Episode 13 Horrible Histories

# Terrible Tudors Gorgeous Georgians

# Stylish Stuarts Vile Victorians

# Woeful wars, ferocious fights

# Dingy castles, daring knights

# Horrors that defy description

# Cut-throat Celts or bull Egyptians

# Vicious Vikings, cruel crimes

# Punishment from ancient times

# Romans, rotten, rank and ruthless

# Cavemen, savage, fierce and toothless

# Groovy Greeks, brainy sages

# Mean and miserly Middle Ages

# Gory stories we do that

# And your host, a talking rat

# The past is no longer a mystery

# Welcome to Horrible Histories. #

Britain about 2,000 years ago, and not a Roman in sight.

Whoops, spoke too soon.

The Romans have invaded and they're here to stay.

I wonder what they'll make of the food.

Hello, I'm an angry, shouty Roman chef and, having invaded Britain,

the first thing I notice is that the food is awful!

So I've come down here to this rubbish restaurant,

see if I can't turn things around, yes?

Come on.

So, what is it you're cooking here,

in this stinking dog-hole of a primitive kitchen?

Um, uh, this is the staple diet of Celtic Britain.

Um, right here we have the stale bread and this is some ale.

-And, uh?

-Right, well,

uh, you eat this, and this is to stop it sticking in your throat.

And what on earth is this?

Ah, well, this is today's special.

I call this recipe, "Lump of unsalted meat".

You think that's special? Celtic Britain is a disaster, fat man.

You're about to get a cooking makeover, Roman style.

Fetch me that pan.

So we're going to create a Roman menu.

Now remember, the Romans are so sophisticated,

they like to eat as much as they can,

make themselves sick and then eat even more.

So we gotta make something

that tastes as good on the way back up

as it did on the way down. Yes?

OK. So what I'm going to make is a wild boar,

with live song thrushes

that fly out when you cut it open.

I wanna peacocks, a ravens, a swans, a jackdaws.

I want the innards of an ostrich in a bowl

and sows' udders

mixed with the brains of a goat, yes?

OK. Pass me the pan.

Let's cook!

Now let me just try some of these sheep's lungs.

Mmm, not bad but it could do with a little something.

Uh, pass me some of those rotten fish guts.

Mmm, that's the stuff.

Delicious.

HE BURPS

OK, so we got boar, birds, salad, brains, lungs.

Well, that's the starter done.

Now we should get on with the main course. Pan.

Hey-hey! Let's cook.

And if you think our Roman eating habits were disgusting,

you should see what our toilets were like.

Right, here are the toilets.

Great. Well, after you.

After me? You are such a country bumpkin, Sextus. This is Rome.

We have communal toilets.

We all go together.

Come on, you.

-But...

-Come on!

-Afternoon, gents.

-Ah, afternoon, Marcus.

Oh, this is Sextus by the way, my cousin. First visit to the city.

Oh, wonderful. Well, take a seat.

OK. Thanks.

-Mmm.

-So, Marcus, how are you?

Oh, feeling a bit... HE BREAKS WIND

..better, thanks.

Was a bit poorly last week.

-Oh? Did you have that...

-HE BREAKS WIND

..cold that's going around?

Yeah, I think so. I tried that newfangled cure, though.

I ate nothing but... HE BREAKS WIND

..cabbages.

And drank my own urine for a day.

-Worked a treat.

-Mmm?

-Yeah.

THEY BREAK WIND

-Ooh, sorry.

-Ooh!

Hey, that reminds me, you really must try my wife's cooking.

Come for dinner this Thursday? We're...

We're having force-fed dormouse.

You can bring your cousin.

Oh, that sounds... delightful.

Mmm. Pass us the stick, old girl.

-Yes, of course, sir.

-Oh, other end, if you don't mind.

Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Sorry.

Ugh. Right, see ya Thursday.

Lovely. I'll bring some...

HE BREAKS WIND ..wine.

Bye.

I can't! I just can't go like this, with all you watching.

For goodness sake.

Thanks.

It's true. 100% accu-rat.

Ha. Romans really did socialise in their communal toilets.

They'd spend hours in there chatting and listening to gossip.

HE BREAKS WIND

Oh, Marcus! Ooh, I do beg your pardon, viewers.

Honestly, there's people watching.

-Sorry, that was my flea.

-HE BREAKS WIND.

And again! Marcus, what have I just said?

We Victorians fought lots of wars abroad

and they were really gruesome.

If you didn't die on the battlefield,

you probably would in the hospitals.

Check out how filthy they were. Mmm.

Welcome to the Crimean War hospital, Nurse...?

-Sorry, I didn't catch your name.

-Uh, Florence. Florence Nightingale.

Well, let me show you round the hospital.

First of all, and this is very important,

do be careful where you tread as there's a lot of...

There's lots of blood on the floor.

We do have hundreds of wounded soldiers here.

There's also a lot of...

A lot of poo.

Most of our patients have diarrhoea.

-Oh. That's disgusting.

-Ooh, watch out for the...

-Aaargh!

-Rats, yes.

-Honestly...

Right, this is one of our new patients.

Oh, but look at his sheets. They're filthy.

He's lucky. Most of our patients have to lie on the floor.

On the floor? What, with all the...

Blood and poo. Yes.

Oh, good heavens.

Ah, looks like the doctor's hard at work again.

Aha, it's just run of the mill operations round here really,

mainly cutting off limbs with a blunt saw.

A blunt saw?

But that must really hurt.

Well, yes,

I have got a bit of a stiff shoulder.

-I just try and ignore it.

-Urgh.

With all the rats around,

it's very important we dispose of amputated limbs properly.

Oh, at last, some basic hygiene.

Geoff! DOG BARKS

Oh, he loves his feed.

Right, I can see we need

to get this place cleaned up.

Let's start with...

Blood and poo, yes.

Ugh, think this really suits me. Don't you? Ooh!

Yes, Florence Nightingale famously introduced cleanliness and order

to hospitals in the Crimean War.

She became known as The Lady of the Lamp,

though us rats knew her as Lady of the Broom,

cos that's what she used to whack us with.

Oh, oi, you! Ha. Huh.

Oh, me snout.

The answer is...they all were.

Victorians still had

a lot to learn about medicine,

and leaning about

how the human body worked

was a particularly gruesome business.

Ooh! Bit whiffy.

Still, much to learn...

Egypt's pharaohs had some really complicated families,

and I mean complicated.

Check this out. A-ha!

Behold the Queen of Egypt, the living Isis, Cleopatra.

Uh oh.

What on earth are you playing at?

I fell out the end halfway up the stairs.

You could've broken my beautiful nose...

Oh, no. I don't believe it.

Yes, Cleopatra VII, last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, this is your reign.

What a lovely surprise.

-And I bet you helped.

-Yes, mistress.

Yes. Well, to show you how much I appreciate it,

I'm going to have you buried alive with me, when I die.

Oh.

Yes, this is a show where your friends and family

tell us funny stories about you,

and we're starting with your brother,

your husband, your second cousin and your brother-in-law.

Yes, it's Ptolemy XIII,

and, er...

Hang on, that can't be right.

Shouldn't there be four people?

Oh, no, he is all four.

You see, I married two of my brothers

and my dad is my mum's mum's brother, so...

Oh, cool. OK, maybe your dad can clear things up,

because he is here tonight with your uncle,

your great uncle, your father-in-law and one of your other husbands.

Hi, Dad, father-in-law,

brother-in-law,

second cousin, third cousin.

Maybe we should leave the family stuff to one side.

It's a bit weird.

-Let's concentrate on your husbands.

-It's us.

No, no, the other ones.

Because you didn't just marry members of your own family,

you also had a thing for powerful Romans.

That's right, husband number two and five,

Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony are here tonight.

Hello there, everyone.

-It's great to be here.

-Me too. Love the show.

Tell us a bit about your romance with Cleopatra.

Uh, well, in 48BC I was the unchallenged ruler of Rome,

then I met Cleo.

Uh, she made me stay on a very long holiday in Egypt.

By the time I got back to Rome,

I'd become so unpopular

that I was murdered by my best friends in broad daylight.

That's similar to me.

I mean, 42BC, had the world at my feet, great armies at my disposal,

met Cleo, shortly after, I died alone,

under attack by my own people. Shocker.

I mean, she's hardly a good-luck charm, is she?

-I was just thinking that.

-Yeah.

Well, it was never going to work with either of you two.

I mean, we're not even distantly related.

Urgh. Cleopatra, this is your very disturbing reign.

So, have we been married yet?

Uh, um, no.

Come on, let's check our family trees. We might be related.

We've all heard of Cleopatra.

She's the most famous female pharaoh, but she wasn't the first.

She was Hatshepsut, pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.

She had power, she had riches,

she had everything a great pharaoh needed.

Except a beard.

-Sorry, a what?

-A beard.

-A beard?

Yes. The pharaoh was meant to be the god Horace in human form,

and Horace was a bloke, so you wore a fake beard to look like a bloke.

Oh, are you, are you sure about that?

Yes, quite sure. Here we go.

Hatshepsut wore a false beard and dressed in men's clothes.

Hang on, what?!

You dressed in men's clothes.

Don't blame me. That's, like, just what you did.

Oh, that's ridiculous.

Hatshepsut, the queen who would be king,

took the throne from her stepson

and reigned over Egypt for 22 years,

-until she disappeared in mysterious circumstances...

-Whoa, whoa, what?

..her monuments destroyed and her name erased from history.

Stop, stop, stop. What happened to me?

You were murdered, probably by your stepson.

He was pretty annoyed about the whole throne stealing incident.

-Right, that's it.

-Where are you going?

You can keep the whole pharaoh thing. Sounds far too dangerous.

-What about the beard?

-Ooh, I'm keeping the beard!

Think it really suits me.

Ooh, that Hatshepsut! Ooh, she was a right show off, she was.

She had lots of carvings done saying she'd won loads of battles,

when actually, her dad had won them all.

Yeah! The next pharaoh put the record straight, though,

by chipping her name off all the monuments.

The rat knows all. Hm.

William Shakespeare was the most famous

-playwright in England.

-HE CLEARS HIS THROAT

-Britain.

-HE CLEARS HIS THROAT

The world.

Towards the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign,

he had his famous theatre, The Globe, built in old London town.

Tea break.

Back to work.

But then, his landlord put the rent up.

Argh!

So, to save money, Shakespeare had the entire theatre moved.

One, two, three, lift.

From north of the River Thames, to south of the River Thames.

To me, to you. To me, to you.

Argh, it's on me foot. Ah, that's better.

It didn't last long, though.

During a performance of the play, Henry VIII,

they used a canon to announce the arrival of the king,

which set fire to the thatched roof, and the whole Globe burnt down.

Right, you get the tools.

I'll stick the kettle on.

Amazing, you couldn't make it up.

Well, obviously Shakespeare could have,

but he was good at that sort of thing wasn't he, Shakespeare?

OK, it's the Battle Of Bosworth Field,

where Richard III is on the run from the gallant Henry Tudor.

Take it away.

"A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse."

Hang on! Hang on. Whoa.

Who on earth are you?

I, Mr Shakespeare, am the ghost of Richard III,

and I take it that that is supposed to be me.

Why have you given me a hunchback, a limp and withered arm?

It's symbolic. It shows you were an evil, murderous king.

But I wasn't! You just said that and everyone believed you.

-Well, you did kill the Duke of Somerset.

-No, I didn't.

You just wrote it in your play.

The Duke of Somerset died

when I was three years old.

Whoa! Well, three-year-olds can have a temper.

There's a difference between throwing your food on the floor

and stabbing a Duke through the heart.

And then, just then, what he said, "My horse, my horse."

"My kingdom for a horse."

-Don't say it now.

-Well, it's dramatic licence.

It's rubbish, is what it is.

Frankly, it'd be more realistic

if I'd have tried to escape on a...badger.

I'm William Shakespeare.

I write plays and I make stuff up.

If I wrote it how it was in real life,

it would be rubbish and boring, like school.

Look, I just want a historically accurate rewrite,

and I want to play myself.

A badger, a badger, my kingdom for a badger.

I need to use it to go and see the Duke of Somerset's grave,

who incidentally died ages ago, when I was three.

So there's no way I could've possibly stabbed him to death.

I've got a hunch this play's gonna ruin me.

I've got a hunch.

Hello and welcome to the News At When. When?

Over 1,000 years ago, when Vikings were always invading British shores.

Here to tell us all about it is Bob Hale, with the Viking Report. Bob.

Thank you, Sam. Well, it's 786AD

and all calm at the moment,

with lots of happy English people,

or Saxons as I like to call them, spread across the whole country.

But I'm afraid it's not going to last.

You can see here a nasty Viking front

sweeping in from the northeast,

causing heavy damage to both monasteries and indeed monks,

before heading back off to Scandinavia.

But not for long, here they come again.

There's lots more of them and they just won't go away.

But luckily a strong band of Saxons, led by King Alfred,

pushed back up across the country, creating a front here,

with the Saxons to the south and the Vikings to the north.

But in 920AD the Saxons say no,

enough is enough and they retake the north,

making the whole of England Saxon again

and that is the end of that. Or so we thought.

Here come those Vikings again,

and a Saxon king called Ethelred doesn't like fighting,

so he tries to pay them not to fight,

but they just take his money and invade anyway.

Those Vikings!

And before long, the Vikings are everywhere

and in 1017 we even get a Viking King.

Let's call him Canute, because that's his name,

and everyone just shuts up and gets used to it.

But not for long.

After a whole succession of kings, some Saxon, some Viking,

we end up with a Saxon one again,

let's call him Harold,

because that's his name,

and before you know it it's 1066.

Sound familiar? Very famous.

Viking's invade from the north, and while Harold's fighting them off,

the Normans from France invade the south.

They say the crown belongs to their king, William the Conqueror.

There's a massive battle in Hastings,

let's call it The Battle Of Hastings,

because that's what it was called,

and Harold gets shot in the eye

and then cut into little pieces. Not a great day.

However, William the Conqueror just conquers England

and all the Saxons who were so worried about the Vikings

end up being conquered by the Normans.

I mean, fancy that!

So in summary, lots of nasty men, big axes,

just don't go outside. Back to you, Sam.

Did you know, the cities of Dublin and Swansea were built by Vikings.

Swansea was named after the Danish King Sweyne,

that's Sweyne Sea, cos it was Sweyne's and it's on the sea.

The rat knows all. Good map.

There's nowhere in Britain named after the Viking Sigurd the Mighty,

and here's why.

# Stupid deaths, stupid deaths They're funny cos they're true

# Stupid deaths, stupid deaths Hope next time it's not you. #

Ooh.

Next.

-Name?

-Sigurd... the Mighty.

Sigurd, full stop. Year of death?

892AD.

Profession?

Viking ruler of mighty Orkney.

Ruler of a tiny island off Scotland. Method of death?

Well, we Vikings had already conquered Orkney

and we fancied somewhere a little bit bigger to conquer,

so we invaded mainland Scotland and defeated the Scots in pitch battle.

I took the head of my sworn enemy, Earl Maelbrigte of Moray,

-and strapped it to my saddle as a sign of triumph.

-Charming.

Unfortunately...

-Yes?

-While I was riding home, my leg brushed against the teeth

of the severed head. The wound went septic and I died of the infection.

Bitten to death by a severed head.

Ooh, ooh, ooh...

You're dead funny.

ALARM BEEPS

Yeah, I love my job sometimes.

I do!

Next.

# Stupid deaths, stupid deaths Hope next time it's not you. #

We Georgians came up with the idea of

making Yorkshire puddings out of batter,

and that's not the only bright idea we had.

Ugh, the hand is yours, sirrah.

I win again. Huzzah!

Let's play again, Earl Sandwich,

only this time I shall beat you, what!

We shall soon see about that. Aha.

Ooh, I find myself a tad peckish, old boy.

Cook!

-Yes, your Lordship?

-Fetch me some meat.

Yes, your Lordship.

Mmm, yeah.

Ah, dashed inconvenient,

but methinks I shall have to stop playing cards in order to eat.

Unless, uh... May I steal some of your fine bread?

-Be my guest.

-Ah, yes. I'll say.

There, huzzah!

The bread stops my hand from getting greasy from the meat.

Uh, ergo I can eat with one hand,

while still playing cards with the other. Ha-ha!

Mmm, I think you might be on to something, Earl Sandwich.

We should name it a sandwich, after you.

A sandwich, capital. Aha-ha. Ha-ha.

My good cook, I would like one of Earl Sandwich's sandwiches.

Um, I'm afraid we've no more meat, sir,

we're only got the leftovers we feed to the dogs,

such as hooves, snouts, tails, guts, private parts...

Oh, well, why not mince it all up, shove it into some intestines,

boil the living daylights out of it and then stick it in a bun.

-Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

-Of course, Baron Hotdog.

I think I'm going to throw up, fetch me a bucket.

Certainly, Lord Turkey of Twizzler.

Yes, it really was Earl Sandwich who gave his name to the sandwich.

But he wasn't the first person to eat things between pieces of bread.

The Romans were doing that about 2,000 years before.

So we should probably call it a sandwichus. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Cos that's... If you put an "us" on the end of words

it makes them sound Roman and... Oh, please yourselves.

Posh Georgians, like Earl Sandwich, loved playing cards.

Poor Georgians had some much weirder ways of amusing themselves.

The answer is...

C. The man ate a cockerel alive, feathers, entrails and all.

And here's another horrible Georgian entertainment.

Welcome to HHTV Sport, bringing you live sporting events from the past.

This week we're off to the 1700s,

when many poor people often didn't wash for months.

Their coats and wigs became infested with lice,

which in turn led to the sport of lice racing.

Sounds disgusting? Well, it was.

You join us here for the Chelsea Pensioner Stakes.

I like a day at the races.

Perfect, a fine pedigree louse.

I call him Itchy Boy, for obvious reasons.

And they're under starters orders, and they're off.

And it's Itchy Boy from Scratchy Lad,

with Haven't Washed For Weeks coming up on the outside.

Urgh, get it off me!

Itchy Boy has fallen, he's broken a leg.

He's still got five left.

So it's Scratchy Lad and Haven't Washed For Weeks.

And at the line it's Itchy Boy who wins it by a head.

Congratulations.

Thank you. But this trophy's not for me, it's for Itchy...

Boy.

Never mind, plenty more where that came from.

# Tall tales, atrocious acts

# We gave you all the fearsome facts

# The ugly truth No glam or glitz

# We showed you all the juicy bits

# Gory, ghastly, mean and cruel

# Stuff they don't teach you at school

# The past is no longer a mystery

# Hope you enjoyed Horrible Histories! #