This is the Technical Difficulties, we are playing Citation Needed
Joining me today: he reads books you know, it's Chris Joel!
Variously verbally, vociferous, verbose, violent, and venile are we.
You're doing a different letter each show?
I have up to now, I'm going to have to think up some kind of crazy third letter now, but...
The bounciest man on the internet: Matt Gray!
Hello Youtube!
And everybody's favourite Gary Brannan - Gary Brannan!
Join me in my balloon to the moon!
I... I...
Is that a euphemism?
I'm not sure if I want to do that or not. On the plus side, it's a balloon to the moon
On the other hand, it's Gary's balloon to the moon
Do you have respiratory equipment?
Gas in it, in't there?
There will be with you in there!
"There's gas in it, in't there"!
In front of me I have an article from Wikipedia and these folks can't see it.
Every fact they get right is a point and a ding [ding]
and there's a special prize for particularly good answers which is
And today we are talking about the boobrie.
It's a bird.
Oh, yes! Point! [ding]
Cut, print, done!
And as the bullet of mirth headed for the tit-shaped gagfest...
Where's the hyphen in that?!
I'm trying to diagram the sentence and it's not happening
Anywhere you could put a hyphen changes the...
Is it an Australian bird?
No, it's not. You're in pretty much the exact opposite around the Earth
-- Norwegian! -- Not... not, uh, about...
-- Canadian! -- West Coast of Scotland.
You're right, it's a bird... sort of
It can also appear in other forms
-- Is it a fish? -- No.
In the same way that a duck is a fish?
A wee mythical beastie!
Oh, it is, have a point. [ding]
A shape-shifting-ma-thing
-- I was going to say -- You know what...
Well this is a quick one isn't it?
Instant points. Instant biscuits.
Do I get a point for mentioning Kelpies and Selkies?
Oooh
Other shape-shifting Scottish beasties
Yes, you can have a point for that as well [ding]
Do you want to talk about the Kelpies?
Err. I can't remember which way round a Kelpie and a Selkie is
it's a thing that looks like a seal that transforms into a people on land or something like that
-- or shape shifts -- Shape shifting water spirit.
-- Can you get a selkie stick? -- Ugh!
A thing that changes from a seal to a person, while walking out of the sea?
That's just a very unobservant person on land, isn't it?
Well, yes! That's how shape-shifting myths happen.
They've looked away, they've looked back, there's a man. And at no point have they gone
"'the two of these aren't related".
They've gone-
"Hoots mon!"
Ideally held up the bottle they had in their hand, rubbed their eyes,
stared at the bottle, shook their head, and put it back down again
And then debated whether it can be deep-fried and whether it'd taste good with Irn-Bru.
The reason I said sort of earlier on, as it may appear in other forms
because it's a shape-shifting entity
"It's just a thing!"
Bullsh*t!
Ah, water -- have a point, water-bull! [ding]
-- What?! -- Water bull.
A water bull, what's a water bull?
It's another mythological Scottish creature
Shape-shifts!
So it shape-shifts into another made-up thing?
Yeah, yeah
Couldn't it be more inventive and shape-shift into something that isn't a shape-shifter?
The water bull is said to reproduce with standard cattle, how can you tell what's happened?
Is there a puddle of water underneath?
Size of their ears.
Of course there is, naturally it's the ears.
Yes, the water bull has big ears, not flippers, not a fin, not anything like that
-- It's not that someone got a cow and- -- Smaller ears.
threw it off a dock, into the... a harbour.
-- Can I ask a question? -- Yes.
Are there "major issues" with this article?
No, none at all!
-- Are there any references? -- Perfectly cited!
Well it's obviously true then(!)
We've got a lot of good references here. A lot of mythological tales,
particularly Gaelic ones have been very, very well studied
So you have a trail of bollocks!
Yes! Yes I do.
Does anyone want to come up with an explanation of what it might be?
It's fairly early on, here. You have a big bird that makes a bellowing sound
that sounds like a bull.
Is it a bittern?
Not quite, it's extinct now, this goes back into mythological times.
Dodo!
Uh, no.
Great bustard.
You're in the right area, it's great something.
That's what they went to school for, isn't it?
Well I thought, boobrie, great bustard...
Great auk.
I was gonna say! F***'s sake! I had awk in my head!
Why didn't you say it?!
Because I thought it was like, Australian or something like that
Nah, I just thought it wasn't a British bird basically, the awk. I didn't think it was...
It isn't anymore because it went extinct halfway through the 19th century
-- Was it shot a lot then? -- Erm, the auk...
It was probably delicious!
That's why most things are extinct!
"Aah, you should've seen this thing!"
An easy shot!
The bird's down was in high demand in Europe, which largely eliminated the European populations
by the mid-16th century
It was a beneficiary of many early environmental laws...
Yeah, but not enough, though, 'cos they killed them all!
The 3rd of July, 1844, the last two confirmed specimens, off the coast of Iceland,
what happened to them?
-- Died. -- Yeah. [ding]
In a freak parachuting attempt.
Yeah. It does say 'were killed' so basically some...
"That's the last two there, I'm gonna have that."
"They're mine."
"My name's in books now!"
That sounds like a case for Detective Inspector Bird!
Cue title sequence. Bird in a little detective's hat... in the rain
I just thought it would be that same Land Rover going down a dirt track
that they've all got.
I've just looked down this, on the Great Auk
The last pair, found incubating an egg, were killed on 3rd of January, 1844
on request from a merchant, and the people who killed them are named.
Jón Brandsson, Sigurður Ísleifsson, I'm probably mispronouncing the surname there,
-- strangling the adults. -- Woah! That's cold.
Woah. If you're gonna kill the last two of a species do it with your bare hands!
It gets colder, it gets colder. And Ketill Ketilsson...
-- Did he kettle them? --- So Ketill, son of Ketill?
Yup, Ketill, son of Ketill
Are we sure this was a man and not an implement?
Don't forget, they're incubating an egg, what did he do?
Boiled it and ate it.
Smashed it. Just smashed it.
Oh, what a cock! He didn't even get a delicious meal out of it.
Um, we-
Because they came alone with no "soldiers".
Literally it was as cold as that. They got interviewed later and just said:
"I took him by the neck. He flapped his wings. He made no cry and I strangled him."
As you looked into that bird's cold eyes, and just went: "shhh."
"This is the last member of this species!"
You do wonder with it being a merchant, it's like:
"I want the last immaculate skin", which is why they didn't shoot it or something
Yes, that's why they weren't shooting it.
They wanted the skins.
But that was the bird that they thought might be causing the sightings of the boobrie
What does it normally prey on?
Small, little cushions.
Small, little cushions?
Pray! Ohh...
Oh wow, that's...
No! Fear!
Preys on fear?
Ah, animals on ships.
Entire boats, this thing eats?
No, it just sneaks along when you've got a boat that's transporting a lot of animals
Takes one.
The whole boat?
No, the whole animal though. The whole animal
How big is this thing?
The great auk's about that big!
Mythological creatures, weird sightings, you know, you'll get all sorts of...
-- And in the days before glasses... -- Yes.
Then it was blurry and that big!
Can we rule out it wasn't one of these things that sank the Titanic?
Yeah, I think we can rule-- it didn't shape shift into an iceberg.
That's not listed anywhere in here.
No great auk's ever been found with red paint smeared ominously on it.
I wish-- what we need's a crash zoom into an auk, just...
with the big red line down it's side!
While it blinks once and smiles.
They will also shelter on land in overgrown heather
-- Who's she? -- There we go. Thank you!
I set it up...
The boobrie can also manifest itself into another form. A very creepy form.
Paul Daniels.
Lizard.
Airships.
They're not creepy!
They are at night.
That's true. That's true. Airships sneaking up on you in the middle of the night.
When you're walking along.
You just wake up and there's one in your face.
You're telling me you wouldn't go...
-- when you saw that? -- That's fair, that's fair
Has it got a little face painted on the front of the airship?
Yeah, 'course it has
Just smiling unnervingly.
Well it's smiling unnervingly, you look away, you turn back, it's frowning.
You've written a Doctor Who plot there about airships.
Moffat, it's yours.
I mean, what, this is a litany of other things it could be.
Well, no, different kingdom here. So not animalia.
A rock!
Is it a plant?
I was going to say, is it a rock?
An insect.
Oh, piss off!
A large insect that sucks the blood of horses, with tentacles and feelers.
But only horses.
Do insects have tentacles?
No.
Well, it's not even consistent, that's my bother with this.
Most mythology isn't all that consistent, to be fair.
Well, if you're gonna make something up, at least you make it up consistently
At least my airship one was, you know, consistent with the flying, inanimate objects
It's partially an insect, partially Saturn(!)
And partially swamp gas.
Of course it is. This is someone excusing their massive fart, isn't it?
You are not getting away with calling what you did earlier "swamp gas", Gary.
No. Oh, it was the boobrie everyone, that's what did it(!)
There is an entire category here on Scottish legendary creatures.
Right. For a political joke:
the Conservative Party.
There we go.
What is it? More pandas in Edinburgh Zoo than there are Scottish Conservative MPs.
Yeah, and they're both Tories!
What? The pandas?
Yeah! Viciously!
"We've got a habitat. I don't see why any of those other pandas should."
"We could let them in, but why should we?"
Gets out the Telegraph and just goes...
Pandas can be like embittered, late-40s Tories! They live together, they don't have sex,
they don't fraternise with other kinds, they've got a very restrictive diet
UK Independence Pandas.
Someone I know has a big thing against pandas, right. And they have a very long list
"F****ng kill 'em!"
Yeah, basically, they don't need to survive anymore,
they've bred themselves out of existence, so why are we bothering?
Not actually a bad argument that one. Pandas are basically an evolutionary dead end at this point
They failed Darwin's test
But they weren't, and like a lot of species we came along and messed things up for them
but, at this point...
And they vote Tory(!)
Yes. Fact. Fact.
We've established this, that pandas are Conservatives.
I'll tell you what, the best way to get a candidate to read your thoughts --
I can say this 'cause it will be after the election when this goes out
If you spoil your ballot, if you put more than one cross in a box,
every candidate has to stand around and look at that to agree that more than one cross is on that bit of paper
I have literally been in that meeting.
You have been there. If you put two crosses and write "you're all dicks"
they all have to read that to make sure that you didn't put one preference more than the other
and that is a genuinely spoilt ballot.
So there you go, if you're gonna make a protest, call them all ****s and put two crosses in
there's nothing better than seeing a row of electral candidates reading what people think about them
as they all go "yes, yes, uh, and too, and my mum!"
On that note, on that note. Congratulations Gary, you win this week's show
The camera can't see you, you're in the darkness
You're in the dark!
Congratulations, you win leafy green vegetables from one of the fathers of computing
Babbage's Cabbages.
-- Thank you very much to Chris Joel -- Bye!
Matt Gray!
Gary Brannan!
I've been Tom Scott, we'll see you next time!
Subtitles by - Katy M [Translating these subtitles? Add your name here!]