The True History of the Blackadder (48 page)

The British press in the aftermath of the first broadcast of
Goes Forth
went into
Blackadder
overdrive, as news leaked out that ‘Goodbyeee’ really would be the team’s swansong. ‘I think we have gone as far as we can go with it,’ Atkinson told the
Sun
, ‘It’s a shame because the audience was enjoying it most when we were enjoying it the least. It’s
like selling a car – the best time to sell it is also the best time to keep it.’ Thus began years of cajoling for the
Adder
alumni to regroup, and endless press speculation as to when the next series could be set. None of these would come to anything, but a year after
Goes Forth
, Curtis did unveil a new generation of the family, in an entirely new format, with the publication of the 1991
Comic Relief Comic
.

Now a precious collector’s piece, the comic was put together by Curtis, with a bizarre plot co-written with Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison and others, utilising the talents of the greatest comic artists, ensuring cameos from every Marvel and DC superhero imaginable, plus the stars of
Dan Dare
,
Judge Dredd
,
Doctor Who
, the
Beano
, the
Dandy
,
Viz
,
Peanuts
,
The Simpsons
, and even the
Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles
, besides comic cameos from generations of comedy icons, including the Young Ones. In roughly connected absurd strands, the Red Nose trio Lenny, Griff and Jonathan were faced with the discovery that Griff had been taken over by evil Numskull-type spirits, ‘projections from the dark side of the human unconscious’, who feed on negativity and ignorance, while Ben Elton and Dawn French mutated into gigantic Godzilla-sized warring creatures (Ben becoming ‘Student Fridge Sausage Man’). The primary thread, however, was another Scrooging for Edmund Blackadder – in this case, ‘Mr Edmund Blackadder OBE’, a powerful contemporary businessman who begins by snidely pooh-poohing: ‘Comic Relief? I’d rather have a Rottweiler doing hunt-the-liver training inside my underpants than watch that. Hmmm. In two thousand years of recorded history, no Blackadder has ever given one badly forged farthing to charity. And I’ll be a scrofulous monkey’s somewhat embarrassing uncle if we’re going to start now …’ However, he ultimately saves the world from Griff’s misanthropic spirits by donating a splendid shining 50p piece to the charity (the Christmas bonus for a punky Baldrick in footman’s livery), thanks to the guidance of a disabled little girl who takes the selfish tycoon on a journey through the areas of society where the money raised on Red Nose Day brings the most relief.

The press thirst for more
Blackadder
was natural, considering the official garlands rewarded to
Goes Forth
on top of the public applause – the BBC certainly saw the weight of awards taken home by the makers and, in great contrast to their rejection five years earlier, made it clear that the
Blackadder
team would have carte blanche to return with whatever historical escapade they could cook up. Curtis & Elton, however, would not be drawn, and had turned down a number of joint movie offers – which, as they were of the calibre of
Police Academy: The London Beat
, was a wise move.

The 1990 BAFTA ceremony provided an embarrassment of riches
^fn14
for the collective trophy cabinet: in a fitting relay of triumphs, Warren Mitchell was the man to hand over the Best Comedy Award and – ten years after picking up the same gong for
Not
– Atkinson’s own golden mask for Best Light Entertainment Performance was presented by Frankie Howerd, Lurkio garlanding Blackadder with fitting ceremony. Atkinson was to pay especial tribute to Lloyd, who batted away the flattery, poured a drink and removed his tie with relief. ‘Then, in the background, I heard Princess Anne talking about someone whose career sounded a bit like my own. Suddenly I realised I was being given a Lifetime Achievement Award and nobody had warned me. I went up onstage in a most dishevelled state with no speech prepared, although in the end it seemed to go OK. Princess Anne was fantastic about it, although I felt impelled to apologise to her and her mother for
Spitting Image
.’

On accepting the Desmond Davis Award, John proudly paid tribute to the BBC, announcing, ‘I’m very glad to have this totally unexpected opportunity to bore everybody stiff about the values that that great organisation stands for, and to have had the honour for the last ten years to have worked in the most innovative, most exciting, most honourable broadcasting organisation in the world.’ But by this stage there was already a feeling that his work was done at the corporation.
Despite hosting the pilot for Hat Trick’s
Have I Got News for You
(then called
John Lloyd’s Newsround
), John was massively relieved to see Angus Deayton finally step into the spotlight by landing the job in his stead,
^fn15
and he similarly turned down an offer to present the
Holiday
show. Besides stepping in front of the camera for a
South Bank Show
comedy special, Lloyd had begun to move into directing commercials back in 1987, and indeed it was on the set of one madcap advert with Harry Enfield that he discovered he was going to be a father. Shortly after came the BAFTA. ‘I remember going home, BAFTAs held aloft, thinking, “I’m the happiest person alive.” Life couldn’t have been any better at that moment. I had everything I’d ever wanted: the wife, the family, the career, the house in London, the cottage in the country, the cars, the money, the awards. I’d won so many awards that people had actually started booing when I went up to collect them. But from almost the very next day, things started to go wrong … Then one Christmas Eve I was forty-two years old and the whole point of anything disappeared. It was just like somebody pulled the rug and I found myself feeling alone and terrified … as if some steel curtain had come down with the words “The Life of John Lloyd – that’s the end of the first part”. I woke up the next day and started the descent into a dark pit … it felt as though I was surrounded by poisonous snakes. I found myself thinking, “What’s the point of it all?” I’d achieved everything I’d set out to achieve. What was missing from my life was any sense of meaning.’

Fatherhood and solid domesticity was in the offing for most of the
Blackadder
brethren, with Rowan and Sunetra marrying in the Russian Tea Rooms in New York one day after he picked up the Royal Variety Award for
Goes Forth
. With respect for Curtis’s wedding allergy, Stephen Fry was chosen as best man, and the groom told reporters,
‘I didn’t want a massive wedding – so I kept guests to just the one close friend. It was a very cosy affair and I’m absolutely delighted.’

Despite the onset of family life for John, Richard, Ben, Rowan and Hugh, it was a birth of a very different kind which ensured that Atkinson and Lloyd’s comedic fortunes would be diametrically opposed in the new decade – only a few weeks after Blackadder went over the top, ITV aired the first ever sighting of the alien known as Mr Bean, on New Year’s Day 1990, and a new era began.

^fn1
He pitched one film about a nervous father and son called
Four Eyes and Fat Thighs
to a team from MGM who claimed to love it, but then tore the screenplay to shreds. And then there was the Hollywood producer who only saw Curtis because he thought he had written
Gregory’s Girl
…

^fn2
Lloyd made a similar dig in his one chart hit,
Spitting Image
’s ‘Chicken Song’ B-side ‘I’ve Never Met a Nice South African’, with the lyric ‘I had lunch with Rowan Atkinson when he paid and wasn’t late, but …’

^fn3
The first series’ insane Messenger David Nunn also returned as one of his greedy charges, alongside
Grange Hill
icon Erkan Mustafa, and David Barber, who found fame as the ‘Fat Bloke’ in
Harry Enfield’s Television Programme
.

^fn4
(Fletcher’s career would flourish and she stayed true to sitcom, directing Dawn French in
Roger and Val Have Just Got In
and Jennifer Saunders in
Jam & Jerusalem
and
Absolutely Fabulous
)

^fn5
Such as Mr B’s original response to Prince George’s claim to love Charades: ‘I think you’re confusing it with strip rummy, sir.’

^fn6
In a strange twist, the actual holder of the post at the time, Nottingham’s first black Sheriff, was also called Tony Robinson.

^fn7
With Danny John Jules’s Rasta Barrington and Mike Edmonds’s Little Ron completing the merrie band.

^fn8
The original press release ran ‘In AD 123, Britain was a cold miserable dump populated by beer-swilling hooligans …’

^fn9
The team worked together to provide the military-themed titles, which were originally down as ‘War Artist’, ‘Court Marshal’, ‘Concert’, ‘Flying’, ‘Spy’ and ‘Over the Top’.

^fn10
The real red Baron was shot down in battle, aged twenty-five, in the spring of 1918, and had little interest in the mechanics of toilet humour.

^fn11
Nobody seemed to inform BBC Worldwide, however – the sketch is included in the
Blackadder
audio box set.

^fn12
The filmed flight sequence was expertly pieced together from stock World War I re-enactment footage by the editing team.

^fn13
As ever, the sitcom was drawing on dramatic forerunners – in this case, R. C. Sherriff’s 1928 play
Journey’s End
, another tale of time idly running out in the trenches.

^fn14
Tony also collected the gong for Best Children’s Series, for
Maid Marian
.

^fn15
Although he did jest, with reference to his one-time girlfriend Lise Mayer, that ‘Angus walked off with my life, my salary and my girlfriend’.

Parte the Sixth

A BASTARD ON THE THRONE

IT SHOULD GO
without saying that the twentieth-century descendants of Captain Blackadder were to enjoy a considerable upswing in their fortunes, as the inheritors of the ancient bloodline continued to navigate the ladders of the British Establishment. Numerous relatives bagged themselves important roles in the military and the civil services, and built up a greater family fortune than ever before – all during a period when most aristocratic families were losing all power, relevance and, of course, cash, as deference died and the modern United Kingdom evolved. The details of the family’s latter-day history, and the biographies of living and more recently deceased family members, however, remains the private business of the present inheritor of the Blackadder legacy, which is as it should be.

Nevertheless, even with the admittedly meagre sources available for research purposes, it is hoped that this history of the family has at least shown that British History is essentially a dialogue, with one half of the equation silenced, and only the winner’s voice remaining on record. Henry Tudor, the primary villain of the piece, was surely only ever to be trusted in exact ratio to the distance he could be thrown, and his granddaughter Elizabeth equally thrived on secrets and lies, while perhaps the Hanoverians were, it is fair to argue, equally unfit to rule over this sceptered isle.

The history of Britain is infinitely studded with forgotten heroes, but perhaps it is time, in the twenty-first century, to finally give the four Edmunds kept alive by the faithful documentation of the Blackadder Chronicles and their 1980s BBC TV dramatisations, whose sad lives all
ended with true victory just beyond their grasp, their rightful places at the heart of our nation’s story. Propaganda may have always been the greatest weapon in any ruler’s armoury, but occasionally the suppressed truth can be re-established for all to see – and especially under today’s modern, open administration, under a monarch of such honest nobility as our own current sovereign.