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?

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.

This is a download from the BBC.

For more information and our terms of use,

go to BBC.co.uk slash radio three.

On tonight's programme, the winter of our discontent.

In Richard III, Shakespeare forged that memorable phrase,

and it goes on to be used in 1979 to name the industrial battles in Labour Britain.

Now, a new production of Shakespeare's play takes as its prompt the 1970s civil warfare across Britain, which borrowed its language from

Richard III, if you see what I mean, and which stretched as far as a projected coup against

the then Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson.

It's based on the idea that there was a planned, not that it ever came to it,

but there was plans for a coup of the Harold Wilson government.

That's fairly accepted knowledge in politics, put it that way.

So York and Lancaster become left and right, basically.

So it's set around the sort of intrigues of modernish British politics,

but just what can happen if something goes to its extreme?

Martin Freeman, who plays Richard III, Shakespeare and Politics

with political commentator Steve Richards later.

But we begin elsewhere with pain, Not you're a pain or a

...