Nostalgia Interviews With Chris Deacy

My guest this week is Ben Marsh, Reader in History at the University of Kent, and very well known for the Marsh Family musical videos which inspired so many people during and since lockdown. Ben talks about how people have been craving something authentic and we learn what it was like to perform live on Comic Relief, meeting (nearly) Richard Curtis and being watched by people one has constructed one’s world around. Ben reflects on how some people will see in the videos whatever it is that reinforces their cultural world and how the videos have endeavoured to bring people together. Music can reach people and enable us to escape tribalism. We talk about copyright issues and find out about the inspiration for some of the music. We learn about Ben’s research on histories of failure and how he very nearly didn’t become an academic. He couldn’t study History at school, but we learn that something about colonial America clicked for him. We talk about going back to the music or films that mattered to us when young,