Unlikeliest 20 March 1988

Trevor Leggett was head of the Japanese Department of the BBC.

This is one of his broadcasts to Japan

Zubari for 20 March 1988

Hello listeners!

It is very difficult to say just what we mean when we say something is ‘unlikely’. There is a Japanese phrase ‘Man-ichi’ which give a mathematical figure; in English we should say ‘one in a million’. That is a hundred times the Japanese figure.

Well, what is the most unlikely thing you ever heard of?

This was my experience:

At a dinner party, an engineer was talking about his childhood. His father was a clergyman who had a church in the small town where he was born. The father sometimes punished him for being lazy or naughty. The punishment was: that the small boy must learn by heart some verses of the Bible.

In the end, he knew several chapters of the New Testament by heart. For the Christmas Children’s Service one year, it was suggested that the piece of Bible Reading (a part of the service) should be done by some child. The Committee asked this boy to read.

The piece he had to read was one of the chapters which he knew by heart.  He began reading and then the church lights all fused.  Everything was black in the church.  But as he knew it by heart, he just went on reciting it, in the complete darkness. The people gasped; it was like a miracle. The boy seemed to be reading from a book he could not see!

When I heard this story, I thought: ‘That’s an impossible coincidence! But a friend of the engineer told me that he believed it; “He is a very strict Christian, and would never tell a lie!”

Well, listeners, is it Man-ichi, or ‘One-in-a-million?’ Has anything like that happened to you? I think that politicians sometimes say things just as unlikely as this.

© Trevor Leggett