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?

Yes.

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.