Hello and welcome to Mandelson, a homosexual history, a new special mini-series from the creators of the podcast Bad Gays.

My name is Ben Miller. I'm a writer, historian, and member of the board of the Shulis Museum in Berlin.

And my name is Hugh Lemmy. I'm a writer, author, and today I am your homosexual expert on the life of Peter Mandelson.

So why are we here?

Ben, let me start of a story. We'll go back a decade or more to 2015 or so.

And I'm about to take part in a panel discussion on political aesthetics and the internet in a venue in central London,

discussing how social media has changed

the way that many voters communicate around their politics. And the audience, perhaps unsurprisingly,

given the subject, is quite small. And we're sat on a stage waiting to begin, we're getting

our mics sorted, when at the back of the lecture theatre, at the top of this steep flight of stairs,

a pair of double doors swing open. And there's a figure

standing there, looking down on us, contemplating the scene and lit from behind so his face is obscured.

And even though it was a good way up to the top of the lecture theatre seating, I immediately

recognised him almost by his silhouette. He's perhaps the most influential and in some ways mysterious

political figure of certainly my early life, and perhaps still almost to this day. I know him by a

whole handful of epithets that define his public reputation, the eminence Greece of New Labour,

a 21st century Cardinal Richelah, a practitioner of the Dark Arts of Spin.

But one nickname immediately springs to mind, and I lean into my fellow panellists and I whisper it.

It's the Prince of Darkness.

The Prince of Darkness is, of course, the former Labour MP, the Spin Doctor, the peer,

the Master of Political Communications, Peter Mandelson. At the moment,

Lord Mandelson, although whether he will still be a peer when this miniseries is fully aired,

...