Truth Be Told is a new programme on Radio 4 on Wednesday morning. Three members of the public recount, in detail, weird and shocking things they say happened to them. But how do we know their claims are true, as both the BBC and the presenter, Helen Zaltzman, state? Could this be another instance of the mingling of fact and fiction, which manifests itself in so many radio plays; of allegations failing to be verified, as in so many news reports; or of the growth in oral history, as exemplified in Fi Glover’s The Listening Project?
Listeners are informed that the three stories were first told at storytelling clubs in Britain. (The best known is Spark London, founded eight years ago.) One man — all are named, but no other details are given — tells how, after flying to Palermo, in Sicily, he accidentally swam to the rocky tip of the runway on which he had just landed. Then a 737 aircraft came straight at him and passed 30ft above his head. He escaped by jumping into the sea and was stung by numerous jellyfish.
A woman tells how she was attacked in a phone box in Birmingham at the point of a Stanley knife. She scrutinised her assailant closely, but does not disclose his ethnicity. The man who took her home, however, was “Indian”.
The most curious tale comes from a posh-sounding woman who says she was having her third child delivered by caesarean section in a south London hospital when the surgeon “pulled something out over the gap he’d created, and it was a round ball about the size of a tangerine, and it was a cream, sort of opaque colour, and he said, ‘Here is your bladder.’ And then he did something really bizarre. He stroked it a couple of times with his thumb. It was possibly one of the most intimate experiences of my entire life.” Radio 4’s programme description refers to “the unusual advances of a surgeon with a bladder fetish”. Unusual indeed, especially in an operating theatre full of people.
Asked what efforts had been made to confirm the accounts, Radio 4 said: “The storytellers were interviewed by the producer before selection and their stories corroborated where feasible (for example, checking encounters with authorities, news reports and location details or maps). The producer checked the dates and times, and spoke to people explicitly referenced.”
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Asked whether that included the surgeon, given how “explicitly referenced” he was, Radio 4 did not respond. Maybe he is even now reading this, bemused by his newly declared “bladder fetish”.