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

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The True History of the Blackadder: The Unadulterated Tale of the Creation of a Comedy Legend Page 45

by J. F. Roberts


  Make-Up Designer

  VICKY POCOCK

  Production Assistant

  JANE SPOONER

  Production Secretary

  HILARY CHARLES

  Production Manager

  SARAH COWERS

  Assistant Floor Manager

  LINDSAY TRENHOLME

  Designer

  ANTONY THORPE

  Director

  RICHARD BODEN

  Producer

  JOHN LLOYD

  A merry messy Kweznuz.

  BLACKADDER GOES FORTH

  Recorded 20 August–24 September 1989

  1) CAPTAIN COOK – TX 28/09/89 BBC1

  Captain Edmund Blackadder

  ROWAN ATKINSON

  Private S. Baldrick

  TONY ROBINSON

  General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett

  STEPHEN FRY

  Lt the Hon. George Colthurst St Barleigh

  HUGH LAURIE

  Captain Kevin Darling

  TIM McINNERNY

  2) CORPORAL PUNISHMENT – TX 05/10/89

  Corporal Perkins

  JEREMY HARDY

  Corporal Jones

  STEVEN FROST

  Private Fraser

  LEE CORNES

  Private Robinson

  PAUL MARK ELLIOTT

  Private Tipplewick

  JEREMY GITTINS

  3) MAJOR STAR – TX 12/10/89

  Driver Parkhurst

  GABRIELLE GLAISTER

  4) PRIVATE PLANE – TX 19/10/89

  Squadron Commander Lord Flashheart

  RIK MAYALL

  Baron von Richthoven

  ADRIAN EDMONDSON

  Lieutenant von Gerhardt

  HUGO BLICK

  5) GENERAL HOSPITAL – TX 26/10/89

  Nurse Mary Fletcher-Brown

  MIRANDA RICHARDSON

  Brigadier Smith

  BILL WALLIS

  6) GOODBYEEE – TX 02/11/89

  Field Marshall Haig

  GEOFFREY PALMER

  SERIES CREDITS

  Written by

  RICHARD CURTIS & BEN ELTON

  Title Music Composed and Arranged by

  HOWARD GOODALL

  Bandmaster, the Band of the 3rd Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment (the Pompadours)

  WOI TIM PARKINSON

  Production Design

  CHRIS HULL

  Graphic Designer

  GRAHAM McCALLUM

  Properties Buyer

  JAYNE LIBOTT

  Costume Designer

  ANNIE HARDINGE

  Make-Up Designer

  CAROLINE NOBLE

  Production Assistant

  VANESSA SHARPLES

  Production Manager

  DUNCAN COOPER

  Assistant Floor Manager

  J. KENNEDY

  Vision Mixer

  CAROL ABBOTT

  Visual Effects

  ROGER TURNER

  Technical Coordinator

  MIKE CHISLETT

  Videotape Editor

  CHRIS WADSWORTH

  Lighting

  HENRY BARBER

  Sound

  MARTIN DEANE

  Director

  RICHARD BODEN

  Producer

  597602 LLOYD, J.

  BLACKADDER: THE KING’S BIRTHDAY

  Recorded at the Lyceum Theatre, 13 January 1998; TX 14/11/98, ITV

  Sir Edmund Blackadder

  ROWAN ATKINSON

  King Charles I

  STEPHEN FRY

  Written by

  RICHARD CURTIS & BEN ELTON

  BLACKADDER BACK AND FORTH

  Filmed June–July 1999, debuted 06/12/99, SkyScape Cinema, Millennium Dome; TX 01/10/00, Sky One; Terrestrial TX 21/04/02, BBC1

  All Blackadders

  ROWAN ATKINSON

  All Baldricks

  TONY ROBINSON

  All Melchetts

  STEPHEN FRY

  All Georges

  HUGH LAURIE

  All Darlings

  TIM McINNERNY

  All Elizabeths

  MIRANDA RICHARDSON

  Dinosaur

  TYRANNOSAURUS REX

  Nursie

  PATSY BYRNE

  William Shakespeare

  COLIN FIRTH

  Robin Hood

  RIK MAYALL

  Maid Marian

  KATE MOSS

  Friar Tuck

  CRISPIN HARRIS

  Napoleon

  SIMON RUSSELL BEALE

  Wellington

  STEPHEN FRY

  Scottish Hordes

  HORDES OF SCOTS

  Royal Reporter

  JENNY BOND

  Written by

  RICHARD CURTIS & BEN ELTON

  Make-up Designer

  JAN SEWELL

  Costume Designer

  HAZEL PETHIG

  Production Designer

  ANDREW HOWE-DAVIS

  Director of Photography

  TONY PIERCE-ROBERTS, BSC

  Music Composed by

  HOWARD GOODALL

  Editor

  GUY BENSLEY

  Executive Producers

  PETER BENNETT-JONES, GEOFFREY PERKINS

  Director

  PAUL WEILAND

  Producer

  SOPHIE CLARKE-JERVOISE

  Produced for the New Millennium Experience Company, in association with Sky TV, with grateful thanks to the BBC. A Tiger Aspect Production.

  BLACKADDER: THE ARMY YEARS

  Royal Variety Performance recorded at the Dominion Theatre on 5 December 2000; TX 17/12/00, BBC1

  Compère/Writer

  BEN ELTON

  Captain, The Lord Blackadder

  ROWAN ATKINSON

  THE ROYAL GARDENER

  ‘Party at the Palace’ trailers TX May–June 2002, BBC1

  Sir Osmund Darling-Blackadder

  ROWAN ATKINSON

  Directed by

  JOHN LLOYD

  THE JUBILEE GIRL

  A clip show reviewing the Summer’s Jubilee events with Sir Osmond Darling-Blackadder and Dame Edna Everage. TX 29/12/02, BBC1

  BANK ADDER

  ‘We are Most Amused’ sketch performed at the Royal Albert Hall on 28 November 2012. Unrecorded. YouTube aside.

  Sir (Lord) Edmund Blackadder

  ROWAN ATKINSON

  Sodoff Baldrick

  TONY ROBINSON

  First MP

  SANJEEV BHASKAR

  Second MP

  HELEN LEDERER

  Madame Chair

  MIRANDA HART

  Written & directed by

  BEN ELTON

  Fig. 3 CONCISE GUIDE TO HISTORICAL ANOMALIES

  There is no such species as a ‘black adder’, and no black snakes have ever been native to the British Isles.

  The Emperor Hadrian never poisoned his mother, nor married his horse, according to existing records.

  There were no ‘Jumping Jews’ in England in the fifteenth century, Edward I having expelled the race, who were not legally readmitted until 1653. Remaining Judaists were compelled to keep their faith secret, and were not known for notable skill at jumping.

  There was never a holy festival known as ‘Garethstide’, nor ‘Norristide’.

  Prince Edmund’s temptation with ‘ten thousand sovereigns’ could not have worked, as sovereigns were not minted until Henry VII’s reign, in 1489.

  The title of ‘Duke of Edinburgh’ was not instituted until the union with Scotland in 1707.

  The greeting ‘hello’ was not in use until several centuries after the instances given in the Chronicles.

  There was only one Pope at any one time during the fifteenth century, never three at once.

  There was no Earl of Doncaster, homosexual or otherwise, until the seventeenth century.

  Geoffrey Chaucer died almost a century before the events of ‘Witchsmeller Pursuivant’, so his appearance would have been a bad omen, whether moo
ing like a cow or not.

  The execution of the Earl of Essex is referred to forty years too early.

  Queen Elizabeth’s Nurse suggests that Sir Thomas More was present at the monarch’s birth, but official records show that he was imprisoned before September 1533. Also, he was beheaded, not burned at the stake.

  Rhinoceroses do not rut.

  Neither Sir Francis Drake nor Lord Effingham were ever under sentence of death – they were victors against the Spanish Armada, and rewarded accordingly.

  Queen Mary I was never beheaded – although, as this claim was made by Elizabeth’s Nurse, her every pronouncement can safely be dismissed as insanity.

  Elephants are not orange.

  There is no record of boomerangs appearing in Britain until after the first recorded discovery of Australia by Captain Cook in the eighteenth century.

  The song ‘Happy Birthday to You’ was written at the turn of the twentieth century.

  If a horse was ever made Pope, the Vatican did not record it, nor allow anyone in Christendom to know about it.

  Sir Thomas Herriott actually introduced the potato to Britain from Colombia in 1586.

  Sir Walter Raleigh was not born until two years after the expedition he claims to have embarked on in 1552.

  The Cape of Good Hope had already been navigated by 1488, by Portuguese explorer Dias.

  Blackadder could not have called the police, two and a half centuries before their creation.

  Lord Percy’s suggestion of inviting Cardinal Wolsey to a party is peculiar, given Wolsey’s death thirty years earlier – although Percy perhaps wasn’t to have known that.

  Prince Ludwig’s demand for Swedish kronor comes three hundred years before the currency’s invention.

  Charles I was captured two years before 1648, the beginning of Sir Edmund’s Chronicle. Oliver Cromwell was also not known as ‘Lord Protector’ until after Charles’s execution. In addition, King Charles never lived to have a fiftieth birthday.

  Pitt the Younger’s insistence on war with Napoleon could not have been mentioned in his maiden speech as Prime Minister, as Napoleon did not rise to power until a decade later – the French Revolution preceded Napoleon’s threat.

  William Pitt’s younger brother died before he took office. Also, Pitt could not have been bullied at school, as he was tutored at home.

  The first edition of Who’s Who was not published until the nineteenth century.

  Samuel Johnson completed his dictionary before the birth of George IV, and did not receive his doctorate until ten years after that.

  The Earl of Sandwich of bread-based-snack fame was christened John, not Gerald.

  Nelson was not made a Lord until 1798.

  Wellesley and Nelson only met on one occasion, just prior to the latter’s death at Trafalgar. The former was not made Duke of Wellington until a decade later.

  Mark Twain wrote The Prince and the Pauper in 1881.

  George III, even in his worst bouts of porphyric insanity, never ended sentences with the word ‘penguin’, preferring instead the expostulation ‘peacock!’

  If Captain Blackadder had been in the British Army for fifteen years by 1914, he would have received promotion to Major in 1915.

  Captain B imitates the Shipping Forecast, which was not first broadcast until six years after the end of World War I.

  There was no such position as Air Chief Marshal for the Royal Flying Corps, it being a subsequent RAF invention.

  The US Army entered WWI in April 1917, more than six months before the Russian Revolution.

  The University of Hull did not officially exist until 1954, having been founded as a college in 1927. That may, however, have been Captain B’s point.

  When Dr Johnson uses the simile ‘as pointless as fitting wheels to a tomato’, he should of course have said ‘as pointless as listing historical inconsistencies in a sitcom’.

  ‘BLACKADDER IN BETHLEHEM’ (EXTRACT)

  ROLLER & VOICE-OVER (WITH CHORAL ACCOMPANIMENT, ANGELS, ETC.)

  ‘And it came to pass, in those days when a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrolment, when Quirinius was Governor of Syria. And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city. And this did constitute an enormous business opportunity for Hoteliers all over the land of Judah, not least in the city of David, which is called Bethlehem.’

  Cut to the outside of the inn; the sign reads ‘Blackadder Inn: Merry Enrolment Day!’ Caption: 24 December.

  SCENE 1. THE FOYER.

  It should be quite realistic, not a romanised reception desk. Enter Blackadder. He has long Jewish locks – looks Arabic.

  BLACKADDER:

  Baldrick! (Enter Baldrick. He looks awful, as usual.) Where the hell is that turkey?

  BALDRICK:

  What turkey, master?

  BLACKADDER:

  I told you to buy a turkey for tonight’s special supper. For Jehovah’s sake this is the most important night in the history of this hotel – please our customers tonight and we’ll get them back every year – tonight could be the beginning of something big, something which will change the world.

  BALDRICK:

  All right, I’ll go out and get it …

  SCENE 2. THE KITCHEN

  Baldrick is arriving back. He takes a big turkey out of his sack, clears the table, and begins to pluck it. But as he pulls out the first feather …

  TURKEY:

  What the hell are you doing?

  BALDRICK:

  Who said that?

  TURKEY:

  Me.

  BALDRICK:

  O my God.

  TURKEY:

  What an incredible way to behave – bring me back here to your house, and then start tearing my bloody feathers out. You little bastard!

  BALDRICK:

  But I have to do it; you’re the master’s supper.

  TURKEY:

  (utter outrage) I beg your pardon?

  BALDRICK:

  You’re the special dinner.

  TURKEY:

  Wait a second – you mean, not satisfied with tearing my feathers out, you’re actually going to eat me as well?

  BALDRICK:

  That’s right.

  TURKEY:

  But I’m a talking turkey – with me, you could buy a hundred ordinary turkeys.

  Enter Blackadder slightly flappy.

  BLACKADDER:

  Baldrick – we need some entertainment for tonight.

  BALDRICK:

  We’ve already got it, lots of wine and our special feast. Although –

  BLACKADDER:

  No, come on, come on – entertainments – you know, snake tamers, lion charmers, that kind of thing. Can you think of anyone in that line?

  BALDRICK:

  Well, my cousin is a very good all-round family entertainer.

  BLACKADDER:

  (suspicious.) Really?

  BALDRICK:

  Well, he’s not a bad magician.

  BLACKADDER:

  Tell the truth, Baldrick. (Hits him.)

  BALDRICK:

  My cousin’s a crap magician, but he’s got a collection of funny hats. (Blackadder just hits him.) My cousin’s got one funny cap.

  BLACKADDER:

  Then get him round here at once – and finish plucking that turkey.

  BALDRICK:

  I can’t.

  BLACKADDER:

  Why not?

  BALDRICK:

  Well, I’ll let the turkey answer for itself.

  BLACKADDER:

  I’m sorry?

  BALDRICK:

  It’s a talking turkey.

  BLACKADDER:

  Of course it is. (To the turkey.) Tell me, we’re undecided what vegetables to do with you. What do you think? Peas or parsnips? (Pause.) Sorry – didn’t quite catch that. (Pause.) Mmm – Baldrick – do you remember what the punishment for lying and time wasting is under Roman law?

 

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