Renaissance Beauty: hair, makeup and skincare in the 16th century

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Hello, Greg here.

Just a reminder before we get going that episodes of Your Dead to Me are released on Fridays wherever you get your podcasts.

But if you're in the UK, you can listen to the latest episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else.

First on BBC Sounds.

Hello, and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously.

My name is Greg Jenner.

I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster.

And today we are plucking our brows and caking our faces with lead as we learn all about the history of beauty in Renaissance Italy.

And to help us with our makeover, we have two very special visitors to the You're Dead to Me salon in History Corner.

She's professor of Renaissance Visual and Material Cultures at the University of Edinburgh, where her research focuses on how human bodies were thought about and modified during the Renaissance.

You might have read her wonderful book, How to Be a Renaissance Woman, The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity.

It's Professor Jill Burke.

Welcome, Jill.

Hello, it's lovely to be here.

And in Comedy Corner, she's a bilingual comedian and social media star based in Paris.

Maybe you saw her debut sell-out Stand-Up Tour, Fugue, or have seen one of her many hilarious TikToks and Instagram reels about the differences between French and British culture.

It's Tati MacLeod.

Welcome to the show, Tati.

Thank you very much for having me.

Excited to be here.

Delighted to have you here.

First time on the show.

Yes, it is indeed.

And I came all the way from Paris to be here.

So I hope you feel very grateful.

We are very appreciative.

And I suppose the obvious question, do you like history or is this already like a disaster waiting to happen for you?

I thought you were about to ask me, do I like makeup?

And I was so ready to say, yeah, absolutely.

Okay, do you like makeup?

Yeah, yeah, I do.

I do.

Like, this is bang on in terms of themes that I'm interested in.

Makeup being the central part to it.

Renaissance, a little bit more uncertain.

Okay.

Do I like history?

Yeah, right?

I mean,

we've all got one.

Great.

Depends on you asking.

In what context?

Relationship history?

Personal history.

Yeah.

No, I'm intrigued.

I'm interested.

I'm curious.

I'm open.

I'm present.

Great.

You're known for your get ready with me videos.

Do you know anything about the Renaissance era and beauty trends?

No, I mean, I don't know today's beauty trends.

I feel like if there's something, you know, especially when you're on social media, and I'm in my mid-30s, so I'm really not the target audience for TikTok.

And I spend a lot of my time just scrolling through, trying to keep up with the never-ending new brands, new products, new Fandango thing that you should be buying.

So I'm not, if anything, I'm probably closer to Renaissance history

than I am to current makeup trends.

So I feel like maybe I'm going to really connect with the makeup of back in the day.

Absolutely.

And do you know when the Renaissance era was?

Can you give us a rough time period?

So my thing with history, I'm more of a people passion.

You know, eras very abstract.

Sure.

I think let's think in people.

So Renaissance, this is how I try to think about it.

Okay, so Renaissance, I'm thinking Leonardo da Vinci.

Lovely.

Very good.

Very good.

Okay, great.

So that's my starting point.

Leonardo da Vinci, I'm pretty sure was around when Henry VIII was around.

Yeah.

And I know that Henry VIII was around in the 16th century.

Very good.

There you go.

So that's how I get into

that.

I always start with the person and then we get into the time frame.

Yeah, so 16th century, right?

Yeah.

Okay, family.

Yeah.

Yeah, good stuff.

So, what do you know?

That brings us to the first segment of the podcast, the so what do you know?

This is where I guess what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject.

Maybe you've seen famous Titian paintings of lovely Renaissance ladies gazing ardently at themselves in the mirror or putting on their makeup.

You might have heard of Queen Elizabeth I painting her face with white lead.

I mean, who can forget Margot Robbie's look in the Mary Queen of Scots movie?

Barbie Would Never.

But how did women and men really get ready in the Renaissance?

What makeup looks were trending and why was arsenic a vital part of the beauty regime?

Let's find out, Professor Jill.

Let's start with the beauty basics.

A primer on primer, if you will.

When was the Renaissance period?

We've already had Tati's excellent summation,

but like technically, because it overlaps the medieval period in a very confusing way.

How would you define it?

So Tati's completely right

in that it's the 16th century is part of the Renaissance period.

But it is a little bit confusing in that it's related to the rebirth of classical antiquity, the interest in classical antiquity, which in Italy started a little bit before other places in Europe.

So normally we'd say from about 1400, so 15th century in Italy, to about maybe 1650, something like that.

Right.

So, late Middle Ages and part of the early modern period.

So, basically, the rest of Europe had to catch up.

Yeah.

Sort of like a fashion trend that starts somewhere in the world.

Absolutely.

That's exactly.

Yeah, okay, I'm with you.

I mean, you know, I'm going to explain it.

And it is exactly people like Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo, all those people.

All the turtles.

All the turtles.

who made like a massive difference and a massive change to the way that people painted and the way that the people saw things and had an effect actually on the way that people understood beauty.

So if you look at say, maybe you'll be able to think of Botticelli's Birth of Venus, you know, when she's

naked and she's, you know, rising from the waves,

that has an idea of female beauty that's different from the Middle Ages, a different shaped body.

It's relating to classical sculpture.

And when people saw these paintings and prints from these paintings, because this is also the era of printing, they decided to change their bodies to look like more like the paintings.

So there's a change not just in art but also in the way that people understood their own bodies and other people's beauty.

What were bodies looking like before then?

Well, the ideal of what bodies were looking like before then was more pear-shaped.

So there's things that stay, but in the Renaissance, you start to get this kind of fascination with hourglass figures.

Quite plump hourglass figures.

Yeah.

In the Middle Ages, when you see things like images of the goddess of beauty, Venus, they'll look much more

bigger hips,

much narrower shoulders.

So there's a change in actually how real women felt they should look.

And we call it the Renaissance.

Well, you speak French, that's usually what Renaissance means, right?

I do, no, I do.

This is another.

I'm actually doing quite well so far.

Are you doing very well?

Again, yeah.

I mean, I can't.

Well, that bit, you know what that bit means.

And Naissance means birth.

So I guess rebirth.

Rebirth.

Yes.

Rebirth.

absolutely so it's a it's a harking back right it's a nostalgia vibes yeah absolutely and they're going way back to the roman era way back to the roman era and they're reading and and ancient greece as well that they know more about ancient rome because um sculpture and buildings from ancient rome are all over the place in europe but particularly in italy and they're also reading um more classical texts so people like Galen, who's one of the most important medical writers in classical times, they're rereading him and Galen writes about cosmetics as well.

So doctors start to be really interested in cosmetics, and wealthy women start to commission doctors to cure any of their beauty ailments as well.

So, there's a real abundance of recipes from this period.

Oh my god, it's so fascinating.

The parallels of like Botox and surgery, you know, like it's a similar, you know, richer the woman going to get a particular doctor.

You can imagine it back then just being like, Have you heard of Doctor?

Absolutely, yeah, Dr.

Falloppio.

Fallopio, yeah, yeah, I've heard that Anne Bonin's been speaking to him.

Famous for his tubes, yeah, exactly.

It's incredible.

So

work for the royal family.

So my life Falloppio, who wrote about the first time about the Fallopian tubes, was also gave beauty tips advice.

And he lectured on beauty at the University of Padua.

And from then, this is a big university where doctors from all over Europe came.

And so they'd listen to Fallopio and then they'd go and write their own beauty books.

So yeah, there's loads of similarities.

Yeah, and this is also the era where they invent the modern mirror, as we know it, like Venetian glass, the long, sort of the full length, the flat mirror.

There are beauty books too, too, right?

I mean, we have to talk about some of the best, because you said the printing press was invented in the mid-1400s, so we get beauty books.

And the best-selling one is Marinello's Ornament of Ladies.

Ornament of Ladies, yes.

This came out in 1562, but

beauty recipe books started in the 1520s in Italy, and there's some in France as well.

So, in the 1530s, you get French medical recipe books.

It's really France and Italy that are leading the field here.

And so, the Ornamente de la Done, the Ornament of Women by a doctor, Giovanni Marinello, has about 4,000 recipes

for cosmetics and for slimming and for all sorts of things.

It's like an actual historic Zephora.

You know, the shape of the Zephora, people go, yeah, it's like boots back in the day.

Except it would be as if Zephora had people standing there telling you what was wrong with you.

I think they do do that.

So they have, Marinella's book tells you the ideal look at the beginning of every chapter and then says things like, if you're hairy, you're like a wild beast,

you can't blame your husband for leaving you.

This kind of thing.

So it's really terrible.

It's funny, but at the same time, really, you really recognise these kind of tropes about beauty, about women always being in the wrong.

And they're marketed as books of secrets.

Oh, yes, books.

There's a sort of like hidden knowledge, like this, this is the book of secrets.

Do you know this one weird tip?

Yeah, it's a good idea.

It's that kind of, isn't it?

It's like kind of one word tip to get rid of belly fat.

Yeah.

This kind of thing.

So there's this idea that there's secrets in nature that if only you can discover them then you're going to be forever youthful so there'll be recipes for things like recipes for if you want to look forever 20 or 25

are you serious i am serious yeah because it just it's i mean it i don't know if it's like funny or fascinating or worrying that nearly hundreds of years later with i'm there thinking yeah well i mean not a huge amount has changed yeah like that sounds like if you pitch that as a marketing approach to something that you were writing now you'd be like yep but that's a real facet of renaissance culture because there's a lot in renaissance culture about pretending to be better than you are.

Right.

If you think of like some of the conduct books at the time, like Castiglione's book of the courtier, which is a really famous one, it's all about just be the person who the court

wants you to be.

Make it so you can be

like, don't let it go.

Pretend all the time.

Yeah.

Okay.

Wow.

And there's also a book by Katerina Schwarzer.

Oh, yeah.

So Katerina Schwarzer is a really interesting figure.

She's the leader of a small Italian state, Northern Italian state in Imelan.

She wrote a book called The Experiment, Si Experimenti.

And in it, she wrote about 192 cosmetic recipes alongside other recipes.

There are recipes for medicine, for horse medicine,

and for magic spells as well, and for alchemy.

Amazing.

That's what you don't get at boots.

No, that's very true.

Not enough horse medicine around.

And I love how those three just sit together.

Dip your face, go and fix your horse

and then ride on to do a magic spell.

The trio.

Well, we're structuring this episode a bit differently, Tatty.

We're going to do it like a get ready with me video.

Which means we need an Italian Renaissance couple.

We need a fella and a lady.

Do you want to name them for us?

Who are our hot Italian couple?

Oh, okay.

Where are they off to?

Like the opera?

Is that a thing back then?

Does that exist yet?

Not quite yet.

Maybe, not yet.

Maybe a play.

Okay.

Let's make them quite.

Let's put them in the upper echelons of society.

So they've got a a bit of money.

She's wearing something fabulous.

I'm guessing silk, lots of colour, maybe like

thick velvet.

Like there's a bodice.

Yeah, maybe some gold.

Yeah, exactly.

She looks fierce.

Yeah.

She looks amazing.

Like she's slaying.

She's slaying.

Her name is?

Her name is Botticella.

And then let's call him Angelo.

Angelo.

Oh, very nice.

Botticello and Angelo.

Oh, my God.

Absolutely.

You know, great, great couple.

And they're off to the theatre.

I love that.

That's great.

Okay, let's start their routine there.

We start with hygiene.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

What type of washing do you think they're doing?

Do you think they're doing that?

I don't know exactly how I wash.

No, no.

I'm not going to ask you.

No, it's been part of this, yeah, French.

But anyway, no, not half French.

So, anyway.

I'm half French, but I wouldn't go that far.

No, how are you imagining them getting clean?

Everything showers or much more modest?

I'm thinking more like a cloth and a big copper basin.

Yeah, that's what I imagine more.

And probably staff washing their back next to a big fire.

Let's place it in spring.

That's nice for the story.

It's spring.

We've got some nice dapple natural light coming through.

So big copper basing by a fireplace, which probably isn't lit because it's warm enough.

People didn't have baths generally.

Some really, really, really wealthy people had running water and had running baths in their house, but they were like maybe a bit above the echelon of Botticella.

If you don't know Angelo, Angelo's in weight.

Thank you.

It's a great year.

But copper basin

is good because you would have a copper basin to wash your hands.

Oh, well done, Tatty.

Very much.

Often on a stand, and you'd have obviously some servants to bring in hot water for

me.

You wouldn't do it yourself.

No, that's true.

But some people,

because you didn't have baths at home, you'd also go to the bathhouse often.

And that might be as much as once a month, even in the summer,

even in the summer and spring, maybe less in the winter.

So, people would wash once a month?

Well, they'd wash in the bathhouse once a month.

Yeah, which was the first time.

But they'd wash every day.

And washing often involved rubbing your body with towels.

So, quite a lot of rubbing your body with towels.

So, a lot of head health because they were worried that noxious vapours would build up in your head overnight.

So, in the morning,

so in the morning, well, they're all drunk probably quite a lot of the time as well.

You'd comb your hair very rigorously, you'd rub your head, you'd rub your face, you'd have to blow your nose, you'd brush your teeth probably with a little cloth or some wood, and so you'd do something like that every day.

They'd often be scented waters, and you'd change your shirts.

They're very, very into changing linen and having fresh white linen.

A couple of times a day, right?

Sometimes, yeah.

So people would have like hundreds of shirts.

Yeah.

Even like the poorest people would have 16 or 17 undershirts.

I do need to bring up actually one thing that's slightly surprising.

The medical advice of the time was water was dangerous.

Bathing was, full immersion was dangerous.

There's a famous story, the king of France is going to have a bath and his doctor panics and races to his bedside to sort of say, I need to like monitor you during this bath.

Why?

Why is water considered dangerous?

Well, there's this idea that the skin of the body is very porous.

And so if you open your pores in any way, it means that diseases can come into your body.

And so things like malaria, for example, or plague were thought to spread, go into your body through your pores, through your skin.

And so being hot and having open pores was a way to catch disease.

There's still very much in some cultures now, you know, in Italy, for example, going swimming when it's at all cold, you know, under like 24 degrees or something like that, is still frowned upon.

So this is still this idea that if you get wet, you allow these bad things to come into your body.

Because of course, there's no really real understanding of bacteria.

No.

They do understand quarantine, that you can quarantine it.

It's an Italian word, right?

Yeah,

it's from

Venice,

when they make ships that are coming in stay outside the city for 40 days.

40 days, quarantine, yeah.

To

stop the plague, largely, and other things going into the city.

The Romans obviously were huge bathers.

They built these incredible firmi, these big bathhouses, and of course we have them in Rome, the Barcel Caracalla, a very famous one you can visit today.

The Renaissance Italian fashion for bathing is a sort of harking back to the Roman bathing culture.

But was it the same?

Was it full nudity?

Was it full men and women separated?

What are we we talking about?

So in Italy, they were very impressed, first of all, by Roman ruins of baths and things.

And they often had set up spas in the same either using the Roman,

what was left of the Roman baths, or on the same site, because, you know, there's a lot of thermal springs in places like Tuscany, for example.

And they also read really avidly about Roman bathing culture, but they didn't do things like use strigils and things like that to scrape the skin like Romans did.

So no olive oil scraping?

No, not so much olive oil scraping.

They were also really influenced by Islamic bathing practices.

Oh, the hammam.

Yeah, and a kind of steam bath.

They separated men and women very avidly, like they do across the Mediterranean.

There's some continuity with classical Rome and some changes.

They also were really suspicious of things going on.

That skullduggery in the baths.

Sexy stuff or criminal stuff?

Both.

Oh, sexy criminal stuff.

The best.

When you think about it nowadays, sauna,

it can be spicy.

You've got to be careful which one you're walking into.

You know, saunas can be a lot of fun.

So it was a very similar story.

Particularly, as these were same-sex spaces, and so there was a lot of

same-sex enjoyment

going on in these spaces, a lot of bawdy tales, a lot of nakedness, particularly female nakedness.

It was almost impossible to see women naked in Renaissance Italy.

Even in marriage, you're meant to keep your undershirt on at all times.

Oh, really?

Oh, yes.

Okay.

There's some very interesting Renaissance erotica that ends up with a woman taking her shirt off after many other kinds of activities.

And so these are real centres for kind of at least torrid imagination and probably things going on in practice bathhouses.

A lot of stuff, illicit stuff, went on.

Okay, so there's an erotic element to the bathhouse, but there's a practical element too.

Yeah, both.

You're getting clean, but you're also getting really dirty.

Very good, Tati.

Well done.

Very good.

So our couple,

Botticella and Angelo.

Yeah.

Lovely.

Okay, are they shaving?

Are they waxing?

Or are they using the depilation cream?

How do you get rid of body hair in the 16th century?

And more specifically, Brazilian, Hollywood, just the sides.

What are we working with here?

What's Botty got going on down there?

We are working with complete nudity.

Oh, complete baldness.

Oh, really?

Wow.

Yes.

Okay, everything off.

Oh, everything off.

This again is a practice associated with Islamic

bathing cultures.

And certainly in the Middle Ages, Crusaders would return with stories of having

all their body hair shaven off in the baths.

And this is very strange.

But certainly by maybe the 13th century, you start to get recipes in southern Italy for a kind of Veet type cream to remove

body hair.

Oh, you don't know what's in it yet, just wait.

Yeah, Tati.

Tati, you're yeah, Veet, other products are available, of course.

They remove cream.

I'm physically in pain.

I'm anticipating,

I'm empathizing with these women that I've never met from hundreds of years ago lathering their labia in a product.

I mean, Veet is bad enough now, but back then, oh, God, these poor girls.

Do you know what what it's made of, Tatty?

Go on.

There's a recipe that Katarina Schwarzer gives, and this is a very common type of recipe, which has quick lime, arsenic, and alum in it.

And

what you do is you smear, you smear, you make it into paste

and you smear it onto your body, wherever you want hair removed, because it says in the recipe.

And then you leave it for the time it says it takes to say the Lord's Prayer twice.

And then you get a maid to throw water on you.

So you wash it off.

And it just says you should wait until it gets hot and then remove it quickly before the flesh falls off.

Yeah, I mean, quick lime is caustic.

Arsenic is a toxin.

Yeah.

Alum is a metal.

And they're all going in your secret paths.

That's not good.

No.

I thought the next pot was going to be put this on,

and then eventually just die.

Because that's a natural next step, isn't it?

But it is fascinating, I have to say, because obviously body hair is such a political thing now.

What's your choice?

And I felt like this was the first time hearing that was even a subject matter before, sort of, this contemporary age.

I thought it was something that was quite a new thing.

But to hear that women have been suffering from this for hundreds of years, I'm going to leave here more feminist and more angry than when I came in.

My job is done.

Radicalized.

That's not the only wacky ingredients in Renaissance-era depilation cream tatty.

Other ingredients included cat feces,

ant eggs, hedgehogs.

Are they just

people just having fun?

Is it just like let's see what we let's see what we can stick on their labia before they start complaining?

Surely not.

And did it even did it work?

Well, unfortunately, I think the quick line probably did work.

I mean, it's gonna remove

pretty much everything.

Arsenic was used as a skin whitener in medicine as well, and it was commonly used to kill as a kind of insecticide.

So for

all sorts of lice and things.

So that was commonly used in medicine.

And quicklime is a very strong alkali, which is what wheat is, effectively.

So it does melt the hair off.

And so, yeah, it would have worked.

I don't think the cat poo would have worked.

I just can't see that working.

Or the antegs, to be honest.

Or the hedgehogs.

Or the hedgehogs.

I mean, some of these recipes are really impressive because they work really well.

And others, you just read them and think, why?

It wasn't like an actual full hedgehog where you used the prickles as like a brush, was it?

You weren't like, sort of like

you were killing the hedgehog and you were using the blood, right, or squishing it.

Yeah, okay.

Generally, it was you had to do horrible things to hedgehog.

Okay, okay, cool.

But

can I just check in then?

This body hair removal routine involving arsenic and caustic, was this something that just the women were experiencing, and were men also whipping off their hedges?

Is Angelo also

whipping it all off?

There's so little evidence about that.

Here we go.

Has he got arsenic on his arsenic?

That's what I want to know.

Bravo.

So there's so little evidence about men and grooming, it's really hard to understand whether they removed their hair or not.

In terms of evidence, there's more evidence about women, right?

And I can trace that in the recipes.

Men, I read that in Holland, men removed all their body hair.

I don't know why in Holland, in like the 16th and 17th century, Holland.

They're very tall.

I don't know.

That's all I know about the Dutch.

They're very feminist, actually,

so probably for gender equality.

Okay, they were very women.

As far as I know, in Italy, if you look at the sculpture of the time, like Michelangelo's David, for example, it has very trim,

neat-looking cubic hair.

So there might have been some trimming involved.

Okay.

But I'm not sure about actual complete removal.

All right.

I think that's unlikely.

The cat feces, my favourite.

Not necessarily going on the genitals.

Oh, no.

It's actually going on the forehead.

Do you know why, Tatty?

I

honestly can't.

A face mask?

Not.

No, it's hair removal again.

Hair removal.

Oh, is it going to be for your eyebrows?

It's not eyebrows.

That's a good shout.

It's a very high forehead, it was fashionable.

So what you cover your head...

Oh, sorry.

For a second, though, I thought you meant it was to cover a high forehead.

And I don't want you to walk around with your tap.

To give you a high forehead.

To give you a high forehead.

So you want it in.

Well, I mean, you explained, Jill, you're better than this.

So if you look at portraits of women from especially the 15th century, they have a forehead that really just kind of goes, recedes, keeps going, yeah, just keeps going and going and going.

And that's because a high forehead was associated with beauty, particularly a high forehead without any wrinkles in.

It's a part of your face that you can really see the quality of your skin in.

So they were really fashionable.

So women used to pluck their forehead.

She must have hurt so much.

Pluck their forehead, or they used to use some of these dipilatories on their forehead as well as the rest of their bodies so my fringe would be really oh fashion this is unthinkable horrible your fringe with networking sack then your fringe would have been um legally banned

because there was a fashion in the 1480s in venice for haircuts with a fringe it was called the mushroom um the fung that as you can imagine yeah for women and i've had one of those yeah and the government banned it because they said it made women look too much like boys my god that's fascinating but then what did women do after a breakup when they needed to change their look?

Yeah.

Like, what did you do when you had a revamp?

What was your equivalent of, like, I need to change myself, panic, cut yourself a fringe?

How did you have a breakdown?

Well, I mean, they went on to poison their husbands, but we can talk about that later.

Okay, that makes absolute sense.

Let's talk about hair washing.

So, you know, once you've removed all the hair from the forehead, you still want to keep some hair on the head.

How are they keeping that clean, Jill?

Well, this is where the copper basin comes in.

Okay.

So

you'd lean over a copper basin and you'd have your maid bring in some kind of scented water or maybe some kind of shampoo, which is made with ashes, so a lye into a soap.

Or they use things like mallow.

They had conditioners, things to make hair fuller-bodied.

And all of these, we've made some of these and they do are quite effective.

But one of the issues in the period was how to dry your hair.

Yes.

Because once you've wet your hair, you don't have a hair dryer.

In the winter, it could take ages.

It could take days to wash and dry your hair.

And so, and so, Lucretia Borgia, who was

the Pope's daughter,

we do an episode on Borgia.

And the governor in Spoleto actually would get up, I really hated going to these social events that she had to go to.

And she'd say, I'm washing my hair.

I've simply got to wash my hair.

Absolutely.

I love that.

No, but also,

look, I mean, nowadays, you know, wash day.

And which day do I wash?

I've got to go to the gym.

If I go to the gym, do I wash before?

Do I wash afterwards?

It takes a couple of hours.

Last night I slept with a hair mask on.

I get it.

And I actually actually think that is something we need to bring back.

Okay, that is a completely socially acceptable reason to not turn up to an event.

I can't come to work today.

It's wash day.

My hair is still wet.

I will be sat by the fire for the next seven hours just trying to work through this humidity.

Fair enough.

So that's La Cretio Borgia, the Notorious Poisoner, and hair care guru.

Okay, so some of those hair sort of conditions sound quite nice.

I mean, some of them had chamomile in them and sage.

Quite nice, right?

Some of them, less so.

My list includes bear's fat, bat's blood,

burnt lizards, burnt moles, crushed hedgehogs, crushed insects.

So when I hear that list, I do start to understand the association between women and witches because

that sounds like a potion.

Let's talk about, just quickly, the perfect hair that you would want.

Like, you know, Angelo, let's talk about later on, maybe.

But Botticella, what hair does she aspire to have?

So in the Renaissance, it was believed that hair was a sign of your internal mixture of humours, the internal liquids that

made up

your body,

that determined health, determined personality.

And so your hair could be a sign of what you were like inside.

And this is true for men and for women.

So men's hair should be dark, ideally, and women's hair should be thick, wavy, and golden.

Oh.

I was hoping you were going to say pink.

For the record, Miss Nero.

Tatty has a lovely pink bob.

Oh, you were calling her bob?

What's that?

What's that?

What humour is pink Bob in Renaissance Italy?

Well, they do talk about dyeing your hair red, and they and Marionella says, I don't know why women want to do this.

They're so capricious.

Capricious.

Okay,

I can get on that board.

Okay.

But the reason why your pink hair would be confused people

is that they divide women into different grades depending on their appearance.

This is very Joe Rogan.

It's very manosphere, isn't it?

It's very manosphere.

So, there was a celebrity doctor called Juan Juate.

He was Spanish, and his book was translated into all different European languages.

And he was explaining to men what kind of women they should marry, dependent on what they looked like.

And so, sorry about this, there's a grade one woman who has the lowest levels of coldness and dampness in the funeral terms, and she should be avoided.

She's of great intelligence and ability.

Oh no,

she never seeds an argument, no matter how small it is.

And she has dark and curly hair.

The best women are grade two in the middle.

They're beautiful, soft, and gentle, and they laugh easily.

They're naturally, almost completely free of body hair.

The hair they have is golden and wavy, and they are obedient by nature, of course, and they're very fertile as well.

So, that's the best kind of woman.

And grade three women

are fat with white and hairless skin, and they're foolish and ditzy, and they have platinum blonde hair.

Are these the incels of the Renaissance?

It's terrifying to realise that actually, in fact, it all makes sense.

This is where Andrew Tate got his whole concept from.

He's been reading some Renaissance literature.

It's a water, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just coming straight back round, isn't it?

Okay, so we've got three levels of women.

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Curly-haired women, intelligent, stay away.

Women with blonde hair, dipsy.

It's just, it's the Marilyn Audrey Hepburn before Marilyn Audrey Hepburn.

It's fascinating.

Okay, so Jill, if the blonde golden curls are the optimum hair, presumably there are a lot of dodgy dye jobs going on.

Women, you know, with dark hair going, I've got to look like a Botticelli painting.

Of course.

In Venice, particularly, they were really famous.

Women were really famous for bleaching their hair.

They had special special straw hats that had a big brim and no middle, so that you could take your hair outside it without getting burnt in the sun.

Oh, I see.

And they'd sit on their balconies.

Like a tennis cap almost, like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they'd sit on their balconies and they'd put a mixture of kind of bleach on their hair.

They'd sit all day and wait for it to be bleached.

And it was really common to do that in Venice.

Both men and women used black hair dye for going grey, so they'd cover up greys.

Great.

They'd use

lead combs and things to

make their hair darker again, and that probably worked as well.

Otherwise, they had various recipes for dye, some of which were less likely to work.

So there was one where you had to put sunflower seeds in breast milk that was fed a male child and leave it to soak for 10 days.

That's actually, that's what I use.

Okay, okay.

And your hair looks lovely.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, it did say it was for a pink.

Yeah, so okay, so Angelo and Botticella, they are, they've got washed, they're clean, they've done their hair.

Now it's onto the skincare routine.

Right.

What are you imagining?

Korean-style 11-step beauty?

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, nowadays I can't even keep up with skincare routines.

I take makeup off and then I put a cream on.

So I'm probably not the right reference.

They might even have something more complicated than that.

Probably something like a vegetable oil, avocado paste on the face.

I mean, based on what we've heard so far, maybe some cat poo in there as well.

A hedgehog for like exfoliation.

I feel like I'm I'm really starting to get the hang of this renaissance skincare life.

Yeah, like something along those lines.

Maybe a bit of arsenic.

Because if there's no poison, there's no peril.

If there's no peril, sorry, skincare routine, isn't it?

It's not skinny care routine if you're not going to maybe die from it, is it?

Take it away.

Well, of course, you're completely right.

You know, they did, so they did have kind of complex routine.

So you'd start at night, the night before, you'd cleanse your skin, and that could be something like bran or breadcrumbs mixed with scented water so that a little bit of exfoliation.

Nice.

And then you'd have a treatment and that would depend on what kind of skin you had.

So you might include vinegar, it was quite popular if you've got greasy skin or nettle tonic if you've got red skin because nettle does actually stop inflammation or a whitener and that would obviously include mercury and arsenic.

And also snail slime was also used.

Which is back in the day, right?

I mean we used to laugh at them, on horrible histories, we used to go, ha ha ha, snail slime.

And now it's like 300 quid for a pot.

So they were ahead of their time.

And you'd sleep with that on.

And then in the morning, you'd wash that off and then you'd maybe put some moisturizer on and then makeup.

So pretty good actually in the skincare routine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ahead of the, okay.

I respect the skincare routine.

Apart from the arsenic bleaching of the skin routine.

Yeah, sorry.

But

that's just, you know, part of course at this point.

Was it like Victorian times where paler skin meant you were richer?

You know, paler skin, good, darker skin means you work in the sun, you must be a peasant.

Yeah, because of course beauty ideals have to be hard to achieve.

Right.

You know, what's the point of beauty ideals that are easy to achieve?

Let's just take a moment to really think about that.

Because that's an important thing you've just said.

Yeah, that's very true.

And most women worked outside.

You know, most women were working as agricultural workers, like they have done kind of throughout history.

And so having paler skin was a sign of being elite, an elite woman.

But there was also a racialized element.

In the 16th century in Italy, we do have an awful lot of African enslaved people in Italy, right?

Yeah.

So

there's been slavery in Italy since classical times.

It's continuous, more so than in other places in Europe.

And from the mid-15th century, you start to get a lot of slaves from sub-Saharan Africa,

particularly female slaves who work in the house.

And there was a fashion amongst some of the elites, like Isabella Deste, who is the Marchioness of Mantua, she says to her agent in Venice, Can you get me a young black slave child as black as possible so that she looks whiter in comparison?

So this is a little girl of white.

Like an accessory.

Like an accessory, yeah, yeah.

And then around 1520, aristocratic women start to be painted in portraits alongside black servants or slaves, really as a contrast to make their skin look paler.

My God.

That's horrible.

It is horrible.

Okay.

Let's move on on to something equally horrible, a different kind of horrible.

White lead on the face.

It's famous from the Elizabeth I portraits.

If you've seen the Margot Robbie movie, Mary Queen of Scott,

I mean, that's bad, right?

That's going to rot your face.

You know, makeup historians have a problem with Margot Robbie.

No, surely not.

Margot's beloved.

How dare you?

Not Margot.

I mean, we do adore Margot Robbie, but her portrayal is Elizabeth I, because one of the problems with white lead is that you can't actually use it, right?

So people can't use it because we know it's poisonous.

They knew it was not very good for you in the Renaissance as well.

But recently, there's been a project in Master University in Canada where they've got a nuclear physics lab, so they can use white lead and they've put it on pigskin to see what it looks like.

And actually, it's not that kind of thick white paste that you see in the portraits of Elizabeth.

It's actually translucent and it's light scattering.

You know, like light scattering foundations that you get today.

Yeah.

And it's a creamy mineral foundation.

Yes, it's not bright.

It's not

bright white or very opaque.

So the idea of what Elizabeth I looked like is partly from the portraits, but largely from using titanium dioxide as a replacement for white lead.

And it's just not a very good replacement.

I see.

So the actual white lead, based on what we now know, thanks to these poor pigs, is actually something a lot lighter and a lot softer than what we've seen.

And reflective.

And reflective.

But still very dangerous.

I mean, it still kills you.

Right, okay, good.

But it doesn't do the job well.

But it does the job well.

You know, they had replacements for white lead even in the Renaissance, so marble dust, for example.

Oh.

And I've brought along a marble dust foundation for you to try.

Egg white as well was used, wasn't it?

Egg white, they use in a lot of different kinds of makeup and add a little bit of a sheen to your face.

And egg white was used on the hair too, wasn't it?

Yeah, I mean, they use eggs in everything, they're readily available and they're quite inexpensive.

So, yeah.

Let's talk about cosmetics and let's try some cosmetics.

I think it's time now for us to turn ourselves into guinea pigs a little bit and try some of this stuff.

And by the magic of radio, I am now transformed into a Renaissance era beauty.

And just to be clear, none of the stuff we are putting on our faces today is poisonous.

We've checked.

Jill, what am I wearing on my face?

It smells delicious.

First of all, you have Renaissance Rose Balm, which is very delicious smelling.

It's just quite normal.

It's like lip balm with beeswax, and that's that's actually something that I would use, actually, genuinely use today.

Then there's some things that you might not use: there's an anti-wrinkle cream with

lamb fat,

not at all, and frankincense, and which normally also contains mastic, which is another kind of tree gum.

And those have been found to have vitamin E, antioxidants, and things like that.

So they could actually affect wrinkles.

Some of this Renaissance makeup is effective.

And then you've got what is really great about your look is

the foundation, which is made of marble dust because white lead is frowned upon nowadays.

I wonder why.

I wonder why.

So it's made of violet oil and rose water, which smells nice, right?

It smells good.

It's made you quite white.

But you've also got beautiful rosy cheeks made with red sandalwood,

which we're hoping we'll be able to wash off, but which may stay.

Yeah, no one told me the sandalwood would be staining the cheeks.

I would run with it.

It's really, it's the hero of what's happening on your face right now.

It's giving Met Gala, it's giving the Oscars, it's giving Greg in a whole different light.

Thank you.

If it doesn't wash off, I think you can make this work.

Yeah.

Okay.

Let's get back to Angelo and Botticella, our influencers,

they're off to the theatre.

They're doing the getting ready.

I just want to ask about hairstyles, right?

So we know that she needs to have golden hair, but how is she wearing it?

Up, down,

you know, in a do, braided.

Always in a do.

There's always a do.

You never wear hair completely loose in this period, unless you're just about to get married or just married, and then you're allowed to wear it loose down your back.

Otherwise, that's a sign of, it can be a sign of madness or illness or being really transgressive.

So as soon as

Katie's giggling

sat here with my pink hair down,

she's crazy.

Watch out.

But women were really creative with their hairstyles, and so, and often used to have the same hairstyle to show that they were kind of part of a gang.

So, if you look at portraits from the Milanese court in the early 16th century, like portraits by Leonardo da Vinci, they all have this big long plait that goes down their back and a hair net that goes across their foreheads.

Yes.

That was a fashion associated with Beatrice of Aragon, and they all started to wear it.

And then, as soon as you get to about the 1510s, it goes.

Nice.

And how do you curl your hair?

I'm naturally curly, I don't have to ask, but like, how would a lady curl her hair if it was straight and she wanted wanted the ringlets?

Um, hot spoons.

Oh,

so if you imagine what tongs are like now, yeah, you'd heat spoons up and then you'd curl your hair around it and maybe use gum Arabic as a setting lotion.

Oh, okay, some curl cream.

So, what I'm getting here is that really, actually, women didn't have a lot of time outside of doing their hair and makeup and making the potions.

When we ask ourselves what were the big challenges to women's education, just generally having careers, I suppose curling your hair with spoons

is probably up there, right?

Yeah, it's quite time-intensive, isn't it?

I mean, that's why you'd have all your servants, I guess.

I forgot about that.

Yeah, of course, yeah, servants.

And what about Angelo?

Is he clean-shaven?

Is he, I mean, has he got a beard like me, short and cropped?

Has he got a long beard?

Kind of Leonardo da Vinci style-y?

Well, it really depends on

when Angelo was about because there's a big change in fashions for beards between the 15th and 16th centuries.

So, in Italy, they associate beards with peacetime and they associate them with Republican governments.

And so in Florence for example everyone was clean shaven until the Medici family came back to rule the city as dukes in the about the 1530s when everyone has a nice little beard.

And some people really, and there's portraits of beards that are very, very curly and very, very well kept.

So people had beard oil, people dyed their beards.

But by the time you get into the 16th century, everyone has a beard.

So Greg would be just absolutely in fashion you wow I'm hot to trot ready to mingle absolutely I think Angelo would have a mustache oh

I think he I think Angelo would have a moustache and possibly a beard yes I think if people

had just a mustache people might point and laugh at him yes if you insist on historical accuracy even though he's my fantasy man but sure

what about shapewear you know what about underwear you know the clothes you wear under your clothes the things that are you know if they're going for the perfect body you talked before about the hourglass coming in.

How are they achieving that?

Yeah, skims, spanks.

What are we working with?

No spanks.

Okay.

Not at all.

In fact, no knickers.

No.

Yes.

Wow.

Hello.

Man, hello.

So

breathe.

Men would wear...

There's actually archaeological remains of pants that may be.

Oh, great.

Historical pants.

Historical pants.

That would have a little nifty tie at the side.

But women didn't wear pants at all.

No.

And actually, if they did wear pants,

that was thought to be a bit raunchy because it was like they were men.

Oh, okay.

So,

what you're saying is that

we've already heard that you could have an entire intercourse with a woman, and the peak of the eroticism was the point at which she takes off her shirt after having had sex with someone.

It's the nudity.

She could be completely naked.

You could see her fanny, and that would be less sexy than if she had a pair of shorts on.

Yes.

Well, you know.

Each to their own.

But can I ask a very specific question?

If they're not wearing knickers, what do they do when they have their periods?

Well, they don't leave the house.

I mean, this is

one of the

history is about controlling women and their activities.

We know about menstrual rags, don't we?

We have allusions to it.

They use rags and they use...

So, yeah, there's certainly

just rolled up rags.

There's cotton wool that can be used as well.

In terms of bras, I mean, so women are going commando on the pants front, but what about support for the bosom?

Well, that's my radio four voice.

Support for the bosom.

So

it used to be thought that bras were invented in the 19th century, but then in 2008, there was an archaeological find where they found there's a false wall in a castle in Austria.

Yeah,

in the Lemberg castle in the Tyrol in Austria.

They found lots of linen had been stuffed in there and they found a bra

which is known as breast bags.

And then like two bags that are designed to lift and separate.

So

you have that and then in the 16th century.

Sorry, I can't just give over the boob sacks.

So lift and separate.

Yeah, so if you look at these bras, they're cotton and they've got a big kind of bodice underneath.

And then these, I mean, they're separate kind of bag shapes that would pull your bosom,

you know, really make it go in two.

So it looks like you've got breasts kind of here.

Really chat up.

So really high up.

Really high up.

Okay.

Yes.

On either side of your eyes.

On either side.

Near your ears.

Yeah.

So there's two bosoms on view, but quite high.

But there's also the kind of monobo.

The monobosom.

Yes.

Not the monobrow, the monoboo.

So, yeah.

So later on, again, this is fashions of bodies and fashions of clothing.

Later on, you get the monobosom, which is a term from fashion history, honestly,

where you get a very bodice that's very stiff and

made stiffer with cardboard, and it kind of squishes you boobs in to make it look like you just are completely flat, really, and triangular.

Okay.

Was there any kind of moral backlash to all of this?

We've heard about, you know, some of the kind of fear that women were deceiving men and whatever, but was there any kind of like haters in the comments section?

You know, when we've got our Angelo and Botticelli going out, are there people going like, oh, God, this is awful and disgusting and immoral, and God would be ashamed of it.

Yeah, oh, absolutely.

I mean, well, all the way through, but particularly as the Counter-Reformation in Italy comes into force in the later 16th century and in England all the way through, people are saying that cosmetics are lies, it's deceitful, that women are vain, they're spending all their money on cosmetics.

Yeah, I know it's depressing,

and

that they're kind of changing the face that God gave them,

and

that it's immoral.

So,

a lot of kind of misogyny, general misogyny, is bound up in cosmetics use.

Really, the grandeur of cosmetics runs through the 16th century and then it kind of tails off as you get into the 17th century.

And we also have this fear that women are poisoning their husbands with their blood, right?

I mean, this is a thing.

It happens.

It is actually true, yeah.

It has happened, yeah.

Amazing.

So, they trick their husbands into marrying them by using makeup, and then they use the makeup to kill them.

I mean, you sound just like every naissance priest.

I'm really

on board with it.

I'm like, how can both the how can the tool of oppression both be the tool of empowerment?

Wonderful.

There we go.

Feminism for the win.

I'm going to lead the witches.

I'm so into this era.

There's a story actually of a 15-year-old murdering her siblings with a poison.

So not just a hubby, but she bumps off her siblings.

Yeah, so this is a, she didn't mean to murder her siblings.

She found...

So women know that this stuff is poisonous.

They keep it generally under lock and key.

And so she got some face whitener from her mum's box because they wanted to send her to a convent and she didn't want to go.

And so she tried to poison the entire family.

She put some of this face whitener onto some salad and they all ate it and they're all ill, but her siblings died.

And so there's

a report of her witness statement

and her conviction in the Florentine archives.

And then later on, the Aquatifana murders were very, very notorious in the 17th century, where they reckoned like hundreds of men, of husbands generally, were killed by women using face cream.

So they put this face ointment into their husbands' food or drink, and they'd kill them slowly over

a matter of weeks.

And they set up a sting operation to find out this woman they tricked.

Yeah, they sent someone along trying to buy some of the poison.

And in fact, she was an agent of the Roman police in disguise.

And then the person who,

the poisoner, sold her it, and they kind of swooped out and arrested her.

Wow, that's amazing, isn't it?

Just very quickly, you also mentioned men dieting.

We know of one particularly famous aristocrat who was murdered because he wasn't wearing his underarmour.

Yes, he didn't want to look fat, right?

It was a duke in Milan, and he they advised him to put on his reinforced doublet.

And he said, No, no, it makes me look too fat.

And then he went to mass in church and he was stabbed to death.

So, yeah, so really, people did die for beauty.

The cost of beauty.

There we go.

Church is right.

Vanity is a deadly sin.

The nuance window!

Okay, so I think it's time for us to get to the nuance window.

This is the part of the show where Tati and I sit quietly in front of the mirror and fix our makeup, or I try and remove mine anyway, for two minutes while Professor Jill enters the dressing room to tell us something we need to know about Renaissance beauty.

My stopwatch is ready.

Take it away, Jill.

Okay, so stories about past cosmetic use can be delightful and they can be funny, but they mask some pretty serious history.

How we look isn't governed just by our genes, but is mutable.

A complex toing and froing between external forces, such as food availability, types of work, our environment, and the choices we make to look after and adorn our bodies, hair, and faces.

It's only recently that historians have realised that the history of cosmetic and hygiene practices is no mere amusing side quest, but reveals much about the concerns, assumptions, and prejudices of the past.

Cosmetic recipes and ideas spread across cultures are shaped by trade, fashion and colonialism.

Assumptions about ideal beauty are steeped in preconceptions of gender, race and class, prejudices against people typically based on their appearance alone.

Cosmetics are often criticised as they thwart attempts to read inner character through external appearance.

So large-scale historical shifts play out in our bathroom mirrors and affect how we understand our own bodies in relationship to the world.

The history of beauty allows us to empathise with people in distant times and places, recognise their vanities, their frailties, their hopes, and their fears.

In a patriarchal society like Renaissance Europe and, let's face it, most past societies, women's hope of social progress or financial well-being was typically dependent on the goodwill of men.

Looking your best was less vanity than necessity.

Inventing and applying cosmetics was often associated with poorer women, people who are typically illiterate so don't turn up in historical sources, and if they do, only in court records.

Reconstructing cosmetic recipes has given us a rich insight into these women's ingenuity, their cleverness in making ends meet, their understanding of what we now call science and their social networks.

Compared to military history, say, or the biographies of great men, the history of beauty gives us a window into a multiplicity of experiences and a chance to remember lives that have been frequently disparaged or dismissed.

Thank you so much.

Wonderful.

Really interesting.

Yeah.

It is easy, I think, to

sort of think, oh, make it, you know, whatever.

It's really interesting.

Yeah, it really is because I think

it also reminds us, and it's still a a conversation we have now on social media especially about how dismissive can be people can be about makeup people doing makeup and there's very much attitude like oh god you've got nothing better to do with your time and that actually how much of women's history is linked to that industry um sometimes not even by choice but how um dismissing it like that sort of doesn't allow us to hear those voices and that existence and what they were up to so thank you for bringing it to the table You're welcome.

Thank you.

And thank you for smearing it on my face.

Anytime.

Absolutely.

So, what do you know now?

It's time now for the what do you know now.

This is our quickfire quiz for Tatty to see how much she has learned and remembered.

I mean, we've talked about an awful lot of stuff, Tatty.

How are you feeling on the confidence level?

I feel confident because I have been listening very closely.

I was fascinated.

Thank you for it.

I leave feeling invigorated, but and also quite, I guess, angry.

Okay, that's fine.

I feel like I want to go and march into the makeup counter of John Lewis and say, and this is feminism, and what you are doing is God's work for some poor woman who's just trying to sell me a nice lipstick.

No, but seriously, your job is vital.

Okay, we've got 10 questions for you.

Here we go.

Question one: Why were baths considered to be potentially dangerous?

My first thought without me hearing your question was the answer will be cat poo.

Why were baths considered potentially dangerous?

Ah, because

being too clean meant that stuff could get in your pores.

Yes, that's right.

That grind was protective.

That's right.

Question two, what harsh ingredients were common in hair removal creams?

I think we've covered, oh, it was that stuff you use on walls.

Right, first of all, arsenic stuff.

Yeah, arsenic, yeah.

And the other one is caustic.

Caustic and arsenic.

Quick line caustic, very good.

You could have had cat feces of course.

Cat feces, of course.

Hedgehogs.

Sorry, the list goes on.

Question three, what kind of hair was considered the most beautiful in Renaissance Italy?

It was, well, in my opinion, of course, short, dark, pink, anything that would make you wild, unruly.

But I suppose for men of that period, it was those very docile of women.

So they would have liked them blonde, blonde, blonde, platinum, blonde.

very good lovely like a cherub question four what was the name of giovanni marinello's best-selling beauty book from 1562 do you remember the name

what was the name of that book i don't know probably something like um listen women

listen behave slap some arsenic on here's some lead for the face crack on

lead and cat poo for you i think that was the subtitle the main title was Ornaments of Ladies.

Ornaments are quite.

Yes, of course.

Question five, what toxic ingredient was commonly found in foundations?

Lead.

It was white lead.

As long as we heard it was light scattering, which was quite surprising.

Question six, what hygiene-related excuse did Lacrezia Borgia use to get out of social engagements?

I'm so sorry, I won't be able to make it.

My hair's wet.

Very good.

I'm washing my hair for the next three days.

Question seven, what kitchen utensil was used to curl hair?

A spoon.

A A hot spoon.

A hot hot spoon.

Question eight.

What was the name of a bra-like contraption worn by Renaissance women?

The monobra.

That's right, the monobo bag.

Oh, the boob, the boob bag.

That's right, the breast bag and the monoboob.

Very good.

Question nine.

How did a 15-year-old from Siena poison her siblings?

She, um, yeah, she used her mum's makeup.

Yeah.

She went and got it out of the cupboard.

But to be fair, they did want to send her to a convent, and I can relate.

I mean, no, I can't relate, but but like, I could, but you know.

That's right.

Yeah, mother's face cream in the salad, I think.

Question 10.

This is for nine out of ten, a very strong score.

Which haircut was banned by the Venetian government?

Which makeup was banned by the Venetian Venetian?

Which haircut?

Which haircut was the best?

Oh, it was banned by the Venice.

The mushroom fringe.

Yes, very bad.

The mushroom hair.

The old fungi fringe.

Thank you.

What have I won?

You have won a year's supply of white lead.

You've won a year's supply of sheep's tallow, face cream and marble mush.

Well done.

Nine out of ten, really good.

Thank you so much, Tati.

Thank you so much, Professor Jill.

Listener, if you want more on historical beauty standards, check out our episode on the history of high-heel shoes.

It's an absolute classic from back in the day.

And also, we did one on hair care entrepreneur Madame C.J.

Walker.

And for more on Renaissance Italy, why not listen to our episode on The Borgias?

They were absolutely wild.

And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends.

Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to get episodes 28 days earlier than on any other app.

And make sure to switch on your notifications so you never miss an episode.

I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests.

In History Corner, we had the brilliant Professor Jill Burke from the University of Edinburgh.

Thank you, Jill.

Thank you.

And in Comedy Corner, we have the truly terrific Tatty McLeod.

Thank you, Tatty.

Thank you.

And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we rifle through the bathroom cabinet of another historical subject.

But for now, I'm off to go and find enough bats to keep my curly locks looking luscious.

Please don't report me to any animal rights groups.

Bye!

Your Dead to Me is a BBC Studios audio production for BBC Radio 4.

Hello, Russell Kane here.

I used to love British history, be proud of it.

Henry VIII, Queen Victoria, massive fan of stand-up comedians, obviously Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor.

That has become much more challenging, for I am the host of BBC Radio 4's Evil Genius, the show where we take heroes and villains from history and try to work out were they evil or genius.

Do not catch up on BBC Sounds by searching Evil Genius if you don't want to see your heroes destroyed.

But if, like me, you quite enjoy it, have a little search.

Listen to Evil Genius with me, Russell Cain.

Go to BBC Sounds and have your world destroyed.

Sucks!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home!

Winner, best score!

We demand to be seen!

Winner, best book!

We demand to be quality!

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs!

Playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaysF.com