Oh What A Time... - #89 Cancel Culture (Part 2)

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!This week we’re trawling through history to discover how people got cancelled in the past. We’ll have the ancient Egyptians striking people from the record, how Stalin photoshopped associates away and how ‘getting cancelled’ worked during the European renaissance.And when did New Year’s resolutions kick in? Did anyone ever think “this year of 1024 is going to be MY year!”? If you’ve got anything on this, OR MEAD to be fair, please do drop us an email: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou 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 xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Winter in Niagara-on-the-Lake is more than a season. It's magical. Come explore Niagara-on-the-Lake now or plan your adventure at niagara-on-the-lake.com. All right, this is part two of Cancel Culture. Let's get on with the show. All right, thank you Tom for delivering part one, which was quite frankly harrowing. Yeah. And it's probably not going to get too much better here because we're going back to the Soviet Union.

We're going back to the time of Joseph Stalin. Now of course, it feels like a more recent phenomena, the idea of the spin doctor, the Alastair Campbell within New Labour, who kind of takes your politician and just cultivates a very careful image of them and deploys all kinds of techniques, style consultants to make this politician seem like, I want to say normal or accessible, one of us, someone you want to vote for. I remember watching the, have you seen the Margaret Thatcher documentary or BBC Four, where she goes and gets elocution lessons and the power suits.

And so Spinner has been around for a long, long time. And actually there's a good argument that one of the best ever, if you can say best, well maybe the most noted person to use Spinn was Joseph Stalin. And famously was cracking on with Photoshop long before it was invented. Stalin famously would eradicate people he had fallen out with from the historical record. He would airbrush photos to make it look like these individuals had never existed. And what's more, he would airbrush himself famously also taking his pockmarked skin and cleaning it up in the photos! And there is actually an argument I would say that

Stalin's Photoshop skills were really important in his rise to power. Were they ever sort of fun? Was it ever like him surfing or something like that or hand gliding? Did he ever have a bit of fun with it? In the mouth of a Tyrannosaurus. Yeah exactly, exactly. Eating the world's largest hot dog. Just have a bit of fun with it, Joseph. Jumping 50 double-decker buses on a motorbike. It's a missed opportunity, even though. A dictator can have a fun side too. It's alright, surely. Occasionally.

No, they tend not to, in my experience. Maybe they should. Isn't that funny? There's not many fun dictators. No. Yeah. That's a shame. Well, I think if you're going to become a dictator, it's a kind of the having a laugh

aspect of your personality is probably one of the more undeveloped bits, I think. Unless, you never know. What if when they're deposed, when they're chucked out of office, well, office is the wrong phrase, but whatever phrase you want to use, maybe then they chill out. Maybe it's like, you know, the traditional role of the dad used to be quite strict and all sorts of stuff and they're actually quite different with their grandkids when their kids have moved out of home, they're quite chill, you know, whatever. You never know. Maybe. Suddenly they become a really good laugh.

Yeah, exactly. Oh, you are fun. Yeah, it was just a job. It was the demands of the job. I felt there was an obligation for me to be that way, but I'm not really like that. I'm actually far more fun. Now, you want to play paintball? That sort of thing. Yeah, you think they have more spare time for activities, more than a normal person to pursue hobbies. It never seems strictly fun being a dictator, does it? No. All that effort, all that horror, but they never seem to be... I've never ever seen one smile doing something that seemed to be happy, like, you know, having a summer break or whatever, just having a bit of sort of... It just seems horrific.

Yeah, even their holidays look shit. Like, I was reading about East Germany, I read Beyond the Wall, like, that's your holiday. And the East German sort of president had like a holiday home. Yes. It doesn't look like president had like a holiday home. Yes. It doesn't look like they're having a good laugh. Yeah. World War II, the eagle's nest when they're up there where it's cool. Is that what it was called? The Hitler's? Yeah, exactly. They're just sort of like staring out at the view. Everyone looks a little bit glum. It's not.

I've definitely been to better parties. Like I'm absolutely, I can guarantee Hitler of that. Exactly, yeah. There's no zip wire there. They've not set up anything fun. You must have seen the, you know, like Eva Braun up in the eagle's nest would film little home videos. And there's one where Hitler is caught on camera doing a little dance.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Have you seen this little clip? No, I haven't, no. He does like a little jig. That was the extent of him being a laugh. That was the most... A little shit jig. You know, he came third in the first series of German Street Clique. You know that? He

made it all the way through to Munich. He was beaten by Goebbels. I'm just thinking now, this is a half remembered historical thing that I've read. I've read a book on dictators and there was a bit about Kim Il-sung and he was just sexually decadent and in North, the first North Korean dictator and he had just about every sexually transmitted disease under the sun. Oh, what? The full English? The full English. I remember reading that he had the absolute lot.

What do you get for that? What do you get if you get a stamp on your card, on your SDD card? Do you think it's like, you know that scene in The Simpsons where Mr Burns has every disease so they're all perfectly working against each other and no one disease can take over and kill it? Wow. That's fascinating. Well, we'll look forward to that on the Kim Il Sung fun dictators episode coming down the line.

And I'm just, you've had your blood test results back and yes, last one, gonorrhea. You've done it. All of them. Yeah. All of them. Your blood test results have come back as a full house. Back to Stalin. So Stalin's photoshopping skills, known to be excellent.

And I think, like I said, there's a good argument that they were the reason that he climbed to power. So what he would do is he used the power of imagery to make it look like him and Vladimir Lenin were actually closer than they were. So he depicted himself alongside Lenin in posters, murals and statues. These images were designed to show Stalin as the trusted companion and natural successor to Vladimir Lenin. So he's inserting himself into big historical moments alongside Lenin.

But of course, one thing he would do was remove people from historical imagery if they fell out of favor with him. So there's lots of examples. The most famous, the one that most people I imagine would have seen was that of Stalin stood next to the Moscow Volga Canal and he stood there next to Nikolai Yezhov and he was the one timetime head of the secret police, the infamous NKVD. Nikolai Yezhov would be purged in 1938 and he would be eventually shot in 1940 and there's

a really horrible quirk to the way in which Yezhov was shot. He was shot in a room of his own design in the infamous NKVD prison, the Lubyanka in Moscow. He was shot in a room that he had designed, a basement room with a sloping floor that could be hosed down after executions and had been built according to Yaskov's own designs. He was put in there and infamously screamed, even though he helped lead a lot of purges too. So he was responsible for thousands and thousands of executions and he screamed and screamed and was eventually shot. Then all trace of him ever having been near Stalin was subsequently removed.

There's an interesting quirk of history that his successor in the NKVD, Leventi Beria, was executed himself and purged. He also screamed, despite being responsible for all the executions, again, the Great Terran thousands and thousands of executions. But that's not the only example. So you've got Yerskov's predecessor as well, Yenrik Yagoda, was removed from a painting after his purge and the spot given over in the photo to a jacket hanging over a railing. And in 1949, a biography of Stalin appeared with a photograph of the man next to Sergey Kirov,

the popular Bolshevik party leader in St. Petersburg who was killed in 1934. This guy's death was actually used as the reason behind the great terror. You got Stalin next to Sergey Kirov, but this photo when it appeared in 1934 was not a new one. It had actually been taken a decade earlier, but in the original you've got Stalin and Kirov and then two other men, Nikolai Antipov and Nikolai Shchernik. They had been airbrushed out of the pictures because Antipov had been killed in the purges in 1938. So he was unpersoned, persona non grata. And Shchervernik, one of Stalin's closest allies who survived until his natural death in 1970, was nevertheless airbrushed out of it to create the impression that this meeting had been purely between

Stalin and Kirov alone. And then, yeah, eventually even Kirov himself disappeared. So Stalin, very, very good at cultivating this cult of personality. So another thing he did as well is remove kind of people who were competing with him for the very top of the Soviet party. And famously he did this to Leon Trotsky. There's a picture of Lenin delivering a speech at Sverdlovsk square in May 1920. Do you remember this? In the original photograph, Trotsky is there, present as the head of the Red Army and behind him is another of the old Bolshevik leaders, Lev Kamenev. During the purges, Kamenev and Trotsky were declared enemies of the state. This famous image of Lenin delivering this speech, Kamenev and Trotsky were declared enemies of the state. So this famous image of Lenin

delivering this speech, Kamenev and Trotsky were removed, airbrushed out, disappeared as though they were never even there. Fascinating. Think about the airbrusher. Yes, the stress of that. But also going home. I don't know if they got housemates, the housemates saying, I was with her today. Oh, all right. What did you get to? Nothing. Just a bit of admin, general admin today. Yeah, yeah. Can I just check? Do you think it would be a problem that I'm in on a massive conspiracy

that Stalin is... Could that be a problem for me down the line as the... Is that fine? Yeah. Is that fine? I'm just slightly disappointed it isn't Stalin himself doing it, getting home and going into his office. Yeah, exactly. He's not particularly good at it either. The people he replaces it with is always a little bit too big or something. God, he looks absolutely massive in that one. I've read a couple of biographies of Stalin. The interesting guy.

So he's not doing the airbrush himself, but when certain people are getting banished and being a lot of the time executed after a show trial. Do you want to briefly just clear up the phrase interesting guy there, Chris? In reference to Stalin. Am I on the verge of getting cancelled in an episode of Getting Cancelled. But I think it was at Generic Yegoda who was executed after a show trial. And there's lots of evidence that suggests that Stalin was hiding at the back. People describe being in the courtroom as Yegoda's getting sentenced and seeing the

silhouette of a pipe being lit at the back of the courtroom. And the smoke like Stalin had turned up and just like stood behind a curtain smoking a pipe just watching things unfold. As people were getting disappeared from history. And it's interesting, I find it interesting with the Soviet Union, especially in this period. We always think of history as something that kind of, it happens and it's a record and that's it.

History is something that kind of, it happens and it's a record and that's it. History is static. But what you get in the Soviet Union is history, the past is constantly evolving depending on what's happening in the present. Photos getting, you know, people getting removed from the historical record, occasionally being brought back in. Photographs of incidents getting, like we say, like Mitrovsky getting airbrushed out because he can't be in that thing that happened in the past anymore It's so interesting when the Soviet Union how it evolves again. I don't mean interesting. I mean, it's terrible. I

Know it's not quite the same but this just remind me of a time when I am I can't say what it was But I wrote the script for a big effort to TV show a big live event it was filmed in an arena for television. I wrote the script for the hosts and the Sugar Babes were on it. And I had a little joke about the fact that the members of the Sugar Babes kept changing. And the Sugar Babes themselves, through their management, ordered that that joke was removed from the script. They weren't comfortable. They didn't want people talking about the fact that the members of the Sugar Babes kept changing. So that was nipped out of history. We don't want that referenced. No, the Sugar Babes have

always been this three. We are the Sugar Babes. So you think they're a Stalinist pop band? I'm saying they are bedfellows, Elliot. That they view the world and are saying, well, yeah, there you go. But fair enough. that they view the world and they're saying, well, yeah, there you go. But it's fair enough. Our influences. I would say sort of ABBA, you know, really melodic pop music, and Stalin actually, when it comes to our management of our brand. The famous picture actually of them meeting Trotsky and they've had him removed because he was actually one of the original members.

In Moscow, of course, there's statues of Lenin, Mutsha, Beria. Exactly. But not the other ones. Never the other ones. Yeah, exactly. But you know what? Good luck to them. That's fair enough. Yeah, good luck to the sugar beaps. Finally, someone's saying it. Yeah, they also, here's another good thing for that. There was a mini fridge. You know what riders are like? Yeah. There was like, people asked for champagne, they asked for 500 different types of tropical fruit. What do they ask for the communist manifesto that does Capitano? They had that anyway.

So there was a fridge that was shared by everyone working on the show. It's just like a communal fridge, a small mini fridge. Inside it was a sugar- Babes rider which was one packet of sliced turkey with a post-it note on it that said Sugar Babes. That was it. I thought... That was the entire rider. I didn't think that was going to be a real, the real rider.

I was waiting for some sort of Soviet setup. One packet of sliced turkey. It was a post-it note with Sugar Babes written on it which is so fun. I think I've got a photo of Soviet setup. One packet of sliced turkey. It was supposed to be with Sugar Babes written on it, which is so fun. I think I've got a photo of it somewhere. Oh God, I laugh so much. But not to their faces, of course, because they're in with Stalin and they kill me. Right. Yeah, back to Stalin.

Stalin wasn't the first though. I mean, Lenin equally guilty of cracking out the Photoshop. There's a postcard of a demonstration taken in 1917 with Lenin there. And in the background, you can see a shop sign that says, watches gold and silver, which is of course not in keeping with a worker's revolution. So Lenin ordered that the image be doctored and the slogan replaced over the shop sign. And instead it says, struggle for your rights instead of watches gold and silver.

Isn't that interesting? That is really interesting. Yeah. Okay. So it's very much, it's not just Stalin. It's a Soviet thing, I think. And of course, the interesting thing about Stalin is that he dies in 1953. And when he dies, you've basically, the history of the Soviet Union to that point and the

history of the Stalin years is of course not really the history because Stalin has been doctored it to suit his needs at that, at whatever time. So in his death, you get Khrushchev who delivered the famous secret speech of February 1956. Yes, I'm studying this university, the secret speech. I don't know about this. What's this? Khrushchev delivered a speech in February 1956 that basically said, do you know what? That's Stalin. Not a great guy. It was actually quite bad. Really? So the history of the... And actually there's a... I mean, this is a whole episode in itself, but it's fascinating how that secret speech came out and the West learned about it.

People begin to realize that there was an active reassessment of the Stalin years and many of his crimes as well. But the fact that we have is that when Stalin gets denounced in February 1956, of course, they have to look back at the historical record. A consequence of that means you've got a bunch of people who were effectively cancelled who now need to be restored to the record. So you've got lots of different images of people that have been airbrushed out and now increasingly some of these people need to be brought back.

So you have really interesting incidents like there was an Uzbek communist leader called Faisullah Khodzayev and he had been purged in 1938 by Stalin. But then in the mid-1960s, the talk of him being rehabilitated. So people start publishing the old photos of him, but picture editors are still a bit unsure, like is he cancelled, is he not, it feels as though he's being rehabilitated. So picture editors to hedge their bets would doodle like beards onto old pictures of him, just so that they had deniability if it turns out that he was still cancelled. So it becomes completely,

the manipulation of photographs became completely absurd in the 1960s. And this is, you can actually see a bit of this. You've probably seen the death of Stalin, the film. Again, the absurdity of certain situations in the Soviet Union, because they're painting themselves into different corners by manipulating the historical record and changing things, and nobody really knows what's cool and what's not. And you get absolutely absurd situations like that example just then. So, the Soviet Union, Stalin, very much foundations built off the back of Photoshop, the clone tool and airbrushing.

Fascinating, genuinely fascinating. Amazing. That's incredible. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] Right, okay, now I'm taking you all back to ancient Egypt. Just a little bit of context and a little disclaimer. I did Google how to pronounce all of these words because I never studied ancient Egypt because my degree was in modern history. I Googled how to pronounce all of them. It took absolutely ages, but there are so many, I'm going to get a lot wrong. So, soz.

And have you even remembered the ones that you learnt how to pronounce? Or is that all gone out? Is that all come in briefly and gone out the other ear? Yeah, yeah. Amenhotep. Okay. Oh, okay. So, he is in. And it's the ancient city of Thebes and not Thebes, for instance. Yeah. And Nefertiti, I knew anyway, because there's a shop called Nefertiti. Thebes was a quite sort of cheap Egyptian hotel, wasn't it? What are you saying at Thebes? Yeah. Yeah, we had to rent the cattle. Yeah, exactly. Okay, let's take you back to ancient Egypt.

In 1353 BCE, a new pharaoh came to the throne in Egypt. He took the regnal name Amenhotep IV, following his father Amenhotep III, also known as Amenhotep the Great. But this younger one and his wife, Nefertiti... The Great, sorry. If someone added that as part of my name, I'd have to say I can't be called Tom the Great. But this younger one and his wife, Nefertiti… The Great, sorry. If someone added that as a part of my name, I'd have to say I can't be called Tom The Great. It's very kind of you suggesting that, but I can't have that. Yeah, I'm thinking of these two Welsh kings, this Llywelyn Fawr,

Llywelyn The Great, or Big Llywelyn, but it means The Great in that context. And then his son Llywelyn Ayn Llywelyn, our last night. What? Right, yeah.elyn our last night. What? Right, yeah. And our last night, I mean I suppose you wouldn't know that was going to be your name would you, because that's going to happen after your death. But equally the great, I can't imagine that's happening in your lifetime. Yeah, good shout Ash.

Oh do you think this is afterwards? Okay, fine, okay fair enough. My point is if someone suggested it to me while I was still alive I'd say that's a bit much. Yeah, there was Ethelred the Unready. Oh yeah. Yeah, that's happening in your lifetime. That kind of disrespect just to your face. Tom Crane the Unready, I can imagine. I can see that happening, to be honest. So this younger one and his wife, Inifatiti, they had radical ideas, which was fine as long as his older brother, Thutmose,

was still alive. Towards the end of Amenhotep III's reign, however, Thutmose died, leaving his brother to succeed in his place. Now, I love this next phrase because it sounds like something that happens in the Premier League when clubs are between managers, okay? Amenhotep IV started out as a continuity pharaoh. What, to the end of the season? So funny. I don't even think Daryl meant that as a joke. That just made me laugh so much.

He's not really given any money to properly change Egypt. He just needs to keep it sort of ticking over until... He's just got to keep them up. Yeah, exactly, yeah. He's got to keep them up. So he was maintaining the systems of government during his old man's rule. Keen to the sustained tradition was polytheism and the worship of the many gods of the ancient Egyptian pantheon. So Osiris, Isis, Anubis, Set, Horus, etc. And chief among them was the sun god Amundrar, hence the

Faroar nickname Amenateb, which means, Aemon is satisfied. That's quite an interesting, because obviously I don't know what, you know, a lot of names often have meanings if you look into it, but you tend, especially in the English language, you tend not to know what they are. Like my dad's name, he's got a very Welsh name, Ayrville, and the Ayr in Ayrville comes from from Eir which means gold. And I think it was like born golden or something. But you don't, because it's ancient, that's old Welsh. You don't think of that every time you say the name. Got you, okay.

But I'm assuming that if he was called Amenhotep, people are like, oh God, Amun is satisfied over there. And sort of you'd be saying, you'd think of that all the time. It's quite an interesting thing. Anyway, he did have a favourite god time. It's quite an interesting thing. Anyway, he did have a favourite god though. And this was an issue and it wasn't his namesake, but a more obscure deity called Aton was also associated with the sun. So Aton itself means sun disc. Will Barron That makes him sound a little bit hipster,

doesn't it? Like, you know, when a sixth form was into a cool band. Will Barron Yeah, yeah, yeah. Will Barron And it's more obscure gods actually. Will Barron It's the more niche gods. Will Barron Yeah, yeah, yeah. You like your mainstream gods actually. Will Barron It's the more niche gods. Will Barron You like your mainstream gods, I get that. That's fine. That's fine. Will Barron Yeah, and that's fine. There's room for that.

Teeny bopper gods that teenage girls like. That's cool, man. Now, worship of Atten had developed during the reign of Thutmose IV, Amenhotep's grandfather, and had grown significantly during Amenhotep III's reign. But the worship of him had always been within a sort of polytheistic context. Now Amenhadep IV's radical idea was to push out into the forefront of state religion and make worship of the God exclusive. Bit like when podcasts on the BBC do sort of,

you know, exclusive BBC sounds only content. Sorry, that's a very niche podcasting reference. But he's like, right, we're going to be a monotheist state now, which is one god. And there's a very controversial act. So initially, Amenhotep declared Atin the supreme god, which didn't exclude other gods, but placed him on a higher level. And then he went one step further. So in the fifth year of his reign, so this is his fifth season as a continuity pharaoh. Five seasons in. You've got to be one of the longer standing. Firmly mid table.

But you've got to win a cup of new by this point. Yeah. Now he suddenly changed his name and became the pharaoh Akenhaten, in effect signaling that Amun was cancelled. Aten was now elevated to the role of sole approved god. So Akenhaten also announced the construction of a new capital city for the kingdom. It was to be called Akenhaten, but is better known today as Armana. Imagine that. Imagine if Keastama was like, right,

we've got rid of the Tories, finally. Big news, building a new London away from London. So, Big news, building a new London away from London. So we are making changes. So Armana replaced the existing capital Thebes, which is near modern-day Luxembourg, and provided a fresh start away from the power and influence of the temple, priesthood and cult of Ammen, which was centred at Thebes. So he had a new royal project. And as a new royal project, everything about Armana was planned with the royal palace, government offices, workers' village and temples dedicated to Atten, this new god. So the city's population was made up of loyalists – that always tends to work out in my experience – and anyone who still believed in Amarna or the other old gods was to be left behind. So he wanted to make certain of his religious revolution, so Aconhattan and his agents began

the process of erasing references to Ammon and its variants. Statues bearing cartouches with the name Ammon Hattep, for instance, were scratched out, only to be restored after Aconhattan's death. But the process was incomplete when the pharaoh died in around 1335 BCE. So, he was succeeded by his wife Nefertiti, who reigned for two years until approximately 1332 BC when the couple's son became Pharaoh. By the way, that's quite a lot for a continuity Pharaoh to get done. He's really, you know, he was supposed to just steady the ship.

He's really made big changes, isn't he? He'd be one of the longest serving leaders in the world. He's up there with Fergie and Wenger. He can't be continuity. He's changed the way they play football. He's won a couple of cups. Yeah, he's rubbed a few people up the wrong way. Now this new pharaoh was intended to be the embodiment of the religious revolution begun by his parents and so was given the name Tutankhaten, meaning the living image of

Aten. This is not how history remembers him. Instead, Tutankhaten is better known as Tutkhamun, the living image of our moon. Ah, oh, this is quite a run of key fair roads here, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nefertiti, Tutkhamun, this is a big, you know, these are big signings. It's Ron Atkinson, it's Alex Ferguson, it's David Moyes. Yeah. And the embodiment not of the religious revolution of his parents, but his cancellation and the

eventual erasure of everything for which they stood. So the same was true of King Tut's wife. She was born Ancansim Paton, she who lives for the Aton, but followed her husband's conversion to the cult of Amun by becoming Ancansimun. But the most powerful men of Tutankhamun's reign and those responsible for the counter-revolution or cancellation were his eventual successor, the Grand Vizier Ai and the army commander Horemheb. Now to ensure the erasure of Armana and the cult of Atten, Ayn Horemheb in particular, they demolished buildings and recycled stone from Armana for use in other projects. Wow.

So Horemheb ordered the removal of all those associated with the Armana experiment from the lists of kings. Akinhaten, Nefertiti, Ayn, Tung Tutankhamun were all thus effectively cancelled. That's incredible, isn't it? Canceling entire, you know, reigns of pharaohs. Will Barron Yeah. Rupert Spira He had inscriptions erected which confirmed the restoration of the old order and usurped statues of Tutankhamun and Acon Hatton for his own. So this cancellation was made certain on the founding of the 19th dynasty by Ramesses I in 1292 BC. Achenharten was referred to by now as that criminal and his successors were discredited as heretics until the rediscovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in the 1920s. Unbelievable. Almost 4 000 years later, much of the history of this period

remained in a state of confusion with no one quite certain of family ties. So in the early 20th century, for instance, before the tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in 1920, some were convinced that Tutankhamun was the son of Amenhotep III and an unnamed inferior queen rather than the son of Amenhotep IV Akenhaten, since this helped to explain the reversion to older religious practices.

Akenhaten was himself declared insane, something which would have entirely pleased the scribes of the 19th dynasty. So the rise and fall of the cult of Aten and the cancellation and restoration of the rival cult of Amun was the most significant instance of religious upheaval in ancient Egypt, and far from resulting in the complete erasure of its protagonists has instead given them greater status and popular memory than almost any other rulers of the kingdom. I think if you asked if you used a sort of normal person in the street if you were to name like a even if it was just a character from ancient Egypt just a person I think Tutankhamun is going to be

pretty high up there. Absolutely. Also from the point of view of your power over a people, telling people what they can believe, who they have to put their faith in, is such a sort of… Oh yeah, yeah. There's one thing having a sort of an impact on the day-to-day life, you know, their freedoms, how cruel you are with your punishments, that sort of thing. But literally telling people what they can believe is incredible. Yeah, massive. Absolutely massive. Yeah, they're confident to do that. They're blatant. Philip Glass wrote an opera, Aachenharten, about his story, which was first performed

in 1984, I think. So yeah, it's an amazing story that lives on. And can I just check there's no relation between Ackinhatten and Ricky Hatten? Just wanted to clear that up. There was also another fairy that sounded a bit like Aunt McPartland. I wasn't quite sure which one that was, but there was one that was something like Partland. They probably were related actually. Isn't there that strange quirk of history that you're like anyone 3000 years ago you're going to be related to. What's that?

There is a strange quirk, wasn't there? There's a famous example of this where someone went back to looking into the family tree of an ancient German princess and discovered that the person researching the family tree was actually related to this person. They thought, wow, what an incredible coincidence. But then they, they realised with the odds of humanity that anyone is today would be related to someone 3000 years ago. Well, yeah, there's some, there's that incredible fact, there's that cheddar man, which is a human male skeleton made of cheese found in cheddar gorge. Right. So it's Britain's oldest sort of near complete human skeleton.

So it tells, they can work out an awful lot about what he was eating and all that kind of stuff and how he lived his life. And they've extracted DNA from the bones. They were doing DNA tests on other people in the area and they found a bloke who was related to him. It's like his great-great-great-great-great-time-500-grandfather. Well, if someone could do the maths and try and figure out, we would love to know, is Ricky Hatton related to the rest of the Hattons? Yeah. I reckon Ricky Hatton comes from a long line of tough, tough people.

Yeah. 100%. I'm definitely related to someone, 3,000 years ago, who was just really, tough people. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. I'm definitely related to someone 3000 years ago who was just really, really hot. Just a really handsome guy. If you look back, I reckon that's a really, really hunky guy. Over the ensuing 3000 years, that hotness has just got watered down. Watered down, exactly, yeah. The indistinct blob sat in front of you now. in front of you now. Right, that's it for cancel culture. Thank you so much for joining us. If you want even more, Oh, what a time. There's two bonus episodes produced every month. And this month you've

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