BILL KURTIS: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME, the NPR news quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis. We are playing this week with Maz Jobrani, Roxanne Roberts and Brian Babylon. And here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Mr. Peter Sagal.
PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill.
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SAGAL: Right now it is time for the WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME Bluff The Listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the air. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME.
JEFF COOPER: Hello there. This is Jeff Cooper.
SAGAL: Hi, Jeff Cooper. Where you calling from?
COOPER: Tennessee - Cleveland, Tenn., just north of Chattanooga.
SAGAL: Cleveland, Tenn.?
COOPER: Yes, sir. I usually say Chattanooga because no one nowhere - knows where Cleveland is.
SAGAL: Right. I understand. Well, welcome to the show, Jeff. You're going to play the game in which you have to tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Jeff's topic?
KURTIS: Victoria's Secrets' secret.
SAGAL: Victoria's Secret, the sexiest place in the mall, unless you're one of those people who's way too much into Cinnabon.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Well, this week we learned there's something we didn't know about Victoria's Secret - Victoria's Secrets' secret. Our panelists are going to tell you about it. Guess which one is tell the truth and you will win our prize - Carl Kasell's voice of your voicemail. You ready to play?
COOPER: Yes, sir.
SAGAL: All right. Well, then let's hear your first story of lingerie from Roxanne Roberts.
ROXANNE ROBERTS: Everyone knows that the name Victoria's Secret is a clever homage to the idea that the very proper Queen Victoria wore some racy undies beneath her buttoned-up exterior. In 1987, executives had what they thought was a brilliant idea. Design a line of lingerie based on Victoria and the 150th anniversary of her ascension to the throne. The company hired royal historian, Marjorie Gascon (ph), who spent six months compiling everything known about royal corsets and knickers. Turns out that not only did Victoria disapprove of sexy scanties (ph) - she thought they were indecent - but that she wore men's underwear or none at all. Gascon found a privately-owned diary by one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting, who wrote that her Royal Highness, as a besotted young bride, stopped wearing undergarments at the request of Prince Albert. After he died in 1861, the grief stricken widow started wearing his underwear. Victoria's Secret's executives were, of course, horrified and paid Gascon 2 million pounds not to publish her findings. But she died last year and left her papers to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which hosted a one-day seminar last week entitled Victoria Unlaced. It just goes to show, said curator Timothy Connell, never judge a book by its undercover.
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SAGAL: It turns out Victoria - Queen Victoria, the namesake of Victoria's Secret went royal commando. Your next story Victoria's top secret comes from Brian Babylon.
BRIAN BABYLON: We've all been there. You have a romantic date. You've got the mood music on and then you're attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes because your bedroom is in the woods. Don't you hate that? Well, Victoria's Secret can help, although that's a surprise to Victoria's Secret. A group of scientists in New Mexico were testing different substances to find the most effective mosquito repellent. And as a joke, they threw in some Victoria's Secret's Bombshell perfume. And guess what? The mosquitoes hated the perfume as much as they hated real repellants. Even the ones with DEET. The scientists have no explanation for the results except that mosquitoes hate the passionate sent of musk with hints of Raid. Victoria's Secret hasn't commented on the tests. But I'm sure they're working on a line of products for the sexy outdoors woman Bombshell repellent perfume to go with their miracle bra with canteens in each cup and survival panties. Bombshell from Victoria's Secret, it's like an erotic blast of Agent Orange.
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
SAGAL: Victoria's Secret perfume. The men love it. The mosquitoes hate it.
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SAGAL: Your last story of a secret with Victoria's Secret comes from Maz Jobrani.
MAZ JOBRANI: If you're looking to spice up your sex life, chances are you've thought about going into a Victoria's Secret store to buy some provocative lingerie to get things started. However, research shows your instincts to be wrong because scientists in Palm Beach, Fla., have found that upwards of 73 percent of people who shop at Victoria's Secret never get to actually use the product. To find out why, we spoke with one of the test subjects, Gertrude Weinberg, who stated we bought the bra and the underwear and I went into the bathroom to put it on. There was so many buttons and straps and buttons and straps.
(LAUGHTER)
JOBRANI: Did I mentioned the straps?
(LAUGHTER)
JOBRANI: By the time I got back, I look at Mel and he's asleep.
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
JOBRANI: Apparently this happens to more couples than Victoria's Secret would want you to know, both young and old. The multimillion dollar underwear chain would lead you to believe that buying their product will improve your sex life and help your marriage. However, most couples state that by the time they get home from work, make dinner, feed the kids, put the kids to sleep, check emails, check Facebook and on the other stuff that comes with modern-day life, they're too exhausted to use the sexy lingerie to fulfill their sexual fantasies. Another test subject, Mike Jones, was quoted as saying, yeah, I got fantasies - fantasy football, fantasy baseball...
(LAUGHTER)
JOBRANI: ...And fantasy hockey.
(LAUGHTER)
JOBRANI: So the next time you're thinking of spending hundreds of dollars on expensive lingerie from Victoria's Secret, consider spending much less on a double espresso that will keep your spouse awake long enough to culminate the experience. When reached for comment, Mrs. Weinberg's husband, Mel. was quoted saying, "Huh? What happened? Did we do it?"
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SAGAL: All right. All right, here are your stories. One of these things was a - was an unknown thing about Victoria's Secret, the underwear company, that we found out this week. Was it from Roxanne Roberts, the unearthed papers of a historian shows that Queen Victoria herself never wore any underwear and then ultimately wore her husband's, or from Brian Babylon, the surprising discovery that Victoria's Secret perfume is an effective mosquito repellent, or from Maz Jobrani, the secret that 73 percent of customers never end up using the sexy underwear because it's too much of a pain?
COOPER: All right. I'm going to have to go with, you know, I'm going to have to go with the third answer - that it takes too much effort to take that kind of stuff off to make it worth putting on in the first place.
SAGAL: All right. You're going to choose Maz Jobrani's story of how a study shows that very few people actually ever use the underwear because it's too complicated. Well, to bring you the correct answer we spoke to someone who actually helped make this discovery.
IMMO HANSEN: We had Victoria's Secret bombshell perfume in the lab. So we tested it, and we were really astonished that it actually worked better than the commercially available repellants.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: That was Dr. Immo Hansen. He's a biology professor at New Mexico State University and the senior officer of the study that showed that Victoria's Secret Bombshell perfume is an effective mosquito repellent. Also, I'm sorry, as it turns out Brian was telling the real story. However, even though you didn't win, Maz does get a point. And I believe even though he made it up, his story is in fact true.
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
JOBRANI: Yeah, 73 percent.
SAGAL: Seventy-three - that sounds about right.
JOBRANI: Yeah.
SAGAL: Thank you, Jeff.
COOPER: Thank you.
SAGAL: Bye-bye. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.