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| History makes more sense when you’re drunk | History makes more sense when you’re drunk |
| (6 months later) | |
| Even the title, Drunk History, feels like something Alan Partridge would offer up in an increasingly desperate attempt to retain the interest of a channel controller with ADHD. The idea is simple: take a comedian, give them a drink, get them to explain – with that combination of earnestness and levity that is the preserve of the truly shit-faced – a chunk of history, and have other comedians act out the resultant quasi-historical mess as a sort of dadaist costume drama. Coincidentally, with only a minor difference in budget, this is also a reasonably accurate description of my A-level Ancient History revision. | Even the title, Drunk History, feels like something Alan Partridge would offer up in an increasingly desperate attempt to retain the interest of a channel controller with ADHD. The idea is simple: take a comedian, give them a drink, get them to explain – with that combination of earnestness and levity that is the preserve of the truly shit-faced – a chunk of history, and have other comedians act out the resultant quasi-historical mess as a sort of dadaist costume drama. Coincidentally, with only a minor difference in budget, this is also a reasonably accurate description of my A-level Ancient History revision. |
| It’s probably fair to say that few people would have bet on this idea turning into a hit TV show, let alone on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, it has done so well that it has now returned to our screens starring the only people who fulfil the role of court jesters more successfully than comedians: the cast of Geordie Shore. Anne Boleyn may have been called “the biggest cock tease in history” by a woman nursing a large glass of red before, but only if Hilary Mantel was having a long and especially difficult day. | It’s probably fair to say that few people would have bet on this idea turning into a hit TV show, let alone on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, it has done so well that it has now returned to our screens starring the only people who fulfil the role of court jesters more successfully than comedians: the cast of Geordie Shore. Anne Boleyn may have been called “the biggest cock tease in history” by a woman nursing a large glass of red before, but only if Hilary Mantel was having a long and especially difficult day. |
| For all the raised eyebrows this show will doubtless provoke, there’s something to be said for mixing history with alcohol and a lack of reverence. Firstly, there are some periods of history that make more sense when you’re drunk. Read Book XXI of Livy (the passage of Hannibal through the Alps) without a sizeable merlot and you’ll miss out on the sheer molten lunacy of herding elephants across a mountain range. The moment where the nervous elephants have to be coaxed into rafts to cross a river, one tiny footstep at a time, just is funny. And the bit where the intonsi inculti – the shaggy, shabby mountain men – choose whose side they’d rather be on is good too. | For all the raised eyebrows this show will doubtless provoke, there’s something to be said for mixing history with alcohol and a lack of reverence. Firstly, there are some periods of history that make more sense when you’re drunk. Read Book XXI of Livy (the passage of Hannibal through the Alps) without a sizeable merlot and you’ll miss out on the sheer molten lunacy of herding elephants across a mountain range. The moment where the nervous elephants have to be coaxed into rafts to cross a river, one tiny footstep at a time, just is funny. And the bit where the intonsi inculti – the shaggy, shabby mountain men – choose whose side they’d rather be on is good too. |
| Besides, Hannibal himself was drinking wine, so you’d feel left out if you didn’t join in. Not only that, wine saved the day. When Hannibal reached an impassable point on his Alpine journey, he had the kind of idea which only comes to the brilliant drinker. He demanded some leftover flasks of wine and poured them over the rocks that blocked his path, then he lit a fire. The combination of heat and vinegary acid weakened the rocks and they crumbled before him. Hannibal and his men – far from being stuck in a hostile environment with no escape – were soon on their way with one of history’s finer booze-related experiments under their Carthaginian belts. | Besides, Hannibal himself was drinking wine, so you’d feel left out if you didn’t join in. Not only that, wine saved the day. When Hannibal reached an impassable point on his Alpine journey, he had the kind of idea which only comes to the brilliant drinker. He demanded some leftover flasks of wine and poured them over the rocks that blocked his path, then he lit a fire. The combination of heat and vinegary acid weakened the rocks and they crumbled before him. Hannibal and his men – far from being stuck in a hostile environment with no escape – were soon on their way with one of history’s finer booze-related experiments under their Carthaginian belts. |
| Then there is Herodotus, whose breezy anthropological history is best read with good whisky. The Battle of Thermopylae – where the 300 Spartans fight to the death against a vastly larger force of Persians – is frankly bizarre if you think about it sober. But whisky-drunks can pick a fight in an empty room, much like the average 5th century BCE Spartan. I once watched the film, 300 (based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel version of the Herodotean story), drinking every time anyone bellowed, “Sparta”. I sobered up a couple of months later, and I still had an easier time of things than the Spartans. | Then there is Herodotus, whose breezy anthropological history is best read with good whisky. The Battle of Thermopylae – where the 300 Spartans fight to the death against a vastly larger force of Persians – is frankly bizarre if you think about it sober. But whisky-drunks can pick a fight in an empty room, much like the average 5th century BCE Spartan. I once watched the film, 300 (based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel version of the Herodotean story), drinking every time anyone bellowed, “Sparta”. I sobered up a couple of months later, and I still had an easier time of things than the Spartans. |
| Besides, Drunk History is continuing a tradition that dates back almost two and a half millennia before television was even invented. In Plato’s Symposium, the attendees of a drinking-party take turns to explain the nature of love. One of the guests is the comic playwright Aristophanes, still nursing a hangover from the night before (not untypical behaviour for a comedian). When it is his turn to speak, he is overcome by a bout of hiccups, and has to let someone else go ahead of him. When he finally gets himself under control, he delivers a quirky, funny “history” of humanity and love, suggesting that we were once all double-creatures, with four arms and legs each. We were separated, and each spend our mortal lives trying to find our missing other halves. This is the kind of story that only occurs to a comic genius with a hangover, as told to us by one of the world’s greatest philosophers. | Besides, Drunk History is continuing a tradition that dates back almost two and a half millennia before television was even invented. In Plato’s Symposium, the attendees of a drinking-party take turns to explain the nature of love. One of the guests is the comic playwright Aristophanes, still nursing a hangover from the night before (not untypical behaviour for a comedian). When it is his turn to speak, he is overcome by a bout of hiccups, and has to let someone else go ahead of him. When he finally gets himself under control, he delivers a quirky, funny “history” of humanity and love, suggesting that we were once all double-creatures, with four arms and legs each. We were separated, and each spend our mortal lives trying to find our missing other halves. This is the kind of story that only occurs to a comic genius with a hangover, as told to us by one of the world’s greatest philosophers. |
| The past may be another country, but that doesn’t mean it must be reserved for sober and sensible academics. After all, there are sober, sensible historians who have talked as much nonsense as any drunk and more: Holocaust-deniers, for a start. And why should history be the preserve of those who sit quietly in front of large books with small print? There’s room for the garrulous enthusiast as well as the expert to share their versions of well-known history on television. In the words of Max Beerbohm: “History,” it has been said, “does not repeat itself. The historians repeat one another.” Just like drunks, as it happens. | The past may be another country, but that doesn’t mean it must be reserved for sober and sensible academics. After all, there are sober, sensible historians who have talked as much nonsense as any drunk and more: Holocaust-deniers, for a start. And why should history be the preserve of those who sit quietly in front of large books with small print? There’s room for the garrulous enthusiast as well as the expert to share their versions of well-known history on television. In the words of Max Beerbohm: “History,” it has been said, “does not repeat itself. The historians repeat one another.” Just like drunks, as it happens. |
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