Factoid Corner

There's a nice letter in this week's TLS. Martin Rose praises a recent book review by David Attenborough but points out that a 'Ghanaian proverb' ("It is unwise to rub bottoms with a pocupine") is not a Ghanaian proverb at all but the winner of a New Statesman competition for inventing fake proverbs. Attenborough has form. In the most recent of John Julius Norwich's anthologies, Still More Christmas Crackers, Norwich thanks Attenborough for contributing the famous speech by Chief Seattle in which he proclaims that the land doesn't belong to any person. If either Norwich or Attenborough had consulted my favourite urban legends website, they would have discovered that the quote is not by Chief Seattle in the 19th century but by a screenwriter in 1971.

A couple of weeks ago, when asked for his favourite example of a scientist in fiction, Attenborough simply replied: 'I don't read fiction.' Yes, he does.