Oh What A Time... - #146 Jesters (Part 1)

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

This week we’re going back in time to look at that most curious of careers: jesters! We’ve got the earliest professional farters, we’ve got Harlequins and we’ll see what jesters were up to in Ancient Rome.Plus we have a quick bit on the history of the mattress. And if you’ve got anything else to contribute, you know what to do: [e-mail] in huge news, Oh What A Time is now on Patreon! From content you’ve never heard before to the incredible Oh What A Time chat group, there’s so much more OWAT to be enjoyed!On our Patreon you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

O-Water Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else, ad-free, plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the O-Watertime group chat. Plus, if you become an O-Water-Time all-timer, myself, Tom and Ellis, will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up.

For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O-Water Time. Hello and welcome to all what a time, the history podcast that asked the question, how unearthed people sleep before mattresses? Have you ever tried to sleep on something that isn't a mattress or an airbed? Absolutely impossible. Young children can do it. Yes. It's a dumb question.

When was the mattress invented? I don't think that's a dumb question. I think it's an interesting question. Is it? I think that's an interesting question. Not sure. Because I slept in a hotel last night and I was ever with hotels and I never do anything about it, i.e. I don't take my own pillows anywhere.

The pillows are too big. Okay. Too fluffy. Yeah, that's a pet hate by the way when you go to a hotel and the pillows are massive. I don't understand like a hay bale. Who means that? Whose neck is at that angle? Hay bale thickness pillows.

Who wants that? For a giraffe? Who wants that? There's certain things in life where you get a worse product the more. you pay. I'd put hamburgers in this category, but also I'd put, when you go to a nice hotel, they've got this idea in the head that you're going to want a massive pillow.

But if you go to a travel lodge, they'll give you a nice, normal size pillow. You go somewhere nice. But we see more pillow makes better value. That's the idea. Yes. You don't need a massive pillow. It's justifying the expenditure. I completely agree. Those big pillows are not

designed for the human neck. No, no, no, no. In any way. Not designed for the human experience. I had to put another thing in there in terms of the more you pay the worst the quality or the worst the experiences, I would put chocolate in there. Post chocolate.

Conflict. I can't functioning. Tea bags, I'd also say. Yeah, yeah. It's strange, isn't it? Blair and I stayed in Paris once in a lovely hotel as a real romantic trip and the pillows were so thick I used my own jumper as a pillow and we were paying whatever.

I don't know what we were paying per night for this place but you should not on a romantic trip be rolling up your own sweater to make a makeshift pillow. It's not all right. That's so funny. A jumper, like you've messed up camping. Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's literally it. That's so funny. Because my son's just had a new bed and I was lying down next to him a couple of weeks ago.

He's only added for about two weeks. But his mattress is too soft for my leg game because he's six, he doesn't mind and he would sleep anyway. I've seen him sleep on the floor. I've seen him sleep on a hard kitchen floor. Doesn't care. But once you get to add, Adults, impossible. So, sleeping in a pre-matress age...

Yeah. I mean, I would never be able to sleep on straw. Are you interested in a quick history of the mattress? Absolutely. Always. As long as this is research, and you've quickly looked this up now, as opposed to you've got a hunch. You will have a hunch after sleep on one of those pillows.

Is anyone interested in a blagged history of the mattress? When is the oldest known mattress? When does the oldest known mattress date from? I'm going to bet the Romans. Romans? Well, I have a question about that in terms of what constitutes a mattress. Yeah, exactly. Is it just essentially something to contain some kind of fibres, which might be straw or whatever?

If we're accepting that, then I'm going to go to... I mean, let's go ancient Greece. They often invent stuff early, don't they? Okay. Well, the oldest known mattress was found in South Africa's Sibidoo Cave, and it was made of grasses and reeds, sometimes topped with aromatic leaves to repel insects. That's 77,000 BCE. That's grasses and reeds. I mean, doesn't feel very mattressy reeds. No. You went around someone's house. And this is the bedroom. It's just grasses and

reeds and some aromatic leaves. Doesn't feel matricy? They're scented. They're scented. I would say, is he? We're going to have to get a hotel because I can't sleep on aromatic reeds. I would say I agree with you completely, L. However, I'm one of the anomalies, possibly because I'm so tired with my children sleep so badly, but I can basically sleep on anything. And I think that might be, apart from this is not, this is not to do with pillows, it's due with what's holding up my body. And I think that's partly because when I was young, I was massively into heater fans. Like really, I was obsessed with heater fans.

Yeah, it was the summer of Britpop. It was the summer of heater fans. We were all into them. Tom, you're going to have to explain, what's a heater fan? A heater fan is a thing, it's an electric heater that creates hot air, you know, in a chilly house. You click it around. I've never heard them call a heater fan.

What would you call it? What would you call it? I'd call them a heater. Or a fan heater. Okay, a heater. My dad would not let me have the heater fan because he thought it was too expensive. But when he went to work, I would sneak it out of the cupboard and I would lie on the floor in front of it. And it's still my happiest memories. I love it. So I can still, I'm happiest memories. It does your wife listen to this?

Better than your wedding day? Better than having kids. Better than holding your child for the first time. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. This is better. My fan heater was better than all of this. Do you want more mattress evolution?

Yes. Ancient civilisation 3,000 BCE. The Egyptians, they invented sleeping on raised wooden or stone platforms with woven mats or stuffed cushions. So the bed frame, essentially. The bed frame, yeah. Romans and the Greeks improved this with cloth sacks filled with straw wool or feathers. This is the earliest record. A recognisable stuffed mattress, yeah.

Now here we go. Feathers, yes, reads no. Wealthier Romans in the round this time had goose down. Oh, yeah, bring it on. When did the rotating water bed come in? Who was responsible for that? Well, the bed frame is very important. Do you remember Paul Mark Watson on the island?

He hadn't lifted his bed from the beach floor. And so he just got bitten by hundreds of insects. Really? And then he was covered in bites, which made his time on the island extremely challenging. Because obviously he had all these sores and he was itchy. And he just made that one elementary mistake on night one, had the worst night of his life. And then for two weeks, it's just trying to survive. I remember hearing something about why humans like to sleep on like the first floor of houses.

Like no one really likes to sleep on the ground floor. It's because when we were, as we evolved from monkeys, monkeys would sleep up the trees to stay away from predators and there's something innate within us that means we don't want to be on the forest floor. So we look for height when we go to sleep. You having that? That's interesting.

I like it. I don't hate it. I knew someone in my hometown who had an upside-down house, living room and kitchen upstairs and bedrooms on the ground floor. So I was picturing that in the extreme sense. Chimmy on the floor. The foundation up in the sky Lavalachians wide into the floor.

I will describe that as anti-climactical. But there is one of those in Brighton and I was gigging in Brighton on Sunday night actually and I was reading about Brighton on the train on the way down and on the 101 great facts about Brighton was like, we've gone outside downhouse which is great if you want to put a selfie on Instagram. Elle, do you remember at Cardiff University

I have once slept technically on the floor when I had a futon bed because I had that bedroom which on the top floor in the eaves it was so small there was no space for an actual bed

so it had to be a single futon you were getting ripped off big time man it was awful giving no idea how small this room was Chris the only way of standing up was to open the Velux window

and put your head out above the room you couldn't stand up in there like a crouch at a sort of 75% crouch it was horrendous How much did you pay them up for that? The same as everyone else in my house without the fact that they had bigger rooms.

That was my problem. You should be able to stand if you're paying the same rent as everyone else in the house. One of them had an on-sweet. That was unbelievable. How did you end up with the short straw then? It's an even short straw than you imagine. When we first moved in...

You went shitting out the vellocks window and claiming it was an unsweet. It's got the slope. It takes it away from your room. The roof wasn't finished when I first moved in either. So for my first two weeks, half of the roof above my bed was just black bin bags that the landlord had stretched across and sell a take down to what was there from the roof.

And I paid full price. I'm not paying you a penny less than full price. Do you know what? I know that everyone goes through this to an extent, but I would just, no wonder my parents worried. Because I lived in Chittal. My mother was half broken when she was. saw the flat I lived in in my second year.

Yes. It was a shit soul. Poor thing. And barely legal. I think second year is a particularly bad time at university because halls offers a sort of degree of... Regulation, like governance. Yeah, yeah.

It might be croup, but it's regulated. It can't be that crap. It's regulated by the university to some extent. Houses that students rent just around universities is wild, isn't it? Oh, yeah. It's horrendous what is considered to be accommodation. The house I rented after uni, the landlord decided he wanted to come around for an inspection

every two weeks and he would come round and for some reason I decided to get a hamster I don't know why and pets weren't allowed and I remember that first inspection I was like I'm going to stick the hamster

in the cupboard and he walked into my room and at that very moment the hamster decided to jump on the wheel and they could hear in the cupboard like the masts of running round And the room fucking stank of hamsters

And he was like What happened? He was like, what's that? And I was like, don't know. And he was like, all right. Really? I thought after that, I was like, the hamster's got to go. I mean, most student accommodations have mice or vermin of some thought.

I never do they have my wheels to play on? It's just that. That's so funny. I remember a second university, we had ketchup on the ceiling. Someone got drunk and threw pizza and food up and it stuck to the ceiling. And then that just, I just remember. That's my main thing. It's just that stain remaining there throughout.

Yeah. In a way that any other time in your life, you'd think, I should probably get rid of the ketchup on the ceiling, but it was a whole year. It would just catch up on the sofa. You would do something about it. Exactly. And students, in my experience, are a bit like children,

little, very little kids have got a real obsession with fairness. Have you noticed this? Yeah. Especially if they have siblings, I find. It's like, oh, well, yeah, but he had a smarty, so I've got to have a smarty. They can't be like, all right, then my brother had a smarty, good, you know, well done him, he's lucked out.

I'll just get over it. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Everything has to stop. Yeah. And now I've got to have a smarter or it won't be equal. He sat in the front seat yesterday, and so I've got to sit in the front seat, but the journey's got to be the same amount of time. The kind of stuff that you sort of just ignore as you get older and older.

And students are the same as it would be like, oh, well, it was your mate who threw tomato, ketchup at the ceiling, so I'm not cleaning it up. Yeah, but it wasn't me who did it Yeah, but it was your friend Yeah, but it wasn't me who did it And then you'll just clean the fucking ketchup on the ceiling I cleaned all the plates in the sink yesterday So I'm not doing it again for another week

Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, I remember having those conversations Conversations that now were sort of unimaginable It's like six people refusing to claim responsibility for anything basically, isn't it? Yeah, yeah Yeah, well I wiped that yesterday You know those sort of

Premiership teams where nobody wants the ball It's because they're like Man United under Amarine And the players are just rattled And nobody really wants the ball A rattled student household Yeah exactly Right I hope that answers your question L

about mattresses You feel completed I'm just assuming everyone was tired all the time Yeah It's a very good question I've never had problems sleeping And I've got problems sleeping Now for the first time in my life

and everything basically has to be perfect or I wake up and I am living in a 21st century house with a mattress and I don't live in a hotel so the pillows aren't too thick and I'm still struggling That's a really good idea for an episode actually

Sleep, the history of sleep is a really good one In terms of, you know, bedding and two other subjects I can't think of now but it's a good one We'll explore that I'm not sure you could get an episode out of it But I do know that people's sleep patterns have changed a great deal.

It was very common that you'd go to sleep much earlier, wake up in the middle of the night, maybe smoky pipe and do some reading, and then go back to sleep. What people do? Yeah, the old sort of eight hours all the way through is, I think, quite a modern phenomenon. That's amazing. I kind of wish sometimes that I still had a bedtime now that my mum would ring me at like quarter to ten or ten o'clock and go, okay, Tom, it's time to go to sleep. because the amount of time I'm up till quarter to midnight

just watching something I'm just rubbish. Yeah. And then I'm knackered the next morning and my kids have been up twice in the night. I'd love to bring back the BBC ending their coverage for the day with the national anthem. There you go. That's better than my mum calling me.

And the overnight shutdown. Do you remember that? The overnight shutdown. It was switched to teletext until like 6 a.m. Also, I must admit, I know that there's an enormous amount of scientific evidence. to argue against what I'm about to say but I do wish I could have a relaxing draw of a pipe

to sound absolutely lovely I know there are enormous health implications to smoke in a pipe but can I add to that a glass of brandy every evening yes yeah and the oldest person in the world whoever that is always swears by it but the do-gooders from the NHS

yeah my aunt Gladys My Aunt Gladys used to have an Irish whiskey every evening. I'd have to make it sometimes. Hot toddy. What is that? Hot water whiskey. Yeah, it's like a cold remedy, a hot toddy. Some sort of stir it.

She'd have that every evening. She lived to like 105 or something. Insane. Yeah, we're not drinking enough brandy as a threesome. As a trio. A couple of Christmases ago, full of Christmas spirit. I saw a bottle of brandy behind the counter in my local budgins. I thought, fuck it, it's Christmas Eve.

Brandy's a Christmas drink. I went home, had a single glass of it. It was fucking disgusting, and I haven't touched it since. Brandy is grim. But it's a nice idea. It's a nice idea, yeah. I think sleep's a good future episode. I think today's episode is a great episode.

Elle, do you want to tell the lovely listeners what we're talking about today? Yes, it's particularly relevant for the three of us. We're talking about clowns and jesters. Yeah, absolutely. Because Tom writes for gestures, I have in my time being a jester. and Chris is jester adjacent. He's West Ham's chief jester. You have to watch bloody 11 jesters every other Saturday, don't I?

Thank you for disregarding my 10 years of stand-up there, L. That's a... Yeah, I saw you. I was there. So that is what we're discussing today. I, later in the show, I'm going to be telling you about how jester's moved from the Royal Court and into the world of theatre.

It's quite an interesting transition and actually shaped stand-up. and the world of comedy we have today. What are you talking about, Elle? I'm going to be talking about medieval gestures and how they were able to tell difficult home truths to important people. And in this show, I'll be telling you all about gestures in antiquity. But do you know what's particularly exciting about this show?

It represents one of the top benefits of becoming an oh, what a time. All-timer, oh, what a time, all-timer. Once a month, we are going to be doing an episode suggested by, oh what a time all timers with the people in the top bracket of subscribers on our Patreon, which is how you now support the show. And indeed we got an email from a man called Leo that says

Hi there, I'm a big fan of the show, me and my friends always joke about how awful the past would be to live in, especially medieval England. So you'll hear about that later. But a topic that always arises in these conversations is how funny were caught jesters, what would peasants living in single room huts with mud floors and far in the middle think when they see someone dressed in bright

colours and a big silly hat on with bells? I for one would piss myself with laughter. What do you think? Much love to the pod. So, in celebration of this suggestion for an episode, we are doing Jester today. And that is one of the great benefits of becoming a Patreon

follower. You can suggest shows and we will do them. Exciting. Yes. Thank you very much, Leo. This was a really, really great suggestion. But before we get into that, shall we do a spot of correspondence? Oh yes, please. So, you sent us

some correspondence, have you? Well, let's try to look at you then. Our email today is from someone called Alex, who has sent us an email with the title, Yorkshire Puddings. It's good with such a serious history podcast, isn't it, that we get titles like that. Hi, I've never needed to write in before,

but catching up on old episodes, I never needed to. That's such a funny choice of words It's become pressing I must This is the first email he's ever sent to anyone ever I've never needed to write in before But catching up on old episodes

I'm deeply outraged At Chris and Tom's disbelief At Ellis's Yorkshire pudding consumption As a 29-year-old man from the North West I still have a Sunday roast every week As is a love that Hate that As is a tradition

And what makes us fundamentally British alongside the fact it's the greatest meal ever created. We'll get to this by heavily disagree. Ellis was spot on, that feels unlikely, with his refrigerator choice, and Chris and Tom should be ashamed to question him. If you're not taking a full Sunday roast ingredients back in your one-day time machine,

you may as well be asking to go back to the great famine of 1315. Keep it light, Alex. Thank you, Alex. So Alex is outraged at Chris and I suggestion that Ellis having a Yorkshire pudding every week is mad and that Sunday roasts are terrible, which I do still stand by.

despite that. I think Ellis you should have the right to reply first. We had one on Sunday. Did you? We had one on Sunday. Yes. I had a gig in Brighton and I had to be there by around 4pm for the sound check. And so I had to leave my house at 20 to 3 and Izzy made like an emergency quick Sunday dinner because it just has to happen. What's in that? What's that microwave? No, no, no, but it was she'd had trouble sleeping I think so I'd given her a lie-in. Should we quickly try and create a, literally an emergency one?

I'm imagining microwave hash browns for rose potatoes. Chicken from a packet. Yeah, exactly. One of those rustlers chicken burgers instead of it. So then when I walk her up, it was like, shit, I better make the emergencies Sunday dinner right now, otherwise you wouldn't have one before you go for your gig. Yes, and they were yorkshas.

My kids are yorkshire pudding obsessing. Kids love yorkshire puddings. They love it and marmite. Not together, obviously. they're like the two kid meals, they think, really? Well, Elle, you will know that I also had a roast on Sunday. Know why you know that? No.

Because I was at my mother-in-law's house, a house that was so cold that I had to hair dryer and I snuck off. I pretended I needed the toilet, but actually I went upstairs and I pointed a hairdryer at my own legs for five minutes. I was so cold. Went downstairs and my son was saying his feet were freezing. So I took his socks. You know about this hell, don't you?

I just want to get your feedback. And I popped his socks in the oven with the sun. Sunday roast to warm them up for about three months. There was chicken in there as well. I didn't put it in with the chicken tray. I put them on the level below. But that's still so weird. I think you, if this was on Dragon's Den, Tom, and you came to me with Sunday roast smelling warm socks. I would purchase. Chicken socks. Can you get chicken or beef or Yorkshire pudding? I'd have that. I'm presuming your mother-in-law didn't have the heating on.

No heating on. No, no. It was so cold. Is it a very cold house? It's a very cold house in the countryside, yeah. Right. Absolutely. But my son was happy. His socks smelt faintly of chicken and his feet were warm. It was an absolute win.

But the bigger point is, I still think Sunday roast are overrated. Skull, do you still back me up on that? No, I had a Sunday roast, and it reminded me that I absolutely love them. Oh, look at you. Yeah, I've changed my tune. Now you've seen that our listeners don't back us. You've completely changed the scene. What a roast dinner does to the smell of a house

Like when you do it It's just so warming and inviting And it's delicious I'd agree with that Nothing rounds a home off And rounds a weekend off quite like a Sunday roast But then what it does to the body Where it makes you feel like you're three and a half tonnes

And you can't move for a fortnight I would say that's overriding I felt very low on my feet Brighton was the best gig of the tour My opinion Powered by Sunday Ross Did you make it to the power check? I did, yeah, yeah.

How many roast potatoes do you have? One, two, one, two, one, two. That's a little sound check, not joke. Okay. I think when El says nice, he doesn't really mean it. Yeah, he goes. No, I sort of do what it is. This isn't a criticism.

It feels like it might be. No, you're such a joke machine. Some of the jokes you come up with absolutely work as jokes. I'm just not in the mood. And you're like, there's no person on earth. Could dispute that that's a joke. Yeah. It works perfectly.

Great punchline, one, two, one, two. But Josh Whittigam describes it in a writer's room. You've got to keep the ball in the air. That's what he says. So I think is that. It's me sat, panic-stricken in writers' room with people who I've been never met before, and suddenly am writing for it, and I'm thinking, oh, God, I've got to produce something.

But just to interpret that analogy, is he implying that you're trapping the ball under foot when you do something like that? He's saying I'm very good at keeping it in the air. I'm not necessarily smacking into the top corner, but it's up. No, what he's doing, he's launching it into the box. Exactly. He's put it into the mixer. He's panicked in the last minute.

So thank you so much for the suggestion in this episode. Thank you so much for that wonderful email, Alex. Although I still disagree with your point of view on Sunday Roast. If you want to get in contact with the show, there are many wonderful ways to do it. Here's out. All right, you horrible love. here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at oh what a time.com

and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at oh what a time pod. Now clear off. He's certainly young to be having a Sunday dinner every Sunday at 29. I did when I lived my mum and dad up to the age of 18. Yeah. I had a few years off. my lost weekend. Yeah.

My head in a stick years. You should only be having a roast between the ages of 18 and 30 if you're popping back to your parents for the weekend. Or if you're hung over in a pub. Yeah, acceptable. Except. Everything else, completely unacceptable.

Although if I turn out a pub on a Sunday and they only have the roasts on the menu, I am gutted. I'm looking for a burger or something else, a beef shin ragu, just something which is not. burger. They are popular, Al. I'm not the one person. You're like Donald Trump's the only thing you'll eat. But I'd argue that they're the world's most popular food, Al.

He sits in bed, eating McDonald's watching the news on three different tellies. It's the Tom Crane lifestyle. I like a quality burger. If you've read the Michael Wolf books, Donald Trump lives like Tom Crane on the other way around. I can't look at who's inspiring who. Tom, do you watch a lot of Fox News in your pants? I do eat burgers in my pants, that is true. I often like to strip down.

It's nice to be relaxed, isn't it? Okay, thank you to everyone who has signed up and become a patron. And don't forget, the top tier of patron is becoming an oh, what a time, all-timer. Where one of the many benefits is that we will read out your name and speculate where in history you may have been. And let's begin this week with Emily Seymour. Okay. Hard to look beyond being one of Henry the 8th's wives. Yes.

Or the sister-in-law? Yeah, that's a good shout. Or... Aren't he? A very early feminist poet whose work was cruelly ignored during her lifetime. Love it. But now has come back into vogue.

Very good. And she's had a real renaissance. The last sort of 30 years or so academics have found her poetry and are like, why was this woman not fated in her during her lifetime? Yeah. And yeah, she had a difficult life, sorry, Emily. She's left about 35 poems that have seen as real classics. Died from consumption at 28.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. She's gone. But what a legacy. Emily's gone. Absolutely. Or won a legacy. Do you want a couple more? Yeah.

Yes, please. Dominic Bailey? Dominic Bailey. I think he is one of the early 20th century Olympians who did, who sort of maybe won a gold medal for England in the 100 meter. Was right out there with Roger Bannister. That's, yeah, that's what I'm thinking, yeah. Competed fiercely with him. Yeah, one of those people who would have, who would have, who would have,

broken the 10-second barrier for the 100-meter dash, or the 100-yard dash, if only he hadn't been running on cinders. Yeah, he's that guy. Yeah. Give us one more. And last one this week, how about Lucas Netto? Can I, I've actually got an idea for this one. This is a Venetian trader, isn't it?

Possibly met Marco Polo. Yes. It's 1600s knocking around trading in the Mediterranean. True. Or early West Ham Siams for start. Premier League and broke his leg horribly. That's so weird. I was about to say Harry Rednapp signing that didn't work out. That is so mad. That is literally what I was thinking.

And 30 grand a week for four years made one substitute appearance. I'm imagining he played for Portugal and scored on his debut or maybe scored two against Sweden or something and Rednapp immediately signed him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he played once clearly off the piece. Much heavy and he should be after preseason. And yet he stayed in. East London. He loves the area. Well, if you want to support the show and

have your name read out, you can become an all-timer or you can support the show in a range of ways over at Patreon and get bonus content and here's how. Hello again, you horrible lot. Enjoying the show? Well, why not show the love by becoming a Patreon

supporter today? For a mere handful of farthings you can get ad-free shows, two bonus subscriber episode each month, access to all the past bonus eps, first dibs on live tickets, and even help decide what subjects the boys cover next. Your support makes everything possible, so sign up today at patreon.com slash oh what's a time or oh what's a time.com. What are you waiting for? Stop dawdling

Okay, on this week's episode of Oh, what a time I will be discussing medieval jesters And how they were used to tell difficult home truths And pass on the news I am talking about how jester's moved from the royal court And onto the stage So let's go back in time now To the dawn of the jester

We're going back to antiquity Now when you think of the jester You think of the classic courtfall In the colourful outfit, the harlequin you know the jingling hat doing a cartwheel maybe I think of like medieval and maybe Renaissance but

that role of professional funny man the Joker with permission to mock power it goes back way beyond medieval times and the Renaissance it goes deep into the ancient world not a cool outfit that is it I mean Elle would you've been drawn to stand up if the leggings

and the jingle hat were still in I mean it's that Harlequin outfit you know what When you put a suit on to go to a wedding or maybe a funeral, you feel a certain way, or when you put on a football shirt to go and play five a side, you think, this is what I need to do. Can you imagine putting on a harlequin's outfit and thinking, telling your wife or whoever it is? Yeah, just off to work, I'll be home at about half-past five, I think, yeah, yeah, I'm harlequinning until about five and I'll be straight home.

Do you think you wear it on the tube on the way to work? Surely you're getting changed when you get to work. Do you know what? I'm harlequining until about 20 past 5, so I can do the parents evening, actually. But I'll take different clothes so I can get changed. You don't need to text here that you're on the way back, I think, because you can hear you coming down the road, jingling your way down the street. I would say, if that was still the outfit for stand-up,

there would be less of a propensity for people to do moving Edinburgh shows about loss. Yes, yes. Story shows about grandparents who died or some of that. I think you'd be sticking with the gags and the physical. You also, fewer Joel Domit slash Russell Howard style ripped comics as well, because it wouldn't matter, would it, in the Harlequin outfit? Thank God that's gone. Yeah.

Isn't it funny, it's old, isn't it? The funny outfits from history, like the clown outfit, the Harlequin, are not that funny. They're actually, I'd say, even a little bit menacing. Yes, but is that with a contemporary gaze? Maybe they were hilarious at the time. Well, let's get into it. We're going to go back to antiquity now and learn about just. There's a lot of this which is just nonsensical to the, and strange to the modern ear.

So let's begin with ancient Egypt. So the earliest known record of a court jester comes from ancient Egypt during the reign of Pharaoh Neferkeri. It's around 2,200 BCE. An official wrote to the pharaoh saying he'd found a dancer who was possibly a little person from southern Egypt, where people were often shorter than those in the north. And this guy was simply such a good entertainer. He simply had to be brought to court. It reminds me, what's that Alan Partridge from the, you know,

Alan Partridge sees John Thompson. He sees his act. Oh, yeah. He sees him on a cruise. He sees him as a ventriloquist, I think. Yeah, yeah. He's got a puppet. He's got a puppet.

Chicky monkey. You simply have to put this guy on telly. This is what it reminds me of. Someone saw this little person in southern Egypt. It was like, this guy is hilarious. The Pharaoh, this is all. recorded on papyrus so we know this conversation happened the pharaoh nephakeri says drop everything bring him to me I want to be entertained wow and the language is quite formal and ancient when the little person is summoned to the court to be the jester he's requested his presence is requested to gladden the heart of the king of the upper and lower Egypt wow

but the message is I want someone funny and weird at my party that's a booking isn't it being summoned by a king to perform at his party. The pressure must have been intolerable. You think the royal variety is tricky, where it's all set up, and everyone's pointing the right direction in a theatre, coming out at a party. Also, I'm assuming, you know, he wasn't going to do work in progress gigs, was he? He wasn't going to book a small run at a fringe theatre. With lower-level royals.

Yeah. With cheap tickets. Yeah. This actually reminds me, one of my friends, his dad was in a comedy band. like musical band and they won one of the first Edinburgh Fringe awards like way back in the day and they were booked for a gig in Windsor and weren't told what it was and they walked in the room and it was the Queen. Oh my God. Yes. And how did it go? Yeah, great. Apparently she was which they had a comedy song about horses that the Queen loved. Yeah. It was like booking the killers

for my birthday and then playing Mr. Brightside. It's going to go down well. That's amazing. Yeah. But of course it goes on, doesn't it? Yeah. So that kind of, you must go on, eh? Well, I've never heard of someone being booked by the queen. Well, she didn't ring up herself. Okay. But I've never heard of anyone turning up and the queen being there as a surprise.

That's beyond anything I've heard of. That's remarkable. Yeah. I mean, this is a slight diversion from what we're talking about. But comedians prior to the 90s really, or certainly the 2000s, not doing work in progress gigs and just doing huge shows with it all being new material having not rehearsed it

I did a documentary about the history of Welsh comedy and that was you know Max Boyce did he was on ITV on New Year's Eve, 1979 going into 1980 he was seeing in the new decade on ITV and it was all new material

really and he hadn't done any work in progress gigs and I interviewed John Sparks who is daddy pig in um no he's not daddy pig but he's in pepper pig I can't remember which role he plays but he was a big on alternative comedy TV shows in the 80s and he was book

because he had a really good 20 minutes so he did the first five minutes of it the first week then the second five minutes of it the second week but after four weeks he'd run out so then he was just writing it on the flight on the way up the stress is is immense

yeah absolutely that's amazing and this poor sod He's got to entertain the bloody royals. Yeah. And he's just a small, weird guy. So what do you do with that? Like, what do you emphasise? Your height?

How weird you are? I'd lean into that, I think. Yeah. That feels like the answer. Bloody hell. My first ever paid writing gig was for Max Boyce, by the way. There you go. Was it?

Was it? Yeah, he was doing a comedy show about rugby on BBC Wales. It was the first ever time I was paid to write jokes. Did you meet him? I didn't. I wrote. stuff and submitted it. He read my stuff out and liked it. Oh, amazing. If I told my dad that, you would instantly become his favorite comedian. I sent him my, um, after Max Boyle.

I sent him my roast potato sound check joke. He absolutely loved it. So he lent into that sort of stuff. He saw quality. Let's go back to ancient Mesopotamia. So this is around the same era as the Egyptians. And we find there an early jester figure, which is the Aluzinu. That word itself meant buffoon or joker and the alusinnus were attached to royal courts and elite households and they were part of a wider troop of performers that included musicians acrobats jugglers and you even had sometimes as accounts of tightrope walkers who danced with pigs be up for that what yeah so as part of the show they had tightrope walkers yeah yeah the pigs weren't on the tightrope were they because that's quality entertainment it's ancient

Mesopotamia. So I don't imagine the tightrope is particularly high up. I don't think they've got, they've nailed scaffolding in ancient Massopotamia. They've got trees. That's true actually. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't think the pigs... They have access to things that are high up. That's true. Things that are high is not a modern. It's not simply a thing of 2025. Okay. I'll take that. So the Alu Zinnu actually thought to have essentially invented performing in drag

which is dressing women's clothes. Partly for humans. Partly is a disguise and partly as a social satire. But he gave dressing and drag gave them license to say things that others couldn't, much like the later kind of jesters' privilege. Do you want to hear an ancient Mesopotamian joke? Yes. Go on then. They've scratched onto a clay tablet from around 2000 BCE in ancient Mesopotamia.

And he goes like this. If Ellis gives this more than he does my stuff, I'm going to be absolutely living. Send this into your man if you think it's any good, Tom. Okay. what is your food answer an odd question what is your food

okay what's the context what is your food I've never asked that in my life is a restaurant setting what is happening what is your food that is the setup what is your food

a hot dish you stuff the backside of a donkey with dog shit and fly droppings and then you eat it is that the punchline that's the punchline max boys would have hated that

yeah yeah it was quite a clean comic let's step through that. What is your food? That's the question. What's your food? Yeah, what is your food? A hot dish. You stuff the backside of a donkey with dog shit and fly droppings and then you eat it. Now, there's a lot that needs to be explained here. It's not resonating with me. It's not. It doesn't make any sense and it's quite absurd. Not particularly funny. But this is what's going on underneath. So in Mesopotamia, priests and professional diviners were enormously important. They were the ones who read the messages

from the gods. And they did this by examining animal entrails, interpreting dreams. But they also had strict purity and dietary laws. So they were in there with the animal entrails, but they could only eat certain foods and avoid the others and had to keep them kind of ritually clean. And so the joke essentially is a send-up of all that pomp and ritual. So it's basically like you claim to be to only eat pure sacred food, but you might as well be eating donkey crap because you're going through end shows at the time, you're ridiculous. You people are ridiculous.

Can I defend jesters for a second? Because I was reading my section and I was thinking about this. Comedy's meant to be zeitgeisty and reflect the time, so I think a comedy often dates very badly. I remember watching some

satirical programmes in the 1980s and I was studying the 1980s at university. And so I got it. And I understood why the jokes worked. But if I hadn't been doing that particular module for my degree, it would have just looked nonsensical. And it's the same with, I went through a phase

of watching Ealing comedies from the 40s and 50s. I don't know if you've ever done this, Tom, but they're actually... I haven't watched them now. Obviously, they're very, they're very old-fashioned, but they're beautifully plotted. Okay. But if you watch them with a much older person who can explain to you the references, suddenly it all

starts to make sense. Whereas I think if you don't know them, you just instantly dismiss it and think that it's shit. Yeah. But in the main I would say, because it's meant to reflect at the time, comedy doesn't date particularly well. Absolutely. And so there must have been something

about the way people dressed as harlequins that was funny or they wouldn't have done it. Yeah, I just can't for the life of me work out what it would be. I think there's a lot of that, isn't there? We're going through what was historically funny. It's so far distant that we just simply don't understand it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that's probably the case with that joke then. But yeah, the ancient Mesopotamians were punching up basically, mocking the elite in their solemn rituals and turning them into toilet humour. You're satire? Yeah, satire, yeah.

And the humour is always kind of targeted self-importance. The more serious someone is about special rules, the easier they are to mock. And that has been true from Babylon to Twitter. Let's move on to ancient Rome now. So fast forward, a thousand years. We're now in ancient Rome. We get a new kind of jester.

The balochers. or the scuror which just means buffoon and these were paid performers who worked for the rich either as a one-night act or a resident entertainer in aristocratic households

I don't mind the one-night act I cannot wrap my head around the resident entertainer the bloke who lives in your house who's there to make you laugh all the time yeah yeah I don't understand it like we're seeing you wake up in the morning for breakfast he's there

you go to bed at night is it not annoying it's like Colin from the far show It's like an annoying flatmate that you're paying. And also a horrible job. I would say the counterargument, well not a counterargument, the people who are employing their houses are bigger than our houses. So you wouldn't have to save every day. So you're not as up close and personal as we would be

if there was a jester living in our terraced house. Good observation, actually, yeah. I mean, probably not sharing a toilet with your own paid for jester, are you? Exactly. You're not having your toast at breakfast and he's there opposite you. He's somewhere else in your massive. Jester, could you tell me when you're done in there? It's just, I need to brush my teeth before I go to work.

I think he's summoned, isn't he, for certain occasions? You're always there. So some of these jester's in ancient Rome were good enough to make it into the imperial court itself where they were given yet another nickname, and this is coprié, which means roughly little shits derived from Greek. The Emperor Tiberius kept a gang of jesters around, and he had these jester's, the jester gang, torment his successor Claudius.

It's such an undignified job. It's such an undignified job, but you're in these stupid outfits and your nickname is Little Shit. I know. And you've got a gang of the, imagine employing a gang of jesters just wind up. Why are you doing? Do something else. This isn't dignified. This is a Roman contemporary account of how Tiberius's gang of jester's wound up his successor, Claudius. Claudius would be woken up by Jester's whipping or caning him in sport.

They'd also slip slippers onto his hands while he was snoring so that when he rubbed his face in confusion, he'd scratch himself with the soles of these slippers. There's good stuff. That's the sort of precursor to hand in a bucket of warm water, isn't it? It's all sort of part of the story of where that came from. So was this, who was this person they were doing? Who was Claudius?

Claudius was the successor to Tiberius And he would get wound up by these gangs of jesters employed by Tiberius We even know the names of some Roman jesters He had Gabba who served under Augustus There was Captoinus Which is the jester of Trajan And Vatinius who performed for the notoriously unhinged Nero

Imagine being Nero's court jester That is a tough old kick In ancient times though Jester's word just for making people laugh. They were about mocking power, undermining rituals, and pointing out the ridiculousness in authority. And whether they were in drag, cracking jokes about bald emperors, or feeding donkey butts to priests metaphorically, they were doing what jesters have always done, telling the truth sideways.

The costumes may have changed over the years, but the job is basically still the same, isn't it? From like cartoonists to stand-up comics and late-night hosts, podcast comedians too. They're there to find the uptight person in the room. take the piss, and this is where it all started in antiquity. Fascinating. I mean, that's what we do, isn't it? We poke fun at authority. Yeah. We take a sideways glance at the world, bravely. I am, as a comedian of, this is my 20th year as a comedian, and my, what would that be,

18th year as a professional comedian. I do kind of feel a kinship with jesters. Yeah. It is effectively the same thing. It's just, you know, in a different context. What I'm amazed at is the pressure they were under. Yeah. Because obviously I'm not doing it by royal decree. Like the worst that could happen, I suppose, is that I would be sucked by the BBC.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, I'm not going to get be ended. If you are a great jester and you're in the court of Nero, and people expect you at these gatherings to take the piss out of Nero, if that's all you're doing week after week is taking. the piss out of Nero. At some point, Nero's going to snap. Yeah. This is what I don't understand about the court jester.

Yeah. It's basically having an employee who's just really bad for morale. Yes, and also, coming out of from the jester's point of view, Tom mentioned Joshua to come a few minutes ago because Tom is one of the great writers on the last leg. So when they're on the last leg, they've worked through it with some other very talented people who aren't on screen. And I just think, Jester's didn't have writers' rooms, did they? With runners bringing them cans of diet coke every couple of hours.

We're going to pray. And the final question, let's say you are near Rose, Jester. I think I'm not being particularly satirical during that time, I think. I'm avoiding that. I'm doing much more physical stuff. I'm getting my foot stuck in a bucket. I'm falling through a window. I'm tripping on a cat.

It's that sort of stuff, I think. I'm not saying anything which punches. up. That's my point of I'm playing it very very slapstick, yeah. You'd be terrifying trying new stuff. Exactly. But I think he can't kill you if he

doesn't take you tripping over a cat but he can kill you if you try and make a comment about the ruling powers in ancient Rome and he doesn't like it. He can be angry if you have a bad gig though. Yeah, that's true. And they weren't great rooms for comedy. Yeah, that's true. For instance, an enormous

difference between the Theatre Royal Brighton and the Cambridge Corn Exchange, as I've discovered over the last three weeks. It's... Yeah. You know, one room is very good, the other left a lot to be desired. But you're just in his sort of royal court.

I've noticed one final link between your life, L, and the life of the Jester. Does he eat a lot of deliveroo? No, in dressing rooms. What was the name of the club that bribed you with much of your early paid work in the West Country? What, just as in Bristol? Just as in Bristol. There you go. God, I had some tough times there.

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