Chinese whispers

"Chinese whispers" was a colloquialism for a phenomenon of oral communication. As the First Doctor once tried to explain to James, Hebron and Daniel, a story could get very confused as it was told and retold. If, to give the Doctor's example, a man told two other men that he had three oxen and a box that travels through space, a person several steps away from the original two men might say that the original man had ten oxen and a box that travelled in time. (PDA: Byzantium!)