% Interview - Greg Jenner answers your questions Horrible Histories Knights History of Poo and more
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Feb 99 min read
Interview - Greg Jenner answers your questions Horrible Histories Knights History of Poo and more
Updated: Sep 5
Henley-On-Thames Literary Festival, By James Gifford-MeedBest-Selling Author, Podcaster, Presenter, Horrible Histories History Consultant and man with exceptionally friendly-looking hair, Greg Jenner needs no introduction. Though if I don't give him an introduction, then what would I fill this awkward paragraph with at the start of the interview?
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Evelyn Zhang 4 minutes ago
It's got to have some words on it, otherwise anarchy may well ensue.
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Andrew Wilson 1 minutes ago
He also was a key member of the team on the BAFTA-nominated film Horrible Histories: The Movie – R...
It's got to have some words on it, otherwise anarchy may well ensue.
With that in mind, let's do some introducing. And thankfully, Greg's website has all the info and will save my fingers some tapping: "Greg Jenner is the host of the chart-topping comedy BBC podcast You’re Dead To Me (30 million downloads), the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Past Forward: A Century of Sound, the BBC’s history podcast for children Homeschool History, and the Audible series A Somewhat Complete History of Sitting Down. He is the Historical Consultant to all nine series of CBBC’s Emmy & multiple BAFTA award-winning TV comedy series Horrible Histories, being solely responsible for the factual accuracy of over 2000 sketches and 140+ comedy songs.
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Charlotte Lee 8 minutes ago
He also was a key member of the team on the BAFTA-nominated film Horrible Histories: The Movie – R...
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Noah Davis 2 minutes ago
Anyway, lets not go down that emotional angst ridden black hole. We asked you guys, our fabulous rea...
He also was a key member of the team on the BAFTA-nominated film Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans. Greg is also the author of the new book Ask A Historian (2021), the critically well-reviewed Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity, From Bronze Age To Silver Screen (2020), and the bestselling A Million Years In A Day: A Curious History of Ordinary Life, From Stone Age To Phone Age (2015), which is an entertaining romp through the evolution of our daily routines."
That sure is a lot of stuff and makes my lifetime achievement of having successfully fed myself this morning seem positively redundant.
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Sophie Martin 1 minutes ago
Anyway, lets not go down that emotional angst ridden black hole. We asked you guys, our fabulous rea...
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Mason Rodriguez 2 minutes ago
Read on and maybe you'll discover that Greg has answered your question, yes you, the person cur...
Anyway, lets not go down that emotional angst ridden black hole. We asked you guys, our fabulous readers, for some questions to ask Greg and boy-oh-boy you did not disappoint!
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Isaac Schmidt 9 minutes ago
Read on and maybe you'll discover that Greg has answered your question, yes you, the person cur...
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Dylan Patel 8 minutes ago
Yes, that's right, the one who is now pointing at themselves in a confused fashion wondering if...
Read on and maybe you'll discover that Greg has answered your question, yes you, the person currently reading these words. Yes you, the one with a face.
Yes, that's right, the one who is now pointing at themselves in a confused fashion wondering if it's you I'm referring to. Yes, the one who is nodding and smiling in understanding.
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Alexander Wang 2 minutes ago
That's it, the one who is clicking on an add at the side of this interview so Uncle Google can ...
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Isaac Schmidt 9 minutes ago
The thing I love about it, is that every day, it’s surprising. I learn something new every day, I ...
That's it, the one who is clicking on an add at the side of this interview so Uncle Google can give us one (or maybe even two!) pence of sweet sweet of ad revenue. Yes, you.
Greg Jenner - Making 1066 drama, Giles Keyte, 2008From Emily, age 9, “What’s the best thing about being a historian”? What a question to start with!
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Sofia Garcia 30 minutes ago
The thing I love about it, is that every day, it’s surprising. I learn something new every day, I ...
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Scarlett Brown 13 minutes ago
It’s a really exciting way to live a life, to update your understanding, as you reframe and rethin...
The thing I love about it, is that every day, it’s surprising. I learn something new every day, I can often have my understanding of the entire world changed by reading something fascinating and interesting.
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Mason Rodriguez 11 minutes ago
It’s a really exciting way to live a life, to update your understanding, as you reframe and rethin...
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Sofia Garcia 8 minutes ago
It’s a really rewarding and friendly way of thinking about other people. It helps me understand ot...
It’s a really exciting way to live a life, to update your understanding, as you reframe and rethink what the world is like. Why our lives are the way they are.
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Zoe Mueller 12 minutes ago
It’s a really rewarding and friendly way of thinking about other people. It helps me understand ot...
It’s a really rewarding and friendly way of thinking about other people. It helps me understand other people’s lives.
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Noah Davis 3 minutes ago
I find it really exciting. You wake up and by the end of the day, you have a totally different way o...
I find it really exciting. You wake up and by the end of the day, you have a totally different way of understanding the world than you did before.
Bella wanted to ask, “What comes first in Horrible Histories, the jokes or the history”?
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Emma Wilson 21 minutes ago
Always the history. This is what made Horrible Histories really different from what came beforehand....
Always the history. This is what made Horrible Histories really different from what came beforehand.
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Evelyn Zhang 8 minutes ago
Even shows like Blackadder or Mony Python or whatever, these incredible shows that we were all influ...
Even shows like Blackadder or Mony Python or whatever, these incredible shows that we were all influenced by, they all started with the joke. Whereas with Horrible Histories and everything I’ve done since, you always start with the history first and then you try and make it funny.
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Joseph Kim 7 minutes ago
Fundamentally you’re trying to communicate the information and then you’re trying to find a nice...
Fundamentally you’re trying to communicate the information and then you’re trying to find a nice way of delivering it. But if you’re thinking of the joke first you’ll always have to change the history to make it fit.
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Julia Zhang 19 minutes ago
I’m trying to explain the complex thing, the hard thing. History is hard, it’s messy, sometimes ...
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Isaac Schmidt 24 minutes ago
We may only have theories or there are two versions of a story.
So, we alw...
I’m trying to explain the complex thing, the hard thing. History is hard, it’s messy, sometimes we don’t have easy answers, and sometimes we don’t know things.
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James Smith 19 minutes ago
We may only have theories or there are two versions of a story.
So, we alw...
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Nathan Chen 23 minutes ago
Horrible Histories, I’ve done that show for thirteen years now. I have a...
We may only have theories or there are two versions of a story.
So, we always start with what we know, then search for a funny way to express it. Because if you go the other way round the joke will always take precedence, and that’s not what a historian would want to do.
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Victoria Lopez 2 minutes ago
Horrible Histories, I’ve done that show for thirteen years now. I have a...
Horrible Histories, I’ve done that show for thirteen years now. I have a team of researchers now but for the first five years it was me doing the history of the world every week.
We would sit down in a big room, with writers and producers and then just me, and I would talk at them for six hours, maybe eight hours, about a different subject each week. Tudors one week, Vikings the next.
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Grace Liu 3 minutes ago
I would just tell them information and they would have to make it funny. That’s why Horrible Histo...
I would just tell them information and they would have to make it funny. That’s why Horrible Histories works, because at the core of it, it’s a show about history and then jokes are added on top.
Xander wants to know “Where do the ideas for Horrible History sketches come from? How do you decide on which history topics to feature when there’s so much to choose from”?
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Lucas Martinez 18 minutes ago
You fire stuff at them! You get a whole lot of people in a room, feed them lots of biscuits and Hari...
You fire stuff at them! You get a whole lot of people in a room, feed them lots of biscuits and Haribo. Actually, I eat all the Haribo!
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Hannah Kim 30 minutes ago
Every series of Horrible Histories we need two hundred sketches, so you need two hundred different i...
Every series of Horrible Histories we need two hundred sketches, so you need two hundred different ideas and each sketch needs eight to ten jokes in it. You don’t start with the joke, you start with the idea.
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Andrew Wilson 49 minutes ago
So, for example, say you’re trying to explain the dissolution of the monasteries. This is all abou...
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Thomas Anderson 42 minutes ago
Which is a very weird word. I’m sure the kids reading this are like ‘Dissolve them?...
So, for example, say you’re trying to explain the dissolution of the monasteries. This is all about Henry VIII and why he wanted to dissolve the monasteries.
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Zoe Mueller 13 minutes ago
Which is a very weird word. I’m sure the kids reading this are like ‘Dissolve them?...
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Grace Liu 80 minutes ago
What, in Alka-Seltzer?’ Henry wanted to close the monasteries down, take their land, all their mon...
Which is a very weird word. I’m sure the kids reading this are like ‘Dissolve them?
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Zoe Mueller 11 minutes ago
What, in Alka-Seltzer?’ Henry wanted to close the monasteries down, take their land, all their mon...
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Daniel Kumar 12 minutes ago
Courtesy BBCSo, he dissolved the monasteries and the joke we decided we co...
What, in Alka-Seltzer?’ Henry wanted to close the monasteries down, take their land, all their money and assets. He wanted to make himself the King but also be in charge of his own English Church and he wanted all the wealth the church had.
Courtesy BBCSo, he dissolved the monasteries and the joke we decided we could tell with that is based around one of those daytime TV shows that your mum might watch. One’s where people look in the attic to see if they have any valuables that they could sell at a car boot.
Maybe there’s an antique painting in the loft that they didn’t know is valuable. They have a little rummage in the attic and they go ‘Oh!
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Chloe Santos 17 minutes ago
I found this old pottery, maybe it’s worth seventy five pounds’? The joke was, what if we do tha...
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Noah Davis 3 minutes ago
All you’ve done there is look for a single idea. It’s a very complicated part of history, very h...
I found this old pottery, maybe it’s worth seventy five pounds’? The joke was, what if we do that and its Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, his chief advisor, and they’re rummaging around looking for books and treasure and valuable things.
So the dissolution of the monasteries turns into ‘Cash in the Abbey’ a day time TV show.
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Isaac Schmidt 11 minutes ago
All you’ve done there is look for a single idea. It’s a very complicated part of history, very h...
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Noah Davis 60 minutes ago
The rest of it writes itself. You know where the jokes are, you know what the information needs to b...
All you’ve done there is look for a single idea. It’s a very complicated part of history, very hard to explain, but how do we make it a single idea? That’s what you need to find.
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Ava White 80 minutes ago
The rest of it writes itself. You know where the jokes are, you know what the information needs to b...
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Elijah Patel 22 minutes ago
One sentence that explains what the joke is going to be. We do that four hundred times per series, p...
The rest of it writes itself. You know where the jokes are, you know what the information needs to be, you can have Henry kicking out the monks and declaring war on France. All the history can be drip fed through it but the single premise needs to be one line.
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Noah Davis 10 minutes ago
One sentence that explains what the joke is going to be. We do that four hundred times per series, p...
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Natalie Lopez 4 minutes ago
It’s the same with songs; Queen Cleopatra is this amazing woman from history who dressed very beau...
One sentence that explains what the joke is going to be. We do that four hundred times per series, probably more, because we write sketches that don’t work sometimes or they're not as funny as other ones, or you film them but the props didn’t work or you can’t get a castle in time.
Courtesy BBCWe do hundreds and hundreds of sketches and we use the two hundred best ones.
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William Brown 30 minutes ago
It’s the same with songs; Queen Cleopatra is this amazing woman from history who dressed very beau...
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Audrey Mueller 25 minutes ago
That’s very similar to the Lady Gaga videos from seven or eight years ago. It was like Cleopatra m...
It’s the same with songs; Queen Cleopatra is this amazing woman from history who dressed very beautifully but all the men in her life died mysteriously or were poisoned or murdered. She even killed her own brothers!
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Henry Schmidt 148 minutes ago
That’s very similar to the Lady Gaga videos from seven or eight years ago. It was like Cleopatra m...
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Aria Nguyen 24 minutes ago
Sometimes it’s a lot harder and you need to find a different way in.
Wil...
That’s very similar to the Lady Gaga videos from seven or eight years ago. It was like Cleopatra meets Lady Gaga. Sometimes it’s very easy to do, this is a bit like this.
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Ryan Garcia 2 minutes ago
Sometimes it’s a lot harder and you need to find a different way in.
Wil...
Sometimes it’s a lot harder and you need to find a different way in.
William would like to know “What is the most disgusting thing you know that happened in history?”
There are loads! Loads!
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Thomas Anderson 25 minutes ago
Throughout history various societies have used poo as a type of medicine, they’ve eaten it and sme...
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Luna Park 62 minutes ago
King Charles II used to spread his body with mummy powder, which was ancient Egyptian mummies dusted...
Throughout history various societies have used poo as a type of medicine, they’ve eaten it and smeared it on their bodies. Corpse medicine; people use to eat other people as a type of medicine.
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Henry Schmidt 95 minutes ago
King Charles II used to spread his body with mummy powder, which was ancient Egyptian mummies dusted...
King Charles II used to spread his body with mummy powder, which was ancient Egyptian mummies dusted down. People would make a marmalade out of bone marrow in the 1600s.
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Sofia Garcia 22 minutes ago
There’s so much gross stuff, I can’t even know where to start!
We ofte...
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Hannah Kim 6 minutes ago
In Shakespeare’s day, Shakespeare’s Dad, he actually collected poo and kept it outside his front...
There’s so much gross stuff, I can’t even know where to start!
We often imagine people in the past being very dirty or smelly, and a lot of the time they did their best not to, but at the same time poo was valuable.
In Shakespeare’s day, Shakespeare’s Dad, he actually collected poo and kept it outside his front door, he would sell it as fertilizer. He would go out and scoop up poo and pop it in a little bucket. There was a point in history where if you found some poo you’d say ‘Woohoo!
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Isaac Schmidt 17 minutes ago
Excellent!’
There a lot of people who sadly fell in to their own toilets...
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Isaac Schmidt 17 minutes ago
There’s lots of poo and wee in history.
I wrote a lot about it in my fir...
Excellent!’
There a lot of people who sadly fell in to their own toilets and drowned in poo. There was this guy called Richard the Raker, who was a gong farmer, a toilet cleaner. He fell into his own toilet and drowned, on his day off too!
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Lily Watson 97 minutes ago
There’s lots of poo and wee in history.
I wrote a lot about it in my fir...
There’s lots of poo and wee in history.
I wrote a lot about it in my first book ‘A Million Years in a Day’. The history of toilets is fascinating because everyone poos, everyone wees.
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Ava White 117 minutes ago
One hundred and eight billion people have lived on this planet since the dawn of our species and all...
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Harper Kim 34 minutes ago
In medieval times knighthood was a status that required a lot of wealth. You would need to equip you...
One hundred and eight billion people have lived on this planet since the dawn of our species and all of them have done their dirty business. It’s part of us, of who we are.
Noah and Ezra want to know “Has a commoner ever become a knight?”
Courtesy BBCYes!
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Dylan Patel 73 minutes ago
In medieval times knighthood was a status that required a lot of wealth. You would need to equip you...
In medieval times knighthood was a status that required a lot of wealth. You would need to equip yourself with armour and a horse. And the horse was where the real money was, that would be very expensive.
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Chloe Santos 8 minutes ago
So, it’s not necessarily something that would happen very often but we do know of commoners being ...
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Aria Nguyen 155 minutes ago
Quite rare but might have happened a few times where it’s a symbolic gesture of saying we’re goi...
So, it’s not necessarily something that would happen very often but we do know of commoners being knighted, sometimes before a battle or during a siege. Occasionally there are stories of women being knighted.
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Noah Davis 116 minutes ago
Quite rare but might have happened a few times where it’s a symbolic gesture of saying we’re goi...
Quite rare but might have happened a few times where it’s a symbolic gesture of saying we’re going to fight a huge battle, the fate of the city, so I’m going to knight you so that you fight harder.
Yes, there was the possibility that a commoner may have been knighted. Probably not a peasant, someone really far down, but maybe someone from the middle of society.
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Sophia Chen 97 minutes ago
It can depend on the times, but you’d had to have had some land and some money, so it’s not goin...
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Oliver Taylor 162 minutes ago
Well, the obvious one, because of what’s happening in the world right now, is climate change. Clim...
It can depend on the times, but you’d had to have had some land and some money, so it’s not going to happen often. But, you know, a thousand years of medieval history, I’m sure it’s going to have happened a bit.
This is from Steve, who’s a bit older than the rest, he’s thirty something, “What is the biggest lesson from the past that mankind should be learning today”? Crikey!
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Ella Rodriguez 4 minutes ago
Well, the obvious one, because of what’s happening in the world right now, is climate change. Clim...
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Aria Nguyen 134 minutes ago
We simply cannot carry on the way we are otherwise we’re all going to end up living in extremely d...
Well, the obvious one, because of what’s happening in the world right now, is climate change. Climate change is an enormous thing that we have to be very serious about fighting.
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Liam Wilson 102 minutes ago
We simply cannot carry on the way we are otherwise we’re all going to end up living in extremely d...
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Jack Thompson 99 minutes ago
There were frost fairs on the river Thames because the river was totally frozen.
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We simply cannot carry on the way we are otherwise we’re all going to end up living in extremely difficult times. The history of climate change is fascinating, we can see throughout history many societies that have been affected by climate change. Sometimes those were not drastic, things like the Little Ice Age – which was a three hundred year period, 1400 to 1700 maybe – it gets quite cold and this changes what can grow and rivers freeze over in the winter.
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Daniel Kumar 24 minutes ago
There were frost fairs on the river Thames because the river was totally frozen.
There were frost fairs on the river Thames because the river was totally frozen.
We also see big changes with the arrival of industry and the chopping down of forests. Britain used to be covered in forests and way back in the Bronze Age and in the Iron Age it was deforested hugely.
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Henry Schmidt 7 minutes ago
So much so that what we think of as natural landscapes, were actually deforested by people. We did t...
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Zoe Mueller 25 minutes ago
There’s very little natural landscape in the UK that humans haven’t changed. Either by introduci...
So much so that what we think of as natural landscapes, were actually deforested by people. We did that.
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Oliver Taylor 96 minutes ago
There’s very little natural landscape in the UK that humans haven’t changed. Either by introduci...
There’s very little natural landscape in the UK that humans haven’t changed. Either by introducing animals, or farming on it or building on it. A lot of historians are doing this work now.
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William Brown 49 minutes ago
That’s what we need to be paying attention to. So as a society, as a global population, we can cha...
That’s what we need to be paying attention to. So as a society, as a global population, we can change and save the planet. So, sorry, big scary answer but I think it has to be said.
Thank you so much Greg for answering our readers’ questions!
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Ava White 187 minutes ago
If you’d like to read, listen and watch more of Greg’s work then we have handy links below:
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Kevin Wang 148 minutes ago
- A Masterclass Mini-Guide with Dominic Sandbrook
The Weird and Wonderful History of Medicine - A Ma...
If you’d like to read, listen and watch more of Greg’s work then we have handy links below:
For children:
Horrible Histories - TV Show
Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans - Film
Homeschool History - Podcast
For grown-ups:
Ask A Historian - Book
Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity, From Bronze Age To Silver Screen - Book
A Million Years In A Day: A Curious History of Ordinary Life, From Stone Age To Phone Age -Book
A Somewhat Complete History of Sitting Down - Audible Series
You’re Dead To Me - Podcast
Past Forward: A Century of Sound, - BBC Radio 4
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Interview - Greg Jenner answers your questions Horrible Histories Knights History of Poo and more...
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It's got to have some words on it, otherwise anarchy may well ensue.
