“You’re Dead to Me is different because we try to raise the level up to academic standards”
Historian and broadcaster GREG JENNER tells us about the return of his hit BBC podcast series, which sees academics and comedians join forces to bring the past alive through conversation injected with humour
You’re Dead To Me aims to reach an audience that may not necessarily be interested in history. How do you approach this?
The idea of the show is to broaden the appeal of history to those who have felt that the subject is dry, difficult, intimidating, challenging or boring. People have often thought: “We can make it fun and get celebrities involved.” But when that happens, you inevitably bring the level of the knowledge down.
The aim of You’re Dead is quite different in that we try to raise the level of the entertainment up to academic standards. We pair a comedian who doesn’t know much about the subject with a top academic. Of course, the comedian is there to provide the jokes, but also to ask the questions people at home might want to ask.
Can you share some of the highlights from the new series?
We’ve done the Borgias with Professor Catherine Fletcher of Manchester Metropolitan University and [comedian] Phil Wang. That’s very funny because the reputation of the Borgias is so sordid – sex, death, murder and poison – but Lucrezia Borgia ended up running a cheese emporium, which is not really what she’s known for.
For the show on 16th-century female Irish pirate Gráinne O’Malley, our comedian was Catherine Bohart and our historian was Dr Gillian Kenny of Trinity College, Dublin. They immediately bonded over being two Irish people with an Englishman. Within five minutes, they had ganged up on me and stolen the podcast, and just spent the entire time taking the mick out of me!
Why are comedians so good on the show?
Every single time, the historian has come away saying, “The comedian asked really interesting questions – they made me think about the subject in a new way.” After working on Horrible Histories as a historical consultant, that doesn’t surprise me: comedians spend their lives pulling things apart. They do observational routines about how odd things are. So when you put them in a room with a historian who spends their life asking questions, they very quickly realise that they have got a lot in common. They think in the same way.
You’re also hosting Homeschool History podcasts. What do those involve? They’re about 15 minutes long and aimed at seven and eight-year-olds, [with] silly sound effects, fun music and snippets of pop songs. But every episode is co-scripted with an expert. It’s a way of contributing to the home-schooling situation [caused by the coronavirus pandemic], which is tiring and taxing for carers.
You’re Dead to Me and Homeschool History are both available via BBC Sounds