The Unbelievable Truth - 03x04 Smiling, Charles Darwin, Cucumbers, Dolphins

Episode Date: October 8, 2021

03x04 13 April 2009 Jack Dee, Fred MacAulay, Will Self, Jeremy Hardy Smiling, Charles Darwin, Cucumbers, Dolphins

We present The Unbelievable Truth, the panel game built on truth and lies. In the chair, please welcome David Mitchell. Hello and welcome to The Unbelievable Truth, the panel game that's all about fantastical truths and scurrilous lies. Of course, many of the things we commonly believe to be true are in fact lies. For example, that loose change dropped from the top of a tall building could kill a pedestrian. In fact, it would only stun the pedestrian, who would then be killed by the investment banker coming down after it. Please welcome this week's panel,

Jeremy Hardy, Will Self, Jack Dee and Fred McCauley. Here's how it works. Each of the panel will present a short lecture that should be entirely false, save for five pieces of true information they've concealed amongst the lies in which they should attempt to smuggle undetected past their opponents. Points are scored by truths which go unnoticed, while other panellists can win points if they spot a truth or lose points

if they mistake a truth for a lie. We'll begin with Jack D. Jack, your subject is smiling, the facial expression denoting pleasure, happiness or amusement, which is typically formed by flexing muscles near both ends of the mouth. Fingers on buzzers, everyone else. Off you go, Jack. Eskimos, or Inuits as I call them because I'm a sophisticated Londoner, have 34 different words for smile. The reason for this is thought to be because Inuits, or the indigenous peoples of Northern Canada, Greenland and Alaska as I call them

because I'm a hand-wringing media type, believe that the human smile is their deity's way of communicating with us. Interestingly, they... Well... I think that's true, that they believe that it's their deity's way of communicating with them. They don't, we don't think. I'm afraid that's not true.

Well, I... Oh. That's just so misery-making and depressing. All right, you'd better press on, Jack, press on. Interestingly, they also have specific smiles for certain situations. For instance, there's a particular smile that an Inuit gives when confronted by a polar bear. If you want to know what it looks like,

then go to Inuitsmiles.com forward slash polar bear, or alternatively look in a mirror next time you're sitting on the toilet the morning after a curry. The concept of deliberately smiling when having your photograph taken was actually only introduced in 1932 by Kodak in their advertising campaign of that year. I'm sorry, I think that probably is true as well. No, I think people always smile for cameras.

Oh, okay. In fact, all those pictures of all the troops going off to the First World War, they're all smiling, which led some people to infer that they're looking forward to it. It's strange in my world, isn't it, where everything grotesquely implausible is in fact a fact. Well, yeah, I mean, that world could be a disadvantage in this format. It could be, but you'd better press on, Joe. Yes, the concept of deliberately smiling when having a photograph taken was actually only introduced in 1932 by Kodak in their advertising campaign of that year,

which held the snappy catchphrase, smile because you're being photographed. Fred? I think Kodak didn't have an advertising campaign that said, smile, you're being photographed. You've not got a high opinion of the marketing department of Kodak. No, they didn't. They missed an opportunity there.

One thing that is true about photographs, and that's what slightly got me going about this, is um graham robb says in his book the invention of france that people in rural france never had photographs of children up until the 20th century and it wasn't considered that children were a fit subject of photography and that's what i think that's true yeah it is i mean it wasn't anything sort of any kind of pedo scare. It's just that kids were kind of beneath contempt. But there was no point in photographing. You don't photograph them, they're not ready.

Yeah, yeah. They're not ready for it. Like photographing an uncooked baguette. Yeah. Yeah, exactly like that. It's now illegal to photograph the police. Yes. Not the band, the actual police.

You're allowed to photograph community service officers, in fact. That's why they were brought on to be... I think they're just grateful for any form of attention, aren't they? Poor guys. They get bullied by the real police. They get arrested at the end of every day as a joke. They look like they've got their uniform from one of those party shops.

And their stab vest is just a vest. In Albania, it's forbidden to smile on Sundays as it suggests that being idle is preferable to working, whereas there is a law still on the books in Milan that requires citizens to smile at all times in public or risk a hefty fine. Exemptions include visiting patients in hospital, attending funerals and listening to quote-unquote.

Physiology is the study of human facial expression. Scientists believe that... Jeremy. That might be true. What, that physiology is the study of human facial expression? Yeah. Yeah, it isn't, I'm afraid. What is it, then? Is it spelled F-I-Z-Z?

E-R-O-L-O-G-Y. I don't have to... It disclosed this. It could be the study of bubbles, for example. No, it's... The study of vimto. The institute of vimto, in which they study Vimto and they make things out of Vimto. They make chairs out of Vimto and surgical instruments. And a model of Enver Hoxha, the former dictator of Albania, that is worshipped by Smurfs who've

escaped from Father Abraham. Is that it? No, it's not. I'm not bothering. This is... Yeah. Little did you know, Jack, when you came up with physiology, you were going to stumble across what Will did his PhD in. Yeah.

This is a different spelling of physiology from the well-known activity you described. I just made a noise hitting water against a thing. It's not the arch, is this? Don't start. Whirr. Do you like some more crockery? Oh, I don't mind if I do.

And to denote the fact it's not the archers, I explained what had happened. In the archers, they don't go, that's not really a cow, it's just a recording. That's not birdsong, it's a tape. These aren't really stairs I'm coming down. I'm not really tired from lambing. Um, Jack.

Scientists believe that smiling was originally an expression of fear, although they fail to explain if this is the case what the point is of looking scared. Fred. I think that scientists did believe that smiling was originally a sign of fear. Yes, they did. Well done.

A sincere as opposed to an insincere smile is known as a Duchenne smile, so named after the scientist who researched smiling by Will. I think that might be true. Yes, it is absolutely true. Will? I think that might be true. Yes, it is absolutely true. Yes, there was this French neurologist called Duchenne.

Yeah, I know. You were there, you met him. I was at physiology school with him. The sincere smile was named after him, even though what his job was is he researched smiling by electrocuting people's faces, thereby getting hundreds and hundreds of insincere smiles. And it seems rather unfair that you name the nice thing a sincere smile after this sadist.

Well, I mean, you've got to put these things in perspective, haven't you? I mean, it was the only way to find out was to electrocute people's faces. I mean, you know. To find out what? To find out whether they were being sincere or insincere. There's a word for using electricity to check people's sincerity, isn't there? Maybe it's torture. Yeah, but if national sincerity is at stake...

Sadly, he spent the remainder of his days locked up alone, repeatedly singing When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, a song which coincidentally was written by a German called Gruff, who never went to Ireland. Well. I think that's true. That's absolutely true. Well done. The first clown known to have the now familiar painted smile was the Hungarian Janos Gyageli,

whose act consisted of deliberately catching his fingers in rat traps. Apparently the sign of him doing this with a huge smile on his face delighted his audiences. I suspect that he was the first clown to have that particular look on his face. Sorry. Bad luck. Yeah. Wrong. particular look on his face.

Sorry. Bad luck. Yeah. Wrong. Sadly, Janos suffered a heart attack after a show, aged only 36, and though rushed to hospital, was not taken seriously by the staff there because of his huge grin. Another school of thought is that smiling was developed by human females as a way of attracting partners.

Evidence that might point to this is the habit of beauty contestants who often smear Vaseline on their teeth, which helps them to hold a fixed smile for longer. Jeremy. Sorry, I think that's true. Yes, that's absolutely true. Well done, yes.

Good. Thank you, Jack. And, Jack, in that round, you only smuggled one truth past the rest of the panel, which was that in Milan, citizens were required to smile at all times in public or risk a hefty fine, except when they were visiting people in hospital or attending funerals. So that means you've scored one point. so that means you've scored one point a genuine smile uses 12 muscles an insincere smile only uses 2 muscles

except in the case of Gordon Brown where the biceps of two strong men pulling upwards are also required someone who never smiles is known as an agilast or a hedge fund manager I don't know if I pronounced that properly I asked about the pronunciation of that

beforehand and have written it down in a way that I can't understand. No, it's hedge fund manager. Okay, we turn now to Fred McCauley. Fred is the second most famous Fred in Scotland, after the Royal Bank of Scotland's Fred the Shred Goodwin. Fred, your subject is Charles Darwin, the English naturalist who presented compelling

evidence that all species of life evolved over time from common ancestors. Off you go, Fred. Fingers on buzzers, the rest of you. Born into a successful family of haberdashers in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, Charles Darwin gave up the chance of running the business because he had had a fear of buttons as a child and he was worried that the phobia might return. Jeremy. I know that there is a common phobia of buttons,

which is the most pathetic fear that you can possibly have. Well, I'm sure there are people who are afraid of buttons, and that's, I'd say, among the least understandable phobias, certainly less understandable than a fear of tigers. If done if you've done panto when i was accused wasn't there someone whose suicide note was uh something like damn all this buttoning and unbuttoning all this buttoning and unbuttoning and all that is left to us is the summer of a dormouse lord byron that he then invented velcro i mean this is not widely known he's one of the great modernists byron he experimented he used initially hedgehog skins which he put onto his clothing and but they he

found that they were rather prickly but he perfected it before he died. Well... His last words were, rip it off. Well, I'm certainly looking forward to the part of the game where you're supposed to talk crap, Will. Unfortunately, Darwin did not have a fear of buttons. Charles Darwin was a skilled musical entertainer and won several prizes at school for playing string instruments.

He progressed from violin to viola, then cello and finally double bass, which some people think led to his theory of the survival of the biggest. His family were indeed distinguished, not least his grandfathers, inventor James Watt and Josiah Wedgwood, the potter... Well... Wedgwood was in his family tree. Yes, that's absolutely right. Yep.

Yeah. Wedgwood was also the granddaughter of Darwin's wife, Emma. That's true. Yes, that's absolutely right as well. That's... Just keep buzzing, Will Yep Darwin thought long and hard about marrying Emma listing all the pros and cons of such an action before eventually deciding to go ahead with the wedding

because it would keep the guest list numbers down In his scientific life, he entertained himself by removing animals from their natural habitat and laughing at their subsequent confusion He once... himself by removing animals from their natural habitat and laughing at the subsequent confusion he once he once transported a tortoise called harriet from the galapagos to australia where she lived happily or unhappily who can tell until 2006 when she died that's true that's absolutely right will yes do you know quite a lot about Charles Darwin, don't you? Yeah, I mean, I don't want to sort of beat my own drum about this,

but he is, you know, arguably the most famous scientific thinker apart from Newton to come out of this country, and there are many, many biographies of him, of which I have read one. And, well, you know, that shows you, kid, sometimes it's worth reading a book. But, anyway... i want to win yeah get on with it fred yeah she incidentally harriet was 176 when she died and when he said i just realized that my subject is the books of will self darwin used to keep notes in a variety of different coloured inks Green for botany, red for geology, blue for philosophy

And black just for fun I think it's true No, that's not true Bums You obviously read one of those crap items I tell you who it is true of though Oliver Sacks, the neurologist.

He keeps notes in different coloured inks. Didn't help you with Darwin, though, did it? No. Gary Alfred. With his talent for quick sketching, Darwin was able to plot the movements of some of the 10,000 barnacles he kept, and if you put all the sketches together in a pad

and flicked them forwards, you could see that absolutely nothing happened. do we define darren's genius well here's an example of the way his mind work to help cure himself of his snuff habit he struck on the idea of keeping his snuff box in the basement of his house and the key to it in the attic whereas someone who was less evolved might just have thrown the snuff box in the bin thank you fred fred you managed to smuggle two truths past the rest of the panel which are yeah they're one of them is the snuff one which is that he cured his snuff habit by keeping a snuff box in the basement and the key to the basement in the attic uh also that he kept

uh 10 000 barnacles which is a lot of barnacles. That's actually 2,000 more than I've got. But also, actually, one thing I sort of wanted to go back and say is that when he did marry his cousin Emma, and he made a list of pros and cons about whether or not he wanted to marry her, a bit like Ross in Friends, among the pros was, Ross in Friends, among the pros was, object to be loved and played with, better than a dog anyhow. A tortoise brought by Charles Darwin from the Galapagos did indeed die in Australia in 2006, aged 176. It's amazing to think that that reptile had provided a living connection with the life of Charles Darwin. Even more amazing was just how like a speed bump it looked for the driver of the HGV. Right, it's now the turn of Will Self.

Will often uses long or obscure words in his writing, a tendency which, in my opinion, leaves him open to a charge of sesquivadelian multiloquence. Your subject, Will, is the cucumber, a typically cylindrical green vegetable with thin green rind and mild white flesh. Fingers on buzzers, the rest of you. Off you go, Will. The place of the cucumber in our literary tradition is profoundly ambiguous. Renaissance writers took their lead from the King James Bible. The daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers,

and viewed the phallic aspect of the fruit for it is a fruit not a vegetable as synonymous with its protective character cucumber skin having been long employed as a specific for the pox fred at the start of that i think you mentioned that the cucumber was a fruit not a vegetable i'm just going to have a stab in the dark that it is a fruit. Yes, it is a fruit, not a vegetable. Well done. Let us salute the noble cucumber and hold it aloft as one might a victor's sword or one's

very manhood. Cries Northumberland in Richard II. And this is but one of the 476 references found to the fascinating fruit throughout the works of Shakespeare. Indeed, the cucumber is not only a favorite source of imagery for the immortal bard, but was ubiquitous in the works of most poets and dramatists of the early modern era.

Spencer's Fairy Queen features Cucumblio, the rampant green spirit of chivalry, who would feign thrust upon his lance a score or more green staffs with puissant water drawn. However, the post-Civil War prevailing Puritanism paid to such pleopism. Hence, John Dryden's grudging and firmly naturalistic portrait, cucumbers along the surface creep with crooked bodies and with bellies deep. But possibly the sternest critic of the cucumber was that arch-Tory Samuel Johnson who dismissed it thus, a cucumber should be well sliced and dressed with pepper and vinegar and then thrown out as good for nothing.

Jerry. I think Johnson might have said that about the cucumber. Yes, he did. Well done. The wags of Johnson's own club twitted the great jam by cultivating large cucumbers in their gardens. James Boswell grew a five foot seven inch

cucumber that was widely attested to be the largest ever seen in the kingdom and the queen insisted on coming to see it twice boswell's was indeed the largest cucumber grown until tom fisher of grand haven michigan grew one six feet two inches long fred fisher had the the biggest cucumber ever he did yes well yes. Well done. Yes. In the Victorian era, cucumbers were ruthlessly censored from all literature intended for polite society, and it was forbidden to refer to them

except when sliced and in sandwiches. Early proof copies of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Cucumberland were seized by the Lord Chancellor's office and burnt. Next week I will be considering the role of Zatziki in Greek literature with special reference to the Odyssey. Thank you. Thank you, Will.

So, Will, at the end of that round you managed to smuggle two truths past the rest of the panel which are that the King James Bible refers to the cucumber as follows. The daughter of Zion is, well, like you said, I don't have to read that out. And also that the poet John Dryden wrote, cucumbers along the surface creep with crooked bodies and with bellies deep. So at the end of that round, you've scored two points.

When women first see wrinkles when they look in the mirror, a lot of them put slices of cucumber over their eyes, and sure enough, they can't see the wrinkles anymore. Cucumbers are 96% water, a slightly higher percentage than the average public swimming pool. It's now the turn of Jeremy Hardy. Jeremy is well known for his strong left-wing views. For example, he believes that all bankers should be shot.

Although, of course, that view is now rather mainstream. Your subject, Jeremy, is dolphins, carnivorous marine mammals that are closely related to whales and porpoises whose friendly appearance and playful attitude have made them popular in human culture. Off you go, Jeremy. The dolphin is the smallest land-living fish in the Midlands. Many people mistakenly believe it to be a marsupial,

like the duck or the plankton, but it is actually a relative of the badger, and is friendly with the tuna. The life cycle of the dolphin... Jack? Is it friendly with the tuna? Is that true? No. Usually not, no, they eat them. Friendships have been

noted between individual dolphins and tuna. No, they swim in the same sea, but that's just... sea but no no so one or two dolphins will get on with the tuna i mean they're not saying they're like big mates but they haven't got the facility of language without which friendship is more or less oh god you're so remorselessly anthropocentric aren't you how how can you give a lecture about dolphins with attitudes like that you've got to enter into the spirit of the dolphin. OK, give him a point, David. Give him a point.

Sorry, am I not involved now? He didn't even buzz. No, he's saying, give Jack a point. I'm backing my man Jack. Right. No, it was my mistake. I don't mind. Listen, if there's more points to go around, the world's a happier place. I'm happy for that to be true.

That's just like quantitative easing. I'm not going to devalue the point by putting 75 billion into the system. Carry on. The life cycle of the dolphin begins with the mummy dolphin swimming upstream to build a nest by damming a river with her sharp front teeth to trap a male whom she mates with before biting his head off. The next day she gives birth to a tadpole which then forms a chrysalis, out of which comes a beautiful moth which lays eggs on your favourite jumper. This doesn't work at all, so then the dolphin just gives birth at a birthing centre where it is soothed by human music,

because when you're a dolphin, whale song is bloody loud. The birth takes place in a pool that has been specially drained. Dolphins have tried water births, but always end up having a caesarean. Many people, exactly seven in fact, have observed the human qualities of dolphins. The female dolphin behaves as though no other dolphin has ever been pregnant before, despite attending an NCT group to acquire a whole load of bogus new friends for the sole reason that they're up the duff too. The birth is attended by a dolphin midwife, which is the kind of nurse

who is only trusted to do one thing, and the dolphin baby doesn't sleep for the first month of its life. In fact, dolphin mating rituals... I think dolphin babies don't sleep for the first month. And you're absolutely right. Well done. In fact, dolphin mating rituals are also similar to those of humans, in that a lot of the time they're not even trying to get pregnant, and quite often the female isn't even involved. During the Second World War,

the Americans who won the war with no help trained killer dolphins to depress Japanese pilots by feeding them raw fish so that they would commit Hare Krishna by crashing their planes into German U-boats, thus cracking the Da Vinci Code. The French Army trained them to sniff out truffles. The French army trained them to sniff out truffles.

I think you smuggled in an inadvertent truth. Where? I think, unlike other animals, they have sex a lot when they're not making babies, and you smuggled that in. I did smuggle it in. You didn't spot it. Yeah, no, I'm afraid... I did, I spotted it. That means I'm the winner. I just, I think you buzzed too late. I'm sorry, Will, but you are absolutely right

that dolphins do have sex just for fun. My mum is going to be listening to this and everything. She never usually listens to me on the radio because she's been dead for 20 years. She said she'd tune in to this one. We get very, very high ratings amongst the dead, actually. But you are right. But I think it was a bit late.

Sorry. Jeremy. Dolphins are notoriously stupid, and the reason that no research has been done into why they're always getting themselves stranded on beaches despite not having feet or flip-flops is that nobody cares. Once it's stranded, you're supposed to dry it with a towel

and hand it over to Her Majesty the Queen, who owns the sea. The most famous dolphin of all time was Lassie the Bush Wonder Horse, who would come swimming up to the old Walton's place to alert them to the fact that there was a storm coming or Sonic the Hedgehog was trapped down an old mine shaft. He died in 1964. Thank you, Jeremy.

Thank you, Jeremy. he died in 1964 thank you Jeremy and at the end of that round Jeremy you smuggled four truths past the rest of the panel although one of them is the controversially retrospectively spotted fact that dolphins have sex for fun the other three facts are that when a dolphin gives birth

she is often assisted by another sort of midwife dolphin who hangs around to help and stops, you know, the tuna they don't get on with from getting involved. And that dolphins... Male dolphins have sex on their own. Yeah, that's what I was trying to say. And the other, the fourth truth, is that all dolphins, whales and porpoises

stranded on British shores must be offered to the Queen, according to a law passed in 1324, because they're known as fishes royal, which means they're not mammals, are they? They're fishes, according to the law. Never mind the science, it's according to the law. What we need now is a law saying that tomatoes and cucumbers are vegetables, because they obviously are. saying that tomatoes and cucumbers are vegetables,

because they obviously are. But that means, Jeremy, at the end of that round, you've scored four points. Dolphins can look in a different direction with each eye, and after about two in the morning, so can Amy Winehouse. Which brings us to the final scores. In fourth place, with minus one point, we have Jack Dee. In third place, with one point, it's Jeremy Hardy. In second place, with two points, it's Fred McCauley. And in first place, with an unassailable five points, and despite all my cheating, it's this week's winner, Will Self.

That's about it for this week. All that remains is for me to thank our guests. They were all truly unbelievable, and that's the unbelievable truth. Goodbye. The unbelievable truth was devised by John Naismith and Graham Garden and featured David Mitchell in the chair with panellists Jeremy Hardy, Fred McCauley, Jack Dee and Will Self. The chairman's script was written by Dan Gaster

and the producer was John Naismith. It was a random production for BBC Radio 4.