This is the Technical Difficulties, we're playing Citation Needed.
Joining me today - he reads books you know - it's Chris Joel!
No letters once more.
The bounciest man on the internet, Matt Gray!
Hello!
And everybody's favourite Gary Brannan: Gary Brannan!
Accompany me into the inner reaches of Dale Winton.
In front of me, I've got 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 is...
Think I've set a personal best there.
Today we are talking about The Jimmy Carter Rabbit Incident.
Oh brilliant! Giant, swimming rabbit [ding] attacks Jimmy Carter [ding]
whilst fishing [ding]
Ha!
Right, that's it, we can go home, we can go home.
Personal best. Right, see you everybody,
That's us done for the day.
Were you both going for that?
Did you beat Gary to that?
Yeah.
It's one of my few, sort of, extra super special bits
of weird general knowledge and I knew Brannan'd know it as well.
You know what, I didn't actually, so well played.
I genuinely thought you'd beaten him to the punch there
Well I thought I -
No, I was going to make up some schtick
but the point is, what I was going to make up weren't too far from the truth, fact is.
I mean, obviously you've won, but -
Obviously this show is now entirely redundant for you, the viewer,
I mean, this is the way we should have done them all along -
Let's explore this because there's quite a lot to go on here.
What do you know about this?
Ostensibly, an enormous rodent swimming across a lake to Jimmy Carter--
who's fishing in this little sort of boat about the size of our table.
- US President Jimmy Carter -
He's up at whatever the country retreat is
and this thing just sort of gets up on the back end of the boat
and he's wailing on it with the oar.
It was a swamp rabbit, swamp hare.
Of course - only in America would they call it a "swamp rabbit"
give it the real, dangerous edge it obviously needs.
It's a large, cotton tailed rabbit. It's a big thing.
Looks about like that.
Essentially, it's still a rabbit though, yeah?
Yeah. That can swim!
But it's got big nasty pointy teeth and it can jump through about-
Okay, it can swim, that's one thing. If it had its own kayak, I'd be more worried, let's face it.
No no, it's much harder to get out of a kayak into another boat --
The rabbit can use a kayak, but it's on attack mode, you know.
So we've got an amphibious rabbit attack as well.
I can imagine it just whittling away...
It only didn't use its torpedos because, you know,
there's only one of 'em. I can take him hand-to-hand.
And it'd get launched backwards!
In the middle of this lake, a log-made submarine just pokes the conning tower above the surface.
The top unscrews - donk! - out comes a rabbit in a naval uniform.
"Fire!" "Sir, it's ungentlemanly to torpedo our president without giving him prior warning."
"F*** it, I'll take it meself then!"
And that was the problem. The problem was --
Dagger in his mouth. Aaah!
-- what was a fairly mundane story, is really funny when you start riffing on it. And everyone did.
This is very funny anyway, because let's face it,
It's a president being attacked by a f------ great rabbit, I mean, that's got --
Can you imagine, just, translating it here?
Gordon Brown is out one day, I don't know, cycling along the road
a sheep gets out and whales the s--- out of him. I'm sorry, I'd watch that day and night!
What was the president's side of the story?
The left hand side.
He was out there fishing in a peaceful fashion.
Maybe those things he did against the rabbits in his time in office came back to bite him on the ass quite literally.
No, he said the rabbit had good reason for being in a panic and jumping away.
Was it being chased by a crocodile?
It's being chased by something.
FBI agents, there to escort the president.
A court order.
Hounds, but I'm gonna give you a point for "being chased" there, Matt [ding].
Okay, okay. So the rabbit's being hunted, and he's running away.
Yup, and he said,
"Swam toward my boat, when he almost got there, I splashed some water with a paddle."
That is Jimmy Carter's side of the story.
I was gonna say, that sounds very much like one side of the story in any incident.
"So I'm innocently on the water, I just splashed me paddle, next thing I know he's on me!"
Turns out he called his mum a ****** or something while he was coming over.
What did Carter's staff say about this when he got back to his office?
-- The staff, as in the oar? -- No.
"Ha ha, hahahahahahaha, boss, you got your ass kicked by a rabbit."
No.
Nothing! They were mute.
Because they too were rabbits. Tinfoil hat.
Yeah, giant rabbit conspiracy tried to take over the giant lizard government of the world.
Exactly, inside job man. Inside job.
No, um --
Rabbits can't cut through steel beams.
Um, rabbits can't what?
Cut through steel beams.
Um, replace -
Swim!
Thank you! Have a point. They insisted rabbits couldn't swim.
Well, I think they just got called bull---- on that one!
Yeah, well, no one believed him apart from then the incident was captured --
-- on literally - there's video.
Puts on tinfoil hat. "How convenient."
"There just happened to be a camera there when the rabbit attacked the president."
False flag, people! False flag! They set it up!
There was a second rabbit behind the Grassy Knoll!
Firing his torpedos.
Yes, there was a second rabbit, in the submarine!
You can only just make out the picture 'cause they haven't got very good steadycam.
When you say footage, it is just a photo.
Hang on a sec.
Rewind. Grassy knoll - is a small little hill is it not?
It is.
What would live inside a small little hill?
-- Teletubbies! -- Teletubbies!
Yeah, Teletubbies killed Kennedy, that's where I was going with this.
Nunu's about to be very naughty.
I've got the thought that the Lee Harvey Oswald footage being re-cut now for Tinky-Winky, being pulled out
being pulled out as Po jumps out.
"This president - is tubby-toast."
Meanwhile, the rabbits, who are behind all this s---
-- Oh, God! -- they're still on the Grassy Knoll!
"Excellent," they cried.
-- Theme from Watership Down plays. The end. -- Yup.
But in a minor key, just to make it a little bit more evil.
More evil than Watership Down?!
Yeah.
Obviously, the president did not mention this to reporters
because "I got chased by a rabbit and had to splash it away" is not a good PR story.
How did it leak?
Rabbits did it.
Conspiracy. It's a rabbit conspiracy.
Well how did the boat leak? I think a rabbit took a big friggin' chunk out of it by the sound of it.
Well if someone photographed it...
The White House press photographer. Official. It wouldn't have gotten out of there.
When they got it developed, the developer saw it...
No, so it's - the press secretary just kinda told a reporter about it.
'Cause it is quite funny.
It is quite funny,
and the reporter promptly filed that with a wire service, and the story, "President attacked by rabbit,"
promptly appeared on the Washington Post.
I could absolutely see David Cameron getting...
Oh yeah. The thing is, they hadn't released the photo
because they didn't want the photo of the president hitting the rabbit to...
So what was on the front of the Washington Post?
A cartoon - an artist's impression. [ding]
Yes, you're getting the point straight away, but bear in mind, this is 1979.
What would've happened in 1979?
What pop culture thing would they have used for President attacked by rabbit?
Disco, or something like that?
It's a film.
Star Wars?
No...
Not '77, but - '77, '81.
About attacks from the water.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind!
Oh, that's a...!
It's wrong...
-- Gnaws! -- Jaws!
That, yeah, I'll give you the point there.
It was - It was "Paws". But it was the Jaws poster with a rabbit instead.
Fair enoughski.
The White House didn't release the photo until, I quote here, "it 'turned up' during the Reagan Administration."
Filed under "rabbits, lol" in a filing cabinet.
Reagan quickly used it as propaganda to go and invade the rabbit nation.
Yes, obviously.
Mr. Rabbit, tear this warren down!
It played into this idea that Carter's presidency was hapless, was feeble,
was someone who could be taken down by a rabbit.
But it's not the only article here listed under "Jimmy Carter, incident".
So fill in the blank, what's the other weird thing that happened to Jimmy Carter during his presidency?
Well, it didn't come out during his presidency.
It actually happened in 1969.
Was it food? Was it a sandwich incident?
No! No, you might be thinking of George HW Bush throwing up in the Japanese prime minister's lap.
That was something that happened.
He was governer of Georgia in 1969.
Oh it's a funny thing, though?
Oh, no, I wouldn't go with funny. I would go with spooky.
Ghost! Witch!
Sasquatch!
UFO.
Ohh baby. Brilliant.
The Jimmy Carter UFO incident, sits quite nicely next to the Jimmy Carter rabbit incident.
And the two aren't linked? Tinfoil hat.
Apparently not. Jimmy Carter saw an object that was bright white,
about as bright as the moon, and 30 degrees above the horizon.
-- Was it the moon? -- Was it the moon?
Now, you say that, um...
"It was as big as the moon, where the moon should be!
"And it looked a little bit like the moon!"
"But it was in the way of the moon! I couldn't see the moon!"
"I couldn't see the moon, for the big white moon thing in front of the moon!"
Well, apparently it changed color to blue, then red, then white.
The reflection of America, in the sky!
Did you just hit yourself really hard there?
-- Really quite hard. -- Well, quite hard.
It sounded like it hurt!
About 20 people unable to work out what a mysterious light could be.
Crash zoom. Rabbit.
With a red torch.
Yeah.
Going "hahahahahahaha"!
"This'll **** 'em up! Hahaha!"
What is the most likely explanation?
What do you see near the horizon that's frequently mistaken for a UFO?
Venus.
Point! [ding]
Absolutely right. Jimmy Carter said he did not believe the object was Venus.
What, did he think it was his plane or something? Oh, he wasn't president by this point.
-- "You're late!" -- Yeah.
He thought it might be a helicopter or something like that.
With a rabbit in it.
But what did he say during his election campaign, what did he tell reporters?
What did he do?
"If I find out I was probed by aliens, I'll let you know."
That's technically true. [ding]
"If I become president, I'll make every piece of information this country has
about UFO sightings available to the public."
Did he?
Well, there weren't any.
"No, definitely not."
Yes, if you were in on the conspiracy, and a president coming in said,
"I'm gonna make this conspiracy public,"
would you let them in on the conspiracy?
Or would you show them the empty filing cabinet that says,
"Evidence for UFOs", hastily written on the front.
And, before that, said, "Evidence for rabbit conspiracy".
What did he say was the reason that he wasn't actually going to make every one of the UFO -
"Truth?! You can't handle the truth!"
You know what, I'm going to give you the point. [ding]
Defense implications.
So the last one's "fill in the blanks" here.
The George H. W. Bush *blank* incident?
Sandwich.
Vomiting, but yeah I'll give you that.
It was at a formal dinner. [ding]
The Bill Clinton *blank* controversy?
Monica Lewinsky?
No, haircut!
What?!
Oh come, we've gone from "man attacked by rabbit" to "man spews on diplomat" to "man has trim".
Man has trim while in Air Force One and grounding other planes, allegedly.
Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo!
The Dick Cheney *blank* incident?
-- Dick. -- Hunting people.
Quail!
Hunting, yes. You can all have a point for that one. [dings]
I said "dick"!
I got a point for saying "Dick Cheney dick incident"!
I... may not have been paying attention there.
Technically he's right, because Dick Cheney was involved in this.
I thought you were going to say Dick Cheney was a dick!
-- Also - also true... opinion. -- Opinion.
And finally, the *blank* of Caerbannog.
-- Cave. -- Rabbit?
Point. [ding]
Absolutely right, it's the one from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"
and it's listed as a related article.
Yes!
Chris, obviously you win this week's show.
because you knew about it and gave everyone the first few answers!
So congratulations to you, you win permission to dress up as a famous frog and go hide in a cave.
It's a hermit Kermit permit.
So do enjoy that.
[in Kermit's voice] "Yay, let's get out of here!"
Yay!
You are dressed appropriately, so with that -
"Miss Piggy!"
We say thank you to Chris Joel!
Matt Gray!
Gary Brannan!
I've been Tom Scott; that has been... this run of Citation Needed!
Thank you very much! We will see you next time!
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