The True History of the Blackadder (60 page)

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Authors: J. F. Roberts

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BOOK: The True History of the Blackadder

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^fn11Although 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.

^fn12He 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?’

^fn13An under-appreciated mockumentary series created by John Morton, which impressed Helen Atkinson Wood so much that she married him.

^fn14A 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.

^fn15Rik Mayall has even channelled Flashheart, albeit nineteenth-century style, to play ‘The Bombardier’, an unctuous advocate of ale.

^fn16Perhaps 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.

^fn17With Helen Atkinson-Wood once guesting as Martin’s ex-wife.

^fn18As 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.

^fn19Although absent from the films, Fry indoctrinated a whole new generation into a love for his sumptuous tones, as narrator of the
Potter
audiobooks.

^fn20And indeed Facebook, where the unofficial fanpage never fails to gather
thousands
of comments and ‘Like’s within minutes of posting any random quote.

^fn21Or 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!’

^fn22In 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, “Please, 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).

The unceasing support of Trevor Dolby and his team at Preface, including Katherine Murphy, Phil Brown, Nicola Taplin, Najma Finlay and others, of course was also crucial in making this book the celebration which
Blackadder
deserved. But above all, John Lloyd has been the patron saint of this chronicle, an alpha and omega, and it’s down to his own kindness, sincerity and bulldog spirit that this True History exists at all.

As for anyone else, may the Yuletide log slip from your fire, and burn your house down.

Jem Roberts, Summer
AD MMXIII

APPENDIXES

Fig.1 BIBLIOGRAPHY, LINKS & BLACKADDER BUYER’S GUIDE

BLACKADDER REMASTERED – THE ULTIMATE EDITION (BBC DVD 2009)

DVD box set containing all four series, two specials and
Back and Forth
, plus
Blackadder Rides Again
,
Baldrick’s Video Diary
, extended interviews and commentaries from Lloyd, Curtis & Elton, Lloyd and Atkinson, McInnerny and Robinson, and Fry.

BLACKADDER: THE COMPLETE COLLECTED SERIES (BBC AUDIO 2009)

Anniversary collection of all four series and two specials on CD, plus
Back and Forth
,
I Have a Cunning Plan
,
Woman’s Hour Invasion
,
Shakespeare Sketch
,
Army Years
, and
Britain’s Best Sitcom
.

BLACKADDER: THE WHOLE DAMN DYNASTY (MICHAEL JOSEPH 1998, PENGUIN BOOKS 1999)

Transcripts of all four series, plus further historical research and oddities.

BLACKADDER BACK AND FORTH (PENGUIN BOOKS)

Transcript of the film, with supporting material, exclusively available at the Millennium Dome.

THE BLACKADDERS CD-ROM (BBC WORLDWIDE, 2000)

Games, PC themes, galleries and other defunct features.

BOOKS BY THE BLACKADDER TEAM

ATKINSON, ROWAN

(with Robin Driscoll)
Mr Bean’s Diary
, Boxtree 1993

CURTIS, RICHARD

Six Weddings and Two Funerals: Three Screenplays
, Michael Joseph 2006

(with Tony Robinson)
Odysseus: The Greatest Hero of Them All
, Knight Books 1986;
Odysseus II: The Journey Through Hell
, Knight Books 1987;
Theseus: The King Who Killed the Minotaur
, Knight Books 1988

(with Simon Bell and Helen Fielding)
Who’s Had Who
, Warner Books 1990

(with Paul Mayhew-Archer)
The Vicar of Dibley: The Complete Companion to Dibley
, Michael Joseph 2001

(with Rachel Cobb)
The Empty Stocking
, Puffin 2012

ELTON, BEN

Stark
, Sphere 1989;
Gridlocked
, Sphere 1991;
This Other Eden
, Sphere 1993;
Popcorn
, Simon & Schuster 1996;
Blast from the Past
, Bantam 1998;
Plays: 1
, Methuen 1998;
Inconceivable
, Sphere 1999;
Dead Famous
, Bantam 2001;
High Society
, Bantam 2002;
Past Mortem
, Bantam 2004;
The First Casualty
, Bantam 2005;
Chart Throb
, Bantam 2006;
Blind Faith
, Bantam 2007;
Meltdown
, Bantam 2009;
Two Brothers
, Bantam 2012

(with Rik Mayall & Lise Mayer)
Bachelor Boys: The Young Ones Book
, Sphere 1984

FRY, STEPHEN (Selected)

The Liar
, Heinemann 1991;
Paperweight
, Heinemann, 1992;
The Hippopotamus
, Random House 1994;
Making History
, Random House 1996;
Moab is my Washpot
, Random House 1997;
The Stars’ Tennis Balls
, Hutchinson 2000;
Stephen Fry’s Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music
, Boxtree, 2004;
The Ode Less Travelled
, Hutchinson, 2005;
Stephen Fry in America
, HarperCollins 2008
; The Fry Chronicles
, Michael Joseph 2010