The criticism Marc Fennell always gets for Stuff the British Stole

He's made a podcast, a TV show and written a book about the Stuff the British Stole, but Marc Fennell says there's still resistance to our history. (ABC/Wooden Horse/WildBear Entertainment/Artemis Media) Link copiedShareShare articleMarc 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. 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 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 takes so much out of him — and what to expect from these six episodes that were two years in the making. 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. Award-winning journalist Marc Fennell takes audiences on a globe-trotting investigation spanning the Caribbean, Asia and Egypt, following the trail of remarkable objects and the communities still fighting for their return. 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. The tiger the British took has been eating an Englishman for over 200 years. The story of the man they stole it from is one of power, blood, and legacy … a legacy still felt today. 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. That's such a long answer, I'm so sorry. 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. 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." I treat every season as though it's going to be the last. It's hard to convey how mu

The criticism Marc Fennell always gets for Stuff the British Stole

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