Gustav III & the Man on the Mast

There is a man standing on the mast. So tonight the whole show is whispered — and then the lads play punk records at full volume through the mast he's standing on.

Which makes them exactly like tonight's king. In March 1792 Gustav III was handed a note at supper telling him he would be killed that night. He went to the masked ball anyway, wearing a mask, a cape — and the shiniest badge in Sweden pinned to his chest, which is precisely what gave him away.

Gaz tells it: the bloodless coup of 1772, the Swedish Academy, the opera house he built and was later murdered in, and the war he wasn't legally allowed to start — so he had his opera tailors sew Russian uniforms and shot at his own border post. Degsy is confidently wrong about coffee. Bengt lies out loud for the first time in twenty-two years and asks for the mast to come down before Monday. And Brenda, out of nothing but pride, tells the technician exactly who they are — then corrects his spelling of Higginbottom.

For once in this series, it was the establishment that told the king to do one.

Contains strong language throughout. The history is fact-checked; the punks are not.

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