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Stupid Deaths: Henry the First

Horrible Histories
SKETCH-O-VISION
A VERY GOOD USE OF YOUR TIME.

The setup

King Henry I pleads his case to Death, explaining how a plate of eels and an over-eager laxative finished him off.

Community rating

– / 10

The premise

Here’s the bit.

In the afterlife's waiting room, Death and his two skeleton judges call up contestant number 1135, King Henry I of England, who is clearly in a hurry. Henry recounts how a visit to his grandchildren in Normandy turned into a binge on lampreys against his doctor's advice, and how the laxative prescribed for the resulting stomach ache worked far too well. Death answers every grim detail with puns and smell jokes, makes a show of conferring with the skeletons while Henry squirms, and finally waves him through to the afterlife before blaming the lingering odour on his bony colleagues.

The funny people

Meet the cast. 2

Say it with us

Highly quotable.

Hey, you could say you were dying to go to the toilet.

I'd leave it five minutes if I were you. It smells like someone's died in there.

Well, Henry, congratulations, you're through to the afterlife.

A little extra

Notes from the archive.

This segment was later reused in the Halloween-themed Scary Special (first broadcast 29 October 2012), where Death presented it as No. 8, "Deaths", in his Top 12 Scary Things.