Special Guest Blogger: Emperor Nero

Reading history books you could be excused for thinking that i was an arrogant, self-centred mummy's boy and there is far too much about killing my mother and executing my first wife and kicking my second wife to death and far less about what an excellent fiddle player i was, and damn i was good.
During the great fire of Rome, which may or may not have been started by me, i had called all the Senators to my place to allow them the pleasure of listening to me play and although they protested that the city was going up in flames, being the consummate professional that i was, i insisted that the show must go on and if i say so myself, it was an epic performance, like Hendrix at Woodstock all those years later only without so many drugs.
I don't think the Senators were really paying attention, the city burning down around them and all that and i detected a severe lack of enthusiasm when i asked them to wave their hands in the air like they just didn't care so on the one hand Rome burned to a cinder but on the other, i gave a truly cracking show.
The history books also make me sound awful, especially the using burning Christians to light my garden at night but i tried Muslims and Jews and they just didn't burn so bright, lack of pork in their diet probably, and an Emperor shouldn't be expected to risk tripping in the garden and getting his toga muddy.
Also something the greatest ruler of the largest Empire shouldn't do is commit suicide in the wrong way which is why i asked several of my friends to try it first, which they did but all that screaming and stabbing themselves and bleeding, there was a lot of bleeding, i decided i probably won't do it after all and went back home.  
With all of Rome baying for my blood i asked my secretary, Epaphroditos, to stab me when i wasn't expecting it and seconds later i was sprawled on the floor with a knife in my back.
My immortal words 'What an Artists dies in me' were true because a real Artist did die that day because if i say so myself, i really was one kick-ass Fiddler.

Special Guest Blogger: Elvis Presley

As well as making music i acted in 31 films and as an actor it was said i was a great singer but that wasn't always the case.
I got a C for music at school and in a singing contest at a country fair i came 5th so it could be taken as a lesson in not giving up your dream or as i prefer, thinking 'what do you know' to music teachers and country fair song judges because i went on to become so famous that i was called the King so f**k you, thank you very much.
As well as the films, i released 117 singles, 50 albums and have thousands of impersonators around the World but the greatest hit i am most remembered for is the one where i hit the floor in my bathroom.
There are more dignified ways to die than being found face down in the bathroom with your underpants around your ankles i admit and if i was given a choice it would be in bed surrounded by several buckets of fried chicken and a plate of banana, peanut butter and bacon sandwiches but as Old Shep found out, 'one day the doctor looked at me and said, I can do no more for him, Jim'.
Suspicious Minds was another one of mine and there have been a few of those regarding if it was actually me who was sprawled all over the toilet floor that day and the simple answer is of course it was, if i was going to plan my own death it would be dying saving orphans from a burning building or drowning whilst rescuing puppies, not dying form the exertion of trying to push one out.
Finally, on the subject of all those Elvis impersonators, why are the majority in my white rhinestone jumpsuit period when i was bloated and wheezy?    
Anyway, don't be lonesome tonight, I have now left the building

Special Guest Blogger: King George III

It may be a thing over there in America but the Revolutionary War is not so big in the UK but there has been so much propaganda about the whole thing.
Firstly i didn't give a flying fig about our colonies over there in America, they were all religious folk who i was quite happy to see the back of if i am being truthful with all their England is not Holy enough nonsense so i was all 'take it, run it into the ground, see if i care' but Parliament insisted that we send troops and i was all like 'yeah, whatever'. 
While all that was going on i was diagnosed as suffering from a mental illness called Old Loon, probably due to all the inbreeding amongst the Royalty (and there was a lot of inbreeding) so i was expected to make decisions of State but i didn't know if i would wake up thinking i was a Kangaroo or a Cockatiel.
One day i shook hands with a tree which i thought was the King of Prussia, but have you ever seen the King of Prussia, he looks like a tree and when it was gently explained to me that it wasn't him, i went around shaking hands with all the tree's and i was meeting him in a forest, we were there all day until i shook hands with a couple of pear tree's which turned out to be him and his wife.
When i was told by a giant Begonia in the garden that we had lost the American colonies i wasn't very upset, mostly because i had lost my keys that day and found them within the hour so a country shouldn't be that hard to find and I helpfully asked if they had looked down the back of the sofa.
My legacy is the King who lost America and admittedly i haven't been paying much attention since i died but from what i can gather all they have done with it is carve some big heads into the side of a mountain, invent Country and Western music and give everyone a gun in case us British ever invaded again.
If a country decided that 5 vowels is one vowel too many and drop the letter 'u' then i can't see them being much of a threat to the British Empire but as it was built by peace loving religious folk i'm sure it turned out okay but i am a bit concerned that the Old Loon tablets may need to be increased, i'm sure i just saw an orange beach ball balancing a bird nest on his top being declared American President.
Have to go, the King of Prussia needs pruning.

Special Guest Blogger: Che Guevera

If you go into any student flat you would probably see a poster of me on the wall in that famous pose with my beret, Lucy even has a mug with my face on it but as famous as that picture is, i never earned a cent from it.
Capitalist pig dogs have grown rich off my image and if i had earned just a small percentage of the merchandise sold then i could have stopped being a revolutionary and lived in comfort somewhere warm but that was against my whole ethos so i would never, ever accept sponsorship for money.
As i heard on my Sony CDX-GT424 radio that has amazing looks and great features which come together so you actually look forward to switching it on, i would never even consider receiving money for product placement.
As i draw on my Fratello Bianco Cigar which are made from a blend of the finest flu-cured golden Virginian, air-cured Burley and Oriental tobaccos for that mild taste, i contemplate just how money is at the root of all evil as i drove my Peugeot 307 1.6 (Peugeot are committed to leading the industry with style, flair and a relentless drive for aesthetic achievement) to the Asda Walmart supermarket where shoppers can buy top quality products at low, low prices such as the new BOSCH TAS4011 Coffee Maker which combines the great Tassimo system with Bosch's renowned looks and quality, and offers a world of flavour with perfect results every time.
Most evenings i switch off my affordable yet stylish Google Pixel 3ai mobile phone with its amazing 8 mega pixel camera and top tier security features and turn on my Panasonic TX-26LMD70A Television with V-Real technology, acclaimed for delivering outstanding image quality and think that the World is money mad and worse of all are the people who try to sneak in subliminal adverts when you least expect them.
Fight the power people, don't become a cog in the machinery of the capitalists!!

Special Guest Blogger: Joan of Arc

I am a hero in France but ask any English person and they will say that all i did was pick up a sword, get caught and then set on fire but there was so much more to my story, apart from picking up a sword, getting caught and subsequently being burnt to death.
Firstly, the 100 year War was called the 75 year war when i was only 16 years old i was visited by Arch Angel Michael who said he was sent by God himself to tell me to lead the French against the English.
I did initially question why God had picked a 16 year old girl with no fighting experience when he had millions of battle hardened Frenchmen to pick from, but the Arch Angel just shrugged and said as most Frenchmen fought like 16 year girls anyway, same diff, and the whole virgin thing, God had a thing about virgins apparently.   
I rocked up at the King's Palace and declared: 'Your Majesty, i have been sent by God to lead the French army and defend France from the English' and rather than laugh and get me dragged away as a nutter, he put down his baguette, wiped his mouth on a small peasant child and said Okay then' and sent me to Orléans.
The 100 Year War was then just changing it's name to the 76 Year War (we had to change the name every year) when i began and things started off well, i won a few battles and after each victory i would praise God for keeping me in his favour and when i was captured by the English, i did the 'you better let me go because God will be pretty angry if you don't'.
I was sure God would save me somehow right up until when the English tied me up and set fire to my pyre i was thinking come on God, a big gust of wind or something, a little help here but nothing.
I found out later that we had won the war (The English fought like 15 year old girls as it turns out) and i did my bit to save France and since i have made my peace with the English although their joke about me giving my name to French Fries was only funny the first 30,000 times i heard it.

Special Guest Blogger: Kurt Cobain

 A mullato, an albino, a mosquito, my labido, what was i smoking when i wrote that particular chorus people often asked me? Pretty much everything i would reply which is why i had to check Wikipedia to see exactly what i did in my lifetime as the details are a bit hazy.
I was out of my face on drugs most of the time but they gave me the oomph i needed. Would i have written Smells like Teen Spirit without bucketloads of Heroin. Probably not and i wouldn't have decorated that upstairs room a dark shade of brain grey without it either but hey, swings and roundabouts.
People were always trying to get me to go to rehab centres but the problem wasn't getting me there, the issue was that the walls were not high enough for me not to skip over and then go stab myself with a massive syringe full of heroin.
What many people didn't understand was that the 'Unplugged' show we did was a cry for help, anyone could see that as i sat there singing the sings that i did that it was the actions of a man who was smashed out of his gourd when he came up with that set.
I did have a persona of being a bit of a grumpy one and it is true that i hated everything, i even sang a song called 'I Hate Myself and Want to Die' which with hindsight may have been another call for help but was just passed off as Kurt being Kurt, the miserable sod.
As with so many celebrities, dying early turned out to be a boon for my career and 25 years on i see teenagers wearing Nirvana t-shirts and calling my lyrics all about teen revolution and the meaning and meaninglessness, playing upon the juxtaposition of my contradictory lyrics and the conflict of two opposing ideas which sounds great but really, Teen Spirit was about nothing deeper than deodorant and the message a friend left me telling me i needed to buy deodorant because i stank. The greatest stroke of luck was that my friend never wrote Kurt needs Lynx as that's a tough one to make rhyme.

Special Guest Blogger: Blackbeard

The city of Bristol does not have a very long list of famous people that have emerged from within it's walls but you ask anyone to speak like a pirate and it's the very best Bristonian accent that chunders forth and that's thanks to me so if nothing else i gave the world that and the Jolly Roger flag.
Being a lazy bugger, and razors not being invented yet, i had a long, luxurious beard, hence the name, and i kept it black by setting fire to it which never really caught on amongst later generations.
Setting your beard on fire as you board another ship was a masterstroke, they would say if that guy is crazy enough to set his facial hair alight then i'm not going to argue with him but the problem was ships move slowly so i would get a decent blaze going and then watch slowly as the ship's came together by which time i was horribly burned, scalded and screaming in pain which only added to the madness but hurt like a bandit.
Over the few short years that i was pirating i got together an impressive pile of loot but as my gambling and drinking debts grew i hit upon the bright idea of shooting members of my crew to increase my share of the treasure.
Things were going well until i found the flaw in my plan and began running out of crew and my enemies boarded my ship and cut off my head and stuck it on top of their mast. Arrgh, that stung a bit me hearty.
Probably the only pirate who could rival me for infamy was Long John Silver and he wasn't even real but he has propagated the image of pirates having a parrot and a wooden leg but a little known fact was us Pirates had a strict Pirate Code we lived by.
This included every man would have a vote in affairs of the moment, all must receive an equal share of any treasure, no cards or dice for money, all lights and candles to be put out at eight o'clock at night, no woman allowed on board, no striking one another on board and no music on the Sabbath Day.
So we were not so bad after all then and the face moisturiser in the afterlife is to die for, literally.

Special Guest Blogger: George Washington

I cannot tell a lie, well i can, but i became known for not lying which worked out well because i could swipe whatever i wanted and nobody would ever suspect me.
I was the very first President of the United States and to commemorate what a great bloke i was, i'm now on the dollar bill, have the Washington monument, the nations capital bares my name and someone carved a massive statue of my head into the side of a mountain.
The only problem i have with Mount Rushmore is that i have to share it with Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt
and while i have no problem with the first two, Theodore Roosevelt never freed slaves, took on the British or authored the Declaration of Independence, he gave his name to a soft toy and set up something called the Bull Moose Party, so you can you see why i wouldn't want to be sharing a mountain side for eternity with the weirdo.
As in the 18th century we were not that far removed from our British ancestors, i did help the Brits fight against the French in North America but then decided a year or two was long enough to then be far enough removed from our British ancestry and fought alongside them against the British in the War of Independence after the whole throwing the tea into the Boston river thing.
The battle that i am most proud of was the surprise attack i made on a British Barracks at Trenton which took place at Christmas where the British had been celebrating the Festivities and were as pickled as herrings when suddenly me and 2,400 of my buddies showed up with a present for them, a dirty great cannon. 
Because most of them was drunk and were either laying passed out on the ground or sitting around with the top button of their breeches undone after one too many platefuls of sprouts, we managed one of the easiest victories of the campaign and i even managed to get a few games of charades in with the General who was dressed at Santa Claus before carting his limey ass off.
Over time we have not only made peace with the British but America has grown and has gone from strength to strength in my vision of creating a nation for all men and women, where all are created equal regardless of race and colour.
Okay, so i goofed on those last two but i am proud of the part i played in making the land of the free and the home of the brave armed with semi-automatic weapons designed for military use, God Bless America.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Nicholas

The last thing i want is to come across as grumpy, sure i appreciate the whole starting Christmas thing but in my lifetime i received a visit from the Virgin Mary herself, brought back to life dead children, calmed a storm at sea, saved innocent soldiers from execution and chopped down a demon possessed tree but mention the name Saint Nicholas and all i'm remembered for is throwing some coins into some prostitutes socks.
To make things even worse it led to the story of the jolly fat guy in the red suit who would replace my boss's kid as the face of Christmas and i'm not jolly or fat and wouldn't be seen dead in a red suit, i was always more of a grey smock guy.
At least the Beach Boys remembered me although at 5ft in my stockinged feet the 'Little Saint Nick' was a bit of a dig, you try clambering up on rooftops when your 5ft tall, not easy i tell you.
Anyway, at least i'm remembered all these years later, remember Saint Agathangels? Nope? There you go then, it's George, Valentine and me and i invented Christmas so that beats fighting dragons and zinging arrows into people butts.
As thanks for giving the World Santa, they made me the Patron Saint of Portsmouth and Liverpool for crying out loud. I know i'm a Saint with a hotline to the Big Guy but anyone who has been to either of those places know even i couldn't conjure up enough of a miracle for them, if i had known at the time i would have kept off the roofs and kept my coins in my pocket.
Still, enjoy the festive season that i gave you and remember me, the man who gave money to sex workers who then morphed into a fat guy with gout and high blood pressure who comes into your bedroom when your asleep and leaves you presents which isn't creepy at all.

Special Guest Blogger: Buddy Holly

Oh boy, i'm as excited as an excited man with a particularly exciting reason to be excited to be asked to write a few words here, lil' ole' me, the nerdy looking geek from Lubbock, Texas who gave Elvis Costello his look and was immortalised by the Song American Pie although why the good ole boys were drinking Whisky and Rye at the Levee in my memory i never understood, i was always more of a Sarsaparilla or a Grape Knee-High kinda fella.
Being the most famous of the three of us that died in the plane that day, i am the one usually most remembered for dying and we will never know just how my career would have panned out otherwise but if only i had brought an extra pair of underpants with me on that tour as we only hired the plane because of my constant bleating about having the wear the same pants and wanting to
find a laundrette.
That the Big Bopper and Richie Valens had to die because i wanted fresh undercrackers is a bit unfair but hey, didn't do me any harm, well, apart from the dying which could have put a serious kink in my career but even worse i didn't follow my mum's advice of making sure i had clean underwear on in case i had an accident.
Something i really need to tackle is the nonsense of a curse surrounding me for ignoring a warning given to my sound engineer by a gypsy which has been going on for years, just because of that plane crash.
Just because my replacement on the tour hanged himself and Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent who had both earlier pulled out of the tour were involved in a car crash which killed Cochrane and left Vincent without the use of one of his legs doesn't prove anything and just because the new singer that The Crickets brought in died in a plane crash, that could have happened to anyone.
That the sound engineer that received the warning committed suicide and the guy who played me in the 1977 film was involved in a near fatal motorcycle accident which left him with brain injuries and the films writer committed suicide shortly before the film's release is weak proof at best.
Del Shannon, after playing a concert at the Surf Ballroom Clear Lake, Iowa which was the location of my last performance Shannon shot himself but i really can't see how any of this can be linked to lil' ole' me.