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DM: Hello and welcome to the ‘Unbelievable truth’, the panel show about incredible truths and barely credible lies. I am David Mitchell.

I can’t think of many panel shows that would boast this week’s lineup of guests. Sorry, would boast about this week’s lineup of guests. Please welcome Arthur Smith (AS), John Finnemore (JF), Henning Wehn (HW) and Holly Walsh (HoW)!

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 panelists can win points if they spot a truth or loose points if they mistake a lie for a truth.

We’ll begin with John Finnemore. John, your subject is Boris Johnson – journalist…

(Audience laughs hysterically)

…journalist, conservative party politician and current Mayor of London. Fingers on buzzes, everyone else!

JF: Boris Johnson was born in a grimy tenement in the poverty-stricken mining community of Henley-on-Thames. The son of a former mineworker and an Old English Sheepdog. For kid like Boris there’re only two ways out of the mean streets of Henley: crime and wiff-waff.

(Henning buzzes)

HW: Well, I know Boris Johnson was the MP for Henley – was he born in Henley?

DM: No.

HW: Ok.

DM: No. No, he was born in New York.

HW: Was he?

DM: You should be able to tell that from his accent.

HW: Yeah, sorry for interrupting…

JF: No, you gave me a point, that’s nothing.(?)

DM: That’s part of it, you’re supposed to anyway.

(Arthur buzzes)

DM: Arthur?

AS: Well, I thought I’d interrupt then.

DM: Hm, well, got anything to say?

AS: No.

DM: Excellent! This way the program will be long enough.

John.

JF: At first bare knuckle street wiff-waff in unlicensed wiff-waff dens. But from there he got a toe-hold into the professional wiff-waff circuit. And before long he was making enough to put himself through a school. On Boris’s first day at Eton the magical sorting hat immediately placed him in Slytherin. But Boris told it to shut up and ambled over to join Hufflepuff.

Boris was at the same school as George Osbourne whom he once used as a footstool, the Miliband brothers and the king of Spain.

(Holly buzzes)

HoW: I can imagine that he did use George Osbourne as a footstool.

DM (chuckling): We can all imagine that now. He, he didn’t, as far as we know.

JF: At Oxford Boris got back in touch with his working class roots joining both the university socialist society and the famous Covingdon (?) club, a group of privileged but socially conscious young men whose purpose was to follow the Bullingdon club around the restaurants of Oxford apologizing and offering to help clear up.

After university Boris wanted nothing more than a quiet life of wiff-waff practice and indulging his hobby of painting pictures of cows. But David Cameron, who on leaving Oxford had automatically been made prime minister by sheer force of how much he expected to be, pleaded with Boris to become Mayor of London.

(Henning buzzes)

DM: Henning.

HW: Did Cameron encourage him to become Mayor of London?

DM: No, I think it’s fair to say that David Cameron wanted almost anyone else in the Conservative Party. Before Boris he approached Sebastian Coe, Andrew Neil, John Major, Anne Robinson, Greg Dyke to stand as a Tory-Lib Dem candidate…

AS: And me.

DM: Arthur Smith, and Nick Ferrari. So. I wouldn’t be surprised with it, if I can.(?)

JF: The idea of any sort of public attention or limelight has always terrified Boris but he was too polite to say no. So instead he decided to come up with some policies which would surely make him unelectable. He suggested patients should be given the chance to carry out their own surgery; the Wales should be sold off as a vast bumping car park; and that we should stop Iran developing a nuclear bomb by just giving them one of ours.

The electorate didn’t listen to a word. But they noticed he had non-standard hair and he shot into a 75 per cent lead. Boris became desperate. He called the entire population of Portsmouth subhuman troglodytes. They agreed with him. He stole a cigar case from the deputy prime minister but the police just made him give it back.

(Arthur buzzes)

DM: Arthur.

AS: Although he may’ve stolen (?), this isn’t a thing he would do, steal a cigar from the deputy prime minister... That would be like a wacky Bullingdon-type stunt, wouldn’t it?

DM: It would. And he did do it.

AS: Yes!

(Audience applause)

HoW: What?..

DM: It was not a cigar, but as John said it was a cigar case and it was from the deputy prime minister of Iraq, Tariq Aziz.

HoW: How did he go about stealing it?

DM: Well, there was some sort of war on in Iraq. So things were a bit up in the air. And he was there as a journalist and he was in the bombed out remains of Tariq Aziz’s house. And there was a cigar case there and he pocketed it.

HoW: Well, that’s probably not stealing then, is it?

DM: Well, the police did make him give it back, so.

HoW: Really? I’d say if your house has got bombed than you’re probably not going back to it, so…

JF: Wow, I’m glad you weren't around in the Blitz!

And so Boris found himself the reluctant Mayor of London, playing long nostalgic games of wiff-waff across the mayoral desk at City Hall and tinkering with his long-term pet project to reroute the London underground so that the tube map spells a rude word.

But that wasn’t the end of his story. In 2015 the conservatives made him party leader because they wanted to rest. In 2018 the nation elected him prime minister because he’s Boris, inn’t he, it’ll be a giggle! In 2030 the newly formed Federated States of Europe made him president because of his amusing hair. And in 2045 the United Nations appointed him lifetime Dictator of the World because he was so good on ‘Have I Got News For You’.

{C}{C}{C}{C}

(Arthur buzzes)

DM: Arthur.

AS: Now I have to say obviously in some sense these may be truths.

DM: Yes, I think all I can say about this is if any of these things come true then we’ll do a recount.

JF: That is why I’ve been sent back here tonight from the future, to say on what we in the future have concluded was the most important and influential radio program of its time: for all our sakes, please, stop finding Boris funny! Thank you.

DM: Thank you John!

And at the end of that round John you’ve managed to smuggle four truths past the rest of the panel.

(Encouraging whistling and applause from the audience)

Which are: that Boris was at the same school as the Miliband brothers which was not Eton but Primrose Hill Primary School. And he was in the year above David Miliband.

And the second truth is that Boris suggested that we should give Iran a nuclear bomb to stop them researching to build their own. He wrote: ‘I’m acutely conscious that this may seem faintly barmy…

(More hysterical laughing here)

DM: …and I should stress that this is simply an idea I am running up the flagpole’.

The third truth is that Boris has a hobby of painting pictures of cows. He revealed this in the interview for the Evening Standard magazine.

HoW: Well, that was a scoop!

DM: And the fourth truth is that he plays games of wiff-waff across the mayoral desk at City Hall. It was in the Independent in 2008 that Johnson has been known to construct an impromptu wiff-waff table at City Hall, by pushing desks together and using a pile of books as a net.

HW: That’s the spirit of the Blitz! Pushing all of them tables together and make do with what little there is and then… Great!

AS: ‘We couldn’t have done it without you guys!’

DM: Anyway, that means, John, you’ve scored four points!

(Applause)

Boris Johnson is directly descending from George II in the 18th century and also directly descending from a zip wire in the 21st century!

Ok, we turn now to Henning Wehn. Your subject, Henning, is computers – programmable electronic devices that can store, retrieve or process data. Fingers on buzzes everyone else, off you go Henning.

HW: Computers were invented by Jesus. In the year zero-one-one-zero-zero-one-zero BC in his believe that the whole world should have free pornography. Today, ironically, the only pornography-free network is runned by the Vatican which has three computers called ‘Raphael’, ‘Michael’ and ‘Gabriel’. The Vatican’s porn is stored on ‘Lucifer’.

(John buzzes)

DM: John.

JF: Is it possible that the Vatican has three computers named after archangels?

DM: That’s absolutely true. Well-done.

Yes, named after the archangels, these computers’re the Vatican’s net service powering their eight-language website and dedicated Youtube channel. In 2004 it was found that the Vatican website suffered 10000 virus attacks and 900 attempted hackings every month.

AS: Yeah, I’m sorry about that.

HW: ‘Lucifer’ can only be operated by trained mice. Which is there we get the word for the childishly named peripheral mouse pointer or, as I prefer to call it, the Manual XY-exact Position Indicator For Modular Display System, easily remembered by the acronym XYepiphytomods.

(Arthur buzzes)

DM: Arthur.

AS: I think that’s probably is the way Henning likes to think of it

DM: Henning, be honest: is that the way you like to think of it? Cause Arthur just scores a point if you do.

HW: I do like to think of it as such but I always refer to it as Hand-XY-ganz-genaue-Positionanzeige-für-m odulares-Darstellsystem, and that’s all one word.

Recently the Church of England gave up on people going to actual churches and set up an online parish, it finances itself by sending email letters of absolution for people who have just been viewing pornography.

But what about non-religious computer use, I hear you ask.

AS: It certainly doesn’t!

HW: In 1969 as Neil Armstrong was close to making a giant leap for mankind the computers on board Apollo 11 panicked and could not handle the data so the crew had to land the thing themselves. As luck would have it at the time Apollo 11 was on the forklift truck in a warehouse in New Mexico.

(Arthur buzzes)

DM: Arthur.

AS: I think I was just first, I mean we all buzzed it on the computers on the Moon landing went awry just before they landed.

DM: Yes. You’re absolutely right, they did. So Neil Armstrong flew the Lunar Module manually to a safe landing site.

HoW: That’s amazing because his first words could well have been ‘I’ve tried turning it off and turning it on again, can someone call an expert?’

HW: Computers might not be good at calculating but their heart is in the right place. And this explains why the PC was named Time magazine’s person of the year in 1982, just ahead of Big Bird and ‘Rambo III’.

(John buzzes)

DM: John.

JF: I will go for the Time magazine naming the PC man of the year.

DM: You’re right, they did.

AS: Well, that’s silly.

DM: That is silly, isn’t it? It was the first time they picked a non-human. And in 2006 Time magazine’s person of the year was You, the creators of the original content of the world wide web. (Arthur makes sick noises) That’s a real cop out, isn’t it? They’re going to give the arbitrary award to you, everyone.

HoW: I actually use it on my CV though. I say, ‘2006 person of the year’.

HW: Moore’s law of computers states that computers will become twice as sophisticated every two years.

(Arthur buzzes)

DM: Arthur.

AS: I think probably they are able to become twice as sophisticated every to years. I know I do.

DM. You’re, yes, you’re right. That’s what Moore’s law of computers states. In 1965 American engineer Gordon Moore predicted that computer speed and memory would double every two years. The actual rate has been doubling every 18 months.

HW: The other thing computers are good for is setting up Facebook pages of second rate German comedians without their consent. Meaning they have to spend hours of non-productivity writing to Marc Zuckerberg’s criminal money-laundering organization with no success at all – apparently it’s fine for anyone to have their identity stolen by some halfwit and have the breach off the basic human right to your own identity overseen by an unelected power-hungry entrepreneur with unanswerable (someone buzzing trying to interrupt him, second word undecipherable to me) that doesn’t possess an ounce of (buzz) common sense (?) and that’s (buzz) exactly (buzz) what Hitler wanted to do!

(More and more furious)

But I tell you (?) that even the Nazi party wouldn’t have had the nerve to steal (buzz) my identity (buzz) and then send me an automated email (buzz) asking me how satisfied I was with their customer service!

DM: Arthur.

AS: Well, either Henning is one of the greatest actors in the world – or that is true.

HW: It’s tsar ways. (?? our ways/eithers)

DM: Well, yes, I think you get a point then Arthur, yeah?

AS: Can I just say Henning, I thought it was quite a funny idea at the time and I’m sorry.

DM: Anyway, that’s… some time ago now was the end of Henning’s lecture and, Henning, you managed to smuggle one truth past the rest of the panel which is that the Church of England in response to declining church attendance has founded an i-church hoping to attract busy Christians who find it difficult to actually go to church. The i-church has its own parish, the current priest is Pam Smith.

HoW: That‘d be so depressing if you’d sent an email prayer and just got an out-of-office reply.

AS: To be honest it’s more than you get from those prayers.

DM: Next up is Holly Walsh. Holly, your subject is Oscar Wilde, Irish writer, the late 19th century, best known for his witty plays, poetry and criminal conviction for homosexual acts. Off you go, Holly!

HoW: Way before David Beckham Oscar Wilde was one of the first men to champion the sarong. Due to a misprint on his birth certificate Wild’s mother dressed him as a girl for the first few years of his life and as a result he became attached to flowing attire.

(John buzzes)

DM: John.

JF: I think maybe his mother dressed him as a girl for a few years?

HW: Hm. I am thinking that might be true.

DM: Yes, his mother dressed him as a girl for the first few years of life.

HW: Was it hand-me-downs or why?...

DM: Well, to be fair quite a lot of Victorian male babies would be dressed in dresses so that is not that remarkable. Except that she also would put jewels on him. Which wasn’t normal…

HW: But these days that isn’t too uncommon either, or is it? Now all of the Premiere League footballers they all wear jewels.

HoW: Yeah, they are not babies though.

DM: Yeah.

AS: Yes they are!

HW: Which makes it even less acceptable, really!

DM: I though, I’ve always fancied a little ankle bracelet, something like that… bit, you know bit of…

HW: Or one of them, big earrings, like really…

HoW: You’ll look good with an earring! Or two earrings. Have you thought about it?

DM: If I’m honest – no. I ain’t got much in the way of earlobes.

HoW: No.

JF: Is that the only thing that’s been holding you back?

DM: Yeah.

AS: Apparently in some parts of the world that’s prized as a thing of beauty, small earlobes.

DM: Yeah. And you’re saying not in this part of the world.

HW: In this particular round I’ve got one (?) problem. I just don’t know anything about Oscar Wilde, so… maybe there is an occasion my mind can buzz in but I can’t quite picture it right now.

AS: Right. Shall we use the German equivalent of Oscar Wilde? Goethe?

HW: But for that I would have to know more about him!

AS: Well, who is the German? Who is the German, perhaps for the 19th century’s famous with brilliant wits on epigrams?

HW: I get back to you on that one.

AS: He always gets it anyway, who would be your ideal dinner party guest? It’s always Oscar Wilde, he’s always at every sodding dinner party.

HoW: You sound so bitter, Arthur, like you wanna be on in it?

AS: (wistfully) I wanna be Oscar Wilde…

DM: I’d always wanted at dinner party someone quiet who doesn’t mind turning the telly on.

And do the washing-up.

JF: Yeah. And who doesn’t eat much.

DM: Brings his own food.

JF: Yeah, brings his own food and leaves some of it.

AS: Or doesn’t even show up at all.

HoW: You want a dead person to come to dinner with you.

DM: I want them to come to dinner, die, and then I eat them and they are delicious.

HoW: After university Oscar won the post of agony aunt on ‘The Lady’ magazine under the heading ‘Dear Phyllis’.

(Henning buzzes)

DM: Henning.

HW: Yeah, did he become an agony aunt on a newspaper?

DM: No.

AS: He might have written for 'The Lady’, mind, mightn’t he, I suppose… anyway that’s not necessarily relevant.

DM: Maybe, did you want to buzz?

AS: (In a conspiratorial voice) This might be a trick! Shall I buzz?

(Audience: yeeeeah!)

(Arthur buzzes)

DM: Arthur.

AS: I believe that after university Oscar Wilde had a job as a columnist on ‘The Lady’ magazine.

DM: No, he didn’t.

AS: Oh. You bastard!

HoW: Such was his success on the role that he went on to edit ‘Good housekeeping’, ‘Woman’s world’ and ‘Grazia’. Wilde’s legacy has impacted every art form. Even the 1999 blockbuster ‘The Matrix’ was loosely based on ‘The Importance Of Being Earnest’. He was also the first to use the phrase ‘bimbo’, popularized the word ‘dude’ and it was from Oscar Wilde that Ant & Dec appropriated the title of their most-loved song ‘Let’s get ready to rumble’.

There’ve been just two attempts to tell Oscar Wilde’s story on stage and screen. One, a 2004 musical written and directed by former Radio 1 DJ Mike Read was performed on this very stage. Described as the worst musical in the world ever and closed after one night.

(Arthur buzzes)

DM: Arthur.

AS: Imagine, I have a faint memory of that being true.

DM: You were in it?

AS: That’s true, I was playing Lord Palmerston.

DM: No, that is absolutely true.

AS: Yeah, quite true, that’s right.

DM: And it was performed on this very stage, in the Shaw Theatre in London, was described as invoking feelings of ‘incredulous contempt’ by the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian wondered whether the sound system was being ‘affected by the hefty rumbling of Oscar Wilde turning in his grave’.

HoW: Oscar Wilde’s grave in Père Lachaise cemetery was originally adorned with the sculpture of a man with an erect penis but a guard there in the graveyard was so offended he snapped it off. Stephen Fry has this penis on his mantelpiece.

(Athur buzzes)

DM: Arthur.

AS: I must admit I heard a member of the audience go, 'True', to the first thing.

DM: Yes.

HoW: So unfair!

DM: As a form of response to the show: that is not to be encouraged!

HoW: This is like ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ The less subtle.

DM: They have to be less subtle because the stakes are so much higher. It’s true, the angel figure designed by Jacob Epstein lost its penis in an act of vandalism.

AS: I’m sorry about that.

DM: After which it was reported to have been used as a paperweight by the cemetery superintendent.

AS: I know who else is also buried in Père Lachaise.

DM: Who?

AS: Jim Morrison.

DM: Oh, right.

AS: Who founded Morrisons supermarkets.

No, it’s Jim Morrison in Père Lachaise. And Gertrude Stein, Oscar Wilde and some others. I’m just like really showing off.

DM: Ah. There’s bound to be some others.

AS: Just the three of them.

DM: Otherwise it’s not so much a cemetery as a serial killer’s back garden.

HoW: That’d be a great place to bury a body by the way. In a graveyard.

DM: You are not first person to think that.

HoW: Have you done it already then?

JF: Yeah, after one of these dinner parties.

DM: Thank you, Holly.

And at the end of that round Holly, you’ve managed to smuggle two truths past the rest of the panel.

And the first is that Oscar Wilde edited ‘Woman’s world’.

AS: Yeah, you see?

DM: Or the ‘Woman’s world magazine’ as it was then known. And the second truth is that Oscar Wilde was responsible for the coining of the term ‘dude’. He did a highly successful tour of American theaters and became very popular with his philosophy of estheticism and his followers became known as ‘dudes’ at that time as the way of ridiculing their foppish style. And that means you’ve scored two points!

Now it’s the turn of Arthur Smith. Arthur, your subject is wasps, winged insects characterized by their narrow waists, yellow and black stripes and potent sting. Off you go, Arthur.

AS: The type of Australian wasp is given the scientific name Aha because whenever the entomologist who identified it received a package from a colleague containing insects specimens he always exclaimed ‘Aha!’. Thus there are also wasps called Cripes and Bloody hell look at this one!

(John buzzes)

DM: John.

JF: I think maybe there is a wasp called Aha.

DM: There is indeed. Yes, well-done.

(Applause)

It is called Aha ha in fact. And it’s called Aha ha because when the entomologist Arnold Menke opened the package in 1977 he said ‘Aha!’ There is also an arachnid called Oops and a colony beetle called Colon Rectum. And horseflies named Gressittia titsadasyi. And Tabanus rhizonshine.

AS: A wasp is the inspiration for the shape of the first croissant. When French bakers noticed wasps would always cluster round the butter-rich pastry when it was hot…

(Holly buzzes)

DM: Holly.

HoW: That sounds possible.

DM: Yes, but it’s not true.

HoW: Right.

AS: My partner gave me that one. And said if you manage to pass that as a fact I’ll give you twenty quid.

HoW: Yes, that’s what she told me. I’ve got ten quid.

AS: Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the looking glass’ features a massive wasp wearing a wig.

(John buzzes)

DM: John.

JF: I think there is a wasp in a wig in Lewis Carroll.

DM: There is.

AS: Well-done!

DM: Yes, well-done.

(Applause)

It was in the original manuscript but omitted from the original publication as Carroll’s illustrator John Tenniel considered it too ridiculous to illustrate and ‘altogether beyond the appliance of art’. He wrote: ‘My Dear Dodgson. Don’t think me brutal, but I am bound to say that the ‘wasp’ chapter does not interest me in the least, and I can’t see my way to a picture. If you want to shorten the book, I can’t help thinking – with all submission – that this is your opportunity.’

AS: Until recently the ‘Dangerous Animals Act’ decided that an animal was officially dangerous if its sting was worse than two wasps. The phrase ‘police sting’ was given a new meaning in 2001 when Dutch scientists announced that they’d found a way of training wasps to sniff out drugs.

(Holly buzzes)

DM: Holly.

HoW: I don’t think like it’s sniffing out, I’ve got a feeling that something about that is true.

DM: Yes, there is something about that that is true, which is that.

Yes, they can sniff out drugs. Biologist Felix Waeckers found that wasps are quick learners and more effective than dogs at finding substances like marihuana and explosives. With the Brecon (?) wasp taking less than an hour to train. (Starts giggling) Ooh, I would have thought it would take about two hours to train a Brecon wasp! It’s amazing!

When the wasps smell substances they move their heads in a feeding motion too slight to be seen by the human eye but which can be picked up by electronic sensors. Men from the university of Georgia have even developed a hand-held chemical drug detector powered by five parasitic wasps nicknamed ‘The Wasp Hound’.

AS: In Cornwall wasps are known as emic fluids (??), in Yorkshire wasps are buzzle nits, in Devon wasps are apple drains and the old Scotts word for wasps is horny gollocks. According (giggles) to people…

DM: I mean it’s a list guys, you all know…

(Buzzing and discussing)

HoW: I’m gonna take the apple thingy.

DM: You’ve taken the apple thingy? You are right!

HoW: Yaay!

DM: Yes, in Devon wasps are apple drains. Presumably because of their inclination to eat or drain apples. Thank you, Arthur!

(Applause)

At the end of that round, Arthur, you’ve managed to smuggle one truth past the rest of the panel which is that in 1981 experts involved with the ‘Dangerous Animals Act’ agreed that an animal was officially dangerous if its sting was worse than two wasps. That means you’ve scored one point!

(Applause)

Which brings us to the final scores.

In 4th place with -5 points we have Henning Wehn.

In 3rd place with 2 points it’s Arthur Smith.

In 2nd place with 3 points it’s Holly Walsh.

And in 1st place with an unassailable 5 points is this week’s winner John Finnemore!

And that’s about it for this week, good bye!