Today Tony is talking to the composer Howard Goodall CBE, who wrote the now iconic Blackadder theme tune. Howard is one of Britain’s best-known composers of choral music, stage musicals, TV and film scores. He wrote the themes tunes for many hit comedy shows including Red Dwarf, Mr. Bean, The Vicar of Dibley, The Catherine Tate Show, 2point4 Children and Q.I. but like so many of the talent who worked on the show, it all started with Blackadder. Last year Blackadder turned 40, to mark the...

Marching 73 miles from coast to coast across the narrowest neck of England, Hadrian’s Wall was the north-west frontier of the Roman Empire for nearly 300 years and yet there is still so much we don’t know about it: only 5% of the wall has been excavated and 7% is viable today. Tony is joined by leading archaeologist Richard Hingley and Collections Curator for Hadrian's Wall and the North East at English Heritage, Frances McIntosh, to give him the low down on how and why Hadrian’s Wall was...

Passwords and codes are something we take for granted in the digital age, but this is such a new development and today Tony is going back to a time when making and breaking codes was an almost exclusively high-level military activity: most famously done behind closed doors by the brains at Bletchley Park. He is joined by two people who are giving him the long view on codes and codebreaking: the Bletchley Park military historian David Kenyon and the Chief Information Security Officer at the...

Men’s facial hair is very prone to fashions: moustaches and beards are back in, but why is that and what sparks bread trends and facial hair fashions? To help him find out, Tony has invited ‘beard’ historian Alun Withey and male grooming influencer Robin James | Man For Himself. They discuss 17th Century notions of facial hair as a waste product; through barber-surgeons and early shaving practices; powdered wigs; the Victorian beard movement; King Camp Gillett’s safely razor; the First World...

Today Tony is talking to his old friend and collaborator, the screenwriter Richard Curtis. They share memories of making Blackadder from the early years to how it all ended. Along the way, they discuss Richard’s comedy roots and how he became a top comedy screenwriter: meeting Rowan Atkinson at Oxford Uni; working on Not The Nine O’Clock News; the influence of Fawlty Towers and plans for a Blackadder series set in the 1960s that never happened. Plus, they read lines from the Blackadder pilot...

Electric cars are the future of motoring, or so we are told, but today’s Cunningcast guests don’t agree. In fact, Hugo Spowers of Riversimple thinks hydrogen is the future and he’s designing hydrogen powered cars to prove it. Together with experienced car broadcaster Richard Sutton, they give Tony the low down on the past, present and their vision for the future of car engineering and sustainability.   Hosted by Si Tony Robinson X | Instagram With Hugo Spowers   Chief engineer and founder of...

Today Tony is conjuring up a history of stage magic: from Reginald Scot's 1584 ‘Discovery of Witchcraft’ to Servais LeRoy ‘The Belgium Conjuror’ and Talma, ‘The Queen of Coins’ via escapologist Harry Houdini to TV magic with David Berglas, Paul Daniels and David Copperfield. Tony also explores women in magic and how ‘female assistants’ were integral to the magic tricks they performed. He’s invited two accomplished magicians and knowledgeable members of the magic circle, Paul Kieve and Laura...

Comedian David Mitchell is joining Tony on Cunningcast today. They cover David’s comedy awakening; meeting Robert Webb and the early years of Peep Show; how Olivia Coleman got involved; his love of Blackadder; playing William Shakespeare and working with Ben Elton in Upstart Crow and meeting his wife, Victorian Coren Mitchell.   Last year the iconic comedy Blackadder turned 40, to mark the occasion, Tony made a TV show in which he tracked down the lost Blackadder Pilot to discover the truth...

It's all going a bit wobbly in Cunningcast Towers as we are talking about the history of jelly. Tony wants to rescue jelly from its place as a children’s party food because there was a time when making jellies was an art form and took pride of place on the tables of the wealthy. He’s invited leading food historian Annie Gray and jellymonger-in-chief Sam Bompas to help him out. Hosted by Sir Tony Robinson X | Instagram With Sam Bompas Food designer, one half of Bompas and Parr food design...

Tony catches up with Alice Roberts to talk about her new book ‘Crypt’ and what developments in the extraction of ancient DNA from bones can tell us about the humans they once belonged to.   They cover the syphilitic anchoress of All Saints Church, Fishergate, York; new findings about the Black Death and the bones in the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Braemore, Hampshire; damage to the bones of the Mary Rose crew; 'the cockle amongst the wheat’ and new finds relating to the St Brice’s Day Massacre...

The art of painting on the skin, it’s fashionable now, but it wasn’t always so. To kick of the second series of his cunningly curated podcast, Tony and his special guests Matt Lodder and Grace Neutral discuss where we can find the oldest tattoos, what’s the history behind them, ancient and modern tattoo techniques, tattoo inks, queer tattoo history, body modification including tattooing eyeballs and when did tattoos stop being taboo? Hosted by Sir Tony Robinson X | Instagram With Dr Matt...

Sir Tony Robinson is back with another series of hit history podcast. Launching on Thursday 8th February 2024, Series 2 of Tony Robinson's Cunningcast will treat listeners to brand-new cunningly curated episodes including;   ·   The history of painting on skin: where do TATTOOS come from? ·   What do BONES tell us about past humanity with PROF ALICE ROBERTS ·   Harry Houdini to David Blaine: conjuring up the history of stage MAGIC ·   Who built HADRIAN’S WALL and why? ·   From aristocratic...

A Cunningcast Christmas treat: today Tony is reading his favourite poem ‘Goblin Market’ by Christina Rossetti, an often-overlooked member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and he's discussing the context and history of Rossetti’s iconic work with Madeleine Callaghan, Senior Lecturer in Romantic Literature at the University of Sheffield. In his electrifying reading, Tony captures all the magic and strangeness of ‘Goblin Market’, which is set in a fairy-tale world where a fraught encounter...

Tony Robinson is pleased to announce his Christmas episode of Cunningcast is dropping on the 21st December and stay tuned for Series 2, starting in the new year. Follow us on social and hit the notification bell wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you don't miss out. X: @cunningcastpod Instagram: @cunningcastpod YouTube Hosted by Sir Tony Robinson X | Instagram Credits:  Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @melissafitzg Executive Producer: Dominic de Terville Cover Art: The...

Tony looks back at the best bits of Series 1 with Cunningcast’s series producer Melissa FitzGerald.   If you like the these best bits but haven’t heard the full episodes, have a wander back and check them out. Or if you listened first time and liked them so much that you want to hear it all over again, give us another listen... Follow us on social and hit the notification bell wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you don't miss out. Twitter: @cunningcastpod Instagram:...

Tony has lived with prostate cancer for 10 years and yet he knows very little about it. 1 in 8 men in the UK will get prostate cancer and the risk of getting it rises with age, but men can also be pretty rubbish at getting medical concerns checked out, especially down in the nether regions. In this special episode, made to mark Men’s Health Week, Tony is having a frank chat about prostate cancer - the most common cancer in men - with leading urologist Professor Hash Ahmed. He also hears from...

As we reach the end of Series 1, Tony Robinson is pleased to announce a special episode on PROSTATE CANCER in partnership with Prostate Cancer UK to coincide with Men's Health Week PLUS a special episode celebrating the BEST BITS of series 1. Coming soon. Follow us on social and hit the notification bell wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you don't miss out. Twitter: @cunningcastpod Instagram: @cunningcastpod YouTube Hosted by Sir Tony Robinson Twitter | Instagram Credits:  Series...

Tony is a self-confessed Census nerd and today he’s having a nose around the newly released data from the 1921 census, alongside data from the 2021 census, to reflect on the National Census 100 years apart: what it says about us and why it matters.    Hosted by Sir Tony Robinson Twitter | Instagram With: Jessamy Carlson Jessamy is a historian and an archivist who has worked at The National Archives for fifteen years. She was the research lead for the 1921 Census when it was released, and she...

Tony really loves his dog Holly Berry, but does she really love him back? During lockdown there was a huge surge in the demand for dogs and the ‘pandemic puppy’ became something of a cliché. Now we are all going back to work, these dogs are being left home alone more often and the ‘post pandemic’ dog’s life is potentially very lonely. As a keen dog owner, Tony wants to know more about the history of dogs: dog evolution, keeping dogs as pets and why it is that we turn to dogs to bring us...

Tony was knighted for services to culture back in 2013, and it got him thinking about the concept of Knighthood: where does it come from? How and why has it changed over time? What would a medieval Sir Tony Robinson have looked like? And what would his knightly duties have been?   Hosted by Sir Tony Robinson Twitter | Instagram   Featuring:   Toby Capwell / Instagram @tobiascapwell Tobias Capwell is an independent scholar of arms and armour, curator, author, lecturer, jouster, historical...

This year is the 40th birthday of the TV show that changed Tony’s life. Since playing Baldrick in Blackadder, he’s still routinely asked in the street if he’d like a turnip. Blackadder was first broadcast on 15th June 1983, so today Tony has decided to test himself to see if he can find out something that he didn't already know about the series, with John Lloyd, who was the producer of Blackadder. John went on to create Have I got News for You and QI but, like Tony, it all started with the...

Today Tony has followed his nose and chosen a topic which is often overlooked: what did the past smell like? Was it bad? Are we loosing smells to history? Tony doesn’t have a brilliant sense of smell so his two guests: smell historian William Tullett, and smell designer Tasha Marks, are on hand to help him out.   Hosted by Tony Robinson @Tony_Robinson   With   Tasha Marks / Twitter @avmcuriosities / Instagram @avmcuriosities / www.avmcuriosities.com   Award-winning artist, food historian and...

Tony remembers driving a matchbox royal coach under his dining table during Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation in 1953. Ahead of King Charles’s Coronation on May 6th 2023, he’s finding out more about where this extraordinary ritual comes from and what it all stands for with historian Kate Williams and HELLO!’s Royal Editor Emily Nash.   Hosted by Tony Robinson @Tony_Robinson   With   Emily Nash / Twitter @emynash / Instagram @emilynashhello. HELLO!'s Royal Editor, Emily has covered the birth of...

When Jacinda Ardern stepped down from her role as Prime Minister of New Zealand in early 2023, saying she was burnt out and wasn’t able to do her job to the best of her ability anymore, it was surprising, not only because she is such a successful global leader, but the way she did it, with such humility, felt like a refreshing change. So how much harder is for women to stay at the top of their political game?   To have this discussion, Tony has called up someone he’s always got on with:...