The True History of the Blackadder (28 page)

Much water under the bridge later, John pays tribute: ‘Mandie’s an extraordinary person, she became a director at a time when women
never
directed TV comedy. She’d been assistant floor manager on
Not
, and I was very keen on her, we were good friends. She had to fight her way up the system like crazy, and was very fiery and sassy – like a principal boy, swashbuckling, with big boots and hands on hips and, “Come on, lads, let’s be having you!” And the crew all loved it, because she was damn sexy!’ ‘We had a love/hate relationship – we had history,’ Mandie says. ‘He was funny and charming, and in those days I can’t tell you how attractive he was – he was blond and blue-eyed and just gorgeous, and that slightly put one on the back foot. But he was the creative force, and he did pull it all together. He did need to be draconian, with so many egos around.’ Lloyd continues, ‘I used to say to her, “You’re treating me like a disobedient puppy!” She’d snap her fingers and say, “John, come here!” Used to make me very cross. But she
was the person who first started to bring a real visual style to
Blackadder
– I’d say, “That’s what you do, Mandie, you do the shots, but I’ve got to do the script because I know these guys, and you’re not going to get a better line out of them because you don’t know how to.” It was a co-production, but we squabbled like mad, like two naughty kids.’

Along with new costume designer Annie Hardinge (who would stay with the show until the end) and Rowan himself, Fletcher helped to sculpt a louche anti-hero so closely modelled on Michael Kitchen’s charming Edmund in Jonathan Miller’s 1982 BBC
King Lear
that it could only be deliberate. Fletcher admits that the results were striking. ‘The moment that Rowan stepped out of the make-up caravan at Wilton House, dressed in all that garb, all us girls went “Ooh!”’ and Elton begrudgingly concurs, ‘I think we were all surprised at how well Rowan scrubbed up – particularly when he was in bed with the prostitute, nearly nude. Honestly, all the girls kept sort of whispering, “Gosh, he’s actually quite good-looking, isn’t he?” There was a lot of that going on. We made him sexy!’ ‘I deceived everyone into thinking I was half decent-looking,’ Atkinson laughs. ‘I thought I looked like the Yorkshire Ripper. It’s exhausting playing a great lover, but I must say I did enjoy it. As Edmund, I’m ambitious to have a good time – especially with Queen Elizabeth.’

Despite the star’s modesty, the sequence they were there to film did cast him in the role of lover, in a rare instance of wilful anachronism, advertising Tudor love songs in a style defined in the script as a ‘very naff Woolies ad’. The writers promised themselves that the cheap laughs afforded by playing around with historical inaccuracy were off-limits. ‘We were not allowed to say, “What’s the time? Oh no, they haven’t invented watches yet!” That sort of joke,’ Elton says. ‘The whole thing was, basically, that Blackadder
was
the wristwatch that hadn’t been invented, he kind of had the attitude.’ Curtis adds, ‘That was resistant to the two traditions that there were at that point, the
Up Pompeii
and
Carry On
tradition, because whenever the
Carry On
people did the past, the whole thing was about anachronisms.’

The ‘Tudor Love Songs’ insert did, however, highlight another boon of the Elizabethan period – more Shakespeare-ribbing. With the series set in the early part of Elizabeth’s reign, 1560–66, Shakespeare was mewling and puking in his nurse’s arms at the time, but that didn’t preclude digs at his crap jokes, and ‘Bells’ directly references
Twelfth Night
, as the dishy Edmund falls in love with his pageboy, Bob/Kate. The first character to accompany Rowan in the series therefore was Gabrielle Glaister, who had enjoyed success in the hit musical
Daisy Pulls It Off
, and the two of them echoed the quandary of Duke Orsino and Viola as they strode around the Earl of Pembroke’s gardens. For Glaister, the spoof element provided a clear template for her character. ‘Viola’s got everything Bob’s got really. Presumably Viola is quite sexy, as one hopes Bob was, and feisty, holding her own in a man’s world. And deceiving people.’

While at Wilton House, Fletcher took the opportunity to make the most of the elegant surroundings. ‘I won’t take credit for much of
Blackadder
, but I will for the closing title sequence on series two. We had a day’s filming in His Lordship’s garden, so we put the camera back to the window, locked it off, and everyone came up with an idea of what the minstrel could do, and what Rowan could do to the minstrel, and it just worked a treat.’ Comic actor Tony Aitken had already been booked to mime the minstrel’s part, and would return to the studio for further Shakespearean spoofs, referencing Edgar’s madness for the episode ‘Money’, though he admitted, ‘I didn’t really understand the reference to
King Lear
and Poor Tom, the Fool and all the Shakespearean references. I could go back to university and spend three years studying
Blackadder
scripts and get a lot out of it.’

Naturally, Howard Goodall had been given crushing deadlines to get the new music ready so early. ‘It was fun doing those songs at the end, although my memory is that Richard would give us the lyric about a minute before it had to be recorded, so it was always a bit tense to be
honest, because we were never quite ready to do it … I feel slightly nostalgic about it, because these days you couldn’t do credits like that. First of all, you’re only allowed a tiny amount of time at the end of a programme, and second, they’re showing you the next programme over the credits and talking over them.’ The opening credits would also continue the sexy trend, blending period instrumentation with rock. ‘All the way through, I wanted to play with the idea of what you would expect to hear, and what you might then get, and I think I suggested a Renaissance-sounding band, and then a kind of crazy guitar solo. I actually wanted, rather like in
Red Dwarf
, for the guitarist to go madder, but it’s quite hard to get a really top session guitarist to play something that doesn’t seem to fit.’ With the original series’ opening histrionics replaced by a modest serpentine title sequence spoofing
I, Claudius
(although this adder needed more direction), the form of the new show was established, and it was time to fill in the gaps.

Turnips, Cabbages and Queens

‘With the second series, we started to establish the repertory company,’ Atkinson says, ‘not only a sort of claustrophobic and dramatic setting, but also quite a small and neat group of people who had a lot of natural creative empathy with one another, which continued until the end.’ Perhaps the simplest reincarnation in
Blackadder II
was that of Percy Percy, whose Elizabethan guise just made the Sir Andrew Aguecheek comparisons blatant. McInnerny’s long, lissom form seemed made to personify the Renaissance dandy, with ostentatious ruffs bringing to mind ‘a bird swallowing a plate’. ‘I think one of the things that made
Blackadder
so superb was the amount of research that went into both the props and the costumes. There were real absurd fashions at the time, where things were taken to huge extremes, so it’s not so outlandish an idea.’ Percy’s role as Blackadder’s emotional punchbag was to earn him the viewers’ love, and Glaister nails the appeal: ‘He’s like the runt of
the litter, you want to kick him, just because he’s so desperate to please, you want to say, “Oh, go away!”’ ‘I remember people asking me at the time whether Percy was based on anybody,’ McInnerny says. ‘He just naturally grew out of the rhythm of the writing. Every time you looked at Richard’s writing, it was just there and very clear.’

Tony’s return was as much a transformation as Rowan’s, albeit in the opposite direction – Baldrick was about to embark on a course of devolution that would make him the nation’s favourite dullard. ‘In order to make Blackadder’s character work,’ Robinson recalls, ‘he needed to be surrounded by people who were clearly much stupider than he was. And the problem with having a Baldrick who was brighter than he was, was that
everyone
was brighter than him, so where’s the comedy? There was no subtlety about it, no duality about it. So one of the ideas they came up with was that Baldrick should be the
stupidest person there’d ever been in the history of the world
. And it took me a long time to get him as stupid as was required – he was still fairly bright in series two, he was quite chipper in many ways. By series four, he was the living dead, but I’m not quite sure that that was in some ways as good as he was in
Blackadder II
.’ Both writers had a deep love of sitcom idiocy, admits Curtis. ‘The very, very stupid character is a sitcom tradition, it’s a lovely thing to have total idiocy.’ This new Baldrick balanced out his loss of mental agility with a whole new level of Curtis-inspired cuddliness, and the stirrings of a crucial trait spearheaded by Elton. ‘I can remember Ben bouncing up to me and saying, “I’ve got a great idea, Tony – Baldrick loves turnips!” I said to him, “What’s so funny about turnips?” And he said, “You know, they’re shaped like that, and they go to a point at the end …” And I said, “Ben, that’s parsnips!” And he said, “Whatever, it’s really funny, believe me.” I said, “Ben, really, it’s not going to get a laugh, it’s like the most unfunny thing in the world.” Which proves how little I know about comedy, and how much Ben knows. But on the other hand I do know much more about root vegetables.’

‘It’s rather impressive, I always think, how both Tim and Tony manage to be stupid in different ways. Usually stupidity is rather a one-note song, but they have their own brands,’ Stephen Fry says admiringly. But his own entry into the
Blackadder
brethren, though hardly the shrewdest nob in Christendom, would provide some contrast. With Edmund and his two friends back in the saddle, a new court had to be built up around them, and Elton always intended the Black Adder’s new nemesis to be played by his
Alfresco
comrade, even named Melchett in honour of Fry’s famous monologue. Elizabeth needed ‘a sort of William Cecil, Lord Burghley figure, all forked beard, forked tongue and fur-lined cloak’ to cheaply personify the extensive council who would have filled the royal court, and Fry lost no time in accepting the role, even though he recalls his friend apologising, ‘I won’t lie to you, it’s not like the greatest character in the world – he and Blackadder hate each other. He’s a kind of chamberlain figure, you know?’

With Melchett as the Queen’s right-hand man, a space was reserved on her left for that Shakespearean staple, the jolly Nurse, and the Ashford-born seasoned actress Patsy Byrne perfectly fitted the role. Though proud to prove to everyone that she could still do the splits on command, the 52-year-old diminutive, cuddly Byrne was the real veteran of the team. Her time with the English Stage Company at the Royal Court under George Devine in the fifties saw her originate roles directed by Lindsay Anderson and John Dexter, and Aunt Mildred in N. F. Simpson’s comedy
One Way Pendulum
. ‘We were all theatre-trained. I remember Tony Robinson’s Feste in
Twelfth Night
at the Chichester Festival, it was very good – he was a classical actor!’ Byrne’s own theatrical experience dovetailed perfectly with requirements, with roles including
Twelfth Night
’s Maria for the RSC, plus
I, Claudius
and historical epic
The Devil’s Crown
, and most fittingly of all, playing the Nurse in an ITV production of
Romeo and Juliet
a decade earlier, giving her a trial run at Bernard the Tudor Nurse’s combination of matronly dotage and treacly idiocy. ‘I played the Nurse about three or four times –
it followed me around, that character. So Nursie was a good part for me! I added just a little kind of colouring. She’s an earthy character and I think you’ve got to have a certain roundness – perhaps to the vowels, though she’d probably think more of the bowels than the vowels … I was completely at home right from the start with Nursie – innocent, scatological, and most incredibly stupid with a very warped and weird view on life, and just so sweetly gormless, but a rather loving creature. I mean, I liked her.’

The producer was delighted with the new trouper, and her ability to be ‘naughty and saintly by turns, and utterly lovable on screen and off’, and for Byrne the public’s love for her character would be the cherry on top of a long and successful life in the business. ‘It was six weeks’ work in, I’m quite happy to admit, a fifty-year-long career, but that six weeks made an enormous difference. For years I’d done some not high-profile but very interesting, rewarding work, and I’d done quite well. Suddenly I became almost, even in the very small part of Nursie, a household name! I still now go to Sainsbury’s and about eight times, every time I go, people say, “Hello, Nursie!” I enjoy that … I’ve often been asked, “Could you come to a party and bring your udders with you?” I say, “I don’t keep them in the wardrobe!”’ Miriam Margolyes says, ‘I’m still great friends with all of them – particularly Patsy Byrne, for whom I’m often mistaken! People often think that I played Nursie but I have to say, somewhat sadly, that I didn’t, but that I know Nursie and I will pass on the good wishes. She was a glorious fixture in
Blackadder
, I was just a recurring guest artist.’

The budgetary restraints had turned an opulent royal court into a cosy family, but with Blacky, Percy, Melchy, Nursie and Balders all signed up, the team still faced the biggest challenge of all – it seemed impossible to find a Queenie, the all-important authority figure for the Black Adder to slither over. The most startling suggestion was Brian Blessed, who had early talks with Martin Shardlow about sticking on a red wig and playing the Queen himself – the idea being that where he
never knew Edmund’s name in the first series, in the second he would be so obsessed with Blackadder that the star would be in constant terror of sexual attack. Luckily (or tragically), however, Blessed’s availability did not match with the recording dates, though he would remain friends with Rowan, who appeared on Brian’s
This is Your Life
in 1984, bowing and scraping. In lieu of Blessed, at least forty female actors (including many famous names who can of course never be specified) were rigorously auditioned, but found wanting. Curtis and Lloyd were in despair, until ‘a scruffy, slightly distracted-looking girl with unwashed hair’, a redhead of the exact same age as Elizabeth herself in 1560, changed everything.