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, it's 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 at some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

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Just imagine the scenes on your television.

It is 1992 and Labour are convinced they are about to storm to victory in the general election against John Major's unpopular Tories.

John Prescott, then an obscure parliamentary researcher in Hull, bursts into his local polling station.

He is wearing a wedding dress. A male colleague appears

from the terrified throng and a church of England minister enters the room. The words of the

Anglican wedding service are read out, contracting the bearded Prescott to his colleague for better

for worse. Finally, Prescott leaps onto a table and reads out a short

official statement that he has taken from Tory HQ. Our days of ridicule are over, it proclaims. We have

lost. Of course, this never happened, and thank you to my legal advisers for making me clarify this.

Well, not quite, anyway. For something similar did take place in England, but it was a long,

long time ago. On a summer's day in 1604, with King James I, new on the throne and with the

nation's religious future uncertain. A Catholic gentlewoman

from the Lake District sent a group of her servants marching, a raid with offensive weapons of war,

guns, staves, bagpipes, to Cartmel Church. Cartmel is a large priory church. Its squat, grey stone frame and short, angled tower

rise starkly out of the moist green pastures of the surrounding landscape. That day, in 1604,

the feast day of St James the Apostle, a special sermon had been arranged to celebrate the new King's accession,

and an Anglican preacher had been booked. Most of the village would have been there.

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