This is the Technical Difficulties, we're playing Citation Needed.
Joining me today, he reads books y'know,
-it's Chris Joel. -In space.
Everybody's favourite Gary Brannan, Gary Brannan.
Nice to see you, to see you...
Nice!
And the bounciest man on the internet, Matt Gray.
-You planned that? -Yeah.
I planned nothing.
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,
and there's a special prize for particularly good answers, which is...
And today we are talking about Juan Pujol Garcia.
Juan Pujol, is there are two of them, is he on his own?
It's a good job this isn't QI, Gary,
because at that part large klaxons would be going off with that joke.
Just saying t*** repeatedly.
Can I guess that this person is from a Spanish or Portuguese speaking country?
Er, yeah, Spain.
-Hey! -I don't know very much about Spain.
It's funny you say that you don't know much about Spain.
Did he neither?
He didn't know much about England and that became important during part of his life.
Did he just end up here and was like 'S***, what's this?'
Well, I'm going to have a run at this one and miss it,
but was he some kind of captain of the Spanish Armada?
Ooh, no, you're far, far, far too early for that.
Was he not the captain of any kind of Spanish Armada?
Yes, but you're not getting a point for not saying he's not something.
Was he not the first man to walk on the moon, is true.
If he was too early for an armada he's going to be too early for the moon.
No, he's too … he's too late for an armada.
-Too late for an armada. -The armada was too early for him?
-Yes. The armada left, he hadn't been born yet. -He missed the bus.
It was centuries, it is centuries later.
"Did I miss the train or did the train miss me?" he cries.
Yeah, he was centuries late for the armada, he was born in 1912, died in 1988.
Aha, that doesn't help much.
It doesn’t, but he had a code name.
-Did he now? -Given those dates,
why might you want a code name?
-Spies. -Yes.
-Is this to do with the government of Fran...? -Oh!
Was he a spy placed in England but he just didn't know anything about the place?
So was he s*** spy?
No, he was a spy placed in England to look after sheep and therefore:
was a shepherd-spy!
[Subtitler's note: Gary's joke is a pun on "shepherd's pie", but for the first time in the show's history, this pun is entirely untranslatable to text.]
That's not olden, that's golden.
Two people in the audience just going, "No. No, we're not rewarding that."
No, he was … he was an excellent spy, but for which side?
And we're talking World War 2 here.
-Both. -Yes, absolutely right, he was a double agent.
Is he involved in the 'man who never was' thing?
No, this was not Operation Mincemeat.
-Right. -This was not that.
Because there was someone in that who was sending information both ways, wasn't there?
This was … this was a man who received both an Iron Cross from Germany
and an MBE from Britain.
How can that make him a good spy? Surely that makes him a s*** spy.
Only for one of those sides.
♪ Dun dun dun! ♪
So during the early days of World War 2
he decided he had to make a contribution for the good of humanity.
And he went to the British who said…
Alright.
Nah.
Have a point, Gary.
Sorry, British. "...No."
Three different times they turned him down as a spy, so what did he do instead?
Oh, did he just go in and start feeding us information without …
without us asking him to?
"That was dreadfully rude of him but jolly useful."
He's only helped the British without asking, but not by talking to them.
-Oh, did he talk… -I was…
-Chris. -Guz... ah...
Posed as a British spy and fed false information to the Germans.
Spot on, absolutely right, he …
he created an identity as a fanatically pro-Nazi Spanish government official,
who could travel to London on business
and he just started sending false reports to the Germans.
"Hello, I'm a fanatical Nazi. (I'm not.)"
Which meant everyone thought he was a spy...
but he just wasn't.
Yes, have a point.
So the Germans accepted him and said, "Okay, you're a spy now."
They gave him equipment, they gave him a bit of money and he moved to Lisbon in Portugal.
Can he see the coast, can he see what ships are going round Portugal?
Look at England from afar!
"I'd go over there to spy directly but the weather, really."
His instructions were move to Britain and recruit a network of British agents.
Did he pretend he was in Britain when he was actually in Portugal?
Yes.
-Clever bastard. -He's a really good spy,
He's such a good spy that he isn't a spy and everyone thought he was a spy.
And then he told them that he was spying and he wasn't doing the spying.
How is he actually sending a report to them? Because he is sending reports in.
Is he sending them to London who will then direct it via London or something,
so they're coming from the right route?
He's just throwing them over the wall and running away?
No, he's staying in Lisbon for this.
Pretending?
Yes.
Did he just lie?
What might he have used as a basis for that?
Because remember, he's just sitting in Lisbon sending completely false reports about Britain.
Was he listening to British radio?
Erm, newsreel reports in cinemas.
But, yeah, he's looking at the news, and using a tourist guide to Britain.
Which, correct me if I'm wrong: the Nazis could watch the news as well?
Yes. But they still believed him.
Because they saw it on the news, they thought that what he was saying was correct,
because he'd seen it on the news.
He was confirming the British propaganda
but by…
But he was, if he's dressed up as a spy saying, "Yes, I know these things."
And then the news says those things because he's already seen the news and they think he's…
Yeah, he's right.
Yes, you're absolutely right, that's pretty much what happened.
There was one slight problem, and he's putting expense reports in, by the way here.
-He's getting reimbursed for this. -He's living the dream now, now I'm with him.
What's the slight problem with his expense report?
Oh, was Portuguese currency decimals, so he couldn't forge the receipts?
Yes.
Because it's really hard to convert decimal to an imperial currency system
because it's pegged completely differently.
Yeah, more than that, he didn't know how pounds, shillings and pence worked.
Because he'd never been there.
Yes, so he's making mistakes but the reports are still credible,
so credible that what happens?
Do we spend a lot of time trying to find him and couldn't because he's in Lisbon?
MI5 launched a full scale spy hunt after they intercepted his reports.
How can they intercept his reports when they're coming from Portugal?
Because he's probably radioing them or Morse coding them across
and they'll be cracking that, won't they?
Yeah, through the Ultra programme, yes, you're absolutely right.
So they did eventually move him to Britain and they gave him a code name.
Was it a bit of a shock for him to actually move to Britain?
He was given a code name for a very British drink.
Crème de menthe.
"Tea."
Bovril.
Oh!
And he's no idea, they're going around, "What's your code name?"
-"Agent Bovril." -"Midnight."
What's yours? "Bovril."
But they did change his code name later to…
-Marmite. -Marmite.
Code name Garbo.
Nice. So from Bovril to Garbo.
Yes.
An autobiography there for everybody.
So what was he actually sending?
We've got a mixture of three things here, complete fiction,
what's the other two categories?
-Newspaper clippings. -Football scores.
Genuine information of little military value, but you know what, football scores is fine,
I'll give you a point.
Was he sending stuff that … well, okay, for want of a better phrase,
was he leaving them breadcrumbs of things he thought might be happening soon,
so they would keep drip-feeding very small amounts in to keep them on the hook?
Ooh! You're close, but there is one thing they did.
He … the first bit of this is 'valuable military intelligence'.
He did actually send proper intelligence to the Germans, there's just one catch with it.
It was harmless, so it was out of date or late?
Yes, artificially delayed.
Ah!
So he sent perfectly accurate data, it was postmarked in time.
Ah! And they're going to say,
"If we had only read this quicker, this would have…
"We'd intercept this because we read this about three days later than we could have.
"And if only we had more staff reading this stuff, we would have got there quicker."
So they employed more staff, yeah?
I quote, 'We are sorry they arrived too late, but your last reports were magnificent.'
The Germans wanted quicker reports and better encryption.
They didn't get that.
Well, they did, what did they send him?
-An Enigma machine. -Yes.
No! No!
You knobheads!
It's not an Enigma machine but it's the strongest code book that the Germans had,
-was promptly sent to him. -F***ing hell!
He must have thought it was bleeding Christmas when that happened.
Straight down Bletchley on his bike, "Got one!"
What was Operation Fortitude in 1944?
A good hearty breakfast.
Did it come after Operation 39itude?
Oh!
No.
But it came immediately before another famous operation.
-41itude! -41itude!
I set that one up, didn't I?
-Overlord. -Yes, which was?
-D-Day. -Yes.
So immediately before Operation Overlord was the D-Day landings.
Operation Fortitude was designed to do what?
This isn't the thing with the inflatable tanks, is it?
Yes, it is, and in fact...
Mystery Biscuits.
They'd made some tank shaped balloons...
balloon shaped tanks.
-Tank shaped balloons, right the first time. -I've heard of this before.
Yeah, and they positioned them strategically
in exactly the place the Germans thought they would be positioned.
And for some reason, I've never quite worked out, that was enough.
Despite the fact I'm almost certain one of them
will probably have got ended up filled with helium, it might have floated upwards.
I like the idea that they're not pumped up enough and they just got really limp guns.
So they accept he's going to send some genuine information.
And he's got the German …
he's got the German radio operators listening in all night.
And he sends them, at 3am, some reasonable,
maybe slightly too late details of a bit of what's going on.
"There's an invasion happening, you know!"
-What happened? -The Germans were asleep.
-Yes. -Oh!
Well, we don't know if they were asleep, they just didn't send a reply until 8am.
"Sorry, was asleep, had phone on silent", that kind of thing.
Yes, so what does he do because it's now definitely too late?
Sends an incensed message that they aren't listening to him.
Yes. "I cannot accept excuses or negligence."
He's bollocking them, I love it.
And then sends pretty much the accurate details of the invasion,
which is happening right now,
and they can't do anything about because they were too late.
Oh!
That, oh, that gives him a free pass.
Yes, it does.
Because he's like, "I would have told you had you been awake at 3:00am."
The Germans paid Garbo how much,
over the network of agents, over 27 fabricated people,
over years, I've got a number here in US dollars, the Germans sent straight to MI5?
Am I allowed to guess in Reichsmarks?
No. But we're going to do Price is Right rules here, as usual,
-closest without going over. -US dollars?
US dollars, 1944.
One million.
I'm going to say it's about $10.92 because they never actually paid him,
because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Clever, I was going to go for about 600,000.
Matt is closest without going over , 340,000 US dollars.
Ooh!
Went straight from the German Treasury to the British one.
They might as well have just like sent a plane over
and just bombed us with banknotes, mightn't they.
He was presented with some awards for this.
Best spy and also controversially, worst spy.
A German military award.
-You said the Iron Cross. -I was hoping you'd forgotten that.
That must have been awkward turning up for your…
because you said a George Cross or something, didn't you?
-MBE, he's still wearing the MBE. -With the Iron Cross.
Yes.
A suspiciously Iron Cross shaped mark on where his breast pocket was.
S***, did he turn up in Germany to receive awards?
No, it was awarded by radio,
and then he received the physical medal from one of his German handlers
after the war had ended.
But if he didn't like the institution
and he had all of these awards from two different institutions,
surely he f***ing hated that.
Yes.
But why did he have to accept it anyway?
Because otherwise it would blow his cover and he'd get killed by some mysterious agents,
they probably thought still existed at the time.
Yes. He feared reprisals after the war.
Because we all assume, like, neatly the war ended in '45.
They weren't very sure the war was actually over for quite a long time.
Because he kind of thought, "They'll be back", like they are in films.
Like there's a secret cache of Nazis that...
After the credits.
Yeah.
A single Nazi helmet pops up out of the ground, ♪ Dun dun dun dun ♪
Well, you know, 70 years later they're back. Anyway…
Ooh!
So what did he do?
Moved to America and lived a quiet life.
You know what, I'll give you that, he … he went to Angola.
That's not America!
And then went to Venezuela.
Like the Nazis did.
-So if you say America, Venezuela is sort of - -It's South America.
-I'll give you the point. -It's an America.
-He also did something else. -Faked his own death.
Yes, he did, he faked his own death from malaria in 1949.
And then...
changed his identity, moved to Venezuela and lived doing what?
Hard drugs.
Printing expense forms.
Money laundering.
A bookshop. A bookshop and gift shop.
"The books are full of spies."
In 1971, British politician, Rupert Allason is trying to track down Garbo.
Is this for his MBE?
-No, he's got the MBE. -He's already got that?
But no one knows his real name.
Does everyone just know him as Bovril or Garbo?
Yes, essentially.
I like the name as a full name, Bovrila Garbo.
Eventually Allason tracks down someone who supplied his full name
and knew roughly where he was.
So what does Allason then do?
Has he gone through every Juan Garcia in Venezuela but there are loads of them?
You know, that's close enough, I'll give you the point.
He went through every J Garcia in the Barcelona phone book
and eventually got in touch with his nephew.
-In Barcelona? -In Barcelona.
That's not Venezuela.
No, because no one knew where he'd gone.
Oh, of course, yeah, we know that, so yeah, "Hello was your… was anyone you know a spy?"
Yes, that's basically what happened.
And this person said yes and they believed him.
That's exactly the thing a spy wouldn't do.
And you make an excellent point there.
I was going to say that Pujol travelled to London and it says here,
"was received by Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace".
But now you've said that, who knows who it was?
Because Prince Philip never met him.
Well, you say that, he then went to the Special Forces Club and was reunited
with a group of his former colleagues.
He told them he'd had plastic surgery while he was in Venezuela.
And so looked and sounded different because was…
"Oh, Bovril, up to your old tricks."
"Yeah, Bovril."
You do know that plastic surgery doesn't work like it does in the Bond movies, right?
Shut up.
Yes, they called every single J Garcia in the Barcelona phone book.
They found his nephew, his nephew put the politician in touch with the original spy.
And he came over and met Prince Philip, toured the beaches of Normandy.
And eventually died in Caracas in 1988 and is essentially
the greatest spy that Britain nearly didn't have.
And when he came over he brought a big stack of expense forms
for all his staff back in the office.
So at the end of the show, congratulations, Chris you win this one.
You win a trip to an 'all you can eat' garlic restaurant.
Aioli you can eat?
Buffet the Vampire Slayer.
Oh!
With that, we thank you to Chris Joel,
to Gary Brannan,
to Matt Gray.
I've been Tom Scott, we'll see you next time.