As I discussed in my first post, science is being discussed more and more by mainstream comedians. As a specialist science comedian, I’m always very careful to make sure my science is correct. Other comedians aren’t always so careful – and not just about science. Each week I hope to correct factual errors I’ve seen or heard about in the festival. I’m not a complete killjoy – the jokes come first – but if you present a fallacy as fact, all bets are off. After all, this is the twenty first century – what does it cost you to Google something? You never know what comedy goldmines are lurking in those search results.

First up isn’t a joke from a show, but a ‘fact’ in a blurb. For his show Let’s Talk About Sex, Mark Butler claims that “ducks are the only birds to have a penis”. This is not true; other waterfowl (swans etc.) also have penises, as do flightless birds. It is true that ducks have the best penises, but I will say no more in case Mark uses startling but true information in his show.

Jim Jeffries reportedly claimed on stage this week that Jesus was only 4′7″ tall (that’s about 140cm in the new measure). This is a case of a ‘possible answer’ which seems to have been debunked. No-one knows for sure how high Jesus was (though it would have been considerably taller on Good Friday); there’s not even a single physical description of him in the Bible. (Well, some claim there is in Isaiah; but even if that is about Jesus, all it tells us is Jesus was nothing special in the looks department.) This would normally leave the field open for any kind of suggestion, and it is true that humans were generally shorter a couple of millennia ago, but I’m told Jim ‘proves’ this ‘fact’ by saying there’s a direct relationship between the average height of humans and how far back into history you go. That’s not true, however; human height has gone up and down for a whole stack of reasons over the centuries. Varying estimates I’ve found put Jesus at anywhere from 4′9″ to 5′7″ (145cm to 170cm) or even six feet tall (183cm), though the latter is highly unlikely. Sorry Jesus; not only does Jamie Kilstein say you’re not real, but we don’t even know how big a hole you leave in so many people’s lives.

Nina Conti set up shop on my home turf with her show Evolution (my second show was called Evolutionary), so my standard for accuracy was pretty high. In general she impressed; her grasp of the processes of natural selection isn’t too bad. On the other hand, if you’re going to explicitly ‘cash in’ on the anniversary of Origin of Species with a faux comedy lecture (see Geek Comedy 101: the comedy lecture), you should do your homework, and Nina gets a few things wrong.

First, she claims that “life has been evolving for 4.3 billion years” – but that’s (roughly) the age of the Earth. This is a tricky one, though, since we’ve not yet settled the question of what counts as life; in any case, the earliest evidence of life as we know it (Jim) only goes back 3.5 billion years.

Nina claims humans evolved from amoeba 500 million years ago, and this is wrong on two counts. First, we not descended from amoeba. We are, ultimately, descended from single-celled organisms – as is all life – but just as we are not descended from modern monkeys, we are also not descended from modern single-celled organisms like amoebas. We do share a common ancestor with amoebas, but it’s like we share a great great great aunt (let’s call her Felicity). Amoeba just looks more like Felicity than we do. The other problem here is the date; 500 million years ago is way off. Our ancestors had backbones by then – and they were fish. I don’t think we’ll be seeing any amoeba ‘n’ chips shops popping up any time soon, either.

That’s it for this week – but have you heard something in a festival show that didn’t sound quite right? Let me know! And I fully expect you readers to keep me honest and tell me if I get something wrong, too.

Finished reading this article? You might also like:

• Fun MICF facts – week one
• Festival Club: first week lineup announced
• Geraldine Hickey in One Week in Paradise