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

by J. F. Roberts

  One other side effect of Edmund’s lowering in status was the natural adoption of ‘Blackadder’ as a surname, which would lead to all sorts of people claiming that the character’s name came from them – but their surname is derived from Scots Border country, where the River Adder runs, and as we know, Edmund’s darkly serpentine roots reach far deeper. Still, Tony says, ‘Blackadder was certainly a name that Rowan was familiar with, being brought up in Newcastle. Right up as far as Edinburgh I’ve seen plaques in churches dedicated to so-and-so Blackadder. They were a wealthy minor noble Borders family, stretching way back.’ Atkinson says, ‘Various men named Blackadder have erroneously been thought the inspiration, including the BBC doctor at the time that we were making the series and a “scout” at my old Oxford college, who died in the early seventies. I only became aware of the presence of the name in the Scottish Borders long after we began to make the programmes.’

  It’s fair to surmise that it was equally purely coincidental that Mr B was not the first eighteenth-century Blackadder to star in his own BBC series. Nearly forty years earlier, John Keir Cross had authored a swashbuckling radio serial, Blackadder, set during the Napoleonic Wars, in which the mysteriously villainous figure of the pirate/spy Blackadder looms large (this Blackadder was, it can be assumed, no relation).

  As ever, frugality was important to the sitcom’s creation, and so the main set, above and below stairs at the Prince’s home, Carlton House, would house George’s enormous entourage, slimmed down to just two, Blackadder and Baldrick – Edmund and his two ‘friends’ recreating The Frost Report’s ‘Class Sketch’ trio two hundred years early. However, as the show’s set-up was beginning to take form, Edmund’s original first ‘friend’ informed the team that he was out – Tim McInnerny insisted that Percy’s bloodline had to be ended. ‘I didn’t want to get stuck with being seen as this one character. However ground-breaking it is, it’s still a sitcom.’ When publicising the movie Severance in 2006, the actor explained, ‘The genre doesn’t actually make a lot of difference to me, as long the character’s interesting and has a journey and the acting’s a challenge, that’s all I’m concerned about. The jobs I don’t want to do are the jobs that are easy. When I get up in the morning to go to work, I want to be excited and also a bit scared about whether I’m going to be able to do what I’m required to do that day. And I want to feel that every day.’ Before Blackadder II’s burst of popularity, McInnerny had managed to balance his comedic and dramatic careers, with a critically acclaimed role in Edge of Darkness helping to make his name even before recording Blackadder’s second series. Percy’s popularity, however, had begun to weigh him down, as he discovered when playing Hamlet for the National Theatre. ‘We did lots of school matinees, and I had to win them over. They thought they were coming to see Lord Percy … The idea of it being fun, and friends together making something, you know, that we’d enjoy even if other people didn’t, had snowballed into such a huge success that I felt it was getting in the way of the public’s perception of me, and my perception of myself as an actor, and I didn’t want it to overpower other things I was doing.’

  This was a disappointment for Lloyd at first. ‘When I heard that Tim wasn’t going to do it, I thought, “Oh dear, this is a bit of a disaster,” because he’d become so much a part of the second series, and if Tim had wanted to do the third series, and had he been free, he might well have played the Hugh Laurie part. In some ways, Hugh’s character is a sort of Percy, similar sort of twittish type.’ But with Fry nannying Me and My Girl on Broadway, there was nothing more perfect than for Laurie to step into the sitcom ‘family’ – and the fact that he was a tall wiry actor portraying one of British History’s most ridiculed human balloons would be entirely ignored. ‘I was conscious of filling the great Tim McInnerny’s shoes,’ Hugh says, ‘and in comic terms, he takes a size – He’s very big-footed, comically. I suppose George was sufficiently different, rather than being a sidekick of Blackadder’s, the dynamic was different.’ ‘I thought it was brilliant,’ Tim happily returns, ‘and it worked terribly well – it wasn’t the same as Percy anyway.’

  Laurie had always specialised in playing repellent Middle Englanders in the past, or anyone with a stupendously silly accent, but his first chance to give an extended performance of inbred aristocratic idiocy would land him with a certain level of typecasting trouble himself in years to come. ‘Hugh’s Prince Regent should be celebrated more,’ Elton says, ‘I mean, a truly brilliant performance of a foppish Regency idiot.’ Curtis agrees: ‘When Hugh plays stupid, there is nothing behind the eyes. I think we took Percy, who hadn’t been clever, and scooped out the final teaspoonful of brains, and presented Hugh Laurie. That utter thickness was something that was fun to put Blackadder against, and different from Miranda’s sort of dangerous childishness.’ ‘It’s that utter sort of gullibility,’ Atkinson says, ‘the perfect sponge for whatever anyone says. Anyone can take him in any direction at any one time. He has no resolution of his own. In the hands of the Blackadder, he is complete putty.’ ‘Underlying all this stupidity,’ Robinson adds, ‘there’s a desperate loneliness; the reason why I think he craves Blackadder so much is that it’s somebody who’ll talk to him on a level that won’t make him feel too threatened, even though Blackadder is manipulating him shamelessly.’

  Hugh was also to bring with him an air of modesty stretched beyond breaking point into neurotic pessimism which, allied with Atkinson’s perfectionism, would only escalate the team’s exhausting obsession with ‘plumpening’ every script into perfect shape, to Elton’s admitted chagrin. ‘They got into overanalysis, but you’d have two actors, Hugh and Rowan, and I know they’ll forgive me for saying it, but they were both very, very intense people, you know, the two of them together could get very gloomy about things and talk themselves into a great deal of a “This is awful, we’re awful, who are we kidding?” sort of world. Particularly Hugh, but I think Row would always go along for the ride.’ ‘Hugh wears his heart on his sleeve; he doesn’t conceal anything. If Hugh is nervous or depressed you see it, it’s all over him,’ Lloyd affirms, adding, ‘I remember saying to Hugh in rehearsal one day, “Why aren’t you a world-famous actor? You’re so good,” and as he does, Hugh said, “Oh, I’m rubbish …”’ and Robinson laughs, ‘Hugh would be beating himself up, going, “Oh God, oh God, I’m so unfunny, I’m the least funny person in the world!” They must throttle him on House, mustn’t they?’ However, he continues, ‘What we had always concentrated on was getting the work right. Nobody was more po-faced about the work than we were. Virtually all of us thought we were the worst thing in it. Stephen thought he was rubbish. He’s probably right! Hugh thinks he’s the least funny person in the entire world. Miranda always felt she was an outsider. What a bunch of neurotics.’

  Elton had learned to minimise his time at rehearsals to avoid dealing with the ensuing contretemps when Laurie would attempt a line only to pull a face and carp, ‘Do they actually read it back once they’ve written it?’ so Curtis had to be the one to take the blows and rework the lines accordingly. ‘He’d often speak to Ben on the phone in the evenings,’ Lloyd remembers, ‘saying, “I’m so fed up with what they’re doing, they’re making a mess of it.” And then when the show would come out eventually, Ben would ring Richard and say, “I can’t understand it, it seems exactly the same!” He’d forgotten the details. Ben’s got a rhinoceros skin – if it’s getting funnier, Ben likes it. He’s not precious.’ It was Lloyd’s job to maintain diplomacy, but he admits, ‘The majority of the second series’ scripts were extraordinarily good, despite them having utterly different writing styles, but later on the first drafts wouldn’t be very good. They’d be cobble jobs of Richard’s fluffy sentimentality, all fluffy teeny-weeny-nosey, and Ben’s whacking great huge arse gags. I’d be going through the scripts, saying, “I think this knob gag’s too rude,” and they’d both be, “Well we like it,” and I could see in their faces that they’d had a conference beforehand – “Ben, that
knob gag has got to go.” “Well, if I can’t have my knob gag you can’t have your fluffy gag!” My role was in smoothing out their writing styles in rehearsal so the end result would seem like the work of one writer.’ This did on occasion lead to rescripting entire scenes himself. ‘If I write, I’m generally doing a technical job. For example, in Blackadder the Third, Blackadder wants to stand for a rotten borough and become the MP for Dunny-on-the-Wold, and I said to Richard, “Most people won’t know what a rotten borough is so you’ll have to explain it – but for God’s sake, don’t make it a boring history lesson.” He said, “Well, how can you do that? It’s just boring – ‘A rotten borough is …’” So I went home that evening and wrote that scene where Blackadder goes on about the electorate being a small dachshund called Colin, and the Prince Regent, confused as usual, going, “What about this robber button, then?” and doing chicken impressions. It’s a neat piece of technical writing, going from A to B, very enjoyable to do, and in the pleasure of doing it these things occur to you – we’ve got to say that rotten boroughs had very few electors so you just exaggerate that …’

  Forming the third corner of what Hugh calls Edmund’s ‘cretinous triangle’ was, of course, Baldrick, devolved further from his wily original, with class separation finally making his relationship with his dark master more of a double act than ever, underlined by the increase in violence shown towards the stinking subordinate. Tony says, ‘Baldrick puts up with all the physical and mental torture that he receives from Blackadder because he thinks that’s the way of the world. He suffers pain and he accepts it because that’s what people do to people like Baldrick. He doesn’t notice it most of the time. It takes a long while for pain to get from any part of his body up to his brain, and by the time it gets there it’s tired, and doesn’t really register very much.’ For all his deepened idiocy, this generation’s Baldrick continued his surprising ability to play deus ex machina when the plot called for it, easily rounding up a lynch mob to save Blackadder from being filled with lead. This incarnation also introduced a burgeoning rebellious side to the downtrodden guttersnipe; with revolution in the air, ‘Sod Off’ Baldrick becomes keen to mutiny against the ‘lazy, big-nosed, rubber-faced bastard’ who keeps him subdued with his wit, and fists – even though he soon realises that he cannot cope without him.

  The dogsbody’s increasing repulsiveness in reverse trajectory to the improvements in human sanitation over the centuries was down to the make-up artists Ann Fenton and Victoria Peacock, to whom Tony paid tribute in his one-man show in 2007. ‘You might be thinking he slapped a bit of brown on his face, thirty seconds, easy. But you’re forgetting Baldrick’s boils. They were created by the make-up artist the night before we recorded each episode, on her kitchen table at home. Basically she got a little round plastic ball of modelling putty and she got her thumb and put it in the middle of the ball, and then she’d tease and squeeze out the top and put it onto the kitchen table so it looked like a little pink bowler hat, then she’d get this sticky yellow stuff and squeeze it into each of the holes, stick a needle in the bottom so that a little bit leaked out and it looked like it was weeping. It was fairly disgusting – in fact during the entire run of Blackadder, her husband refused to eat off the kitchen table. But then we’d go into the studio, and she would glue these things onto me, which I suppose was fairly sensible, except we finished taping the show at ten o’clock, the BBC bar closed at ten thirty. At ten past ten, Stephen would be up in the bar with a gin and tonic in his hand regaling his adoring fans, Hugh would be playing the piano, Rik would be under the piano … at twenty to twelve I would still be in the make-up room desperately trying to claw off these boils, dying for a drink! But I did get my retribution in a kind of way, because during the rehearsals for each episode, Rowan would discover that he’d got reams and reams of over-elaborate dialogue to learn. I had about seven lines. And they would be going “rabbit rabbit rabbit”, and I’m thinking “what do I say next? Oh yes, I remember: three, two, one … I have a cunning plan!” It was easy!’ However, he continues, ‘I think one of the useful things about Baldrick in that series is that he provides a breathing space. Everyone else is talking at nine hundred miles an hour in the most dazzling vocabulary, using words that often most of us don’t understand, or think you may understand but aren’t quite sure you know what they mean. And then in comes Baldrick – much slower tempo, much less to say, whatever he says, you’re going to get it. And I think that helps you to feel comfortable about the series – it’s certainly how I felt being in among all those dazzling minds in the middle of rehearsals!’

  The central cast then was slimmer than ever, but a third regular set was needed, unless every plot was to somehow unfold at the Prince’s home. In eighteenth-century London, the natural place for a man about town like Mr B had to be the coffee shops where the cream of society’s thinkers, roisterers and artists would meet, plot, and debate the hot topics of the day. Finally, Elton’s mysterious Mrs Miggins, the paraplegic Elizabethan pie-shop owner – or rather, her descendant – would graduate from being an off-screen funny name into an on-screen funny character. A regular female role was a must, and although by this stage any comic actress would have been glad to join the Blackadder team, there was a natural candidate for the role, in Rowan and Richard’s long-standing collaborator Helen Atkinson-Wood.fn9 Besides being part of the team on the ill-fated adult Tiswas spin-off O.T.T., Helen had only had small roles in shows like The Young Ones and The Comic Strip Presents: Consuela, and Radio Active was still two years away from transferring to BBC2 as KYTV, so when Lloyd contacted her to propose the regular role, she admits, ‘I think I probably said, “Yes please” before he actually got to the end of the sentence.’

  Blackadder II did of course boast its own well-seasoned female dullard, but Atkinson-Wood was trusted to bring to life her own tribute to the toothless fishwives and frilly grand dames of Georgian fiction. ‘Parts for women were so thin on the ground that it was tremendous to be one of the few,’ she says. ‘There was Queenie, and Nursie … and then who? The women brought a different texture to Blackadder. Mrs Miggins was a very warm-hearted character: different from Blackadder, who was so oily, and different from Baldrick, who was … well, fiddling with his turnips; and different from the Prince Regent, who was so barking!’ Being the only other regular female on the core team besides the director gave Helen an insight into the difficulties of Fletcher’s position. ‘It was a pretty exposing place for Mandie, being surrounded by all these people who knew each other well, very hard for her to hold the whole thing together – which she did brilliantly – surrounded by a lot of very strong personalities. The gender is immaterial, but it was very nice for me, having another woman around.’

  ‘Helen of course had always been part of the gang,’ Tony says, ‘just as Helen Fielding always had, so working with her didn’t feel strange in any way. We were criticised quite a lot at the time for using what was called “the Oxbridge Comedy Mafia”, but there was a real issue here, which was that because we didn’t make acting decisions until very late in the day, people who weren’t used to working that way could be dreadfully insecure – like Wilfrid Brambell. You don’t want to duplicate that experience very often, because it just takes too much time. So actually if you worked with people you knew, there was no aggravation, there was no problem, you weren’t having to deal with their anxieties, they knew something would come out of it at the end of the day.’ ‘Why work with anyone else, other than the people that you know and like? If you’re in a room with people you’d be perfectly happy to be on holiday with, the whole thing just bowls along in a blissful way,’ Helen adds.

  ‘I don’t think she was originally going to be a Northerner, on paper, but my roots are in the North, and I’m a great lover of cooking – it’s no coincidence in a way that Mrs Miggins was the ideal character for me, given that I love pies and cakes and buns … I think in another guise I’d be president of the WI.’ Besides her Cheshire upbringing being a help
in playing ‘a no-nonsense, Northern character’, the attractive actress had a history of portraying the most grotesque crones imaginable in the name of getting a laugh, so the whole team knew that the role of Mr B’s hostess, the hideous nincompoop who could be relied on to buy into every new craze that the period threw up (not just spearheading that week’s plot but giving the butler another chance to pour scorn on the times and her personally), was in good hands. In time, Miggins would have a cult of her own. ‘I still receive tons of fan mail for Mrs Miggins, and it just constantly amazes me, the fan base that’s out there. So much so that I think I’m going to have to start thinking about opening a cake or pie shop, in the not so distant future.’

  THE WALRUS AWAKES

  The first time this new team entered the ‘Hilton’ to bring Ben and Richard’s scripts to life, Atkinson-Wood recalls having ‘that Christmas-morning feeling in your tummy. Comedy and laughter, we all feel better for it, so it is a great thing to be around. It’s not like you’re going in to rehearse Ibsen; you’re going in to have the time of your life.’ Ultimately, however, the process wouldn’t be such a breeze. At this stage, the scripts still followed the Elton pattern of having simple titles – ‘Dictionary’, ‘Actors’, ‘Rotten Boroughs’, ‘Highwayman’, ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ and ‘Duel’, in that order – but it wasn’t until after recording that Lloyd, the master packaging expert, had the brainwave of giving each episode Austenian monikers, from ‘Ink and Incapability’ to ‘Duel and Duality’. It’s one more way in which the series had more of a workshop feel to it than any other, and John admits, ‘Sudden changes of direction like this, right up to the very last minute, were commonplace. They brought both unforeseen delight, and perennial problems.’