Dan Snow's History Hit - Celebrity

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

Greg Jenner has given my children so many hours of happiness as the historical brains behind the Horrible History tv shows and movie, not to mention the Homeschool History podcast that it would have been grotesquely unfair not to have him on the show and talk about his new book on the history of celebrity. Greg has tried to define exactly what we mean by this title and suggests that it all began in the early 18th Century with the rise of a literate mass audience and the magazines and papers that catered to it. His suggestion of the first celebrity will surprise every one of you, but his stories about the people that we have thrown onto pedestals and then cast aside will amaze you. As i should know by now, nothing, nothing at all, is new in this world. Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hey everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Got a superstar on, Greg Jenner, historical brains behind the Horrible Histories TV series and film, even appeared in that film, what a legend, been the film. He's also got his Two Smash Hit podcast. He's got Homeschool History. He's got You're Dead to Me. And now, I mean, as if that's not enough, the guy's got a book out on the history of celebrity. He's been spending years working away, trying to identify where and when this obsession we have with fame and celebrity stems from it's great to have him on the podcast talking about that just a quick note for those of you who are listening to this on the day it drops which is Wednesday the 13th we have got Rutger Bregman coming on the podcast, and we've started this tradition of recording some of our biggest guests on Zoom and allowing subscribers to History Hit TV to come and sit in on the recording,

ask questions and interact with the historian. We've got some fantastic people coming on. We've got Rutger Bregman, whose book everyone is talking about at the moment, Humankind. Next, we've got the Pulitzer Prize winner, Caleb O'Daniel, and lots of exciting speakers lined up after that. So it's just one of the many perks you get as a History Hit TV subscriber. You obviously get access

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They are only available on History Hit TV. So please head over there and do that. We've got lots of people signing up. Really grateful. Hope it's proving some comfort during the lockdown at the moment. If you use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, you get a month for free

and then your second month is one pound, euro or dollar. So please head over there to historyhit.tv and enter the code POD1. And then if you do so by this evening, you will get an email inviting you to join the Rutger Bregman Zoom call. If you don't want to do any of that, just wait for it.

It'll be out on the podcast soon enough in your feeds. In the meantime, everyone, here is Greg Jenner. Greg Jenner, you're back on the podcast. Welcome, welcome. Hello, how are you? I'm okay. In sort of COVID-adjusted terms, I'm okay. You know, I wish we were together having a laugh about this extraordinary book you've written rather than doing it remotely. But, you know, it's been years in the making.

Everyone on social media has followed your adventure through this book. Does it feel good to have it out finally? Adventure is one word. I don't know if it's an odyssey. Four years to research and write it. And it wasn't meant to be that long. But it's a surprisingly vast and complex subject. And I think I was a bit naive going in, to be honest.

I thought it would be quite straightforward, a bit of fun, easy to do, a year and a half. Turns out it's actually really, really sophisticated and complex, nuanced and challenging. It's been one of the toughest things I've ever done, I think. What did you want to get to grips with about celebrity? I mean, surely we've always had celebrity, or do you identify something new, something particular, something quite modern? The book is relatively provocative in that I pushed the origin point of celebrity back to 1700. That's for me where we confidently, I think, see celebrity culture existing. And there are other scholars who'd say, oh, no, you can go earlier than that. And I don't think they're quite right, but I can certainly see

why they've thought that. But we often think celebrity is a 20th century invention. You know, for many, many decades, historians, sociologists rather, have said, yes, celebrities, you know, Hollywood, 1910, Charlie Chaplin, all that kind of stuff. So what's been really exciting and challenging and a bit nerve wracking, to be honest, was to actually take something that we all seem to be really modern and hyper technological. Celebrity is all about the image disseminating through mass media, through photography and video and sound and these reproducible stuff. Well, did that happen in the 18th century? Yeah, it did. stuff. Well, did that happen in the 18th century? Yeah, it did. And to do that, you know, you needed a culture, a society that wanted to know about famous people. So what was fun in writing the

book, but also a huge challenge was trying to define what celebrity is, because actually, no one's been able to do it so far, not properly, not in a way that everyone else says, yeah, that's it. There are lots of different definitions of celebrity that are useful working definitions but nobody agrees so i spent 18 months on that loan just trying to work out what even is it and then once you know what it is then you can go looking for it okay then buddy come on my next question what the hell is it i dropped myself in that one didn't know i really so for me celebrity is something that you need to tick five boxes so you need to be famous to strangers so you need to be recognizable to strangers that process needs to come about through the involvement of the mass media there has to be

something uniquely identifiable about the celebrity so you've got to have something charismatic or specific to you that people can go oh that person then the last two points are perhaps the most important point four is that there is a fascination in the personal life so a celebrity is someone who's, perhaps their professional interests are important too. So you could be a notable athlete or journalist or lawyer and whatever, but you might not be a celebrity because you might be on the TV, but we don't care about your personal life.

So I'd argue David Attenborough is not a celebrity, which is quite a bold argument, but I don't think he is. I think he's renowned. And the fifth point is perhaps most crucial of all. Celebrity culture is an economic industry. It is an attention economy, and it's about paying for access to these famous people's lives. Celebrity exists so that other people can make money from the famous people. So it's not just enough that a celebrity can earn money by selling ticket sales or, you know, selling their albums or whatever it is they do. Celebrity culture is when other people can

ride on the back of the coattails, can get onto someone else's celebrity brand and make money from it as a sort of parasitic exploitation, if you will. So those five points, if you don't tick all five boxes, I don't think you're a celebrity, which means that there are other categories that we have to consider. And they're very fluid and difficult. You have renown, which I've mentioned already. I think that's where people know who you are and they respect you for what you do, but they don't know about your personal life. And there are earlier categories such as fame and the Romans and Greeks give us fame. It's a beautiful word, fame, and it comes from the Latin pharma, meaning the verb to speak or gossip about someone. But when we read Virgil, the ancient Roman poet, his version of fame is terrifying. It's a monster. Pharma is a goddess, but she's a sort of half bird, half human

goddess. She's huge, she's sort of like a godzilla she stalks the land she's got wings her body is covered in eyes and tongues and mouths and ears and she grows in size the more people talk about someone so she's this sort of beast that stomps across rome or wherever hunting people down and the more people gossip the bigger gets. And Virgil talks about her as this terrifying predator, almost like a beast that will find you. So for him, fame was intrusive and quite alarming, a bit scary. But the Greeks also had fame, who is much more of a classical goddess, beautiful, you know, she had a trumpet. And for them, that's more of an idea of glory, about renown, about reputation. So you have Achilles has fame, you know, he has glory,

has kleos is the Greek word. So the ancients, funny enough, had two very confused ideas of what fame could be. On the one hand, it was for glorious warriors who died in battle, or, you know, great politicians. On the other hand, it could be for anyone who was being gossiped about and it could actually be really quite nasty and intrusive and scary. So these two oppositional ideas don't really gel very well. And the Romans struggled and the Greeks struggled to actually give them words. They ended up just using the word pharma or fame for both negative fame and positive fame for those who are living and those who are dead. So we've inherited that confusion in our language now, which is why we still talk about people being famous and we mean celebrity. But actually, celebrity and fame, I think, are different.

And so the book, I try and make that case. When you talk about that last box they've got to tick, which is around people making money off them, that does imply that a kind of capitalist materialist commercial economy is required there's things you can go and buy bits of stuff with someone's face yeah 100 but you've hit the nail on the head for me celebrity arrives in the 1700s because that's where we see not just the emergence of what jürgen harbemas called the public sphere this idea of a public being aware of itself as a public and wanting to join in and, you know, discuss and gossip about what's going on.

But we also see, of course, the emergence of a shopping culture, of the rising middle classes, of materialism. You get the first daily newspapers in 1702 in Britain, or rather in England, and then obviously Britain in 1707. You get the emergence of a culture of tat and souvenirs and art, people buying engravings, wanting to own the images of famous people. And so you get celebrities posing for paintings done by very famous artists like Joshua Reynolds, but the engravings would then be sold cheaply to the ordinary people in the streets and you could go and own yourself a bit of David Garrick and put him up on your wall so in the 1700s we see this suddenly coming into force

arguably it had been maybe sort of blossoming a little bit earlier maybe in the 1670s 1680s you've got Nell Gwynn people like that who are nearly celebrities but not quite but in the 1700s it's up and running and it's there and the evidence is fantastic and the earliest celebrity that I tracked down who met my criteria funny enough actually was not someone you might expect to be the celeb you know if you think what a celebrity is in our head it's someone glamorous perhaps beautiful perhaps slightly provocative they might be a bit of a radical or dangerous a bit edgy. Well, the first celebrity that I can sort of confidently point at was Dr. Henry Sash Everill, who was a churchman, who was

a cleric. He gave a speech in 1709 at St. Paul's Cathedral, attacking the Church of England for going a bit soft and attacking the government of Queen Anne, which was a Whig government. He was a Tory and he said it was all a bit soft. He gave this speech on the anniversary of Guy Fawkes Day, and he divided the country down the middle. And he became almost a sort of Nigel Farage-type figure. You know, you were either on his side or against him. He was a Conservative. He was a Tory.

People paraded him through the streets. They named their children after him. They put his face on the front of pubs and in their windows. There were riots named after him, the Sacheverell riots, where people lit bonfires and smashed windows in his name. You could buy little Henry Sacheverell statues. You could get engravings of him. He posed for 20 different portraits.

You could buy fans and buttons and badges and all sorts of things. And this is 1709. And this is a conservative theologian. But he was a celebrity. And he also hugely influenced the next election of 1710. And it was a landslide win for the Tories, largely in part because of him, because of his speech, because of his brand. So funny enough, we often talk now about, you know, oh, celebrity is telling us how to vote in elections. And, you know, you get the sort of sniffy responses about, you know, why should I care what some actor thinks about who we should vote for? Well, actually, celebrity is telling us how to vote is there at the very beginning of celebrity in 1709. He's the

first person in my book. So that was a real surprise to me. I did not know that story. I encountered it through the work of another historian called Brian Cowan, and it was really eye opening. It's interesting that celebrity and electoral politics have been linked from the beginning, given, I think, where this conversation is going to end up, buddy, in the present day. So where do you go from there? I mean, does that link with politics remain or does it go to people like Garrick? Is it cultural and social and, you know, areas of literature and drama and stuff that you see the biggest figures emerging? Yeah I mean it's a really good question actually and I think a lot of people at the moment are trying to rack their brains on as to how celebrity and politics intersect because we're seeing it obviously right now with the leaders who are currently running the country certainly in the UK and in the USA

you have politicians who have a certain celebrity and they behave like celebrities. But throughout the 18th, 19th century, I stopped the book in 1950, so I don't go into the 50s and 60s, but obviously, yeah, there had been celebrity politicians, those who were in the political world, but they had a certain kudos and a certain brand image.

And so people like mirabeau in the french revolution and then you have people like cobden in britain later on to a certain extent in the kind of late 18th century those perhaps who are pro-america during the revolutionary war you know who surprisingly you know divided the nation down so georgiana duchess of devonshire was in some ways a celebrity in other ways she was aristocracy, which is not quite the same thing. There is often been a kind of tinge of glamour to politics. I mean, famously that phrase is, what is it, politics is a celebrity for ugly people or something like that. But there's often been actually an intersection between who you vote for and who's on your team politically. Actually,

there's been a kind of charisma there, a leadership there. What Max Weber talked about later on is he talks about this charisma of leadership whereby those with influence can become almost like leaders that people will follow. And so there's something about them that is much more potent and profound. And you get it with people like Garibaldi, you know, the Italian general who, when he came to Britain, there was an enormous queue of people to meet him, you know, parading through the street, women screaming and crying. He was met by hundreds of thousands of people who came out to see this Italian military hero. And Britain had no dog in that fight. You know, there was no reason for the British people to be excited about an Italian general turning up who had been involved in the unification of Italy. You know, it's not

the kind of story that British people needed to get excited about, but they did because he had something. He dressed in a specific way. He wore these very distinctive clothes. He had a kind of glamour to him. And that's a fascinating thing to see that happening in the mid 19th century, to see it even earlier, perhaps. So politics is certainly perhaps more of a complicated area. You know, we can certainly with celebrity, we can be very comfortable with actors and actresses, singers and dancers. And my book is full of those, you know, there are loads and loads of singers and dancers and actors and actresses. But when you get into political leaders, there is a sort of grey area there. But I think we're seeing it more and more.

I thought Nelson, people talk about him as an interesting, that transition from celebrated war hero to someone who's actually a celebrity. Yeah. What's fascinating about Nelson is he went through a couple of transformations actually in his life and then one after his death. So he goes from being a successful naval officer.

Battle of the Nile is a big win for him. That really makes his name. He's then kind of heralded as a sort of great man. But then he embarks on this affair with Emma Hamilton and they become this gossip magazine power couple, you know, despite the fact that he's got a wife at home Francis and despite that she's got a husband William Hamilton they are kind of a couple and everyone knows it and there's all these cartoons published these poems these satirical jokes and

it's sort of allowed very interesting that Nelson is kind of allowed to get away with it because he's this great man this great naval hero who has won this triumphant battle. But what then happens is his death at Trafalgar ends that moment, and Emma Hamilton is immediately ostracised. Overnight, her reputation is in tatters. She's no longer allowed to be in the papers. She's now vilified. She's now attacked. His widow becomes the grieving wife and is given the kind of full

respect of the country. Emma Hamilton is then derided thereafter as well and Nelson is turned into a myth. So all of his affairs are just hushed up. His biographies just don't mention them for 150 odd years. And Emma Hamilton was used as a sort of stick to beat him with, but then also she was just kind of buried. And even the artists who worked with Emma Hamilton was used as a sort of stick to beat him with. But then also she was just kind of buried. And even the artists who worked with Emma Hamilton were attacked by the Victorians for having worked with her. So what's interesting with Nelson is that he was a celebrity in his life. And then in death, he becomes something else. He becomes a mythical saint, almost a sort of military, hagiographical figure that the country needed, I suppose. You know, you put him in Trafalgar Square on top of a plinth and you turn him into something more than a man. And if he's

more than a man, that means he can't have floors, he can't have mistresses. So he suddenly becomes something beyond celebrity. So that process is fascinating. It happens very quickly. Totally. Now talk to me about some of the other celebrities that we have forgotten to remember, but who at the time bestowed the narrow earth like colossi. I mean, you must come across so many extraordinary people writing this book. There's some incredible characters in the book. There are 125 characters in the book, one of whom's not even human. Clara the rhino was a globe trotting. I mean, she toured Europe for 17 years and she was a two ton celebrity. She was an Indian rhino brought to Europe by a Dutch sea captain and she was a big star, literally a big star. Then there are people like Edmund Keane, who I'd never really heard of, but was a Shakespearean

superstar actor. And his story is incredible. He had literally overnight fame. He goes from being a complete alcoholic screw-up to being the most famous person in the kingdom in 1814. grew up to being the most famous person in the kingdom in 1814 and he ends up touring America twice but he's such a problematic toxic guy he's such a douche you know he's a really really awful fella that he ends up alienating everyone the Americans at one point try and kill him 5,000 people storm the theatre to try and murder him he's really really extraordinary but he was incredibly famous incredibly incredibly powerful. One of the great romantic geniuses of that period, friends with Lord Byron. A story that just hasn't really resonated with it, hasn't carried.

And then you get people like Ada Mencken, who was a huge star as an actress in the 19th century. And she was this extraordinary character who kept changing her backstory she had multiple names even now historians don't know what her real name was she was always reinventing herself like madonna does that sometimes but she was a massive star she came to britain she was this iconic actress who had this really great role in a play and which she was strapped to a horse and she did live stunt work on stage with real horses but she was this really provocative poetess and actress who you know her love life was in the papers every other week so you've got characters like that you've got early movie stars like Florence Lawrence her manager did a publicity stunt and faked her death he told

people that she'd been run over by a trolley car so that when she turned up at the premiere of her next film, she was mobbed by fans, so much so, in fact, they nearly killed her, ironically. You have celebrity criminals. My favourite probably is Jack Shepard, who you might know Jack Shepard. Dan, he's in the 1720s and 30s, I think it is. He was a kind of folk hero. He was a burglar. Not a particularly good one, but he was an amazing escapologist. He kept breaking out of prison and he did it four times and he ended up as a kind of

folk hero to the public. The people, they loved him. He was a working class hero. The aristocracy came to visit him. Daniel Defoe wrote a fake memoir for him. And when he went to the gallows, there were 250,000 people there to watch him die. And the irony is that he had planned to escape at the gallows. His friends were going to cut him down and resuscitate him. But there were so many fans there to see him, they couldn't get in. So ironically, he was killed by his own fame. And, you know, this is 300 years ago.

So there's a really broad kind of canvas there, 125 different people. We've got celebrities who were not necessarily white. There's Mai from Polynesia who came across and visited and was painted by Joshua Reynolds. There's Sarah Bartman, who is known as the hot and tart Venus. She was from South Africa and brought to Britain. So it's a really broad spectrum. I'm trying to look at all types of celebrity. Land a Viking longship on island shores. I'm trying to look at all types of celebrity. inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed

not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. As you're telling me this, I'm thinking that I haven't really heard of many of these people. Is that because celebrities don't matter and they don't leave an enduring legacy? don't matter. And they don't leave an enduring legacy. Unlike scientists and Charles Dickens. And is there something in your definition of celebrity that is inherently of the moment? And actually, once they're gone, once they're dead, once the wheel moves, they're kind of irrelevant. This is a great question. And it's a really, really interesting conversation, actually,

because you've mentioned Charles Dickens. He was a huge celebrity, massive. He earned something like 30 million pounds in modern money when he toured America. And he had huge influence. But people also were fascinated by him. He had stalkers. He had people who wrote to him. He was a performer.

He performed the role of Charles Dickens. And people were really, really obsessed with him. They queued overnight to see him in America. You know, people camped out in the same way that they queue overnight for getting to the J.K. Rowling screening or whatever, you know, to hear her talk about a new book. What's interesting about celebrity culture is on the one hand, it's a constantly, you're right about the novelty thing. You know, I like to describe it as a sort of endless firework display. There are constantly new fireworks going up and exploding and we go, ooh, ah, but there are always, always new people.

And a lot of the people go, they burst, they're bright and colourful, and then they fall. Some celebrities can go long. Some celebrities have long, enduring careers and continue to be famous after their death. So Lord Byron is still very well known now, but there are people who burn bright and then are immediately forgotten. There are people who burn bright for just two years.

You know, in 1804, Master William Betty was a superstar child actor. People were obsessed with him. This was the eve of Napoleon's threat to invade Britain. So people were kind of very, very tense, very worried. They were nervous about Napoleon and they sort of put all their hopes on this little 12 year old boy who is a great actor and he became this lightning rod and people were obsessed with him and he earned a huge amount of money parliament closed down early to go and watch him act people smashed in the theatre doors to see him they pulled guns out you know pistols were drawn, sword fights happened, people were killed in the crush to see this 12-year-old boy. Two years later, it's over, it's done. He's not needed anymore and he's 14 and his voice is breaking and it, you know, so you've got your kind of Macaulay Culkins of the early 1800s. There are people in the past who burned

bright and then were over, they were useless and they sometimes try to redefine themselves, themselves you know they might have got famous one way and then they try to sustain that career by doing something different and occasionally they were allowed to but often so many of them a lot of the beautiful women who got famous for being beautiful and sexy and perhaps provocative try to go legit they try to write poetry and novels but they were never allowed to they were never allowed to go legit what had made them famous was their beauty their bodies their sex lives and once they became 35 40 years old people weren't interested anymore so some people in the past were able to continue it keep it going keep it ticking over and then got a kind of posthumous glory that we still

talk about now and then there were others who were, you know, flashing the pans. One celebrity who has transitioned from TV to the White House is Donald Trump. I mean, you talk about him a lot on social media as an example of some of the things you write about. Why is he such a fascinating figure for your thesis? Well, sir, he's so interesting because there had previously been charismatic presidents, of course, Ronald Reagan had been an actor. So he knew how to give speeches, he knew how to deliver, he knew how to interact with the public, you know, he had a very warm style. Obama, a great orator, again, he had a certain element of cool. Bill Clinton had charisma, you know, there was a

certain sort of people when they meet Bill Clinton say that it feels like there's no one else in the room. He has this specific technique of gazing into people's eyes and leaning in. And it makes them feel like they are not surrounded by other people. They're in a line waiting to shake hands. So there have been charismatic presidents. But Donald Trump is not like that. Donald Trump is a celebrity president. He was covered as a celebrity by the media. He ran as a celebrity. His entire modus operandi is celebrity culture. He's only interested in, there's a famous quote from Andy Warhol saying, don't care about what they say about you, measure it in column inches. Donald Trump only cares if he's in the papers. He's only interested

if he's making headlines. Just two days ago, he was banging on about the fact that he's number one on Facebook. You know, the world has stopped. Coronavirus has decimated the economy. Everyone is terrified. And all he cares about is that his ratings are good. This is someone who's obsessed with the metrics of celebrity, the glamour, the image, the beauty of it, the ratings of it. You know, he wants to be number one in celebrity. And for him, being wants to be number one in celebrity.

And for him, being president was being number one. You know, so regardless of how you see his politics, and I am obviously not a fan, but what's fascinating about him is that he doesn't play the game like anyone else. He's really, really good at this game. That's why they can't get rid of him. That's why they couldn't impeach him. That's why he got elected in the first place.

He's really good at it. And he also has a very charismatic style that works for him. I don't enjoy his speeches, but many people kind of get it. They find him charismatic. They think he's funny. He has a performative style that is incredibly iconic and distinctive. He is a kind of construct. He's put himself together this way

and he ran as a celebrity. And it meant that whereas other politicians get caught in scandals and they have to apologise, backtrack and probably resign or pull out or at least, you know, go quiet for a few weeks, he doesn't have to because he's a celebrity and celebrity culture is about drama. And he is drama. Every time he opens his mouth, he is ratings gold. He got $5 billion worth of free coverage on American media when he ran in 2016. Because every time he opened his mouth, the networks got a scoop. They got a fantastic headline. And it wasn't a boring headline.

It was a, I'm going to nuke North Korea or Mexicans are rapist or whatever. Some deeply problematic, offensive thing he'd say. But it was a story. And celebrity ultimately is a human soap opera. Celebrity culture is about endless stories. And Donald Trump gives you that every single day. And although it's very distressing when you're sitting there and you're watching him saying these things. It's successful for him. It's working for him. He cheated the system. He gamed it. He ran as a celebrity. He's covered a celebrity. And now he is a celebrity president. So the question now for

the Democrats is how do you combat that? And the question for us as historians is, well, that can continue. Are we going to see a long line of celebrity presidents and celebrity politicians where that charisma inoculates them against the stuff that normally would knock out a political career? But what's the flip side? Why have we got a celebrity, journalist, television presenter, columnist in Boris Johnson's prime minister in the UK, celebrity in charge of the US? It may be happening elsewhere. The only one I can think of, particularly of the Ukraine, where it's a of the US. It may be happening elsewhere. The only one I can think of, particularly of the Ukraine, where it's a comedian who's the president.

What has also had to happen? Has celebrity culture become so powerful that it just ate political culture? Because there have been examples of celebrities who tried to jump into politics, as you know better than anybody. Why are they able to do that now? What's the other thing that's changed? I think a lot has happened.

And I think that the truth is that there are no simple answers for this stuff. If we look at the 1920s and 30s this is when sociologists first started to notice that celebrities were being written about more than business people, titans of industry. Previously magazines had written about great industrialists who had you know railroad tycoons and engineers and so forth. And in the 1920s and 30s, sociologists first started going, hang on a minute, there's more column inches going to actresses and actors and singers

than there is to these people we think of as being important. So that is 100 years ago. You roll forward, obviously, into the 60s and 70s, you get in the 1960s, Daniel J. Boston, who was an American critic, sort of lamented the rise of celebrity culture, but also this sort of culture of kind of fake pseudo culture, you know, where things were just spectacles. They were just events, but they weren't real. And he was one of the people who coined the phrase famous for being famous. You know, he didn't quite use that phrase, but the idea of it. So in the 60s, people are starting to say, yeah, this is already happening. We're already seeing the kind of glamour and glitz and fakery of celebrity starting to dominate the things that matter, which are how the public engages with news, how the public thinks about ideas.

You know, I'm not that cynical. I think celebrity culture can be a force for great good. It can also be detrimental, a much more broad and complex thing. But celebrity often allows us to discuss ethical questions. It allows us to talk about, to our friends, to our taxi drivers and hairdressers, to our family. We can talk about the kind of questions in society that are fascinating to us and important. And we use celebrities as case studies. So we talk about drink driving and we talk about drug use and is it acceptable for women to wear provocative clothing on children's television at 4pm or whatever. You know, these questions that come up in the Daily Mail all the time. We talk about, is it okay to smack your children? Is it OK to a 14-year-old to have a glass of wine?

All of these conversations happen through celebrities. They are the prisms through which we engage in these ethical chats. And there are several theories. Emil Durkheim talked about this. The idea that actually celebrities in some ways allow us to... Land a Viking longship on island shores. Allow us to... Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits.

There are new episodes every week. Kind of bond as a society and criminals are the same. Sometimes you need criminals in order to find where the lines are, where the boundaries are. And what celebrities do, which is fascinating, is they move the boundaries. They either cross the line and we go is fascinating, is they move the boundaries. They either cross the line and we go, no, you've crossed the line, we're going to punish you, we're going to cancel you, which happened to Oscar Wilde. You know, he was funny, he was sexy, he was clever, he was talented, people liked him, but then of course his sexuality was revealed and he was ostracised, he was exiled,

he died in poverty. But then you get some celebrities like Mae West in the 1930s, who was provocative and sexy and naughty and rude and should have been cancelled. But there was something about her that was funny and charming and safe. And she was allowed to become a movie star. And so she moved the line. She literally went, no, the line's over here now. And so society moved on. It changed.

It evolved. It progressed. Thanks to a celebrity. it progressed thanks to a celebrity. So celebrity culture engaging into the political world, on the one hand, has been damaging when you look at, I think, what Trump has done for international diplomacy. And I'm no great fan of Boris Johnson either. But I think what's interesting is that you could also see celebrity culture used in the opposite way to advance progressive causes, to advance a much more caring, eco-friendly, green, kind society. It depends on who the celebrity is and the techniques they use. We may well see in 10 years time, Dwayne Johnson,

The Rock, running for office, winning a landslide and bringing in some pretty decent, tolerant policies that everyone goes, yeah, fair enough. Who knows? I mean, the future is so unknown now, given where we are right now. I think as a historian looking back, I can kind of see where we're heading. But I'm also fascinated about what comes next, because Trump and Boris Johnson, and as you say, in the Ukraine, they've got a comedian who played a president on TV now being actual president where do you go after that do you flip back to the usual do you sort of revert back to the norm or do you build on it and do you carry on with that long train of going okay everyone who's in office now needs to have charisma charm

they need to be funny they need to be able to deflect political scandals. We need movie stars. I don't know. It's a weird question, but I think it's a question we need to start asking. Well, thank you for your attempt to answer. It's pretty good. Now you are doing a new podcast, not satisfied with one smash hit. You've got another one coming. Tell us about this Corona podcast. A lockdown podcast. Yeah. Yeah. So normally I do You're Dead to Me on BBC Sound, which is a history show where I get a comedian and an academic historian in the room and we have a really good fun chat. But obviously we've had to postpone that because of health and safety measures. So what we're doing instead is it's a show called Homeschool History.

They're going to be a series of 15 minute short narrative lectures by me, each on a different subject. They're for kids. They're going out on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. They're going to be funny and lively. They've got silly sound effects to sort of keep the kids amused. But every episode we are co-writing with an expert historian. So you're making sure that you're getting the good quality stuff in there. But it's my voice, it's my tone. It's a bit of fun, a little bit like Horrible Histories, but a bit different because essentially it's a history lesson. You it's a long narrative explanation so we did a pilot on the restoration and we've

just done one yesterday on the space race so it's you know hopefully a way of helping children engage with history enjoy history have a laugh it's a way of helping families at home who are having a tough time the bbc this have just announced a huge raft of exciting new projects to help with homeschooling, you know, GCSE level, Key Stage 1, 2, 3, lots and lots of documentaries coming out of the archives, loads of radio, loads of stuff. So if you've got kids at home, check out Homeschool History, but also go and look at all the other fantastic resources

that the BBC is making available. That is the wonderful resources that the BBC is making available. That is the wonderful thing about the BBC. When it needs to, it can just suddenly scale up and do this fantastic stuff. So I'm very proud to be taking part in that. And it's been fun doing it. You know, it's strange making a radio show from home. You know, that's not how we normally work. But I guess you've been doing this for a while, Dan. You are the home podcast king. So it's really fun to try and get around the technological challenges. That's right, buddy.

I'm usually by the pool, gin and tonic in hand. I never go anywhere. Good to talk to you, Greg. The book is called? Dead Famous, An Unexpected History of Celebrity. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Good luck with it, dude. Just before you go, a bit of a favour to ask.

I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber. I hope I haven't been here. I can't remember what the link says. But if you just do a bit of a favour to glowing review i'd really appreciate that it's tough weather that law of the jungle out there and i need all the fire support i can get so that will boost it up the charts it's so tiresome but if you could do it i'd be very very grateful. Thank you.