The Unbelievable Truth - 24x01 Musical Instruments, Recipes, Pets, Women

Episode Date: February 19, 2022

24x01 15 June 2020 Holly Walsh, Miles Jupp, Sara Pascoe, Frankie Boyle Musical Instruments, Recipes, Pets, Women

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, and you'll notice that unusually, this recording is not taking place in front of a studio audience. Well, you know the saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, unless there's a global pandemic, in which case, fix away. Today, I'm joined by four comedians all united by one thing, the desperate need to earn a living during lockdown.

Please welcome Miles Jupp, Sarah Pascoe, Holly Walsh and Frankie Boyle. The rules are as follows. Each panellist 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 Walsh is part of a genetic experiment to combine Holly Willoughby and Bradley Walsh to create the perfect ITV presenter. Holly, your subject is musical instruments, devices created or adapted to make musical sounds. But before you start, Holly, could we hear the buzzers from everyone, please? Starting with you, in fact, Holly, although you can't buzz in this round.

Thank you. And Miles. Sarah. And Frankie. Excellent. Well, have your fingers or whatever on those objects, please, and off you go, Holly. The first ever musical instrument was a synthesiser, which was invented in the Stone Age, but there was nowhere to plug it into, so people just used it to club mammoths to death. Then, no instruments were invented for ages until the 1800s, when culture peaked with the invention of the coolest instrument ever,

the triangle. The triangle was originally a 12 foot by 90 centimetre oblong with watches, diamonds, gold teeth and rings strung along it for extra bling. Frankie? Yeah? Was the triangle originally a large oblong? The instrument made that noise. Now that I say it out loud, it sounds stupid.

No, it wasn't ever a block, I think. I think it was always triangle. Triangular. It would have been very confusing, wouldn't it? Yes. Napoleon Bonaparte insisted on being woken by a single triangle ting every morning. Well, did you? Sarah?

I'm going to go for that one, because Napoleon was a strange, interesting, eccentric man. A man of whom almost anything could be believed. Indeed. Unfortunately, that's not true. He wasn't woken by a ting. Also, it was quite cool that your sound effect was a ting. Well, that was partly it as well. I wanted to do a sound effect for your story.

What if it woke Napoleon from his sleep of death and he came back to rescue us all? And in fact, I can see in my mind's eye the corpse of Napoleon walking across the sea from St Helena. But I was seeing that anyway. That's my every dream since the lockdown started. Franz Liszt wrote a piano concerto featuring a triangle solo. Miles? I think the Liszt piano a piano concerto featuring a triangle solo. Miles? I think the Liszt piano thing is right.

That he wrote one featuring a triangle? Yes. That is correct. Oh. Yes, that's our first spotted truth under lockdown. And that's the sign of an expensive education. It's actually just guesswork. It was also because you two guessed the other two.

I would say the confidence to guess in public is the sign of an expensive education. It's actually just guesswork. It was also because you two guessed the other two. I would say the confidence to guess in public is the sign of an expensive education, and I think our current Prime Minister bears that out. Yes, Franz Liszt included a triangle solo in his Concerto No. 1 in E flat, or as it was dubbed, the Triangle Concerto. It drew derision from critics who dubbed it a lapse in taste. I've never seen this triangle as a vulgar instrument,

but just not very versatile. Do you know what? I think you'd just be muttering that sort of stuff to yourself even if we weren't here. I didn't even know I was saying it out loud. The acoustic guitar was invented as a way of discovering annoying people at house parties, while the electric guitar replaced the old-fashioned gas guitar and was invented by Leo Fender.

Miles. I think the electric guitar was invented by Leo Fender. It wasn't. Oh, but I think it was. And I stand by that. Well, that's, you know, I think increasingly that's the way to go, isn't it? You've got your opinion, we've got ours. My opinion, based on this sheet,

is that the electric guitar was invented by Adolf Rickenbacker in 1932. Well, that's enough to change my mind. I just wanted you to know that's what I thought at the time. People talk a lot about Rickenbacker guitars, even I've heard of them, but they don't mention the Adolf, do they? Let's just bear the Adolf in mind before we get you know too into rock and roll you can't assume that he's a right wing just because his first name's adolf we don't assume that you and david irving have exactly the same opinions about everything well the thing is although you probably do david irving is an

insufficiently accomplished fascist to have ruined the first name david for everyone else hitler has ruined adolf all right yeah okay he's the triangle of fascists similarly violin designer antonio stradivari practiced by building gallows piano maker tobias schmidt built the guillotine and... Sarah. I think that fact about practising on gallows in Stradivarius is a fact. It isn't, unfortunately. True at all. And Ed Sheeran indirectly invented the lethal injection by releasing Galway Girl. But the weirdest people in music history are the composers.

Lamont Young composed a piece demanding the pianist fed the piano with hay. Miles. The hay thing is true. It is true. Did you know that? I know people like Cornelius Cardew used to do things like filling pianos with hay. Sorry, I didn't know that, but I didn't know the name of the other composer. Lamont Young. His instructions to the pianist are as follows. Bring a bale of hay and a bucket of water onto the stage for the piano to eat and drink. The performer may then feed the piano or leave it to eat by itself. That sounds fair enough.

Yes. That's the sort of thing that used to get funding. J.S. Bach wrote a sonata where instead of a piano stool, he insisted on sitting on, and I quote, a chunky maid, while his grandson, W.F.E. Bach, wrote a concerto involving a large male pianist playing with his arms around two smaller female pianists in a style called The Creepy Uncle.

Frankie. I'm going to say Bach did write Sitting on a Maid. He didn't. Frankie. I'm going to say Bach did right sitting on a maid. He didn't. No. I just like to go for the least likely ones. Yeah, as far as we know, he sat on a chair or a stool. I was just thinking, as a one-off, you've got to get bored of sitting in a chair every time.

I mean, I think there'd be grounds for some sort of tribunal if he started using somebody as furniture. If they consented and it was part of the job description, it's OK. Well, there are things that you can't consent to, that are illegal contracts. Well, I find it odd that people have sex with people who work for them, but then get all high and mighty about not using them as a chair. I don't think David's been high and mighty.

Thank you, Holly. So, Holly, at the end of that round, you've managed to smuggle three truths past the rest of the panel, which are that the triangle was originally made with rings strung along it. The modern-day orchestral triangle is based on a Turkish marching instrument called the Turkish crescent or jingling johnny, which was about two metres long and strung with bells and rings. It wasn't until the 1800s that the rings were removed from the triangle.

The second truth is that piano maker Tobias Schmidt built the guillotine. The guillotine was originally proposed by Dr Joseph Ignace Guillotin. He oversaw the first prototype, which was built by German piano and harpsichord maker Tobias Schmidt and designed by French doctor Antoine Louis, who was later executed by his own machine. And the third truth is that J.S. Bach's grandson, W.F.E. Bach, wrote a concerto involving a large male pianist

playing with his arms round two smaller female pianists. Das Drehblatt was written for three players on one piano. And that means, Holly, you've scored three points. OK, we turn now to Miles Jupp. Miles, your subject is recipes, sets of instructions for making or preparing something, especially food. Fingers on buzzers, everyone else. Off you go, Miles. One of my proudest possessions, apart from the cap that I received on the occasion of my 100th Test Match for England,

is an old leather-bound book full of handwritten recipes that I inherited from an elderly aunt of mine, who was called Roger. Auntie Roger was a very formidable lady and a professional cook in a little pension in Normandy. I only met Auntie Roger once, and I have no recollection of it, © BF-WATCH TV 2021 fish sperm crepes and sea urchin gonad sauce, two recipes that are, of course, uniquely French. She died, I need hardly tell you, in prison, despite her defence that everyone serves up Brussels sprouts with a bit of cyanide in them. Holly. I think all Brussels sprouts have cyanide in them.

They do. Brussels sprouts contain thiocyanides, compounds of cyanide and hydrogen, and also hydrocyanic acid, which is cyanide combined with hydrogen. It is these chemicals that produce the bitter taste we associate with the cooked vegetables. I actually don't associate a bitter taste with them. I think they're delicious. Do you like them with chestnuts? Yeah, yeah, but I like them on their own. If I became vegetarian, I would have them with every meal.

Do you have them boiled or fried? Either. I like them even if they haven't got, like, butter and salt on them. It's a series. You can have them... It's because people are forced to eat them when they're children, and that puts you off stuff. Yeah.

It might also be a thing that when you're a kid, your taste buds aren't properly formed, and so when you do eat Brussels sprouts, they do taste disgusting. It's because you have more taste buds and they die as you get older, so things that do taste horrible become palatable. So what you need is a few more years of whiskey and cigarettes and then the true nutty deliciousness of the sprout comes through. This is already the longest conversation I've ever had about Brussels sprouts.

You should come to one of the vegan meetings. This is what we do. Well, you see, longest and best are not synonyms, whatever the Oscar judges say. Still, the sheer number of recipes that she was capable of cooking is impressive. But then the average person from Normandy knows 15 recipes off by heart. In Brittany, the average Breton knows only 14. The average Briton knows only four, and one of those is toast. Sarah. I think the true thing is that people in Britain on average know four recipes. That is the thing that's true. Well done.

What are they? I assume it's not the same four. There must be overlap. Six of the top ten best-selling books in 2019 were recipe books. Frankie? I'm going to go for the recipe books thing. Must be quite a high number of cookery books. It's not six, I'm afraid.

It's two, which is quite high. That's 20% of all popular literature. In the top ten, the best-selling was Pinch of Nom, and at number nine there was Veg by Jamie Oliver. I'd say nom is probably one of my least favourite words ever said by anyone. It really is awful. It's awful. It's like people who say sleeps till.

Oh, yes. I mean, come on. I once knew an adult man, an an actor who used to have a banana every morning but he called it a nana that same thing of like talking like he was a baby miles actually you do know him all right i'll whisper his name to you his first name is joseph oh joseph again another name that despite the efforts of Starling, has remained mainstream. And Mengele. I thought Fritzl. And then the amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Joseph. Yeah.

Do we put him in the for or the against column? I think it's probably better to put him in the for. I think that would cause fewer letters. Okay. Joseph Starling's Technicolor Dreamcoat. Of course, we forget about that because so many of the photos of him are black and white. The tradition of the Sunday roast can be attributed to the writing of Jane Austen in the early 1800s, as she needed something that characters could sit around in order to discuss

whether or not they'd recently received a letter from a vicar who may or may not love them. For years, potatoes were eaten raw, like apples. The first recipes for cooked potatoes caused a sensation, as we can see in the work of Charles Dickens, most notably his Tale of Two Chippies of 1859, when Dickens describes a perfectly acceptable recipe for potato chips. Holly, it sounds like you're lighting a cigar to start with. Or ripping Velcro off your mouth.

Dickens wrote about crisps or chips or something. He did. In Chapter 5 of A Tale of Two Cities, not The Tale of Two Chippies, which was published in 1859, Charles Dickens describes husky chips of potato fried with some reluctant drops of oil. It's the first recorded use of the word chips

used in reference to fried potatoes. Left-handers often feel left out when it comes to food, as very few recipes cater to their needs. So you can imagine their delight when Burger King announced a fast food breakthrough, the left-handed Whopper. It featured the same ingredients as the regular Whopper, except the condiments

were rotated 180 degrees. Nom, nom, nom. Thank you, Miles. I think you got less applause than Holly because of the noms there. Yeah, I think so. No one should applaud spontaneity. And at the end of that round, Miles, you've managed to smuggle two truths past the rest of the panel, which are that fish sperm crepes and sea urchin gonad sauce are uniquely French recipes. The second truth is that Burger King announced a fast food breakthrough, the left-handed Whopper. It featured the same ingredients as the regular Whopper, except the condiments were rotated 180 degrees.

This was announced on the 1st of April, 1998, by Burger King. April 4th. That means, Miles, you've scored two points. Next up is Sarah Pascoe. Sarah is a committed vegan and recently adopted a dog from a rescue centre. Or as the dog remembers it, that place with the lovely meat. Sarah, your subject is pets. Domesticated animals kept for companionship or pleasure. Fingers on buzzers, the rest of you. Off you go, Sarah. To quote Sir David Attenborough, a pet is an animal kept prisoner by your need for affection oh my dog just literally walked in he's like oh finally something i fear

about okay anton shekhov writer of the saddest comedies in history until ricky gervais came along couldn't decide if he was a dog or a cat person, so he got a mongoose. Frankie. Purely because it sounds so unlikely, did Chekhov have a mongoose? He did. Well done. Yes, Chekhov brought a pet mongoose back to Moscow from Sri Lanka, which proceeded to terrorise his pet dachshunds and was generally very rowdy. To continue, Nicole Kidman keeps...

Sorry, my boyfriend's having a really loud wee in the flesh in the toilet. Sorry if you heard it. If ever there was something you could have blamed on the dog. The dog's a good boy. OK, the only famous person not to have a pet is Napoleon, who had a fear of small furry things, which is why he never looked down in the shower. Frankie.

Was Napoleon scared of small furry things, which is why he never looked down in the shower. Frankie. Was Napoleon scared of small furry things? He was. He was terrified of them, and on one occasion, thousands of tame rabbits were collected for Napoleon's hunting party to shoot. But when he appeared, the rabbits assumed it was feeding time and ran towards the emperor as one, causing him to flee terrified into his carriage. On another occasion, he was found by his manservant sweating and shaking in his bedroom, lashing out wildly with his sword, and the source of his terror was a tiny pet kitten behind a curtain. What can you tell about a person from the way they treat their pets?

Well, Hitler famously refused to pick up dog poo, Stalin murdered a parrot for imitating him. And Mussolini taught a bear to smoke a pipe. Holly, lighting another cigar there. One of those three. Hitler wouldn't pick up dog poo. There's no evidence that he wouldn't pick up dog poo. I heard he only picked up dog poo. In those days, people didn't pick up dog poo. I heard he only picked up dog poo.

In those days, people didn't pick up dog poo anyway, so he probably never picked up dog poo, but also no-one ever asked him to. He shot his dogs, didn't he? It's that thing, isn't it, the megalomaniac thing of, like, if you can't have something, other people, no-one else can. Lots of people who murder their family also kill the pets. Yeah, but I bet they forget the goldfish. That would be particularly terrible if you were a goldfish

and you'd see all the other pets being murdered and they haven't even bothered to flush you down the loo. Sort of think, what am I, a house plant? An evil dictator who fared better with animal care was Princess Diana. She began her career with a prize-winning guinea pig and she's in the Guinness Book of Records for the smallness of her Shetland ponies. Miles.

I suspect Princess Diana did win a prize for guinea pig keeping. That is correct. In 1972, an 11-year-old... I thought it was 1972. An 11-year-old Diana Spencer... I bought the plate, yeah. ...entered her guinea pig, Peanuts, into a pet show at Sandringham, where it won first prize in the fur and feathers section.

People in LA might think that they have everything they want in life, but they aren't allowed to keep gerbils. The extreme measure was undertaken to protect Richard Gere from another anal injury. And finally, dogs are angels in disguise. They are made of love, and we are very lucky to know them. And finally, dogs are angels in disguise. They are made of love and we are very lucky to know them. Thank you, Sarah. And at the end of that round, Sarah, you've managed to smuggle two truths past the rest of the panel,

which are that Stalin murdered a parrot for imitating him. He kept a pet parrot that learned to imitate the noises Stalin made when smoking his pipe. According to Stalin's daughter, on one occasion her father returned to his flat in the Kremlin in a foul mood and picked up his pipe to relax. The parrot began making the usual sounds and in a rage Stalin reached into the cage and crushed its skull. And the second truth is that people in LA aren't allowed to keep gerbils. It's for fear of them becoming an invasive species where they could get loose.

And that means, Sarah, you've scored two points. A company in Texas offers a service which includes having your pet's hair made into a fur bikini. Apparently an adult miniature poodle has enough fur to produce a good-sized outfit, whereas a chihuahua will barely cover your chihuahua. It's now the turn of Frankie Boyle. Thanks to his abrasive comedy and natural dystopian view of the world, Frankie has actually been socially isolating for his entire professional career. Frankie, your subject is women, adult female human beings. Off you go, Frankie. I've struggled to fully understand women

ever since I was a wee girl. In fact, before Prime Minister and soul-gathering gender traitor Margaret Thatcher, few people had even heard of women. Personally, I was all for Mrs Thatcher having a lavish, publicly funded cremation. But then she died. Heterosexual women say that the most common type of role play they get involved in

is telling their partner that they love him women can accurately gauge a man's physical fitness from a single image during the 10 minutes my picture was on tinder it was left swiped so often i got whiplash due to voodoo sarah um i'm gonna guess that that experiment about women being able to guess physical fitness from a picture is true. It's not. No. Binding women's feet to restrict their size originated in ancient China, which explains why the 10,000 figures of the terracotta army contain precisely zero lady clowns.

Miles? I think that is where binding feet, to change their size, originated. In ancient China? Yeah. No, it was in imperial medieval China. So China, just not ancient China. Yeah, yeah. Although actually, because it was later, the China it originated in was already ancient.

In a way, if it had been in ancient China, the China it originated in would have been comparatively new. I loved your early stuff about sprouts. Frankie. Miniature golf was invented for women who weren't allowed to play real golf, and wearing white at Wimbledon began as a way of hiding the fact that women sweat. Holly. I think that's true. What's true?

The white of Wimbledon. That is true, yes. When the dress code for Wimbledon was created in the 1880s, it was decided that white should be worn by players to conceal unsightly sweat stains. The rule was imposed specifically with women in mind, as, in the words of tennis fashion writer Valerie Warren, it was quite unthinkable that a lady should be seen to perspire. What about the mini-golf?

Can I ding in and say I think that the mini-golf was invented for women? You can, and you're right. Yes! The first miniature golf course at St Andrews was created in 1867 for women who weren't allowed to play real golf due to it being considered improper for a lady to, quote, take the club back past their shoulder. It is true, however, that women don't sweat, they glow.

Hence the expression you'll often hear from joggers, slow down, Sandra, I'm glowing like a pig. Unlike men, women experience dopamine release when cleaning. My mother is using vinegar to clean so many surfaces during this pandemic that she has, in effect, pickled her house. Like most women, my mother is vegetarian, which is why she was surprised when I came along as vegetarian women are more likely

to give birth to baby girls than to baby boys. Miles? That sounds like a sudden bit of science. The more likely to give birth to girls than boys? Oh no, I think his mother's genuinely pickled. Yeah, the vegetarian baby thing.

Yes, this is true, according to a study conducted by researchers at Nottingham University on a sample of 6,000 women. Explanations for the findings were that a vegetarian diet might place a stress on the female body, meaning only the more robust female fetuses survived, or that the diet

might change the acidity of the vaginal secretions, creating a hostile environment for sperm-carrying male genetic information. Well, the second one sounds good, doesn't it? It sounds really bitchy. Yeah, no, hand me the corn. Yeah, that's enough at the root. All right.

Statistically, women are better off financially than men, despite being paid lower wages, as they have lower heating bills due to the menopause. They've had an astonishing historical impact, considering that the word she didn't exist in English language until the 12th century. Sarah. That's true. Didn't the word man refer to everybody?

It is true that there was no word for she before the 12th century, which is about 400 years after English began to take form. Dead Egyptian noblewomen were given the special treatment of being allowed a few days to ripen so that the embalmers wouldn't find them too attractive. Women are unsuited to medicine

as they see loss of blood not as a reason to operate, but as an excuse to eat chocolate and be annoying. Indeed, only two women have ever been awarded a Nobel Prize. Such a low proportion that it led to a campaign by feminists with the slogan, come on girls, let's pull our socks up. Sarah? I think the Nobel Prize thing is true.

It isn't. As of 2019, 53 women have been awarded a Nobel Prize, but 866 men, more than two, anyway. And there's a really good thing where they don't ever announce who's nominated, so anyone can say you've been nominated for a Nobel Prize and you're never disproved. Oh, that's a good one. That's a good one, yeah. You can say, oh, yeah, I was on the short list.

Same with the FHM High Street one. That's a good one, yeah. You can say, oh, yeah, I was on the short list. Yeah. Same with the FHM high street honey. That's so true. You just get the buzz, you just feel. People say I was nominated for the spirit of the Nobel Prize. Really just about effort. Marie Curie won three Nobel Prizes for physics, but she let her husband Pierre have one as a wedding gift. A laboratory full of highly radioactive metals

may seem an unlikely place for romance to blossom, but right from the start, they both just clicked. Thank you, Frankie. And at the end of that round, Frankie, you've managed to smuggle one truth past the rest of the panel, which was that dead Egyptian noblewomen were given the special treatment of being allowed a few days to ripen so that the embalmers wouldn't find them too attractive.

This is according to the Greek historian Herodotus. Why didn't they just get embalmers that weren't perverts? Or just got women to do it? Well, I think the thing is, to a certain extent, the people you get are self-selecting. You're bound to get in people who seek a career as an embalmer a higher than an average rate of people who fancy corpses. It's just inevitable. And the way all their rule is doing is encouraging people to apply for the job who like them ripe.

Well, that's true. I mean, it's just people who on day on day one, wouldn't have been interested. By day four? Soon as they're covered in flies. Goodness me! Anyway, that means, Frankie, you've scored one point. In 16th and 17th century France, women could charge their husbands with impotence. To counter the charge, the man would have to demonstrate in a courtroom

that he could both maintain an erection and also ejaculate. Hence the popular taunt, you'll never make it stand up in court. Which brings us to the final scores. In fourth place, with minus one point, we have Sarah Pascoe. In third place, with no points, it's Frankie Boyle. And in joint first place with three points each, it's this week's winners, Holly Walsh and Miles Jupp.

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 Holly Walsh, Miles Jupp, Sarah Pascoe and Frankie Boyle. The chairman's script was written by Thank you.