The following spring all five original members joined Parker to record a new album, entitled Three Chords Good, and in September 2011 Parker and The Rumour filmed a performance scene for the Judd Apatow film This Is 40.
Such was their reputation that when a battered Roman army under Consul Gaius Hostilius Mancinus was besieging Numantia in 137 BC, the rumour of the approach of a large combined Cantabri-Vaccaei relief force was enough to cause the rout of 20,000 panic-stricken Roman legionaries, forcing Mancinus to surrender under humiliating peace terms.
Guillaume de Rochefort, Lord Chancellor of France, repeated the rumour in the Estates-General in Tours in January 1484, adding that Richard III had "massacred" the princes and then been given the crown "by the will of the people"; he may have obtained his information from Mancini's report.
Before Davis ultimately moved to Germany, where he has resided ever since, he and Wheatley recorded material together, along with Rob Townsend from Family, keyboard player Billy Livsey and the horn section from The Rumour.
Multiple publications spread the rumour that the firm was operating a German spying network, the main source of such rumours being the publicist Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski.
Urban legends and Internet memes have long alleged that its design consciously mirrors the Tower of Babel as painted by Bruegel (the Vienna version), and although unfounded, the rumour has entered mainstream media through Glenn Beck.
Its story consists in the main of three incidents: the attempt by Jing Ke to assassinate Ying Zheng; the rumour of a Chief Minister's having sired the latter before transferring his concubine to become Queen Mother; and the (possibly fictitious) story of an official having sired children by the Queen Mother herself.