The Unbelievable Truth - 12x03 Trees, Spain, Doctors, Newspapers

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

12x03 13 January 2014 Henning Wehn, Victoria Coren Mitchell, Graeme Garden, Jeremy Hardy Trees, Spain, Doctors, Newspapers

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 show about incredible truths and fairly credible lies. I'm David Mitchell. I'm joined by four giants of the British comedians who are available seen. Please welcome Henning Vane, Graham Garden, Jeremy Hardy and Victoria Corrin Mitchell. The rules are as follows. Each panellist will present a short lecture that should be entirely false, save for five pieces of true information, which they should attempt to smuggle past their opponents,

cunningly concealed amongst the lies. Points are scored by truths that go unnoticed, while other panellists can win points if they spot a truth or lose points if they mistake a lie for a truth. First up is Henning Weyn. Henning comes from Germany, a nation which, according to a poll I saw the other day, should never have invaded his country. Henning, your subject is the tree, described by my encyclopedia as a very tall plant that has deep roots and a thick stem made of wood which supports leaf, flower and fruit-bearing branches. Off you go, Henning. Fingers on buzzers, the rest of you.

Trees were invented by Jesus's dad. Who, in the year nothing put all the knowledge in the world into the tree of knowledge. Fortunately there wasn't much knowledge back then so it was only a small tree. Jeremy. Oh did I accidentally press?

Oh no no, did you press? I know you like to call me Jeremy. Yeah I know. Victoria. Okay now I can't say for certain that this is a fact, but if your opening line was, trees were invented by Jesus's father, we're surely not at a point where we can say that definitely isn't true. You're suggesting there's a god? I'd like to know how you'd rule on the matter. Well, I think I always knew it would be down to me to decide on this point. Is there a god? Well, there certainly might be a god.

I think you maybe get a half point, because there may be a god. But Henning doesn't lose a point, because there may be a benevolent god. Hindu men believe that it is unlucky to get married a third time, so they take a tree as their third wife. The tree is then burnt, and they're free to marry a fourth. Graham. The Hindus who think it's unlucky to marry a third time. You're absolutely right.

And if you marry a tree, it is unlucky, isn't it? It's a sort of self-fulfilling thing. I knew my third wife, we wouldn't get along as soon as I decided she was going to be a tree. Yes, belief among some Hindu men that to marry for the third time is unlucky. So the tree or third wife is married and then burnt, leaving him free to marry the woman of his choice as his fourth wife. Yeah. Does it have a dress and everything? I think they just douse it in petrol. Henning. In the 8th century, Prince Jahal of Mysore got on so well with his tree that they stayed happily married for 46 years. It's possible to tell which direction is south by cutting down a tree and looking at its rings.

Before the invention of the compass, thousands of trees were felt in Europe by confused travellers, making it much easier for them to see where they were going. Well, there are certain trees without which global exploration would have been impossible. The Ghanaian sausage tree was a favourite of Alexander von Humboldt because it produces a meaty fruit that tastes just like pork loin. The Venezuelan cow tree produces a rich milk that can be poured on cornflakes. A particularly industrious species

is the bottle tree family, members of which have found work as a prison cell in Australia and a pub in South Africa. As of next week, one of them starts work as a benefits office in Sunderland. Mind you, trees also know how to mingle with the upper class. George III was driving through Windsor Great Park one day when he stopped to greet an oak tree. He shook hands with one of its branches

and chatted to it for several minutes, believing it to be the King of Prussia. Graham. King George III, did you say? Yes. Oh, yeah, he did chat to the king of prussia graham king george iii did you say yes oh yeah he did chat to the king of prussia who turned out to be an oak tree no that's it's that's not true it's a famous story but entirely apocryphal he didn't talk to why would somebody make that up he was crazy he probably did all kinds of stuff like that Crazy people don't do that sort of thing as much as you'd think. It's a lot more unhappiness and self-harm and a lot less thinking you're Napoleon. It was too early for him to think he was Napoleon.

No. Unless he was Napoleon. Well, I think people applauding there are going to feel embarrassed shortly because George III went mad in 1810 and Napoleon was already Emperor of France. Oh, yeah, fair play, see. So, yes. But that just shows...

The other people are clapping now. They hate the people who are clapping first. That just shows that because I am more popular and charismatic than you, I have a higher truth. You can make lies true, can't you? You're like Hitler. How did Hitler end up in this? Thank you, Henning.

And at the end of that round, Henning, you've managed to smuggle four truths past the rest of the panel. It could be the speedboat. Never happened before. And the four truths are, firstly, it's possible to tell which direction is south from tree growth rings.

So by chopping a tree down, tree growth is more lush on the side of the tree closest to the equator, meaning that the tree rings are spaced further apart on that side. This means that in the northern hemisphere, the growth rings are wider apart on the south side of the tree and on the north side of the tree in the southern hemisphere. The second truth is there's such a thing as a cow tree, and it produces a milky juice that you could put on your cornflakes.

It's actually the Venezuelan brosimum tree, colloquially known as the cow tree. The third and fourth truths concern the hollow boabab or bottle tree. One of them, near Wyndham in Western Australia, was used as a prison in the 19th century and is now a tourist attraction. And the other, in South Africa, is a pub. It's about 6,000 years old

and it's got room for 15 people to sit in it comfortably and get drink get drunk get drink and then get drunk anyway Henning that means that you've scored four points no I have I really have to change my game plan now, don't I? Usually, I come out with zero points and then try to spot truths. And that always backfires and I end on about minus five. So plus four, from my previous experience of this program, is enough to win the round. I'm not going to challenge anything. In 2007, in New Hampshire, a man tried to rob a bank, disguised as a tree.

He walked in with leaves and twigs duct-taped to his head and body and demanded money. But it was swiftly dealt with by the branch manager. Okay, we turn now to Victoria Corrin-Mitchell. As some of you may know, Victoria and I are married. But I can assure you, as host, I will be giving her no preferential treatment at any stage of her victory. Victoria is a professional poker player

who's also a columnist and a TV and radio presenter. She's an all-rounder. She's like a full house with King's High and a flushed turn on the river. Well, hang on. All right, I don't know anything about poker. I still have to shuffle cards by putting them all on the floor and stirring them round in circles. When you say she's an all-rounder and a full house, are you saying I'm fat?

No. Okay. I read that in the guidebook to married life. Your subject, Victoria, is Spain, a constitutional monarchy in southwest Europe comprising most of the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic and Canary Islands. Fingers on buzzers, everyone else.

Off you go, Victoria. Spain literally means the land of rabbits. It's ironic because rabbits are believed to literally means the land of rabbits. It's ironic because rabbits are believed to be unlucky in most of Spain. Jeremy. I reckon rabbits are unlucky in Spain. No, they're not. Oh.

Graham. I think the word Spain means land of the rabbit. Well, you're right. Yeah. You're absolutely right. The Roman name Hispania, from which we get the modern Hispania, is thought to derive from the Carthaginian Ispania, meaning land of rabbits. Oh, interesting.

By the way, I would get involved, but I've got four points to defend. Victoria. In Spain, it's illegal to hum near a policeman because of an ongoing border dispute with portugal spain doesn't technically have a width jeremy i think it's illegal to hum near a policeman i think it's a hangover from franco regime which was just incredibly authoritarian and they were just making up repressive laws just so they could kill more people and so that law stayed in statute and not been repealed since the collapse of spanish fascism that no it's i kind of talking myself out of it as i went along actually no i thought that

you're citing the frfascist regime was extremely moving. Well it's important to remember. In fact, yeah let's take a moment to remember fascism. Henning, no. It was only a matter of time.

Victoria. Spanish firemen dress entirely in green. Spanish doctors are obliged to train initially as chefs. Spanish ambulances have no siren, instead blaring out old episodes of Fawlty Towers. Henning, you've been tempted down. I shouldn't do this. Do Spanish firemen, do they wear green?

No. It's the Fawlty Towers one, isn't it, that's true? Are you going to invest a buzz in that? No, I'm just saying purely theoretically. No, Spanish firemen wear brown and yellow. Spanish mothers are given a small omelette pan after having a baby, representing the joy of having another mouth to feed. Although it's not strictly necessary...

That sounds plausible. It does sound plausible. Plausible but not strictly necessary, as all Spanish children are born holding a hamper of cured meats and a thermos flask of strange, bitter coffee. Graham. I'm going to go with the pan, the babies being given a pan. No, they're not given a pan.

Once the babies have delivered the picnic, they are wiped clean, given a small sherry and piled onto a mattress so the devil can jump over them. To hell with it. Let's say it's true about the devil and the mattress. It is true about the devil and the mattress. Babies in the Spanish village of Castrillo de Murcia participate in an annual baby-j jumping festival dating back to 1620 where

a man dressed as the devil leaps over as many as six or seven babies on a mattress in the street with the intention of cleansing the babies of their original sin. The festival is considered one of the most dangerous in the world. The reputation of the Spanish as great Latin lovers is undermined, or confirmed, depending on your point of view, by the fact that the word esposas means both wives and handcuffs. Prostitution, however, is encouraged and respected. Spanish hookers are allowed to use empty council houses

as temporary brothels, and they get tax breaks on fishnet tights, antibiotics, and due to a particular interest of the Prime Minister at the time the law was made, plastic mouse ears. Jeremy? I think the bit about empty council places.

Spanish hookers are allowed to use empty council houses? Yeah. No, they're not. No, then rather the one with the double meaning for the word esposas or whatever it was for why why is it handcuffs yeah that's true that's a while ago henning you've been sitting there in your ivory tower of points shrinking shrinking ivory is more like an eagle really see i've had my one point, I lost it, and now... So now you're just chatting.

Yeah. Well, I see you so rarely, this is really the only opportunity I have. It's really the only time we talk, isn't it? Yeah. So prostitution is encouraged and respected, it's even possible to take a course in prostitution at school, giving rise to the portmanteau word

which literally means a large smile on the face of the careers officer. The only restrictions on this ancient trade are that Spanish ladies of the night are formally required to wear sensible shoes, gloves, protective headgear and reflective vests, which can cause awkward moments for cyclists. I have never been to Spain.

Thank you, Victoria. At the end of that round, you've managed to smuggle three truths past the rest of the panel, which are the one that Henning suspected too late and was also too timid to invest their buzz anyway. Because it is a bit like ball and chain, isn't it? So that's... Well, yes, the Spanish word esposas means both wives and handcuffs.

I don't know whether that's because their official word for wife is ball and chain. I don't know. No, but you say that in English, don't you? He doesn't. No. Anyway, so the first truth is that esposas means both wives and handcuffs, and both words derive from the Latin spondere, meaning to promise. The second truth is that a Valencian school, though not a state school, charges 100

euros for a one-week course in prostitution, which it says guarantees a job on graduation. The course teaches pupils a range of practical and theoretical subjects, including how to use erotic toys, the most popular positions from the Kama Sutra, and the history of prostitution. Is there a written test or is it just oral? And the third truth is that prostitutes in Spain are made to wear reflective vests. Prostitutes working along the busy LL11 road in Catalonia now wear high-vis reflective jackets

after Catalonian police imposed 40 euro fines on prostitutes for not wearing the jackets in 2010. Yeah, better safe than sorry. And that means Victoria, you've scored three points. Next up is Graham Garden.

Graham is one of the most loved of all Britain's gardens and now requires a similar amount of regular maintenance. Your subject, Graham, is doctors, persons trained and qualified to diagnose and treat medical problems. Off you go, Graham. In 2009, a group of doctors opened a restaurant in Latvia called Hospitalis. The dining room looked like an operating theatre. The food came on hospital trolleys with drinks in specimen beakers.

On request, you could be fed your meal by waitresses dressed as nurses while you wore a straitjacket. Henning. Yeah, I believe that story. You're right to believe it, because it's true. It closed because it was failing hygiene tests. But as we know, the hygiene requirements of a restaurant are much, much higher than they are for a hospital. In the 14th century, Henri de Mondeville believed

that causing the patient to weep or scream would remove the cause of their illness, which is where clown therapy began. Jeremy. I think the first bit of that is true. He believed that causing patients to weep or scream was a good idea. Yeah. No, he didn't.

Okay. No. But no, this chap, Henri de Mondville, he was one of the first surgeons to stress the need for a good bedside manner, so very much the opposite of making people weep and scream he recommended that surgeons should keep each male patient cheery with false letters about the deaths of his enemies or if he is a spiritual man by telling him he has been made a bishop that's it just that's a way of cheering someone up Some bad medical news

In other news, you have been made a bishop Graham When doctors in Brazil went on strike in 1973 the number of daily deaths dropped by a third Henning That sounds unfortunately entirely plausible. It is true, yes. It's believed a factor in the reduced death rate could be the reduction in elective non-emergency surgery

caused by the strike. Or, you know, they're doing more harm than good. Back in the 1860s, one American doctor devised an ingenious way of getting rid of awkward patients. He invented the hand grenade. Doctors. Victoria.

I'm going to guess that the person that invented the hand grenade was a doctor. No, he wasn't. Oh, I'm so bad at this. No, well, you're not. You told me that Henning always lost and this will be an easy one. always lost and this will be an easy one. No, no, the hand grenade wasn't devised by a doctor, but the machine gun was invented by a doctor,

Dr Richard J Gatling. Doctors have always been applauded for the elegance and clarity of their handwriting. In a rare exception to the rule, the doctor who recorded the birth of Hollywood hunk Clark Gable was not a master of penmanship. As a result, Clark Gable's birth certificate listed him as female and his name was deciphered as Joan Crawford. are STS, Stranger to Soap, KTOG, Knuckles Trail on Ground, and FLKFLP, Funny Looking Kid, Funny Looking Parents.

Like Doc Holliday, Doc Martens, and Dr. Seuss, Ozzy Osbourne trained to be a doctor of medicine. Prince Charles is a fully qualified doctor of homeopathy. Homeopathy was originally dreamt up by Dr. Carl Emmerich, who sadly died of an accidental underdose. And that's the end of your lecture, Graham. And at the end of that round, you've managed to smuggle three truths past the rest of the panel, which are that Clark Gable was registered as a girl at birth because the registrar couldn't read the doctor's scrawled handwriting.

And indeed, an estimated 7,000 Americans die each year as a result of doctor's poor handwriting. The second truth is that FLKFLP, funny-looking kid, funny-looking parents, is a real acronym used by doctors. Other genuine acronyms include NFN, normal for Norfolk. And TUB, tube, totally unnecessary. Breast examination. UUB tube, totally unnecessary. Breast examination.

The third truth is that Dr. Martens was a genuine doctor in Germany during World War II who came up with the famous shoe. And that means, Graham, you scored three points. Next up is Jeremy Hardy. Your subject, Jeremy, is newspapers. Daily or weekly printed publications, often consisting of folded sheets of paper containing news, comment, features and advertisements. Off you go, Jeremy.

Newspapers were around in primitive form millions of years before paper or printing presses. The ancient Inuit traditionally wrote about current events in the snow. Like journalists today, they would need to drink a huge amount to produce even a few hundred words. In ancient Rome, Julius Caesar ordered that a daily bulletin of announcements be carved into stone or metal or spelled out in alphabetic spaghetti. And of course, in this country, the town crier originated in Leeds and was named after an old man called Barry, the town crier originated in Leeds and was named after an old man called Barry

who walked around town telling the same stories over and over again to anyone who would listen. There are some interesting examples of giveaways to promote newspapers in 19... Graham. There are. There are. I think Graham's pedantic buzz holds water,

which will probably electrocute him. Because I think there will have been some interesting examples. You don't lose a point, Jeremy, just Graham gains one. But that means I've got too many truths now. There's a points inflation, I'm not happy with that. Maybe we should all just start the programme with a number of points and just share them out equally among the panel. There's never going to be a socialist government in this country, Jeremy.

In 1937, the Daily Mail inserted a weekly series of recipe cards entitled Lady Moseley's Fascist Suppers. In 1984, The Guardian gave away a dictionary and the first ever edition of the Daily Mirror came with a free mirror. Victoria. Did the Daily Mirror come with a mirror? It did come with a mirror. Yes, well done.

Now, I might be misled from reading. I'm a keen reader of the Asterix comic magazines. So they had like public announcements in the old realm is that actually true i mean this is you know it's almost as long again since rome since uh jeremy made the assertion but that that is true that uh in ancient rome julius he's just gone home and looked that up and It's all right. I'm not going to give him a point, Jeremy. No, I didn't challenge. Yes, you did.

I never know. I never bust. We were just having a chinwack. I never... Newspapers always relied on advertising, and before the advent of radio and TV, the advertising jingles were written down in newspapers and readers had to sing them themselves. Newspapers are notoriously bad at keeping abreast of new trends. The Daily Telegraph described Mrs Beaton's new recipe

for a cold pudding made with layers of sponge, fruit, custard and cream as a mere trifle. The then editor of the Daily Express refused to meet John Logie Baird, saying, get rid of the lunatic who says he's got a machine for seeing by wireless. Graham. I think Logie Baird was probably given short shrift by a short-sighted editor. Yes, he was. Yes, he was, yeah. Well done.

a short-sighted editor. Yes, he was. Yes, he was, yeah. Well done. Yes, the editor was incredulous and refused to see him, apparently instructing the journalist whose job it was to send Baird away to watch him, he may have a razor on him. The following are all unintentionally funny,

genuine newspaper headlines. Naked protesters appeal to magistrates. Dentist receives plaque. Ostrich burger passed by health inspectors. And pool condom disaster as Met Chief cops feel. Thank you, Jeremy. I think I've heard Jeremy read all of those headlines out on the news quiz. So none of them are true.

Well, one of them is true, and that is one of the three truths that Jeremy has smuggled past the panel. One of them is that dentist receives pluck is a real headline that appeared in the Carroll County Times' Maryland. Other unintentionally funny headlines include, Cemetery Allows People to be Buried by Their Pets, Doctor Testifies in Horsesuit, and Police Search for Witnesses to Assault. The second truth that Jeremy Smuggle passed is, as we said earlier,

during the Roman Republic, by order of Julius Caesar, official notices known as Acta Diana were posted in prominent places. And the third truth is that jingles, in the form of rhyming verses, first appeared in newspapers in the late 19th century. Some provided the music as well, so

they could be sung by their readers. And then they had the scores. They would publish the little rhyme and the tune you were supposed to sing it to. It's like, essentially, here is the script for an advert you might like to act out at home. And that means, Jeremy, you've scored three points. Thank you.

Which brings us to the final scores. In fourth place, with minus one point, we have Jeremy Hardy. In third place, with minus a half a point, it's Victoria Corrin-Mitchell. Minus a half a point, it's Victoria Coren Mitchell. And in joint first place, with an unassailable four points each, it's this week's winners, Graham Garden and Henning Vane. And that's about it for this week. Goodbye. The Unbelievable Truth was devised by John Naismith and Graham Garden and featured David Mitchell in the chair,

with panellists Jeremy Hardy, Graham Garden, Kenning Vane and Victoria Corrin-Mitchell. The chairman's script was written by Dan Gaster and Colin Swash and the producer was John Naismith. It was a random production

of BBC Radio 4.