrum he was throwing.

“Ok, you have thirty seconds, your time starts now!” Jimmy said brightly.

The music began, from behind his desk Jimmy pulled on a goalies helmet, pads and gloves as he ducked down below his desk. A man who looked very much like Jimmy stood from behind the desk now dressed in fully goalie attire, skates, stick, and all. 

He made his way around to the front of the desks to a patch of fake ice that had been set up with a net at one end and a large pile of pucks at the other. Shane noticed this, quickly grabbing a stick from underneath his own desk he hurried his way around to the other end of the ice.

He took a moment to adjust his stance on the ice before he snapped a puck towards himself, playing with it for a second before shooting it hard at the net. He was aiming for the goalies glove really but by the way the audience gasped he was sure they hadn’t been able to tell the difference.

The goalie shook a little as Shane continued to shoot pucks into the goalies glove with a terrifying speed - it was not very often he got to send pucks at full power at a mostly willing goalie and he found he was quickly getting into the swing of it, slapping them in with relative ease.

Behind them the clock was slowly reaching the end of the thirty seconds, the music speeding up as Shane managed to shoot one more puck hard into the goalies glove, he watched as the goalies hand snapped back a little under the force of the puck.

As the timer hit thirty seconds and the music stopped the goalie quickly stood from his place in the goal, his legs shaking a little as he made his way back to Jimmy's desk. He ducked behind the desk and moments later Jimmy emerged holding a half broken stick and a glove with a hole through it.

Shane made his own way back to his seat with a proud smile, hockey stick in hand.

“Oh, I think that’s broken–” he said, tossing the stick and the glove off to the side, “how many did you get Miles?”

“I got eight, but it’s a risky eight.” Miles said, the crowd oohed and ahhed appreciatively rather like a pantomime audience.

“Sean?”

“Just a six.”

“Jon?”

“I also got eight.”

“And Shane?”

“I thought I was sitting this one out?” he said, panicked now under the attention turned on him. He supposed when Jimmy had approached him about the bit he had never explicitly said he wouldn’t be participating in the round but he had assumed he would have been exempt from taking part.

“What and leave Jon to do it all?” Jimmy asked, raising his eyebrows expectantly. “No, come on you must have gotten something.”

Shane glanced over to the board where the letters had been placed, he knew he didn’t have long but maybe he could stall if he thought quickly enough. “Six– I definitely got a six.” he said, suddenly incredibly sure of himself, if he and Sean both had a six then surely he would go to Sean first and not-

“Oh well this will be good then, Shane what's your six?” Jimmy asked.

Nuts, Shane thought, he stared at the board again, willing the letters to form themself into any word so he could say something. “Umm…”

“I am going to have to press-” 

“Eating.” Shane said quickly, cutting Jimmy off before he could suggest that he somehow didn’t know the words.

“Wow-” Jimmy whistled in low surprise as Rachel shuffled the letters around on the board to present the word ‘eatings’ to the teams.

“Ok you don’t have to sound quite so surprised,” Shane grumbled, he knew he wasn’t so good at the numbers round but letters he could do - he had spent enough years helping his dad with crosswords and word games in the papers he read and besides, competitive scrabble hadn’t been banned in the hollander household for no reason.

“Well I mean you had all of the time on the numbers round and you were still struggling with that.” Jon pointed out, Shane glared at him trying very hard to wipe the last numbers round from all living memory with a single hard stare.

“My dad reads the new yorker, we do crosswords together sometimes,” he shot back, pouting a little.

“Jon your eight?”

“Swatting.” he said simply, watching as Rachel shuffled the letters around to show his word on the board.

“Miles?”

“Similar, I went for sweating.”

“And that was a risky word for you?” Shane asked a little incredulously, staring at Miles from his seat across the studio.

“And Sean, did you get the same?”

“I had wettings,” he said simply. Jimmy looked at him a little confused before turning to Susie.

“Susie is wettings in there?”

“It is yes it is the plural form of the noun wetting, as in the act or an instance of making something wet, wettings.”

“Very good, that's eight points to each team, Susie, Rhod, could they have done any better?”

“There is a nine letter word they could have had-” Rhod began, Shane, who had now had more than a few seconds to look at the board interrupted excitedly.

“Oh, twangiest!”

“Exactly!” Susie said, a little taken aback by the intrusion but happy that someone had gotten it nonetheless, “yes that's right Shane, twangiest.”

Rachel rearranged the letters on the board to spell tawngiest out. Shane sat with a self satisfied smile, all the sulking and grumbling from earlier erased under the glow of getting something right.

“I can see the rage bubbling under Jon's skin from here,” Sean commented. Shane cast a glance over to his team mate to see that yes, Sean was right, Jon seemed to be seething with a barely hidden rage.

“No, no I mean I just think its funny how you have all the time in the world for Jimmys jokes, but you dont have the time to sit down and actually play the fucking game.” he snapped, Shane laughed in disbelief as Jon mirrored his own posture from earlier, sinking down low in his seat and crossing his arms in a way that was definitely not sulking as far as anyone was concerned.

“I’m not sure I've ever seen him this annoyed and I made him lose carrot in a box twice,” Sean said gleefully, laughing at Jon's overly apparent misery.

“Theres veins popping out that I didn't know the human body could make honestly,” Jimmy added.

“Oh yes, lets all laugh at poor Jon who apparently is the only one putting any fucking effort in to winning, ha ha ha lets just laugh it up!”

“Shane,” Ilya said slowly, putting his phone in his pocket as he walked into their home gym to find Shane running on the treadmill. “Do you mean to tell me that the years of you doing ‘just a little promo’ has actually been you tormenting David Mitchell with your apparently not incredibly boring life? And you never thought to mention it once?”

“Huh?” Shane called, slowing the treadmill to a walk to glance over his shoulder at where Ilya was stood. “What do you mean?”

“I mean there are lots of tweets here about you on these shows and you seem to be giving all of them aneurysms?” Ilya said, pulling his phone back out and opening up twitter to show Shane.

Shane stopped the treadmill, letting himself glide off it smoothly as it slowed to a stop. Shane grabbed his towel from the arm of the treadmill and slung it over the back of his neck, mopping up the sweat he had been working up as he made his way over to Ilya, still a little breathless from his run.

Ilya turned his phone to show Shane the flurry of tweets that were coming in at a rapid pace. For a second his heart stopped, anxiety spiked at the quickly rolling in tweets, he was categorising in his head what he had done, what he might need to do, he could speak to Troy, he could speak to Farah, would he need to put out a statement? Maybe it would be best if- he managed to finally stop and read one fully.

His face pulled into a confused look as he glanced back up at Ilya, handing the phone back to him.

“Ilya these are just about the shows I was doing when I was doing promo for the foundation? What's the problem?” he said, breathing a sigh of relief.

“There is no problem, it is just not what I expected, you told me you were doing promotion things, I thought it would be very boring talking to very important boring people about very boring things. I did not think it was you telling David Mitchell about the time where you apparently got trapped on a lake with a pod of orcas, this you did not mention.” Ilya said, almost pleadingly in an effort to make Shane understand just how confusing the morning had been for him.

“I did mention it!” Shane said defensively, throwing his hands up a little exasperated. He had talked to Ilya about it plenty, he had told him about his flights and his hotels and how busy his schedule was. He had even facetimed him multiple times to talk about how intimidating it was going into a studio with a bunch of people he didn’t know super well and how different it was to the sort of press he did after games. 

He was so sure Ilya had understood at the time but looking back on it he wasn’t sure he had ever actually spoken about the specifics of the shows he was on. Nonetheless he thought surely Ilya knew, how could he not? “I told you I was doing some interviews and shows and I even invited you along. You told me you had an incredibly busy summer planned!”

“I THOUGHT YOU MEANT BORING INTERVIEWS WITH THE NEWS PEOPLE I DID NOT THINK YOU WERE THROWING POTATOES AROUND WITH JOE WILKINSON?!” Ilya shouted, throwing his hands up dramatically. “Shane, moya lyubov' surely you understand that I thought you were talking to professional interviewers about the camps like how you do here. Surely you understand how much of a shock it was to see you firing pucks over the head of Greg Davies?"

Shane thought for a moment, rolling back through everything he had ever told Ilya about the shows. He knew he had told him at first, about the interviews he was doing, late night TV was light night TV no matter where he was in the world and the content of it had been much the same as it was elsewhere, still he had told Ilya dutifully how each one had gone, what sort of things they asked about. 

Shane may not be the best at picking up cues most of the time, but he knew Ilya, he had known him for so long it was almost second nature, which was perhaps why he had stopped talking about the shows. He had seen the way Ilya nodded along with polite interest, the same way he did when Wyatt was talking to him about a new comic, or Bood about the best type of fuel for the grill - it was a learned feigned interest and Shane had no interest in boring Ilya with his stories so he had stopped getting into the details of it all, choosing instead to discuss the things he knew Ilya cared about; his flight, how his stay was, how much he missed him, the usual.

“Well I mean it did start off with a few sort of armchair type interviews, I told you about them I just– I don't know you didn’t seem very interested in them so I guess I started leaving the details out. I didn’t want to bore you.” Shane said, somewhat sheepishly, bringing his hand up to wipe some of the sweat from his brow. 

“You could never–”

“Don’t even start that Ilya. I know I was boring you, you spent most of the time I was explaining my day, half listening, playing with Anya.”

“It is not my fault she looks at me with big puppy eyes and asks for attention, if you looked at me with big puppy eyes and begged for attention maybe I would listen better.” Ilya said, raising his eyebrows and smirking at Shane. “Anyway I do not understand how this all went from interviews to panel shows with comedians.”

“I mean I don't really know how it happened myself, I guess miketta and Alex saw some of those and thought it would be fun to get me on some of their late night shows– it was all made a little easier me knowing some of the comedians from the interviews I guess. I told you all about this though I am sure I did. I told you I was looking forward to doing the letters game.”

“I THOUGHT YOU MEANT THE CROSSWORD SHANE, I THOUGHT YOU MEANT YOU WERE LOOKING FORWARD TO DOING THE BORING CROSSWORD YOU DO EVERYDAY.” Ilya said, exasperated once more, “I DID NOT THINK YOU MEANT YOU WERE DOING CATS DOES COUNTDOWN WITH A BUNCH OF FUNNY BRITISH COMEDIANS?!”

“I don't know how you didn’t get it? We’ve had Miketta round for dinner a few times now?” Shane was confused again, he was sure Ilya would have picked it up when they were all sat around the table discussing how post-show production was going and what the edits were looking like. He knew Ilya didn’t always remember details of conversations like he did but surely that would have clued him in to the fact that Shane had been on these shows.

“You said she was a friend from a while ago,” Ilya said slowly, not quite connecting the dots on it all yet. “You mean to tell me she has somehow orchestrated all of this?”

“She’s the head of production for channel four Ilya? We spoke about productions in the off season at length? Her husband is that freelancer?” Shane said slowly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Ilya sighed a long dramatic sigh before speaking, “Shane, Lyubov' vsey moyey zhizni, samyy dorogoy muzh, solntse I luna moyey vselennoy, do you think I know all british show producers off the top of my head? Did you tell me she was a producer?”

“Well no” Shane admitted, suddenly all to aware of his lack of communication, “but I mean I thought you would have known from-”

“If you tell me you think I knew because you had some boring discussion about television production I am going to scream moya lyubov'” Ilya said seriously, catching Shane's hands in his own and pulling him a step closer to him. “You must know this is surprising to me?”

“I really didn’t think it was that big a deal” Shane mumbled, letting himself be pulled in close to Ilya's chest, “I’m sorry I promise I really thought you knew. You aren’t upset with me are you?”

“Upset with you for what?”

“I don’t know” Shane shrugged, letting his head thud softly against Ilya's chest. “Not telling you everything? Having fun without you?”

“Shane, I do not care that you had fun, I was just surprised that is all,” he said softly, a fond crinkle in his eyes as he looked down at Shane. “I would not say no though if you were able to get me on some of those shows with you too Shane.”

“Ilya-”

“Oh so suddenly my husband doesn’t know people?” Ilya said in mock hurt, “my beautiful wonderful husband whom I have loved for many years will not let me go on the fun shows with him? It would be kinder to just ask me for a divorce if you do not love me anymore moye solnyshko but I will be having Anya in the divorce she is my baby.”

Shane groaned softly at Ilya's dramatics, “I'll have to ask miketta, it’s really not up to me I just get invited along to these things.”

“Oh what a wonderful day, my husband loves me again, we should celebrate this immediately!” Ilya said, pressing a long, wet kiss to Shane's nose.

Shane wriggled his way out of Ilya's arms, “gross, I'm all sweaty at least let me shower.”

“You will be all sweaty after we are done celebrating Shane.” Ilya said, a grin pulled across his face as he caught Shane's hand with his own. “Come on, let me congratulate you on giving many British comedians a heart attack.”

Shane let himself be led down the hallway by his hand, a soft smile spread across his cheeks.

“Does Yuna know about this?” Ilya asked, stopping about halfway down the hall, his voice suddenly more serious.

“Of course she knows it's not like-” Shane began to protest. Ilya cut him off.

“No, Shane, I am not asking if Yuna knew you went to the UK to do promotional material for the foundation,” he said simply. “I am asking if your lovely mother, who has done no wrong in her life ever, knew that you were in the UK giving David Mitchell a heart attack, talking about how you got invited to the royal wedding by Judi Dench, on a regular basis.”

“I–” Shane froze, trying to wrack his brain for something, anything that told him he had in fact given his mum all the details of his trip. “Oh fuck.”

“Shane.” Ilya said warningly.

“I’m sure she–” 

“OH MY GOD YOU DID NOT TELL YOUR MOTHER?” Ilya shouted, suddenly horrified. “YOU ARE A TERRIBLE SON SHANE SHE IS GOING TO BE SENT TO AN EARLY GRAVE!”

“I’m sure it's fine it’s nothing to worry about she knows she must know,” Shane said, trying to bring Ilya's hand to his mouth to press a gentle kiss to his knuckles.

“You want poor sweet yuna to find out that Bob Mortimer has a tattoo of you as a garden gnome through twitter?” Ilya asked, deadly serious.

“Oh fuck.”

“YES OH FUCK I AM GLAD YOU SEE THE GRAVITY OF THE SITUATION NOW SHANE!” 

“I need to call her right now,” Shane said, taking off down the hallway to find his phone. Ilya ran after him shouting about finding him a nice coffin or scattering his ashes underneath the ice at the rink.