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

by J. F. Roberts

  Blackadder’s extended thespian family all agree that they would be proud to receive any call from Lloyd for a new incarnation, and Miriam Margolyes for one says, ‘It was a very, very happy programme to work on; I feel it was an honour to have been even a tiny part of it. It’s something I cherish in my career that I was part of something that still, after twenty-five years, is so fresh, clever, inventive and extremely funny. It’s one of the classic pieces of television comedy, like Dad’s Army or Fawlty Towers, there are just a few series that are outstanding, and I think that that was one of them.’ Fry concludes, ‘We made some people very happy and had a damned good time (well, some of it was good) making it. I’m terribly pleased to have been involved. Laughter is an astounding gift to be able to give people, especially laughter that isn’t cool, look-at-me, wearing sunglasses and being hip.’

  Tony is equally positive about the show, no matter what happens. ‘I am so proud to have been in Blackadder. I don’t feel like some actors would – “Oh, I don’t want to mention that character, I’m in fear of being typecast!” I don’t feel like that at all … There are lots of other shows that I’ve done that have taken more time to do, that have taken more toll on me,fn22 or where I’ve actually made more money! But the fact that I’ll go to my grave as Baldrick isn’t something I shy away from … I feel like the curator of Museum Baldrick. Every few years a new generation want to bring him out and dust him off. It’s not that he is me, but I feel I have a very warm and close relationship with him.’ With typical self-criticism, the man forever to be seen as Baldrick’s master divulges, ‘I was travelling on a plane several years ago, and an episode came up on the entertainment channel, and it was the Nurse episode from the fourth series, with Miranda. And as far as I’m aware it was an episode that I had never, ever seen … I’m not a great laugher, sadly, but I might have sniggered at it. Which was my way of saying that it was very funny … I think one of the most striking things about it is how it’s lasted, actually. It doesn’t seem to date. I suppose it helps that we set the sitcom in different periods of British History, and therefore it’s not like watching those seventies sitcoms, where people seem to have embarrassingly long sideboards and things, which immediately dates it, and distances you from the comedy. Whereas because we tended to do it in quite a serious way, most of the programmes look as though they could have been made yesterday.’

  Everyone agrees that if anyone has the power to bring another Edmund Blackadder back from the dead, it is the writers, and in 2011 Elton did admit that he and Curtis were working together on a new script for the first time since the millennium – and, as Atkinson outlined, doing so in their own time, and not to a commercial brief. This was not Blackadder, however, but a Curtis movie idea with Elton input – Ben nearly collaborated on The Boat That Rocked, but schedules clashed.

  Nevertheless, the show’s thirtieth anniversary does make a resurgence for the country’s most jingoistic comedy character seem more pertinent than it has been in years. Whether buoyed by the 2012 Olympics and Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee or not, for the majority of the British public, monarchist or republican, Blackadder, with its searing sarcasm, poetic wit, ironic jingoism and cheering regular doses of lavatorial filth, remains a genuinely unifying national touchstone. The texts constructed by Curtis & Elton and ‘plumpened’ by everyone else are already in many ways as embedded in the British consciousness as Shakespeare – or at least, for years now, amateur dramatic companies have performed episodes with comparable regularity – with all proceeds usually going to Comic Relief.

  It would be glib to portray the four protectors of the Blackadder name as the victorious elder statesmen of British comedy – Rowan, the King in exile, keeping his next comic gambit shrouded in secrecy, Richard the venerable Archbishop of Love and Charity, Ben the international impresario and Pope John Lloyd, commander of curiosity. But unlike many of their contemporaries none of them has lost the hunger to amuse which propelled them to their lofty positions, and none of their successes, particularly with regard to Blackadder, were achieved without collecting scars, both professionally and emotionally. Where the surviving Pythons are happy to laughingly rake each other through the dirt until they die, the Blackadder team in many ways have a deeper affection for each other, and thus a greater fragility when rancour has arisen in the past, no matter how much water has gone under the bridge. Theirs was an explosive chemistry which has been carefully kept separate for many years, and yet, as witnessed at first hand, the depth of personal affection between each of the creators of Blackadder, and the strength of the protective code which still binds them three decades on, is tangible. The combustible collaborative spirit which united them in the 1980s has been sacrificed for the benefit of their close friendships, so perhaps for that reason alone Blackadder is a blueprint best left in a locked drawer.

  The last lines of Blackadder dialogue written prior to the original publication of this True History was a short scrap of Tudor apocrypha written by Curtis for a charity auction in 2006, where famous writers had to offer something on the theme of ‘Between the Lines’:

  EDMUND:

  What are you doing?

  BALDRICK:

  I’m reading, sir …

  EDMUND:

  You might find it easier if you had it the right way round.

  BALDRICK:

  Thank you, sir.

  EDMUND:

  And if it was in English, not ancient Greek.

  BALDRICK:

  I thought it looked a bit funny.

  EDMUND:

  It is the Iliad by Homer – so it is not the slightest bit funny. But am I to surmise, reading between the lines, Baldrick, that you do not actually know how to read?

  BALDRICK:

  No, sir, not a word.

  EDMUND:

  So why were you sitting with a book in your lap when I entered the room?

  BALDRICK:

  I was hoping to impress you, sir …

  EDMUND:

  If I came into the room and William Shakespeare was on his knees begging you to help him finish his next play, and Queen Elizabeth was on her knees giving you a blow job, I would still not be impressed.

  BALDRICK:

  Why not, sir?

  EDMUND:

  Because I know you to be the lowest creature ever created by God and every time he looks down and sees you, he hits his forehead with his fist and shouts – ‘Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! I totally and utterly fucked up that time.’

  BALDRICK:

  In which case, I will never try to impress you again.

  EDMUND:

  Good decision. Now … I want you to take this scroll to Ben Elton and ask him to do a rewrite on this scene – Richard Curtis can’t think of a punchline …

  Whether any new collaboration from Ben and Richard sees the light of day or not, Curtis says, ‘My general feeling about Blackadder is that I feel massively lucky about how it turned out. While we were doing it, I remember saying to Ben, “It’s good, but it’ll never be great.” And so it’s a surprise, these years later, that it lasted so well. To be honest, I write films most of the time now, and I believe in television more. When you write something of which there are a lot of episodes, they can be a bigger part of people’s lives. I think sitcoms have a way of being a part of the texture of the life that you lead. Python isn’t a sitcom, but Python and Fawlty Towers were that for me. And it’s a fantastic thought, a big achievement, if Blackadder is that for other people … The charms about Blackadder are, one, it’s quite lovely to look at because it’s so lusciously designed and dressed, and, two, it’s very dense, there are more words in it than one would expect and sometimes those give me pleasure. I have to say that it was exceptionally hard work, so if it turned out well, that would be why.’ Elton, traditionally jaded about his past work, and eager to promote his next, has admitted, ‘I’ve recently watched Blackadder again for the first time in nearly twenty years and I’ve taken enormous joy in the fact that my kids love it. Th
at’s something I never thought about when it was happening, that twenty years later I’d be watching it with my children … I’m flattered about how fond people are of Blackadder. I’m not running it down here. Blackadder is not finished. We’ll never give up on it. It could be a middle-aged show. We’ll never officially close it down. Ever.’

  This True History, therefore, can have no ending. While the cream of the eighties generation who bonded together to make Blackadder are still around, there will always be the promise of more. And for long after they aren’t, the Blackadder legacy will prove as immortal as the Adder himself, still making Britons as yet unborn laugh, and look at the existing history of the nation in a completely different way. ‘Maybe what we are doing is providing the background buzz of inaccurate history. It’s quite interesting that history education has moved in a Blackadder direction. It’s trying to take the juiciness, violence, stupidity and oddness of old eras and look at it through a young kid’s eyes,’ Curtis concludes. ‘It does make you slightly wonder whether we didn’t take our responsibilities seriously, and whether we could have actually said some more interesting things about history all the way through. Perhaps we should go back and do the series in a more responsible manner next time.’

  fn1 Plus, for Canada, there was a quick job providing links on a Just For Laughs Montreal special as a Mountie called Casey Rogers, scripted by Lise Mayer and Jon Canter.

  fn2 The first link between the two comic universes came in the cartoon, where Bean’s antics in Buckingham Palace in the episode ‘A Royal Flush’ featured subtle portraits of Lord Blackadder and the Prince Regent adorning the walls.

  fn3 Besides the casting of Hugh Grant as Curtis’s on-screen avatar for the first time – and the dress worn to the film’s premiere by his then girlfriend Liz Hurley.

  fn4 The role would eventually be taken over by Helen Atkinson-Wood, with Elton remaining as director.

  fn5 Who was given the role of Verges in Much Ado About Nothing with the single instruction, ‘Don’t act.’

  fn6 Stephen even had a letter and signed photograph from the great man.

  fn7 Laurie’s subsequent claim that they had ‘filleted the oeuvre’ of Wodehouse’s books was not quite the case – besides a few short stories, the entire last novel Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen remained untouched.

  fn8 Ten years later, Mayall was to claim in his near-memoir Bigger Than Hitler, Better Than Christ that he was upset at the time due to Fry fleeing abroad, pregnant with his child.

  fn9 Both colleagues have long hinted that some form of comic collaboration could be on the cards, and they were confirmed as providing voices for a new adaptation of The Canterville Ghost in 2014.

  fn10 This idea was adopted by the BBC for Jon Plowman’s The Nearly Complete and Utter History of Everything, an epic special aired in the first days of the new millennium, and featuring a truly incredible roll-call of comedy stars appearing in epochal scenarios, including Brian Blessed’s debut as a very loud Henry VIII and Stephen and Hugh joining Patrick Barlow, James Dreyfus and Robert Bathurst for an investigation into how the crowned heads of Europe divided the Continent with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.

  fn11 Although it’s easy to imagine the Edmund who was converted to charitable causes in the 1991 comic capitalising on his donations to bag a peerage from New Labour.

  fn12 He opened sets with ‘Everybody’s been asking me if I’ll still be doing all the lefty politics now that Labour are in. Well, no I’m not. They don’t bother any more, why should I?’

  fn13 An under-appreciated mockumentary series created by John Morton, which impressed Helen Atkinson Wood so much that she married him.

  fn14 A return to mainstream studio-based sitcom was thankfully inevitable for Elton – a series starring David Haig as a beleaguered Health & Safety Officer, Slings and Arrows, was piloted for BBC1 in the summer of 2012.

  fn15 Rik Mayall has even channelled Flashheart, albeit nineteenth-century style, to play ‘The Bombardier’, an unctuous advocate of ale.

  fn16 Perhaps if the mysterious shop assistant Rufus (the last movie role written by Curtis for Atkinson) had been revealed to be an angel as was the original intention, the number would have been higher.

  fn17 With Helen Atkinson-Wood once guesting as Martin’s ex-wife.

  fn18 As well as returning to the plot of The Black Adder by playing Catesby in Richard Loncraine’s Richard III, one of many Shakespearean performances, which include stealing the show as Iago at the Globe Theatre.

  fn19 Although absent from the films, Fry indoctrinated a whole new generation into a love for his sumptuous tones, as narrator of the Potter audiobooks.

  fn20 And indeed Facebook, where the unofficial fanpage never fails to gather thousands of comments and ‘Like’s within minutes of posting any random quote.

  fn21 Or indeed, loud misquotation, to the disgust of the true devotee – a trait highlighted by Harry Enfield via his character Kevin the Little Brother’s regular irritating expostulation, ‘Bloody hell, Baldrick!’

  fn22 In exploring the most Baldrick-worthy occupations mankind has put up with for his series The Worst Jobs In History, poor Tony gutted pigs, trod stale urine, shovelled dung, caught rats and was thrown off cliffs.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Bravo – at an annoyingly loud volume …

  I originally tumbled into comedy chronicling after articles I’d written celebrating the I’m Sorry legacy led to a chat with Barry Cryer, in which a full history of I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again and I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue was mooted. The resultant Clue Bible proved to be a titanic undertaking, covering half a century of comedy, and sadly contending with numerous tragedies during composition. After such a blazing trial by fire, Preface Books’ invitation to suggest a follow-up required much thought. Having tackled such an enormous topic, I couldn’t turn back and plump for the simple life; my next subject had to be as huge, as terrifying and as difficult as Clue.

  It just so happened that Blackadder, by far the most important, influential and beloved comedy in my own life, presented the perfect challenge. The sitcom’s status demanded a print celebration, and I felt that if the job was worth doing (and as one of the few great sitcoms not to have been properly documented in print, it certainly was), then it was worth obsessing about for years, leaving no avenue unexplored to tell the Blackadder story in the greatest detail. From the start, I knew that the team behind the show would be near impossible to pin down – John Lloyd’s own journeys to bring everyone together for Blackadder Rides Again proved that anyone wishing to write about this gang was liable to be facing more snakes than ladders. Luckily I had a head start, having been researching the topic passionately since the age of nine, and so my first thanks should go to my brothers, Nick and Tim, who were there when the Blackadder fascination took hold, and were witness to the original creation of the juvenile scrapbooks which formed the basis of the years of intense research which went into the making of this book. Another head start came from the fact that Lloyd and Stephen Fry (and his eternally wonderful sister Jo Crocker) had been extremely encouraging to me with my first book, and if they hadn’t agreed that The True History of the Black Adder was a worthwhile project from the off, it would never have happened.

  My very first interviewee, however, was Terry Jones, who helped me ease back into author mode with a few pints and a long chat about medieval propaganda. With Tony Robinson and Howard Goodall next to come on board, I was filled with the confidence to use every cunning ploy I could to talk to as many of the Adder family as possible, and thus followed chats with Miriam Margolyes, who led me to Patsy Byrne, then Gabrielle Glaister, Robert East, Helen Atkinson-Wood, Warren Clarke, Humphrey Barclay, Geoff Posner, Mandie Fletcher, Charles Armitage, Jeremy Hardy, Lee Cornes, Peter Bennett-Jones, even young Natasha King … all of them as kind and helpful as the last – and yet the greatest fillip of all had to be the vigorous pep talk from Brian Blessed, who urged me, ‘Do see Rowan, just go and fucking see him! Say, “Pl
ease, I beg of you! Brian says do him a favour, Brian loves and trusts me!” What you’re doing is so worthwhile. Keep at it!’

  With that kind of wind in my sails it was hard to feel too despondent, and Commander Lloyd – having already recommended the celebrated historian Justin Pollard (who did not die) to be our historical expert – brought further cheer by personally contacting the remaining members of the Blackadder team, resulting in the input of the Adder himself. Having always known how passionately Atkinson protects his private life and his work, this was an unhoped-for honour and the book’s crowning glory. Subsequently realising the ambition of a lifetime by meeting both Richard Curtis and Ben Elton was the cherry, icing and smarties on the cake.

  The achievement of so much of the above of course relied on the goodwill and help of many agents and PAs, and I’d like to thank Stephen Gittins, Lucy Fairney, Giacomo Palazzo, Sarah Dalkin, Alison Lindsay, Arthur Carrington, Paul Carney, Sarah Douglas, Adele Fowler, Louise Bedford, Sarah McDougall, Aude Powell and Pru Bouverie. Archival help came from a number of shadowy sources, but special mention should go to Steve Roberts, Andrew Martin, Dennis Sisterton, Darrell Maclaine-Jones and Reinier Wels, plus Jeff Walden at the BBC Archives in Reading. My own scrapbooks were consistently supplemented by the wonderful archive shared by the SOTCAA team, and the excellent T. J. Worthington was also disarmingly complimentary when he agreed to be the very first person to read the fruits of my labour. Further outpourings of gratitude are due to the numerous journalists, periodicals and website editors who have shared some of their interviews for this chronicle (see fig. 1).