The Unbelievable Truth - 18x05 Ducks, Oliver Cromwell, Words, Astronauts

Episode Date: February 18, 2022

18x05 1 May 2017 Holly Walsh, Mark Steel, Elis James, Frankie Boyle Ducks, Oliver Cromwell, Words, Astronauts

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 barely credible lies. I'm David Mitchell. In recent weeks, the BBC has been banned from White House press conferences following accusations by the American president of fake news. And on behalf of BBC News, I've been asked to clarify that in her recent speech to the United States, when the Queen said we are divided by a massive sea, she was referring to the Atlantic Ocean, not Donald Trump. Please welcome Mark Steele, Holly Walsh, Ellis James and Frankie Boyle.

The rules are as follows. Each panelist will present a short lecture that should be entirely false, save for five hidden truths which their opponent should try to identify. 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 Holly Walsh.

Holly recently took a break from stand-up to have a baby. To save time, Holly, we've paid your fee straight to the babysitter. So now you've only got to give them the difference. Holly, your subject is ducks. Waterbirds with flat bills, short necks and webbed feet. Off you go, Holly. Fingers on buzzers, the rest of you. One thing we can all agree on is that ducks are evil bastards. On the grand scale of villainy, they come just

above murderers, but below people who take guitars to parties. They really are absolute scum. And it's not a recent thing. Some of the earliest cave paintings are of ducks teaming up to mug a crippled mammoth. The ancient Egyptian god Aratek had the head of a duck and the body of another slightly bigger duck and was the most feared of all the gods due to his love of vengeance and stale bread. Mark? Yeah, I reckon he was a two-duck type of character, Aratech.

Like a cut-and-shut duck. Yes. Remember when they used to run car thieves? Aratech sounds It's shunt It's cut and shunt isn't it No cut and shunt Is when you steal Two cars

And then you Sorry I Oh this is This is the sort of thing You get someone From a working class background On him

You get a whole different Level of anecdote We were talking about The duck headed Duck bodied ancient Egyptian god Aratech, who I'm afraid does not exist. Obviously, no Egyptian gods exist.

Spoiler alert! But Aratech was not even supposed to exist by the ancient Egyptians. Aratech is in fact a global leader in the biometrics and securities industry based in China. Holly. The Mayans were obsessed with anything duck-related.

They'd force prisoners to swallow duck feathers, use duck-calling whistles as they went into battle, and paint human sacrifices a lovely shade of duck-egg blue. Frankie. I reckon the Mayans maybe would have used duck-calls. They didn't use duck-calls calls and they weren't particularly into ducks. One clear sign of their evil is the fact that ducks

have always been popular with dictators. Kim Jong the second, no, Kim Jong Il, sorry. Do you think it was Charles II, really, Charles? Elizabeth Ill, that's what we should be calling her. Kim Jong-il loved watching Daffy Duck cartoons while dressed in a Howard the Duck onesie. Mussolini had a tattoo of Donald Duck on his left arse cheek.

And as he admitted on Desert Island Discs, Robert Mugabe's biggest dream is to be able to dive into a swimming pool of gold like his hero, Scrooge McDuck. He even named his sons Huey, Dewey and Spare Son 3. Frankie? Is Kim Jong-il always a fan of Daffy Duck? Yes, he was, yeah.

Yes. Like Adolf Hitler, Kim Jong-il loved cartoons and was particularly obsessed with Daffy Duck. Ducks are even designed for wrongdoing. Ducks have hollow compartments in their bones to make it easier for them to smuggle drugs into schools and prisons.

Their beaks are the exact shape of a rudimentary shiv, and their feathers are a natural source of cyanide. Their beaks are the exact shape of a rudimentary shiv and their feathers are a natural source of cyanide. Their evil actions carry on to this day. One German duck recently went on an epic crime spree that involved crapping on a lollipop lady, chasing 16 school

children into a moat and giving away the ending to the mousetrap before being caught on the way home doing 40 in a 30 zone, making that duck Germany's worst ever villain. Duck's droppings are considered a delicacy in many cultures, and the Chinese people find their poo tea delicious. That's duck's poo tea, not Chinese people's poo tea.

Mark. Oh, this is mad, isn't it? No, I bet it is. I bet it is a delicacy, duck's droppings. It's not, is it? No, I bet it is. I bet it is a delicacy. Duck's droppings. It's not, is it? Duck's droppings themselves

are not a delicacy but you do get the point because duck poo tea which is in fact marketed as duck shit tea is a delicacy although it doesn't

in fact smell or taste like duck faeces. The deliberately unattractive name is believed to have been given to the tea by the original farmer because he didn't want rival farmers to discover the secret to his cultivation.

So there is, yeah, there is. Quite a posh, expensive Chinese tea is duck poo tea. Thank you, Holly. And at the end of that round, Holly, you've managed to smuggle three truths past the rest of the panel, which are that the Mayans would paint human sacrifices a lovely shade of duck egg blue. The pigment, known as Maya blue, is virtually indestructible. And the second truth is that ducks have hollow compartments in their bones.

Ducks' bones are hollow to enable them to fly. Their hollow bones also help them float in water. Most birds have hollow bones. I've said hollow bones more times in the last 20 seconds than I hope to in the rest of my life. And the third truth is that one German duck was caught doing nearly 40 in a 30 zone. In 2002, a police speed camera in Germany caught a duck breaking the speed limit by traveling at 39 kilometers per hour in a 30 zone. The duck was flying a few centimeters above street level in Gluckstadt when it triggered the speed camera. And that means, Holly, you've scored three points. The inscription on the tombstone of Mel Blanc,

voice of Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny and other Warner Brothers characters, reads, Though presumably his dying words were more like, In 1974, people in Arkansas were pelted and their property damaged by a downpour of frozen ducks that had been caught up and killed by a sudden blast of cold air. Talk about being hit by an unexpected bill. OK, we turn now to Mark Steele. Mark is the quintessential 80s comedian.

Even his surname is something we don't make in this country anymore. Mark, your subject is Oliver Cromwell, an English military and political leader who became Lord Protector after the execution of Charles I. Off you go, Mark. Now, Oliver Cromwell is always depicted on documentaries by an actor marching through a field yelling, from this merry day, Parliament shall rule this blessed land. But this is untrue, because he was actually a farmer until the age of 40 and would lead his troops into battle by crying he's a rum old do that king cromwell's universal popularity stemmed from all the things that he banned he loved banning things and everybody cheered whenever he announced

his latest target he banned wasps he banned noel edmonds he banned serving a meal on a chopping board he banned swimming backwards diagonally in a swimming pool, bumping to do every other poor sod who's trying to count their length. He banned people who you pull over for in a country lane and then they don't say thank you when they pass. He banned swearing, unless directed at a We Buy Any Car advert. Ellis, did he ban swearing? He did ban swearing, yes.

Yes, swearing was banned under Cromwell. People caught swearing were punished with a fine, but serial swearers could be sent to prison. Many popular aspects of British culture were banned under Cromwell, including Christmas, Halloween, theatre, pubs, sport, make-up, Christmas carols, bear baiting and horse racing. Can I say something that I've been dwelling on for a while? Yes. Was Oliver Cromwell a farmer? It was basically Mark's first sentence. It was his first sentence, so it's too late to buzz. I'm being a bit cheeky, but, you know. Can I

mention something that's been dwelling on me for a while? Did ducks actually have hollow bones? Yes, well, the truth is, ducks did have hollow bones, but it's too late to get a point. It's also too late to get a point for correctly but belatedly saying he was a farmer. Yeah, he was a farmer, and he was a farmer till he was 40.

And you're not giving me a point for that. No, but it was ages ago. You are a vile man. It's been said many times. What else did he ban? He banned the letter W because he considered it lewd. And when he became Lord Protector, he shocked the world by putting out a series of tweets in the night,

such as, Charles First stole my custard creams. Bad man. Probably Mexican. Fact. Now, among the things that Cromwell introduced to England, and he's not given credit for these, are tarama salata and cheesy watsits, as long as you thanked God personally for each individual watsit. And he took receipt of the first pineapples in the United Kingdom, which then cost the equivalent of £5,000 each.

Frankie. Did he get some pineapples in? Yes, he got pineapples. But the first pineapples arrived in Britain in 1657 from Brazil and were presented to Oliver Cromwell. Did he ban the letter W out of interest? He didn't ban it for any reason at all. No.

But I can't lose a point for it. I mean, I'll tell you what, it would be dumb for a man to ban one of the letters in his own name. Yes, exactly. He would have been Oliver Crome II, which would have been amazing. Now, this made each pineapple more valuable than Canterbury Cathedral,

and the Radical Leveller movement demanded replacing Canterbury Cathedral with a pineapple and distributing it in chunks and syrup to the common man. The dispute was finally resolved when Cromwell banned the radical leveller movement and then banned pineapples and cathedrals. Holly? He would have banned cathedrals, wouldn't he? No, he didn't ban cathedrals. If you look around, there are quite a few cathedrals that predate him.

They've all been built in 1964. There's also a lot of swearing, you f***ing a**hole. And he banned that. I think you'll find when you listen back to this, you didn't say that. Cromwell introduced the profession of taxi driving, setting up the Fellowship of Master Hackney Carriages, which was opened in a ceremony

in which Charles II arrived by Uber, setting off a row that restarted the Civil War. The first proposal for space travel in English history was made by Oliver Cromwell's brother-in-law, who postulated that space travel could be beneficial for the English economy because the people of Earth could trade goods with extraterrestrial societies. The scheme to trade with extraterrestrials finally collapsed when Saturn refused to pay £5,000 for a pineapple, and the next year England voted to leave the Solar System Union as a result. Thank you, Mark.

And at the end of that round, Mark, you've managed to smuggle three truths past the rest of the panel, the first of which is Ellis's hard-won moral victory that Oliver Cromwell was a farmer till the age of 40. The second is that Cromwell introduced a profession of taxi driving, setting up the Fellowship of Master Hackney Carriages, which was the start of the London black taxi cab. And the third truth is that the first proposal for space travel

in English history was made by Oliver Cromwell's brother-in-law, who postulated that space travel could be beneficial for the English economy because people of Earth could trade goods with extraterrestrial societies. John Wilkins, an Anglican clergyman who was married to Oliver Cromwell's younger sister, Robina, was interested in the possibility of space travel and believed that the moon and planets of the solar system were inhabited. And that means, Mark, you've scored three points.

Two years after his death, Oliver Cromwell's body was dug up, put on trial, executed, and his head boiled and placed on a pike. Students. Next up is Ellis James. Ellis is a Welsh comedian who performs in Welsh and has a degree in Welsh history. He lives in South London. Ellis, your subject is words, units of language that have meaning and can be spoken or written. Off you go, Ellis. Linguists predict that by 2020, all language will be entirely emoji-based. Speaking as someone who loves language, sad face.

The most interesting emoji is the X people write to mean a kiss, because until the Romans invaded, the British had no word for kissing. The nearest they got was the more descriptive term, mouth sex. Japanese has no word for awkward. Frankie? I'm going to go for the British didn't have a word for kissing for the Romans. You're right. As far as we know, they didn't.

Thus there's no evidence for a word for kiss in any language spoken by the ancient inhabitants of the British Isles. The Romans, by contrast, were frequent and enthusiastic kissers, distinguishing between a friendly oscular on the cheek, a more intimate basia on the lips, through to the overtly sexual suavia, with tongues. Ancient Romans used to kiss to seal legal and business agreements, a practice that continued throughout the Middle Ages.

That explains the plague. Japanese has no word for awkward. Russian has no word for bigot, whereas the Swedes have knurf, which means the awkward bigot who should know better but is unable to extract anecdotal experience from a broader worldview and feels great shame in espousing what he knows are intolerant opinions. Holly. I think the Japanese probably have no word for awkward.

No, they do have a word for awkward, which I don't know. I wish I'd known it, because that would have been the for awkward? No, they do have a word for awkward, which I don't know. I wish I'd known it, because that would have been the best time to go, Kachii no wa! Or they'd look like a bit of a fool, buzzing in, saying, the Japanese have no word for awkward. Why, I know it.

It would be pretty clear you'd just done it to show off. In reality, I just look racist. Yeah, or sound racist. It's a radio programme. Right. Was it racist to say that someone doesn't have a word for awkward? No, it's racist to make one up

that sounds a bit like it might. You know, I think it's low-level racism. It's still the sort of racism that's still a bit of fun. Farage wouldn't make much of a running, would he? No. By the way, QI apparently noted that the French have no word for awkward.

Seem that's true. That's something the French have just done to be awkward. It's typical of them. Why are they sitting around thinking about whether nouns are men or women? That seems to be entirely pointless. I mean, you know, a scone is neither a man nor a woman. The Germans have a neutral one as well, don't they? The Germans obviously thought French is not complicated enough.

But it's interesting that you say that the French have decided everything's got to have a gender ascribed to it, even though it obviously doesn't. And the Germans obviously thought that that was also a good idea, but then sort of petered out before finishing the process. If you're going to say, is a microphone stand a man or a woman, just decide. Oh, no, they'd have to be sort of,

oh, God, no, the microphone stand is transgender and... So that's what the Germans are being more politically correct. Yeah. T'was ever the way. The phrase is right on. Rad and cowabunga were all given to us by Shakespeare in his play Julius Caesar in the scene where Caesar is taught to skateboard

by four wisecracking turtles in a sewer. Holly. Oh, one of them must be Shakespearean. I'm going with right on. You are correct. Yes. Anthony utters the phrase, write on, in Act 3, Scene 2 of Julius Caesar,

after the murder of Caesar. As anyone who's ever holidayed abroad will confirm, there are three words which are understood in all known languages. These are... Oi! Oh! And... Blah!

Blah! And... These three words also form the entire first draft of every Carry On film. In Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, he only used 26 of the 40 letters available to him at the time. And although he included the letter X, there were no words that started with it, so that page was helpfully left blank.

Mark? Yeah, that must be right. He wouldn't have had any X words. Samuel Johnson? No, he didn't have any X words. You're absolutely right. Because I seem to remember Samuel Johnson didn't actually recognise the xylophone

as a bona fide instrument. I think xylophones do very well by having an X at the beginning of it because they're an alright musical instrument but they become a lot more popular because there's a shortage of X words for children. You're right. Yes, I think that's absolutely true. It's not that good an instrument.

It's very underhand. If you were the piano, you'd be spitting blood, wouldn't you? That ridiculous showy, plinky-plonk X thing. I am a proper instrument. Try and write a sonata for that, Beethoven. The Welsh language was invented just for us to switch to the moment an English tourist walks into one of our pubs.

If you ask a Welshman to describe his green, brown and grey landscape under a blue sky, the closest he can get to is, oh, drab. Because classical Welsh has no individual words for green, brown, grey and blue. I'm going to go for that because Scots Gaelic certainly doesn't have blue and green differentiated.

You're absolutely right. However, Welsh does have 55 words for the noise tourists make when they realise how little phone signal there is in Gwynedd. Thank you, Ellis. And at the end of that round, Ellis, you've managed to smuggle one truth past the rest of the panel, which is that Russian has no word for bigot. The nearest Russian word to bigot is fanatic.

The word fanatic is a Russian word as well, meaning blind adherent. And that means you've got one point. In ancient Greece, the word idiot meant anyone who wasn't a politician. And today, quite the reverse. who wasn't a politician. And today, quite the reverse. The 1939 novel Gadsby by Vincent Wright does not contain a single letter E. It took 165 days to write and no one had ever published such a thing before, but remarkably on the very day of the book's publication, Vincent Wright did. Sorry, Vincent Wright died. Sorry, Vincent Wright died.

Next up is Frankie Boyle. Frankie has appeared on many radio and television programmes, several of which have asked for him to come back. Like Scotland... Like Scotland, Frankie is proud, fiercely independent and not very good at football. Your subject, Frankie, is astronauts, persons trained for travelling in space. Off you go, Frankie.

In 1955, the Soviet Union sent a dog into space. Some claim it wasn't done in the name of research but as a punishment for defecating in one of Stalin's slippers. Mark, they did send a dog into space, didn't they? Not in 1955. That's the only year in the 50s they didn't. Yes, they first sent a dog into space in 1951, and they did through most of the 1950s.

The famous Leica went into orbital flight in 1957. Sadly, they weren't able to bring the dog back to Earth as it was decades before the invention of the retractable lead. Russian cosmonauts routinely took guns into space to protect themselves in case re-entry accidentally landed them in the American Midwest. Holly. I bet they went into space with guns.

They did go into space with guns, yes. The reason was different. They took guns into space in case their capsule landed in the Siberian wilderness, as once happened in 1965, and they needed to hunt or defend themselves against attacks by bears. President Kennedy famously urged Americans to shoot for the moon. The United States started its programme to land on the moon when they realised that nuking it would be too complicated.

Why was Neil Armstrong first on the moon rather than Buzz Aldrin? Apparently he just went for it after getting fed up waiting for the result of the coin toss. Of course, we all remember the first words of the third man on the moon, which were, whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that was a long one for me. An itchy nose in space has been known to drive people mad,

so inside an astronaut's helmet, there is a Velcro patch that serves as a scratcher. Mark. I think there is a device to scratch the astronaut's nose. Yes, there is. You're quite right. APPLAUSE there is a device to scratch the astronaut's nose. Yes, there is. You're quite right. Jack Swigert, an astronaut aboard Apollo 13, revealed, we had a piece of Velcro put on the inside of the helmet that we reached over and scratched our nose on.

Everybody seemed to agree that you needed that. To apply to be an astronaut, a pilot must have completed a minimum of 1,000 hours of sitting in their pants, staring out of the window, secretly wishing that the world would explode. Holly. Is that true, the 1,000 hours thing?

No. I think you've probably got to have done a thousand hours of something, but not sitting in their pants. How long does science air level take? That's a very good question. I think probably less than a thousand hours. Astronauts often train in public swimming pools, so that when they're in space and a jobby

floats past, they're totally prepared for it. The reason astronauts keep the capsule windows shut is to keep out the smell, as apparently space smells like seared steak, hot metal and welding fumes smell, as apparently space smells like seared steak, hot metal and welding fumes. There inside the capsule smells like one of those little cardboard Christmas trees you can hang in the car and lily of the valley. On the International Space Station, British astronauts have been told that post-Brexit they'll have to do all their experiments on a coffee table pushed Oh, Holly? Is that true? Has it massively dropped off?

But I'd imagine post-Brexit people are worried about investing in that business. I know Brexit is a big issue for us, but I'm not sure that it will have affected Richard Branson's mad proposal to blast plutocrats into space. I was going to go into space, but now that we're not going to be in the EU... Perhaps the need to escape from the planet is reduced because we've escaped from a, you know,

a perfectly harmless, mutually beneficial trade agreement. And at the end of that round, Frankie, you've managed to smuggle three truths past the rest of the panel, which are that the United States started its programme to land on the moon when they realised that nuking it would be too complicated. At the height of the Cold War, the US developed a top-secret plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon. Dr Leonard Riefel, the physicist who fronted the project, said it was clear the main aim of the proposed detonation was a PR exercise and a show of one-upmanship.

The Air Force wanted a mushroom cloud so large it would be visible on Earth. And the second truth is that the first words of the third man on the moon were, whoopee, man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me. Don't want that to be taken out of context. Pete Conrad made the quip to fellow astronaut Alan Bean in 1969 after exiting the lunar module of Apollo 12, the second module to land on the moon, and the third truth is that space smells like seared steak,

hot metal and welding fumes. Many astronauts have described space as having a metallic sort of smell, whilst other astronauts have described it as smelling like hot metal, welding fumes and seared steak. And that means, Frankie, you've scored three points. Sex is banned aboard the International Space Station. Apparently it can lead to every astronaut's worst nightmare, burning up on re-entry.

Which brings us to the final scores. In fourth place, with one point, we have Ellis James. In third place, with two points, it's Holly Walsh. In second place, with three points, it's Mark Steele. And in first place with an unassailable five points, it's this week's winner, Frankie Boyle. 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 Mark Steele, Ellis James, Holly Walsh and Frankie Boyle. and graham garden and featured david mitchell in the chair with panelists park steel ellis james holly walsh and frankie boyle the chairman's script was written by dan gaster and colin swash and the producer was john nasmyth it was a random production for bbc radio 4