50 Fun Facts About Horrible Histories

The Horrible Histories author set one condition for the 2009 sketch show: it had to be 'horrible, funny and' what?

True. He'd had a bad experience with an earlier cartoon of his books, and once writing began the sketch show's makers found that truth turned out to be funnier than fiction.

Which former actor and drama teacher wrote the Horrible Histories books?

Terry Deary was asked for a history joke book, with a few facts supplied to go with the gags. He found the facts more interesting and delivered 'a fact book with jokes' instead.

Lion Television's live-action Horrible Histories, hosted by a rat puppet, launched in 2009 on which channel?

CBBC got a sketch show made by writers from adult comedy, whose benchmarks were Blackadder and Monty Python and the Holy Grail rather than other children's programmes.

What is the name of the black rat puppet who links Horrible Histories sketches, explaining which facts are real?

Rattus Rattus sometimes holds up the show's pop-up signs himself mid-sketch, and he went on to co-host the spin-off game show Gory Games.

Which two titles launched the Horrible Histories books?

Terrible Tudors and Awesome Egyptians led the way, though only the first has the alliterative kind of title most of the series uses. Awful Egyptians is a different, later book.

In the Horrible Histories sketch show, which foodstuff usually stood in for excrement in the gross-out scenes?

Melted chocolate bars did the dirty work while soup stood in for vomit, a prop trick the crew used across five series of bodily-function jokes.

When Horrible Histories was recut for adult BBC One viewers in 2011, who replaced the rat puppet as host?

Stephen Fry fronted a six-part 'best of' drawn from the first two series, taking mainstream a children's show that had long been a guilty pleasure for parents.

Bill, the 2015 film from the Horrible Histories troupe, imagines young Shakespeare as a hopeless player of which instrument?

Lute. Ditched by his band, Bill heads for London to make his name as a playwright and is caught up in a plot to blow up Queen Elizabeth.

In the Horrible Histories film Rotten Romans, schemer Atti is banished to a cold, wet province for upsetting whom?

Nero packs Atti off to the edge of the empire, where he is captured by a Celt called Orla and ends up facing her tribe at the Battle of Watling Street.

Which prize, won twice by Horrible Histories, had never before gone to a children's programme?

The British Comedy Award for Best Sketch Show went to the children's series ahead of adult nominees including Harry & Paul, and it won the prize again a year later.

Which Australian cartoonist drew the illustrations for the original Horrible Histories books?

Martin Brown grew up in Melbourne, doodling cartoons, and reached London on his travels with no plan to stay. He settled, and has drawn the series since its first books.

The Horrible Histories author grew up helping in his father's shop in Sunderland, which was what kind of shop?

A butcher's, in a poor part of the city. He has said that growing up around it showed him what poverty was and gave him 'a realistic outlook on life'.

The Horrible Histories author wants his own books banned from where, saying they take all the fun out of his stories?

Schools, he says, were 'a Victorian idea to get kids off the street'. At his own there were 52 children in the class, and all he learned was how to pass an exam.

The Horrible Histories author said in 2013 that which institutions had 'had their day', paying him far too little?

Libraries lent his books more than 500,000 times in a year, but the lending scheme capped his payment at £6,600. At 30p a sale, he said, he should have been getting £180,000.

Which publisher of the Horrible Histories books called the franchise one of its 'crown jewels' in 2013?

Scholastic's UK publishing director said the series had covered 'every possible era that has a commercial outcome' and was moving into box sets and annuals.

Which theatre company turns Horrible Histories into live shows under licence, using 3D 'Bogglevision' effects?

Birmingham Stage Company was founded by actor-manager Neal Foster. In its Vile Victorians the effect arrives after the interval, when the animated backdrop behind the actors turns 3D.

Which Horrible Histories stage show became the longest-running children's production in West End history?

Barmy Britain opened in the West End in 2012 with a cast of just two, and kept returning in new editions, reaching a Part Five for its tenth anniversary.

Which Horrible Histories star plays Death, the skeletal, platinum-blond host of 'Stupid Deaths'?

Simon Farnaby went on to co-write Paddington 2 and Wonka with Paul King, and returned as Death when the show was relaunched in 2015.

Which Horrible Histories writer ended up in the cast because nobody else could deliver his creation Bob Hale?

Laurence Rickard was hired purely as a writer. By 2011 he was performing a Bob Hale report live at the Royal Albert Hall, as part of the show's BBC Prom.

Bob Hale, the HHTV News reporter whose reports spiral off a studio map, parodies which election-night presenter?

Peter Snow's breathless studio style was the model, and a special Bob Hale Report was even made for the BBC's 2012 Sport Relief night.

Who plays the Shouty Man, the Horrible Histories pitchman who hawks historical products like an infomercial host?

Jim Howick won a Children's BAFTA for the show in 2010. He says a grandfather and granddaughter once waited outside a restaurant toilet to ask for his autograph.

Which Horrible Histories regular, later the Captain in Ghosts, made Henry VIII his signature role?

Ben Willbond later co-wrote the troupe's film Bill and took the villain's part himself: Philip II of Spain, who arrives in England planning to kill Elizabeth I.

Whose Charles II, the 'King of Bling', became a Horrible Histories signature before he co-created The Wrong Mans?

Mathew Baynton wrote The Wrong Mans with James Corden, a friend from his time in Gavin & Stacey, and went on to win Taskmaster in 2025.

Which RADA graduate, the only woman in the core Horrible Histories troupe, played Elizabeth I and Cleopatra?

Martha Howe-Douglas went from playing a receptionist in the daytime soap Doctors to playing the show's queens, and later led Yonderland as suburban mum Debbie Maddox.

'Born 2 Rule', the first-series Horrible Histories hit that set the music-video template, cast four kings as what?

A boyband of four kings proved so popular that from series two every song was built as a self-contained parody of a modern genre.

Which of the four Georges in Horrible Histories' 'Born 2 Rule' really did die on the toilet, in 1760?

George II rose at six on 25 October 1760 and went to his closet alone. His valet heard a crash, ran in and found the king on the floor.

Horrible Histories' 'The Monarchs' Song', listing every ruler since 1066, copies the cumulative style of which duo?

Chas & Dave's knees-up format was chosen deliberately to challenge young viewers who had already memorised earlier numbers word for word.

The Horrible Histories song 'Ra Ra Cleopatra', reprised at the 2011 Prom, parodies which pop star?

Lady Gaga's sound, a Guardian critic felt, needed no orchestra, calling the Prom's added strings 'unnecessary, even intrusive'.

Horrible Histories' series-two song 'Charles II: King of Bling' is a swaggering pastiche of which rapper?

Eminem's style was borrowed for a video shot at Hampton Court, where the producer says only documentaries are usually allowed. Charles II and his bewigged cronies danced on the tables.

Horrible Histories' Charles Dickens music video was styled on which Manchester band?

The Smiths meant so much to the actor playing Dickens that he said he'd be 'distraught' if anyone else got the part. The song welds This Charming Man to Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now.

Which troupe played the Hollywood producers hearing historical pitches in 'Horrible Histories Movie Pitch'?

The League of Gentlemen's three performers, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, had gone their separate ways after a 2005 film, so the sketch doubled as a reunion.

Which 'tyrannical pedant' checked Horrible Histories' facts before hosting You're Dead to Me?

Greg Jenner vetted every sketch, and said he had counted only eight errors in some 4,000 facts over the first four series. His podcast pairs a historian with a comedian.

Which Greek playwright did Horrible Histories show being killed by a tortoise dropped by an eagle?

Aeschylus told the tale to Death himself in a Stupid Deaths sketch, but it is tradition rather than record: one TV critic pointed out there is 'no hard evidence' it ever happened.

In 2014 the BBC Trust ruled that a Horrible Histories sketch wrongly showed which nurse turning away Mary Seacole?

Florence Nightingale never rejected Seacole herself, the Trust said, and the makers had no evidence for the sketch's line that her nursing corps was 'for British girls'.

From series two, the last Horrible Histories episode of each series was a compilation special called what?

Savage Songs gathered each series' best music videos, many of which went on to find a life of their own on YouTube.

In Gory Games, the Horrible Histories game show, young contestants win which prizes, each hiding an AD or BC date?

Year Spheres are counted up at the end of the show: an AD year is added to the player's score, but a BC year is taken away.

In Ghosts, the sitcom from the Horrible Histories troupe, which crumbling mansion does Alison Cooper inherit?

Button House's ghosts only become visible to Alison after one of them pushes her out of an upstairs window and she comes back from the brink of death.

By what name is the six-member collective of Horrible Histories stars behind Yonderland and Ghosts known?

Them There first considered a haunted mansion straight after Horrible Histories ended, but shelved it because the idea had 'no jeopardy'.

Which actor reprised Emperor Claudius in Rotten Romans, the role that made him famous on BBC TV in 1976?

Derek Jacobi recreated the stammering emperor he had first played in I, Claudius, a return the Guardian's review called the film's 'most sensational coup'.

Which 'Foundations' singer signed on in 2018 to play Boudica in the Horrible Histories film Rotten Romans?

Kate Nash took the warrior queen role fresh from playing wrestler Rhonda 'Britannica' Richardson in the Netflix series GLOW.

The 2015 Horrible Histories relaunch opened with an episode timed to the 800th anniversary of which document?

Magna Carta also won the relaunch an International Emmy for kids' TV in 2017, for its episode about the crooked king who sealed it.

Horrible Histories calls the Georgians 'Gorgeous' and the Victorians 'Vile'; who does it call 'Slimy'?

Stuarts are 'Slimy' in the books and on screen, where the era's sketches include the Gunpowder Plot retold as the trailer for an action film, 'Fawkes' 13'.

Which people do the Horrible Histories books and TV show label 'Smashing'?

Saxons were the makers' own example of why every era gets a cartoon introduction: cutting straight from a Roman sketch to a Saxon one confused the children at test screenings.

Which Blackadder star played Henry VIII as a guest in the 2015 Horrible Histories relaunch?

Rowan Atkinson starred in 'Horrid Henry VIII', which follows the young king from life with his boring dad to going through wives 'like most people go through toothbrushes'.

The Horrible Histories author's 2025 crime-fiction debut, sold after a four-way auction, is called what?

Actually, I'm a Murderer went to the publisher Constable. The title is how an unremarkable little man introduces himself to the strangers sharing his train carriage in 1973, and one of them is soon dead.

Which actor, later Ben Hope in Heartstopper, played the Roman teenager Atti in the film Rotten Romans?

Sebastian Croft had already been the young Ned Stark in Game of Thrones, and his Atti brought him a Children's BAFTA nomination for young performer.

Which Peep Show co-writer, later the creator of Succession, ranked Horrible Histories beside Pingu as his favourite children's show?

Jesse Armstrong said in 2011 that the show had been his afternoon vice since it first aired, and he picked the Four Georges as his favourite sketch.

Horrible Histories shot its studio scenes at which London studios, where the Beatles filmed A Hard Day's Night?

Twickenham Studios hosted a schedule that squeezed thirteen episodes into the time a normal sketch show takes for six, forcing the cast to improvise.

Which Come Dine with Me narrator hosts the Horrible Histories game show Gory Games alongside the rat puppet?

Dave Lamb first turned up in the sketch show itself, narrating a Roman edition of Come Dine with Me, before fronting the spin-off game show from 2011.

Which Horrible Histories star, Stevie in Miranda, left after series two but came back for the fourth and fifth?

Sarah Hadland played Queen Victoria in the first series, a part a castmate took over for the rest of the run. In 2024 she and Vito Coppola finished runners-up on Strictly Come Dancing.