Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2011-03-08 01:04 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2011-03-08 01:04 pm
Entry tags:
I May Be Overestimating Your Interest In This.
Something I forgot from Sunday's Would I Lie to You? recording: Havers saying that he found swimming with dolphins a bit unsettling because they were larger than he'd expected.
Mack: Did you think they were going to be pilchards? 'I can't wait to go swimming with the pilchards. My God, those pilchards are huge!'
When![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
valderys and I were at said Would I Lie to You? recording, amandapear and sawnoffcourtney very kindly offered us tickets to The Unbelievable Truth on Monday! The panel were Tony Hawks, Arthur Smith, Rhod Gilbert and Charlie Brooker (again! I can't believe the comedy-related luck I've been having recently).
Going to so many recordings in such a short time has sort of exhausted my memory, but here is my report! In case anyone who might be interested is unfamiliar with the concept of The Unbelievable Truth: it is a Radio 4 panel game in which panellists must attempt to spot true facts in lectures composed largely of nonsense, hosted by David Mitchell.
At the beginning, prior to the actual recording:
Gilbert: Is there a doctor in here? Because Charlie gave me some pills, some painkillers, and... I might not have been supposed to take them. I don't know. What if I collapse?
Audience Woman: I'll be here, don't worry.
Gilbert: You'll be here? ...I'm sorry, who are you?
Audience Woman: I'm a GP. What is it you can't take?
Gilbert: I'm not supposed to take ibuprofen. I've got a sort of stomach ulcer thing; it'd make it worse. He gave me [name]; is that the same thing?
Audience GP: ...it's even stronger.
(uncomfortable pause)
Gilbert: Oh.
(uncomfortable pause. Brooker is laughing nervously. There's an air of mortified desperation to it.)
Gilbert: Do you think it'll be all right?
(very long silence. The audience are laughing nervously, now.)
Mitchell: This would be a good moment for a tactical lie.
Audience GP: You'll be fine.
(Brooker and Gilbert, unsurprisingly, don't seem entirely reassured by this.)
Brooker: But I asked you whether you were allergic!
Gilbert: Yeah, after you gave them to me! The sequence of events was you gave me the pills, I took the pills, then you said 'are you allergic to these?'
Brooker: (more nervous laughter)
Brooker really did look horrified, poor thing.
Mitchell: We'd better crack on, then.
Gilbert: OH, I'M SORRY. (pretends to die)
Shortly afterwards, Gilbert ran out and gave the GP the packet so she'd know exactly what he had taken, just in case.
(This reminded Smith of a story about a play:
Smith: Halfway through, a man stood up and shouted, 'Is there a doctor in the house?', and someone in the audience said yes, and he said, 'Doctor, isn't this play shit?')
Gilbert: (to Brooker) Are you asking me why Chairman Mao did something? Let me just check my texts.
Hawks: (after several interruptions and tangents) Can we press on? We're still in the first speech.
Mitchell: All right; we'll try to keep the humorous banter to a minimum.
Gilbert: Here's an idea: nobody interrupt.
Gilbert: I think it's true that mice don't like cheese.
Mitchell: That's not true. Mice don't mind cheese. They prefer peanut butter or chocolate spread, but—
Gilbert: You're overestimating my interest in this.
Mitchell: (laughs, abashed) A problem I often have.
Brooker asked whether lemmings would burst upon falling from a great height, then, in response to audience noises of distress, called us all cowards.
A later Brooker-audience interaction occurred when Smith asked a question that a man in the audience was able to answer:
Brooker: Thanks, Wikipedia.
Mitchell: Some people believe having a bird crap on you is good luck. Obviously it's bad luck.
Smith: Have you ever had a bird crap on you?
Mitchell: Yes. ...I should make it clear that I mean a bird as in the animal. I have never been excreted upon by a human of either gender, for purposes sexual or otherwise.
Smith: Can you make the noise a male mouse makes during sex for us, David?
Mitchell: Well, it's too high for the human ear to hear.
Hawks: You've been making it this whole time, haven't you?
Mitchell: I am in a state of great excitement.
Brooker: A friend of mine was once kicked out of his flat, and the landlord said it was because he had been seen 'getting up to hijinks'.
Mitchell: Well, hijinks could mean anything. It could mean a harmless game of charades, or it could mean group anal sex.
Brooker: I'm never going to one of your parties again. (pause) Such a letdown.
Brooker: You know those Garibaldi biscuits? The ones people call 'squashed fly biscuits'? I thought that was literal when I was a child, and so I once ate a bluebottle.
Mitchell: Thinking 'oh, it's just the bit of a Garibaldi biscuit that's good for you'?
Brooker: It tasted of grit. Grit and despair.
Mitchell: That's less disgusting than I would have expected.
Hawks: I'm going to go for the tits thing.
Mitchell: That sounds like a line from a very different show.
Hawks: That's the one I thought I was coming on.
(pause. Brooker begins to giggle, which develops into the entire audience cracking up.)
Hawks: Can I be sacked for something I said accidentally?
In his lecture on television (Brooker was so obviously in his comfort zone when spouting bullshit about television; easily his strongest Unbelievable Truth lecture):
Brooker: Early programmes included a man in a top hat waving at you, a talent show called Come and Be Televised featuring a young Bruce Forsyth and How Do You Do?, an experimental programme consisting entirely of a close-up of a man's face repeating the words 'how do you do?', the idea being that viewers would place a top hat on top of the television and raise it when a lady entered the room.
Brooker also mentioned a programme called 'Watching Paint Dry', in which viewers watched live footage of different colours of paint drying and voted for their favourites. It was freaking true.
Mitchell was asked to explain his reasoning in denying Smith a point.
Mitchell: Because I'm arbitrary, and...
Brooker: Drunk with power.
Mitchell: ...drunk with power, and generally a bastard.
Smith: You're going against public opinion.
Mitchell: (smugly) I know.
Smith: You're Colonel Gaddafi.
Mitchell: I am. I feel very powerful now that you've said that.
During another demand to be granted a point, this one from Gilbert:
Mitchell: You can't see it on the radio, but Rhod Gilbert is threatening me with a club.
Brooker: (buzzes) Did Francis Drake teach Walter Raleigh how to smoke?
Mitchell: He did! And they didn't have bike sheds back then, so I don't know where they did it. (pause) ...by which I mean where he taught him how to smoke. There's no historical evidence to suggest that they did it.
Brooker: I think Walter Raleigh's name was spelt in over a hundred different ways. Because they were sloppier about that sort of thing back then, weren't they?
Mitchell: They were sloppier, but not quite to that extent. Over forty different spellings were recorded, but not as many as a hundred.
Brooker: You're such a pedant.
Mitchell: I am. One could argue that I've been placed in quite a pedantic role.
Brooker: I believe that Raleigh might have invented what sounds like quite an erotic dance.
Mitchell: You think it sounds erotic?
Brooker: Well, it involved bodily contact? ...I suppose they could have just charged at each other from opposite sides of the room.
Mitchell: Aroused sailors running and hurling themselves at each other?
Brooker: I don't dance; is that what it is?
Around here, Brooker said something I couldn't catch, Mitchell said 'Well, that definitely sounds sexual' and Brooker looked deeply bemused. Can anyone who was there tell me what Brooker's comment was?
Smith: (in his lecture) He praised the three greatest things in life: a cigarette before, and a cigarette after.
Mitchell: Those are only two things. I don't understand.
A woman in the front row started talking audibly to herself during Gilbert's lecture on soup, and Mitchell became more and more distracted from the game, watching her in puzzled concern. I think she must have been quite unwell; she didn't seem aware that she was causing a disruption.
Mitchell: (awkward, trying to ease the tension) There's some talking going on in the audience, but I suppose it's fair enough; we have been speaking a lot.
Eventually, the entire game ground to a halt and the panel watched in confused silence as she was helped out of the theatre. After the door had closed:
(pause)
Brooker: ...Did that just happen?
Mitchell: I'm - I'm not sure.
(pause)
Hawks: Well, I don't mean to say anything about you, Rhod, but nobody left during my lecture.
Between the two recordings, Gilbert went to the loo, followed by Hawks. As Smith also headed offstage, Brooker began to look puzzled.
Brooker: Is there some sort of orgy going on back there I've not been invited to?
Smith: (from behind the curtain) I LOVE YOU, TONY.
(pause)
(pause)
(Brooker stands and hurries offstage)
On their simultaneous return (bizarrely, Hawks had earlier emerged briefly from behind the curtain, seen Mitchell recording trails and disappeared again):
Brooker: Now it looks like we all went to the loo together. (sitting) Which we did.
Mitchell: Did you all wee in the same bowl? Did you cross the streams?
Brooker: It's more environmentally friendly.
Mitchell: I just find the idea exciting.
Mitchell: I suppose you could use any medium-sized dead animal as a draught excluder, really. Or an animal in a coma. Or just a very docile animal. (pause) Or a plant. A plant is sort of like the most docile animal possible, isn't it? (pause) Unless it's a triffid.
Brooker: What is wrong with you?
Mitchell: Aren't there social conventions against asking questions like that?
Gilbert rattled off a long list of uses for a badger's penis bone. Brooker buzzed for 'cufflinks' and lost a point. Hawks said he thought both clothes pins and tie pins were true uses; he was right on the 'tie pins' front, so Mitchell gave him the point. Brooker was outraged.
Brooker: He said two things! I could have just said 'any of those words he said'!
Mitchell: Tony guessed two things and was fifty per cent right. You were zero per cent right. If you'd said 'all of the above' you'd have been about five per cent right, so—
Brooker: Don't pretend you're powerless to help me!
Brooker buzzed some time after the claim that a badger that could only last an hour would be considered bad in bed.
Brooker: I just - I think I missed a truth earlier, and it's been haunting me. If a badger has a bone in its penis, it can probably make love for longer, so a badger that could only last an hour probably would be considered bad in bed... (moment of realisation) ...if... badgers... make love in... beds.
Mitchell: Well, it's interesting that you say that; the reason I didn't seem to be listening to Arthur earlier was because Rhod actually missed a part of his lecture out.
Gilbert: It's not in my copy. What happens is we send these scripts in, and then the production staff cut them down to make them pithier.
Mitchell: Yes, and in this case they've made it pithy to the point of being unfair on the other contestants. Impressively, Charlie, you've spotted a truth that he didn't actually say.
Brooker: Oh. Does this mean I get a point?
Mitchell: You will in just a minute; we need to fake a bit now. (passes his own copy of the script to Gilbert, over Brooker) Er, Charlie, don't look; that copy has the truths marked on it.
(Brooker covers his eyes until the script is in Gilbert's hands)
Mitchell: Rhod needs to do that bit of his lecture again - this time you include the bit about badgers making love for up to ninety minutes - and then, Charlie, you buzz in.
Hawks: Not if I get there first.
Mitchell: Any of you can buzz in, but when you do I'm going to say 'Charlie'.
Brooker: (leaning back, folding his arms, smirking at Hawks) I'm going to make you buzz for me.
The retake:
Gilbert: Badgers can make love for extraordinary lengths of time, and in fact a badger that could only last an hour would be considered bad in bed.
(Brooker buzzes triumphantly)
Smith: You're too soon!
(Brooker cracks up laughing, faceplants onto the desk and is blushing furiously when he raises his head again)
Mitchell: Tell you what, I'll cue you in.
Gilbert: Promise me this is the only time you'll cue someone to buzz on my lecture.
Brooker: I think it's true that Scotland Yard collected the earprints of criminals in the nineteenth century.
Mitchell: It's not true.
Brooker: YOU WITH YOUR FACTS AND YOUR TRUTHS AND
Mitchell: Although using earprints to catch criminals has become more popular recently.
Brooker: (immediately placated) Oh. So it's sort of true.
Gilbert buzzed in on a couple of ridiculous flying-with-ears facts in Smith's lecture on ears, both false.
Gilbert: If you fell a long way and covered a lot of distance, nobody would be able to prove you weren't using your ears as wings.
Hawks: If you jumped out of a window and fell ten storeys to your death, people wouldn't come up to you and say 'Wow, that was some amazing flying.'
Mitchell: 'He's really good at flying straight down with his ears. In fact, he's so good at it that it killed him.'
Gilbert: I think the thing about the bat flying with its ears is true.
Hawks: Let the flying with ears go! It isn't going to work!
Gilbert: But I've seen bats that sort of glide.
Mitchell: I think the things they glide with are called 'wings'.
Smith eventually just threw a 'Margaret Thatcher once flew across the Thames using her ears' into his lecture.
Hawks opened his lecture on divorce with 'Divorced people smell'. Brooker buzzed it and got a point for an inadvertent truth, because a) everyone has a smell and b) most divorced people have a sense of smell.
Brooker thinks 'divorcees' should be a category on The X-Factor.
Brooker: There would be so much resentment and bitterness. (sings, in the most bitter way you can imagine) All by myself!
Mitchell: It would be even better if that were the only song they were allowed to sing.
Brooker: (buzzes) That's so crazy it must be true.
Mitchell: It's not true.
Hawks: You may find that the 'so crazy it must be true' tack proves to be risky play.
Later:
Hawks: (from his lecture) ...who wrote a book called That's What You Get for Screwing Around, which has sold over eight copies and is used as a textbook on the small island nation of Non-Existia. (looks at Brooker) It's crazy, man!
Whenever Hawks left a pause after a statement, either Brooker or Gilbert would buzz. They couldn't resist it. Hawks happily exploited this.
There was a particularly long run of Brooker buzzing in, genuinely convinced, on many things that turned out to be untrue. Mitchell became increasingly sympathetic. 'I feel for you, Charlie, I really do. It is plausible. I'm not trying to be condescending; the only reason I know it's not true is because I have a list of all the facts here in front of me. I might have believed it in your position.'
Eventually, Brooker covered his face with his hands.
Brooker: (despairing) I'm just an idiot.
(Gilbert buzzes)
Smith: You know, Charlie, I know about this great scheme; if you give me your bank details, I can get you loads of money from my cousin in Nigeria.
Brooker's lecture on ice-cream was the last of the evening, and I think everyone was a bit tired. Gilbert was the first to buzz, several lines in.
Gilbert: I'm sorry; I was just so bored I had to interrupt. I mean, it's so boring it has to be true.
It was not true. Later, Gilbert buzzed again.
Gilbert: Well, again, it's just so prosaic and dry...
Mitchell: I'm really sorry, Charlie; I happen to think you're a very talented writer.
Later in Brooker's lecture:
Brooker: The horror writer Stephen King invented the slogan 'I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice-cream' to market ice-cream, although his original suggestion was 'I scream, you scream, we scream and scream and yet nobody comes, dear God why does nobody come? Also, buy some ice-cream.'
Smith buzzed in on a true fact in Brooker's lecture but was too late to get the point. He obsessed over this for the rest of the lecture and eventually stalked out.
Mitchell: Arthur Smith has walked out, fortunately just at the point when we don't need him any more.
He came back on with his arms held aloft when Mitchell announced that he had in fact won anyway.
At the end, Brooker had to repeat something from his lecture. As it was a retake, Mitchell was free to lounge back in his chair and watch him rather than follow along on his script, and when Brooker correctly pronounced a name the pronunciation of which had earlier been in dispute Mitchell gave him a double thumbs-up.
(And the painkillers didn't seem to kill Gilbert, so that's good.)
Three recordings in four days. That's a bit ridiculous. There are no more recordings in my immediate future, though, so I'll stop spamming your flist with reports for a while. Hope you've enjoyed these!
Mack: Did you think they were going to be pilchards? 'I can't wait to go swimming with the pilchards. My God, those pilchards are huge!'
When
valderys and I were at said Would I Lie to You? recording, amandapear and sawnoffcourtney very kindly offered us tickets to The Unbelievable Truth on Monday! The panel were Tony Hawks, Arthur Smith, Rhod Gilbert and Charlie Brooker (again! I can't believe the comedy-related luck I've been having recently).Going to so many recordings in such a short time has sort of exhausted my memory, but here is my report! In case anyone who might be interested is unfamiliar with the concept of The Unbelievable Truth: it is a Radio 4 panel game in which panellists must attempt to spot true facts in lectures composed largely of nonsense, hosted by David Mitchell.
At the beginning, prior to the actual recording:
Gilbert: Is there a doctor in here? Because Charlie gave me some pills, some painkillers, and... I might not have been supposed to take them. I don't know. What if I collapse?
Audience Woman: I'll be here, don't worry.
Gilbert: You'll be here? ...I'm sorry, who are you?
Audience Woman: I'm a GP. What is it you can't take?
Gilbert: I'm not supposed to take ibuprofen. I've got a sort of stomach ulcer thing; it'd make it worse. He gave me [name]; is that the same thing?
Audience GP: ...it's even stronger.
(uncomfortable pause)
Gilbert: Oh.
(uncomfortable pause. Brooker is laughing nervously. There's an air of mortified desperation to it.)
Gilbert: Do you think it'll be all right?
(very long silence. The audience are laughing nervously, now.)
Mitchell: This would be a good moment for a tactical lie.
Audience GP: You'll be fine.
(Brooker and Gilbert, unsurprisingly, don't seem entirely reassured by this.)
Brooker: But I asked you whether you were allergic!
Gilbert: Yeah, after you gave them to me! The sequence of events was you gave me the pills, I took the pills, then you said 'are you allergic to these?'
Brooker: (more nervous laughter)
Brooker really did look horrified, poor thing.
Mitchell: We'd better crack on, then.
Gilbert: OH, I'M SORRY. (pretends to die)
Shortly afterwards, Gilbert ran out and gave the GP the packet so she'd know exactly what he had taken, just in case.
(This reminded Smith of a story about a play:
Smith: Halfway through, a man stood up and shouted, 'Is there a doctor in the house?', and someone in the audience said yes, and he said, 'Doctor, isn't this play shit?')
Gilbert: (to Brooker) Are you asking me why Chairman Mao did something? Let me just check my texts.
Hawks: (after several interruptions and tangents) Can we press on? We're still in the first speech.
Mitchell: All right; we'll try to keep the humorous banter to a minimum.
Gilbert: Here's an idea: nobody interrupt.
Gilbert: I think it's true that mice don't like cheese.
Mitchell: That's not true. Mice don't mind cheese. They prefer peanut butter or chocolate spread, but—
Gilbert: You're overestimating my interest in this.
Mitchell: (laughs, abashed) A problem I often have.
Brooker asked whether lemmings would burst upon falling from a great height, then, in response to audience noises of distress, called us all cowards.
A later Brooker-audience interaction occurred when Smith asked a question that a man in the audience was able to answer:
Brooker: Thanks, Wikipedia.
Mitchell: Some people believe having a bird crap on you is good luck. Obviously it's bad luck.
Smith: Have you ever had a bird crap on you?
Mitchell: Yes. ...I should make it clear that I mean a bird as in the animal. I have never been excreted upon by a human of either gender, for purposes sexual or otherwise.
Smith: Can you make the noise a male mouse makes during sex for us, David?
Mitchell: Well, it's too high for the human ear to hear.
Hawks: You've been making it this whole time, haven't you?
Mitchell: I am in a state of great excitement.
Brooker: A friend of mine was once kicked out of his flat, and the landlord said it was because he had been seen 'getting up to hijinks'.
Mitchell: Well, hijinks could mean anything. It could mean a harmless game of charades, or it could mean group anal sex.
Brooker: I'm never going to one of your parties again. (pause) Such a letdown.
Brooker: You know those Garibaldi biscuits? The ones people call 'squashed fly biscuits'? I thought that was literal when I was a child, and so I once ate a bluebottle.
Mitchell: Thinking 'oh, it's just the bit of a Garibaldi biscuit that's good for you'?
Brooker: It tasted of grit. Grit and despair.
Mitchell: That's less disgusting than I would have expected.
Hawks: I'm going to go for the tits thing.
Mitchell: That sounds like a line from a very different show.
Hawks: That's the one I thought I was coming on.
(pause. Brooker begins to giggle, which develops into the entire audience cracking up.)
Hawks: Can I be sacked for something I said accidentally?
In his lecture on television (Brooker was so obviously in his comfort zone when spouting bullshit about television; easily his strongest Unbelievable Truth lecture):
Brooker: Early programmes included a man in a top hat waving at you, a talent show called Come and Be Televised featuring a young Bruce Forsyth and How Do You Do?, an experimental programme consisting entirely of a close-up of a man's face repeating the words 'how do you do?', the idea being that viewers would place a top hat on top of the television and raise it when a lady entered the room.
Brooker also mentioned a programme called 'Watching Paint Dry', in which viewers watched live footage of different colours of paint drying and voted for their favourites. It was freaking true.
Mitchell was asked to explain his reasoning in denying Smith a point.
Mitchell: Because I'm arbitrary, and...
Brooker: Drunk with power.
Mitchell: ...drunk with power, and generally a bastard.
Smith: You're going against public opinion.
Mitchell: (smugly) I know.
Smith: You're Colonel Gaddafi.
Mitchell: I am. I feel very powerful now that you've said that.
During another demand to be granted a point, this one from Gilbert:
Mitchell: You can't see it on the radio, but Rhod Gilbert is threatening me with a club.
Brooker: (buzzes) Did Francis Drake teach Walter Raleigh how to smoke?
Mitchell: He did! And they didn't have bike sheds back then, so I don't know where they did it. (pause) ...by which I mean where he taught him how to smoke. There's no historical evidence to suggest that they did it.
Brooker: I think Walter Raleigh's name was spelt in over a hundred different ways. Because they were sloppier about that sort of thing back then, weren't they?
Mitchell: They were sloppier, but not quite to that extent. Over forty different spellings were recorded, but not as many as a hundred.
Brooker: You're such a pedant.
Mitchell: I am. One could argue that I've been placed in quite a pedantic role.
Brooker: I believe that Raleigh might have invented what sounds like quite an erotic dance.
Mitchell: You think it sounds erotic?
Brooker: Well, it involved bodily contact? ...I suppose they could have just charged at each other from opposite sides of the room.
Mitchell: Aroused sailors running and hurling themselves at each other?
Brooker: I don't dance; is that what it is?
Around here, Brooker said something I couldn't catch, Mitchell said 'Well, that definitely sounds sexual' and Brooker looked deeply bemused. Can anyone who was there tell me what Brooker's comment was?
Smith: (in his lecture) He praised the three greatest things in life: a cigarette before, and a cigarette after.
Mitchell: Those are only two things. I don't understand.
A woman in the front row started talking audibly to herself during Gilbert's lecture on soup, and Mitchell became more and more distracted from the game, watching her in puzzled concern. I think she must have been quite unwell; she didn't seem aware that she was causing a disruption.
Mitchell: (awkward, trying to ease the tension) There's some talking going on in the audience, but I suppose it's fair enough; we have been speaking a lot.
Eventually, the entire game ground to a halt and the panel watched in confused silence as she was helped out of the theatre. After the door had closed:
(pause)
Brooker: ...Did that just happen?
Mitchell: I'm - I'm not sure.
(pause)
Hawks: Well, I don't mean to say anything about you, Rhod, but nobody left during my lecture.
Between the two recordings, Gilbert went to the loo, followed by Hawks. As Smith also headed offstage, Brooker began to look puzzled.
Brooker: Is there some sort of orgy going on back there I've not been invited to?
Smith: (from behind the curtain) I LOVE YOU, TONY.
(pause)
(pause)
(Brooker stands and hurries offstage)
On their simultaneous return (bizarrely, Hawks had earlier emerged briefly from behind the curtain, seen Mitchell recording trails and disappeared again):
Brooker: Now it looks like we all went to the loo together. (sitting) Which we did.
Mitchell: Did you all wee in the same bowl? Did you cross the streams?
Brooker: It's more environmentally friendly.
Mitchell: I just find the idea exciting.
Mitchell: I suppose you could use any medium-sized dead animal as a draught excluder, really. Or an animal in a coma. Or just a very docile animal. (pause) Or a plant. A plant is sort of like the most docile animal possible, isn't it? (pause) Unless it's a triffid.
Brooker: What is wrong with you?
Mitchell: Aren't there social conventions against asking questions like that?
Gilbert rattled off a long list of uses for a badger's penis bone. Brooker buzzed for 'cufflinks' and lost a point. Hawks said he thought both clothes pins and tie pins were true uses; he was right on the 'tie pins' front, so Mitchell gave him the point. Brooker was outraged.
Brooker: He said two things! I could have just said 'any of those words he said'!
Mitchell: Tony guessed two things and was fifty per cent right. You were zero per cent right. If you'd said 'all of the above' you'd have been about five per cent right, so—
Brooker: Don't pretend you're powerless to help me!
Brooker buzzed some time after the claim that a badger that could only last an hour would be considered bad in bed.
Brooker: I just - I think I missed a truth earlier, and it's been haunting me. If a badger has a bone in its penis, it can probably make love for longer, so a badger that could only last an hour probably would be considered bad in bed... (moment of realisation) ...if... badgers... make love in... beds.
Mitchell: Well, it's interesting that you say that; the reason I didn't seem to be listening to Arthur earlier was because Rhod actually missed a part of his lecture out.
Gilbert: It's not in my copy. What happens is we send these scripts in, and then the production staff cut them down to make them pithier.
Mitchell: Yes, and in this case they've made it pithy to the point of being unfair on the other contestants. Impressively, Charlie, you've spotted a truth that he didn't actually say.
Brooker: Oh. Does this mean I get a point?
Mitchell: You will in just a minute; we need to fake a bit now. (passes his own copy of the script to Gilbert, over Brooker) Er, Charlie, don't look; that copy has the truths marked on it.
(Brooker covers his eyes until the script is in Gilbert's hands)
Mitchell: Rhod needs to do that bit of his lecture again - this time you include the bit about badgers making love for up to ninety minutes - and then, Charlie, you buzz in.
Hawks: Not if I get there first.
Mitchell: Any of you can buzz in, but when you do I'm going to say 'Charlie'.
Brooker: (leaning back, folding his arms, smirking at Hawks) I'm going to make you buzz for me.
The retake:
Gilbert: Badgers can make love for extraordinary lengths of time, and in fact a badger that could only last an hour would be considered bad in bed.
(Brooker buzzes triumphantly)
Smith: You're too soon!
(Brooker cracks up laughing, faceplants onto the desk and is blushing furiously when he raises his head again)
Mitchell: Tell you what, I'll cue you in.
Gilbert: Promise me this is the only time you'll cue someone to buzz on my lecture.
Brooker: I think it's true that Scotland Yard collected the earprints of criminals in the nineteenth century.
Mitchell: It's not true.
Brooker: YOU WITH YOUR FACTS AND YOUR TRUTHS AND
Mitchell: Although using earprints to catch criminals has become more popular recently.
Brooker: (immediately placated) Oh. So it's sort of true.
Gilbert buzzed in on a couple of ridiculous flying-with-ears facts in Smith's lecture on ears, both false.
Gilbert: If you fell a long way and covered a lot of distance, nobody would be able to prove you weren't using your ears as wings.
Hawks: If you jumped out of a window and fell ten storeys to your death, people wouldn't come up to you and say 'Wow, that was some amazing flying.'
Mitchell: 'He's really good at flying straight down with his ears. In fact, he's so good at it that it killed him.'
Gilbert: I think the thing about the bat flying with its ears is true.
Hawks: Let the flying with ears go! It isn't going to work!
Gilbert: But I've seen bats that sort of glide.
Mitchell: I think the things they glide with are called 'wings'.
Smith eventually just threw a 'Margaret Thatcher once flew across the Thames using her ears' into his lecture.
Hawks opened his lecture on divorce with 'Divorced people smell'. Brooker buzzed it and got a point for an inadvertent truth, because a) everyone has a smell and b) most divorced people have a sense of smell.
Brooker thinks 'divorcees' should be a category on The X-Factor.
Brooker: There would be so much resentment and bitterness. (sings, in the most bitter way you can imagine) All by myself!
Mitchell: It would be even better if that were the only song they were allowed to sing.
Brooker: (buzzes) That's so crazy it must be true.
Mitchell: It's not true.
Hawks: You may find that the 'so crazy it must be true' tack proves to be risky play.
Later:
Hawks: (from his lecture) ...who wrote a book called That's What You Get for Screwing Around, which has sold over eight copies and is used as a textbook on the small island nation of Non-Existia. (looks at Brooker) It's crazy, man!
Whenever Hawks left a pause after a statement, either Brooker or Gilbert would buzz. They couldn't resist it. Hawks happily exploited this.
There was a particularly long run of Brooker buzzing in, genuinely convinced, on many things that turned out to be untrue. Mitchell became increasingly sympathetic. 'I feel for you, Charlie, I really do. It is plausible. I'm not trying to be condescending; the only reason I know it's not true is because I have a list of all the facts here in front of me. I might have believed it in your position.'
Eventually, Brooker covered his face with his hands.
Brooker: (despairing) I'm just an idiot.
(Gilbert buzzes)
Smith: You know, Charlie, I know about this great scheme; if you give me your bank details, I can get you loads of money from my cousin in Nigeria.
Brooker's lecture on ice-cream was the last of the evening, and I think everyone was a bit tired. Gilbert was the first to buzz, several lines in.
Gilbert: I'm sorry; I was just so bored I had to interrupt. I mean, it's so boring it has to be true.
It was not true. Later, Gilbert buzzed again.
Gilbert: Well, again, it's just so prosaic and dry...
Mitchell: I'm really sorry, Charlie; I happen to think you're a very talented writer.
Later in Brooker's lecture:
Brooker: The horror writer Stephen King invented the slogan 'I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice-cream' to market ice-cream, although his original suggestion was 'I scream, you scream, we scream and scream and yet nobody comes, dear God why does nobody come? Also, buy some ice-cream.'
Smith buzzed in on a true fact in Brooker's lecture but was too late to get the point. He obsessed over this for the rest of the lecture and eventually stalked out.
Mitchell: Arthur Smith has walked out, fortunately just at the point when we don't need him any more.
He came back on with his arms held aloft when Mitchell announced that he had in fact won anyway.
At the end, Brooker had to repeat something from his lecture. As it was a retake, Mitchell was free to lounge back in his chair and watch him rather than follow along on his script, and when Brooker correctly pronounced a name the pronunciation of which had earlier been in dispute Mitchell gave him a double thumbs-up.
(And the painkillers didn't seem to kill Gilbert, so that's good.)
Three recordings in four days. That's a bit ridiculous. There are no more recordings in my immediate future, though, so I'll stop spamming your flist with reports for a while. Hope you've enjoyed these!
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At which point I briefly have hysterics and shout "OH GOD ONLY IN BRITAIN".
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I love your write-ups. They always make me legit laugh out loud.
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thank you so much for these! ♥
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I'm just going to sit in this corner and crack my shit up for about twenty years.
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(THEY ARE SO ADORABLE, I CANNOT EVEN.)
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Brooker: What is wrong with you?
Mitchell: Aren't there social conventions against asking questions like that?
*giggles*
Three recordings in four days. That's a bit ridiculous. Awesome. The word you're looking for there is awesome.
Again, thanks for these. :)
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As a side-note, I've spent the afternoon tracking down the episodes of WILTY and Unbelievable Truth that you've posted about and watching them. I've just finished this one (http://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/246382.html), in fact. (As a side-note, I refuse to believe that Chris Addison is nearly forty.)
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Also I've just finished the horse-story and I don't remember the last time I've laughed so hard.
edit: Do you know when the ones you went to this weekend will be aired? I'd like to track them down one I've given time for them to appear on the internet.
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(The horse story was incredible. I think I may have gone 'WHAT' aloud when it turned out to be true.)
(Edited because I used an incorrect verb form.)
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I think that was everyone's reaction. I also laughed ridiculously hard at the one I watched after that one, but I don't remember which one it was.
(I love that you edited to fix an incorrect verb form. Most people wouldn't have even noticed, let alone bothered to edit.
....Now I'm going to spend quite a lot of time wondering which one it was.)
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... *snickers*
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fhdklsghkljfdhgksjhdg thanks for clearing that up, David.
So delightful. I love your write ups! I wish they'd release XL versions of radio recordings like they do for QI.
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Extra-long versions would be great! I hadn't realised how much great material was lost until I became a massive recording-going addict. Would I Lie to You? recordings take about three and a half hours, but ultimately only half an hour is used.
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They are all adorable!
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As always, a brilliant report, and thank you for remembering millions of things I never would! :D (BTW - three recordings in four days is an admirable thing. Sawnoff and I just did four in five days, although one was a lunchtime show so it's cheating a bit ;))
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(Going to so many recordings is exhausting! I don't know how Mitchell manages it; he attends rather more than I do and has a much more involved role.)
Thank you so much for the tickets! ♥
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