The Rest Is History - 154. The Most Disastrous Party in History

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

We've all been to some terrible ones, but what is the most disastrous party in human history?  Not at all inspired by recent political events, Tom and Dominic have whittled our listener suggestions down to the ten parties that they think are the most calamitous - tune in to hear which party comes out on top! Join The Rest Is History Club for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Jack Davenport *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello, welcome to The Rest Is History. And my friend, Gertie Gabber of Historically Based Podcasts, Dominic Sandbrook is with me. And Dominic, today we're recording this on the 16th of February. And in 2015, Leslie Gore very sadly died. Are you a fan of Leslie Gore? do you know her greatest hit?

remind me Tom, I'm struggling it's my party I will cry if I want to cry if I want to, cry if I want to you would cry too if it happened to you and you could say that at the moment would be the theme song for the British Prime Minister

Boris Johnson, who has endured a torrid few weeks over what the British press have called party gate. And perhaps for the benefit of our overseas listeners, you could explain exactly why these parties have been so disastrous. Well, maybe Tom, I should wait for Sue Gray's report. But since that's not forthcoming um I should say uh in the first sort of months or year or so the lockdown it is alleged that in Downing Street um Boris Johnson and his aides held an enormous quantity of of parties gatherings quizzes drinks and so on which they say are all work-related events, but it appeared to be they look very like parties

which were breaking the government's own COVID rules. So the image is of a government that was making rules for everybody else, but in which the prime minister and his aides were kind of ambushing each other with cakes and drinking cheap Prosecco and just behaving in a shameful manner. That's the sort of claim they claim this was all work related and they will be completely exonerated we will well the tension mounts tom but dominic the i mean the effect of it on the prime minister standing

and on the performance of the government in the polls has been i mean really very drastic and as as a historian of uh you know of british politics have you ever seen a meltdown quite like it? I mean, it seems to me unprecedented. Over parties? Not over parties, not over parties. But I think what it is, is to my mind, a disastrous party is a bit like a scandal. So a political scandal. So it becomes disastrous.

I mean, we're no strangers to disastrous parties. I imagine anybody listening to this, but a party becomes politically disastrous when it seems to throw into relief flaws or sort of anxieties that were already there. Right. Okay. So on the back of Partygate, we had a brilliant suggestion by Matt Butcher, for which we're very, very grateful, that we should do the top 10 most disastrous parties in, for which we're very, very grateful, that we should do the top 10 most disastrous parties in history, which I thought was, you know, we both thought was an absolutely brilliant idea. So that's what we've done. We put out, so I put out a tweet asking for you, the listeners, to nominate. We put it out on the Discord. And we've had hundreds and hundreds

of nominations. We have, and we've whittled them down, haven't we? We have whittled them down. So all the ones that we've got have been suggested by you, the listeners. Boris has not made the cut. No. I was sorry that some of his colleagues who are listeners to this podcast didn't write in with nominations of their own to maybe nominate his party. Yes.

That secret party we had in the broom cupboard. Exactly. That nobody party we had in the broom cupboard. Exactly. That nobody found out about. Several parties were nominated that we've already had on The Rest Is History. So Tom Gorman nominated Prince Yusupov's party at the Moika Palace. Yeah, Rasputin.

Disastrously. That was not a good party for him. Sam the Belgian has nominated Joyce and Proust meeting up, which we mentioned in the 1922 episode. Gavin Barrett, Belshazzar's Feast, which in a way is, you know, that's the archetype of a terrible party. The writing on the wall and all that kind of stuff.

You don't want that to happen at your own party, do you? No, no. But I mean, I wouldn't invite Daniel to my party anyway. No. Yeah, but the whole thing about that is that, you know, the means and the person's come gate crashing in. That's true. I about that is that, you know, the means and the Persians come gatecrashing in. That's true.

I mean, that's, you know, very bad party. We're all familiar with the issue of gatecrashers. And then we have had several nominations that have been bubbling under. So Stephen Clarke, very much a friend of the show. Josef Sieser, am I pronouncing that right? MEP. He looks Hungarian to me, Tom. He is Hungarian.

He's a committed opponent of gay rights. Right. And inevitably, he was arrested during lockdown in Brussels, fleeing a gay sex orgy, climbing down a drainpipe. Oh, that's so off in the way. So that's quite fun. Eamon Matrfardi, absolute fixture on the Discord. The 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner,

where Obama and Seth Meyers mocked the idea of Trump running for president while he was sitting in the audience. Well, supposedly that was one of the motivating factors. Yes. Trump's determination to kind of get his own back. Absolutely. And another American one from Josh909. Andrew Jackson's inauguration. 20,000 people trashed the White House and ate a lot of cheese.

And apparently the White House smelt of cheese for months. So anyway, they didn't make the cut uh nor nor dominic did a joke that about 400 people made uh i thought this was quite funny of which jack clark is representative change uk yes again for our for our overseas listeners just explain that joke i mean this is like kind of explaining a shakespeare comedy or something a very ill-fated um centrist political party formed an opposition i think largely to brexit but also to jeremy corbyn didn't do very well but there's also that party of gina millers the truth and fairness party or true and i can't remember what it's called but only six people turned up to the launch of it but not not that kind of party of course no no they're not as disastrous as our 10th choice

well dominic should we just say say, so you and me yesterday, we went through and we kind of winnowed them down. And we're going to do it like the kind of top of the pops. We're going to go from 10 up to one. So we find out what we voted the most disastrous party of all time. So I hope you will find the tension kind of mounting as we go through. But number 10, what comes in at number 10? So it's a hunting party in the Black Forest, Tom.

They are at Donau Schwingen Castle in Donau Schwingen, Baden-Württemberg. Their date is the 14th of November, 1908. Very much a friend of the show, the Kaiser, Wilhelm II, notorious for his ill-chosen shoes. Yes. Tom Holland style shoes. And this is very much a party that revolves around ill-chosen shoes, Tom Holland-style shoes. And this is very much a party that revolves around ill-chosen dress, isn't it?

It is. Well, we don't know what the Kaiser was wearing, but we do know what his old childhood friend, Count Dietrich von Hülsenheisler, was wearing. We do. I've got a printout of him. And he's a very, I think, fair to say, a Prussian-looking gentleman. He's very German. I mean, he's got the whole moustache.

He's very stolid. He's a man who's been eating sausage for decades. His jacket is festooned with medals and iron crosses, shaven-headed, square-headed. And this reminds me that this was nominated by a friend of the show dan jackson who does love a teutonic gentleman in in military uniform i've noticed from his twitter feed um so so this guy was a prussian he was the son of a general he became a general he was a childhood friend of the kaiser um and in 1889 he became the aide de camp the kaiser or should that be the aide de camp?

Yes, very good. Because, so he's, I think, I believe he's the chief of the German Imperial Military Cabinet at this point, Tom. So a very important figure. And they're at Prince Max von Furstenberg's castle, as we've said, in Baden-Württemberg. And they've been hunting, haven't they? They've been hunting.

They've been great, great, great laughs together hunting. The Kaiser's a great huntsman. They come back and they have formal evening uh do a kind of dinner and so on and count von hülsenhäisler clearly must leave the room at some point and then really i think he's about to say he misreads the mood well you don't know. I mean, maybe he comes in and he's dressed. He's dressed in a pink tutu and ballet tights and a kind of pink leotard. He does a kind of dance of the sugar plum fairy with pirouettes and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then he kills over of a heart attack. Supposedly he does a lot of capers and jumps.

He's an implausible ballerina it's fair to say um anyway so he has a heart attack and that's and that but yeah he does this he does this routine and then he dies and um they they call a doctor did you see this they call a doctor by the time the doctor's got there they've failed to resuscitate him and they pronounce him dead he's so he's he's succumbed to rigor mortis they had struggled to get him out of his he's obviously a really hefty he's a really hefty bloke so they they don't bury him in it no they don't but the weird thing about this tom and i said that parties when i was not laughing i said that parties were disastrous when they accentuated existing anxiety. The Kaiser and the German high command, they have been racked for the last two years by accusations of homosexuality.

Yes, the Ullenberg scandal. Yes, exactly. An imperialist journalist, Maximilian Harden, he's accused Prince Philip of Ullenberg of being gay gay of being part of a sort of gay ring um some officers have committed suicide after being blackmailed there have been a series of libel cases and actually the kaiser has asked um count to kind of clean up the prussian high command so the weird thing is why is he doing it is he cracked under the strain and put on the tutu? Or is this a sort of elaborate in-joke? Is he maybe having a laugh in private about this sort of situation?

Anyway, he's been in his tutu. He's dropped dead. It's very embarrassing. Okay, so that's not a good party. I think that we can say cast a poll over the evening and over and over the kaiser's reputation and the reputation of the german high command yeah i think that's quite a way yeah and it has been argued that you know the kaiser was left with a determination to prove his manliness that resulted in the first

world war so that's absolutely right there's a lot of literature on pre-first world war origins about manliness and gender and this sort of stuff and about the that resulted in the First World War. That's absolutely right. There's a lot of literature on pre-First World War origins about manliness and gender and this sort of stuff and about these sort of anxieties. Anyway, we don't need to go down this rabbit hole too deeply, but this is our number 10. Okay, and at number nine, nominated by Brian Spabler, we have the Fyre Festival, F-Y-R-E.

And Dominic, you must love this one. Blame all your darkest expectations of millennials it is a terrible behavior isn't it so the fire festival for those people who don't know it's been the subject of two rival documentaries one on netflix one by hulu um it was founded by a wikipedia claims the icon artist i think i don't know whether that's too harsh called billy mcfarland and a rapper called jar rule i'm not sure how you say it so basically they want to promote an app called of the fire app which is an app for for booking bands and they schedule this this this sort of two weekend festival in april and may 2017 on an island called

great exuma in the bahamas but originally they'd been planning to have it on another island, hadn't they? That they'd kind of visited while they were on a private jet, and they'd landed on this island. And it had previously been owned by one of the leading henchmen of Pablo Escobar. That's right. And the show Narcos was then very popular in the US. So they were very excited by that. And they were told, do not publicise this using Pablo Escobar's name, that one of his henchmen. But I've seen their ad. I looked up this ad preparing for this podcast.

It's still there. It's a real sort of Instagrammers kind of ad. And on the ad, it says explicitly, on an island owned by Pablo Escobar, which is just untrue. Pablo Escobar did not own this island. But that's why they then have,

that's the problem, because the people who own it are furious and kick them off. So they then have to go and find some other place and they go to Great Exuma. And, you know, that's fine. They book in. But the problem is that the Exuma regatta is going on at the same time. Everyone has booked up all the hotels. That's right. Yeah. And they've kind of promised incredible luxury.'ve got loads of um kind of instagram stars are you familiar with all these people tom kendall jenner you're familiar with the work of kendall jenner uh daughter of um the jenners related to greg jenner the podcaster yes uh bella hadid are you willing to follow her work big fan uh hayley baldwin emily ratay

ratay kowski i know i see that name in mail online all the time but i don't know who it is anyway they were all they were all paid to advertise it and then there was a scandal over that but basically did you see the list of acts are you familiar with the acts you're not familiar with the work of pusher t designer with two eyes no scepter clap tone what about lee burridge are you well lee burridge sounds like he plays in golf in Northampton Town, I think, compared with the others. Lee Burridge, that's the worst name. It is.

It's not a great name. Anyway, they didn't turn up, all these bands. I mean, some of them hadn't even been booked. It was all a complete con. The best part of this con, actually, was that they told, the organizers told people who bought tickets, it will be cashless and cardless. So basically, you have to give us lots of money now, and we'll send you a bracelet with your money on it and this was a sort of wireless it

would work by wi-fi but when the people got to the islands there's no wireless on the island so there's no there's nowhere to stay no they all stayed they kind of got a tense but they weren't enough tents to go around united nations tentse tents. And they gave them cheese sandwiches. Yeah. So the reason this is resonant, I think, is because it's 2017 and it seemed to – I mean, there was enormous quantities of schadenfreude. A lot of the people who paid up, hundreds, 5,000 people, had to be sort of flown out, had to be like refugees.

And I think this thing about parties or scandals throwing things into relief it was seen as the sort of you know the the the self-delusion of the instagram generation right so it's all about instagram because the whole thing was designed to look good on instagram so that was why it was instagram influencers advertising it and so the fact that it then turned out to be you know you were camped out in a cesspool with a cheese sandwich was everybody who hadn't gone well everybody adored it basically yeah everybody over the age but you were camped out in a cesspool with a cheese sandwich. Everybody who hadn't gone absolutely adored it. Basically, everybody over the age of 35 thought it was just absolutely the best thing that had happened.

But I think also people who would have loved to go also enjoyed it because they hadn't, and they dodged a bullet. Well, this is true. Do you not feel like that? I mean, I'm not a natural festival goer. I don't think that'll surprise any of the audience to hear that. Whenever I, you know, when I was in my 20s and I used to see news footage of a deluge at glastonbury and people you know trudging miserably through torrents of mud i always used to think i'm so happy they're there and i'm here but i think there's a difference

because you expect that at glastonbury and that's kind of factored in as part of the fun that's true and actually you know there's nothing you know kate moss in a pair of boots wandering around that's that's absolutely what is going to look good on instagram but the thing about this was that essentially you know you you pay an enormous amount of money to look like you know a refugee basically yeah and it was the contract it was the contrast of what was sold and then what was so jar rule tweeted it was not a scam. This is not my fault. And the official statement said, due to circumstances out of our control, the physical infrastructure was not in place on time

and we are unable to fulfill on our vision safely and enjoyably for our guests. Well, the main guy was sent to prison. Six years. Six years. Yeah. So the lesson for that, don't go to a festival unless it's a history festival.

Let's move on to uh number eight number eight a man who actually i can kind of see at the fire festival the young peter the great young peter the great and this was suggested by uh simon girdleston um and i'm just going to read it read it out because really there's there's very little to add to it so simon i nominate peter the great stay at john evelyn's house sales court in detford in 1698, in which Peter and his entourage of 70 soldiers, four dwarfs, a cook, a priest and a monkey, consumed a colossal volume of spirits, burned all the furniture for firewood, including all 50 chairs, used all the 25 fine pictures for target practice, smashed all the doors and locks, left the carpets and floors covered in such a layer of grease that all were ruined and three floors had to be ripped up entirely, broke 300 window panes and smashed all the hedges in the garden that it had taken evil in 20 years to grow, as well as all the wheelbarrows by using them in drunken races. That's pretty much it. So Peter the Great is on his grand tour of the West. He's come to London. He wants to look at the shipyards,

but everything is, it's the winter of 1698. goes to he goes to amsterdam first doesn't he does exactly and this is when william the third is king of he's king of england and he's whatever yeah holder is he prince uh prince of orange prince of orange in the netherlands so the he then comes to london the thames is frozen everything is frozen people are skating and selling pies on the ice and uh basically because crowds keep coming to look at Peter the Great he goes off he's incredibly tall isn't he and he's in disguise so everyone's pretending it's not really him but he's so tall and John Evelyn the uh diarist very famous 17th century diarist he's been been he's been doing looking after this garden for 45 years laying out the the hedges, which are his pride and joy. And he sublet it.

To Peter the Great. No, no, no, he hasn't sublet it. Oh, no. He sublet it to somebody else. Admiral Benbow. Yes, who then sublet it to Peter the Great. So they never actually meet. No.

And at one point, actually, Evelyn's steward writes to Evelyn. He says, the house is full of people and write nasty. Yeah, well, that's up. Yeah. And this is exactly what happened. So he actually gets Christopher Wren and the Royal Gardener to go to the house to examine the state and to assess the damage. Yeah.

And it's exactly as you say, the tiles have all been smashed. The windows have all been broken. There are 50 chairs in the house and every one of them has been smashed. The pictures have all been used for target practice. And's their garden i think that's the big issue because this hedge has been utterly destroyed by people ramming wheelbarrows into it and having races and now apparently what they used to do was they would put the czar in the wheelbarrow and race him into the hedges well anyone who's seen the great about uh catherine the great and her marriage to peter the III will recognise this.

The analogy here is sort of parents going away for the weekend and their children advertise a party on Facebook and a load of Russians turn up and... Wheelbarrow racing. Apologies to any Russian listeners. I'm sure there are plenty of Russian listeners who are much better behaved than Peter the Great was. But anyway, £350 and ninepence was the damage.

And that, you know, I haven't done the conversion, but that's a colossal amount of money in 17th century terms. So those are three in which nobody died. Yeah. But it's not really a disastrous party unless there's a kind of brutal killing. Well, hold on. No, no, no. That bloke died before.

The tutu man. Of course he did. Yes, he did. Yes. Apologies. Yes, he did. But he wasn't murdered. No, nobody's murdered anybody yet which is disappointing so now we come to our first party that involved a murder in fact a few murders um and this is the brilliantly named

blood feast of roskilde and as new guard has suggested this who i'm imagining is perhaps a danish listener i should think so yeah um so in 12th century denmark aren't we yeah uh ninth of Newgard has suggested this. Who I'm imagining is perhaps a Danish listener. I should think so, yeah. So in 12th century Denmark, aren't we? Yeah, 9th of August, 1157. But the roots of this, Dominic, lie in events that we covered in our 1066 episode. So it involves Fane II, who was the king of Denmark

who sent the very last kind of what could be called a Viking expedition in I think 1067 1069 that's right against England and he'd been

the great rival of Harald Hardrada who we've talked about quite a lot but the other thing he does is he has enormous quantities of children

and they all fall out with each other so it's like Edward III. Very much. You know, with a kind of delayed aftershock with the Wars of the Roses. This is the Danish equivalent. So there are three rival claimants, aren't there, by the point of this blood feast. Is that right?

Well, again, the echo of Wars of the Roses in England. So in 1146, Eric III of Denmark abdicates and retires to a monastery. So he's that kind of guy. Do you know what his sobriquet is? Eric the Wet. I think he's Eric the Memorable, isn't he? Is he? Yeah.

Well, the fact that he can't clearly isn't that memorable. Well, I suppose memorable for a disastrous decision. Well, go on. Because he abdicates and there are three alternative candidates. Yeah. And apparently in kind of Danish, Danish lists of kings, they're all remembered as kings. They all overlap, exactly.

So you've got Svein II. No, Svein III. Svein III. Yes, of course, Svein III. Knut V, Voldemar I. Yeah. And basically these three kings all fight each other for 11 years. And then they held council in

Lolland. And it's a bit like King Lear. They decided to divide the kingdom into three. And they confirmed the treaty by an oath. And then they... Svein invites the other two kings to a party in Roskilde. Absolute idiots. I've been to Roskilde a ton. Fantastic ship

museum. Yeah, ship museum. I heartily recommend it. A great cathedral. Very nice. Red brick kind of cathedral, isn't it? This is Fantastic ship museum. Yeah, ship museum. I heartily recommend it. A great cathedral. Very nice. Red brick kind of cathedral, isn't it? This is all a trap. Canuck gets killed. Voldemort gets wounded in the thigh but runs away, manages to escape. Yeah.

And a few months later, he comes back with a big army. He defeats Svein and he then becomes Voldemort the Great. Yeah. So there's a man called, it's that classic thing. Svein has invited them to the party and then spain says um i just have to pop out for a second basically if somebody you've been feuding with does that to you in medieval europe you're absolutely mad to say oh yeah well i'll hang around here with your soldiers till yeah which is exactly what happens he has a man called detlef who's just starts stabbing everybody um but the folly is not to kill voldemar as well, because Valdemar escapes,

doesn't he? He then fights Svein at the Battle of Gratahede. Svein runs away. He's killed by a mob of angry peasants. And Valdemar becomes king of Denmark, is that easy to say? So basically, don't go to a party with a Danish king. And Valdemar becomes a very successful king

and he smites the Wens, who were pagans, who never did anything without consulting a talking horse. Wow. That's a bit like Ptolemy I and his talking snakes. Yeah. Talking animals are very much a feature of this podcast. So number six.

Yeah. What have we got at six? So number six, specifically, we're heading to Egypt, and we are heading to Cairo in the spring of 1811. An Albanian kind of warlord called Muhammad Ali, not the boxer, is sick of the Mamluks. The Mamluks are the Turkic kind of warrior class that have been running Egypt. Who are in Napoleon in Egypt. Exactly.

So this is the sequel release in Napoleon in Egypt, our earlier podcast. Egypt has reverted to sort of nominal Ottoman rule. Muhammad Ali wants to basically take it over for himself. He's sick of the Mamluks. And in that classic way that is so common, it's going to be so common in this podcast, the way to do it is to invite them all to a party. Now, there's a lot of them.

There's hundreds of them. They are this sort of warrior elite from whose ranks for centuries the Egyptian the masters of Egypt have basically been been chosen or emerged through this sort of bloody competition and Tom do you want to tell the story of what happens to the Mamluks well it's his his son's birthday party which is the the kind of exquisite twist and he holds this in the citadel anyone who's been to Cairo it's kind of. Everything that you'd expect the citadel of Cairo to be. And it has a very steep, narrow passage that connects the kind of upper reaches of the fort to the lower gate. So they go there and they enjoy the party.

They enjoy the party cake and the games and pass the parcel. There's lots of sweetmeats, which is exactly what I expect from an Egyptian party. They enjoy the party cake and the games and pass the parcel. There's a lot of sweetmeats, which is exactly what I expect from an Egyptian party. Of course. And then they all start filing down this steep, narrow passage. And the Albanians slam the doors shut. The Mamluks are going down on their horses. And they're trapped in this passageway.

And so they're easy game. And they all get wiped out or do they the story goes that one of them jumps over the wall on his horse on his horse and the horse dies but he manages to get away and he's the only survivor yeah but but that's the that's the story so that's not a good party um and i i think it's fair to say that dynastic change in Islamic history often features terrible parties. So the very first one, the Umayyads are the first Islamic dynasty. And they get eliminated by the Abbasids who go on to found Baghdad. And the last Umayyad caliph, Marwan, gets pursued again to Egypt, gets cornered, killed, head gets sent to the Abbasids, and they feed his tongue to a cat. But they then, they're anxious to round up the remaining Umayyads.

Yeah. And so they get them all, and they stab them, and then they use them as a kind uh the foundation for a party so they drape them with carpets and put all the kind of you know the couches and the treats the sweetmeats and things and that they all lie there and they can hear the groans of the maids as they slowly expire so i suppose i mean i suppose that's a great party if you're an aborted but it's a it's a terrible party if you're an aborted see tom i was actually uh when we were drafting this, I was a bit gutted that we chose that and not Chappaquiddick. But now I think that is a better party,

a more disastrous party than Chappaquiddick. Yes, I think it probably is. We have to come back to Chappaquiddick in the future. Ted Kennedy's rather darkest hour. Well, not just his darkest hour, but Mary Jo Capetna's darkest hour in a future podcast, I think. Yes, we will. Definitely.

Right. So we're halfway through the top 10. Tension is mounting. I think at this point we should take a break. And when we come back, we'll be giving the top five. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History. Now now before we continue with history's most disastrous parties we want to let you know that we are going to let you the listeners choose the topic of an

upcoming episode what could possibly go wrong so we've had billions of episode suggestions on twitter and on email and on our Discord chat room for the Restless History Club members over the last few months. And we have narrowed them down to the four, the big four options, and we want you, the listeners, to decide. So Tom, would you like to unveil the shortlist? Number one, The Historical Jesus, suggested by Joe Evans-Green. Number two, The Winter of Discontent in the late 70s by Roy Nelly. Number three, Top Sidekicks. So that's Agrippa, Eden, Keith Joseph, and that's suggested by Simon Girdleston. And number four, The Special Relationship. So I guess that's Britain and

America, and that's suggested by amy mantrovadi so there you have it the historical jesus the winter of discontent top sidekicks and the special relationship and if you want to get involved it is a bit like choosing a party leader it is one person one vote we don't have a trade union block vote in the rest is history but you do have to be a a member of the rest is history club whether you call yourself a wang a friend of the show or an athelstan doesn't matter but you have to be part of the club to vote. So go to restishistorypod.com, you sign up to the Discord, and then you click on the polls channel to cast your vote. The poll is now live, and it will be until Wednesday evening, and we will announce the

winning topic on next week's episode, and we will then think about when we're going to record it. So welcome back to The Rest is History. We're all about parties this week. We've done some of the top 10 most disastrous parties in history. We are approaching our top five. Tom, a great character awaits us now. One of my favourite Roman emperors, Elagabalus. Yes. Sun worshing uh by all accounts

a dreadful man though perhaps much maligned by the i'm basing this on the augustan history which i i suspect you will tell me is pure propaganda so what century are we in first we are we're in the early third century um so the the age of the antonine peace is uh coming to an end in fact elegabalus is is the last of the Antonine in that particular family he reigns 218 to 222 and as you say the main source for his life

is the Augustan history and the account that it gives is very very lurid that's putting it mildly so yes so Elagabalus is according to this biography of him in the Augustan history, very much a party animal. So he likes to dress up as Venus.

He's reputedly the first emperor to wear nothing but silk. That's right, yeah. He lolls around on cushions that are filled with rabbit fur. He's also made entirely of silver. He feeds his dogs on cushions that are filled with rabbit fur. He's made entirely of silver. He feeds his dogs on foie gras. He only swims in perfumed swimming pools. He has a chariot drawn by kind of female ponies. So women who, you know,

are bitted and bridled and human ponies. But he's a japester. Well, some of these details are absolutely preposterous. So some of this, and this reading from the Augustan history, some of his humbler friends, he would seat on air pillows instead of on cushions.

And he would let out the air while they were dining. So that often the diners were suddenly found under the table. I mean, that's just, that's only a step up from a whoopee cushion. But if you, but if you get that, you get off lightly.

Yeah. Well, because... Well, so another gag of his was to invite people to massive banquets, but the food that they were given was made entirely out of wax or wood or pottery or whatever, where he'd have real food and he'd be guzzling away. They'd just have to stare at it and then pretend that they'd eaten. But the worst was if he invited you to stay overnight oh yeah and he'd get you hammered he'd get hammered and then and then he'd say i've procured you the most skillful and beautiful

courtesans in the world uh and and leave the lights off and they'd wake up and discover that they were withered old crones yeah old hags from ethiopia yes in the august but i thought you were going to say what he does is um it says here when his friends became drunk he would shut them up and suddenly during the night he would let in his lions and leopards and bears so that's the ultimate so that all of them harmless because they'd obviously had their teeth taken out or something so that his friends on awakening at dawn or worse during the night would find leopards and leopards and bears in the room and some even died basically of a heart attack when they woke up to find they were sleeping next to a leopard yeah so so he's i mean he's a

tremendous laugh one more though tom one more one more this is the most banal i think he'll propose to his guests by way of a feat they should invent new sauces for giving flavor to the food and he would offer a large prize for the man who invented the best sauce. On the other hand, if the sauce did not please him, the inventor was ordered to continue eating it until he invented a better one. So when you're turning up with a sauce,

you've got to keep eating it until you come up with a better one. Well, he's kind of MasterChef with... With leopards. With leopards. I think that would be brilliant. You know who would have enjoyed his parties, Tom? With leopards. With leopards. I think that would be brilliant. You know who would have enjoyed his parties, Tom?

Dietrich Graf von Hülsenhäsel. Yes, he would. And Ted Kennedy, actually. He'd have loved it as well. Well, actually, so a comment on this from Joseph Evans Green. This episode will surely be awash with absolute lads. I i think basically all these all these guys i mean imagine anyway the famous um party that elegabalus supposedly hosted um is illustrated by the famous painting by lawrence alma todema the kind of dutch painter of classical scenes

um and it shows elegabalus drowning his guests beneath suffocating his guests beneath the rose petals and the story goes that rose petals start to drop down on the guests but they're at the table and everyone's thinking this is delightful how charming and they continue to fall and they continue to fall and they continue to fall until they everyone is dead suffocated by it and when um when alma todema painted this uh very famous painting if you haven't seen it do google it um it was in the dead of winter and so we had to send for rose petals from the french riviera which is kind of great that's very elegabal and behavior in itself well it is and elegabalus was the great hero of the kind of, you know, the decadence and romantics. So kind of wild and people like that.

Aubrey Beardsley-ish kind of people. Aubrey Beardsley, yeah. Antoine Artaud called him the crowned anarchist. What happened to him, Tom? Nothing good. He got murdered. Yeah, he got murdered. Good to do.

Because he can't make people sit on air cushions and next to leopards for that long. One party too far. Yeah. So he's at number five. And I think he's not higher because it probably didn't happen. Yes, that's the issue with this, isn't it? That none of it really happened. Yeah, so that's a shame.

I think parties actually have to have happened. But our next party definitely did happen because we've mentioned it on the show before. Number four. That's right, isn't it, Tom? It is, yeah. So this is suggested by james lavender and we then have an honorable mention well so it's the black dinner it's a scott it's the first scottish party of the uh of the top 10 and we also because this is really a sort of um a devolved

administrations party section because we're also going to be touching on the abigavenny massacre recommended by andrew patterson so, tell us about The Black Dinner. So The Black Dinner, lots of fans of Game of Thrones will have heard of this because it provided the model for the Red Wedding. And it's called The Black Dinner both because it was a terrible thing, but also because it involves the Douglases, who are probably the most powerful of the Lowland families in the late middle ages um they had come to prominence during the scottish wars of independence um and you have uh sir james douglas uh who was known to the scots as the good douglas yeah and to the english as black douglas because he was he was such a kind of proficient

fighter against them um and he he's he is the guy who gets charged by robert bruce to take his heart to the holy land and he takes a wrong turning and ends up in spain where where where he dies fighting the moors and um bruce's heart is brought back and buried, I think, in, is it Melrose? I think it's Melrose. It might be Melrose, yeah. And the Earl of Douglas is known as Black Douglas. The Earl of Angus, who's another kind of family, and this, again, going back to Macbeth, the complexities of Scottish families are known as the Red Douglases.

And the Black Dinner takes place in 1440 so that's several generations after um the original Douglas um and it involves it's not an uncle murdering his nephew but it's a great uncle yeah murdering the 16 year old William Douglas isn't it yeah who is the sixth yeah the sixth Earl of Douglas um and his brother. So it's quite Richard III. But this is also a children's party, which is worse, because they're invited to dinner with James II of Scotland, who's 10 years old. Yeah.

And while they're eating, they're having a lovely dinner. James II is having a wonderful time. And while they're eating, the servants bring in a black bull's head, which is meant to be... They couldn't get a magician. Yeah. It's basically, when they bring in this black bull's head, which is meant to be... They couldn't get a magician. Yeah. It's basically, when they bring in this black bull's head, it's a symbol of death.

This is the equivalent of the black spot from Treasure Island, isn't it? At that point, these two... So William Douglas is 16. He's turned up with his younger brother. At this point, when the black bull's head makes his appearance, they're dragged out, aren't they? And basically beheaded.

Is that right, Tom? Yeah. After a kind of fake trial. And they're beheaded so that one of the people who's organised it is also a Douglas, so that he can basically get the wealth and titles and the earldom. Well, that's the great uncle. Right.

James, yeah. It's very bad. Very bad form. Walter Scott writes a poem about this. Tom, do you want to know how it goes? Yeah, I'd love to. I'd love a bit of poetry. Edinburgh Castle, town and tower.

God grant thou sink for sin. And that in for the black dinner, old Douglas Gatt therein. Who knows what that means? I don't know what that means, but anyways, that was a very powerful... The Scotsman would give that more than one star, I think. A wonderful flavour of what the world missed

when you were denied the chance to play Macbeth. Or indeed Walter Scott. Well, now talking of great dramatic portrayals. So the Abergavenny Massacre, are you familiar with this? No, but I saw it had been suggested by Andrew Patterson. So the Abergavenny Massacre is not dissimilar from this or from the Ross Gilder, carry on. We're on the Welsh marches.

William de Breaux who's a sort of marcher lord he invites a man called Sitzelt and all the powess chieftains to a feast at Christmas they're going to bury all the hatchets and be great pals

and have a wonderful time it's a classic Game of Thrones style story they pitch up Christmas feast, stack the weapons in a corner ale is flowing um suddenly the doors are barred william de bros's men come rush in and massacre everybody william de bros earns the the name the ogre of abogavenny and abogavenny castle has this taint of of treachery and and murder ever since so this is and other people he's murdering Welsh? They're Welsh. They are Welsh.

So this is a kind of... Well, he's not English, is he? No, he's a Norman kind of marcher. But here's the weird thing. So this fellow, whoever it was suggested Abergavenny Massacre. Who was it who suggested it? Andrew Passam. I thought I'll read up on this. I saw there was a big thing on the Brecon Beacons National Park

official website about it. Because obviously it's taking place there. I had a look, and there is an essay on the Brecon Beacons National Park website, written apparently by William de Breaux, defending himself in the style of Donald Trump. Can you believe that? It's so weird. People who don't understand, they only believe liars and haters. People who fail to make up their own minds as to the truth. They call me the ogre of Abergavenny. Wrong. I gathered a team, truly great and talented men, patriots, to plan very smoothly, very effectively, very efficiently, how we could defeat these terrorists once and for all and make the marches safe for civilization and make the crown great again. My many enemies, losers, and jealous people have misrepresented this story. The news of the Christmas victory did not get the praise it deserved.

We stayed strong. We won a great victory, a truly great victory. And it goes on like that for hours, basically, explaining why the massacre at Abergavenny, he's been hard done by, by losers and liars, the fake news media and all this stuff. It's such a weird thing to be on the official National Park website, but there it is. Well, I like that. So you didn't expect that story to take that turn, but it did.

So disastrous parties can have, you know, hilarious consequences. Well, that brings us very neatly to uh to number three which i think is a truly terrible party uh i mean it's it's an awful party and it's been seared on my mind ever since i read uh barbara tuckman's distant mirror years and years ago one of my favorite books when i was about 12 yes and and this is um the ballad days are done charles the sixth the dance of the dance of the kind of burning people yeah dance of the people set on fire and this is the story of charles the sixth who in in a way is the kind of the henry the sixth of france so this is um this is kind of the interval in the hundred years war so the english have come they fought chrissy therefore poitier they've basically been kind of forced back out under that great French king, Charles V.

Charles V has died in 1380 and he's succeeded by his son, Charles, originally named Charles. He becomes Charles VI, aged 12. Yeah. Poor fellow, he's as mad as a hatter, Tom. Well, he's not at this point. So in his kind of teenage years, he's not.

He comes of age, he starts ruling we have um various dukes among them um our old friend the duke of burgundy well the bold yeah he they listen to our burgundy podcast may remember charles the sixth um and what what he later believes about himself all these so there are all these kind of various predatory dukes and so on hanging around. And in 1392, Charles VI becomes obsessed with the idea that one of these kind of powerful magnates is out to get him. And he's retreated to Brittany. And so Charles orders an invasion force to go out from Paris to invade Brittany. And he's riding along. and he is apart from the rest of the group because it's very hot it's very dusty he doesn't want to get the dust that's been kicked up by all his partner's horses in his nose and he's riding along and suddenly a barefoot madman comes running

out of the woods and reaches up and tries to hold his bridle and he shouts out ride no further noble king turn back you were betrayed and he follows the king shouting this for about half an hour. And it's obviously very, very uncomfortable, very unsettling for the king who's starting to feel a bit dizzy in the heat. And they stop. And then one of his pages drops a lance and it clangs against the helmet. And suddenly the king goes completely mad and he draws his sword and he's convinced that he's being attacked by um by people he starts attacking his own uh his own um party he attacks his brother yeah duke of orleo louis the duke of orleo uh and he has to be kind of overpowered and philip duke of burgundy seizes control of the situation they head back to paris and the king is nursed back to a precarious kind of health uh by winter and over the winter season

they just everyone decides that the way to to get the king you know happy to get him functioning is to provide a whole series of parties so tomfoolery just endless tomfoolery isn't it james yeah mad capery um and on the 28th of january his wife isabelabel, Isabeau, the queen, she is celebrating the third wedding of one of her favourite ladies-in-waiting. And it's the custom when you celebrate the wedding of someone who's already been married that you kind of have particularly riotous behaviour. Yeah, you do it in a less, dare I say, a less sacral way, Tom. A less sacral way, yes. So decorum is thrown to the winds. It's like Downing Street.

And there's a very unpleasant guy called Huguet de Guissy, who is very, very unpleasant. And his particular party trick is if a servant offends him, he kind of forces the servant to fall down on the floor and he puts his spurred boot on the back of the servant and he shouts out bark dog bark oh it's a bit like succession yeah the boar on the floor very successful that episode um and ugo decides that it would be tremendous fun and obviously brilliant when the king is a little bit precarious and fragile, if they all dress up as trees, as kind of wild men of the trees. So they coat themselves in pitch and they add various branches,

bits of wood, bits of twig. And sort of hair and fur and stuff, isn't it? And they all wear masks so that nobody can see who they are. And because obviously they understand that this is a fire hazard i mean that's part of the thrill of it you know that you're dicing with death very strict orders are given that no one is to have a torch that's right so there are six of them they all go rushing in to where the queen and her lady-in-waiting is celebrating the nuptials and they start dancing and shouting obscenities shouting obscenities nobody knows who they are

yeah but you know but this is what people have been expecting. And then disastrously, Louis, the king's brother, the Duke of Orléans, comes in and he hasn't heard the orders. He's a bit tipsy and he's carrying a torch. Carries a torch. And a spark catches the pitch on the bodies of one of the revelers. And it just goes whoosh. And the queen screams because she knows that her husband is one of these six dancing men.

But his aunt, who is only 15, is wearing a massive dress, colossal dress. A chest of berry. And she throws her skirt over him to basically put out his, you know, to protect him from the flames and to put out any sparks that have attached themselves to him. But then the other five all go up like candles, don't they? One of them jumps into a wine cooler. He does, of course. Yes, he does. So two of them survive.

The sieur de Nantouillet, he jumps into a big vat of sort of Duke of Cairns style, jumps into a vat of wine. But the others. He's all right um yeah the others the others so one dies on the spot yeah two two linger kind of for two days and then die of their burns and then huger the gc he dies after three days and he gets put in his coffin and the cortege go through paris and as it goes through the streets of Paris everyone shouts out bark dog bark oh my word well and of course this drives the king completely around the twist I was about to say this isn't good for Charles's mental health no it's not good for his mental health sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night oh Tom if only he'd listen to your ads I know um

wondering will I ever stop being mad yeah he won't because he he thinks he's made of glass and all that kind of stuff that's a very sad story poor charles and but it's good for henry v yeah so it's so it all ends happily in the end yes right so that's i think i think that's i mean in a way the most upsetting perhaps that's quite tragic well this next party is very tragic so number two um claire jay suggested this i'm glad she did because I suggest it was one of the first parties I thought of when we talked about disastrous parties. So sort of friends of the show or sort of tragic friends of the show, I should say, uh, Nicholas and Alexandra, the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, they are getting crowned

in May, 1896, um, at the Uspensky Cathedral in the Kremlin. And there are all kinds of massive celebrations and festivities arranged to celebrate the latest kind of Romanov Tsar. And there's going to be a huge party, sort of festival banquet at Kadinka Field, based on the outskirts of Moscow. So the way that's going to work is they put up a sort of mock theatres, kind of wooden theatres. They put up all kinds of stands.

They've built 20 bars. Now, near where it's going to happen, there's this field with kind of all gullies and ravines, and it's a bit kind of raggedy field. But that's fine. Everyone's going to turn up and have a tremendous time. Now, they are told by the evening of the 29th of May, so it's going to turn up and have a tremendous time. Now they are told by the evening of the

29th of May, so it's going to be the next day, on the 29th of May, the rumor goes around Moscow that there are going to be all kinds of gifts given to the people when this party takes place. So basically the gifts you get, now these may not sound like much to you, Tom, but people of Moscow in 1896,

a bread roll, a piece of sausage, some pretzels, some gingerbread, and a commemorative cup. Which sounds better than the Fyre Festival. Yeah, it's a lot better than the Fyre Festival. So people are very excited about this. And the rumor goes around that in the cup, there will be a gold coin, which people are very, very excited by. So by dawn on the morning of the party, there are thousands of people already streaming onto this field. Basically, it's the classic thing.

The authorities haven't anticipated the demand. They provided about 2,000 policemen, but that's nowhere near enough to control the crowds. And then a rumour goes around, sort of as the excitement mounts the morning wears on a rumor goes around um that they are going to run out of pretzels and beer and the crowd all get very excited and they stampede towards the the stalls and as i said the field is kind of ragged and pitted and there's ditches and stuff people start to fall into a ditch more people part on top of them and basically um at least 1 200 people are crushed to death at this at this party and there

are thousands upon thousands more perhaps as many as 20 000 who are badly injured so it's an absolutely appalling ghastly scene the extraordinary thing is the festival continues so the czar and alexandra they turn up at about two o'clock by which time the dead have been taken away um and then that evening they go on to a ball at the at the french ambassador isn't it the french embassy exactly now nicholas writes about this in his diary and he says you know it's um it was a terrible mishap and awful awful and all this but because he's a very he and alexandra are very controlled slightly neurotic anxious serious people they don't do a kind of princess diana and go and emote and no they go to church they exactly and everybody says whatever it is and

everybody says you know they don't care they don't so right from the beginning lots of people say um well first of all it's called bloody nicholas bloody nicholas exactly this is he has his nickname right from the beginning it's ill-fated that this is a terrible omen for his reign but of course the reason that one of the reasons it's a terrible omen is that in a very unequal divided febrile society it's the worst possible start and you know no script writer could imagine a scene better calculated to prove that you have an uncaring aloof elite and a downtrodden oppressed majority and as you've said all along the key to a really disastrous party is that it holds a mirror up to

fractures exactly exactly pathologies within a society which obviously this does very powerfully. Right. So I think that's indisputably a terrible party. We now come to our choice of number one. Yeah. And there's a bit of a cheat this, because we have actually already discussed it. Well, it's two parties in one list, this though, Tom. So that's why we've chosen it,

because this is a disastrous party that echoes down the centuries and gives birth to a second disastrous party. So we have chosen as our most disastrous party in history, Alexander burning down Persepolis, Alexander the Great. Well, it's basically Persepolis as a party venue. I think this isn't it. Yeah. So tell us about Alexander, Tom. Well, we've got simon james george not many parties get that out of hand yeah so alex alexander so joseph evans

green had said that this episode will be a wash with absolute lads alexander is obviously the ultimate lad uh and he he features in three disastrous parties really really. So there's the party that is held to celebrate his father, Philip. He gets remarried, gets drunk, stumbles. And Alexander, who's very miffed that his father has remarried, kind of dismissively, this is when Philip is planning to invade Persia, says,

men of Macedon, what a fine hero the states of Greece have to lead their armies from Europe to Asia. He's not able to pass from one table to another without falling. It says, men of Macedon, what a fine hero. The states of Greece have to lead their armies from Europe to Asia. He's not able to pass from one table to another without falling. Philip tries to kill him. Alexander runs away. It's all terrible.

But also, Tom. It's a bad wedding party. But also, Philip, they had a party, didn't they, for Philip's daughter? Was it Alexander's sister who was getting married? And that's where Philip was assassinated. Yes, that's another one. Philip has a terrible record with parties.

So that's a bad one. Okay, so there's four, so that's a bad one. Then there's the murder of Black Clitus, friend of Philip, kind of mentor to Alexander. The brother of Alexander's old nanny. Yeah, so they have a massive bust up and Alexander ends up scurrying him with a spear. That's in Samarkand, isn't it?

This one is 330. Alexander has defeated the Persians in three great battles. The third one at Gaugamela, Darius III, has fled. So Mesopotamia and Persia are now Alexander's. So he

goes to Babylon, and then he rides up to Persepolis, which is the... It's the city that most symbolizes the power of the Persian dynasty, the Achaemenids, whom Alexander has toppled. And although generally Alexander wants to lay claim to the inheritance of the Persian empire, on this occasion, clearly he has decided that Persepolis should go, that he will be making a statement that the Achaemenid era is over and that he is the new king of Persia. And the story goes that he is celebrating capture of Persepolis, riotously drunk. And there is a courtesan there, Hetera, called Teis, who is the mistress of Ptolemy,

our friend with the talking snakes, who subsequently becomes king of Egypt. And she is Athenian. And one of the Persian kings, Xerxes, had burnt the Acropolis during the invasion of Greece in 480 BC. And she says, let's have vengeance. Let's burn Persepolis. And so the story goes that Alexander, very drunk by this point, and all the gang, Paius kind of cheering them them on incinerate the palace. They throw all these torches don't they into the Xerxes

the hall with the thousand columns or whatever it's called. The fantastic buildings that are far greater than anything in Greece. The finest most splendid statements of power in the sort of near eastern world. Often sculpted by Greeks. But

they're absolutely, you know, you know a lot of made of wood so it all burns down um these rafters come crashing down it's a terrible scene but as you say it resounds down the centuries because it becomes that party becomes the sort of template doesn't it for it's the sort of it's it's the ultimate symbol of hubris and sort of drunkenness and all this kind of stuff and actually that our next persepolis party has also become a symbol of hubris though some historians think slightly unfairly so let's go more than 2 000 years forward in time we're in 19 just to nathan hogg for suggesting this yeah very good suggestion. We're in 1971, on October 1971, and it is the 2,500th anniversary of Persia?

No, of Cyrus. Of Cyrus the Great, exactly. And the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who we talked about in our oil crisis, oil weapon episode. He is very keen to assert Iranian power, modernity, sort of its renewed status in the world to assert his regime and all this stuff. So he organized this colossal party. Some, you know, as with so much of this, like with al-Aqaba's party, how much of this like with alagabas's party how much of this is true is actually difficult to say even though it's very recent because the guinness book of records

crowned this the greatest banquet in human history but whether that's really the truth the food is flown in from um from maxims in paris exactly yeah and there's all kinds of there's 250 mercedes limousines um There's dinnerware from the Emoge. There are special plates commissioned from Spode of England. 10,000 plates decorated in turquoise and gold. All this sort of stuff is special. And lots of... So the Queen doesn't go.

Jeke Venimer goes. Nixon doesn't go. Spyro Agnew goes. Spyro Agnew goes. Princess Anne goes. Haile Selassie goes. Yeah, Haile Selassie, Tito, Imelda Marcos Ceausescu, Mobutu

a lot of people who've turned up in the show before they all go so it's an absolutely tremendous occasion if you like dictators or princesses and yeah they have this huge blowout and there's a Son and Lumiere show there's all this kind of stuff.

But what's so interesting is, so the Shah's regime falls sort of seven, eight years later in the Iranian revolution, and the party becomes this metaphor for the hubris of the Shah's regime. It has done ever since. And the estimates of its cost have kind of ballooned and ballooned. But it turns out, so I read, there's an academic study of this by a chap called Robert Steele, and he says a lot of this stuff is just made up.

So there's a claim, for example, they flew in 50,000 songbirds from Europe. And he says, this is just utterly invented. They didn't need to fly in songbirds. There are lots of songbirds in Iran. What happened is that when the revolution took place, in order to basically besmirch the Shahs, I mean, the party was an extravagant blowout, no question, but that people made ever more inflated claims about it

in order to kind of paint the shah as this sort of demented madman. But also it's to attack the very institution of monarchy itself. Exactly. Which is why the fact it's at Persepolis is so potent. And actually, if you go to Persepolis the the frameworks of the tents that they put up which i think were modeled on the field of the cloth of gold yeah um you can still see them so you walk up a path towards the ruins and the kind of the the skeletons the the rusting skeletons of these tents are still there i guess

as a you know as a reminder exactly as a reminder I mean, all that stuff about the songbirds and everything, I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? Because it does suggest, say, the Aligabalus episode. I mean, you can kind of see how these stories develop and indeed even the story that Alexander tortures it as part of a drunken party. But I agree. It's really the ultimate disastrous party, I think,

because it resonates so powerfully. so tom give me your choice so if there's one party if you had to go to one which would you go to and which is one would you least likely like to go to i think for the sheer improbability of it seeing the ballet dance in the black forest that's what i choose i mean i enjoyed that story so much that i would love to have been at that party. Which would you least like to go to? Well, I think the Rose Petals, because then you're going to die. No, no, no. I'd definitely, I'd have, the one I'd least like to go to,

surely you must be able to get, I'd hate to go to the Fyre Festival. Yeah. With a load of would-be influencers. But you wouldn't, but the influencers didn't go. I think if I went to that fest, if I'd gone to the Fyre Festival, I mean, it's inconceivable. I can't imagine the scenario in which I would go to the Fyre Festival. But if I had gone, I think I would much rather have been like the Black Dinner or a Mamluk.

Is your dislike of going to festivals so great that you'd rather be smothered to death beneath rose petals? If it was with the people at the Fyre Festival, I think yes. Well, if there are any influencers who are running massive festivals out there who'd like to invite dominic i mean it'd be a great endorsement for your festival actually if you converted me so yeah i'm very much up for if like any of these bella hadid people want to contact me and invite me to their festival and maybe maybe you could take your tutu yeah i'll go as count von whatever how about that and we may have a new candidate for the most disastrous party of all time exactly anyway thanks ever so much for listening um what have we got coming up dominic we have got oh we've got um

the last um the last emperor of mexico haven't we that's a very that's a very exciting story very actually quite a few disastrous parties in that i think so thank you very much for listening and we'll see you all next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman.

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