Blackadder Rides Again

Edmund, have you someone special in your life?

-Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do.

-Who?

Me.

No, I mean, someone you love and cherish and want to keep safe

from all the horror and the hurt.

Mmm... Still me really.

I was travelling on a plane

several years ago and an episode of The Blackadder

came up on the entertainment channels,

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.

-Cigarette?

-No, thank you. I only smoke cigarettes after making love.

So, back in England, I'm a 20-a-day man.

I'm not a great laugher, sadly, but I might have sniggered at it,

which was my way of saying, "That was very funny."

Remarkably, Blackadder first slithered on to our screens all of 25 years ago.

I'd mud-wrestle my own mother for a ton of cash, an amusing clock and a sack of French porn.

So tonight, we celebrate the series that sired a comic generation

and a quantum of quotable lines.

-You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?

-No, not really.

This is a different thing. It's spontaneous and it's called wit.

We travel by train, plane, boat and automobile to track down

the original cast and creators who'd gone on to conquer

all corners of the known universe.

Baaah!

If you should falter, remember that Captain Darling and I are behind you.

About 35 miles behind you.

We travel from Northumberland...

When we filmed here, it was the first time I'd ever met a camp Geordie.

..to northern France.

If ever there was a subject requiring of satire,

it's people blindly going to war.

From Hollywood...

There were some rather large egos.

I happen to be perfect, but everyone else is just a sort of big-headed twerp.

..to the Horn of Africa.

After Blackadder, I sort of semi-retired really, and I bought

this small African town, Potendwe,

and the land you can see there, up until the hills, that's all mine.

Behind is Christopher Biggins', except the hill further on.

That's the S Club 7 and Boyzone accountant.

Blackadder, to remind those from another planet,

followed the exploits of the devilishly cunning Edmund Blackadder

and his trustily stupid sidekick, Baldrick.

Baldrick, believe me.

Eternity and the company of Beelzebub and all his hellish instruments

of death will be a picnic compared to five minutes with me and this pencil.

The pair journey from the mayhem of the Middle Ages...

through the terrible Tudors...

to the gorgeous Georgians...

Hurrah!

..ending up in the First World War.

MACHINE GUN FIRE

As an historical sitcom, it's timeless and keeps on twisting

and turning its way into the public's affections like...

Well, a twisty, turney thing.

And your chosen subject.

-Blackadder.

-Blackadder the TV series.

Blackadder Goes Forth.

It's even the backbone of school history lessons.

Now who's heard of Blackadder?

I want to be remembered when I'm dead.

I want books written about me, I want songs sung about me,

and then, hundreds of years from now, I want episodes from my life

to be played out weekly at half-past nine

by some great heroic actor of the age.

Now, for the first time, Blackadder himself, Rowan Atkinson,

and producer John Lloyd are re-tracing the story of the show,

a story that began at Oxford University, where a young Atkinson

first met the show's fellow creator, Richard Curtis.

I did nothing of a theatrical nature

in my first term at Oxford.

You know, I was just relishing the whole,

you know, slightly olde-worlde, you know, privileged nature of the place,

and going to endless organ recitals. I was a great lover of the organ.

I met Rowan in a small room - a don's room in some college

with people who'd answered an advertisement

for The Etceteras, which was the Oxford sketch-writing group.

He described me as being like a cushion,

like a cushion, because I sat on the chair and said nothing.

I thought he was a stuffed toy.

I mean, he didn't say anything for the first three meetings,

just a curiously shaped object in the corner.

And just when we were trying to decide what the material should be,

and we'd all been handing in sketches for months,

Rowan actually stood up and did two absolutely astonishing sketches.

Endsleigh?

Babcock?

Bland?

I was an enormous admirer of Rowan Atkinson.

I'd seen him in Edinburgh where he'd been a cult performer

from his earliest performances.

Nancy-Boy Potter?

Nibble?

'And I don't remember ever having laughed so much.'

I genuinely weed myself at one point.

Just a small amount, you'll be pleased to know,

but I did wee myself at Rowan's schoolmaster monologue.

Nibble! Leave Orifice alone.

Not The Nine O'Clock News, the show that brought alternative comedy

to TV, was the next step for Rowan and Richard.

It was while working together on the ground-breaking sketch show

that the idea for Blackadder started to take shape,

and they made a pilot that's never been seen till now.

-Then there's the Morris dancers.

-We're not having them.

Morris dancing is the most despicable entertainment

I've ever seen.

A load of effeminate blacksmiths waving bits of white cloth

they've been wiping their noses on.

-It's a positive health hazard.

-KNOCK ON DOOR

Go away!

The thing we really didn't want to do was anything that could,

in any sense, be compared to Fawlty Towers.

That was...that was almost the starting point.

There's one thing you mustn't be, Fawlty Towers, or anything like it.

And of course the great inspiration on the other side of it,

the thing we DID want it to be quite like was Errol Flynn's Robin Hood.

The pilot turned into the first series,

featuring a Blackadder very different

from the brilliant bounder we came to know.

What a little turd!

It was a grand affair, set in the Middle Ages

at the stately Alnwick Castle in Northumberland.

Well, so, 25 years ago,

we found ourselves coming to this town for the first time.

Oh, look, there's a bit of castle, there's the sort of gate.

I'm sure, when we came on the recce, we thought,

oh, no, this is really disappointing.

-Is that it? Just that gate.

-Yeah.

Oh, dear, that's a bit squat.

Oh, my God, there it is.

-Now this does ring bells.

-Yes.

Although I have to say the whole feel is an awful lot more spruce.

It's a lot... It's very trim, isn't it? It wasn't like this.

I mean, look at that grass.

You know, there are lots of castles in, you know, Kent or somewhere

which just don't have this sense of openness and bleakness

which Alnwick has, particularly in the snow in February.

All I can remember is thinking, "Look at all this stuff..."

This place would have been full of people,

as far as the eye could see. Horses and dogs...

This is where the first shot we shot begins, as you say goodbye to Baldrick.

And I remember the fantastic sound of hooves on these stones,

on this stone inside this tunnel.

And I remember, when you were on that horse that first day,

you leaned down from the horse and there was a little dewdrop

hanging off the end of your nose because it was so cold.

-Oh, yes, yes.

-The raindrop there,

and then you said,

"What voice shall I use?"

Help! Help! We haven't thought about this at all.

Get out of my way!

Are you going on a journey, my lord?

No, I thought I'd stand here all day and talk to you.

Well, you'll be needing someone to tend your horse then.

What is your profession?

One two three, one two three!

My God, a retired Morris dancer.

I found this the other day. I actually kept a diary of a few days.

"12th February 1983.

"Filming has been fantastically slow and tedious.

"The snow comes down on the words 'turn over'

"as if summoned by an incantation and a remarkable variety of textures.

"Often it's as big as gravel stones,

"and the flagstones look like a working model of Brownian motion."

Oh, that's rather...

Some lyrical writing!

-Very well written.

-Thank you so much!

Rather better than the series!

"On Monday, Tuesday, worried dreadfully that

"Rowan's character was a disaster, but it seems to be gelling well."

Oh, oh. It's gelled.

"Tim McInnerny is brilliant, as is Tony Robinson,

"quite splendid juices being squeezed from a rather shrivelled selection of lemons."

What comes in my head first about series one

is freezing to death in Alnwick Castle.

I can remember on the very first day, Tim McInnerny and I

started to get the giggles

because in the previous hour,

we'd been subjected to five different kinds of snow.

It was everything the north-east had to throw at us.

"The hailstones are as fat as Mint Imperials

"and it's so cold, we have to wear our long-johns in the bath."

Despite its quite graphic description of the difficult conditions,

actually, the tone is quite optimistic.

I mean, you don't sound like a man about to jump off a cliff.

What used to be strong about British comedy

was that people went from writing sketches

to writing a sitcom, and their sketchcraft was carried through.

-Let's get down to business, shall we?

-Business, my lord?

Yes. Baldrick has been looking at some of the ways we can actually make a bit of money at this job.

Some of the things that are best in series one are really sketches.

There appear to be four major profit areas.

Curses, pardons, relics and selling the sexual favours of the nuns.

Selling the sexual favours of nuns?

-Yeah.

-You mean some people actually pay for them?

Well, foreign businessmen, other nuns...

'We weren't an ensemble at that time'

and, in a way, for me, I think,

that scene was the first time that it really gelled.

Moving on to relics, we've got shrouds from Turin.

Wine from the wedding at Cana.

Splinters from the Cross.

And of course, there's all the stuff made by Jesus in his days in the carpentry shop.

We've got pipe racks, coffee-tables, coat stands.

Waterproof sandals. That's what I remember.

This was my one good scene in the first Blackadder series.

'I was so pleased I got this.'

I haven't finished this one yet.

It's so verbal, isn't it?

Nice props, I'm not knocking them at all,

but just the three of us being serious and pulling faces.

'Absolutely.'

I have here a true relic.

What is it?

It is a bone from the finger of our Lord.

It cost me 31 pieces of silver.

'Baldrick, you stand amazed.'

I am. I thought they only came in boxes of 10.

'Look at you!'

You should be shot for that kind of acting.

No, I could have been much worse.

I remember Blackadder being lots of fun.

In the end, you are about as much use to me as a hole in the head -

an affliction with which you must be familiar,

having never actually had a brain.

Hello!

The Spanish Infanta didn't know she was ugly.

That's the sad thing, really, about it.

Here I am, awaiting the arrival of the most beautiful, ravishing...

Hello!

Leave me alone, will you? I'm trying to talk to someone.

..while you're wittering away like a pox-ridden moorhen.

SHE SPEAKS SPANISH

She loved Blackadder, and she was electrified, sexually, by him.

SHE SPEAKS SPANISH

I've waited for this moment all of my life

SHE SPEAKS SPANISH

Your nose is smaller than I expected.

For him, it was tough.

He felt a huge responsibility,

kind of carrying the show.

It's extraordinary, the physical difference with Rowan,

-between the first and second series.

-Yeah.

Do your funny walk then, Adder.

-Moi?

-Do the funny Blackadder walk.

I haven't got a funny Blackadder walk.

You did one like that!

'Or something weaselly.'

What seems odd now is that

Tony was the streetwise, smart guy, and Rowan was an idiot.

Incredibly dysfunctional, almost twisted person.

A bit like what Mr Bean became.

Rowan wasn't entirely relaxed in the first series,

as were none of us, because we weren't quite sure...

not quite sure what we were doing.

Rowan's character wasn't properly sorted out.

Oh, my God, this is impossible! I can't do this.

We tried to do too much with Rowan's character in series one,

cos he was sort of aggressive and stupid and posh and cowardly and brave,

so it was a sort of agglomeration of quite a few funny things

that we knew Rowan could do.

But it's interesting how, you know,

an amusing costume and a daft haircut an amusing character doth not make!

I sat there wanting to laugh and unable to, a lot of the time.

I did laugh quite a lot, but I hope desperately that I shall laugh more the next week.

What exactly is funny about this?

What is funny about having that character?

Farewell, sweet England, and noble castle!

First watering place in the desert of my life.

Farewell, gentle giblets and sweet crenellations,

and farewell, dearest gutters!

I remember that famous comment of yours.

It looks like a million dollars but it cost a million pounds.

I suppose a good thing about the modern BBC is that they would never have allowed us to do this.

You know, to do what we did.

I mean, you know, they would never, you know, have just let

a few young, you know, creative people come up to Alnwick and shoot.

Well, no, they wouldn't, but then, on the other hand,

we were very proud of it at the time we did it.

The basic fault is the script, because Rowan Atkinson

and this chap who he writes with, have written an awful lot,

and it seems that six episodes are too much for them.

There are a lot of half-employed script writers who could have been brought in to good effect.

There was in fact a slightly more than half-employed scriptwriter knocking about.

Ben Elton was behind the cult series of The Young Ones

and was brought in to hone the writing of the second series.

Is the sitcom written?

-I mean, not the sitcom, the drama, the comedy.

-Well...

-That sounds like a good idea.

-I'm working on a pilot, I'm working on a pilot episode.

I've now had a screening council, and the end is hard to get right,

and I don't know how to get the special effects right.

I think we met at a script meeting for what was going to turn into Spitting Image,

and I was startled to find a huge fan of Blackadder I.

These were before the days of ratings. That was always the shock.

I mean, I still don't know how many people watched any episode of Blackadder.

And I remember on BBC...

Well, I used to wander round Shepherd's Bush

looking at people's windows,

particularly people with basement flats, to see whether or not anyone was watching.

You were looking for any nude girls who'd left their windows...

No, I was looking to see if anyone was watching Blackadder.

One didn't know whether it would be a success.

I wondered who that kind of ginger perv was whilst Kate and I were singing the theme tune.

'He lived rough.

'He talked rough.

'He wore a ruff.

'Blackadder II.

'Coming soon.

'Ish.'

They would sit in different rooms, probably even in different houses,

having divided the series into two halves,

and they'd write three episodes each and then swap over.

It always led you somewhere else. OK, execution,

head cut off, how's he gonna get out of it?

Stick the head down the back of his tights. Obvious!

'But maybe not obvious to the person who started with the beheading.'

Oh, Percy!

I've got the body, my lord, and I see you've got the head.

Yes, but it's no good, Percy.

No-one's ever gonna believe we've just cut it off. It's gone green!

Ben and I never wrote together, mainly because we had better things to do with our time.

We were both completely obsessed by pop music.

Madness, very great era for Madonna.

I seem to remember endless meetings when all we talked about

was which was our favourite track on True Blue.

And I remember us going to see Kylie Minogue, and we were literally the only two men there.

It was very early on in her career, and the entire audience was made up

of 30-year-old women who watched Neighbours and their daughters,

who also watched Neighbours, and were, by the time Kylie came on, fast asleep.

However enjoyable the writing process and however well the scripts were shaping up,

Ben and Richard were less than lucky, lucky, lucky

to get an ominous letter from the BBC's head of comedy.

Michael Grade had come in, and he looked at the ratings,

and it doesn't stack up.

It's not good enough for the little ratings they're getting,

and it doesn't get enough good reviews. It's finished.

And I remember the sentence very clearly.

"For this season, and realistically that means for good.

"Very sorry about this. It's over."

At which point,

a combination really of John Lloyd, Rowan Atkinson and Rowan's agent,

Richard Armitage, at the time, went into overdrive.

There was this mad weekend where Richard, Ben and I were sitting

at three typewriters, desperately cutting up out all the film,

taking up anything that had a silly costume,

that was at all expensive,

and we went back, I went back two days later,

the beginning of the next week, to John Davies, and said, "Here you are.

"These are the cheapest sitcoms on telly, and please may we have another chance?"

The key element to the success of the second series though,

would be the transformation of Blackadder himself

from nerdy medieval prince of series one to suave Elizabethan courtier.

The very first lesson was to pick Rowan's character,

to get it exactly clear what it was he was gonna do,

and, as Ben says, there was a whole imperious, sarcastic,

posh side of Rowan which we both loved,

which we knew how to write, which came very naturally to both of us.

Tell me, young crone. Is this Putney?

Indeed. That it be.

Yes it is, not "that it be".

You don't have to talk in that stupid voice to me, I'm not a tourist.

It's lovely to have this sort of pecking order, and to place

Blackadder somewhere in it, somewhere in the middle,

so he can be very cynical about those above him,

and very cynical about those below him.

Oh, very good shot, my lord.

Thank you, Baldrick.

-Sorry I'm late.

-No, don't bother apologising.

I'm sorry you're alive.

'There's a thing about comedy in Britain.

'Britain's a terrible place for class, as everybody knows.'

You look at a... I don't know, a sitcom.

The moment the lights go up, as it were, and you think, "Oh, God, it's upper-class people.

"I don't care about them." Or, "Oh, God, it's middle-class dentists, I don't care about them."

Or, "Oh, God, it's wacky Scousers, I don't care about them."

You know what I mean?

Everybody seems to hate everybody else in Britain and thinks up a reason not to care about them.

And one of the marvellous things about Blackadder II

and the subsequent Blackadders is that they are set in a very rigidly hierarchical world.

My Lord. The Queen does demand your urgent presence on pain of death.

Oh, damn. The path of my life is strewn with cowpats

from the devil's own satanic herd.

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."

Ooh, Edmund. I do love it when you get cross.

Sometimes I think about having you executed just to see the expression on your face.

It's within court,

which is a very small, bejewelled world, you know.

There are these little people in there,

who think they rule the world, and of course it was only me that ruled the world.

-What is it?

-A stick.

Is it a stick, Lord Blackadder?

Yes, Ma'am. But it is a very special stick,

because, when you throw it away, it comes back!

Oh, well!

That's no good, is it?

Because, when I throw things away, I don't want them to come back!

You! Get rid of it.

'Richard and Ben had created this idea, which was the Queen

'was like, a little girl with an enormous amount of power.'

I think we interviewed 40 actresses,

and we really were beginning to get desperate.

It was probably written in a pretty two-dimensional way,

and they all just were playing girls from Bedales.

The 41st person who walked in, when we were really about to shoot ourselves,

was this blonde who clearly hadn't washed her hair.

Apparently I walked in like something that had been pulled through a hedge backwards.

Spot the difference!

Here was this astonishing actress who did nothing like we expected it.

Every line was odd, peculiar, weirdly pitched.

I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman.

But I have the heart and stomach...

..of a concrete elephant.

-Prove it!

-Certainly will.

First I'm going to have a little drinkie,

and then I'm going to execute the whole bally lot of you.

Unbeknown to most people, and Miranda,

in a secret corner of the BBC, where few dare to tread,

there's the forgotten costumes department.

In the bowels of the building.

What has it got in its pockets?

Oh! God!

This looks rather familiar.

Ah!

I hope several hundred moths don't fly out.

Look at this!

Look at the... And even the work in the...

in the cuffs.

All these little individual pearls, most of them still there, just bobbling away.

I remember the weight.

Bloody hell! Yes, that dear friend, as I remembered. And not only...

Not only the dress, not only the wig, not only the ruff, but also a pomander

and a mirror attached to my dress.

Do I look absolutely divine and regal

and yet and at the same time very pretty and rather accessible?

You are every jolly jacktar's dream, Majesty.

I thought as much.

Had we not lucked out in getting Miranda,

-probably Blackadder II wouldn't have worked.

-Yeah!

I think it's held together rather well.

Rather better than I have!

Even though in theory I had the title role of the programme,

because there was Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie and Tony Robinson,

there was this wonderful feeling of being able to delegate,

of almost being the man in the middle, who was able to say,

"Ladies and gentlemen, Tony Robinson will now be extremely amusing!"

Baldrick, I would advise you to make the explanation you're about to give phenomenally good.

-You said, "Get the door."

-Not good enough, you're fired.

But, my lord, I've been in your family since 1532.

So has syphilis. Now get out.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Stephen Fry!

Now, Melchy, you really are a beginner.

You're not even wearing a pair of comedy breasts.

Au contraire, Blackadder.

You silly, silly people!

To have come all the way to Ndigwe

with a pair of comedy breasts.

Well, down the hatch.

CHEERING

They still smell the same.

They're fantastic.

I always felt sorry for those who came into the Blackadder to,

you know, do their roles, you know, do their cameos.

It's me!

Some people managed it better than others.

Flash by name, flash by nature!

Come here, camera.

Come here. Come here.

Hello, girls. It's Rik.

Happy Christmas.

Wahay!

-Hooray!

-Where have you been?

Where haven't I been? Woof!

I was surprised when they asked me.

Very honouring they should ask me.

I said, "All right, so long as I get more laughs than Rowan."

So my old mate Eddie's getting hitched, eh?

What's are the matter? Can't stand the pace of the in-crowd?

Many actors have many facets.

I do... I can do ego...

And that's about it.

Am I pleased to see you or did I just put a canoe in my pocket?

Down, boy, down!

I've got a big one. It's a big one.

< But Flashheart isn't really you, is it?

-I mean, it's...

-No, my ego.

Who is that?

I don't know but he's in your place.

Not for long!

It really helped, somebody coming in with a different style,

shall we say! Which gave everybody a bit of a kick up the arse, I think.

There was a very good head-butt. I'm rather proud of that one.

I head-butt him through the door.

Look, I only took the part of Flashheart for the women.

-Hi, Queenie. You look sexy. Woof!

-Woof!

He's like Errol Flynn coming in, you know, and she's, she's obsessed.

I've got such a crush on him!

He's just bigger and louder and got more testosterone.

Still worshipping God?

Fancier tights.

Last thing I heard, he started worshipping me!

-Ah ha ha ha ha!

-Ah ha ha ha ha!

To be standing next to Rowan is quite an experience.

My fiancee, Kate.

Hi, baby!

'You see then that Rowan is also a great reactor.'

FRANTIC GRUNTING

And at the end of it, Rik said, "Did I win?"

Which isn't really in the spirit of the ensemble, is it?

I don't know. Of course I haven't counted,

but I got three-and-a-half rounds of applause and he didn't get one.

Hurrah!

Series two was a brilliant success so nothing stood in the way of series three.

The dastardly duo moved from Elizabethan excess

to the bewigged and perfumed finery of the 18th century.

Series three, we took a big old gamble at the beginning,

that we ended up with such a small cast,

because there'd been sort of five of them, hadn't there?

There'd been Melchett and Nursey and Queenie and Percy and Baldrick

and Rowan, and this time, there was just Baldrick, Rowan and Hugh.

It was the casting of Prince George alongside Blackadder and Baldrick that brought new life to the show.

The role went to an actor who's since quickened the pulse of America.

Roaaaarrr!

It's a trial, John, you've no idea.

Have you learned anything about medicine? Can you remember all the stuff?

For about 20 minutes.

You know, I can hold it in my head for about 20 minutes, and I could...

For about 20 minutes, I could probably

do a coronary bypass operation.

If you catch me at the right hour, then by all means

have an aortic infarction at my feet and I'll fix it.

But, if it's the wrong hour, you're a goner.

I have to say, it's that my favourite series, Hugh,

that one, and it's because of you,

and I remember saying to you on the set that one day,

you are gonna be such a world-famous actor.

-Stop it.

-I told you.

-Stop it.

I bet you say that to all the actors in Blackadder, third series.

Hugh's always self-deprecating about it,

but that's the kind of bloke he is.

He says, "Oh, I just shouted a lot."

I'm a gay bachelor, Blackadder.

I'm a roarer, a rogerer, a gorger and a puker.

I can't marry. I'm young, I'm firm-buttocked, I'm...

Broke.

Well, yes, I suppose so.

You used to get quite stressed when you were the Prince Regent.

I came pre-stressed.

No stress was added.

I mean, that's what I do. I don't know why.

I wish I didn't, I wish I could sort of relax and enjoy things more,

but I don't, I worry about them.

Just occasionally one can say, "Come on, Hugh."

Is the entire idea of your misery for us to spend the next three hours

telling you how great you are?

Because, whether or not that was the idea, that is the end result!

Prince George is shy and just pretends to be bluff and crass and unbelievably thick.

Whilst deep down he is a soft little marshmallowy, pigletty type of creature.

But I do love the Prince Regent.

I love his...

His attempt to be better all the time.

That's one of the things that's so likeable about him, is,

he's trying to improve himself, and we know how doomed it is.

'That vacant, panicky look in his eye. It's bliss.'

I terminated my uninterrupted categorisation

of the vocabulary of our post-Norman tongue.

Well, I don't know what you're talking about,

but it sounds damn saucy, you lucky thing!

The classic episode of series three saw the arrival of Robbie Coltrane as Dr Johnson.

Here it is, sir.

Author of the very first English dictionary.

This book, sir, contains every word in our beloved language.

Every single one, sir?

-Every single one, sir.

-Oh.

Well, in that case, sir, I hope you will not object if I also offer

the doctor my most enthusiastic contrafibularities.

What?

Contrafibularities, sir.

-It is a common word down our way.

-Damn!

Oh, I'm sorry, sir.

I'm anaspeptic, frasmotic,

even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulations.

What, what, what?

The funny thing about the dictionary episode is there are things

in it which I really don't like.

Robbie's wig, which doesn't fit properly. The poets.

Be quiet, sir!

Can't you see we're dying?

The dream. I suddenly realised I don't like dreams.

Baldrick! Who gave you permission to turn into an Alsatian?

Oh, God, it's a dream, isn't it?

It's a bloody dream.

But the fundamental idea of the plot was a brilliant moment for us.

Baldrick, where's the manuscript?

You mean the big papery thing tied up with string?

Yes, Baldrick, the manuscript, belonging to Dr Johnson.

So you're asking where the big papery thing tied up with string,

belonging to the batey fellow in the black coat who just left, is?

Yes, Baldrick, I am.

And if you don't answer,

then the booted bony thing with five toes on the end of my leg

will soon connect sharply

with the soft dangly collection of objects in your trousers.

I can remember Richard saying, "I've had a great idea.

"It took Dr Johnson 25 years to write his dictionary.

"How about he finishes it, lends it to Blackadder,

"Baldrick puts it on the fire, Blackadder's got a weekend to rewrite the dictionary."

Now what about D?

-I'm quite pleased with dog.

-Yes, and your definition of dog is?

Not a cat.

And I just thought, that is such a beautiful conceit,

and that's a lot better than writing three good knob gags,

which is what I was sort of trying to do.

The dictionary episode was an appropriate highlight for a series

that revelled in the richness of the English language,

and was never shy of a scintillating simile.

He's madder than Mad Jack McMad, the winner of last year's Mr Madman competition.

You look as happy as a man who thought a cat had done its business

on his pie but it turned out to be an extra big blackberry.

I'm as poor as a church mouse that's had an enormous tax bill

on the very day his wife ran off with another mouse taking all the cheese.

-A burned novel is like a burned dog...

-Oh, shut up!

The Blackadder scripts are so revered that all these years later,

the team still pore over the subtleties of their trade

with fellow literary luminaries, wherever they can be found.

-Do you want it dedicated to somebody?

-To Derrick, please.

-Thank you.

-I love Time Team.

You really are a national treasure.

Have you got a favourite quotation?

We used to play the game of guessing who had written which line.

We were invariably wrong.

Thanks.

When it came to the rehearsals, and this got more intense series by series,

everyone became fantastically and wonderfully greedy.

We'd do no rehearsing, we'd sit around at a table,

arguing about the script and pulling the script to pieces.

There was one where I said, "I have a message, my lord",

and Rowan said, "That's the worst message I've ever read",

and we all went, "Urgh", and it ended up...

"That's the worst message I've ever heard since..."

..Lord Nelson's famous signal at the Battle of the Nile,

"England knows Lady Hamilton

"is a virgin, poke my eye out and cut off my arm if I'm wrong."

People fought for their patch.

Nobody just toed the line and stood where they were told to stand

and did what they were told to do.

Everyone stood up for themselves and their characters.

-It was very free...

-Yes.

-And creative.

-Richard wouldn't have said that.

No, no! "Just read it out" was Richard's... "Just read it out!"

They would sit around for the entire time discussing the script.

We'd sometimes say,

"If you stood up and tried to act this script out,

"you might find out things about it."

I hate to raise this having worked on it for three hours

but is it a good joke, Hugh, since you suggested it?

This was nothing to do with me.

It was!

It was up on the board. I just read it out.

John and Richard and Hugh and Stephen

conduct themselves in a very affable way,

and when they talk about Blackadder now,

it all seems like it was a bit jolly,

slightly sticky sometimes, but basically fine.

I don't remember it quite like that. It was hard.

Hours would pass and packets of cigarettes would be got through,

huge quantities of polystyrene hideous muddy coffee would be drunk

in an effort to try and get the script right.

Hang on, there's something wrong here.

Surely if you're ordering a cab for a Mr Redgrave... oh, from Arnos Grove?

Sometimes it was very tense, I remember some difficult times

when we appeared to be just sitting around for 2.5 hours,

bemoaning the lack of writing clarity in a particular scene

and desperately trying to think how it might be re-orientated to work.

Just change it to "for".

If you're a young writer and in with your mates,

and because you've known them for a long time,

they're going to be able to slag you off in a way other people

probably won't now because you're becoming successful.

That's going to be difficult.

I remember this like a heart attack....

That was when I felt the analysis was getting overblown

and I remember feeling it was better,

we're now feeling a duty to open everything up at all times.

I thought it was Mr Redgrave ordering the cab but in fact

what you're saying is Mr Redgrave is the person who's going to be picked up who's on the top bell, yes?

'That's roughly how it was when it was good.'

And when it wasn't so good, it wasn't really like that.

It was more strained.

I'm not saying those moments were rare because they weren't.

They were quite commonplace. There were lots of longeurs between.

'People sitting with their heads in their hands.'

And a cab...for a Mr Redgrave,

picking up from 14 Arnos Grove, ring top bell.

On the back of the third series, Blackadder was awarded its own Christmas special,

a parody of Dickens' Christmas Carol with Ebenezer Blackadder in very different form.

But the fourth series would take our comic anti-heroes into a place where heroes dwell - the First World War.

Writer Ben Elton and producer John Lloyd

have come to the Somme to reflect on the setting of the final series.

I've always been so interested in the First World War.

Yet I've never been to the cemeteries.

We've all seen the footage,

many a panning shot, as we're doing now, but until you actually stand amongst

tens of thousands of crosses, each with a name on it, it's really...

-I had a grandfather fight on either side. Did you know my German grandfather got an Iron Cross?

-No.

Yes, he got an Iron Cross.

Which, actually, is buried in England because as Jewish refugees, they escaped

from Nazi Europe...escaped, got out,

my grandad brought his Iron Cross with him and my grandma,

on discovering it, was horrified.

Here we are, German accents, Iron Cross,

people might put two and two together so she buried it in a garden in Hampstead.

What we discussed back in '88 when we were writing it was not

taking easy laughs at the expense of such mass heroism.

Coming here today, I'm very glad we didn't.

By the time we got to Blackadder Goes Forth, we'd always said that, more than anything,

we'd like to create a series

that was very claustrophobic

where the five or six of us who were the performers

were trapped in a space

and what better way to feel that notion of claustrophobia than in the trenches in the First World War?

Hear the words I sing,

war's a horrid thing.

So I sing, sing, sing,

ding-a-ling-a-ling.

It was a peculiar and bold thing to make a comedy out of,

but ultimately a very sympathetic and respectful one

even though the characters were absurd and moronic at times.

It never sort of disrespected their courage or sacrifice.

I joined up straightaway, sir.

August 4th, 1914, what a day that was.

Myself and the rest of the fellows leapfrogging down

to the Cambridge recruiting office and then playing tiddlywinks in the queue.

We'd hammered Oxford's tiddlywinkers only the week before

and there we were, off to hammer the Boche.

And how are the boys now?

Well, Jocko and the Badger bought it at the first Ypres, unfortunately.

Quite a shock, that.

Those awful policies, of what were called the Pals Brigades,

because in 1914 people joined up together, whole gangs, the pub would

march to the recruiting station, a cricket team or the tiddlywinks team as we said in Blackadder.

They'd all go together and the idea was they will fight together,

fight for each other and this industrial war didn't have time

for people to fight for each other because people would be mown down in an instant.

Gosh, I suppose I'm the only one of the Trinity Tiddlers still alive.

There's a thought and not a jolly one.

People don't stop making jokes because somebody is killed around the corner. In many ways,

life, as people say who've been fighting in real wars, life becomes very precious and pumped up.

Baldrick, what are you doing out there?

-I'm carving something on this bullet, sir.

-What?

I'm carving, "Baldrick", sir.

-Why?

-It's a cunning plan, actually.

-Of course it is.

You know they say somewhere there's a bullet with your name on it?

Yeeeeees.

I thought if I owned the bullet with my name on, I'd never get hit by it.

One of the things that strikes me about that last series

is how isolated all the characters in it are.

Are you a bit cheesed off, sir?

George, the day this war began I was cheesed off.

Within ten minutes of you turning up, I'd finished the cheese and moved on to the coffee and cigars.

The world weariness of Blackadder was something extraordinary,

something beaten down.

He was not necessary going to win all the time.

And knew he wasn't, which gave it a darker edge, I thought.

Baldrick finds his absolute apotheosis as the Tommy.

He can make the best of everything, turn things to his advantage,

however ghastly it is. He can find a better puddle to go to.

I believe Baldrick is the key to Blackadder and the key to why it's popular.

He's the common man. We all identify with this downtrodden guy who's not respected by anybody,

even when he's supposed be stupid, Baldrick's analysis of everything is simple but basically truthful.

Are you looking forward to the big push?

No, sir, I'm absolutely terrified.

Hmmm, the healthy humour of the honest Tommy. Ha-ha!

I had the privilege of performing a part that represented the ordinary lives of the grandfathers

of an awful lot of people in the country in which I live.

But really it was for them to imbue Baldrick with that notion rather than me.

I was just a bloke who couldn't make coffee.

Baldrick, fix us some coffee, will you?

And try to make it taste slightly less like mud this time.

-Not easy, I'm afraid, Captain.

-Why is this?

-Because it IS mud!

In the original script, Ben had written this line

about Baldrick saying he'd made the coffee out of mud.

We ran out of coffee 13 months ago.

So every time I've drunk your coffee since, I have in fact been drinking hot mud.

And in rehearsals, as was so often the case, someone said,

"Well, shouldn't there be milk in the coffee?"

Well, saliva.

And then there should be sugar.

-Which is?

-Dandruff.

And then I know this was Tim McInnerny, very late in the week, he suddenly said,

just for us, not cos he thought it would go in the script, "We could always make it cappuccino."

BALDRICK SPITS

Here you are, sir.

Ah, cappuccino.

Have you got any of that brown stuff you sprinkle on the top?

-Well, I'm sure I could...

-No, no.

'In the initial rehearsals, he wasn't even called Darling.'

He was called Captain Cartwright, which is kind of dull.

I didn't really know who he was and couldn't get an angle on him.

I had this bizarre idea that maybe if there was something

laughable about him, teaseable, and then it occurred to me maybe a name.

A really silly name.

What's going on, Darling?

Suddenly, this character was born out of nowhere just cos of the name.

You never mentioned this to me, sir.

Well, we have to have some secrets, don't we, Darling?

It's such a simple joke,

calling someone Darling,

especially if he's such a bitter, nasty man.

The way Stephen could come out, "Oh, Darling."

Get a laugh every single time.

Captain Darling? Funny name for a guy, isn't it?

Last person I called "darling" was pregnant 20 seconds later.

Every time his name is mentioned it's like a knife in his heart, twisting.

His hatred and self-loathing and self-denial is getting more and more tortured.

Just doing my job, Blackadder.

Obeying orders and of course having enormous fun into the bargain.

Darling and Blackadder are kind of the same. They're lower middle-class,

semi-gentlemen.

Obviously one of them has connived himself onto the staff and the other one is bad-lucked into the trenches.

You're a damned fine chap, not a pen-pushing, desk-sucking blotter-jotter like Darling here.

-Eh, Darling?

-No, sir.

Oh, you're always so good at this. Oh, yes.

Oddly enough, these feet aren't the same feet I used to play General Melchett in Blackadder.

Those were my early feet, I lost those feet in a card game to Keith Allen in 1992.

These are my second pair of feet.

Young people playing old people is very funny.

Because I was in my 20s and I was playing a general, it was somehow

funnier than if I'd been the right age to be a general which I now am.

It had to be a 30-year-old playing a 60-year-old.

If it had been a 60-year-old actor it would have been different.

It might have been funny but in a different way.

It wouldn't have worked the way Melchett worked.

It's the authority of youth.

Slightly red cheeks I remember having cos he was constantly puffing and blowing.

Constantly... I had in my head that he had piles so when I sat down...

Oh! Like that, these strange noises, bleats and baas.

-Baa! Baa!

-Baa!

Baa!

Baa! It's an extraordinary gift to play a character who's afraid of no-one, who's in supreme command.

It was just wonderfully... He was seamless.

There was this feeling of an unstoppable train of a performance.

-Who is the judge, by the way?

-Baa!

I'm dead.

Come on. We'll get this over in five minutes and have a spot of lunch.

The court is now in session.

General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett in the chair.

I remember five or six years after Blackadder IV, I was walking along

the street and somebody shouted at me, "You bastard pigging murderer!"

I thought, "Oh, God, it's a loony."

So I quickened my step and then I heard footsteps hurrying after me.

"Mr Fry, Mr Fry!" I went, "Yes?"

He said, "Sorry, you seem upset."

I said, "You called me a bastard pigging murderer."

He said, "No, I said Flanders pigeon murderer."

The case before us is that of the Crown versus Captain Edmund Blackadder.

The Flanders pigeon murderer.

Clerk, hand me the black cap, I'll be needing that.

I love a fair trial.

For all the comedy bawling and bleating, the final episode saw events take an extraordinary turn

as Captain Blackadder and his troops braced themselves for the inevitable.

-Don't forget your stick, lieutenant.

-Rather, sir. I wouldn't want to face a machine-gun without this.

I just remember feeling, you know, the impending doom, for my character,

'and I remember feeling

'this strange sort of knot in the pit of my stomach.'

It was the first time, as an actor,

that I had felt the predicament of my character.

'I was going to die at the end of the week.'

'It was much more like a serious play or a drama'

as all the comedy kind of melts and fades out of it,

and it becomes sadder and sadder,

'and more and more tragic,

'and, eventually, almost unbearably moving and sad.

'It's valedictory.'

I hope no-one was left in any doubt of the respect

I think everybody on the team had for...

for the sacrifices made and the honour of the people involved.

But it was a damn silly war and if ever there was a subject,

you know, requiring of satire,

it's people, no matter how honourably

and no matter how nobly, blindly going to war.

Company, one pace forward!

On the signal, Company will advance.

WHISTLE BLOWS

Good luck, everyone.

WHISTLE BLOWS

-CHARGE!

-PERCUSSIVE RATTLE OF GUNFIRE

In those days, you had to get out of the studio by 10 o'clock.

If you didn't, the electricians would pull the switch.

'At ten to ten, we finished filming in our normal studio,'

we then had to race across to the other studio

and it was then that we saw this no-man's land set for the first time

and it looked dreadful.

OK, well, this, apparently, is the original footage

from the very last scene of Blackadder IV

where they all go over the top.

I haven't seen this since 1989.

-Action!

-Charge!

They're actually only running - what? -

15 yards before they hit the barbed wire

and stand around looking like lemons,

then pretend to die and it's very embarrassing.

CHARGE!

RATTLE OF MACHINE GUNS

GUNFIRE CONTINUES

HE CHUCKLES

It's pretty unconvincing, isn't it?

Now they've done a close-up here.

There's a ghastly shot of Hugh and Tim

and Baldrick dying.

Rowan pretending to die but keeping his eyes open.

He's getting up and he looks cross.

Well, that's...

me looking decidedly miffed.

And that's the end of it.

I can remember coming away thinking,

"I've no idea how we're going to end the series."

I thought they would end it before we actually went over the top.

It's one of the lowest points, I think, of my television career

thinking, "The end of this amazing series and I've just screwed it up."

As it was so obvious

that we had so little material to work with, we had to really slow

the pictures right down in order to stretch them in time

but that produced an incredibly good effect

with the flashes which were going over on the right of the picture

and the debris that falls over Rowan's character.

In slow motion, this suddenly achieved a grandeur

which was not obvious in the full motion.

The assistant editor said, "What if we slowed the sound down?"

ECHOING GUNFIRE

And suddenly we had this - pwuffch! -

this slow-motion sound effect and it starts to get really quite spooky.

BLACKADDER THEME AT SLOW SPEED

Having got Rowan virtually obscured by the debris,

to go to the next shot

where we're now in a blank no-man's land wide shot,

our characters are seen virtually to melt into the landscape.

And then somebody, I think it was the PA, said,

"We should get some poppies. What if...? I think..."

And someone got very excited and ran upstairs to the picture library

and got a still, a transparency, of some poppies.

The last decision, some bright spark in sound,

said, "Let's put some birdsong on it."

TRILL OF BIRDSONG

Even in the edit

it was obviously one of the most moving things that I had ever seen.

In the 19 years since the series ended, the team have each gone on

to achieve greatness in their own right.

But for all of them, there remains

something special about the Blackadder era.

'I think that I'd have to say that it just seems an unbelievably'

lucky break that something which was just a bit of work

that I did for a chunk of time, you know, doing the best I could

with people I really liked, has turned out to last so well.

'I don't think there'd been anything

'that enjoyed history like that.'

The relationship between lords and ladies and dukes and peasants.

The whole panoply and richness of what it is to come from our culture.

'It was just a very enjoyable experience'

of spending extended periods of time

with people with whom you felt a tremendous creative empathy.

I was doing Time Team once and somebody said me,

"Here, aren't you that bloke that used to be funny?"

THEY CHUCKLE

Only one question remains.

Dear, oh, dear. Oh, Lord.

Will they ever be funny together again?

-Would you do it again?

-What?

-Blackadder.

-No.

Because?

HE SIGHS

Too old...for one thing.

I don't think people want to see us the way we look now. I really don't.

They want those memories.

There's often talk of a fifth series.

If you had to do another one, what setting would you like to do it in?

If we'd done another one, I think we were going to set it in the '60s.

He had this idea of Adder as a sort of Brian Epstein figure

and Baldrick as a drummer,

a Ringo-style drummer, called Bald Rick

who has to wear a Beatle wig.

Rowan as the bastard son of Queen Elizabeth II

but also running a rock band in the King's Road.

It's already sounding shit. That'll be why we never made it.

The one I really liked the idea for was the one set in Neanderthal times.

Out of the jungle comes homo Blackadder.

I thought you meant gay Blackadder!

Oh, I thought you meant homo Blackadder.

I was just going, "Not many parts for girls there then!"

What about you, Tony, what would you've liked?

We talked about loads of ones.

I love the idea of a cowboy one.

I'd do that. Definitely.

Where I get to be a sort of Calamity Jane or something. Fantastic.

In a prisoner-of-war camp in the Second World War.

I've always personally favoured the Colditz idea.

But maybe it's best to leave these things as a memory.

SCOTTISH ACCENT: Aye, times past. That's what they were.

# Blackadder, Blackadder

# His taste is rather odd

# Blackadder, Blackadder

# A randy little sod!

# Blackadder, Blackadder

# Who gives a toss?

# No-one! #