The True History of the Blackadder: The Unadulterated Tale of the Creation of a Comedy Legend

by J. F. Roberts

  Patsy Byrne says, ‘Miranda and I would play Scrabble at the side while the boys all conferred with John on the script.’ When it comes to favourite scenes, she offers, ‘I think I remember visual moments more, and I really crack up whenever I see them. Perhaps my most favourite is the moment when Baldrick is discovered in a corner, trying out his costume for the party, with two pencils up his nose … and I liked that really disgracefully dirty scene, with the sailor who “loved his mum”, and then asked for a quick one.’ ‘Patsy was delicious,’ Fry says. ‘She seemed happy to let us get on with it and rewrite all the time and there wasn’t a line she couldn’t get instantly. She completely understood her character. An unsung genius.’

  When the big recording day arrived, the natural warm-up for the relaunched show was of course Elton himself, never short of a gag, topical, scatological or historical – although often in rapid enough succession that Fletcher had a job to shut him up for a take. He would also put the episode in context for the crowd, which Fry recalls as being vital, as ‘there was always a detectable air of disappointment emanating from the audience. No part of the current series would yet have been broadcast, so they would be staring at an unfamiliar set and fretting at the absence of the characters they had known from the previous series. When they came to Blackadder II they were sorry not to have Brian Blessed there as the King; when they came to Blackadder the Third recordings they missed Queenie; and when they arrived for recordings of Blackadder Goes Forth they wanted to see Prince George and Mrs Miggins.’ The role of the warm-up is a crucial one, with the audience’s participation central to the proceedings, even if the slog of some TV recordings can prove torture to the general public. Elton didn’t give them time to grow restless, urging, ‘Do try and make new friends during these pauses, you know, use the time properly – we’ll be passing some joints around later, maybe linking arms, I’ll be doing some mime in a leotard … Middle-class comedy, go go go!’

  With the Elizabethan set-up established, Elton would then introduce the cast. ‘Which didn’t make you feel less nervous, actually,’ McInnerny says. ‘Very, kind of, American, it felt like. Everybody applauding and you thought, “Oh no, now I’ve got to live up to that!”’ Robinson continues, ‘Then Rowan would come out, so embarrassed, walking like someone with a tragic physical illness, and they’d all think he was being comic, and it was just his nerves. And he would kind of squeak, turn his back on them and go onto the set.’ The set itself was split into three, with Lord Blackadder’s home occupying the left-hand space, the throne room in the centre, and on the right, that week’s one allotted special location, all designed with an eye on simplicity by Antony Thorpe. Rowan was to reflect, ‘It is hugely ironic that, having set out to make the first series of Blackadder as unlike Fawlty Towers as we could, by the time we got to the second series and rejigged it, we did end up with three sets, and something quite claustrophobic and hierarchical. So we learned the error of our ways: there are good reasons why sitcoms tend to have the shape that they do.’ Lloyd went further: ‘Despite our efforts to disguise the provenance of the series, there are in fact only seven plots, and in many ways Blackadder is actually Fawlty Towers in tights, with Rowan as Basil perennially poking Tony’s Manuel with a pencil.’

  ‘Rowan would deliberately forget his words so that he could do the take again’, McInnerny laughs. ‘He’d use his stammer if he wasn’t happy with a take, so he could redo it. Whereas we weren’t allowed to, we were only allowed to do retakes if they got the camera wrong!’ But the show’s star, despite his triumphs with audiences for a decade or more, was having to adjust to the sitcom recording experience. ‘That sitcom tradition is very strange, when you’re performing to both a camera and an audience at the same time. It’s a discipline that some actors find quite difficult to adjust to, and to find the best compromise between what performance you’re going to give. In the end, you are just performing for the cameras, and the studio audience have to pick up whatever they can.’ However, he has no doubts about the benefits of the process. ‘It made a tremendous difference. It was just a joy to have real people in the room and to be recording it like a theatre show – we did rehearse it all week and then we put on a show for two hours. Admittedly only half an hour of programme came out the other end, but it felt like what it was, a live performance. People even now are rather surprised when you tell them that we had a studio audience; they just assume that either the audience had seen it later, afterwards, or that it was canned. And even though, when I look back at Blackadder now (which I don’t do very often), I can see moments when I, you know, stammered a bit, or the pause was a bit too long, and you think, “God, how frustrating that we did it on the hoof, and how much better it would have been if we had got every little pause and every little inflection absolutely right in a filmic way of doing take after take after take.” And yet, you have to pay that price of slight inconsistency and fault lines to get the energy and the feel and the joy of a live performance. And in the end, I think it was probably a sacrifice worth making.’

  ‘Head’ was the perfect series opener for this return – in some ways the closest to a pilot that the show had, with no guest stars, besides the return of Bill Wallis as Ploppy the Gaoler, son of Ploppy the Slopper. All the characters were reintroduced, with Baldrick’s loss of wit perfectly summed up by the opening maths lesson (‘To you, Baldrick, the Renaissance was just something that happened to other people, wasn’t it?’), and the plot itself was a testament to Elton’s populist tastes and the series’ swerve towards the traditional, with the most frenetic farce yet attempted. The Black Adder had farcical situations aplenty, but the new Lord High Executioner’s desperate bid to save his own head provided the ultimate clash of sitcom scrapes with deadly peril. ‘It’s a very rigidly hierarchical world,’ Fry says. ‘You’ve got real threat – Blackadder is going to have his head chopped off at any moment. It’s perfectly possible this mad capricious Queen really could say, “This time I mean it!”’ However – and despite Percy’s decision to shave off his beard during the second episode causing a blatant continuity problem – it’s clear why the decision was taken to reverse the two opening episodes for broadcast, as ‘Bells’ called for the return of Rik Mayall, in his first major post-Young Ones role. ‘I was surprised when they asked me,’ Mayall says, ‘very honouring that they should ask me … I was thrilled to pieces, what a great part! The ultimate crazy Errol Flynn shag-rat. And he wasn’t on for long – he used to come on, steal the show, then run away again. Usually with a bird.’

  Ben and Rik’s comedic symbiosis would suggest that getting him to return would be automatic – after all, Richard notes, ‘This was a time when there was really no BBC casting department – you simply cast people you’d either fancied or fallen out with at some point.’ And Ben adds, ‘We were young and sort of hip, and as long as John was in charge we were pretty much given free rein.’ But the meeting with Mayall at – where else? – the Zanzibar showed that he had lost none of his unrestrainable passion for making a splash. He told the writers, ‘I’m only doing it on the condition that I can be funnier than Rowan. Every line has to be funnier than the funniest line of Rowan’s in the whole thing.’ With Mad Gerald a deranged memory, they concocted a legendary figure more akin to ‘the Hawk’ – a childhood friend of Lord Blackadder who was never less than ten times the man he was in every regard. Mayall’s creation of Flashheart was his own escape from the fartiness of his ‘Rick’ persona in much the same way that Atkinson was escaping the drippy Edmund – but, as ever, for Mayall it had to be on a grander scale. He worked with Costume to ensure the character was just right, insisting on glamorous blond locks threaded with seashells, and, of course, an outrageous moustache. ‘I would like to praise and congratulate the Costume department,’ he was to ooze, ‘I mean, look at the fantastic costumes they gave me, gave everybody, in the Elizabethan one. I could make jokes about my codpiece and things, and it was just gorgeous gear.’

  ‘Rik was a particular joy,�
�� Curtis recalls, ‘he would not say a not-funny line. He’s so exuberant and noisy, and Rowan is constitutionally rather calm and quiet … he just gently stepped back during that week and did his homework in private, while we indulged Rik’s magnificent firework personality. And then Row would step forward once Flashheart had buggered off.’ Fry has theorised at length about the opposed forms of comic genius which Mayall and Atkinson had at their fingertips in the 1980s – the former a gross exaggeration of his own personality, the latter a far more intangible talent which seemed to grow out of him ‘like an extra limb’: ‘It was like seeing a Vermeer next to a Van Gogh, one all exquisite detail with the subtlest and most invisible working and the other a riot of wild and thickly applied brushstrokes. Two utterly different aesthetics, each outstandingly brilliant … I am as capable of envy and resentment as the next man, but when you are in a room with two people who possess an order of talent that you know you can never even dream of attaining, it is actually a relief to be able to do no more than lean back and admire like a dewy-eyed groupie.’ The chemistry which resulted from the clash of these two elements on 16 June 1985 produced an unexpectedly resonant comic explosion. Throughout rehearsal, Fletcher says, ‘Rik would nod sagely as I said, “Perhaps you should do it this way …” “Yeah, fine!” And do it perfectly, but the instant he got in front of those cameras he went berserk! And if you look at the scene, you will see that everyone’s standing around on that set, looking completely amazed at the force of nature that’s just arrived.’ ‘Whenever he arrives in something he always gives it a good kick up the behind, so everybody has to look up and pay attention, and actually look to their own game plan. And improve it,’ Tim says. ‘Rik decided not to watch how everybody was working, he decided to make everybody work the way he was working … Rowan had to find his way around Rik’s style of acting, which I thought was very amusing. Always fun to watch other people react to other actors.’ Tony agrees: ‘When Rik gets in front of the camera, you just kind of keep out of the way, basically … Part of Rik’s whole strategy is to ensure that he gets the best snog. So Gaby Glaister was obviously a very clear target. But quite honestly, if you’d put a dog’s bottom in a dress, Rik would have snogged it.’ Rowan has never been less than glowing about Rik’s comic powers, but Mayall openly admits, ‘Of course there’s a rivalry there! Because I’m thinking, “He’s funny, and I don’t understand how he can be funny.” Maybe he’s thinking, “That bloke shouts a lot louder than me.” I could hit him, I could shout about myself, I could talk about my genitals … whereas Rowan could get his laughs from just two words, or just a raised eyebrow, or just his stasis. I can’t do that.’ Elton concurs: ‘Rowan knows how to pause. He said after seeing me do stand-up in 1987 that I had enough material in one show to last him a lifetime.’

  As the smoke cleared, with the flimsy paper doors hanging off their frames and Flashheart eloping with the hero’s girl for the first time in recorded history, the injection of Flashheart into the annals of Blackadder lore showed to Lloyd that ‘Bells’ would be a dynamite return for the much-mocked Blackadder. ‘And at the end of it,’ Robinson smiles, ‘Rik said, “Did I win?” Which isn’t really in the spirit of the ensemble, is it?’ ‘Of course I haven’t counted,’ Mayall says, ‘but I got three and a half rounds of applause and Rowan didn’t get one.’

  Lap Dogs to a Slip of a Girl

  Far from being threatened by Flashheart’s explosive intervention, Atkinson says, ‘People thought I was crazy to give him a part because he got so many laughs. They reckoned it was professional suicide and said he would wipe the floor with me. But I can’t understand to this day what they were on about. By coming on like a whirlwind and wanting to sleep with all the women he helped me tremendously because it enabled Blackadder to look even more icy and cynical.’ Furthermore, he insists, ‘I loved it when people used to come in and be extremely funny, because I always regarded my role in nearly all the Blackadder series as a bit like a master of ceremonies, it was a bit like saying: “Ladies and gentlemen …” and then I put my hand up and greet the next extremely funny performance. And it was fantastic being able to delegate, if you like, so much of the responsibility for the comedy and for the acting to others. It was great that Tony was always so good and so funny, and I felt that our double act always worked so well. It was just lovely being able to share that responsibility, which of course in a programme like Mr Bean I was far less able to do, it’s far more of a one-man show, and it’s a horrible responsibility which I don’t particularly enjoy. But Blackadder was, as work goes, almost enjoyable.’ Stephen was just one of many to be given their share of the limelight as these New Elizabethans recreated the glory of the Virgin Queen’s reign 420 years on, and says, ‘It’s funny that Rowan has this reputation for being the great rubber-faced clown, the great performer, which he is, but he’s also a magnificent straight man. And in Blackadder, part of its success I think was his simple generosity – he was the star of the show, and television sitcoms are littered with stories of people like Tony Hancock, who couldn’t take Kenneth Williams getting more laughs than him. Well, Rowan was never like that. So if Baldrick or Percy got a great laugh Rowan was thrilled, and he would help build on it by being the best straight man you could ever work to … He could just watch with a Buster Keaton stony face and then come out with a single word, and be brilliant.’

  The bustle of the Elizabethan court gave more scope for Lloyd’s idea of having Blackadder clash with real historical figures, and yet the series would boast only one, with Simon Jones, who appeared in H2G2 and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, landing the role of Sir Walter ‘Ooh What a Big Ship I’ve Got’ Raleigh in ‘Potato’ – another superman for our anti-hero to thumb his nose at, who peppers Blackadder with so much belittlement the new editor, Chris Wadsworth, could pick and choose from them, excising his remark that Edmund is ‘the sort of moist scallop whose feeble posturings I went to sea to overshadow’.

  A despicable cheat of course, our Lord does not sit around and suffer any demotion in rank among the Queen’s favourites, and is soon plotting with his friends to put to sea himself – even though Percy, savaged by a turbot as a child, hides in a box to save his skin, in a scene truncated for broadcast.

  EDMUND:

  Oh hello, Balders, where the hell’s that idiot Percy, you haven’t seen him, have you?

  BALDRICK:

  … Yes, my Lord, he’s hiding in the box!

  EDMUND:

  Come on, jellybrain, hurry up, otherwise we’ll miss the tide! Whatever that means … (Exits.)

  PERCY:

  I was just trying it out for space! I thought it might come in handy as a lifeboat. (Opens box.) What went wrong?

  BALDRICK:

  It was the force of his personality.

  PERCY:

  Damn, of course!

  He strikes his forehead, the box lid thunks down on him.

  Portraying Wally Raleigh gave Jones some of his finest on-screen moments, and yet the undeniable force of Tom Baker’s other-worldly personality blew everyone else out of the water, his Captain Redbeard Rum, ‘a huge bearded pirate with every cliché attached’, being the closest thing in this series to Blessed’s epic bluster, with a wealth of twaddle to match, as in this out-take:

  PERCY:

  I mean, why do you think it’s called the Cape of Good Hope?

  BALDRICK:

  Why?

  PERCY:

  Because you’ve got no hope, it’s a joke, it’s a sick joke!

  BALDRICK:

  Cheer up, my Lord, it’s not the end of the world.

  RUM:

  No, we’ll know we’ve reached the end of the world when we fall into the jaws of the gigantic mouse …

  Roaring into the plot with a textbook example of Lloyd’s insane ‘house style’, Baker chews the scenery magnificently, electrifying the court and even stealing Nursie’s heart, to Byrne’s joy. ‘Anyone who pays attention to her in a slightly flirtatious or sexy way, she crumbles
with delight! I think she thinks Rum is quite extraordinary, even if he is legless.’ Baker himself was not quite so pleased with his performance; while claiming it as the oddest TV role he’s played (more so than a two-hearted time-travelling alien), he has also complained, ‘I keep getting money because they repeat my appalling Blackadder performance … for which someone should have taken away my Equity card. It was terrible and the buggers keep playing it.’ Fry begs to differ: ‘His performance was superb, and he himself was entirely charming. While a scene that didn’t involve him was being rehearsed he would disappear and return with a tray fully laden with sweets, crisps, chocolates, sandwiches, nuts and snacks, which he would hand round to everyone in the room, often nipping off again to reload … He had a way of gazing at you with grave bulging eyes that made it rather hard to determine whether he thought you an idiot or a god.’ Despite being repeatedly hit with a boomerang in the episode, McInnerny was to declare, ‘He’s my favourite Doctor, so working with him was a fabulous week! One of my favourite weeks on Blackadder.’

  Technically, the role of the Bishop of Bath and Wells in fourth episode ‘Money’ was not a true historical figure, but there is something slightly fishy about the fact that the official records for holders of the exalted ecclesiastic post record two of the few extended vacancies in the 800-year-long history of the diocese during the late sixteenth century – it’s probable that a bishop who was a self-confessed baby-eating ‘colossal pervert’ would be expunged from all documents. The late Ronald Lacey, despite being a doubly well-known face, as the greasy Harris in Porridge and the Nazi Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark, was lost within the ruddy folds of fat that enveloped his despicable bishop. So infamous was his grotesque depiction, indeed, that when the present incumbent the Right Reverend Peter Price took up the post in 2001, he felt obliged to tell the House of Lords in his maiden speech, ‘In the aftermath of the Blackadder television series, there are always perils for the bishops of Bath and Wells. I am constantly reminded of the alleged activities of one of my predecessors as a baby-eater … Entering Your Lordships’ House has proved no exception, and the greeting from the doorkeeper on my first day was capped only by the Bishop of Southwark seeing my five-week-old granddaughter arrive and remarking, “The Bishop has brought his own lunch!”’