Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps

it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream

van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.

Well, before I start, I just wanted to say that I tweeted Stephen Fry yesterday to ask him to come to this talk, and I'm absolutely delighted that he was able to join us.

No, sorry. I didn't. I didn't. I just wanted to bring to your mind the extraordinary power of celebrity. A few of you looked as excited as if I'd said one of your beloved old friends was here. I also wanted to remind you of how easy it is to communicate with celebrities now. With the arrival of Twitter, the dialogue between public figures and their fans is a part of life.

But celebrity culture is not new.

Two hundred years ago, Lord Byron attracted as much notoriety as any rock star today.

His poetry sparked a frenzied interest from women in particular.

His wife called his fans the Biro-Maniacs. He was the first person to receive fan mail on a mass scale. These fan

letters not only give us an insight into why Byron was so popular in his time, but they also

help us to understand our obsession with celebrities

in the digital age. In order to think about the beginnings of celebrity culture, we need to head

back to the period leading up to Byron's career. Three hundred years ago, most books were

distributed through a system of private subscription. A relatively small number of literate, educated, and largely male readers may well have known

the author of the book they were reading personally.

By the late 18th century, there was a huge technological change.

Books started to be produced mechanically on a mass scale, and literacy was also increasing exponentially.

People felt overwhelmed by the amount of printed material available, and it's funny, much of the rhetoric at the time was very similar to that involving the internet,

that there's too much stuff and it's often a bad quality and everyone

is losing their ability to read critically. During this period, romantic ideas of authorial genius

were starting to take hold and a small number of writers were elevated above the crowd.

It was at this time that words like celebrity, star and glamour came into popular use.

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