This Wednesday 27th August, Chester will once again witness a Roman gladiator and a Tudor bricklayer wandering its historic streets. There will be Chester Family Tours with Carpophorus the hoplomachus at 10am and 11am: an interactive, family-friendly tour of Chester's two thousand year history in just sixty minutes. At 1:30pm and 3:30pm that day, Myles Mason will be giving Tudor & Stuart Tours of Chester: a ninety-minute tour of Chester in 1603, with tales of dissolution, pestilence and even civil war.

On Monday 1st September however, Live History will be officially launching its first adults-only tour to the general public, which means that tickets for both public and private tours will be available through the group's website. This last week saw two preview tours on Monday evening and Friday evening, with members of the public joining the sixty-minute tour for free. Pitched at stag/hen parties and just those who like something a bit ruder than the standard daytime stroll around Chester, the tour has been deemed a general success, despite initial misgivings.

"Upon hearing the tour's theme, I've received more than one quizzical look from members of the public but I'm convinced that there's a market for it out there. It's one that those of a more conservative nature may wish to avoid as it includes contextual swearing and stories of a taboo nature but unfortunately our history has been heavily sanitised by the morally-uptight Victorians and even our everyday conduct has been influenced by them", says Live History's founder, Tom Hudson. "I wanted to do something different that might appeal to particular people. From the filth of the street to the filth behind closed doors, it's essentially a very human story about people that have done some very filthy things. These preview tours were a way of getting feedback so that we could tweak the tour to make it the best that it could be before its official launch."

Operating under the guise of Time Travel Tom (an apt name for a guide who has portrayed all manner of historical characters in the past), customers have since described the tour as showcasing "captivating storytelling" with "all those juicy bits the usual tours politely skip over" , the guide's "attention to detail was remarkable."

The Filthy Chester Tour will be available to book both publicly and privately through Live History's website from Monday 1st September. As autumn approaches, we wonder what Live History will do next. Rumours are that the group will be issuing a TikTok challenge to the general public next month. Chances are, we'll hear about it in Chester.