Colm O'Regan: Horrible Histories is grand, but what about our own horrible history?
The actors carry on oblivious, but I know I'm not the only one thinking WHAT ABOUT THE PLANTATIONS?
We're at Horrible Histories: Terrible Tudors in the Olympia Theatre.
Five minutes in and I thought maybe we should have gone to the other one: Awful Egyptians. Cleopatra, pyramids, King Tut are more accessible. (I'm assuming they don't go into too much detail on brother-sister stuff).
We're sort of bogged down at the battle of Bosworth Field. Henry Tudor defeats Richard III and he's buried in what will become a carpark in Leicester.
The reference doesn't really land for us. The battle of Bosworth Field doesn't even make it into the 'development squad' for Irish history taught in schools. The Tudors don't really get going for us until they start taking our wild oaks.
But the children are still into it and fairly soon we get onto Henry VIII's wild oats and we're on familiar territory. By the interval, a full Thr-Olympia is singing 'Divorced, Beheaded, DIED/Divorced, Married, SURVIVED' as a tuneful way of remembering the fate of Henry VIII's wives.
After two hours of English history, Irish children have loved it. Even though some of the jokes don't land, the acting's good, the songs are good and the brand is so strong that people are willing to overlook the fact that 50 yards from Dublin Castle, we are hearing the doings of English kings and queens without a scintilla about plantations, Kings County, Queens County, Desmond Rebellions.
I don't blame the Horrible Histories people — they've a lot to get through. And they might reasonably assume that in a country full of people who can talk about 800 years for 800 hours might be already well covered in terms of funny Throlympia-filling, stage shows for children about our 300 rebellions, our Celtic past, our saving of literacy in the dark ages.
After all, we sustained musical comedies about Saipan, Munster beating the All-Blacks, Mattress Mick. Surely we can muster something for the kiddies about paying homage to Celtic chieftains by sucking their nipples.
Actually we have done it (okay, not the nipple thing). There were two very good series of Blasts from the Past, a funny, well-made children's TV show where a girl goes back in time to help out.
That finished in 2022. We watch it on RTÉ Player. That's the good thing about history. Even though it's all dates, it doesn't date. But nothing since or at least definitely nothing to fill the Olympia.
I get it. TV is expensive. Ireland is small. But time is now big money. At the moment The Rest is History podcast with its 11 million downloads, 1.2 million monthly YouTube views andover 45,000 paying subscribers is wending its way through the Irish War of Independence.
And in the past two years, over the course of about 10 hours, the podcast has gone through Irish history in an entertaining way.
For millions of English people it's amazing watching them finally find out 'What was the problem with you Irish, eh?'
With Horrible Histories, my children now know more about the various Queen Marys than I ever did. I realise I was never taught much about English apart from what they done on us. But let's fill the Olympia with our own history.
Tales of Irish monks inventing the space between words, the time the Irish tried to invade Canada, fights over eel-fishing rights, Grainnuaile shocking Queen Elizabeth I (booo!) by throwing a snotty lacy hankie into the fire, the English banning-14th century hipster haircuts in Kilkenny.
The past is a funny country. Let's make some jokes.
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