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.

Hello, August the 10th, 1895, at 8 o'clock in the evening, I can see that packed house now and hear the welcome I received.

Many such welcomes have been mine since then, but the first will always remain green in my memory,

not only because it so encouraged me at the time, or even because it was the first,

but because I doubt whether more than

20 people in that crowded audience had ever seen me raise a bat on. Well, that was Henry Wood,

of course, recalling his younger self and that first ever first night of the proms. And to tell us

more, we have Sir Nicholas Kenyon, the man who directed the proms from 1996 to 2007,

and the cultural and social historian of music, Leanne Langley, who's written extensively about the world into which the proms were born.

Please welcome them both. Thank you.

120 years on from 1895, the BBC proms is indisputably part of the annual calendar of great national events.

But let's begin by recalling how it all began.

Now, Nick Kenyon, the name Henry Wood

still lives on as part of the proms legend. Technically, there's still the Henry Wood Promenard

concerts. And yet the name Robert Newman has disappeared, but in a sense he was the entrepreneur

with vision who really made them happen. You're right, but of course it was the conductor

who was the visible face of the proms night after night

for the audiences,

and let's remember completely differently from today's proms

that it was Henry Wood conducting virtually every concert.

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