You're Dead to Me - Ramesses the Great (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

Greg Jenner and his guests lift the lid on one of Ancient Egypt's greatest rulers, Ramesses the Great. How did Ramesses acquire the nickname 'The Great'? What were the reasons for the adulation he received from his subjects? How long did he rule and how many temples were built in his honour? Greg discusses these questions and many more with his guests, the comedian and writer Sophie Duker and the historical expert Dr Campbell Price.Produced by Greg Jenner and Emma Nagouse

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Greg here. Hope you're doing well and I hope you have been enjoying Series 7 of You're Dead to Me. Lots of fun for us to make that one. We've really enjoyed it. We've had some lovely feedback from you all. Thank you. Glad you like it. We have one episode left in the series. It's a big, spectacular one.

It's our live special all about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, where we were joined by an orchestra, an absolutely massive orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, 54 musicians and a conductor, and David O'Doherty in Comedy Corner. It was a huge amount of fun to record at LSO St Luke's. You'll be hearing it soon, but not just yet. We're going to put it out on the 29th of March, which is for the Easter weekend.

So in the interim, we have a couple of weeks where we don't have a new episode coming out. So we're going to do a couple of reversions from previous series, but the cut down radio version. So the first episode is going to be Ramsey's The Great. That's, of course, snipped down to 28 minutes. So half the length of the normal recording. And then the next episode after that will be Old Norse Literature. Get your Vikings on.

Again, another 28 minute edit. So if you want the full length versions, they're already out on. Again, another 28-minute edit. So if you want the full-length versions, they're already out there. They're already in the podcast app. They're in wherever you get your podcasts at full length, with the quizzes, with all the rude bits. But if you want the shorter one, well, that's what you're getting the next two weeks. Ramsey's the Great, followed by Old Norse literature. And then, on the 29th of March, you will get to hear our lovely, spectacular,

then on the 29th of March you will get to hear our lovely spectacular noisy in a good way huge live episode about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart it was huge fun I hope you really like it and that of course will be the end of series 7 and we are already beavering away on series 8 so fear not we shall be back in July but until then thanks very much for all the support and keep well cheers bye hello and welcome to you're dead to me the comedy show that takes history seriously my name is Greg Jenner I'm a public historian author broadcaster and today we are grabbing our selfie sticks to go statue spotting in ancient Egypt as we lift the sarcophagus lid on one of the most renowned rulers of all time, Ramesses the Great. To help me talk about Ramesses, I'm joined by two very special guests. In History Corner, he's curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum. He's a fellow at the University of Liverpool and chair of the Egypt Exploration

Society. I heartily recommend his book, Pocket Museum, Ancient Egypt. It's Dr. Campbell Price. Hello, Campbell. how are you? I'm fine, I'm absolutely thrilled to be here discussing Ramesses the Great. And in Comedy Corner, she's a comedian and writer who you'll know from loads of telly including Frankie Boyle's New World Order, 8 Out of 10 Cats and Mock the Week. Her Edinburgh Fringe show Venus was nominated for Best Newcomer Award and of course you will remember her from her two starring roles on your Dead to Me episodes about Asante Garner and the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. It's Sophie Duker.. And of course, you will remember her from her two starring roles on your Dead to Me episodes

about Asante Garner and the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. It's Sophie Duker. Hi, Sophie. How are you? Hi, I'm so thrilled to be back. I really want a new like history bay that I can reference because the Chevalier de Saint-Georges,

I keep dropping him into conversations like it's ever relevant. But I think having like an Egypt bay would be a real boost for my social life i don't know if ramesses is a is a hottie oh i think he was sophie he was okay so i mean sophie when we did the asante ghana episode you were in ghana and when we did the chevalier episode you spoke french so i mean i'm hoping you're in egypt right now right so as research not only have i watched the dreamworks documentary the prince of e, not only have I watched the DreamWorks documentary, The Prince of Egypt,

but I have been on the Ramesses revenge ride at Chessington. Okay. I think I'm a little more qualified, Campbell, to speak about. So I'm dealing with two experts here. I mean, do you know much about Ramesses? I'm not going to lie to you because that would be unethical. I have been to Egypt and I went while I was at university and I saw a lot of sarcophaguses?

Sarcophagi, possibly. Sarcophagi, yeah. Saw a lot of sarcophagi and sarcophagirls. Saw a lot of statues. So, what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what people at home might know about today's subject. People might know Ramses II or Ramses the Great from his role of bad guy in the Hebrew Bible. According to some scholars, not all, he is the pharaoh in the book of Exodus.

So he's the guy who sort of brings about the ten plagues. Oh, he's the guy from the Prince of Egypt. I know loads about him. Exactly that. Prince of Egypt, which was the 90s animated movie with Ralph Fiennes and then became a West End musical. He's also in Civilization V, if you're a hardcore gamer. And if you're a hardcore poetry fan, he's the famous Ozymandias from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem. Ozymandias is his Greek name.

He also had a different Egyptian name, which is Usamatra. Is that right, Campbell? Yeah, that's acceptable. So he's got a lot of names, Sophie. He's Ramesses the Great, Ramesses II, Usamatra, Ozymandias. You missed out Meriamun. He's beloved of Amun lots of times.

Is he more like Snoop Dogg, where he's gone through Snoop Lion? Yes, exactly, Sophie. He's the ancient Egyptian equivalent of Snoop Dogg. People might know Ramesses II or Rames the Great who was he was he really the great and what can we know for sure about someone who lived so long ago so I mean Campbell first things first ancient Egyptian history is massive it's literally thousands of years so where in that timeline does Ramses go and what do we call that period? We think of ancient Egypt as this big monolithic hole. And as you just said, it's a long time. It's 3,000 years of just pharaonic Egypt. He is the second of 11 kings

called Ramesses. The later kings are called Ramesses because of him. He rules between around 1279 to 1213 BCE. He's part of the 19th dynasty, and he's what Egyptologists call situated in the New Kingdom. So we have the Old, the Middle, and the New Kingdom. To him, the pyramids were already well over a thousand years old. So he very much looks back on his glorious history and he wants to outdo pretty much everyone who comes before him so he's been trained for power we think he's about 24 when he becomes king but sophie prior to that he does have a coming of age party and he is given a coming of

age gift a bit like a sort of bar mitzvah i suppose Do you want to guess what his big gift is from his dad? Is it a living thing? Yes. Yes. Does he get a snake? It's a lovely guess. No, it's wrong. It's more cute. Less cute. More problematic, really.

Oh, like a problematic living thing. Oh, does he get a wife? He gets a harem of women. Oh, no. I guess this is a standard thing, right, Campbell? A harem of women, that's what you get on your birthday when you're a teenage boy? Not now, obviously.

In ancient Egypt, if you're a prince, you do, yeah. But he is also given a wife. You were right, Sophie, actually. And this wife is the famous wife. Have you ever heard of Nefertari? It's not ringing specific bells. Nefertari is an interesting person. It's worth saying that Ramsey's family are northerners

and cause as i say they're very much new on the scene of the old pharaohing business they need to shore up political support from the south of egypt so we tend to refer to the north of egypt as lower egypt and the south of egypt as upper egypt confusingly because of the way the nile flows from south to north so she is a a southern bell, an upper Egyptian princess. And so it's politically expedient for Ramesses to get with Nefertari. And judging by the monuments dedicated to her, they do seem to be quite a winning match. Ramesses, presumably he's learning the ropes in terms of administration,

in terms of war. Is Ramesses sensitive and a little bit you know he likes poetry and art or is he like chariot monthly loves a bit of rough and tumble can't wait to get his bow and arrow out yeah exactly i think he's a speed junkie he'd be on the chariot at the earliest possible age and there's an expectation because his dad's a big warrior so he takes the sun out on campaign and it seems that later on in Seti's reign, when Ramesses is old enough, he gets to lead and be actively involved in military exercises. We do get the sense he's settling down as well. You know, he's married, he's settling in, he's doing admin, he's off to war. I get the sense here that he's kind of ready to step up. And at 24, he does. He becomes the king of Egypt. And at 24, he does.

He becomes the king of Egypt. Am I right in thinking Nefertari and Ramesses have multiple children, but the main son is the heir to the throne, right? Yes, they have a son called Amun-her-wen-emeth. So we have Ramesses II. He's on the throne. He's got his son. He's got his wife.

They've got a few kids. And now comes this sort of imperial phase. I don't know if that's quite fair. I know Egyptians and empire is empire is not quite right isn't it campbell they're not really into empire but this is him expanding maybe yeah i i think the problem is we tend to look at ancient egyptians through the lens of the british empire the ancient egyptians don't want to expand their territory in the sense we might think of as empire, but they do want to have influence and they do want to have stuff. And so there's an opportunity early in Ramsay's reign to go and beat some people up and he takes it. This is where we get to the very famous battle from history, Sophie. Have you ever heard of the Battle of Kadesh? No. Was it a good battle?

Well, so it's a heroic victory. It's a triumph. It's the greatest achievement of his career. He's going to stick it on all his walls. He loves it. The heroic battle of Kadesh in which he defeats the Hittites. Only there's one small thing about the Battle of Kadesh, which is slightly odd. Do you want to guess what it is, Sophie?

It's like a sort of ideological battle. Oh, like a battle of ideas? What is one is like hearts and minds, he hasn't there's no like there's no bloodshed yeah the twist is it's his greatest triumph it's the biggest win he puts it on all his walls problem is he loses yeah this is something which he goes on and on and on and on about on temples and in in other sources so there are written papyrus copies of this account at this battle of Kadesh and he will not shut up about it but in fact it seems to be at best a draw so there's the Hittite leader Muatali II Ramses goes out with different divisions of his army named after different gods like Seth and Ra and Amun and they split up thinking they've got intelligence from two Hittites that they've captured but in fact they are spies so they confuse the Egyptians the Egyptians get ambushed and Ramesses basically

says you guys have deserted me and then only the god Amun has come to my aid and then I single-handedly fought off all the Hittites so it's kind of unbelievable from a general perspective. Ramesses leaves. They kind of agree a truce there. Ramesses withdraws back to Egypt. No one in Egypt has been following 24-hour news. No one's got the internet. No one's got a newspaper. No one can challenge the living god's account of what has happened hundreds of miles away. So he says he beat everyone up and Egypt rules that part of the world now so that's what's put on temple walls and temple walls are not art galleries not just picture decoration whatever you carve in hieroglyphs which the ancient egyptian term for is the god's words

you are literally making true is that where the saying pics or it didn't happen came from glyphs or it didn't happen glyphs if it didn't happen is nice rameses obviously is the great conqueror who hasn't conquered this is also where he gets into his building phase yeah pharaohs are builders back in the old kingdom or the middle kingdom you'd build a pyramid but by the time rameses is on the throne your tomb is quite small it's hidden away in the Valley of the Kings, but you build Mahusiv temples and statues. And Ramesses just goes hell for leather on building statues. And it seems his father, Seti I, is a big builder also,

but he is totally eclipsed by his son, who takes on a lot of the building projects his dad started and then basically repurposes them with his own name sophie do you want to guess what he names the capital after himself yeah absolutely of course he does surprise his favorite thing he knows the capital after himself he could go inside himself sophie if you were a mighty pharaoh what are you going to name your city i feel like it's quite juvenile to name a city afteraraoh, what are you going to name your city? I feel like it's quite juvenile to name a city after yourself.

I'd be like, welcome to Ducatown. I don't know, I like it. Sounds good. Actually, now I've said it, I can completely see why he's getting off on it. Yeah, I think I'd name it something where people were like, I have to go there. Hot and sexy people, Bill. Like the City of Winners, I think. City of Winners is good.

City of Winners. Win of winneropolis yeah okay so rameses built the temple at abu simbel which took a modest 35 years to put up famously it has two enormous statues of him greeting you on the way in not one of him and his wife but him times two which i love and they're 65 feet tall rameses does all sorts and i think it's worth thinking about the fact when he comes to the throne, he doesn't know he's going to live to be 90. So he thinks, I need to make a mark in history. And he just goes at it early doors, like the clappers.

So he takes over, like I say, projects and statues of his dad. But then he lives a bit longer and he just keeps going. He has the Paramses, the city we've been talking about there are at least 50 colossal statues so this is more than 10 meters tall and that's more statues than most other pharaohs you know complete in a lifetime ramses just as that for for one city that reminds me actually sophie in terms of winner city your new city that you've built what are you having on the way in you know when people come in through the opening gates oh i think it's actually quite funny that he's got himself greeting himself on the way in so i think i'd either do like a nod to maybe me cosplaying as

both like the lion and the unicorn or i think there needs to be some mystery maybe there's like a body of water that's like bounding it or maybe there's a big wall so maybe you have to go like straight into a mouth like a funhouse train look my head is like the entrance and my mouth's open real wide i think you've missed your calling sophie i think you've been an excellent pharaoh there is a certain grandiosity to rameses's sort of statuary isn't there yeah you know egyptologists kind of joke that that rameses has this crude kind of wham bam thank you ram style to his carving he has a particular thing about colossal statues and this is something i've researched and published about in the past it really interests me that he hero worships an earlier king, Amenhotep III. He's King Tut's granddad.

Great king, rules for almost 40 years, has lots of statues, palaces, temples. And Ramesses emulates him by not just saying he's the son of a god like every king does. He says, I am an actual god. And he creates these colossal statues that have their own names. So it's his name, Ram's name and another name so they each have an individual identity so the statue kind of functions independently from the pharaoh so people come and they worship the statue as kind of a

divine manifestation of the king i think it's a bit creepy. I want them to worship me uniquely, but not be like, oh, this is just like Sophie, but it doesn't chat quite so much. And it's easier to maintain. I think you sort of make yourself a bit obsolete. If you've got all these statues, you kind of don't need to be there. We've already mentioned his first queen, Nefertari. People have often said that she's the only love of his life, which I don't know if that's sort of Victorian propaganda or that's a bit of Hollywood romance. Certainly she seems to be esteemed. She gets her own temple, but she does die before him. She does. She gets her own temple at Abu Simbel. So this is the rock cut ones in the very south of Egypt. And it's kind of his and hers temples. He's got one, but she's got one as well because he's a god, she's a goddess. Therefore

she dies many years before he does. She has this beautiful tomb in the Valley of the Queens. So we have the Valley of the Kings. There's also the Valley of the Queens. Not much left in it. It was pillaged in antiquity. There's a little furniture knob which has the name of an earlier king that maybe is one of her relatives. So lots of speculation about her family and where she came from.

And very sad, there are remains of the knees and shins of a body. No one else seems to have been buried in the tomb, so that's presumably Nefertari's knees. We're well used to finding the mummified bodies of pharaohs and queens, but just the knees and shins feels a bit weird and a bit gothic. Is that because the rest of her body was taken somewhere? Yeah, because it was smashed up to get jewellery, probably. That's why it's such a miracle that Ramesses' body

and other kings' bodies have survived the depredations of tomb robbery. And obviously their son, whose name I'm going to completely mangle here, but I'm going to go with Hemenhe Wenemef, I think is vaguely where you went with. So their son also dies relatively young as well. You know, he's the crown prince, he's the heir, he's meant to be next in line, but he seems to go in his 20s. And so Rameses marries again, but the new wife, is it Nothred? Is that right? Yes, is it Nothred? That's right.

I thought you were asking if it was Nothred, but that's just the full name. Yeah, no, no. I thought you were being really cute like is it Nothred? Yes it's Nothred no is it Nothred yes it's Nothred so is it Nothred is the second great wife you know there are other wives we we know he's got Hittite brides and she has their own child as well another heir to the throne so he sort of replaces one heir with a new heir yeah because the kids are dying off because you know off because you were doing well in ancient Egypt if you made it to 30. So he keeps going.

So Isit Nofret, as you say, becomes the second great wife. But she's intriguing because she seems to be, unlike Nefertari, from a northern part of Egypt. And we don't have her tomb. We've never found her body.

So she's still alive? Possibly, who knows? Cryogenically frozen. No, I think we would probably have some remains of the tomb because we know so much about Nefertari's tomb. We don't have it. So that may be one of the tombs to be discovered in the future. So we're talking here about Ramesses' family, so the Ram Fam, let's call them that. So Sophieie do you want to guess how many children rameses the great has oh i'm gonna say 50 go bigger 150 that's 100 yeah it's i mean it's as far as we can tell 52 boys 48 girls or something like that either way there's a lot of kids running

about one of the weirdest things i I suppose, about ancient Egyptian culture is that you would get marriages between a father and a daughter. So Ramesses marries four of his daughters and they're called Bintanath, Meretamen, Nebetawi and Henutmire, I think. Correct. That's good pronunciation. Hooray, I'm getting better.

This is a custom, right? This is not creepy. It's just a kind of dynastic thing. Yeah, it is. It's creepy to us. but like could it be both yeah it's it's all relative cultural culturally relative these are not necessarily sexual relationships these are ritual relationships because they are keeping it in the family in the sense that they are daughters of important women. So they are qualified, if you like, to accompany their father in certain ways.

So Ramses' second wife is at Nofret, and they have another son who's going to become the crown prince. And his name is Kaimwaset. Kaimwaset, yeah. Ramses also has a pet. He's got an adorable good boy who follows him around the palace. Do you want to guess what it was, Sophie? I mean, the fact that you said adorable good boy makes me think it has a pet. He's got an adorable good boy who follows him around the palace. Do you want to guess what it was, Sophie? I mean, the fact that you said adorable good boy makes me think it's a dog.

I was going to say a cat, but has he got a little Ramses rover? You were right with your first inkling on cats. A pet lion. I think he's like the rock. Yeah, he's like an alpha male, but at the same time, he's a sort of sweet dude who takes care of people. There's some other sacred stuff we should talk about actually in terms of Ramesses. There was a very famous important festival or a jubilee called the Sed Festival, S-E-D. And this was held for a king after they had ruled for 30 years. So it's quite a rare festival.

Not many kings get that long. How many do you think Ramesses had, Sophie? He ruled for 66 years. So he's going to have had at least two. Wait, it's after 30 years you get it. I think he maybe had like five to 10. That's a really good guess. He went with 14.

Do you want to guess what the festival involved, Sophie? It's a bit of physical activity. Wrestling. It's a bit more jogging, really, isn't it, Campbell? I mean, are we talking here? He had to circumnavigate the palace, right? We've got scenes that show this, but you're never sure if what is on the temple wall is actually what people did and at 90 years old i doubt he

was actually running around doing this ritual jog you run around these two markers which seem to represent the boundaries of egypt that could be one interpretation and the fact that you're running around them encircling them means you control them and you are master of them. And it also proves you're physically fit to rule. So, yeah, the Heb Sed was also about confirming the king's divinity. And sometimes some kings used it to upgrade their divinity. And that seems to be what happens with Ramesses. He really says around year 30, okay, now I'm extra specially divine. And then he keeps having them yeah every

three or four years it seems quite weird to like give yourself like the equivalent of the bleep test every four years and cam was set like his his other elder brother also did not outlive his dad right ramesses the great outlived almost all of his children, didn't he Campbell? Yeah, it's his 13th son that eventually succeeds him. If you imagine in a culture where people don't make it into what we would call middle age much, he really was saying he was a god and he just wasn't dying. So people would think, gosh, he really is a god. Ramesses the Second, or Ramesses the Great, does eventually die at age, we think, about 90. Presumably, he wasn't in peak physical condition. Yeah, this is the funny thing about having the mummified remains

of ancient Egyptian kings. We tend to kind of characterise them in terms of the mummy because we have this medical curiosity and voyeurism, which I don't think is terribly healthy, actually. Ramesses would want us to remember the athletic statues. But in often you go if you see an egyptian mummy how did they die what medical conditions did they have yes he was an old man he had yeah abscesses in his gums and arthritis and he would be stooped over but then you know that's that's just human life so and people say lots of things about maybe he had red hair we don't know if he actually had red hair it might have been dyed by the

mummification process he was buried in the valley of the kings but then that's not where he was found sophie do you want to guess who or what found his body and i say what as in it's an animal i want it to be like a callback to his pet lion but i think he was probably found long after that lion had passed on to pride rock in the sky maybe it was like a little dog maybe like a little lap dog it's a runaway goat a runaway goat i know this story is slightly embellished and romanticized but there is a story to tell yeah there is there always is and it's usually a goat or a donkey that finds the finds the tomb in 1881 there is an official discovery of this tomb which is chock full of coffins with kings queens elite people it's like an ancient egyptian hello magazine come to life under the ground but this tomb has been discovered up to 10 years before by local people the abdul

rasul family and they've thought wow there's a tomb full of nice stuff we'll start selling some of the stuff as you would but archaeologists see these things appearing on the art market and think hang on that's got names of kings and queens we don't have the tombs of we think there has been a discovery somewhere and they go down and the european authorities in charge of the egyptian antiquity service use a bit of torture and they get the story out of the abdul rasul brothers of where the tomb is and they go and they find it and basically overnight they ship out dozens of coffins from from this tomb in luxor in the south of egypt back to cairo and among them probably the most famous king of ancient egypt is ramesses the second sophie what's the best

thing you've ever found while chasing a runaway goat oh i actually have chased quite a few goats back in Ghana. Okay. I used to go to a lady down the road to braid my hair and she had lots of goats. So maybe I would have found a goat that had run off with some hair extensions because they always used to watch me while my hair was getting braided. And then they might just be like goats in toupees, goats in little... Goats with an amazing weave. Yeah, goats with weaves and rasta hats just be like goats in toupees, goats in little... Goats with an amazing weave. Yeah, goats with weaves and rasta hats just being like, yeah, we live here too.

But why is he in a different tomb, Campbell? Yeah, it's interesting. So Tutankhamen is not normal because he was actually found where he was buried. Most of the other Egyptian royals have either been damaged, destroyed like poor old Nefertari with her knees, or they had been gathered, as Ramesses was, and put in a royal cache. At the end of the new kingdom, when Ramesses ruled, there were economic problems. There was a spate of tomb robberies. And so the authorities in Egypt, a couple of hundred years after Ramesses had died, thought they had to gather up all the kings together and bury them in one safe place.

The nuance window! Well, that brings us on to the nuance window. This is where Sophie and I take a little break and we allow our expert, Dr. Campbell, to talk for two uninterrupted minutes about whatever he needs us to hear. Campbell, you're going to talk about Ramesses' penchant for propaganda. Maybe that's not the right word. Three, two, one, the nuance window. I think because we know or think we know so much about someone called Ramesses the Great, we tend to make a lot of assumptions.

He's famous for being bombastic and boastful, particularly with the case of the Battle of Kadesh. But we tend to, when we're describing that, talk about propaganda. And we use that term with a modern understanding of political propaganda. And what you have to understand with Ramesses is he's living in the 1200s BCE when there isn't an alternative to autocratic monarchy. It's not like there are political parties. He's not appealing to a general public. He is the divine king. So when he's building colossal statues, I wonder, it's not that they're propaganda

because the general mass of people fundamentally do not matter to the elite he is more likely to be advertising to the gods because he sees the gods as his peers and so he sees himself in that keeping that society for eternity so when we see a colossal statue we instantly think autocratic oriental despot that's what they're like in e. They have these despotic rulers. And it's fundamentally judgmental, prejudiced, racist attitude, which we project back into the past. But I think Ramesses is as much advertising to the gods, and he's also advertising to himself. He's going into the temples and he's seeing these huge colossal statues of himself and thinking do you know what maybe i am a king i am a god and i can do this job so it's kind of positive self-affirmation on a different scale and i think we misunderstand rameses if we use

the modern term the loaded modern term propaganda amazing thank you so much sophie any thoughts on that i love because i did think when you were like, he keeps making statues, he can't stop making statues. I was thinking of like some of my friends who get like candle making sets and then they're just constantly doing it. But it is just a form of self-care. Like all the ticket stubs and all the stuff you do,

you're like, yeah, I am the pharaoh. But that's basically it for our show. All that's left for me to do is to say massive, colossus thank you to our two wonderful guests. In History Corner, we've had the wonderful Dr Campbell Price from Manchester Museum. Thank you, Campbell.

Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Sophie. And in Comedy Corner, the returning hero, the quiz queen, the sensational Sophie Duker. Thank you, Sophie. Thank you so much, Greg. Thank you, Campbell. I just want to say in the words of Mariah Carey,

who provided a song for the soundtrack to The Prince of Egypt, there can be miracles when you believe. And to you, lovely listener I just want to say in the words of Mariah Carey, who provided a song for the soundtrack to The Prince of Egypt, there can be miracles when you believe. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time for some more historical hijinks. But for now, I'm off to go and carve a 65 foot statue of myself and plonk it outside BBC Broadcasting House. Classy. Bye. Hello, Russell Cain here. I used to love British history, be proud of it. Henry VIII, Queen Victoria, massive fan of stand-up comedians, obviously, Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor. That has become much more challenging,

for I am the host of BBC Radio 4's Evil Genius, the show where we take heroes and villains from history and try to work out were they evil or genius do not catch up on bbc sounds by searching evil genius if you don't want to see your heroes destroyed but if like me you quite enjoy it have a little search listen to evil genius with me russell kane go to bbc sounds and have your world destroyed. you