The criticism Marc Fennell always gets for Stuff the British Stole (original) (raw)

Marc Fennell is done being polite when it comes to Stuff the British Stole.

Three seasons into his hit TV show, with a book of the same name on the way, he knows too much about how "contested" objects around the world really ended up in the care of an empire that was anything but considerate.

And he's possibly too tired for any pretence.

It's early afternoon on the day we meet for a video call, but the Walkley Award-winning writer, presenter and Stuff the British Stole (STBS) creator is still feeling the effects of his 10pm finish the night before.

He's the first to admit how much STBS has changed his life, and yet Fennell isn't sure how long he can keep making it.

Ahead of the launch of the latest season, we asked him to share the story of how it all began, why it was taking so much out of him and what to expect from these six episodes that were two years in the making.

What was going on in your life when you came up with the idea for the STBS podcast, from which the TV show was adapted?

In 2019, a podcast I'd made got nominated for the Rose D'Or Award in London. I kind of knew I wasn't going to win and thought I might as well make the trip useful if I was going all the way there to lose.

I'd written up this [pitch for a new podcast around] the idea there were objects in museums and galleries that were nicked.

So, I looked up this historian named Alice Procter who was doing these rogue tours [of museums] and asked if I could interview her.

I also organised some meetings with broadcasters and production companies in the UK.

I really clearly remember having a meeting with a very well-known British broadcast platform and they were like, [assumes British accent], "Yeah, but did we really steal that much stuff, though? Like, is it really that bad?"

I should have realised in that moment that it was going to be hard …

Interviewing Alice was the last thing I did before flying out.

I just said to her, "Are there many things in museums that are stolen?" And you know when someone laughs and they let out a bit of spit?

Alice Procter started her Uncomfortable Art Tours in June 2017. (Supplied: Connor Harris)

She basically rattled off a list of objects that became the first season of the show, before asking, "What time is your flight? You need to go to the Victoria and Albert Museum."

She sent me to this wooden tiger mauling to death a British soldier with a hand crank on the side [that once belonged to an 18th-century ruler of a kingdom in southern India]. If you crank it, it produces a sound that's almost musical, almost the sound of somebody crying out in pain.

I seriously remember looking at it and going: "What the f*** is this thing? Why does it exist?"

I'd had the idea before [going to London] … but in that moment, with that tiger, suddenly everything fell into place, and it became [the first episode] of the show.

It was a complete sliding doors moment.

That's such a long answer, I'm so sorry.

It was, but you also just saved me from asking about 10 questions. As someone from Australia, India, Singapore and Ireland, how personal is STBS for you?

A big part of why I wanted to do it was because I don't know anything about my history.

Fennell as a toddler with his grandmother Mary Catherine in 1996. (Supplied: Marc Fennell)

I'm half white and I'm ethnically Indian, but actually we were from Singapore … And my Irish grandparents were the ones who looked after me on the weekends.

There's now a term for it, we talk about "third-culture kids". There was no term for it when I was growing up in 90s Australia, where basically the goal was to be as white as you possibly can.

It was: "You're not quite white, you're definitely not full Indian, you're kind of just like nothing."

"We pay lip service to multiculturalism now, but back then it was like, 'We like stir fries and lasagne', and that's the limit of what multiculturalism was accepted," Fennell says. (Supplied: Marc Fennell)

[By the time we started making the podcast], we were in the deepest, darkest COVID lockdown and I realised: "Oh, this is actually my history." I'm so slow.

It turns out the person who had Tipu's Tiger commissioned almost definitely was a warlord who had command over my ancestors at some point in history.

This season of STBS was two years in the making. What can we expect from it?

We're doing tea, the greatest botanical theft of all time.

We're doing Captain Cook, the hottest, red-hot piece of culture war territory.

We're finding a way to tell the story of slavery [through The Zong].

We may never, ever get to do it again, so this season [is filled with episodes] where I'm like, "Let's leave nothing on the table."

What makes you say that?

I treat every season as though it's going to be the last. It's hard to convey how much it takes out of me, personally.

We have a team. I'm not pretending I'm out here doing this by myself auteur-style. I'm not.

But I live and breathe this show.

And we started writing this season pretty much off the back of season two airing in 2024. It's occupied a huge part of my brain for the entirety of that period [until now].

Also, I have two kids and a wife. To shoot this show, I have to be away for a minimum of seven weeks.

When I'm away, my kids call me an NPC, a non-playable character.

As much as Fennell is still struck by the "enormity of the experience" that is filming STBS, he describes flitting from country to country as "brutal". (ABC/Wooden Horse/WildBear Entertainment/Artemis Media)

When you make a show like this, there's a cost to it, and it's not just borne by me, but by everyone around me.

We could do decades and decades of this subject. But I want to make sure that every time we do it, it's a statement and it has a full stop at the end.

What's the worst reaction you've had to the show?

The most common criticisms I get are: "When are you gonna do a show about all the stuff the British gave us?" And I'm like: "That's the education you've already gotten."

Also, it's part of the show … Plus, literally all the other history shows that have ever played on any public broadcaster have [focused on that].

I could literally open up the TV guide and there'll be something to that effect [assumes British accent again], "Secrets of the House of Lords!", "Treasures of the Tower of London!"

I find the "whataboutism", instead of engaging, really revealing … I think it says more about them than it does anything else.

Marc Fennell finds it hard not to be "dismissive" of some of the common STBS criticisms. "I've just had so many years of it," he says. (ABC/Wooden Horse/WildBear Entertainment/Artemis Media)

[Another one is]: "When are you going to do a show about the stuff the French or the Mongols or the Romans stole?"

And I'm like, "I'm there. Give me the money and I'll make it in a heartbeat."

But also, yes the Mongols stole things, the Romans stole things. We don't, however, start parliament with "Hail Caesar", and Genghis Khan isn't on our coins.

The British Empire's the one that's shaped our world in Australia, and it's frankly the most impactful empire of its kind.

So, that's where we're going to start.

"You don't get to command a quarter of the world's landed population for a couple hundred years and then get sensitive about it," Fennell argues. (ABC/Wooden Horse/WildBear Entertainment/Artemis Media)

What does your relationship with the British Museum look like these days?

Um … [Laughs]

The question I get asked the most is: "Are you banned?"

The answer is no. In fact, they don't care.

My impression from them is they just wish it would all go away. And because I'm from Australia, the colonies, I am easy to ignore.

They pay lip service to [STBS] on Instagram and things like that, but when really asked whether they'll do an interview or answer questions, let us film or even license us footage, they do everything they can to shut it down.*

While gaining access to some institutions has been hard, the likes of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (pictured) feature this season. (ABC/Wooden Horse/WildBear Entertainment/Artemis Media)

I'm done being polite about this stuff, because honestly, the British Museum has a perfectly good story to tell. They have genuinely saved objects. I'm the first to admit it, it's undeniable.

What I can't abide is not responding to the free press — pretending you're this broad social good, but refusing to answer questions.

But you know what? It's not just them. The Australian War Memorial did the same thing in season one.

So, the British Museum, look. I absolutely adore it … I just wish they would walk the talk.

So much British history in particular hides behind politeness, and it was not a polite empire.

Surely, we're grown up enough as a species to be able to acknowledge our history has both light and dark sides?

First the STBS podcast, then the TV series, now the book. What made you want to tell the STBS story in a third format?

I was in a bookstore, and I saw one of those books titled, [assumes British accent again] "1001 objects that tell the history of the world" or some shit like that.

I opened it up [and the description for one of the objects said]: "It was acquired in the Pacific."

I'm like, "You mean they f***ing shot a guy? Because that's how that actually got there."

I'm sick to death of passive labels hiding a much more interesting truth about how the world ended up the way it is.

How do you keep your emotions in check when filming?

I intentionally don't have opinions in public because my job is to be able to go anywhere in the world and have anybody talk to me.

From "activist types on one side of the political spectrum", to "Tory peers on the other", Fennell talks to anyone and everyone on the show. (ABC/Wooden Horse/WildBear Entertainment/Artemis Media)

There's a moment last season, where I was talking to a lord — it's always a lord — and he was like [assumes exceedingly posh British accent]: "I thought you were a bunch of racists, but now you're here, I realise this is a perfectly reasonable show."

Your British lord accent is very good.

Well, I've spent a lot of time in the UK.

[Resumes accent] They're all a little bit up in the nose, you've got to do it up there.

I have to resist accidentally curtsying to them, that's my main thing.

Oop!

I have accidentally curtsied to a prince once, and it was awkward as hell.

Which prince?

A couple years ago, I was asked to do an event with the queen's now least-problematic son, Prince Edward.

The event in question, at which Marc Fennell curtsied for Prince Edward (centre right) several times. (Supplied: Marc Fennell)

They sent through this royal protocol, [which explained] I was supposed to call him a certain thing when I met him and another thing afterwards and I was like: "Yeah, I got this."

Anyway, he comes walking towards me and, I kid you not, I'm just like …

[Fennell gets up from his desk, steps out from his chair and begins descending into the first of many curtsies.]

I just started curtsying.

I had this out-of-body experience watching myself and being like, "What the f*** are you doing?"

That's good gossip. Do you have any juicy BTS stories from this season of STBS to share with us?

Every time I would write a script, it'd be like, "Marc arrives on a boat." I'm a big fan of boats on the show because it was a maritime empire … right? Make sense? Boats?

[At one stage I was asked about it] and I was like: "It looks better than arriving in an Uber, does it not?"

At a certain point, I realised the team were keeping a tally and the boat count for this season is about eight, I think.

Across six episodes …

Yes [Chuckles]. One episode has at least three boats.

You've been That Movie Guy, but you've also hosted Mastermind, done a show about a school that tried to end racism, and of course there's STBS. What's the common thread between the many, varied projects you take on?

Professionally curious, that's how I describe myself.

I just like asking questions.

On your website, your stint as a hand model is also briefly listed. Was that your professional curiosity in action again?

[Laughs]

My dad was a photographer and when I was about nine or 10 years old, a hand model didn't turn up for a job. It was an ad for bathroom hygiene, and it was meant to be a female hand model.

Dad decided that my nine-year-old hands could effectively pass and so I held sanitary pads with my small, child hands. [Laughs]

OK, that's not where I expected that to go.

It's one of my formative moments of … I don't know what. But it was definitely a turning point.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

*In a statement, a British Museum spokesperson said it considered "team capacity, scheduling availability, object access, and … the safety of the Museum collection" when assessing media requests.

They also said they "cannot make exceptions" as a charity "operating within a strict regulatory framework".

Watch Stuff the British Stole free on ABC iview and ABC TV from 8pm on June 9.