by Henry VIII live at Funhouse Comedy Club Melton Mowbray: the full closing set on legacy, rubber ducks, and the pork pie’s superior lawyers
Melton Mowbray. The final night of the tour, and I have saved you for last, because you are the only town in England that understood the assignment. Your pork pie is protected BY LAW. Its name. Its recipe. Its geography. Defended by statute against all imitators. A pie, Melton Mowbray, with more legal protection than any of my marriages ever had. And I say this with nothing but admiration: it is the first sensible piece of English legislation since my reign. And I am including my reign.
I visited the pie shop this afternoon. Ate one at the counter. Bought eleven more for the road. Attempted to knight the pastry, and was refused on hygiene grounds. That is the second knighthood this tour has lost to hygiene grounds, and I begin to suspect the phrase is a conspiracy.
Divorced, Beheaded, Survived By A Rhyme
There is a rhyme. You all know it. Every child in this country learns it. Sing it with me, come on, you know the words: divorced, beheaded… yes… died, divorced, beheaded, survived. STOP. Stop there. Listen to yourselves. Thirty-eight years of statecraft. War. Theology. SHIPBUILDING. And the national memory has filed me under six words about my personal life, in the wrong emotional order, set to a SKIPPING rhythm. I founded the Royal Navy, Melton Mowbray. Nobody skips to that.
And notice: the rhyme is about the women. Six remarkable lives, compressed to a fate each. And here is the strange justice of your age. The rhyme became a MUSICAL. The musical gave each of them a song. The songs sell out arenas. And I am not in the show. I am the PREMISE. I have been reduced to the premise. And the premise does not receive royalties.
My divorces now have better reviews than my reign. Four stars. Five stars. Dancing in the aisles. The Dissolution of the Monasteries has never once danced. I am the only man in history whose exes formed a successful girl group. And the wound is not the group, Melton Mowbray. The wound is that they are GOOD.
The Gift Shop At The End Of History
I have toured my own palaces as a paying visitor. Let me describe the experience. You walk the state rooms in a queue. You exit through a gift shop. And in the gift shop, my face is on TEA TOWELS. The face that launched armies now dries cutlery in Surrey. There are pencil toppers. There is a rubber duck of me. A DUCK. Anne Boleyn has one too. Hers sells better. The staff did not have to tell me that. But they did. They QUEUED to tell me.
I stood before myself at the waxworks. Studied the work. It is accurate to the portraits, which is to say accurate to the propaganda, which is to say the shoulders are magnificent and the waist is DIPLOMATIC. Schoolchildren were photographed beside me, making faces. In 1540, that was a capital offence. In 2026, it is a package deal with the dungeon experience. And the dungeon experience, I noted, has a MEAL OPTION. We never offered a meal option. Missed revenue, frankly.
In October I found myself in a supermarket. And there I was. On a rack. A Halloween costume. Polyester doublet, plastic crown, foam turkey leg INCLUDED. Nineteen pounds. I spent the modern equivalent of two million pounds a year on clothing, and I retail at nineteen pounds INCLUDING THE MEAT. And the packet did not even say my name. It said TUDOR KING. Generic. I have been genericised, like the hoover. And the hoover is still under warranty.
Fact-Checked By Puppets
There is a television programme for children in which I am played for laughs, singing about my wives. I resisted it for a full year of this new life. Then I watched it. And I must report to this room, with a heavy heart: it is CORRECT. The jokes are accurate. The costumes are researched. The song is catchy. I have been fact-checked by puppets, Melton Mowbray, and I LOST.
And that is the lesson of legacy, so take it from the man at the wrong end of it. You do not get to choose it. I commissioned chronicles. I censored histories. I burned inconvenient letters. I executed at least two men for unflattering accuracy. And the verdict of the centuries was assembled anyway, by schoolteachers, songwriters, and a sketch show. History is the one court where the king goes LAST and everyone else speaks first.
Meanwhile, the pie hired better lawyers than all of us. So protect your pies, Melton Mowbray. Protect your cheese, your name, your recipe, your little patch of the record. The empires wash out. The PAPERWORK survives. In five hundred years, nobody will sing about your wars. But they will still be arguing about your crust. And that, my friends, is immortality with a hot water pastry.
A Word From Our Sponsor
The Henry Is Back tour has been sponsored throughout by The London Prat, a London institution now seeking the same protected status as your pork pie, on the grounds that it too is best enjoyed cold, in one sitting, and against medical advice. And Bohiney Magazine has filed a petition to protect MY legacy under the scheme. I have seen the application. It lists me as a regional delicacy. … Approved.
I raise pie number twelve in salute. To the crust, to the county, to the long argument of history. You have been the finest final night a king could ask for. GOODNIGHT, MELTON MOWBRAY!
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
