Clive Anderson

Listen to "Clive Anderson From Mystic Britain On The Smithsonian Channel" on Spreaker. Over Britain's tens of thousands of years of civilization, its history has played host to a series of strange and mysterious rituals, events, and cultures. In Smithsonian Channel’s new series Mystic Britain, British comedian Clive Anderson and anthropologist Mary-Ann Ochota travel across the U.K. to explore the sacred sites and supernatural beliefs of the ancient Britons. It’s a road trip mixing mysticism with trademark British humor! Winner of the British Comedy Award in 1991, Clive Anderson rose to fame as the host of the long-running improvisational comedy series Whose Line Is It Anyway. His career included stand-up comedy, script writing, and hosting a number of television shows including the BAFTA ceremonies, Britain’s equivalent of the Academy Awards. Among the stories featured this season include: • Revenants -- Clive visits a medieval village where a pile of bones was discovered. Were they human sacrifices, outsiders murdered by angry villagers, victims of cannibalism? Legend holds that they may have been revenants –the medieval undead who rose from their graves to cause chaos and spread evil. • Mummies -- Clive disproves some common misconceptions about mummies, namely that they were all Egyptian and wrapped in bandages. He learns that the Bronze Age Britons had their own bizarre and gruesome way of preserving the dead. • Rollright Stones -- In an anonymous field, Clive visits one of the lesser known mystic locations in Britain: The Rollright Stones. Some of the ancient stones placed at Rollright are twice as old as Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Egypt. For 6,000 years, people have been drawn to this strange place and told supernatural tales of witches, fairies and druids. • Stonehenge -- Clive tries to unravel why Britain’s greatest Stone Age monument was built - and why whoever built it chose the middle of Salisbury Plain. Builder suspects include Merlin the wizard (with the help of giants), as well as the last of the Stone Age people.