Blackadder Rides Again Page #6

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!"

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