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.

Tonight, we are donning our blazers, practising our fake accents, and preparing to enter the world of the scoundrel.

Who then you ask our your opponents? Everybody in a word who is not you.

And the purpose of your life must be to be one up on them.

Alistair Sim, expounding the philosophy taught to students in the 1960 film School for Scoundrels.

I'll be discussing their appeal from the 18th century celebrity highwayman to now as a new musical of the film Dirty Rotten Scandrels hits the

stage. And the geographer who counted all the bedrooms in Britain to reveal the strange

contradictions in the nation's relationship with bricks and mortar. But first, I've just

been at the Paul Foot Award ceremony for investigative and campaigning journalism.

Last time the winner was Andrew Norfolk of the Times for his investigation into the grooming and sexual exploitation of young girls.

Amongst the workup for awards this year were headlines like GCHQ intercepted foreign politicians' communications, Fakes, fraud and forgery in Lloyd's

PPI selling scandal. I needed to eat so I hunted rabbits. And I lost my finger to a loan shark.

Private Eye magazine editor Ian Hisslop told me about this year's shortlist. Well, I think journalism's

in quite a sort of odd period.

Everyone's a bit unsure and a bit nervous.

We're post-Leverson, but we haven't agreed to do anything.

And the point of these awards is essentially to show it's there and it's kicking.

And the chairman of our judges just said that the spread here

from local regional papers to trade mags to websites to agencies was just extraordinarily the amount of stuff going on out there.

...