What is he doing?

Is he clenching his muscles?

Ooh!

Ha ha ha!

This is, you know, the first... Oh, I love it, I love it!

modern bodybuilder Eugen Sandow.

And what was-- what's his story?

What's special about him?

He's a strong man who's seen as the world's most perfectly developed specimen.

Influencer is a term I loathe, but Sandow was a fitness influencer, so it's very much a trend of the time.

He sold books, magazines, workout equipment.

So this is a 5-pound dumbbell, spring grip dumbbell.

Let me-- Would you like to try?

I would love to squeeze.

Now remember... Would these have been the sort of thing that Arthur himself used?

This would have been the exact thing that Arthur would have used.

Total concentration as you do this.

Well, it's a bit easy.

It is a bit easy, yeah.

Ha ha ha!

Did they come in bigger sizes?

No.

This is--I mean, this is the full stack, but this is the marketing genius of Sandow because you can feel it's quite light.

Yeah.

You could ship this throughout the world.

So Arthur would have likely have had an anthropomorphic chart, as well, where he could have tracked his measurements and compare himself to Sandow because this was the sale, right?

Can you fit your physique to Sandow's?

His physique is seen as so perfect that in 1904 the Natural History Museum commissioned a statue of Sandow's body so that they have a symbol of the perfect white man that later generations can look back on and see what perfection looked like in the early 1900s.

The perfect white man.

That rings alarm bells.

There is now a fear that Britain's getting weaker compared to its colonial subjects, and Sandow's own zeal spreads to this idea of improving Britain's racial stock, their racial fitness.

If we can make Britain's men and women strong and fit and healthy and physically active, we can ensure the place of Britain within her empire.

This started out as camp fun, but it's gone to a very dark place.

♪ Worsley: Even with this dark side, Arthur was willing to embrace Sandow's ideas of masculinity... ♪ so much so it led him here... to the Royal Albert Hall to judge Britain's very first bodybuilding competition.

Yes, you did hear me correctly.

Oh, my giddy aunt!

Ha ha ha!

I don't know what to say.

Worsley, voice-over: Can you imagine?

80 men standing on pedestals, wearing leopard skin.

Worsley: You think I'm joking, but look at this.

It did really happen.

[Camera shutter clicks] Worsley, voice-over: If Sherlock Holmes had been about brains, this was about brawn.

♪ Sandow's regime was all about creating the perfect physical specimen, a type of elite action man able to defend the country, and Arthur wanted to be match fit.

Worsley, voice-over: Because the Empire needed all the strength it could muster.