Channel4 executive: "OMG, OMG! BBC just had their poetry season and it was so supercool! What do we do?!" Other Channel4 executive: "Is there anyway we can make poetry really sensationalist and entertaining? I mean, I am not not opposed to clever things but poetry is really stuffy, y'know?"
Channel4 Executive: "Uhm.... how about Lord Byron? He was not stuffy. He slept with his half-sister, was 'mad, bad and dangerous to know', wanted to liberate Greece, went a-roving with the Shelleys and wrote really amusing poetry about eating spaniels."
Other Channel4 Executive: "We need a celeb angle. We need.. we could send Rupert Everett around Europe whilst he settles into his botched facelift - and he could talk about Lord Byron's sex life. The incest bit and how he fancied Percy Bysshe Shelley?"
Rupert Everett: "I'll only do it if I get to say naughty words, show off my naked bum, swim in my underwear with cute semi-naked boys, eat caviar with Donatella Versace, and pretend that Lord Byron is really me, me, me!"
Channel4 Executives: "You're on!"