The comedian takes a typically irreverent look at Ludwig van Beethoven's character flaws. Was he the only great composer to have pelted his housemaid with rotten eggs? He clearly had anger-management issues ...

Mark Steel turns up the volume on Beethoven with his tribute to a man who was the nearest eighteenth-century Vienna got to not only Jimi Hendrix, but also Captain Sensible. Unflinchingly exposing Ludwig's anger management issues and his dependence on Ceefax's 888 subtitle service, Mark Steel sets Beethoven in his revolutionary context and reveals the quirks of his character the history books gloss over.

Taking in the revolutionary nature of the Freemasons, Haydn's contractual similarity to Prince, Beethoven's unusual fondness for semi-hemidemisemiquavers and his love-hate relationship with Napoleon, The Mark Steel Lectures once again combines unique reconstructions with inventive graphics to bring Beethoven right up to the minute.