Chatty Death: Alfred the Great

On the candlelit set of his talk show, Death cracks a skeleton joke for his audience of bones and a mummy, then introduces Alfred the Great, who appears on a studio screen seated on his throne. Alfred is chuffed that history still calls him great for driving back the Danes and bringing the Anglo-Saxons under one crown, while Death keeps stepping on his moment with jokes of his own. When the king mentions his burial in Winchester, Death breezily explains that his body was dug up and moved more than once before Hyde Abbey was torn down under Henry VIII, so nobody knows where he lies. Alfred insists on answers, Death offers to arrange a tip-off and promptly tips him, throne and all, into a swirling void, then signs off grumbling that his royal pun deserved a bigger laugh.

The sketch's account of Alfred's wandering remains is broadly true: he was first laid in Winchester's Old Minster, moved to the New Minster, and in 1110 taken with his family to Hyde Abbey, which was dissolved in 1538 under Henry VIII and later quarried away. In January 2014, the year before this episode aired, a pelvis fragment from the Hyde Abbey site was radiocarbon-dated to the right period and suggested to be Alfred's or his son Edward's, though that remains unproven.