Trabia Garden

It was Final Fantasy VIII's twentieth birthday on the eleventh of February, and I got a little emotional about it. I'm so glad this game exists. I'm so glad I was accidentally sold it when I tried to buy a different game. I'm so glad I played it when I was thirteen years old and I really needed it. I don't know who I'd be if I'd never met Squall Leonhart.

I really want to do something in honour of this game. Maybe I should try to finish my 'Squall is contracted to be Yuna's guardian' crossover with Final Fantasy X. It seemed too ambitious, but maybe it could work as a one-shot if I just focus on crucial scenes from their pilgrimage.


The other event on the eleventh: I attended a recording of The Unbelievable Truth! But, unfortunately, I forgot to make notes afterwards, so it's all escaped my mind. Here are a few scraps I've managed to pull out of my unreliable memory, at any rate.

The panellists were Henning Wehn, Lou Sanders, Lucy Porter and Frankie Boyle; the host, as ever, was David Mitchell. The goal in The Unbelievable Truth, if anyone's unfamiliar with the rules, is to spot the ridiculous truths concealed in a largely false lecture.


For the second time on the show, Wehn gave a lecture on Germany.

Wehn: I was quite upset to be asked to give a second lecture on Germany...
Sanders: (buzzes) I don't think that's true.
Wehn: It is.
Mitchell: I... sorry, I don't understand. You've buzzed in to say that something isn't true.
Sanders: I've forgotten the format of the show.
Mitchell: And Henning says it is true, so I think we have to give you a point for an inadvertent truth, regardless of what you actually said when you buzzed. She's cunningly tricked you into saying it was true, Henning.

Wehn's full opening line was 'I was quite upset to be asked to give a second lecture on Germany, as it suggests there was something wrong with the first.' He concluded with 'I trust that I have now given a satisfactory overview of Germany and that a third lecture will not be necessary.'


Wehn: In Germany, it is illegal to give a child a stupid name.
Sanders: They let you be called Henning.


Wehn actually made a callback to the last Unbelievable Truth recording I attended! After finishing his lecture with three points: 'I know how I'm going to play this.' (The last time he'd got three points, he'd refused to play for the rest of the game so he wouldn't risk losing them. An effective strategy, it turned out, but perhaps not the most desired one for a comedy panel show.)


Porter buzzed at one point and then agonised over whether she was making the right call. 'If it's any reassurance,' Mitchell said, 'this game absolutely does not matter.'


A line I definitely laughed too loudly at in Boyle's lecture on beards:

Boyle: Kanye West's beard is insured for eight million dollars. Every year he shaves it, sells it and donates the proceeds to a charity for helping poor, disadvantaged children... grow beards.


Wehn's second lecture was on time. One of his truths was 'Scientists have been unable to prove that time exists'.

Later:

Wehn: A casserole is a unit of time, being the amount of time it takes to cook a casserole. If your casserole becomes burnt, too much time has passed.
Porter: (buzzes) The second half of that is true.
Mitchell: Well, that's not one of the truths Henning was supposed to include, but I think you've spotted an inadvertent truth.
Boyle: Haven't we just established that time might not exist? If your casserole becomes burnt, too much heat has gone into the casserole.
Mitchell: That is true. All right, Lucy, you don't get the point because time doesn't exist.


Points aren't typically awarded for buzzing long after the fact, but Porter managed to get around that.

Porter: I know I'm buzzing late, but time doesn't exist, so...


A man in the audience occasionally heckled. Eventually, the producer interrupted the recording and had the heckler escorted from the premises.

'That was incredibly awkward,' Mitchell said after the removal, desperately.

I went to a recording of The Unbelievable Truth a few days ago! The panellists were John Finnemore, Lucy Porter, Jeremy Hardy and Frankie Boyle; the host, as ever, was David Mitchell. It's the first time I've seen Lucy Porter live; she's never entirely worked for me on the radio, but I quite enjoyed her here.

I don't think I'll ever reach the ridiculous lengths of my recording recaps in my university days, but I actually remember a handful of things!

The aim in The Unbelievable Truth, if anyone's unfamiliar with the rules, is to spot the ridiculous truths concealed in a lecture composed almost entirely of nonsense. Finnemore, lecturing on the subject 'Donald Trump', opened with, 'Donald Trump is the current Republican nominee for the office of President of the United States.'

Porter: ...
Hardy: ...
Boyle: ...
Hardy: (buzzes, very hesitantly)
Mitchell: Jeremy.
Hardy: I mean... God help us, but that is true, isn't it?
Mitchell: Yes, it is, in fact, true.
Hardy: I thought for a moment maybe I'd woken up and it had all been a horrible dream.
Finnemore: It's a game about ridiculous, unbelievable facts. I had to open with that one.

Other apparently true facts I've now learnt about Donald Trump: his failed business ventures include 'Trump Steaks', 'Trump Vodka', 'Trump: The Game', 'Trump Magazine', 'Trump University', 'Tour de Trump' (an American version of the Tour de France, apparently - although, given the name, perhaps the bikes would just be riding over Trump himself) and a travel website called 'GoTrump.com', and he once wrestled another millionaire to the ground and forcibly shaved him.


Porter: A woman stabbed her husband at their wedding reception with the knife used to cut the cake. He survived but spent the rest of the night in tiers.
Mitchell: I've always found the cake-cutting part of weddings very dull. The sense of jeopardy might help to enliven things.
Porter: It's more exciting when they snap each other's necks in the first dance.


One of Finnemore's claims in his lecture on spies was that David Mitchell had been recruited by MI6. Jeremy Hardy buzzed it as true.

Mitchell: Unfortunately, that is not true.
Hardy: But that's what you'd say if you had been, isn't it?
Mitchell: No, no, I'm not a spy.
(Finnemore resumes lecture)
Mitchell: (in a very loud 'confidential' whisper) I AM.


Porter: Whereas China has the Great Wall of China, Great Yarmouth has the Wall of Great Yarmouth, which runs the length of Great Yarmouth and is the only manmade structure visible from Great Yarmouth.


Finnemore: (buzzes on Porter's lecture) ...oh, I don't like Lucy's smile.
Mitchell: There's no need to be rude.

Later, Finnemore declared, 'I don't like Frankie's haircut' - but it had been too long for a call-back and, for a strange, uncomfortable instant, it seemed like he was just insulting Boyle out of the blue. He very hastily explained his intention.


Mitchell: (on snail racing) Unfortunately, it's been discovered that the practice of removing the snails' shells 'to make them go faster' actually just makes them sluggish.


Finnemore screwed up several retakes of one line, eventually cursing and throwing his script across the stage mid-sentence.

'You know, you worry a lot about tiny details,' Mitchell said, 'but that last take was fine.'


Producer: All that remains is for me to tell you that this will be broadcast... (checking dates)
Finnemore(?): Hooray!
Producer: This will be broadcast on the...
Hardy: Radio.


Entirely unrelatedly: there's a picture of Winhill in Esthar's Presidential Palace. I never noticed it before, in all the thousands of times I've played Final Fantasy VIII. Oh, Laguna.

The Giedroyc-O'Leary-Dawson-Widdicombe episode of Would I Lie to You? just aired! It's a great episode; do watch it if you haven't yet (here, for people in the UK, is the iPlayer link). I attended the recording of this, and I now have a little more to say about it.


( On a claim that was curiously absent from my original recording recap. )


I have no idea how to end this entry. Erm. Have a cool animated fight scene? It's a trailer for something called RWBY, animated by Monty Oum, the guy who made the Dead Fantasy series of Final Fantasy/Dead or Alive crossover videos. 'Cool animated fight scenes' seem to be very much his thing. I don't usually much care for fight scenes, but I've watched the entirety of Dead Fantasy to date, and that's over half an hour of fighting. (The RWBY trailer is a much more manageable three-and-a-half minutes.)

Last So Wrong It's Right recording of the series yesterday! The guests for the first episode were Susan Calman, Richard Osman and Rob SOMETHING BEGINNING WITH B, I CANNOT REMEMBER, SORRY ROB SOMETHING (EDIT: Rob Beckett! Thank you, ruthi! I'd noted him down as 'Rob Bennett' and only realised that was wrong when I got home); the guests for the second were Calman again, Shaun Pye and Miles Jupp. The host, of course, was Charlie Brooker; this is the second recording I've been to at which he has speculated on shagging himself via time travel. Here is my report!


( So Wrong It's Right recording, 1st May 2012. )


I think this series of So Wrong It's Right is going to be broadcast on Radio 4 later this month, so keep an ear out for that! In the meantime: everyone knows the thoroughly excellent Would I Lie to You? is on BBC One on Fridays at the moment, right? Well, it is.

Last night, courtesy of valderys, I went to a Would I Lie to You? recording! On David Mitchell's team were Sanjeev Bhaskar and Richard Madeley; on Lee Mack's were Kate Humble and Miles Jupp. The host, of course, was Rob Brydon.

(I'm not sure whether I've ever mentioned this before, but prior to every Would I Lie to You? recording - every single one - Brydon claims that someone asked him on Twitter to demonstrate his 'small man in a box' voice at the show. Nobody's fooled, Brydon, you massive showoff.)

Here is my report! For anyone unfamiliar with the concept: Would I Lie to You? is a panel show in which a panellist on one team reads out a fact about themselves from a card, and the other team cross-examine them in order to determine whether the fact is true or false.


Out-of-Context Theatre, because I cannot remember the context for this at all:

Mack: Before the show, Rob wanked me off. Did you do that for David as well?
Brydon: I did.


( Would I Lie to You? recording, 16th March 2012. )


I hope you enjoyed this writeup! I've no idea when it's going to be broadcast, I'm afraid; probably at some point in the autumn.

valderys very kindly offered me a ticket to yesterday's recording of The Unbelievable Truth! The panel were Lee Mack, Jack Dee, Rufus Hound and Graeme Garden; the host, as always, was David Mitchell.

The premise of the game, for those unfamiliar: each panellist delivers a short lecture on a given subject, which must be entirely false save for five pieces of true information. The other players must buzz in if they think they've spotted a true fact.

Below the cut is what I can remember of the recording!

(I've just realised that, despite all the Unbelievable Truth recordings I've been to, I've never told you the joke Mitchell always tells for the sound check! Here it is, as Mitchell tells it:

What's a ghost's favourite country? That's the question. And the answer, the humorous answer, is 'Fraaaaaaaance'. What makes it so funny is the ghostly way in which 'France' is pronounced.)


( The Unbelievable Truth recording, 11th December 2011. )


And that's all I can recall for now, I'm afraid; I hadn't been to a recording for about half a year, so my memory was a bit out of practice. Two episodes were recorded; the first will be broadcast on Boxing Day, the second probably three weeks after that.

I had the opportunity to go to a recording of QI yesterday! The host, as ever, was Stephen Fry; the guests were Andy Hamilton, Jo Brand and Ben Goldacre.

Interesting to note that the audience respected Jo Brand. Female comedians often seem to have trouble breaking through existing audience prejudice against women in comedy and getting laughs, but Brand's jokes were very well received. Of the female comedians I've seen at recordings, I suppose she's the most established, so people go 'oh, good, it's Jo Brand' rather than 'oh, hell, it's a woman'. This is presumably why she accounts for over forty per cent of female guests on QI (QI producers, you bastards, public perception of female comedians is never going to improve if we never see them).

I'm not going to be able to give you a very detailed report, I fear, but here are a few notes:

Fry: Why would you wake up in the morning and take a pill of a poisonous metalloid?
Brand: If you woke up after a heavy night and realised you were next to Michael Winner.

Fry: What is intelligent falling?
Brand: Is it when you're walking along and you see Michael Winner coming towards you, so you deliberately fall over to squash the cunt?

Fry: What do you call someone who eats literally everything?
Brand: Winner.
(klaxon sounds)

Brand: Laughter is the best medicine, isn't it? But I've found it generally doesn't work for impotence.
Hamilton: I wish you wouldn't look at me when you say that.

Fry: Bowel movements become very important to people as they get older. You hear about grateful patients sending nurses stools, don't you?
Brand: I don't know whether they're grateful.

At one point, a picture of Dr Gregory House talking to his original team appeared on the background screens. Stephen Fry said, 'Who the hell is that?' (I had completely forgotten who actually played House until this moment), and then, of Chase, Cameron and Foreman, 'They're all thinking "I would".'

Goldacre was very interesting and intelligent, and I would happily have listened to him talking about the pharmaceutical industry for hours. Apparently the law does not insist the the results of all drug trials be released! Companies can release only the results that make their drug look good and withhold the others! How incredibly worrying.

Fry: Well, when I read 'a study has shown' I just think 'oh, a study has shown'. It takes someone like Ben here to ask: what was the study? How was it conducted? Who was in it?
Goldacre: Yeah, but... this show is probably one of the worst for that.

Eventually, Goldacre wrote 'CITATION NEEDED' on a pad of paper and held it up whenever Fry said something for which he had insufficient evidence. An xkcd fan, presumably.

Fry: (begins asking a question)
Goldacre: (hits his buzzer)
Fry: (cuts off and looks at Goldacre)
(expectant pause)
Goldacre: Can I have a wee?

Incidentally, Goldacre kept fluffing up his hair whenever the cameras weren't on. OH NO, I'M GOING TO BE ON TELEVISION, I'D BETTER MAKE SURE MY HAIR LOOKS SUFFICIENTLY RIDICULOUS.

Thank you so much to chocolatepeach for the ticket!

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 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.


( The Unbelievable Truth recording, 7th March 2011. )


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!

Yesterday, sos_your_face and I went to a recording of Would I Lie to You?. On the journey to the studios, I mentioned that Victoria Coren hadn't appeared on the game before and I'd love to see her there.

'You've said it, so now it's going to happen,' sos_your_face said, referring back to an earlier discussion of my weird power to alter reality: the way Charlie Brooker began flirting with David Mitchell only after I began theoretically 'shipping them, the way I came away from an earlier Would I Lie to You? filming thinking Keeley Hawes/David Mitchell would be adorable and subsequently along came this sketch. 'I'm going to be really disappointed if she's not there tonight. I'm just going to leave and go home.'

'Right,' I said. 'Well, I apologise in advance if on this occasion my reality-warping powers let you down.'


Fast-forward a couple of hours and you'd find us sitting in the studio.

'Next,' Rob Brydon said, 'please welcome to the stage one of my favourite writers, presenters and poker players...'

I actually exclaimed 'Yes!' aloud.

So, yes! On David Mitchell's team were Chris Packham and Mackenzie Crook; on Lee Mack's were Rhod Gilbert and ♥ Victoria Coren ♥. I was convinced for several minutes after Coren's appearance that I was dreaming.

(Victoria Coren is, incidentally, the best player of Would I Lie to You? as a game ever. She got every single claim right.)


Here are some things that I remember from the recording! For anyone unfamiliar with the concept of Would I Lie to You?: a panellist on one team reads out a fact about themselves from a card, and the other team cross-examine them in order to determine whether the fact is true or false.


( Would I Lie to You? recording, 4th March 2011. )


At the end, Coren put on her duffel coat and she and Mitchell walked away together and Mitchell stepped down from the set and held out his hand to assist her and she took it and stepped down and it was the most adorable thing ever. It's fine if you don't want to get married and produce the world's most intelligent and sarcastic children, guys, but I think it would be a great loss to humanity.

Managed, courtesy of totaldrwhofreak, to go to the second unbroadcast pilot of 10 O'Clock Live, the live current affairs programme with David Mitchell, Charlie Brooker, Jimmy Carr and Lauren Laverne! As ever, I have written down what I can remember for the benefit of those who weren't there.


( 10 O'Clock Live unbroadcast pilot, 13th January 2011. )


10 O'Clock Live is starting up in earnest next week; it'll be shown on Channel 4 on Thursday evenings. You can probably work out what time.