The Unbelievable Truth - 05x06 Ducks, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Make-up, Thomas Edison

Episode Date: October 8, 2021

05x06 3 May 2010 Fred MacAulay, Liza Tarbuck, Susan Calman, Charlie Brooker Ducks, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Make-up, Thomas Edison

We present the unbelievable truth, the panel game built on truth and lies. In the chair, please welcome David Mitchell. on truth and lies. In the chair, please welcome David Mitchell. Hello, and welcome to The Unbelievable Truth. It's the panel game that blends extraordinary truths with barefaced lies. Of course, many things that we think are true are not true at all. For example, Sherlock Holmes never actually said, elementary, my dear Watson. Although, interestingly, he did once say, oh, come on, Watson, even a spanner like you could have worked that one out. On to our panel, and four

finer comedians you will not hear. Yes, it's unfortunate, but we'll just have to make the best of it. Please welcome Fred McCauley, Susan Calman, Charlie Brooker, and Lisa Tarbuck. The rules are as follows. Each panelist 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. We'll begin with Fred McCauley. Fred, your subject is the duck defined by my dictionary as a water bird with a broad blunt beak short legs webbed feet and a waddling gate off you go fred fingers on buzzers the rest of you allow me if you will to reproduce my

impression of donald duck sneezing an act which won me third place in the 1982 So You Think You Can Sneeze Like Donald Duck Glasgow Regional Final. Pee-yuck! Another cartoon character, Popcat, when he wasn't chasing the mouse Tweetypie, used to abuse Officer Dibble on a regular basis, but never actually made fun of his name, even though it means to drink like a duck. It's a reflection

of how they behave in the wild, where a number of drakes will ambush a single duck, mate with it so vigorously that the poor creature sometimes drowns. Charlie. That sounds like the sort of cruel and unpleasant thing that happens in natural love lives. Yes, yes, that is true.

Yes, well done. And in a way, I think I'm glad that that was a truth rather than something Fred made up to try and amuse everyone. It's not behaviour that's covered by cartoon ducks, is it, generally? No. If it were to happen, Charlie, it would sound something like this. I stop! You've now broken Donald Duck for me.

He was gagging for it. Wardling about with no pants on. Only one pair of monogamous ducks has ever been reported Known as Darby and Joan They were a familiar sight around the Norfolk Broads at Hickling They were inseparable for many years Until, as nature intended, one of them got shot I myself have shot duck I'm not proud of it

But I had to do it because the persistent sneezing was annoying me. Can I go for the romantic ducks? Was that me? I thought that was Lisa. Did you both go? I think we both did. I have to be fair here, and Lisa's light came on first, and electricity does not lie.

Susan's really staring at me. It was the Derby and Joan Norfolk ducks I was going to have. She wasn't going to say that before I said that. Well, in this instance, Susan, you've been lucky because it's rubbish. I totally out-psyched her there. I wasn't going to say anything. It's getting nasty. Like many other game birds, ducks are really unpleasant to eat.

However, if you happen to get a duck at the right time of year, you won't even have to pluck it, because all its flight feathers fall out at the same time. You'll see these ducks looking slightly embarrassed at their temporary flightless naked state, scuttling around the reed beds wearing small barrels with leather shoulder straps. In Mexico, the chihuahua was used as a hunting dog for ducks,

its name coming from the choking noise the dog would make if it got duck feathers lodged in its throat. In Germany, the preferred duck-hunting dog was the Poodle. Charlie. I believe that the Germans might be perverse enough to use Poodles to hunt ducks. They are indeed. I know.

First genocide and now this. In fact, the... In fact, the name poodle comes from the German word pudeln, meaning to splash about in water, which is presumably what a poodle does when it's eviscerating a duck. The expression, like a duck to water, is actually a corruption of the old saying, like a duck to otter, meaning that a venture hadn't worked properly due to misidentification.

Maybe I didn't make that clear enough. Like a duck to otter. No, I did make it clear enough. This is based on the observation that male or female ducks sometimes attempt to mate with an otter as it swims past. The mistake could have been due to the duck's eyesight being impaired by one of its three eyelids at the time of the attempted union. The otter had no excuse.

Susan. A duck has three eyelids. You're absolutely right. A duck has three eyelids. Very good. Ducks have three eyelids, as have all birds. The third eyelid sweeps excess fluid into the corner of the eye where it drains.

Its membrane is transparent, so vision is not impaired when the eyelid blinks. What I don't understand is if the inner eyelid, you can see through and just protects your eye and all that, then why ever open it? Just have it constantly shut? Well, maybe you want to feel a breeze. But in case you get a bit of a sort of clammy eye?

Well, no, it just makes you feel alive, doesn't it? Have you never stuck your head out of a moving car and opened your eyes wide? I mean, I have stuck my head out of a sort of clammy eye. Well, no, it just makes you feel alive, doesn't it? Have you never stuck your head out of a moving car and opened your eyes wide? I mean, I have stuck my head out of a moving car, but not particularly to ventilate my eyes. Well, you're a coward. I am a coward. And that's the end of Fred's lecture.

Well done, Fred. And, Fred, at the end of that round, you've managed to smuggle two truths past everyone else, which are that dibble means to drink like a duck or to lift one's head up after every sip, and ducks lose all their flight feathers at the same time and cannot fly for a few weeks until the new ones grow in. That means you've scored two points.

The collective nouns for ducks are a paddling if they're in water, a flight if they're in the air, and a starter if they're in a pancake. Okay, we turn now to Lisa Tarbuck. Your subject, Lisa, is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a prolific and influential composer of the classical era whose 600 or so works in almost every conceivable genre are widely acknowledged as amongst the greatest of their kind. Off you go, Lisa. Johnny Mozart's middle name was Wolfgang,

and it came from his mother's side of the family, who were members of the notorious Heidelberg street gang, the Wolves. Mozart only had one ear for music. The other one was strangely shaped, what doctors call a Mozart ear, and he kept it covered with an earwig. As a composer, Mozart initially worked very slowly

and spent six years writing The Barber of Seville. His agent insisted he should speed up his output, so he wrote Don Giovanni the opera in one sitting and had it performed the very next day. Susan. Don Giovanni written in one day and performed the next day? That is absolutely true. Well done. and one day and perform the next day?

That is absolutely true. Well done. Mozart's rival, Saliami, tried to go one better, and his opera, Cosi Tut Fanni, was performed the day before he wrote it. It wasn't a success. When Mozart couldn't find anybody able to play his fiendishly difficult piano sonata number 14 he persuaded the pianist Heinz Henschmidt to agree to having two extra fingers grafted onto his right

hand when they were unable to find a surgeon prepared to do the operation Mozart composed a piece that merely required the player to use two hands and his nose. Mozart was known for his lack of a sense of humour. On one occasion, Haydn sat on a needle and let out an agonised squeal. Mozart merely remarked, G-sharp. Beethoven immediately went over to the piano and played a G-sharp. Mozart was correct. On another occasion, Beethoven himself let out a squeal

after sitting on a bumblebee. Mozart exclaimed, B flat. Fred. I enjoyed that very much, Lisa. Thank you so much. But right at the start, you said he was known for not having a sense of humour, and I think he was a pretty dull character, Mozart. That was a long time ago, Fred.

I know, I mean, he'd been dead hundreds of years. He'd been thinking about it. Well, I'm afraid that's not true. Mozart's well known for having a very good, cocky sense of humour. For example, he once wrote a canon in b-flat major for six voices entitled lick me in arse or lick my arse mozart was a boy scout a member of the cambridge footlights a fauvist a freemason a buddhist and a popular leader of the lib dems i think he was a Freemason.

The magic flute's all about rolling up your trouser leg and saying, all right, mate. Yep, you're absolutely right. Can't argue with that. Mozart also played football for Bayern Munich, but is mostly remembered now for his work as a dairy farmer and the cheese that bears his name, mozzarella, from Salzburg and prized as a great luxury.

Although today, the Italian copy, mozzarella, is more widely known. Thank you. Thank you, Lisa. And at the end of that round, Lisa, you've managed to smuggle three truths past the rest of the panel. Which are that Mozart's middle name was Wolfgang. His full name was Johann Chrysostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart. Amadeus is Latin for Gottlieb, which is why people think that was his middle name.

Other memorable middle names include Richard Tiffany Gear and Harry S. Truman, where the S stands for nothing despite the full stop. I actually think Richard Tiffany Gear, that's fine. Tiffany's a surname, and apparently it was his mother's maiden name, and he's not at fault. It's the people who started calling people Tiffany as a first name who are at fault for their vulgarity.

The second truth is that Mozart had a strangely shaped ear what doctors now call mozart's ear and he kept it covered with an ear wig the condition results in a bulging deformity to the exterior or pinna of the ear and the third truth is that mozart composed a piece that required the player to use his two hands and his nose. The story goes that Mozart taunted his friend Joseph Haydn that Haydn would never be able to play a piece of music that Mozart had just written. Haydn began to play from the manuscript but stopped on discovering a note in the centre of the keyboard

while his right hand was playing a high treble and his left hand a low bass. Nobody can play this with only two hands, Haydn exclaimed. In foreign, probably. I can, retorted Mozart in foreign. And proceeded to bend over and strike the central note with his nose. Haydn remarked in foreign, With a nose like yours, it becomes easier.

And that means, Lisa, you've scored three points. Right, it's now the turn of Susan Calman. Susan's recent Edinburgh show, The Last Woman on Earth, was set in a world where all human life had been wiped out. Think Eastbourne after a cold snap. Your subject, Susan, is make-up or cosmetics, such as lipstick or powder, which are applied to the face to enhance or alter the appearance.

Fingers on buzzers, the rest of you. Off you go, Susan. The people you would expect to be least conscious of how they look are in fact the biggest users of make-up. Felicity, man-hater Dubois, the founder of feminists against men movement, secretly wore mascara. But to make sure she wasn't found out, she used to wear it on her lady garden.

Women in nudist camps tend to use more make-up than women elsewhere, although they tend to use all-over body paints to make sure that they're noticed amongst a group of naked people. In Morrisville, Pennsylvania, women need a legal permit before they can wear lipstick in public, and in the small Scottish town of Paisley, women are not allowed out of the house wearing foundation less than five millimetres deep.

Charlie? I can believe there's somewhere where you need a permit for lipstick. Well, you're right to believe it, and that place is Morrisville, Pennsylvania. Wow. It is one of those weird US laws that exist but aren't really observed,

which are basically so brilliant for this show. Others include the Kansas law that you're not allowed to catch fish with your bare hands, rather than it's just difficult, and the Texan law that it's illegal to graffiti someone else's cow. Make-up disputes are among the commonest grounds for divorce. 14% of couples who are divorcing have stated that their partner's obsession with the slap drove them apart, although 83% of those were women married to clowns. As all parents of teenage girls will tell you,

there's nothing simpler than getting someone to stop wearing make-up. In 1974, Philip Grundy, a dentist, left his dental nurse £181,000 on condition that she didn't wear any make-up or jewellery or go out with men for five years. She didn't and is now happily married to a woman called Bruce in San Francisco. Charlie.

I can believe that there was a dentist that weirdly controlling. Yes, there was. Well done. Yes, and other unusual legacies include Samuel Bratt, whose wife wouldn't let him smoke, and he left her in 1960 the sum of £330,000 on condition that she smoked five cigars a day and Juan Potomachi gave 200,000 pesos to the Teatro Dramatico in Buenos Aires in 1955 on the sole condition that his skull

be preserved and used as Yorick in Hamlet and the German poet Heinrich Heine left his estate to his wife on condition that she remarry so, and I quote, there will be at least one man to regret my death. If you name somebody in your will, they actually, and you're leaving them money, they actually are obliged to be there to receive it. Really? Well, that's what I've heard. What if you named 10,000 people?

Well, what if you named somebody nice and sort of interesting that would have to make the... Well, you don't have to turn up if they don't want the money. Yeah, I suppose that would be the case, wouldn't it? Essentially, I quite like the idea of Elton John turning up to the reading of my will, I'll leave him 60 quid. Yeah. My kids have always wanted to meet him.

Yeah, there's a risk. There's a risk that the spent thrift start wouldn't turn up. Prior to Lidl selling their own brand of cosmetics called Lidl Women, there was nowhere you could buy proper make-up. Before the days of lipstick, women used to colour their lips red with crushed beetles on a base of ant eggs. Lisa.

Crushed beetles. Colouring. I mean, you are right, but I wondered if you'd treat us to a verb. I was doodling. In fact, Cleopatra wore precisely this lipstick. It's made from the deep red pigment created by crushing cochineal beetles and blending the concoction into a base of ant's eggs. When eye shadow cost more than a whole salmon, it was common for women to use the skin of the fish as decoration for the eyes.

Whilst attractive, it often caused a bad smell, which is why perfume was invented, to cover the smell of fish. Fred? I just feel I haven't buzzed in for a while, and at the risk of losing a point, I think maybe fish scales might look nice on an upper eyelid, or three.

No, that's not true although lipstick has used the substance pearlescence which is found in fish scales wasn't too far off wasn't it no it wasn't beetles fish eyelids fish my eyes makeup all too often leads to a life of crime. A survey of shoe shops said that lipstick is at the top of the league of items most frequently shoplifted by women. However, traces of mascara have been found at nine out of ten armed robberies, as it's thought that the mascara assists in keeping the tights out of the robber's eyes.

I believe the shoplifting fact. You're absolutely right on the shoplifting fact, yes. I should have been... I should have been at the Chilcot Inquiry. Did they have to buzz in at the Chilcot Inquiry? In case, if Tony Blair says anything true. Lipstick is the most shoplifted item by women.

By men, it's razor blades. Is it? Yeah. Thank you, Susan. And at the end of that round, you managed to smuggle just one truth past the rest of the panel, which is that women in nudist camps tend to use more make-up than women elsewhere.

Suppose they've got more to cover. And that means you've scored one point. Sean Connery has to have the tattoos on his arm covered by make-up when filming. The tattoos declare his love for his mum and dad and for Scotland, but not, oddly, for the tax-free haven of the Bahamas, where he actually lives. Now it's the turn of Charlie Brooker.

Charlie's hilarious and pithy comments about the state of modern television are frequently quoted amongst London's media set, to such an extent that there's not a members' club in Soho without its huddle of TV executives all sharing their favourite lines of Charlie. Your subject, Charlie, is Thomas Edison, American inventor, scientist, and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the microphone, and a long-lasting practical electric light bulb. Off you go, Charlie. Contrary to popular opinion, Thomas Edison didn't invent the light bulb in order to help mankind see at night, but in a desperate bid to keep a

moth entertained. The bulb's illuminative properties were a happy side effect, especially for Edison himself, who was afraid of the dark and had spent every evening of his life up to that point uncontrollably screaming in blind terror until sunrise. Susan? I think Edison was afraid of the dark. That's absolutely true. Well done. He did. When he was once asked if he was afraid of anything, he replied, I'm afraid of the dark. Although this was a man who was trying to market the light bulb so as a child edison was brilliant at school which he left at the age of six having learned everything there was to learn he then tutored his parents at home until they knew enough to conduct intelligent conversations with him telephones were all the rage and edison quickly made his mark on the new invention by creating the engaged tone.

The doop-doop noise you hear when ringing a busy number is a recording of Edison humming idly to himself in his workshop while waiting for Alexander Graham Bell to get off the line. Edison also pioneered the use of the informal word hello to signify the start of a call, prior to which the stifling etiquette of the day meant all phone calls tended to begin with an awkward two-hour wait as each party tried to work out which of them should speak first. Susan.

I have a feeling that Edison was the one that started the relaxed one because before that, people used to go, ahoy there, or there was some ridiculous greeting that they used to do. Ahoy, hoy, yes. I think Edison was the one that first said, why don't we just say hello? That sounds good. Yes, you're absolutely right. Thank you.

No, that sounds good. Yes, you're absolutely right. Some people do start phone conversations by saying ahoy. They're sort of irritating office jokers. The reason I know it is because actually Mr Burns and the Simpsons always answers the phone with ahoy-hoy. Alexander Graham Bell wanted it to be ahoy-hoy, and that's what it originally was, and then hello was brought in by Edison.

Ahoy hoy. It would have been normal by now, though, wouldn't it? Regular Ahoy Hoy. I don't think Hello was normal. I don't think people said Hello when they bumped into each other, not on the phone, they'd say good morning. It was an exclamation of surprise. Hello! Hello! You could sort of hear it, it's like the sort of adventure novels

that lead to war. Hello, what's going on here? Hello, that's a rather strange place for a hooked man. Or jings. Sorry? Jings. Jings. It's a Scottish exclamation of surprise. Jings.

Jings. Clements is not my board. G-I-N-G-S. Jings. You've just both made that up. Jings. You all say jings. You've just both made that up. Gings. You all say Gings. You say Gings, Kevin.

It really is a different country, isn't it? Gings. So if you drop something... Stop keeping saying it. It's not making it sound any more plausible. Gings. Gings. Gings.

Gings. What do you mean? What? Let's say we went backstage and you walked into the toilet and I was there naked. you'd go, jings! We should broadcast this, because all the letters from Scotland will start with jings, have you never heard? Oh, that's interesting.

Despite his familiarity with the telephone, Edison considered the human voice boring and preferred to converse using alternate means. He wooed his future wife using semaphore, popped the question by tapping out a proposal on her hand in Morse code and exchanged vows via carrier pigeon. Lisa. I'll go for tapping out Morse code.

Will you marry me on her hand? You're absolutely right. Oh, thank you, Lord. Yeah. Marry me on her hand. You're absolutely right. Oh, thank you, Lord. Yeah.

Despite... Despite Charlie's deft hiding of it in a middle clause... Yeah. He, using 74, popped a question mark in Mel's code and exchanged vows via carrier pigeon. Hey, I didn't know we were getting marks for style. Don't bring a whole new level into things you tyrant all right i just you know it's interesting in charlie's defense though of all the facts he could have picked on this guy he's picked that one because it is rather beautiful it's sweet yeah i think you

maybe just had a bad tremor yes well he's quite true he proposed to his second wife mina miller in Morse code, and she answered in the same way, tapping his hand. And after they were married, they often spoke to each other in Morse code. The winter nights must fly by. Yeah, exactly. Nerds. Edison claimed to be able to hear the current humming in an electric cable

and once silenced a meeting so he could enjoy listening to the sheets of paper settling in his notebook. His hearing was so remarkably acute that Henry Ford once bet him a thousand dollars he couldn't hear the Pacific Ocean from his office in New York. Much to Ford's dismay, Edison said he could hear it just fine. Always ahead of his time, Edison also invented a crude forerunner of the iPad. His version consisted of a shiny rectangle that looked nice and lit up a bit, yet disappointingly served no other discernible purpose. In other words, it was identical to the present-day version, although Edison's iPad flopped since no-one in 19th-century America could work out how to log on to the App Store.

He also invented a temporary canoe made of rice paper, an official uniform for wasps, the motorised tie rack, four types of imaginary candelabra, a machine designed to pick up evidence of the afterlife, a helicopter that worked on gunpowder, the street luge, the cassette single or casingle,

honey nut cornflakes, metal Mickey, C-3PO, Max Hedrum and David Cameron. Fred. Yeah, one of those things in the list. OK. Not David Cameron, not Max Hedrum.

I think maybe the machine for finding out if there was anything in the afterlife. Well done, yes. Maybe the machine for finding out if there was anything in the afterlife. Well done, yes. The writer B.C. Forbes revealed in 1920 that Edison was working on an electrical device intended to communicate with the dead. It obviously didn't work.

Thank you, Charlie. Charlie, you managed to smuggle one truth past the rest of the panel, which is that Edison invented a helicopter that worked on gunpowder. Charlie, you managed to smuggle one truth past the rest of the panel, which is that Edison invented a helicopter that worked on gunpowder. Or at least the equally explosive gun cotton. It exploded, as you might expect, and also blew up part of his factory. So essentially he invented a bomb with a propeller. That means you've scored one point.

Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the light bulb. He had a brilliant idea for something else, and it just appeared above his head. Which brings us to the final scores. In fourth place, with two points, we have Fred McCauley. In third place, with three points, it's Lisa Tarbuck. In second place with four points, it's Susan Kalman. And in first place with an unassailable six points,

it's this week's winner, Charlie Brooker. And that's about it for this series. We'll be back for more in the autumn. All that remains is for me to thank our guests. They were all truly unbelievable, and that's the unbelievable truth. Goodbye. Goodbye. John Naismith and Graham Garden and featured David Mitchell in the chair with panellists Susan Carman, Lisa Tarbuck, Fred McCauley and Charlie Brooker. The chairman's script was written by Dan Gaster

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