My dad died a month before my 18th birthday. A few months before that I had recorded a ‘pop quiz’ with him about his life. He’d been an actor and had lots of good anecdotes; some accurate, some he’d spun so far for effect over the years that I’m not sure he even knew what the truth was anymore. In the recording, he recited a passage that began ‘List and listing long…” and told me how he’d used it to trick one of the world’s leading experts in Shakespeare while he was studying at RADA.
Over the years, I kept coming back to that passage and really wanted to know if the various details in his story were true. Fourteen years after we had recorded that pop quiz, I decided I had to know. My fact-finding mission became the subject of Scenario podcast Epsiode 5: The Ruse. I end up down countless rabbit holes, sorting fact from fiction and even encountered the murder of a Victorian actor on my quest to find answers. Listen for free on the Scenario website, iTunes, or wherever you download your podcasts.