A Brief History of Fun

Other episodes of A Brief History of Fun

View program details

• Matthew Sweet tells the long tale of the British coffee house: from the first in Europe back in the seventeenth century, right up to the 1950s espresso bar boom and today's chains invading every high street. Along the way he discovers why tea took such a hold in Britain, and meets a man who tastes 200 cups of coffee a day.
• Matthew Sweet traces the origins of the British dance hall, from the 18th-century Assembly Rooms where Jane Austen shook her booty to the lavish workers' playground of Blackpool's Tower Ballroom, and the nightclubs of the 20th century. Along the way he meets the world's first club DJ, Sir Jimmy Savile.
• Matthew Sweet uncovers the origins of the shopping mall, visiting the world's first (visited by Queen Elizabeth), and revealing scandalous cross-dressing antics on at an elegant Regency arcade.
• Matthew Sweet visits some of Britain's finest old cinemas, including one of the oldest to survive (an Edwardian Electric Palace), as well as a grade-one listed masterpiece from the 1930s, where he rides on a Wurlitzer and picks out some bingo balls.