The Rest Is History: 357: Historical Love Island: The Sequel

Art 20-something's really this clinically brain dead. How could people this stupid possibly

get a job, hold a job, let alone be able to go to some resort? These mindless idiots

have no knowledge of books, films, art, history, politics or anything else that normal people

would use in small talk on a date. They appear to be completely uneducated, completely uncultured

and massively immature. An extremely sad and pathetic commentary on the current generation.

Disgraceful. So that Tom Holland is a review entitled Brainless More Is.

Was this in the Daily Mail Dominic? No, it's on IMDB. It's a review of Love Island. It

actually reads very like some of the reviews that academics write about the rest is history.

Anyway, so that's Love Island, the great television sensation of our times. And Tom,

last year, we did a Rest Is History special themed around Love Island. And you enjoyed

it so much, you wanted to do it again. Well, they do Love Island every summer. So if they

do Love Island every summer, we should do historical Love Island every summer. So last year's winners

were Stanley Baldwin, your great hero, 1930s Prime Minister, and the Empress Theodora. And

they made a lovely couple. They did. And we should explain to listeners who are not mad.

I wonder what the hell is happening here. Yeah, who are not brainless ones. We should

explain to these listeners what's going on. And to do that, Tom, we have recruited an

absolutely tip top expert, the same experts who joined us last year, one of Britain's

leading Love Island connoisseurs. And that is, of course, would you like to introduce

her to the audience? Yes. So this is my daughter, Katie, who actually introduced me to Love

Island because Katie and her sister, Eliza, watch it a great deal and talk about it a great

deal. So that's what inspired last year's historical Love Island. And Katie, welcome

back to the show. It is lovely to have you on. And I wonder, for the benefit of those

very few of our listeners who haven't watched Love Island, could you just explain what the

rules are, what's going on? Of course. Hello, everyone. Can't believe you've let me come

back on. But very, very happy to be here. Yes. So for anyone who hasn't watched Love

Island, firstly, do it. Secondly, the format is basically that you get four girls and four

boys in a villa. And the ultimate aim is to find love. And it lasts for about eight weeks.

And as you go through the eight weeks, the aim of the game is to stay in a couple. So

every single week, there's a recoupling. And all the islanders have to gather around

the fire pit and make a speech about who they want to stay with. And throughout the course

of the series, the couples are given challenges to test their loyalty to their loved ones.

So one of the big challenges is Casa Amor, where the boys and the girls are split up

and four new boys and four new girls are sent in. And chaos ensues because most of the boys

especially are quite unloyal. And the aim of the game at the end is to win. And you

also get 50K, but you also get fame in the UK after you finish. So it's quite an interesting

experiment in a way because you're seeing whether the people are there to actually find

love or are they there to get the Instagram brand deals after they leave. So that's Love

Island in a nutshell.

Right. It's like the people who come on this podcast, Tom. Are they in it for the right

things or are they just hoping to become influencers?

They're in it for the love of learning Dominic. So what you have done for us as you did last

time is you have come up with the archetypes, the kind of people that if you watch Love

Island, you will see. So four boys, four girls. And what you're going to do is introduce each

of these archetypes. And Dominic and I have come up with a figure from history who we

think fits that particular archetype. So we will then describe them. And you at the end

of our descriptions of these various characters will decide which of them will pair off.

Exciting. I cannot wait for this. Okay. So shall I start with my first male archetype?

Do. Yeah.

Yeah. So the first one I've chosen is the Jester. So this is a classic Love Island character.

He was always the centre of the pranks. And he loves all of the other boys in the villa

and often shows way more interest in them than the actual girl he's coupled up with.

So he'll often cry whenever someone is dumped, especially one of his boys from the island.

You like cried tears? Yeah. Yeah. Very upset.

Breaking. But then he'll have slight problems showing

the same level of emotion to his partner, much to her distress. So yes, that's our first

one. Okay. So I have chosen King Charles II, who is well known as the Merry Monarch. And

a huge part of his merriness is his fondness for japes, for horse racing, for wearing long wigs,

for hanging out with the orange sellers and actresses. So he's a tremendous lad. And this

is very bad news for his wife, Catherine of Braganza, who comes from Portugal. Princess

had been brought up in a convent, very, very pious. And so probably not a natural Love Island

contestant. So she's Catholic. Charles II is a Protestant, ruling a Protestant country.

So there's a lot of hostility in Britain to Catherine of Braganza. Charles does stand by her.

In that sense, he doesn't kind of get rid of her, although there are all kinds of accusations

are leveled against her, this kind of thing. But basically, he is not going to stay at home

and moon around the Queen Catherine of Braganza because he is out there having fun.

So his backdrop, of course, is that his dad had his head chopped off. So he's got quite a lot of

issues to work through. I mean, it's quite a lot of trauma there. He got exiled because England

got taken over by the Commonwealth by Oliver Cromwell. Charles tried to come back, set himself

up as a kind of, you know, a popular favorite to try and get people behind him, but they didn't

really rally to him. He got defeated in battle. So then he had to escape across England. He

hid in an oak tree very famously. But the great thing that enabled him to escape was his ability

to blend in and to mingle and to play, you know, he's kind of a man of the people. So even though

he's a king, he has that kind of popular touch. And then when he comes back and he's king,

it's been a very duer time under Cromwell. Cromwell has been, you know, banning pies and

Christmas, hasn't he, Dominic? He's banning pies. That's a bizarre claim, Tom. We didn't even ban

Christmas. No, he didn't. He didn't do any of that. So Charles comes back from his exile.

He is restored. This is the restoration. Cromwell is dead. Cromwell is not a guy for debauchery.

Charles basically is. So he, although he has no children by poor old Catherine of Brighansa,

he has 12 children by seven mistresses. So one of them is Nell Gwyn, another is Lady Castlemane,

another is Louise de Kerouet, who was a Love Island contender in the previous year.

Princess Diana was descended from two of his mistresses. The Queen, Camilla, she's descended

from one of Charles II's mistresses as well. So there's a lot going on there. He loves horse

racing. His favorite horse was a horse called Old Rowley, and that was the nickname that got

given to Charles himself. He loves pranks. He is great friends with a whole succession of

notorious rakes of whom perhaps the most notorious is the Earl of Rochester, a young man, the son

of a very devoted follower of Charles II, who had stayed with him throughout all the bad years

when Charles was in exile. So this is Samuel Peeps on Lord Rochester. The King dining yesterday at

the Dutch ambassadors. After dinner, they drank and were pretty merry. And among the rest of the

King's company, there was that worthy fellow, my Lord of Rochester. And Tom Killigrew, whose

mirth and rarity offended the former so much that he did give Tom Killigrew a box on the

ear in the King's presence, which do give much offense to the people here at court.

So this is very poor form. I mean, you know, even if you're an Earl, you don't go up and kind of

box people in front of the King. And so Rochester is banned from the court. But Charles II misses

him so much that within a few weeks, he's got Rochester back. Then Rochester is spectacularly

rude about the King. He writes a poem about him. So this is Rochester on Charles II.

Restless he rolls from whore to whore, a merry monarch, scandalous and poor. And so Charles II

bans him again, but then forgives him and appoints him the Ranger of Woodstock Park.

So that's the kind of vibe that's going on with Charles II. There's all this kind of banter.

It goes too far. Charles II gets rid of his friends, but then brings them back and makes them

Rangers of Parks. So that's the vibe that's going down. I think he'd be a great contender.

He's a good contender, Tom. He's a very good contender.

I should say, actually, you can dump a fellow islander if they rub you up the wrong way sometimes.

Okay. So if the Earl of Rochester was on the island and going too far,

pushing the pranks too far, Charles would probably get the Earl of Rochester off.

And Charles would have to do a speech saying why he's dumping him. He'd say,

that poem was too far, Earl of Rochester, you're off.

But could he then take it back?

Yes. Then he can come back in a shock twist.

All right, let's have your next one, Katie. What's your next archetype?

It has to be a woman this time.

Okay.

Or a girl. Sorry, a girl. They're not girl and women, do they?

No, no, they call them a girl. Yeah, very, very good, Dominic.

So the first girl I have is the Minx.

Brilliant.

So a very vivid character from Love Island. He comes up every year in some kind of form.

So she'll come in straight away, couple up with someone,

proclaim her love for them in five days.

She'll then fall in love equally as quickly as someone else

when Catherine Moore comes. So this is when the girls are put into a separate house and

new boys come in and they have to test their loyalty.

And she'll leave the first boy broken hearted,

as well as the girl she has stolen the guy from.

Perfect.

So yeah, there's not a lot of loyalty to the ladies.

Okay. So I'm choosing the Minx and I've chosen Catherine Howard,

briefly Queen of England. So she is one of Henry VIII's queens, as you will know, Katie.

Catherine Howard was born, we think at about 1524.

And she's kind of been in a Love Island environment before.

This is why I think she's such a strong contender.

So I had a very good year last year with Theodore and Stanley Baldwin.

Yes.

I was disappointed not to have a good year this time,

which is why I've chosen Catherine Howard.

Because what happened to Catherine Howard,

she's one of the six children of Lord Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpepper.

So the Howard thing is really important because she's part of one of the most powerful aristocratic

clans in 16th century England, the Howard clan, later to the Duke of Norfolk.

And she is brought up at Norfolk House, which is in Lambeth,

not a million miles from where you are, Tom.

Yeah.

And Norfolk House, which is the house of her father's stepmother, the Dowager Duchess,

Agnes Howard. And this is basically run as a sort of 16th century Love Island arrangement.

So there are quite a few aristocratic girls who stay there in a kind of dorm,

Katie, and they smuggle boys in at night.

The girls will steal sweetmeats from the kitchens and wine and gifts for the blokes.

So Catherine is absolutely into all this. She loves it.

She likes dancing. She likes dogs. She likes messing around and bubbliness and that sort of carry on.

Her first liaison is with her music teacher,

who's a man called Henry Mannex.

And later on at her trial, she was doing her interrogation, I should say.

She says, at the flattering and fair persuasions of Mannex,

I suffered him at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body.

So this is going on.

Anyway, he gets booted out, I think. I think this is discovered.

So that's the end of Henry Mannex.

And then she starts carrying on with the Dowager Duchess's secretary, Francis Derham.

And they call each other husband and wife. They're not husband and wife, but this is very touching.

I read he entrusts her with wifely duties, such as looking after his money when he goes away on holiday.

So this is quite sweet. But then she meets bloke number three.

And now the story takes a darker turn because this is Henry VIII.

Now Henry VIII is married to Anne of Cleves, who is not a natural love island contestant,

it's fair to say. It's all because she's German for one thing. So she's not laugh a minute.

She's basically got Angela Merkel's personality.

And the Howard's push young Catherine Howard in front of Henry.

They make sure she's sort of, she's sitting near him at parties and things.

He thinks she's a brilliant person.

He, by the way, at this point is an elephant of a man and much older.

Has his ulcer kicked in? His smelly ulcer?

His ulcer has kicked in on his leg. So he's got the stinking ulcer on his leg.

But love conquers all this, you know? So in the Catherine I'm all.

So Catherine Howard looks past this. He's delighted by this.

She's only about, she's about 70 years his junior, but that's fine.

He says she's the very jewel of womanhood.

So he boots out Anne of Cleves, marries Catherine Howard,

gives a tons of presents, jewels and all this kind of thing.

But as you know, with the minks, you know, history never stops.

They go off on a tour of the North, but Catherine has eyes for a new player

who is man called Thomas Culpepper, one of Henry's mates, one of his hunting friends.

Thomas Culpepper has a slightly unsavory past.

He's been accused of raping a parkkeeper's wife and then murdering somebody who tried to

restrain him or something. This wouldn't play well with Love Island audience.

Well, it's very Charles II and Rochester actually. Henry was very cross at first,

but then forgave him and said, listen, he's a great laugh.

You know, boys will be boys. Boys will be boys.

People sometimes overstep the mark, bringing back.

Catherine carries on with Thomas Culpepper during the tour.

She smuggles him up to her rooms in Pontefract.

Very unromantic place. No offense to people from Pontefract.

Great cake, though.

Yeah. And a good castle.

I think it's Pontefract Castle and also the Bishop's Palace in Lincoln,

where Culpepper is sneaking up late at night.

Anyway, bad news for Catherine, Katie.

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer leaves Henry.

I mean, this surely is very Love Island behavior.

He leaves him an anonymous note on his pew in the chapter saying...

Very Love Island.

Saying, your wife is cheating on you. Terrible scenes.

Henry bursts into floods of tears.

He's like a quivering blamange of misery and regret.

Catherine herself, she's arrested.

She's in floods of tears. It's absolute scenes.

She's taken to the palace at Sion.

Henry is very unrelenting, I have to say,

because later on she's dragged onto a barge against sobbing.

Taken to the Tower of London, 13th of February, 1542.

She is led to the block.

Beforehand, she'd been very cool.

She'd actually been practicing laying her head down,

practicing for the execution.

But when the moment comes, apparently it's terrible scenes.

She's pale. She's terrified.

She's shaking. They have to help her up the steps.

And then the blade comes down. That's the end of her story.

And she wants to know what the top historian David Loads says about Catherine.

How sympathetically he describes her and her story in his history of the Tudors.

He says, she was a stupid and oversexed adolescent,

a wanton slut who behaved like a whore.

When did he write that?

It was about 90, I don't know, 1990s or something.

Wow. I think his historiography is very different in those days.

And her ghost haunts Sampton Court, isn't it?

I believe so, yeah.

You can hear her screams echoing down the corridors.

The story is that just after she was outed, after she was discovered,

her dancing masters arrived to teach her her dance,

regular dancing lesson, and the doors were closed.

And the guard said something like, the days of dancing are over.

And they were for Catherine Howard, Katie.

So you can put that right today if you find the right partner for her.

Well, yeah, I guess there's the beheading thing to link her and Charles, maybe.

Yeah, they've both got beheading histories, haven't they, in various ways.

Maybe she wouldn't know she's being beheaded when she's in Love Island.

I don't know if they know the whole life journey.

Well, I mean, she'd be dead if she did.

Oh, I see. They don't know what's going to happen to them or what has happened to them.

I guess her ghost could come.

That's a bit niche, isn't it?

Bit niche.

I mean, she's sitting there without her head around the fire pit.

That would be very odd for people.

I think we should actually have the next contestant because we're running out of time already.

Okay, so I'm going to go back to the men.

So this one is the devoted one.

This character will most likely pair up with someone like the minks.

I don't want to predict, but he will be hurt by her.

But he's so blinded by love that he is willing to be humiliated over and over again.

Okay, so I have nominated Sir William Hamilton, who lived in the 18th century.

He'd served as an MP, and then he became the British ambassador to Naples,

to the kingdom of the two Sicilies, as it was called.

And to begin with, there would be nothing at all about him that would suggest

that he would in any way make a good Love Island contestant.

He's an absolute model of sobriety.

So he's married to his wife Catherine, whom he absolutely adores.

His interests, he's very, very interested in Greek and Roman pottery.

So he's hanging out in Naples, and of course Pompeii and Herculaneum and nearby.

And this is when the excavations there are starting,

and he becomes a great collector of antiquities.

He's very, very interested in volcanoes and earthquakes.

He climbs Mount Vesuvius over 70 times.

He takes guests up there.

One time he takes his friend, the 4th Earl of Bristol up there,

and the 4th Earl of Bristol burns his arm on a burning piece of lava.

So that's probably the most exciting thing that has happened to him in the course of his life.

And also he's a great patron of music.

And so he entertains the 14-year-old Mozart in his ambassadorial residence.

But as I say, there's nothing there, I think,

really that would interest the contestants of Love Island.

But then in 1782, his beloved wife Catherine dies and Zoolium is devastated.

I must forever feel the loss of the most amiable,

the most gentle and virtuous companion that ever man was blessed with.

I mean, very, very touching.

And he's very upset.

So he goes back home to England to kind of recuperate emotionally.

And he stays with his nephew.

And his nephew has a very young mistress who'd been born Amy Lyon.

And she'd worked variously as a housemaid, a dancer, an actress, and a courtesan.

And it is as a courtesan that she is staying with Zoolium's nephew.

And she has taken on the name Emma Hart.

This is her kind of stage name.

When Zoolium meets with Emma, she is 18 years old.

And he's an elderly widower.

And he's a little bit smitten with her.

And he goes back to Naples.

And he's very, very lonely.

After having lived 22 years on Femi, it is most terrible to live chiefly alone.

He writes to his nephew.

And the nephew by now is getting a bit bored of Emma Hart.

He wants to dump her and move on to someone else.

So he is very much a Love Island contestant.

I mean, he'd be an absolute player.

And so he decides, I know, I can see that my uncle,

you know, he's quite keen on this young girl.

I will fob her off onto him.

And so he packs Emma Hart off to Naples.

And so William's a bit nonplussed that he's been sent his nephew's ex mistress.

But he's very chivalrous.

And so he puts her up and indeed her mother, who's come with her.

That's a weird detail.

So that probably doesn't happen in Love Island.

People, the contestants don't bring their mothers with them, do they?

They actually do in the last week.

But to kind of see if they approve of their partner.

So he puts Emma and her mother up in a palazzo.

And then he falls increasingly in love.

And within five years, he's not only head over heels in love with her,

but he's decided he's going to marry her.

So they go back to London.

They get married there.

Emma is now Emma, Lady Hamilton.

They go back to Naples.

Emma Hamilton becomes a great star.

So she becomes a huge friend of the Queen of Naples,

who is the sister of Marie Antoinette,

daughter of Maria Teresa, the Empress of Austria.

So this would be very, very Love Island.

She does what are called attitudes,

which involves her dressing up

in kind of wispy classical style swimsuits and poses next to the fire pit.

So this would be tremendous.

Perfect.

But she's not a contestant.

He is.

No.

She becomes very fond of Sir William,

who she describes as the best husband and friend.

And they seem to be ticking along.

But then in 1798, the most famous man in Britain,

who has just beaten the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile,

he sails into town and this is Horatio Nelson.

Oh, crikey.

And Emma starts having a fling with him.

Everyone's terribly embarrassed on behalf of Sir William,

but he puts up with it.

He doesn't mind.

I think partly because he's so devoted to Emma

and partly because he thinks as British ambassador,

it's his duty to allow the hero of the hour, Lord Nelson,

you know, to relax any way he wants.

And if Nelson wants to relax with his wife,

then it's his patriotic duty to facilitate that.

So 1800, they all return back to England over land.

And it's a main à jatois.

And it causes a kind of international scandal.

And they arrive in London and the three of them together

take rooms in a hotel.

And Nelson is married as well.

He hasn't told Lady Nelson that he's back

and he's shacked up with Lady Hamilton and her husband.

So Lady Nelson suddenly turns up.

They're having dinner.

Lady Nelson turns up.

Then Nelson's father turns up.

They all have dinner.

And Lady Nelson observes that Emma is looking a bit larger

than she might otherwise be

and realizes that Lady Hamilton is pregnant.

And Nelson refuses to apologize.

And basically there's a massive kind of scandal.

It's all over the press.

There are cartoons, journalists kind of doorstopping them.

Very, very kind of.

They're being papped everywhere they go.

It's cartoonists are scribbling.

And Paul Sir William is a butt of public mockery.

He's the most famous cookhold in England.

But he still doesn't mind.

He still puts up with it.

And Nelson ends up dumping his wife.

He goes off to sea, fights the French again.

Emma gives birth to their daughter who they call Horatia.

After Horatia, making it absolutely clear to everyone

who the father is.

And Nelson buys a house in Merton.

And the three of them go and live there.

They go on holiday together.

They go on holiday to Wales.

They go on beach holiday in Ramsgate.

And then in 1803, Sir William collapses.

And he dies in Emma's arms.

And he leaves her all his money.

Oh, Sir William leaves her 800 pounds.

Katie, are you crying?

He has stuck with her through all this kind of stress.

He's put up with the public humiliation of being laughed at,

of having cartoons done about him.

So I think he is an absolutely model Love Island contestant.

Okay, Katie, what's the next contestant, please?

Okay, so we're going to go back to the girls.

The next one is the resilient one.

Okay, brilliant.

So quite, quite similar.

So she will get rejected over and over again,

but she always keeps her head held high.

Regally high, would you say?

Imperially high?

Definitely, definitely.

Regally high.

The public are impressed.

Brilliant.

They keep her until the final,

despite her palpable lack of success in the boy arena.

Splendid.

So I have a perfect candidate.

She is the Empress Zoe of the Eastern Roman Empire,

or the Byzantine Empire, as people often call it.

So Katie, she was born in the year 978, or thereabouts.

She's one of the three daughters of the Emperor Constantine VIII.

The Byzantine historian, Michael Sellus, says of her,

she was regaling her ways, a woman of great beauty,

most imposing in her manner and commanding respect.

A woman of passionate interests,

prepared with equal enthusiasm for both alternatives,

death or life.

She was open-handed, the sort of woman who could exhaust a sea,

teeming with gold dust in one day.

Her eyes were large, set apart with imposing eyebrows.

Her nose was inclined to be aquiline,

and her whole body was radiant with the whiteness of her skin.

That may be an issue with all the fake tan.

I don't know whether that's a problem.

But he also adds,

she confused the trifles of the Harim with important matters of state,

which I think is quite love island.

So she has a bit of bad luck,

which has a lot of bad luck in her life.

She first appears in the history books when her uncle,

who's the Emperor Basil II,

decides he's going to marry her off to the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III.

She's all excited.

Everyone says she's the top beauty, really pumped for it.

She sets sail from Constantinople.

She arrives in Bari to marry Otto III,

and she's told he's actually dead.

He's died of fever.

So miserably, she has to sail back again to Constantinople.

And this is a bit of a blow for her, Katie,

because she spends the next 27 years effectively locked up in the palace,

stuck in her apartments.

So that's very boring.

But then her time comes at last.

Her father, Constantine, dies of old age.

And she is basically the next person standing set,

but she needs to marry to become Empress.

And her father has already arranged a marriage for her with an old man,

who's the governor of Constantinople,

who's called Romanus Argyrus,

who becomes Romanus III.

Now, he's this sort of wizened old bloke.

She has no interest in him at all.

She becomes infatuated with a young courtier called Michael Lepaflagonian,

and she starts an affair with Michael.

Romanus, he's a bit of a William Hamilton type,

because he allows Michael to become his personal kind of attendant.

But she and her husband fall out,

so she basically gets Michael to murder him.

The emperor is drowned in his bath.

That's very extreme love island behavior.

And Michael becomes the emperor.

But, but, Katie, how does he reward her?

He banishes her to the women's apartments again,

where she'd been for 27 years,

and says, I was only going out with you,

because, you know, oh, for the Instagram.

What a skunk.

Clicks or whatever.

Yeah.

So was it fake grafting, Dominic?

It was fake grafting, as they, I believe they call it, on the island.

But he, fate turns against him,

or the audience turn against him.

He's epileptic, and this gets worse and worse.

He gets dropsy, edema.

He swells up like a balloon with water.

And his legs become gangrenous.

His legs become gangrenous.

And he dies.

She's still hanging around, though.

She reemerges from the palace.

She says, I need another emperor.

She adopts his nephew, who's also called Michael.

Right.

So this is Michael V.

At this point, Katie, he also turns on her.

Oh, no.

He tries to banish her to a monastery on the Prince's Island

in the Sea of Marmara.

But the audience by now, they admire her resilience.

Yeah.

She's become a bit of a favorite.

Yeah.

So the audience, I mean, they literally riot.

People tearing through the streets.

Michael goes and hides in a church.

I don't know how much church going takes place on Love Island,

but he's not the contestant she is.

He's dragged out of the church, and he is blinded by

her chief sort of captain of the guard,

who's a man from the north called Harold Hardrada.

So he gouges Michael's eyes out.

That's the end of Michael.

She needs another husband now.

She's had a lot of bad luck.

She needs another husband.

The bad news is she's now 64.

The good news is that the Byzantine historian Michael

Seller says every part of her was firm and in good condition.

So she'd still look good in a swimsuit.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So she's still...

Katie, don't be agist.

Don't be not agist on the rest of this.

No, no.

It's just the description for the historian.

Different times.

You're a different...

That's journalist for you.

Yeah, it's journalist, exactly.

So she now marries somebody called Constantine Menomachus.

He is about her age.

Thank God.

And he's a former lady's man.

He's very loose.

She's very obeying.

I imagine him as Charles Dance.

Crazy name.

Crazy guy.

So she marries him.

But there's bad news.

Constantine Menomachus brings with him his mistress,

Maria Sclerina, who lives with them in the palace.

Who's a raven-haired beauty.

And for poor old Zoe,

I think this is a little bit humiliating.

And so she dies in 1050.

She's lived to a ripe old age.

So she's lived to mid-70s.

But she's never really...

I mean, she's never been...

She's been knocked down again and again.

But she's always dragged herself back up.

And she's very much a crowd favourite.

They will riot and gouge out your eyes if you cross Zoe.

And the thing is, Dominic,

that Byzantine emperors have a track record in Love Island,

don't they?

Well, Theodora won.

Yeah.

I would imagine that Zoe is very conscious of that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's one of her predecessors who won Love Island.

I think as well that business about being firm and in good condition

is a real...

When I saw that, I thought, you know...

Yeah.

She's a contender.

She's a definite contender.

The viewing audience would be impressed by that backstory.

Anyway, I don't want to prejudge what you're going to decide, Katie.

I don't want to put pressure on you.

She's my favourite.

You know who I think would be good for her?

Would be...

It's a William.

Are the public ready for two quite elderly winners,

Tom?

That's the question.

I think they are.

I think they are.

Well, time will tell.

Yeah.

Because we have to take a break, don't we?

So what sort of adverts do they have in Love Island, Katie?

eBay is a sponsor this year.

Oh, crikey.

We're not in that league, Tom.

No.

Sadly, we're more...

Flight to Las Vegas, aren't we?

Which is very Love Island in its own way.

All right.

We'll take a break now and we'll return for more contestants.

See you in a second.

Welcome back to The Rest is History.

We are on Love Island.

What was that review entitled?

Brainless morons.

No, I think the four contenders we've had,

well, maybe three of them are clearly very smart.

I don't think Katherine Howard is quite as smart

as she might have been, but the other three.

Okay.

So you're back on, Tom.

Katie, what's your next archetype?

The next one is the power-hungry one.

So this lady has applied for Love Island every single year,

hoping to get her big break and become the new Molly May,

who is one of the most commercially successful contestants

of UK Love Island ever.

So commercially, she's had lots of kind of brand endorsements.

Yeah.

She's worth, I think, five million now.

So she will cause arguments with the other girls

and pick them on purpose to get as much airtime as possible.

The public sees straight through it, but they are conflicted.

She's not very likable, but she also brings the drama.

Okay.

So Dominic has already chosen one Roman Empress

in the form of Zoe.

I'm choosing another one.

And this is the wife of the Emperor Nero,

his great beloved, Pepea Sabina.

And she was the most fashionable woman in Rome,

incredible beauty, unbelievably stylish,

had kind of amber hair.

Nero would send to Denmark for amber,

and then he would decorate his palace with it

as a tribute to her.

She actually had her own brands of cosmetics, which were...

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

...people wanted to look like her.

She would bathe in asses milk to protect her complexion.

Her mules, when she went out on trips carrying her luggage,

they would all be shod with gold.

So she is absolutely the cutting edge of fashion,

and she'd be an amazing, amazing influencer.

Every sponsor would want her, I think, advertising their products.

But she is a bit of a baggage.

I mean, she is a bit of a piece of work.

And I think that that may be because

she had quite a tough upbringing.

She was the daughter of a guy called Titus Olius,

and so originally she was called Olius.

But then he gets caught up in a kind of court scandal

and gets ruined.

And so she then takes the name of her mother,

who is also called Papaya Sabina.

But then Papaya Sabina gets forced to commit suicide

by the Empress Messalina, who's a love rival.

So Papaya Sabina absolutely has a sense

of how high the stakes can be on Love Island,

that you really have to play it hard.

So Papaya, both her parents have been ruined.

One of them has been disgraced.

The other one has been forced to commit suicide.

And so she's looking for a partner

who can help her get a leg up in this competitive world

of influencing in Julie Claudian Rome.

So she marries the head of the Praetorian Guard.

So you'd think he'd be a banker.

But then he gets removed, so that's no good.

So she dumps him and she moves on to a guy

who is the best friend of Nero,

a man called Otho, who, again, is very, very stylish,

wears a cutting-edge toupee, keeps his, depilates his legs.

So he's kind of literally very, very smooth.

And then a bit like with Nelson and Hamilton and Emma,

they all get involved in a main à chatoir.

And the gossip columnists are obsessed by this.

So there are lots of different interpretations

in the press about what's going on.

So maybe Otho had boasted to Nero too much

about how sexy his wife was and Nero's kind of moved in.

Or maybe they're having a threesome and then Nero decides

that he wants to prepare for himself or whatever.

Who knows what's going on?

But basically, Nero decides that he's going to marry

Papaya for himself.

And so he sends Otho off to govern Portugal.

But there is a problem that Nero is already married

to his step-sister, Octavia.

Poor Octavia.

And so Papaya is saying,

I'm not just going to be your mistress.

I want to be the Empress.

I want to marry you.

So poor Octavia.

Nero is now obsessed with Papaya Sabina.

And so he accuses her of committing adultery,

which is absolutely shameless,

because Nero's been committing adultery

left, right, and centre.

Octavia gets sent off to a remote island of Italy.

And then Papaya Sabina demands that she be executed.

So Nero is so smitten by this point

that he sends a guard to chop her head off

and brings Octavia's head back.

And everyone revolts, don't they?

They do. Yes, they do.

As you say, Papaya Sabina is quite unlikeable.

And Octavia, people in Rome feel very sympathetic about her.

But that doesn't stop Papaya,

because she knows that the key is to get off with the Emperor.

So Octavia ends up dead.

Her head is brought back to Papaya,

and Papaya keeps it as a kind of souvenir.

So she's quite tough.

She's very good at the brands.

I think she'd be an absolute player on Love Island.

I don't think you'd want to come up against her.

Nothing will stop her from getting the donkey milk brand deals

after she leaves. Exactly.

And she ends up dead,

because Nero ends up kicking her to death.

So it all turns out badly.

Yeah, I can see her and Emperor Zoe,

her and Emperor Zoe having some serious clashes.

They'd have some real beef, wouldn't they?

They would.

And I think I'd probably back Papaya in that particular.

But Zoe is never beaten, Tom.

Well, we'll see.

I mean, she doesn't get a head cut off,

or it's kicked to death or any of these things,

by Nero, by her own husband.

Is that never happened to Zoe?

Zoe made sure her husband died first.

Yeah, but Papaya is a glamorous ending.

That's much more Love Island.

She's a loser, though.

She's a loser.

Also, Papaya, I guess, could say,

look what I did to Octavia.

You'll be next if you cross me.

Yeah, but Zoe wasn't next.

She never was.

Anyway, this is all part of the excitement of it.

But we need some more contestants.

So who's next, Katie?

Okay, I'll go to a boy.

So the next one I'm going to do is the other Jester.

This guy will be a duo with Charles II.

He is much loved by the public,

and deeply in love with his lady,

but repeatedly stung by her.

We'll go on to become a very much-loved presenter

of shows on Channel 4.

Like Nick Knowles or somebody like that.

Yeah.

He isn't here a presenter of things on Channel 4.

Anyway, listen.

My choice is somebody who would definitely

get on World with Charles II.

It's Russian Tsar Peter the Great.

So Peter the Great was born in 1672, Katie.

The key thing you need to know about him is he's 6'8".

He's a massive bloke.

He's incredibly imposing.

He's a real Royster-Doyster.

He loves his dwarfs, doesn't he?

He loves dwarfs.

We'll get on to the dwarfs.

He expands the frontiers of Russia enormously,

beats the Swedes who are previously their big rivals

in the Baltic.

He builds a Russian navy.

He leads a kind of cultural revolution.

He's a man of the early Enlightenment.

He wants to transform Russia into this great

sort of modern powerhouse.

But he's a man who knows how to party,

loves pranks, loves partying.

So in 1698 he launches what he calls his grand embassy.

He travels often incognito around Western Europe

with a load of attendants trying to observe

what's going on so that he can modernize Russia.

He arrives in England.

He's in England for about four months.

I don't know whether he would bring these people

to the island.

It's very unclear because obviously he's never

been on that island before.

He traveled with four Chamberlains,

two Clocksmiths, three interpreters, a cook,

a priest, six Trumpeters, 70 soldiers,

all as tall as him.

Four dwarves and a monkey.

So he pitches up in England.

He stays at the diarist John Evelyn's house in Deptford.

And Tom, we discussed this before in the rest of history.

When he moves out, Christopher Wren

is sent round to sort of tally up the damage.

They have caused 300 pounds worth of damage,

including three pounds for wheelbarrows

broken by the Tsar in races and parties and such.

All the floors are covered with ink.

All the curtains and the bedclothes

have been torn to pieces.

All the chairs have been smashed.

300 window panes have been broken.

The garden has been torn up.

And this is just in the course of their kind of roistering.

He had a mistress, an actress called Letitia Cross.

When he left England, he said his 500 pounds,

which is the equivalent of more than a million pounds today.

She was absolutely gutted by this.

She said, I'm worth a lot more than this.

And he said, frankly, I think I'm being very generous.

I think you're overpaid given the nature of your services.

He goes back to Russia.

Anyway, as Tom said, he's massively into dwarves.

He stages a wedding for his favorite dwarf in 1710.

He orders that all dwarves in Russia be brought to St. Petersburg.

He forces them to drink goblets of vodka

and dance until they fall over.

He regularly convenes what he calls the all drunken synod

of prostitutes, dwarves, and other characters.

And he tells each person at this party,

this all drunken synod,

your name is going to be Archdeacon Thrust the Prick.

Oh, you're going to be called Archdeacon F. Off

for any of these kind of things.

So that's all great fun.

He's a great lad.

He's a great roisterer.

Now, the obvious issue is, what about his love life?

He's deeply in love with this lady,

but repeatedly stung by her.

So he's married twice.

His first wife was called Eudokia.

They had an arranged marriage, but they fell out.

And Peter exiled her to a convent in Suzdal.

And he thought, she'll go and she'll be like a nun.

And that'll be lovely.

But no, she starts an affair with an officer

called Stepan Glebof.

And I think it's a sign of what a lovely fellow Peter is.

How much is hurt by this,

that he's so upset that he has Stepan Glebof impaled on a stake.

Because that would be an incredible adornment to Love Island.

And the stake, we read,

was artfully inserted to miss all the vital organs

so that Stepan would live longer.

And then Peter is so hurt that he gets his soldiers

to force Eudokia to watch Stepan's death agonize.

How long did it last?

Oh, probably hours and hours and hours, maybe days.

So that's that.

He also has a bit of bad luck.

He has a Scottish mistress called Mary Hamilton.

But it turns out that she's been stealing

from his second wife, the Empress Catherine.

So again, Peter is very, very hurt and he has her beheaded.

But then in a sign of his son foie,

is called and composure,

which I think would strongly advantage him on the island.

He goes up and he picks up her head

and he shows it to the crowd

and he gives them a lesson on anatomy pointing to the head.

So it says, he pointed out the sliced vertebrae,

open windpipe and dripping arteries

before kissing the bloody lips and dropping the head.

So again, that's a big reason.

Yeah, a lot of listeners will say,

Peter the Great sounds like a terrible man.

So to make them feel better

and to curry favour with that element of our audience,

I will say, good news is he dies of hideous bladder problems.

So the end of his life,

surgeons managed to extract two litres of blocked urine

from his gangrenous bladder.

And he dies of a gangrenous bladder a year later.

So he's quite a character.

In fact, Tom, we're going to return to Peter the Great next year

on the rest of history,

a little series on Peter the Great and the Great Northern War.

What kind of Channel 4 series do you think he'd end up presenting?

Don't they do things like Naked Bodies?

Naked Bodies, I was going to say.

Yeah.

He would do that with Naked Severed Heads or whatever.

Yeah.

Wouldn't he?

There's a lot of severed heads in this villa.

That'll be the bonding point.

That's history.

That's history, Katie.

Yeah.

Severed heads and impaled bodies.

And impaled bodies.

That can be their icebreaker at the beginning of the season.

I'm not going to prejudge anything.

Again, I don't want to influence you, Katie,

but I think he'd get on brilliantly with Zoe.

Oh, why do you think he'd get on with Zoe?

They're both the emperor and empress.

We can't begin to discussion now.

We've got she had people's eyes gouged out.

Dominic, stop.

Stop it.

We've got to get on.

All right, Tom, it's your go.

Okay.

This is my last girl.

The last girl is the out of place one.

So she works in a crazy job like a landmine disposal

and agrees to go on Love Island

because she thinks it would be a great platform

for the social core she believes in.

And then it will push her out of her comfort zone.

And in a nice twist of fate,

she actually ends up falling in love.

So I have chosen Mary Fisher, who was a housemaid,

lived in Yorkshire in the 17th century.

She was born in 1628.

But then in 1651, she is serving at table

and she hears this guy called George Fox, preacher sermon.

And George Fox is a founder of a group called Quakers.

And Quakers, the spirit of the Lord descends on them

and they start shaking and trembling and roaring

and crying and foaming at the mouth.

And this is why they get called Quakers.

And Mary Fisher decides that this is great.

She's going to sign up to it.

Quakers believe in absolute human equality.

They believe in gender equality.

They believe in giving away all their earthly possessions.

And this really appeals to Mary.

So she becomes a Quaker.

And I think that you might think that going around the world

preaching about the spirit of the Lord

might not be entirely Love Island behavior,

except for the fact that Quakers are quite prone

to making public statements

by taking all their clothes off and walking around naked.

So that might be something that the viewers of Love Island

would enjoy in Mary's case.

So she has quite a tough life

because she is absolutely committed

to spreading the good news of Quakerism.

So she goes to Cambridge,

where she protests against the students

who are all being trained to become Quakers.

Quakers don't really approve of Quakers.

And because of this, she gets taken to the market cross

and flogged.

And she is the first female Quaker

to be publicly whipped for her Quaker ministry.

Then she goes off to America.

She goes to Barbados,

where she manages to convert the governor to become a Quaker.

And then she goes to Boston.

And here she has a terrible time

because the Bostonians don't approve of her at all.

The moment she lands, she gets arrested, imprisoned, stripped.

Her body is intimately examined by a perv

for signs of witchcraft.

By a perv, is that Tom?

Yes.

That's a technical...

Well, the person meant to be examining her

is meant to be a woman.

But it turns out to be a guy who's dressed up

as a woman's clothes so that he can go and have a grope.

No, really?

So I think that counts as a perv.

Brokey.

Don't you think?

That's definitely a perv.

And all her books and everything get seized

by the Bostonian hangman and burned.

So it's all very sad.

And she gets put in prison

and she's only saved from starvation by a friendly innkeeper.

Because there's obviously something about her

that appeals to this innkeeper.

So I think that bodes well for her.

Her prospects on Love Island.

So anyway, she spends five weeks in prison

and then she gets deported.

And they've only managed to get one convert.

So that's very sad.

But she's nothing daunted.

So her next stunt is she goes off with five Quaker pals.

And they go off to convert the Ottoman Sultan

who, you know, there are various issues there.

Firstly, he doesn't speak English

and Mary doesn't speak Turkish.

And secondly, she's a Quaker and he's a Muslim.

And also, she's a housemaid and he's a Sultan.

So all in all, the odds on them meeting up

and getting on, I'd say, are fairly low.

But actually, she does get to meet him.

And he's very polite and listens to her.

And Mary says of him that he was very noble unto me.

And someone writes about her performance here.

She departed through that great army,

that's the army of the Sultan,

to Constantinople without a guard,

with the two she came with at the least hurt or scoff,

to the commendation and praise of the discipline of that army,

the glory of the great Turk and his great renown.

So she's obviously got something.

You know, this impecunious, slightly mad housemaid

has turned up and the Sultan himself has listened to her.

She comes back, she meets with a sailor from Poole,

marries him, he dies.

And then she marries a guy called John Cross.

And they are together for the rest of their lives.

And they emigrate to South Carolina,

where she dies in 1698.

And she is buried there with her beloved husband, John Cross,

in the Quaker burial ground.

And you can see her grave to this day.

Oh, Tom.

Sweet story.

Very sweet.

Katie, we've got one more.

So the final person is the accidental heartbreaker.

So this is a man who's very joyous and charismatic,

forms strong friendships with the girls

and then is thought over by them

once they realize what a nice guy he is.

Okay.

Tom tugged at the heartstrings the last one.

And I've gone with an unexpected heartstring tugger

and a person who a lot of people

will be surprised to hear me nominate in this category.

So this is the former conscience of the Labour Party

and of the Labour Left, Tony Ben.

The former Viscount Stansgate.

Stung on his penis by a wasp.

He was stung on the 6th of September, 2000, Tom.

I had a bath this morning

and I must report it a wasp stung my private parts.

It's been stinging all day.

I could feel this thing flying around in my pants

and I tried to swat it

and I probably did succeed

and it responded by stinging me.

Because that would be great on Love Island, wouldn't it?

People would love watching that.

That would go on Love Island best bits,

which are the bits that don't make the main show.

So Tony Ben is a very implausible candidate on Love Island

because he's a man of enormous political sort of priority

and seriousness.

So his father was a liberal and then Labour MP.

His mother was a feminist suffragist theologian.

He was in the RAF in the Second World War,

though he never really saw action,

but he was in the RAF in Africa, I think.

He is motivated, as I'm sure Tom would agree,

by this extraordinary kind of non-conformist religious passion.

Although he's not really a religious person,

but he pours all that in.

But quite Mary Fisher.

Yeah, very much so, Tom.

He would love Mary Fisher.

He pours it all into politics.

When he succeeds to the peerage at the beginning of the 1960s,

he fights this long battle to disclaim his peerage

because he doesn't want it.

So he was by account of Stansgate,

but he wants to stay in the House of Commons.

He's the Minister of Technology under Labour in the 1960s.

And then he has this kind of conversion experience

where he goes way over to the left.

And he becomes Labour's Secretary of State for Industry

in the 70s where he loves nationalizing things.

He dreams of a future in which hundreds of companies

have been nationalized,

in which men in donkey jackets

are planning the future of the economy.

And in the 1980s,

he becomes the absolute kind of Tribune of the Plebs,

kind of touring the land,

giving these incredibly articulate,

rousing, inspirational speeches,

not just against that tourism,

but against what he sees as the heretics in his own party.

But the reason I've chosen him

is because he is also incredibly luxurious.

He has this very sort of admirable

and touching love story with his wife Caroline.

So they met over tea at Worcester College, Oxford in 1949.

She's American and she's also very left-wing.

And he was smitten straight away.

He proposed to her nine days later,

after they'd first met at a park bench in the city at Oxford.

She accepted.

Many years later, he bought that bench from Oxford City Council

and he installed it in the garden of their house in Holland Park

and critics in the mid-1970s

claimed that he was secretly having orgies at a rented house.

And it was a story so utterly unbelievable and outlandish

that it didn't even remotely catch on

because he was the last person in Britain

that would ever have done something like that.

50 years after they had first met,

she wore the same dress that she had worn that night.

She kept it and she would come sometimes get it out

and wear it on their wedding anniversaries and things like that.

But the thing that's actually most touching about them

Tony Bember's an inveterate diarist.

That is why he will, long after his political achievements,

which were, I think, it's fair to say debatable,

long after they were forgotten,

he'll be remembered as this great diarist.

And if you read his diaries from the year of her death

and the year after she died,

she died on the 22nd of November 2000

and his diary entry afterwards said how heartbroken he was.

She was the finest person I ever met.

And then you read the next year's volumes.

He's often saying,

it was the anniversary of Caroline's death this week.

I must say I'm finding it very painful.

Not only do I miss her terribly,

but I am riddled with guilt,

the things that I should have done with her that I didn't.

The next day, at six minutes past 10,

the exact moment she died,

we all went into the front room where I'd lit a candle

and we stood in front of the picture of her

and we hugged each other and took photographs.

A month later, I was listening to Cessets in the car

and he's obviously thinking about his wife.

He says, I began crying and I sobbed and sobbed

all the way to Stansgate.

It was freezing cold there.

I sat in the bedroom and sobbed.

Just comes back to you all of a sudden.

I wondered where Caroline was.

Has she disappeared into the thin air?

What does death mean?

Is it a complete and absolute end?

And he writes these kind of entries again and again.

But there is one nice Love Island touch to this,

which is about three years after his wife's death,

he meets somebody on whom I think it's fair to say

he develops an absolute crush, very implausible person.

And this is the first winner of Strictly Come Dancing,

Natasha Koplinski.

So Natasha Koplinski comes around to his house to interview him.

She's a BBC breakfast presenter at the time.

And he says in his diary, she did the interview.

She's very professional, exceptionally beautiful.

Two days later, there was a knock at the door

and there was Natasha Koplinski,

who'd come around with a box of chocolates,

which was really sweet of her.

They keep up this relationship.

June 2004.

I watched Strictly Come Dancing and Natasha won.

She was doing a foxtrot, I think.

Oh, she was terribly good.

And I sent her a little message.

Later that month, Natasha came top again.

Oh, she was so good.

I voted several times and supported her.

Then I rang her and said how fabulous she was.

A month later, Natasha rang.

She said, she'd love to have lunch.

I said, I've kept a month open for you.

She said, only a month, Tony, which was very cheeky.

Anyway, next Wednesday is settled.

Oh.

Guys, on and on.

They have the lunch.

Natasha arrived at 4.45.

She is beautiful and very friendly.

I really enjoyed the evening.

So that was a sort of sweet romantic friendship,

I think it's fair to say,

that he developed in very advanced age.

And I think those two things, the love story with his wife

and then the late life platonic romance

with Natasha Kiblinski,

make him a compelling dark horse candidate

for this year's Love Island.

Yeah.

So he never, they never got together.

Him and Natasha Kiblinski?

Yeah.

Well, who knows.

Not that I'm aware of.

I mean, Natasha Kiblinski,

if she's listening, we'll be able to.

Yeah.

Well, there is a dance challenge.

So it sounds like Tony Bem would be completely undone by that.

Maybe.

Yeah.

But unless Natasha Kiblinski has given him dance lessons.

Tony Bem was a great crier as well.

So if you were to have a minor's choir or something

who started singing,

he would burst into floods of tears.

And I wonder whether that would also

endear him to the audience, Katie.

Oh, definitely.

Or if it was a challenge, a Love Island challenge

about nationalizing businesses or fighting the IMF.

He'd win.

I mean, he'd be all over that.

He would be absolutely all over that.

They haven't done that yet, but never say never.

Yeah.

I don't think prepare would be as good.

No.

No.

Our opinions on international capitalism, Tom,

probably not as robust as certainly goes.

Probably not.

So, Katie, there you have your eight contenders.

Now you have to decide which of them

are going to pair up with which.

What do you think, having heard them?

Instinctively, I'm going to pair up Peter the Great

with Popeye Sabina.

Yeah.

Because I think she would be attracted to his name.

She would see some opportunity in that.

And he's also got a bit of a cruel edge like Nero.

So I think they would get on.

Yeah.

I would pair up Catherine Howard with Sir William Hamilton.

Oh.

Because I think she would see some opportunity to have some fun

while also having a stable partner in the villa.

I like it.

Yeah.

Very good.

I would pair up Brazoi with Charles II

because I think the producers will want that to happen

because they'll enjoy her being humiliated over and over by him.

Oh, no.

Poor Zoe.

Poor Zoe.

I feel a bit cruel doing that because she is my favourite,

actually, but it makes good TV, so it's going to be done.

And then, of course, I'd pair up Mary Fisher with Tony Ben.

Because I think Popeye Sabina

will be attracted to Tony Ben and might try and ruffle some feathers.

That sentence has never been said in the history of human experience.

Until now.

You could have a million monkeys on typewriters

writing for a million years and you'd never get that line.

No.

Right.

OK.

So Peter the Great and prepared Sabina.

Catherine Howard and Sir William Hamilton.

And Brazoi and Charles II.

Tony Ben and Mary Fisher.

Those are the four Love Island couples.

And now, Katie, am I right?

The rule is that two people who are called bombshells get introduced.

Yes, exactly.

And there's a chance to see if people are going to dump the people

that they're with and move on to someone else.

So we're going to introduce a man and a woman.

And both of these are friends of the show,

people who have already appeared in episodes.

It will be familiar to lots of listeners.

Yeah.

And the man that I have chosen is Admiral Horatio Nelson.

There's a history there.

It's walking in.

One eye, one arm, a victory of many battles.

Man from Norfolk.

Burning with zeal for King and Country.

King and Country.

Yeah, King and Country keeps him warm.

And of course, Sir William Hamilton.

Well, I mean, is he going to glare at Nelson?

They get on, I think.

They get on, yeah.

So they get on.

So do you think basically any of the ladies, sorry, the girls,

do you think that they might go for Nelson?

I think they'll all go for him,

but he'll be attracted to Catherine

because he always wants what Sir William Hamilton has.

History's repeating.

Would Catherine go for him?

Yeah, 1000%.

Of course she would.

Sir William Hamilton, sadly, would be dumped.

He's been dumped again.

But I think he'd go very graciously.

Or do you think that they would live in a mania chatua?

He'd still tag along.

Yeah, he might be brought back, actually.

He'd stand outside the bedroom.

Yeah, exactly.

Looking sad with his vases.

Oh, no.

Yeah, you can imagine the memes being made about him, I think.

Okay, so Catherine Howard and Nelson.

So William has been dumped.

So that is explosive action.

But Dominic, who is the girl who's coming in?

Top blood drinking, Christ marrying saint, Catherine of Siena.

So Katie, your dad had been pestering to do an episode

on Catherine of Siena for about, well, ever since the beginning of the rest of history.

She initially was very interested in fashion, wasn't she, Tom?

Yeah.

Loved fashion.

And then had this sort of, again, a sort of conversion experience,

actually a bit like Tony Ben, moving to the left after the 1970 general election.

She casts off earthly things.

She stops eating.

Jesus visits her in her bedroom.

They get married.

She pledges herself to eternal virginity.

She pledges herself to eternal virginity, which is an issue on love, I agree.

Loads of saints and stuff piled into her bedroom to reserve the wedding.

I mean, these are dead people, like St. Paul and stuff.

She married Jesus using as a ring his blooded foreskin.

And then she carried out miracles, didn't she, Tom?

Yeah.

Stuff with bread and wine, healing people.

She drank, what did she drink?

Puss from the drink.

Puss from a breast, cancerous breast.

I mean, that would be, that would be unusual.

I mean, that's not the kind of thing I imagine that you get on.

On love, anyway.

So do you think that she might, anyone, any of the lads would?

I think she'd be brought in halfway through.

In Casa Amor for Tony Ben to test his love with Mary Fisher.

Gracie.

But it will fail because he's exorious and so she will then be booted off.

Catherine Sierra didn't last long.

Okay.

Gracie.

Yeah.

Okay.

Right.

So the final couples, therefore, Peter the Great and Popiah Sabina.

Catherine Howard and Horatio Nelson.

Emperor Zoe and Charles II.

Mary Fisher and Tony Ben.

You eliminate them, Katie.

So two couples go to the final.

Yeah.

So which are the two finalists, please?

I think probably Popiah Sabina and Peter the Great

sort of killed off most of the little ones.

And I think probably Tony Ben and Mary Fisher.

Crikey, what a showdown.

Oh, yeah.

What a showdown.

What a showdown.

I mean, this will say so much about the British people, won't it,

about the British electorate.

So they go for bloodstained, murderous, head severing, dwarf tossing.

Yeah.

And loads of articles be written about it.

What does it mean for Britain?

Yeah.

What does the vote mean?

The cultural zeitgeist.

The Guardian will be going bonkers for Tony Ben, Tom.

They'll be writing one of their letter writing campaigns.

So, Katie, you have to decide not who you want to win,

but who you think the British public would vote for.

So Peter the Great and Popiah Sabina, Tony Ben and Mary Fisher.

Given those two couples, who do you think the Love Island voters would go for?

I think given the political climate that we're in at the moment,

it has to be Tony Ben and Mary Fisher.

Oh, my word.

Oh, what a turnip.

Stunning.

Tom, can you see Theo in the chat?

In the ad producer just writing, yes, yes.

In Capitals.

The people's choice.

The people's winner.

Amazing scenes.

And then you can imagine The Guardian writing about that as well.

Perfect.

Oh, The Guardian will be all over it.

Maybe The Guardian would sponsor Love Island.

Exactly.

And people sometimes say that the rest of the history is not woke enough, Tom.

I mean, what a rebuke.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

What a rebuke to them.

Yes.

Katie, that was brilliant.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And I think everyone who's listened will agree that that was a roller coaster.

Yeah, wow.

Who saw that coming?

With a stunning Denoumore.

Right.

And on that bombshell.

Absolutely bombshell.

That succeeding Stanley Baldwin and the Empress Theodora are Top Quaker, Mary Fisher,

and Top Nationaliser of British Leyland, Sony Ben.

We say thank you very much to Katie, who, as always, an expert guide through a world that,

as that review on IMDB said, a world of brainless war runs, an extremely sad and pathetic commentary

on the current generation.

Let's hope they're not saying that about this podcast.

And we will see you all next time.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.