50 Fun Facts About Horrible Histories

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

True was the non-negotiable part, and the producers found that sticking closely to the historical record made the jokes easier to find.

Which former actor and drama teacher wrote the Horrible Histories books, starting with two titles in 1993?

Terry Deary has written 351 books that have sold more than 38 million copies in over 45 languages, and he retired from children's books in 2011.

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

CBBC ran five series of thirteen half-hour episodes between 2009 and 2014, and still repeats the show daily.

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

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

Which two titles launched the Horrible Histories books in 1993, one on a dynasty and one on an ancient people?

Terrible Tudors and Awful Egyptians set the alliterative pattern, and the last book in the main series was announced for 2013, two decades on.

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

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

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

Stephen Fry fronted a six-part 'best of' from the first two series, a move History Today's editor called 'frightening' for an adult audience.

Bill, the 2015 film from the Horrible Histories troupe, imagines whose 'lost years' as a hopeless lute player?

Shakespeare's rise from Stratford to London is a blank for scholars, so the six actors filled it with 40 shared roles and a plot to blow up Elizabeth I.

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

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

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

The British Comedy Award wins were followed by four successive children's BAFTAs, and Channel 5 later ranked the show eighth among all British children's series.

Which Australian cartoonist's illustrations make every Horrible Histories book and spin-off instantly recognisable?

Martin Brown's drawings became the basis for the TV show's animated sketches and even for a 2013 Battle Arena range of action figures.

The Horrible Histories author, a butcher's son who helped in the shop from age three, was born in which city?

Sunderland later gave him an honorary doctorate in 2000, and he still supports the city's football club from his home in County Durham.

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

Schools, he argues, are a Victorian idea for keeping children off the street, and classrooms 'take all the fun out of his stories'.

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

Libraries had just made him the UK's tenth most-borrowed author in 2012, yet he wanted £180,000 a book from lending rather than £6,000.

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

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

Which theatre troupe stages Horrible Histories around the world under licence, using 3D 'Bogglevision' effects?

Birmingham Stage Company was founded by actor-manager Neal Foster in 1992 and has taken the shows as far as Delhi, Sydney and Dubai.

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

Barmy Britain first opened in 2012, from a producer whose repertoire runs from Roald Dahl to David Walliams.

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

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

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

Laurence Rickard's rambling HHTV News monologues proved impossible to hand to anyone else, and he later played Robin the caveman in Ghosts.

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

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

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

Jim Howick won a Children's BAFTA in 2010 for the show's second series, and later taught science as Mr Hendricks in Sex Education.

Which Horrible Histories regular, an Oxford graduate in Russian and French, made Henry VIII his signature role?

Ben Willbond had won the Perrier Best Newcomer prize in 1999 as half of the duo Ben & Arn, and later played the Captain in Ghosts.

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

Mathew Baynton, who trained in clowning in Paris, went on to win Taskmaster's nineteenth series in 2025 and its Champion of Champions.

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

Martha Howe-Douglas had been a Doctors soap receptionist before the show, and she later led Yonderland as suburban mum Debbie Maddox.

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

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

'Born 2 Rule' blamed the wrong king for dying 'on the loo'; at the 2011 Horrible Histories Prom it went to whom?

George II really did collapse and die beside his close stool in 1760; the 2009 video had pinned the death on George I, and the Prom reprise put it right.

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

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

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

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

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

Eminem was the model for the Charles II number, one of the pieces the cast reprised with a full orchestra at the 2011 Prom.

Horrible Histories' Charles Dickens video, with comedian Al Murray on drums, was styled on which Manchester band?

The Smiths pastiche was one of several fifth-series roles for the Pub Landlord comedian, who joined a guest list that included Alexei Sayle and David Baddiel.

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

The League of Gentlemen trio of Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith used the format of an old Orange cinema advert about switching off phones.

Self-styled 'tyrannical pedant' Greg Jenner counted how many errors in Horrible Histories' 4,000-plus facts?

Eight slips in five series is the tally from the man who later launched the You're Dead to Me podcast pairing a historian with a comedian.

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

Aeschylus's tortoise drew a critic's complaint that no hard evidence for it exists, one of the traditional anecdotes the show admits using alongside the Caligula stories.

In 2014 the BBC Trust ruled a Horrible Histories sketch unfair for having which nurse turn away Mary Seacole?

Florence Nightingale was held to have been given racially discriminatory motives without proof, so the BBC pulled the sketch from its website and future repeats.

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

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

In Gory Games, the Horrible Histories game show, three young contestants complete challenges to collect what?

Year Spheres each hold a date, and an AD date is added to your score while a BC date is subtracted, before the losers slide down the Time Sewer into gunge.

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

Button House's ghosts only become visible to Alison after one ghost pushes her out of a window and she is clinically dead for three minutes.

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

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

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

Derek Jacobi's return was called the film's 'most sensational coup' in one three-star review, which otherwise rated it below the troupe's earlier film Bill.

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

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

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

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

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

Stuarts are slimy in both the books and the TV show, where each era gets its own title card and a short animated introduction.

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

Saxons earned 'Smashing' in the sequence of alliterative eras that the TV show carried over from the books, each with its own title card.

The 2000 Horrible Histories cartoon, a bad experience for its author, followed which two time-travelling kids?

Mo and Stitch were pestered by a history-obsessed bully called Darren Dongle, and the 26 episodes aired in the UK on ITV rather than the BBC.

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

Actually, I'm a Murderer went to the publisher Constable well over a decade after its author retired from children's books in 2011.

Which actor, young Ned Stark in Game of Thrones, was BAFTA-nominated as Atti in Rotten Romans?

Sebastian Croft went on to play Ben Hope in Heartstopper and had earlier toured for eighteen months in the title role of Oliver!.

Which director of the original Horrible Histories sketch show went on to direct the 2019 film Rotten Romans?

Dominic Brigstocke shot the film in Bulgaria and at Butser Ancient Farm in Hampshire, and it took $3.7 million at the box office.

Horrible Histories shot each series in under two months on location and at which London studio complex?

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

Which puppeteer, also lead operator of Rygel on Farscape, performs and voices the Horrible Histories rat host?

John Eccleston once presented the UK Disney Club on camera, but quit appearing on screen because he disliked being pointed at in the street.

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

Sarah Hadland's Queen Victoria was a signature role, and in 2024 she reached the Strictly Come Dancing final as runner-up with Vito Coppola.