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

by J. F. Roberts

  Besides, their only other seasonal idea, Richard recalls, could have led to some undesirable controversy. ‘The Blackadder Christmas Special That Never Was! Blackadder ran the inn when Mary and Joseph came by, so he put them in Baldrick’s bedroom.’ ‘Blackadder in Bethlehem’ is a very curious oddity, featuring a talking turkey which objects to Baldrick’s attempts to pluck it, a Miggins-esque sidekick called Rachel, festive entertainment featuring close-harmony shepherds, and a modern-day scene in which the unbeliever Blackadder is turned into a stuffed hedgehog by Jehovah. Besides Rowan and Tony playing Jewish ancestors of the central duo, the only other regular specifically included in Curtis’s rough script was Stephen, who was pencilled in for the first of the Three Kings.

  KING 1:

  I’m sorry, I’ve been outside. Just inspecting the skies. Lovely evening.

  BLACKADDER:

  Thank heavens you speak the lingo. So far I’ve construed that you are looking for a messiah …

  KING 1:

  He shall be a babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Lovely word, ‘swaddling’, isn’t it? I love the idea of swaddling someone. Would you like a swaddle?

  BLACKADDER:

  Well, look, I can’t say a totally clear picture of your situation, your desires or your mental health, is emerging, but if you’d like to bed down for the night, we can look into it all in the morning. It so happens we have three very expensive rooms available, did I say expensive, I meant excellent, they are of course expensive as well, but hell, you’re three kings, if you can’t afford it who can, quite frankly … If you could just fill this form out …

  (They sign. One normally, one upside down, and the other with a huge signet stamp. Baldrick is in attendance.)

  BLACKADDER:

  Excellent. Any questions you’d like to ask me?

  KING 1:

  Yes, we were wondering whether you knew if a child is being born anywhere in the region …

  BLACKADDER:

  Ah – no – we have a rabbit coming out of a hat – but no sign of a child. (Baldrick is surprised at this.)

  KING 1:

  Very well – we shall be back later. Come, let us continue our search. (They exit.)

  BALDRICK:

  Why did you lie?

  BLACKADDER:

  Look at it this way – what would you think if you were booking into a hotel and someone told you the stables were presently in use as a maternity ward?

  BALDRICK:

  Yes, it’s not a very nice idea.

  BLACKADDER:

  It’s a positively disgusting one. ‘Yes – we had an excellent night, apart from the sound of a woman in labour for six hours.’ I would hardly define it as the height of in-house entertainment to listen to a midwife shouting ‘push’ for seven hours.

  BALDRICK:

  I suppose you’re right. Still, it’s a sin to tell a lie.

  BLACKADDER:

  Who says?

  BALDRICK:

  It’s in the Bible.

  BLACKADDER:

  Dearest Baldrick, sweet little, naive little dung-for-brains Baldrick – you don’t still believe in that mumbo-jumbo?

  BALDRICK:

  Of course: Moses came down the mountain. With the commandments.

  BLACKADDER:

  Yes. Stop there – you think it likely that a very old gentleman with a beard went up to the top of a mountain and God stuck his hand out of the sky and gave him a list of ten naughty things that good boys shouldn’t do?

  BALDRICK:

  Stranger things have happened.

  BLACKADDER:

  No they haven’t. All that old religion was developed by the tour operators to keep people occupied on the long journey to the promised land.

  BALDRICK:

  I suppose you’re right. But what about David who was born in this town? He was a man of God.

  BLACKADDER:

  He also rogered Bathsheba and got her husband killed.

  ‘It’s not very legitimate because I never sent it to Ben,’ Richard admits. ‘It was begun in 1988, and then abandoned for fear that it would cause too much offence … On rereading it, I suspect it was also abandoned because it’s like a strange mixture of Fawlty Towers and Life of Brian – both of which are too good to measure up to. So we returned to Dickens.’

  Having decided that ‘Ebenezer Blackadder’ would be visited by a spirit which showed him previous Blackadder incarnations – bar The Black Adder, which was already considered best forgotten, especially given the time constraints of a special only extended by fifteen minutes – Lloyd was faced with the perennial problem of reuniting his team of in-demand stars, and it was to prove a bigger headache than ever. McInnerny was still shy of returning to sitcom, so the writers knew to work around the absence of any Percys, but even then, the programme would need to be recorded on separate evenings just to accommodate the plot’s scope, and on a tight schedule – with the finished episode in that year’s Christmas Radio Times, BBC1, 9 p.m. on the day before Christmas Eve, less than a fortnight after the recording.

  So there would be less room for plumpening and argument than before, but that didn’t mean the writers’ original scripts would reach the screen untouched, as the unedited version of Hugh’s jovial introduction alone would show:

  In the reign of Good Queen Vic, when little boys lived up chimneys and caring mothers drank four bottles of gin for breakfast, there stood in Dumpling Lane in Old London Town, the moustache shop of one Ebenezer Blackadder – the kindest and loveliest man in all England. Here is the story of what happened to him one very special Christmas …

  For all the dramatic time constraints, with the writers’ plan to revisit two past Blackadders as well as creating two brand-new ones ramping up the pressure, the best cast imaginable was assembled to bring the life-changing visions of Christmas to life. The New Zealand-born sitcom stalwart Denis Lill was reincarnated from the crusty Sir Tolbert Buxomley in ‘Dish & Dishonesty’ into the fat Beadle;fn3 Patsy Byrne of course returned as Nursie as well as creating Bernard, her far-future descendant; Robbie Coltrane made his last guest-star turn par excellence as the Spirit of Christmas (a hairy giant who might have caught the magpie eye of writer Jo Rowling when she began to construct Hogwarts, inspiring the lovable caretaker Hagrid); and the greatest coup of all had to be the reunion of Miriam and Jim, once again displaying the most preposterous accent in the role of Albert to Margolyes’s pitch-perfect Queen Victoria. ‘I played Victoria subsequently in a documentary about the restoration of the Albert Memorial,’ she says, ‘I’m fascinated by her, always have been, and I’m the same size and shape as she was …’ As another Dickens fanatic, it would have been unthinkable to leave Miriam out of the proceedings, not least as this time she got to play a syrupy fun-bundle with only a hint of the gorgon. Add to these returning players all-new wonderfully revolting turns from Comedy Store veteran Pauline Melville as Mrs Scratchitt and Dr Who pin-up Nicola Bradbury as Ebenezer’s irritatingly loud Godniece Millicent, and it’s little wonder that the forty-five-minute episode required three nights of recording to get in the can.

  The flashbacks to the days of previous Blackadders was perhaps made more of a challenge by the change of director, with Mandie’s tenure ending, to be succeeded by budding sitcom director Richard Bodenfn4. The tension between producer and director remained, however, John admits. ‘When we got Richard Boden on board, we went to the pub and I said, “Now look, Richard, we’ve done three series now and it’s a success and you’re lucky to get the job – if you want to do it, the deal is, if I say I want a two-shot I don’t want to argue about it, is that OK?” And he said, “Absolutely, John, of course, I quite understand and I’m pleased to be asked.” A very nice, decent, civilised guy, Richard. And then on the first recording, in the camera rehearsal during the day, about two hours in, I said, “Richard, you know, shot 37, that should be a two-shot with Baldrick in the background if you don’t mind.” And he said “Oh, so you want to direct this, do
you …?” “Richard, can you come into my booth …?” He got up, and I said, “I won’t say this in front of the crew but the answer to your question is yes, I do want to direct it and if you don’t do what I ask without fuss, I will.” And I never heard another peep out of him! It’s a long-suffering job and he did it extremely well. It was frustrating for the directors, because they wanted the power, and they weren’t going to get it from me. I would consider myself the representative of the group, I would say, “Nobody is working for me, I am working for the programme and I am the programme’s representative on Earth!” It’s a priestly role, it’s an intercessor. It’s not an ego thing. All three were very nice, competent, good directors – but they walked into a room full of arrogant lunatics who wanted their way! It must have been awful for them. I’m sorry, guys!’

  Editor Chris Wadsworth was still a crucial part of the crew, abetted by Lloyd’s eye for painstaking editing, snipping out the tiniest exchanges to keep up the pace and squeeze everything in.fn5 One sequence to receive a special slimming-down was the vision of Christmas Yet to Come, to tone down the writers’ (and Lloyd’s) understandable excitement at getting to spoof the worst excesses of the science-fiction genre. Note the switch of the name ‘Frondo’ to Stephen Fry’s preposterous intergalactic aristocrat, and the excised reference to TV colleagues Geoff, Only Fools producer Gareth, and Alan:

  A splendid reception chamber from the furthest reaches of time. Four mighty figures stand in state.

  ALL:

  HAIL, QUEEN ASPIXIA SUPREME MISTRESS OF THE UNIVERSE.

  ASPIXIA:

  And hail to you, my triple husbandoid. Frondo, Mighty Birdlord of Thribble.

  FRONDO:

  Hail, Luscious Sovereign.

  ASPIXIA:

  Pigmot, Majestic Prince of Frumpity.

  PIGMOT:

  Hail, Empress of the Volepeople!

  ASPIXIA:

  And Bernard, Grim Overbeast of Yourbrav.

  BERNARD:

  Hello, dear.

  ASPIXIA:

  It is for no mean ceremonial that I rouse you from your pedpodules. I summon you here to groupgreet our swift imperial navies home …

  EDMUND:

  Majesties, this much greeting … Today we celebrate the ancient feast of Harrodsale. When tradition says that the great prophet Jesus Christmas did manifest himself on Earth and was born in a mango in Bethnal Green.

  PIGMOT:

  We know all that but what of the foul Marmidons?

  EDMUND:

  … They’re dead, if that’s what you mean. I’ve also wiped out the Posners, the Gwenlans and the vile Yentobs.

  The conclusion to the special proved especially tricky to pin down, once Ebenezer is returned to his rightful villainy, with a number of alternative endings being included in the studio script. When the reformed shopkeeper has sent away Victoria and Albert more offended than they have been in their entire lives, the writers suggested either a cheeky way to turn the Blackadder–Baldrick relationship on its head:

  BALDRICK:

  But Mr B, that was the Queen come to give you £50,000 and a title.

  EBENEZER:

  Why didn’t you tell me, you poxy little runt? (Thump, crash!)

  BALDRICK:

  I’m sorry to do that, Mr B, but sometimes you push me too far.

  Or alternatively, with Baldrick displaying the Queen’s royal seal to prove to his master what a mistake he has made, there was a more convoluted but traditional display of seasonal violence from the newly despicable moustache vendor:

  EBENEZER:

  Yes, like that one. Ah. I see … This is clearly all your fault, Baldrick, but don’t panic – if I climb up Mr Froggitt’s drainpipe, sprint across the roofs of Pimlico, shin down Marble Arch, get a real speed up and skid the length of the frozen pond in St James’s Park I may just be able to catch them before they reach Buckingham Palace, and tell them that the person who insulted them was in fact my identical twin brother. Of course, if I don’t, I will come back and kill you with the poker. (Ebenezer exits to the shop. And then reappears.) On the other hand, thinking realistically, I’m not going to make it, am I?

  He calmly stops and returns to hit Baldrick with the poker – swings to hit – freeze/engraving.

  Ultimately, the producer decided to freeze the action at Blackadder’s moment of realisation, and leave Baldrick’s inevitable punishment to the imagination.

  It was an incredible feat of comedy production to get this complicated special ready to broadcast to the nation’s eggnog-sated families, but they watched in their millions with great approval as Advent drew to a close – the Black Adder worming his way into the nation’s hearts even during the season of goodwill. Which makes it all the sadder that every subsequent broadcast of Blackadder’s Christmas Carol capitulated to a minority of complaints about one of the funniest exchanges, as Baldrick details the pitfalls of recasting the role of Baby Jesus in the workhouse nativity play with a frisky dog named Spot – Blackadder’s kindly concern for the orphan audience originally received Baldrick’s chirpy reply, ‘Nah, they loved it! They want us to do another one at Easter – they want to see us nail up the dog!’ ‘I have a lot of experience of being right on the edge of bad taste,’ Lloyd says. ‘I flatter myself that I have a good-taste meter, I know exactly where the line is. And I can almost guarantee that in rehearsal I would be saying, “This is too strong, it’s going to upset a lot of people and we’re going to have complaints,” and Ben saying, “Don’t be so pathetic, Jack, it’s just a gag.” God knows how it got through the censors – I think because there was no censorship, there weren’t compliance people. So it probably went through on the nod and then got a lot of complaints … It’s breathtakingly cruel and very dark. And you don’t just get the Jesus lobby, you’ve got the dog lobby as well!’ Nonetheless, besides the unpleasant taste in the mouth which is inevitable when artists bow to viewer complaints, be they for reasons of animal cruelty or blasphemy, the swift edit required to cut the end off Baldrick’s line has always stuck out like, well, a giraffe in dark glasses trying to get into a polar bears-only golf club. That the gag remains excised from the DVD releases is one reason why the Blackadder box set’s ‘Ultimate’ branding has a faint whiff of humbug.

  One other planned festive treat has remained safely locked away in the archives: to accompany the Christmas special, Curtis, Goodall and Robinson collaborated on a Christmas single, along the lines of ‘Grandma, We Love You’, entitled ‘Baldrick, We Hate You’, complete with cherubic choir singing abuse to the stinking guttersnipe as he revels in his repulsiveness. There was a time when sitcom spin-off singles were not unusual – Steptoe & Son, Manuel and Mr Humphries all made assaults on the charts – but Goodall recalls that it was decided that Baldrick’s song was just too much for the British public. ‘It sort of died a death. No one would allow us to do it because it was very rude, although it wouldn’t seem that rude now. I think it was mainly suppressed because it wasn’t very good.’

  Soupy Twists and Turns

  Despite their absence from Friday Night Live, Fry & Laurie’s live sketches had cemented a professional partnership which seemed to have crept up on Stephen and Hugh despite their close friendship, but which was seen as a done deal to everybody else. The Fry & Laurie brand, as it were, had a sophisticated but frequently outrageous charm all of its own, and they were more than ready to take on the decade’s other young TV double acts, Smith & Jones, French & Saunders and Hale & Pace, as they strove to plug the holes left by the tired Two Ronnies, feuding Cook & Moore and much missed Morecambe & Wise. When the BBC finally learned from their mistake in pooh-poohing The Crystal Cube and offered the chaps the chance to pilot their own vehicle, the pair decided to outdo their competitors in one crucial area, as Hugh recalls: ‘We just decided that we were going to write them all. All the other sort of sketch shows that were around at the time were all more or less being written by the same people, and so we felt that the thing we have going for us, if we
have anything, is that this is personal, this is our personal view of the world, it’s not a corporate machine that’s just sort of generating thirty minutes of a sketch from here and a sketch from there, and these two guys will put on funny moustaches and do it … There are lots of times when we didn’t make anyone else laugh, but we were always amused by ourselves.’ This belies Dawn and Jennifer’s gleefully slapdash creation of their own world in French & Saunders, and Victoria Wood took the crown for her solo authorship of every episode of As Seen on TV, but with their joint moulding of A Bit of Fry & Laurie the Footlighters had finally stepped out of the script-producing shadow of the whirlwind Elton. After a successful pilot in ’87, much of the following year was spent with the two of them cursing into a word processor, but between sessions Hugh was settling down with new wife Jo and starting a family, while Stephen was in the West End making his first appearance in a Simon Gray play, The Common Pursuit, with Rik Mayall playing a firebrand narcissist to Fry’s gentle academic. Although he claimed never to have seen any of these young stars’ TV shows, Gray would develop a particular attachment to Fry, casting him in the central role of his 1990 TV play Old Flames, alongside Simon Callow and Miriam Margolyes, playing curious siblings.