Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 66

Verity & Tansy’s Two Cents: Who’s In What?

This week’s episode of Verity doesn’t have me in it at all!

The topic was ‘who’s in what’ and I think it’s inspired the most comments by listeners ever! Lynne was inspired to do a “My Two Cents” post, and I started composing mine almost as soon as I started listening to the episode.

The question was, what shows/movies/media have you chased up purely because of a Doctor Who connection?

I found the various perspectives really interesting, especially as the episode is balanced equally between those who started Doctor Who with the new version of the show, and those who have been watching it since they were ‘wee.’ Liz provides a treasure trove of which old movies to track down in search of Doctors!

Download or listen now (runtime 35:40)
http://traffic.libsyn.com/veritypodcast/veritywhosinwhat.mp3

Mrs Hudson from Sherlock, what are you doing with the Third Doctor?

Turns out that despite having watched Doctor Who my whole life, I’ve rarely gone hunting for Classic Who actors in TV shows or movies – I’m much more likely to have done that with the modern gang, in our post-IMDB reality. I did however spend most of my childhood being hit over the head by appearances of Doctor Who actors in unexpected places.

I am more likely to have deliberately sought out shows featuring Press Gang actors (yes Hotel Babylon I’m looking at you for hiring Dexter Fletcher) – though there are several actors appearing in Press Gang who I definitely saw in Doctor Who first, including Principal Winter and Duggan from City of Death. Oh, and Chrissie, AKA Winifred Bambera.

I think my lack of actively hunting classic actors is because it wasn’t exactly an easy thing to do back in the height of my classic Who fandom – I was much more likely to casually stumble across them. And by the time the Internet was available for the likes of me, I was already pretty well established in my ‘casual stumbling’ technique. (also let’s face it, a lot of the actors playing companions didn’t actually turn up in many other shows, at least in substantial roles)

And, you know, remembering odd connections between actors from British TV is kind of my superpower. I have often baffled people with my unfailing ability to remember exactly which Carry On Film featured that particular actor, or which long-forgotten BBC drama featured that actor now guest-starring on Absolutely Fabulous. Following them deliberately would be a bit of a cheat, wouldn’t it?

Having said that…

Shows/films I watched because of a Doctor Who connection:

Peter Davison stuff in the 80’s, 90’s and beyond: Sink or Swim, A Very Peculiar Practice, Campion, Meet the Braithwaites, The Last Detective.

Gavin and Stacey because of James Corden (now one of my favourite shows). I also went on to listen to James Corden’s autobiography (he reads it himself) and to watch The History Boys movie after being fascinated by his telling of how the play evolved – and also a bit because I knew that a bunch of his co-stars from The History Boys played the lads in G&S. The History Boys also includes the fannish joy of a young “Waris Hussein,” and Midshipman Frame, just saying, while Stacey of Gavin & Stacey went on to be Queen Elizabeth I and a Zygon!

Stella because of Ruth Jones who I discovered in Gavin & Stacey (twice removed from DW! But I want her writing for the show). Together with Torchwood, these 3 shows have fueled my obsession with TV shows set in Wales. Also, PC Andy is in season 3 of Stella as a douchey lawyer!! Most importantly, the amazing Catrin Stewart is in it, playing a devastatingly authentic teen girl at the same time as playing Madame Vastra’s rather more sophisticated maid/wife Jenny.

Two Pints of Lager & a Packet of Crisps, Hysteria, etc as part of my Sheridan Smith completionist phase. (Returned to watching Jonathan Creek largely for her, too)

Queer as Folk, The Second Coming, Casanova & Bob and Rose as part of my RTD completionist phase (& in the case of The Second Coming & Casanova, it was in order to suss out the new Doctor before he started properly).

Lucie Miller & the 8th Doctor pretend they don’t know each other in front of Jonathan Creek.

Broadchurch for David Tennant, Arthur Darvill and Olivia Coleman

The Hour for Peter Capaldi. (SO WORTH IT) Also featuring Anna Chancellor wearing the wardrobe she should use when she is inevitably cast as the Doctor in the future. Ditto Romola Garai. I was also a bit excited to get to see Lisa Greenwood in it, because she plays new Sixth Doctor companion Flip.

(I actually watched The Thick of It for Capaldi too, but long before he was cast as the Doctor.)

John Simm is another actor like that – one I watched a bunch of stuff for, long before he made himself Doctor Who relevant.

The digital download of David Tennant & Catherine Tate in Much Ado About Nothing is probably my all time favourite thing I watched because of Doctor Who. I also plan at some stage to watch the later seasons of the US version of The Office only for Catherine Tate.

Oh, and the lovely Robert Shearman – I read pretty much anything he writes, thanks to discovering him via Doctor Who. Other Doctor Who writers whose work I actively seek out elsewhere include Paul Cornell, Paul Magrs, Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum.

I recently went on a tear of Jenny Colgan’s recent novels (having only ever read her first previously) because of the Verity interview and her recent Doctor Who work!

Ten and Donna Much Ado-ing it Eighties Style

Favourite Doctor Who actor sightings:

William Hartnell in Carry On Sergeant

Patrick Troughton in The Viking Queen (still wearing that damned coat)

Jon Pertwee in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum & The Avengers: “From Venus With Love” but most especially as the voice of Spotty in Superted. Okay, and Worzel Gummidge, which I watched interchangeably with Doctor Who during my childhood.

Tom Baker in Black Adder II: Potato & as Puddleglum in The Silver Chair

Peter Davison as the skeezy teacher in Miranda, and the Meat in Hitchhikers Guide (plus Tristan in All Creatures, of course!)

Colin Baker in the first ever episode of Jonathan Creek (produced by our Verity!)

Sylvester McCoy in the Hobbit – I wouldn’t have bothered with the movie at all otherwise!

Paul McGann in Hornblower & Jonathan Creek: The Judas Tree (WITH SHERIDAN SMITH! Can’t tell you how squeeful this made me)

Christopher Eccleston in Thor II – okay this one wasn’t a surprise but I wasn’t watching it because of him!

David Tennant as Charles Darwin in The Pirates – love that not only I but also my 9 year old recognised his voice without realising he was supposed to be in it.

Matt Smith in the Ruby in the Smoke – though that was a weird one because I’d already watched it (for Billie Piper) and didn’t remember him at ALL. Seems bizarre he made so little impression.

Again this was long before he was the Doctor, but my favourite Capaldi appearances are as the hot film producer in season 1 of the Vicar of Dibley, and as Sid’s Angry Scottish Dad in Skins.

Polly could well have ended up running a chic 60′s boutique.

Anneke Wills in an Avengers episode – the one with the dogs?

Maureen O’Brien in She’ll Be Wearing Pink Pyjamas

Katy Manning in Don’t Just Lie There, Say Something (also featuring Joanna Lumley)

Roger Delgado in the first St Trinians movie

Elisabeth Sladen in Some Mothers Do Have ‘Em

Lalla Ward in BBC Shakespeare’s Hamlet as Ophelia

Tony Selby in The Good Life

Nicola Bryant in Blackadder’s Christmas Carol & The Biz

Kate O’Mara as Patsy’s sister in AbFab

Billie Piper in the BBC modernised Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

John Barrowman in Arrow – though I agree with Lynne, my favourite non Jack Harkness appearance of his is the scene with Kevin Kline in DeLovely where he’s a young musical actor trying to learn how to sing “Night and Day”

Brian Blessed in anything ever, but especially Blake’s 7, Flash Gordon and other, non-bearded roles.

The Merlin Connection

Merlin was a hotbed of Doctor Who crossover actor appearances, including but not restricted to: Eve Myles, Anthony Stewart Head, Colin Morgan (with unexpected cool hair in Midnight), Angel Coulby (OK she only had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in The Girl in the Fireplace), Richard Wilson, Tom Hopper (Jeff with the laptop), and more.

Basically, Merlin is the Blake’s 7 of the twenty-first century. Though we could argue the same for the Harry Potter movies, of course…

Family connections:

I will watch anything and everything with a McGann brother in it.

Ditto Sean Pertwee.

Who was also responsible for me reading every single Ellis Peters novel in my teen years, thanks to luring me into the Brother Cadfael TV series. Thanks, Sean Pertwee!

Actors I was already ridiculously fannish about who happen to have later turned up in Doctor Who:

Morgaine plots the assassination of Queen Victoria.

Jean Marsh (for Upstairs, Downstairs)

Pauline Collins (for Upstairs Downstairs)

Diana Rigg (for The Avengers and later, Mrs Bradley Mysteries)

Rupert Graves (for A Room With A View and The Forsyte Saga)

Rachael Stirling (for Tipping the Velvet & being Diana Rigg’s daughter)

Sophia Myles (for Big Women)

Tamzin Outhwaite (Red Cap, Hotel Babylon)

Celia Imrie (for everything she’s ever been in and being amazing)

Ian McKellen (ditto)

Oh, and when I heard about the casting of Samuel Anderson as Danny Pink, while others were going ‘hmm what has he been in’ I was all “He’s Fingers in Gavin and Stacey! He was the one who wanted to be an actor in The History Boys! He’s been on the West End and Broadway!”

So yes, my trivia-like memory for actors is still going strong. Hey, what else was I going to use those brain cells for?

David Tennant as Benedick as Miss Piggy. You’re welcome.

Friday Links are Very Tired (and on Saturday)

Yesterday was a long day, with one sick little girl in Emergency at the local hospital (all fine now) and… no, that’s basically it for all that happened yesterday.

Still, if I don’t keep doing these posts, my post-it of saved links will fill up and explode!

Liz Myles has added to the Cranky Ladies blog tour with her great post: Ten Great Military Leaders, Probably Cranky Ones that points out several women of history who were better military leaders than Boudicca.

I have a new post up too, over at The History Girls, on the poet Sulpicia.

Did I MENTION that we funded this week? Oh yeah, baby. Night Terrace aren’t doing too badly either.

Over at Book Smugglers, Ana is pondering on History, Fandom and Masters of Science Fiction.

Foz Meadows does another of her great snarky takedowns, this one at yet another article about the troubles with YA by someone who doesn’t read or understand the YA publishing phenomenon.

Sarah Rees Brennan also wrote an amazing piece about the way female YA authors are treated – and her own personal experiences of being belittled and shamed for her history as a teen fanfic writer before she became a published author. It’s a raw, important essay.

Historical romance author Jeannie Lin (who specialises in romances set in Tang Dynasty China) talks about how her worst selling novel, The Lotus Palace, recently became a best seller!

Kameron Hurley (who has been writing some great stuff across the internet lately) did an inspiring International Women’s Day post at Angry Robot, talking about standing up for yourself online, why Joanna Russ was so very important, and how it actually does get better for women in publishing and sharing their voices generally.

In Keep Calm and Carry On, Marie Brennan talks about how the wave of flamewars, slapfights and angry shouting about gender issues on the internet are a sign of our community’s health, not its doom, and notes that this is not a phenomenon unique to the science fiction community. Good, sensible stuff.

“Keep Usefully Angry and Carry On Working For Improvement!”

Mahvesh Murad talks about the spec fic by women that she intends to read this year – a wonderfully diverse list of books, and so many on there that I am excited by too!

Emma Newman wrote about her young love for Star Trek, and why Melinda Snodgrass is her hero.

Kate Elliott brought the positive to the internet by asking Twitter followers to tell her what they liked about their own writing.

Here’s a recipe for a coffee cake in a mug.

Day 16: Funded!

Tehani and I are overwhelmed by this! We reached our funding goal before midnight today which is the halfway mark of the campaign – and that means of course that we are also eligible for the $2000 Crowbar grant from Arts Tasmania.

In the meantime, you can still pledge if you hadn’t got around to it yet – it’s definitely not too late!

We’ve listed some stretch goals on the page, to help the book be even more awesome. The campaign will stay open until noon on April 1. In fact, we’re actually startlingly close to our first stretch goal already…

Thanks everyone for your support, your pledges and your signal-boosting. We’re not resting on our laurels – lots of work ahead of us.

Beaconsfield: Feeding Writers Since 2014

I’m going to one of those fancy literary festivals! There’s a thing that doesn’t happen very often.

Beaconsfield, a little town at the far north of Tasmania, is hosting the new Festival of Golden Words this weekend, and I’m going along to be a panellist. Actually, I’m going as TWO panellists, since they invited me as TansyRR and as Livia Day.

Looking at the program, I am delighted by how many combinations of food and words they have managed to put together – poet’s breakfasts, literary lunches, and the promise of vineyards. They know how to lure writers, right? You promise to feed them…

It’s an incredible line up, including Wendy Harmer, Carrie Tiffany, Andy Griffiths, Nikki Gemmell… the list goes on! Very pleased in all this that they made some space for genre writers, and very much for local writers too.

So here’s what I’m doing:

Friday, March 14

11.00 am – Schools Day solo session, 60-seat room, Beaconsfield Child & Family Centre

Saturday, March 15

10.30-11.20, as Livia Day, marquee panel session, ‘It Started With a… Where Writers Ideas Come From.’ Fellow panelists Nick Earls, Qld crime writer Poppy Gee, and NSW children’s author Paula Boer. Chair, Russell Eldridge.

3.30-4.20, as Tansy Rayner Roberts, marque panel session. ‘Living in a World of Fantasy’. Fellow panelists Lian Tanner and Chris Foster. Chair, Zoe Walton, (Children’s and YA Publisher with Random House Australia.)

I’ve never actually driven from one end of Tasmania to the other by myself before, so I’m a bit excited about that, too. Might be time to crack out Dark Eyes 2!

Day 11 – Cranky Ladies is a Marathon, not a Sprint

It’s hard to deny that 83% looks pretty good from here. Yesterday, I lamented on Twitter about how agonising it was to be only $5 away from reaching the $7K mark, and a few small pledges straight after tumbled us beautifully over that hurdle and on to the next one. We’re now at $7135, so every pledge helps us count down the final $1500.

If nothing else, this campaign has been working on my hang ups about self promotion. Talking about things actually makes people pay attention to them!

Still, even though it looks like it’s all sewn up, it really isn’t, not until we cross that final line. So our job now, in the middle of the month, is to keep our energy levels high, stay hydrated, and keep heading forward. Yeah crowdfunding!

We’ve added another reward level, because we’ve had suggestions from various people they would like to buy a second copy of the book to pass on to a friend, or their Mum. So if you have a special person in your life who you think would benefit from the book, please check out the new ‘One for me, one for a friend’ level. If you’re thinking ahead to Christmas, please remember that Cranky Ladies won’t be released until February 2015 – but the Cranky Ladies calendar will be released to all supporters in good time for Christmas giving.

My fellow hosts on the Verity Podcast were nice enough to let me plug the anthology on the new episode of Verity! It happened to also be the episode where we addressed the historical villains (as part of our ongoing theme year on the villains and monsters of Doctor Who), which led to all kinds of interesting chat about why historical stories work differently in the show, and the ethical issues of time travel, not to mention the ethical issues of writing about time travel. I’m really proud of this especially crunchy episode.

Meanwhile, the Cranky Ladies of History Blog Tour continues – if you want to write about your favourite cranky lady of history, let us know so we can link to your post too!

Also, our good friends from the excellent Splendid Chaps podcast are launching their own crowdfunding campaign today! Night Terrace, their SF comedy audio series, will be raising funds on Kickstarter from 1pm Melbourne time and I heartily recommend you check them out. I love audio drama, I love John & Ben & Petra, and after the fabulous performances that came from Splendid Chaps (not to mention their combined backgrounds in theatre, radio, TV and live action games) I have no doubt that Night Terrace is going to be fabulous. Please support them!

UPDATE: they’ve announced their lead actress is Jackie Woodburne (Susan Kennedy from Neighbours) and now I’m super fangirling about them even more! Go pledge to Kickstarter now!

Galactic Suburbia 95

New episode is up a day early! Get it here.

In which, the Hugo host debacle online conversation became a many-tentacled AI that wants to steal our souls, and ladies are cranky.

Speaking of Cranky Ladies – check out Tansy and Tehani’s crowdfunding campaign.

News In Depth: The Hugos v. Jonathan Ross, Safe Spaces & Online Discussions

Foz Meadows laying out the original drama in her usual inimitable style.

Cheryl on the arguments for & against Jonathan Ross as host as particularly on the importance of Intersectionality – how to be a good ally, and why you LISTEN to why people are upset, even if it’s inconvenient to you or your community.

The Chairs of LonCon apologise for the situation – weirdly, this graceful and thorough acknowledgement of their responsibility for how the chain of events went is often not being mentioned in coverage of the discussion.

UPDATE, PLEASE READ:

The downside of recording several days ahead of broadcast is that sometimes the conversation we are contributing to moves on without us – in particular with the “Hugos and Jonathan Ross” conversation we recorded on Wednesday night there has been some serious reframing of the narrative, some of it highly gendered.

We wanted to reference some of this further discussion rather than be seen to ignore such an important (and troubling) development.

Some important posts calling attention to the reframing of the narrative to trivialise the concerns of women (and to hide the fact that many prominent men shared and vocalised those concerns):

Kameron Hurley on Power, Responsibility, Empathy and Privilege

Kari Spelling on how the conversation has changed from being about the unsuitability of Ross as a Hugo host to being about how women were “mean” on Twitter – and how those women are continuing to be unfairly targeted.

Natalie Luhrs on “Reframing and Punching Down” – with particular reference to how those posts calling for people to be nicer to each other, or how fandom is too hysterical to deserve nice things, aren’t always as helpful as you think they are.

David Perry questions the mythical concept of Seanan Maguire’s Angry Mob, calling particular attention to how Seanan and her tweets are now being reframed as central to Jonathan Ross’s resignation, due to selective quoting, selective memories and gross misrepresentation of the actual timeline of events. This is important stuff, people. Our history just got rewritten while we were watching.

[note: we deliberately didn't mention Seanan by name while discussing the issue in this episode of GS because we could see she was already being unduly blamed and centred in the discussion despite being only one participant - it's the exchange between Seanan and Jane Goldman mentioned in the Perry article that Alisa also refers to as a conversation that ends in mutual apologies and is later misrepresented by others long after it's concluded.]

Another important post by Kameron Hurley, Rage Doesn’t Exist in a Vacuum. On why internet rage happens, why someone else might be more upset than you are about a thing, and why it’s important to speak up about upsetting things even if it ruins someone else’s happy party fun times.



Culture Consumed:

Alisa: Game of Thrones S1, Fringe S3, Kaleidoscope ToC



Tansy: Ms Marvel #1 & She-Hulk #1 Fringe S3

Alex: Midnight and Moonshine, Lisa L Hannett and Angela Slatter; A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar

Pet subject: feedback

Galactic Suburbia Award!! (last call for suggestions)

for activism and/or communication that advances the feminist conversation in the field of speculative fiction

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

Day 8 – The Happy Glow of Books Pre-Ordered

It’s been a whirlwind weekend in crowdfunding land! We gained 10% of our goal on Friday thanks largely to the ABC International Women’s Day article, and another 14% or so yesterday…

Ahem. Yes. 74%. On Day 8. That’s beyond extraordinary. $6345, mostly in pre-orders for our lovely book!

Tehani and I get to squee at each other in person today thanks to the lovely book party we’re throwing at the Hobart Bookshop to launch my Ink Black Magic, and Dirk’s Path of Night. Lian Tanner will be there too, to do the launching.

Seeing all the ‘yep I’m coming’ comments on Facebook has made me happy.

Knowing we’re so close now to our funding goal to make Cranky Ladies of History happen, makes me happy.

Kaia blogging about the wacky and wonderful Queen Kristina of Sweden makes me happy.

The internet has brought us some sadness and suckiness this week, so I’ll take the happiness where I can.

Don’t Forget the Book Party!

Not content with having a crowdfunding campaign this month, FableCroft Publishing are also holding a book party!

New novels by myself (Ink Black Magic, the newest installment in the Mocklore Chronicles) and Dirk Flinthart will be launched tomorrow by Lian Tanner at the Hobart Bookshop. We’d love as many readers and book lovers to join us as possible. There will be free wine and juice, there’s a kiddie corner in the bookshop (my daughters will be there dressed as pirates and witches), and what else are you going to do on a Sunday afternoon?

Hope to see you there if you can make it.

Day 7: Cranky Ladies on the ABC

The thing about crowdfunding is, it kind of takes over your life. Promoting, it, watching the tally rise, fretting when 24 hours goes by without any pledges… announcing percentages to family members as they pass by, planning a spreadsheet to properly crunch the data…

So yeah, yesterday a couple of big things happened. We had been going through a bit of a lull in pledges (have we plateaued? Is it over??) but then my guest post went up on SF Signal, who are fantastically supportive of crowdfunding projects within the international SFF community. Quite a few pledges came in after that, and after recording an episode of Verity (with a bit of plugging) I went out for a couple of hours so my daughter could clamber all over an indoor gym with her best friend.

When I came back it was to a wave of tweets, squee and links – because of this fantastic article that Tehani cleverly managed to arrange on the ABC news site.

Thanks to Rosanna Ryan for framing the story of the book so well, and for really “getting” the project. Thanks in part to International Women’s Day (we knew we would be taking advantage of any slight media interest in Womens’ History Month by crowdfunding in March but didn’t take the mass media interest in IWD into account – woo!) Tehani has also had some appearances on radio too, in Launceston as well as Sydney.

So thanks to this burst of publicity, we leaped from 49% to 59% over the course of the day, and added a bit more overnight for a current total of 61%. I am seriously lamenting our lack of a bar graph to properly track our day by day process (like you get for Nanowrimo) so I’ll be working on that this weekend.

Thanks to much to everyone who has been boosting the signal, especially those who have been doing it over and over as the week goes on. And of course a BIG thank you to all our financial supporters – we’re sitting at 98 right now which is super exciting.

Getting to 50% in our first week was the big goal we were shooting for, having done all our research about Pozible, crowdfunding, and how this stuff works. To be past 60% on Day 7 is pretty damn good, and makes it much more likely that we will comfortably reach our funding goal.

And yes, we do have some stretch goals in mind just in case we do hurtle towards that finishing line earlier than planned… stay tuned!

Day 5: Cranky Ladies, Horrible Histories & Mary Seacole

We’re still making progress! Up to 43% on the Cranky Ladies of History crowdfunding project at Day 5 – and with 60 supporters, we’re very happy with it so far.

Because so many of our upper level rewards were taken up so quickly, Tehani and I have planned a few extras for people to choose from if they’re feeling generous (and indeed, covetous). The first new level allows supporters to choose one of the stories/historical characters from our completed TOC which will then be illustrated by the amazing Kathleen Jennings – as well as the book itself and our exclusive Cranky Ladies of History calendar, the supporters at this tier will also get a canvas print of the illustration they commissioned!

There have also been plenty of new additions to the Cranky Ladies Blog Tour – one of my favourites is this piece by Faith Mudge, who says a lot of things I was planning to say and hadn’t been able to write down in the right order yet. Obviously that was because she was doing it instead!

I also really enjoyed Joyce Chng’s piece about Leizu, the First Empress – I know next to nothing about Chinese history and mythology, and this was a great start. I’m looking forward to reading more about Joyce’s take on Leizu in fiction.

While we’re talking about history, cranky ladies and all that sort of thing, I also wanted to give a shout out for my family’s favourite tea-time TV show, Horrible Histories. My daughters are both rabid history fangirls, thanks largely to this show and its kid-friendly devotion to sharing the grottiest, grossest and smelliest corners of history. Plus its clever way of using modern TV and storytelling techniques to make history feel very real and relevant, something that even the best teachers struggle with these days. (Their Historical Wife Swap is hilarious and very clever, making pointed commentary on class and gender inequalities in a slightly different way every time)

My girls were always going to be exposed to a love of history, but because of my own personal obsessions and specialities, there was always a danger that we would never get past the Ancient Greeks and Romans, with occasional glimpses of the Egyptians. And yes, it’s true that Raeli actually cheers when the Groovy Greeks segment comes on – she knows which side her bread is buttered on.

But the awesome thing about Horrible Histories is that it takes from many different historical traditions and cultures, and throws up snippets of history that I don’t know a thing about, thereby exposing my daughters to a much wider range. That, combined with their ongoing focus on pointing out where history has messed up, is providing quite a solid grounding, and I’m already seeing Raeli take what she has learned from this silly, musical show, and apply it to broader research.

I especially appreciate it when the show takes pains to point out the unfairnesses of history, whether we’re talking about child labour, voting rights, slavery, and so on. A piece I wanted to call attention to with particular reference to the Cranky Ladies project is the Cliff White-Lie series of sketches, based on the idea that all the misconceptions and false information perpetuated by history books are down to one PR guy who can be bribed to give greater or lesser prominence to particular characters.

In the cowboy episode, we learned how Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp weren’t really as badass or as “heroic” as their reputations suggested… and that meanwhile, their female equivalent, Pearl Hart, was more impressive than either of them and was barely a footnote in the history of the Wild West.

Then there’s this one, which pretty much lays out why so many Cranky Ladies have a reason to be cranky – because it’s the rich, privileged white women like Florence Nightingale who get to be remembered as iconic figures, and the poor black women doing the same work with fewer resources are ignored by the history books… though in the case of Mary Seacole, a modern campaign to bring her into prominence has in fact done wonders. She won the 100 Best Black Britons poll, has had awards named after her, a statue, and is now included in educational materials for primary schools, as well receiving as other public acclaim for her work.

Though for many people outside Jamaica and Britain, her appearance in a certain educational TV show will probably be, as it was for us, the first they’ve heard of her. Which only goes to show the usefulness of comedy! And I really love the fact that my daughters are so rapt by a TV show that teaches them not to believe everything they read about history the first time around – especially when it comes to those with less privilege.