WHEN I was taught history at school in South Africa we had two textbooks. One was written by a bloke called Boyce, and the other was by a bloke called van Jaarsveld. We always used the one by Boyce because there had been complaints from the parents about van Jaarsveld’s racism, which was quite something back then, when not whipping your servants marked you out as a lily-livered liberal. But even by those standards van Jaarsveld’s book should have come with a burning cross on the cover. He didn’t even refer to the Second World War, probably because the wrong side won.
I mention this because, despite it all, I developed a love for history. For one thing, there were laughs to be had. True, it was some years before I learnt that President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal Republic had opened a synagogue in the name of Jesus Christ, but alongside the gripping tale of the time Kruger had killed a fully grown lion with a penknife there was the information that he thought the Earth was flat.
Of course, this was not the sort of history the examining board wanted me to retain, which is probably why I didn’t do all that well in my finals. It is, though, the sort of history that’s terribly popular on television and radio now. This is not why, where, when and how history, but who. It’s gossip, it’s tittle-tattle, it’s subterfuge and horrible murder. It’s sex and drugs and plainchant.
It’s a pity that David Aaronovitch’s brief Radio 4 series The Norman Way has ended. As with his examination of Britain under the Romans, Aaronovitch turned historical fact into thrilling everyday life. Why, for example, were the clergy so uptight about people dancing in the churchyards 1,000 years ago? Why, for that matter, did people want to dance in churchyards? Aaronovitch’s history is a bit like the Japan of Lost in Translation — recognisable but alien.
All this week (Radio 4, 3.45pm) there’s Justin Champion’s Strange and Sundrie Stuarts, which brings a similar approach as Aaronovitch’s to the years 1603-1714, but stumbles in that it reveals much that is already known and doesn’t have as many loony academics on board. Popular history programmes live and die by their contingent of loony academics.
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But do they live and die through comedy? Of course not — if truth is not stranger than fiction, at least one cliché has developed feet of clay. Even the comic genius of Andy Hamilton fails to draw more than the occasional chuckle from Revolting People (Radio 4, Thurs, 6.30pm), and as for 1835 (Radio 4, Weds, 11.30am), its uneasy combination of pop history and terrible jokes is . . . uneasy. That’s the word, uneasy. Feeble is another one.
Finally, last Friday (Radio 4, 6.30pm) saw the start of a new series of We’ve Been Here Before, the comedy quiz show that attempts to draw ancient comparisons with modern events, and really just gives quizmaster Clive Anderson another chance to be slightly too pleased with himself.
As with all panel games, its success derives from the chemistry of the participants, and last Friday’s opening programme had the misfortune to include Arthur Smith — a man who knows what is funny but can’t be funny himself — and Arabella Weir in the teams.
You have to hand it to Weir — she’s managed to build a career out of a single catchphrase — but her “I used to be in The Fast Show” shtick has had its day. Shoehorning a stunningly tasteless reference to the murder of Gianni Versace into a comedy history quiz just because of its Fast Show tie-up stopped the programme in its tracks. Still, van Jaarsveld would have found it a thigh-slapper.