Blackadder Rides Again Page #3

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...

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