The Mark Steel Lectures: Season 1

Mark Steel follows the glorious life of Lord Byron from his birth just off Oxford Street in London to his death in Greece thirty-six years later. We see Byron on the beach, Byron and his pet bear and Byron on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, as Mark traces an extraordinary, unpredictable and rude life in Nottinghamshire, London and Athens, from Byron’s bedroom to his deathbed. In Lord Byron, Mark finds echoes of other modern heroes – revolutionaries, adventurers and poets like Joe Strummer, Lech Walesa and David Beckham, and suggests convincingly that Byron would have enjoyed Last of the Summer Wine.

He was a scientist who thought he could turn lead into gold. He was an obsessive with a secret Swiss boyfriend. And, in the world of The Mark Steel Lectures, he likes Alphabetti Spaghetti and the Communards. The contradictions of this fascinating character, half-scientist, half-magician, take us from Newton’s childhood penchant for arson to the Houses of Parliament via Old Compton Street, discovering on the way why God can’t draw circles and what Cliff Richard will be doing in the year 3150. Mark Steel explores the world and the discoveries of Isaac Newton – surely one of Britain’s finest scientific alchemical gay fraud-busting genius MPs.

With a life measured out in cigar-cutters and cocaine wraps, Sigmund Freud was clearly a genius. Here was a man who looked around the world at the start of the 20th century, saw brutal empires, millions being sucked into soulless factories, impending world war, and said: “I know what causes the problems - we want to have sex with our mothers.” Mark Steel reveals the absurdity and complexity of that genius as he travels from Vienna to London in Freud’s wake. Our Sigmund, played by Martin Hyder, steps out of the darkness like Harry Lime, snorts cocaine like Al Pacino in Scarface, and treats his friends like Richard Ashcroft in the video for Bittersweet Symphony. In the course of the journey, Mark is given a 'shoeing' in a London pub, eats a raw onion, walks with the strippers in downtown Vienna, and finds himself inside the dreamworld of David Lynch. Surely the rudest, funniest lecture BBC TV has ever seen, this is the secret world of Sigmund Freud.

Mark Steel traces the history of Greek Philosophy from Pythagoras (“never ate beans”), to Plato (“old and bald”), to Aristotle (“made lists of Olympic champions for fun, and possibly a bugger for the bottle, or possibly not”). The lecture takes in all the important areas of classical philosophy, including ethics, Sue Barker, whether the Four Tops are really the Four Tops at all, incontinence and Jim Davidson, ballooning, and why Aristotle would have disapproved of Orange marches. Filmed at the Parthenon and across Athens, Mark Steel brings you the Aristotle that history has forgotten; the one that liked a pretty girl, a shop full of beds and a KFC, and just maybe a drink as well.

Delving further, and more imaginatively, into the evolution of Charles Darwin than ever before, the Mark Steel Lecture takes this modern hero off the ten pound note and into the present day. We follow him onto the Beagle and into the bedroom, and worry for his sanity as he fashions a turtle out of mashed potato. A tortured figure whose distress eventually forced him to take to his bed and watch Animal Hospital and Countdown all day (probably), this is the show that tells you things about Darwin you never knew - including his opinion on the taste of Galapagos tortoise urine.

As he moved from Paris to London, Marx managed to leave a trail of uncleaned rooms and even more untidy relationships in his wake. Mark picks his way through the discarded Pot Noodle cartons and unexpected children to reveal the real Marx. You'll discover why the state of Marx's flat caused consternation amongst those sent to spy on him, and get to watch him doing his grocery shopping. Mark also explains what made Marx's theories so revolutionary and why Marx wasn't a Marxist.